Europe
Ukrainian cities shelled, including one near nuclear plant
Powerful explosions rattled the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Thursday and a city close to the country's biggest nuclear power plant sustained a barrage of shelling amid Russian attacks in several regions, Ukraine's presidential office said.
At least four civilians were killed and 10 more wounded over the past 24 hours, with nine Ukrainian regions coming under fire, the office said in its daily update.
Two districts of Mykolaiv, which has been targeted frequently in recent weeks, were shelled.
Russian forces reportedly fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. Some 50 residential buildings were damaged in the city of 107,000 and some projectiles hit power lines, leaving city residents without electricity, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Nikopol is located across the Dnieper river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was taken over by Russian troops early in the war.
Experts at the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War believe that Russia is shelling the area intentionally, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position."
Read:US says Russia aims to fabricate evidence in prison deaths
“Either Ukraine returns fire, risking international condemnation and a nuclear incident (which Ukrainian forces are unlikely to do), or Ukrainian forces allow Russian forces to continue firing on Ukrainian positions from an effective ‘safe zone,’” the Institute’s latest report said.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency earlier this week voiced alarm over the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
In northern Ukraine, the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv, was being shelled from Russia, the presidential office said. Several industrial facilities were hit in the city, which also has been a frequent target. In the nearby city of Chuhuiv, a rocket hit a five-story residential building.
In the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting has been focused in recent weeks, residential buildings were being shelled in all large cities and a school was destroyed in the village of Ocheretyne. The region is struggling without gas supplies and, in part, without power and water supplies; its residents are being evacuated.
Russia-backed separatist authorities in the city of Donetsk said that two people were killed and three others wounded in Ukrainian shelling of the central part of the city on Thursday.
Russian forces have already seized the neighboring Luhansk region. Its Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on social media that local residents are being mobilized to fight against Kyiv's forces and that “even indispensable mine workers are being taken.”
Ukrainian authorities reported another abduction of a mayor who reportedly refused to collaborate with the Russians in the southern Kherson region, which is also almost entirely occupied.
The reported kidnapping of Serhiy Lyakhno, the mayor of the village of Hornostaivka, comes as Russia amasses more troops in the area in anticipation of a counteroffensive by Kyiv and ahead of a planned referendum on the region becoming part of Russia.
US says Russia aims to fabricate evidence in prison deaths
U.S. officials believe Russia is working to fabricate evidence concerning last week's deadly strike on prison housing prisoners of war in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine.
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia is looking to plant false evidence to make it appear that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the July 29 attack on Olenivka Prison that left 53 dead and wounded dozens more, a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence finding told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Russia has claimed that Ukraine’s military used U.S.-supplied rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka. The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defense ministry claimed in a statement Wednesday to have evidence that local Kremlin-backed separatists colluded with the Russian FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, and mercenary group Wagner to mine the barrack before “using a flammable substance, which led to the rapid spread of fire in the room.”
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the classified intelligence — which was recently downgraded — shows that Russian officials might even plant ammunition from medium-ranged High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as evidence that the systems provided by the U.S. to Ukraine were used in the attack.
Read:Cold showers, no lights: Europe saves as Russian gas wanes
Russia is expected to take the action as it anticipates independent investigators and journalists eventually getting access to Olenivka, the official added.
Ukraine has effectively used HIMARS launchers, which fire medium-range rockets and can be quickly moved before Russia can target them with return fire, and have been seeking more launchers from the United States.
Earlier Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to investigate the killings at the prison.
Guterres told reporters he doesn’t have authority to conduct criminal investigations but does have authority to conduct fact-finding missions. He added that the terms of reference for a mission to Ukraine are currently being prepared and will be sent to the governments of Ukraine and Russia for approval.
The Ukrainian POWs at the Donetsk prison included troops captured during the fall of Mariupol. They spent months holed up with civilians at the giant Azovstal steel mill in the southern port city. Their resistance during a relentless Russian bombardment became a symbol of Ukrainian defiance against Russia’s aggression.
More than 2,400 soldiers from the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian national guard and other military units gave up their fight and surrendered under orders from Ukraine’s military in May.
Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but other families have no idea whether their loved ones are still alive, or if they will ever come home.
Cold showers, no lights: Europe saves as Russian gas wanes
Fanning out like urban guerrillas through Paris’ darkened streets well after midnight, the anti-waste activists shinny up walls and drain pipes, reaching for switches to turn off the lights.
One by one, the outdoor lights that stores had left on are extinguished. It’s one small but symbolic step in a giant leap of energy saving that Europe is trying to make as it rushes to wean itself off natural gas and oil from Russia so factories aren’t forced to close and homes stay heated and powered.
Engineer Kevin Ha and his equally nimble friends had been acting against wasteful businesses in Paris long before Russia started cutting energy supplies to Europe in a battle of wills over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. As such, the campaigners were precursors of the energy economy drive becoming all the rage in France, Germany and elsewhere. Their message — that everyone can contribute — is almost word-for-word what public officials from cabinet ministers to mayors are saying now, too.
“Everyone can have a positive impact at their own level, by adopting good practices, by doing the right things to reduce their overall energy footprint,” the 30-year-old Ha said on a recent night of light-extinguishing on the Champs-Élysées boulevard.
The stakes are high. If Russia severs the supplies of gas it has already drastically reduced, authorities fear Europe risks becoming a colder, darker and less-productive place this winter. It’s imperative to economize gas now so it can be squirreled away for burning later in homes, factories and power plants, officials say.
“Europe needs to be ready,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “To make it through the winter, assuming that there is a full disruption of Russian gas, we need to save gas to fill our gas storages faster. And to do so, we have to reduce our gas consumption. I know that this is a big ask for the whole of the European Union, but it is necessary to protect us.”
And although Europe is scrambling to get energy from elsewhere, any difficulties this winter could be a harbinger of worse to come if Russian gas supplies are completely severed and stay off through 2023, said France’s minister overseeing energy, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“If gas deliveries are cut by the end of the year, that will mean we’ll have a full year without Russian gas, so the following winter could be even harder,” Pannier-Runacher told French senators.
Hence the mounting appeals — already familiar to exasperated parents of wasteful teenagers everywhere — for Europeans to take shorter showers, switch off power sockets and otherwise do what they can.
Read:Drone explosion hits Russia's Black Sea Fleet headquarters
Germany had been getting about a third of its gas from Russia, making the EU’s biggest economy and most populous nation conspicuously vulnerable. Energy saving is in full swing, with lights going off, public pools becoming chillier and thermostats being adjusted.
The glass dome of the Reichstag, the parliament building in Berlin, is going dark after it closes to visitors at midnight, and two facades will no longer be lit. Legislators’ office temperatures will drop by 2 degrees to 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) this winter. Berlin City Hall, the Jewish Museum, two opera houses and the landmark Victory Column with panoramic views are among about 200 sites in the German capital that will no longer be lit at night.
Saunas are closing in Munich’s municipal swimming pools, which have chillier water now, too. There’ll only be cold showers at public pools in Hannover, part of a plan by the northern city to cut its energy use by 15%.
“The sum of all the contributions will help us get through this winter and be prepared for the next one,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister. He also told news weekly Der Spiegel he has slashed the time he spends showering.
“It will be a demanding, stony road, but we can manage it,” he said.
With a campaign dubbed “Flip the Switch,” the Netherlands’ government is urging showers of no more than five minutes, using sun shades and fans instead of air conditioning, and air-drying laundry.
Under a law passed Monday in often-sweltering Spain, offices, stores and hospitality venues will no longer be allowed to set their thermostats below 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer, nor raise them above 19 degrees Celsius in winter.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asked office workers to ditch neckties, presumably to lessen the temptation to use air conditioning. He led by example, appearing at a news conference in an open-necked shirt.
The Italian government also is recommending limits on heating and cooling in public buildings.
In France, the government is targeting a 10% reduction in energy use by 2024, with an “energy sobriety” drive. Mayors are also waging their own war on waste, with fines introduced for air-conditioned or heated stores that leave front doors open; others are working to limit the pain of soaring energy prices.
The 8,000 residents of Aureilhan, in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, have been adjusting to nights without street lights since July 11. Extinguishing all 1,770 of them from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. will save money that Mayor Yannick Boubée would rather spend on roads and other maintenance. Otherwise, he said, the town’s 84,000-euro ($86,000) lighting bill in 2021 was on course to nearly triple next year.
“When it comes down to it, there’s no reason to keep the lights on at night,” he said by phone. “It is shaking up our way of thinking.”
Next will be convincing townspeople to agree to less-heated classrooms when schools reopen.
“We’re going to ask parents to put a pullover on their children, all measures that don’t cost anything,” he said. “We have no choice, unfortunately.”
New Zealand's unemployment rate remains low at 3.3 pc
New Zealand's unemployment rate was 3.3 percent in the June 2022 quarter, much lower than other developed countries, the statistics department Stats NZ said on Wednesday.
The underutilization rate was 9.2 percent in that quarter, Stats NZ said, adding these rates were relatively unchanged from the March 2022 quarter.
"Measures of spare labor market capacity have fallen over the year and remained low for several quarters, continuing to show a tight labor market," work and wellbeing statistics senior manager Becky Collett said in a statement.
Read: IMF loan would help economy gain stability in reserves, dollar market: Experts
Underutilization and unemployment rates have fallen over the year for Maori, Pacific, and Asian ethnic groups, as well as young people, Collett said.
The labor cost index salary and wage rates increased 3.4 percent in the year to June 2022, up from 3 percent in the year to March 2022, statistics show.
The average ordinary time hourly earnings increased to 36.97 NZ dollars (23.06 U.S. dollars), up 2.2 percent quarterly and 6.4 percent annually, Collett said.
Read: Capitalism culprit for U.S. gun violence: Al Jazeera
On comparable measures, New Zealand's 3.3 percent unemployment rate stands favorably against 3.6 in the United States, 3.8 percent in Australia and Britain and 5.1 percent in Canada, said Minister of Social Development and Employment Carmel Sepuloni.
New Zealand's unemployment rate was much lower than the average of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, which was 5 percent.
Bad weather in Black Sea slows 1st Ukrainian grain shipment
The first cargo ship to leave Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor more than five months ago has run into bad weather in the Black Sea and is set to arrive later than scheduled in Istanbul, a Turkish official said Tuesday.
The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, which set sail from the Ukrainian port of Odesa on Monday, is now expected to reach Istanbul early Wednesday, according to Rear Admiral Ozcan Altunbulak, a coordinator at the joint center established to oversee the grain shipments.
Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. officials are to inspect the ship after it anchors in Istanbul. The inspections are part of a U.N.- and Turkish-brokered deal to shift Ukrainian grain stockpiles to foreign markets and alleviate a mounting global food crisis.
Altunbulak said “preparations and planning” are continuing for other ships expected to leave Ukraine’s ports, but he did not provide details.
As part of the July 22 agreement on shipments, which include Russian grain and fertilizer, safe corridors through the mined waters outside Ukraine’s ports were established.
The situation in the Black Sea remains tense, however, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged international partners to keep a close eye on Moscow’s compliance with the deal.
Read:1st ship carrying Ukrainian grain leaves the port of Odesa
More ships are expected to leave from Ukraine’s ports through the safe corridors. At Odesa, 16 more vessels, all blocked since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, were waiting their turn, with others to follow, Ukrainian authorities say.
The more than 26,000 tons of corn on board the Razoni, destined for Lebanon, will make barely a dent in what the World Bank last week called “rising food insecurity” across the world.
“Record high food prices have triggered a global crisis that will drive millions more into extreme poverty,” its latest food security update said, blaming the war in Ukraine, global supply chain problems and the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the restart of shipments from Ukraine and Russia, which are major world suppliers of wheat, barley, corn and sunflower oil, raised hopes that the situation could improve. The fertile Black Sea region has long been known as the breadbasket of Europe.
The shipping developments came against a backdrop of continued fighting, especially in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Moscow's forces stuck to their familiar pattern of bombarding areas they don't hold, with Ukrainian officials reporting that the Russian shelling killed at least three civilians in eastern areas overnight.
In the Donetsk region at the forefront of the Russian offensive, the bombardments targeted towns and villages, especially Bakhmut which has taken the brunt of recent shelling.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenlo said that “the Russians are leveling Bakhmut with a massive barrage from the ground and from the air.”
“The shelling of Bakhmut is continuing around the clock, leaving civilians little chance to survive,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks.
The United States said it was sending an additional $550 million worth of military aid to Kyiv. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a tweet late Monday that the package included 75,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and more ammunition for the American-built HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, which have given Ukrainian forces an advantage on the battlefield.
Drone explosion hits Russia's Black Sea Fleet headquarters
A small explosive device carried by a makeshift drone blew up Sunday at the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean Peninsula, wounding six people and prompting the cancellation of ceremonies there honoring Russia's navy, authorities said.
Meanwhile, one of Ukraine's richest men, a grain merchant, was killed in what Ukrainian authorities said was a carefully targeted Russian missile strike on his home.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the drone explosion in a courtyard at the naval headquarters in the city of Sevastopol. But the seemingly improvised, small-scale nature of the attack raised the possibility that it was the work of Ukrainian insurgents trying to drive out Russian forces.
A Russian lawmaker from Crimea, Olga Kovitidi, told Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti that the drone was launched from Sevastopol itself. She said the incident was being treated as a terrorist act, the news agency said.
Crimean authorities raised the terrorism threat level for the region to “yellow,” the second-highest tier.
Sevastopol, which was seized along with the rest of Crimea from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, is about 170 kilometers (100 miles) south of the Ukrainian mainland. Russian forces control much of the mainland along the Black Sea.
The Black Sea Fleet's press service said the drone appeared to be homemade. It described the explosive device as “low-power.” Sevastopol Mayor Mikhail Razvozhaev said six people were wounded. Observances of Russia’s Navy Day holiday were canceled in the city.
Ukraine's navy and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the reported drone attack underlined the weakness of Russian air defenses.
“Did the occupiers admit the helplessness of their air defense system? Or their helplessness in front of the Crimean partisans?” Oleksiy Arestovich said on Telegram.
If such an attack is possible by Ukraine, he said, “the destruction of the Crimean bridge in such situations no longer sounds unrealistic” — a reference to the span that Russia built to connect its mainland to Crimea after the annexation.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the mayor of the major port city of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, said shelling killed one of Ukraine's wealthiest men, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife, Raisa. Vadatursky headed a grain production and export business.
Read:Red Cross struggles to see prison where Ukrainian POWs died
Another presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Vadatursky was specifically targeted.
It "was not an accident, but a well-thought-out and organized premeditated murder. Vadatursky was one of the largest farmers in the country, a key person in the region and a major employer. That the exact hit of a rocket was not just in a house, but in a specific wing, the bedroom, leaves no doubt about aiming and adjusting the strike,” he said.
Vadatursky's agribusiness, Nibulon, includes a fleet of ships for sending grain abroad.
In the Sumy region in Ukraine's north, near the Russian border, shelling killed one person, the regional administration said. And three people died in attacks over the past day in the Donetsk region, which is partly under the control of Russian-backed separatist forces, said regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Podolyak said on Twitter that images of the prison where at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an explosion on Friday indicated that the blast came from within the building in Olenivka, which is under Russian control.
Russian officials have claimed the building was attacked by Ukraine with the aim of silencing POWs who might be giving information about Ukrainian military operations. Ukraine has blamed Russia for the explosion, saying it was done to cover up the torture and execution of prisoners.
Satellite photos taken before and after show that a small, squarish building in the middle of the prison complex was demolished, its roof in splinters.
Podolyak said those images and the lack of damage to adjacent structures showed that the building was not attacked from the air or by artillery. He contended the evidence was consistent with a thermobaric bomb, a powerful device sometimes called a vacuum bomb, being set off inside.
The International Red Cross asked to immediately visit the prison to make sure the scores of wounded POWs had proper treatment, but said Sunday that its request had yet to be granted. It said that denying the Red Cross access would violate the Geneva Convention on the rights of POWs.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that the war has significantly reduced the size of Ukraine’s grain harvest compared with past years, but that Ukraine is working on ways to export what it has to avoid a global food crisis.
“The Ukrainian harvest this year is in danger of being half as large,” he said on Twitter.
Russia and Ukraine recently reached an agreement that would allow the release of millions of tons of grain held up in Black Sea ports. Officials have said they expect the shipments to begin soon.
Prince Charles' charity got donation from bin Ladens
Britain’s Prince Charles is facing more questions over his charities after a newspaper reported that one of his funds accepted a 1 million pound ($1.2 million) donation from relatives of Osama bin Laden.
The Sunday Times reported that the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund received the money in 2013 from Bakr bin Laden, patriarch of the large and wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq. Both are half-brothers of the former al-Qaida leader, who was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.
The newspaper said advisers had urged the heir to the throne not to take the donation.
Also read: Prince Charles’ wife Camilla tests positive for COVID-19
Charles’ Clarence House office disputed that but confirmed the donation had been made. It said the decision to accept the money was taken by the charity’s trustees, not the prince, and “thorough due diligence was undertaken in accepting this donation.”
The fund’s chairman, Ian Cheshire, also said the donation was agreed “wholly” by the five trustees at the time, and “any attempt to suggest otherwise is misleading and inaccurate.”
The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund was founded in 1979 to “transform lives and build sustainable communities,” and gives grants to a wide variety of projects in Britain and around the world.
Charles, 73, has faced a series of claims about the operation of his charities. Last month the Sunday Times reported he had accepted bags of cash containing $3 million from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.
Also read: Prince Philip wasn't really looking forward to centenary
London police are currently investigating a separate allegation that people associated with another of the prince’s charities, the Prince’s Foundation, offered to help a Saudi billionaire secure honors and citizenship in return for donations. Clarence House has said Charles had no knowledge of any such offer.
Red Cross struggles to see prison where Ukrainian POWs died
Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed each other Saturday for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in an attack on a prison in a separatist-controlled area. The International Red Cross asked to visit the prison to make sure the scores of wounded POWs had proper treatment, but said its request had not been granted so far.
Meanwhile, Russia kept launching attacks on several Ukrainian cities, hitting a school and a bus station.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ICRC and the United Nations have a duty to react to the shelling of the prison complex in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk province, and he called again for Russia to be declared a terrorist state.
“Condemnation at the level of political rhetoric is not enough for this mass murder,” he said.
Separatist authorities and Russian officials said the attack Friday killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded another 75. Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday issued a list naming 48 Ukrainian fighters, aged 20 to 62, who died in the attack; it was not clear if the ministry had revised its fatality count.
Satellite photos taken before and after the attack show that a small, squarish building in the middle of the Olenivka prison complex was demolished, its roof in splinters.
Both Ukraine and Russia alleged the attack on the prison was premeditated and intended to silence the Ukrainian prisoners and destroy evidence.
The ICRC, which has organized civilian evacuations and worked to monitor the treatment of POWs held by Russia and Ukraine, said it requested access to the prison “to determine the health and condition of all the people present on-site at the time of the attack.”
Read: Ukraine forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south
“Our priority right now is making sure that the wounded receive lifesaving treatment and that the bodies of those who lost their lives are dealt with in a dignified manner,” the Red Cross said.
But the organization said late Saturday that its request to access the prison had not been granted yet.
“Granting ICRC access to POWs is an obligation of parties to conflict under the Geneva Conventions,” the ICRC said on Twitter.
Russia claimed Ukraine’s military used U.S.-supplied precision rocket launchers to target the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military accused the Russians of shelling the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said the competing claims and limited information prevented assigning full responsibility for the attack but the “available visual evidence appears to support the Ukrainian claim more than the Russian.”
Moscow has opened a probe into the attack and the U.N. said it also was prepared to send investigators. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said “we stand ready to send a group of experts able to conduct an investigation, requiring the consent of the parties, and we fully support the initiatives” of the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian rockets hit a school in Kharkiv and a bus station in Sloviansk, among other strikes. In southern Ukraine, one person was reported killed and six injured in shelling in a residential area in Mykolaiv, local officials said.
Russian and separatist forces are trying to take full control of the Donetsk region, one of two eastern provinces that Russia has recognized as sovereign states.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned Saturday that Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk will face severe heating problems this winter because of the destruction of gas mains. She called for a mandatory evacuation of residents before the cold weather sets in.
The prison attack reportedly killed Ukrainian soldiers captured in May after the fall of Mariupol, a Black Sea port city where troops and the Azov Regiment of the national guard famously held out against a months-long Russian siege.
On Saturday, an association of Azov fighters' relatives dressed in black demonstrated outside Kyiv's St. Sophia Cathedral and called for Russia to be designated a terrorist state for violating the Geneva Convention's rules for the treatment of war prisoners.
A woman wearing dark glasses who gave only her first name, Iryna, was waiting for news of her 23-year-old son.
“I don`t know how is he, where is he, if he is alive or no. I don`t know. It`s a horror, only horror,” she said.
On the energy front, Russia’s state-owned natural gas corporation said Saturday it has halted shipments to Latvia because of contract violations. Gas giant Gazprom said the shipments were stopped because Latvia broke “terms for extraction of gas.”
The statement likely referred to a refusal to meet Russia’s demand for gas payments in rubles rather than other currencies. Gazprom has previously suspended gas shipments to other EU countries, including the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria, because they would not pay in rubles.
EU nations have been scrambling to secure other energy sources, fearing that Russia will cut off more gas supplies as winter approaches.
US envoy: Russia intends to dissolve Ukraine from world map
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and dissolve it from the world map entirely.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing “illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.”
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “has even stated that this is Russia’s war aim,” she said.
Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime.”
Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east comprising Donetsk and Luhansk, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council on Friday that “The de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine will be carried out in full.”
“There must no longer be a threat from this stage to Donbas, nor to Russia, nor to the liberated Ukrainian territories where for the first time in several years people are finally able to feel that they can live the way they want,” he said.
Read:Russia, Ukraine trade blame for shelling of POW prison
Polyansky also warned Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets that they were shifting “the provisional security line” further toward the west, “and in so doing clarifying even further the aims and objectives of our special military operation.”
Thomas-Greenfield went after countries that say “one country's security should not come at the expense of another's," asking what they call Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She didn't name any country but this is a view China has repeated frequently, including Friday by its deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang.
He told the council, “Putting one's own security above that of others, attempting to strengthen military blocs, establishing absolute superiority ... will only lead to conflict and confrontation, divide the international community and make themselves less secure."
The U.S. ambassador also went after nations that call for all countries to embrace diplomacy without naming Russia, saying: “Let us be clear: Russia’s ongoing actions are the obstacle to a resolution to this crisis.” Again she named no countries but a significant number of nations in Africa, Asia and the Mideast take this approach.
Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of mounting atrocities including the reported bombings of schools and hospitals, “the killing of aid workers and journalists, the targeting of civilians attempting to flee, the brutal execution-style murder of those going about their daily business in Bucha,” the suburb of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.
She said there is evidence Russia forces “have interrogated, detained forcibly, deported an estimated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children -- tearing them from their homes and sending them to remote regions in the east.”
Nearly 2 million Ukrainians refugees have been sent to Russia, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these journeys as forced transfers to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations of war victims who already speak Russian and are grateful for a new home.
A recent Associated Press investigation based on dozens of interviews has found that while the situation is more nuanced that the Ukrainians suggest, many refugees are indeed forced to embark on a surreal trip into Russia, subjected along the way to human rights abuses, stripped of documents and left confused and lost about where they are. Those who leave go through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being yanked aside and never seen again.
“The United States has information that officials from Russia’s presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations,” Thomas-Greenfield told the council.
Polyansky countered that despite Ukraine’s efforts at intimidation of their citizens “people are choosing the country that they trust” -- Russia.
He warned that heavy weapons being poured into Ukraine by the West “will spill over into Europe” because of what he claimed is “the flourishing corruption among Ukraine’s political and military leadership.”
Polyansky said Western weapons are only “dragging out the agony and increasing the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”
Addressing Western ambassadors, he said: “The aims of our special military operation will be achieved either way, however much fuel you pour into the fire in the form of weapons.”
Russia, Ukraine trade blame for shelling of POW prison
Russia and Ukraine on Friday accused each other of shelling a prison in a separatist eastern region that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war who were captured after the fall of Mariupol in May.
Russia said that Ukraine used U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in the attack on the prison in Olenivka, in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region. Officials from Russia and the separatist authorities in Donetsk said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded 75.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov described the strike as a “bloody provocation” aimed at discouraging Ukrainian soldiers from surrendering. He said that eight prison guards were also wounded by the shelling.
The Ukrainian military denied any rocket or artillery strikes on Olenivka, insisting that it wasn’t shelling civilian areas and only strikes Russian military targets.
It accused the Russian forces of deliberately shelling the prison in Olenivka in order to accuse Ukraine of war crimes and also to cover up torture and executions there.
The statement denounced the Russian claims as part of an “information war to accuse the Ukrainian armed forces of shelling civilian infrastructure and the population to cover up their own treacherous action.”
Neither claim could be independently verified.
Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed separatist leader, said the prison has 193 inmates. He didn't specify how many of them were Ukrainian POWs.
Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region said Russia has pressed on with the shelling of civilian targets in Ukrainian-held areas.
Read:Ukrainian president observes 1st grain exports leaving
“The fighting in the region has been intensifying by the day, and civilians must evacuate while it’s still possible,” said Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. “The Russian army doesn’t worry about civilian casualties. They are pummeling cities and villages in the region.”
The Ukrainian troops in Mariupol were taken prisoner after the fierce fighting for Ukraine’s Azov Sea port, where they had been holed up at the giant Azovstal steel mill. Their resistance has become a symbol of Ukrainian struggle against the Russian invasion that started on Feb. 24.
The Azov Regiment and other Ukrainian units defended the steel mill for nearly three months, clinging to its underground maze of tunnels. More than 2,400 surrendered in May under relentless Russian attacks from the ground, sea and air.
Scores of Ukrainian soldiers were taken to prisons in Russian-controlled areas such as the Donetsk region, a breakaway area in eastern Ukraine which is run by Russian-backed separatist authorities. Some have returned to Ukraine as part of prisoner exchanges with Russia, but families of others have no idea whether their loved ones are alive, or if they will ever come home.
In other developments:
— Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv.
City mayor Ihor Terekhov said a central part of the northeastern city was hit, including a two-story building and a higher education institution. Terekhov said the strike occurred just after 4 a.m. on Friday.
“The State Emergency Service is already working — they are sorting out the rubble, looking for people under them,” Terekhov said in a Telegram update.
— The Ukrainian presidential office said that at least 13 civilians were killed and another 36 were wounded in Russian shelling over the past 24 hours.
In the southern city of Mykolaiv, at least four people were killed and seven others were wounded when Russian shelling hit a bus stop.
“The Russians have changed their tactics because of the Ukrainian forces’ successes in the south. ... They fire near a bus stop,” Mykolaiv Gov. Vitaliy Kim said.
The Russian barrage also hit a facility for distribution of humanitarian assistance, where three people were wounded, officials said.
Ukrainian officials also said at least four civilians were killed and another five were wounded in the eastern town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, which is the focus of the Russian offensive in the Donbas. More than 30 residential buildings and a kindergarten were damaged.