Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Brittney Griner, WNBA star arrested on “drug” charges in Russia, could face 10 years in prison
Look who is coming to her aid!
Dennis Rodman plans Russia visit to seek release of Brittney Griner
NBA hall of famer Dennis Rodman says he has
permission to travel to Russia as he attempts to secure the release of
fellow basketball star Brittney Griner.
“I got permission to go to Russia
to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC News. “I’m trying to go this week.”
He did not specify who had given him permission to travel to Russia.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Brittney Griner, WNBA star arrested on “drug” charges in Russia, could face 10 years in prison
Look who is coming to her aid!
Dennis Rodman plans Russia visit to seek release of Brittney Griner
NBA hall of famer Dennis Rodman says he has
permission to travel to Russia as he attempts to secure the release of
fellow basketball star Brittney Griner.
“I got permission to go to Russia
to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC News. “I’m trying to go this week.”
He did not specify who had given him permission to travel to Russia.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Brittney Griner, WNBA star arrested on “drug” charges in Russia, could face 10 years in prison
Look who is coming to her aid!
Dennis Rodman plans Russia visit to seek release of Brittney Griner
NBA hall of famer Dennis Rodman says he has
permission to travel to Russia as he attempts to secure the release of
fellow basketball star Brittney Griner.
“I got permission to go to Russia
to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC News. “I’m trying to go this week.”
He did not specify who had given him permission to travel to Russia.
I love him!
Rodman has taken a fair amount of flack from some PJ fans over the years, and I can understand some misgivings- he's made some what I would call dumb moves- but he's an interesting character and I've always liked him despite some things he's done that left me head scratching. But he's a true blue Pearl Jam fan and no one else has been able to bride the U.S. and North Korea the way Rodman has. Fallible (like all of us), but fascinating.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
US to send $3 billion in aid to Ukraine as war hits 6 months
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE
2 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — As Russia's war on Ukraine drags on, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the package is expected to be announced Wednesday, the day the war hits the six-month mark and Ukraine celebrates its independence day. The money will fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two, they said.
The total of the aid package — which is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — could change overnight, but not likely by much. Several officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the aid before its public release.
Unlike most previous packages, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments, most of them done under Presidential Drawdown Authority, have focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel that the Pentagon already has in stock that can be shipped in short order.
In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for potential future defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the United States intends to keep up its support, regardless of the day-to-day back and forth of the conflict, the officials said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the more extended focus Tuesday as he reaffirmed the alliance’s support for the conflict-torn country.
“Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term, so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a virtual conference about Crimea, organized by Ukraine.
Six months after Russia invaded, the war has slowed to a grind, as both sides trade combat strikes and small advances in the east and south. Both sides have seen thousands of troops killed and injured, as Russia’s bombardment of cities has killed countless innocent civilians.
There are fears that Russia will intensify attacks on civilian infrastructure and government facilities in Ukraine in the coming days because of the independence holiday and the six-month anniversary of the invasion.
Late Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the State Department issued a new security alert for Ukraine that repeated a call for Americans in the country to leave due to the danger.
“Given Russia’s track record in Ukraine, we are concerned about the continued threat that Russian strikes pose to civilians and civilian infrastructure,” it said.
To date, the U.S. has provided about $10.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including 19 packages of weapons taken directly from Defense Department stocks since August 2021.
U.S. defense leaders are also eyeing plans that will expand training for Ukrainian troops outside their country, and for militaries on Europe’s eastern and southern flanks that feel most threatened by Russia’s aggression.
___
Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Isolated incident or a sign of things to come if the sanctions keep driving inflation and energy costs into winter? Or is it just 70,000 people moved by Russian propaganda and xenophobia? Inflation and energy problems seem real enough predicted at20% we can hardly deal with 9. But then again there is the xenophobia aspect. I'm wondering if the fear of refugee angle would be less if the citizens weren't dealing with insane inflation?
"Tens of thousands of Czechs protested in Prague against the government to demand more state help with rising energy bills, the largest manifestation of public discontent over the worst cost-of-living crisis in three decades.
About 70,000 people filled Wenceslas Square in the center of the Czech capital on Saturday, according to police estimates, with some carrying signs denouncing the country’s membership of the European Union and the NATO military alliance.
Czech inflation, driven mainly by surging housing costs and spiking energy prices, is currently the highest since 1993 and the central bank forecasts it to peak at around 20% in the coming months."
Russia announces troop pullback from Ukraine's Kharkiv area
By KARL RITTER and JOANNA KOZLOWSKA
30 mins ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Saturday that it was pulling back troops from two areas in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region where a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made significant advances in the past week.
The news came after days of apparent advances by Ukraine south of Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, in what could become the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said troops would be regrouped from the Balakliya and Izyum areas to the eastern Donetsk region. Izyum was a major base for Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, and earlier this week social media videos showed residents of Balakliya joyfully cheering as Ukrainian troops moved in.
Konashenkov said the Russian move was being made “in order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas,’” one of the eastern Ukraine regions that Russia has declared sovereign.
The claim of a withdrawal to concentrate on Donetsk is similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling back its forces from the Kyiv region earlier this year when they failed to take the capital.
Earlier Saturday, Ukrainian officials claimed major gains in the Kharkiv region, saying their troops had cut off vital supplies to Izyum.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko also suggested troops had retaken Kupiansk, a town along the main supply route to Izyum, long a focus on the Russian front line and the site of heavy artillery and other fighting. Nikolenko tweeted a photo showing soldiers in front of what he said was a government building in Kupiansk, 73 kilometers (45 miles) north of Izyum.
The Ukrainian Security Service posted a message hours later saying troops were in Kupiansk, further suggesting it had been seized. The military did not immediately confirm entering the town, a railway hub that Russia seized in February.
Videos on social media appeared to show Ukrainian forces on the outskirts of Izyum at a roadside checkpoint. A large statue with the city’s name could be seen in the images. Ukrainian forces did not acknowledge holding the city.
Britain's Defense Ministry said Saturday that it believed Ukrainian troops had advanced as much as 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Kharkiv, and described Russian forces around Izyum as “increasingly isolated.”
“Russian forces were likely taken by surprise. The sector was only lightly held and Ukrainian units have captured or surrounded several towns,” the British military said, adding that the loss of Kupiansk would greatly affect Russian supply lines.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, likewise referenced sweeping Ukrainian gains, estimating that Kyiv has seized around 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) in its eastern breakthrough. The institute said it appeared that “disorganized Russian forces (were) caught in the rapid Ukrainian advance,” and cited social media images of apparent Russian prisoners seized around Izyum and surrounding towns.
The same report said Ukrainian forces “may collapse Russian positions around Izyum if they sever Russian ground lines of communication” north and south of the town.
Vladislav Sokolov, head of the Russian-appointed local administration, said on social media that authorities in Izyum had started evacuating residents to Russia.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine comes amid an ongoing offensive around Kherson in the south. Analysts suggest Russia may have taken soldiers from the east to reinforce the latter area, offering the Ukrainians the opportunity to strike a weakened front line.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the television channel Ukraina that the Russians had no food or fuel for their troops in the area as Kyiv had cut off their supply lines.
“It will be like an avalanche,” he said, predicting a Russian fallback. “One line of defense will shake, and it will fall.”
The Ukrainian military was more circumspect, claiming to have taken “more than 1,000 square kilometers” (386 square miles) from pro-Kremlin forces this week. It said that “in some areas, units of the Defense Forces have penetrated the enemy’s defenses to a depth of 50 kilometers,” matching the British assessment, but did not disclose geographical details.
Officials in Kyiv have for weeks been tight-lipped about plans for a counteroffensive to retake territory overrun by Russia early in the war, urging residents to refrain from sharing information on social media.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that troops had reclaimed more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region since the start of the counteroffensive.
“We are gradually taking control over more settlements, returning the Ukrainian flag and protection for our people,” Zelenskyy said.
He spoke after the Ukrainian governor of Kharkiv reported that the national flag had been raised over Balakliya, recaptured by Ukrainian troops Thursday following six months of occupation.
“Balakliya is Ukraine!” Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian emergency services reported that a 62-year-old woman was killed in a Russian missile strike in the Kharkiv region when her home was flattened overnight.
Syniehubov also accused Moscow of pummeling settlements retaken by Kyiv. He said via Telegram that five civilians were hospitalized in the Izyum district, while nine others suffered injuries elsewhere in the region.
In the embattled Donbas, the Ukrainian governor said civilians were killed and wounded overnight by Russian shelling near the city of Bakhmut, a key target of the stalled Russian offensive. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram that two people died and two were injured in Bakhmut and the neighboring village of Yahidne.
In the Russina-held city of Enerhodar, home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, electricity and water were restored after a four-day outage due to an explosion, the city's Ukrainian mayor, Dmytro Orlov, said.
Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have come under repeated shelling in recent weeks, which Russia and Ukraine each other the other of committing. The shelling has raised fears of a radiation leak at the plant, which has been cut off from outside power sources; the facility has been forced to rely on power from its only working reactor for systems cooling and other safety measures.
Orlov said workers from the plant assisted in restoring Enerhodar's power, but it was not clear if the electricity was coming from the plant or from a nearby thermal generating station.
Also Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv and said Europe would not tire of helping Ukraine, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to raise the pressure by withholding energy supplies.
Baerbock said Germany will assist Ukraine in finding and removing mines and other unexploded ordnance left by Russian troops in areas where they have been pushed back.
Despite Ukraine's gains, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned Friday that the war would likely drag on for months. Blinken said the conflict was entering a critical period and urged Ukraine's Western backers to keep up their support through what could be a difficult winter.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops on Sunday successfully pressed their swift counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country, even as a nuclear power plant in the Russia-occupied south completely shut down in a bid to prevent a radiation disaster as fighting raged nearby.
Kyiv's action to reclaim Russia-occupied areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to prevent them from being surrounded, leaving behind significant numbers of weapons and munitions in a hasty retreat as the war marked its 200th day on Sunday.
A jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked the Russians in a video address Saturday night, saying “the Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back."
He posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the national flag over Chkalovske, another town reclaimed in the counteroffensive.
Yuriy Kochevenko, of the 95th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, tweeted a video from what appeared to be the city center of Izyum. The city was considered an important command and supply hub for Russia’s northern front.
“Everything around is destroyed, but we will restore everything. Izyum was, is, and will be Ukraine,” Kochevenko said in his video, showing the empty central square and destroyed buildings.
While most attention was focused on the counteroffensive, Ukraine's nuclear energy operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid, allowing engineers to shut down its last operational reactor to safeguard the plant amid the fighting.
The plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for shelling around it.
Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by shelling knocked the plant off transmission lines, the reactor was powering crucial safety equipment in so-called “island mode” — an unreliable regime that left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a potential nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog that has two experts at the plant, welcomed the restoration of external power. But the agency's director-general, Rafael Grossi, said he remains “gravely concerned about the situation at the plant, which remains in danger as long as any shelling continues.”
He said talks have begun on establishing a safety and security zone around the plant.
In a call Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the withdrawal of Russian troops and weaponry from the plant in line with IAEA recommendations.
In fighting, Ukraine's military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy, said its forces had recaptured about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles) since the counteroffensive began in early September. He said Ukrainian troops are only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the Russian border.
Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops have reclaimed control of more than 40 settlements in the region, noting he couldn't give a precise number because the operation is still unfolding.
Widespread power outages were reported Sunday night by Ukrainian media, including in the regions of Kharkiv, Poltava, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy. Officials in various regions said Russian forces had caused the outages by attacking infrastructure, knocking out electricity and water, with explosions preceding the outages.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov called the power outage “revenge by the Russian aggressor for the successes of our army at the front, in particular, in the Kharkiv region.”
Local officials said they were trying to repair the damage, and none of the outages were believed to be related to the shutdown of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Defense Minister Anna Malyar said Ukrainian forces are firing shells containing propaganda into areas where they seek to advance.
”One of the ways of informational work with the enemy in areas where there is no Internet is launching propaganda shells," she wrote on Facebook. "Before moving forward, our defenders say hello to the Russian invaders and give them the last opportunity to surrender. Otherwise, only death awaits them on Ukrainian soil.”
The Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces had also left several settlements in the Kherson region as Ukrainian forces pressed the counteroffensive. It did not identify the towns.
An official with the Russian-backed administration in the city of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said on social media that the city was safe and asked everyone to stay calm.
The Russian pullback marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, near the start of the war. The Kharkiv campaign came as a surprise for Moscow, which had relocated many of its troops from the region to the south in expectation of a counteroffensive there.
In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday the troops' withdrawal from Izyum and other areas was intended to strengthen Moscow's forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south. The explanation sounded similar how Russia justified its pulling back from Kyiv earlier this year.
Igor Strelkov, who led Russia-backed forces when the separatist conflict in the Donbas erupted in 2014, mocked the Russian Defense Ministry's explanation of the retreat, suggesting that handing over Russia's own territory near the border was a “contribution to a Ukrainian settlement.”
The retreat drew an angry response from Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who bemoaned it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to step up its war efforts. Many criticized Russian authorities for continuing with fireworks and other lavish festivities in Moscow that marked a city holiday on Saturday despite the debacle in Ukraine.
Putin attended the opening of a huge Ferris wheel in a Moscow park on Saturday, and inaugurated a new transport link and a sports arena. The action underlined the Kremlin's narrative that the war it calls a “special military operation" was going according to plan without affecting Russians' everyday lives.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov criticized the Moscow festivities as a grave mistake.
“The fireworks in Moscow on a tragic day of Russia’s military defeat will have extremely serious political consequences,” Markov wrote on his messaging app channel. “Authorities mustn’t celebrate when people are mourning.”
In a sign of a potential rift in the Russian leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, said the retreat resulted from blunders by the Russian brass.
“They have made mistakes and I think they will draw the necessary conclusions,” Kadyrov said. “If they don’t make changes in the strategy of conducting the special military operation in the next day or two, I will be forced to contact the leadership of the Defense Ministry and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground."
Despite Ukraine’s gains, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned Friday the war would likely drag on for months, urging the West to keep supporting Ukraine through what could be a difficult winter.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Ukrainian advances very encouraging.
“I’m proud that the U.S. and our allies have locked arms to support the Ukrainian people in this fight,” Kaine said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We and our allies must keep standing with Ukraine. Putin needs to recognize that the only way out is to end his failed war.”
—-
Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
at what point do Russian troops get so demoralized that they just stop fighting?
if putin is anything at all like stalin, the retreating soldiers will either be forced to fight the ukranians, or will be shot by their own troops upon retreat.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
at what point do Russian troops get so demoralized that they just stop fighting?
if putin is anything at all like stalin, the retreating soldiers will either be forced to fight the ukranians, or will be shot by their own troops upon retreat.
Because deposing or "unconditional surrender" isn't a strategic objective here, I think the West still needs to give Putin an off ramp to save a little face. I'm not sure what that is, but if it can be achieved before winter, Russia loses what little advantage they have remaining. And that little advantage is heating oil for the European winter.
at what point do Russian troops get so demoralized that they just stop fighting?
if putin is anything at all like stalin, the retreating soldiers will either be forced to fight the ukranians, or will be shot by their own troops upon retreat.
Because deposing or "unconditional surrender" isn't a strategic objective here, I think the West still needs to give Putin an off ramp to save a little face. I'm not sure what that is, but if it can be achieved before winter, Russia loses what little advantage they have remaining. And that little advantage is heating oil for the European winter.
could be considered an act of war against nato countries using that.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
at what point do Russian troops get so demoralized that they just stop fighting?
if putin is anything at all like stalin, the retreating soldiers will either be forced to fight the ukranians, or will be shot by their own troops upon retreat.
Because deposing or "unconditional surrender" isn't a strategic objective here, I think the West still needs to give Putin an off ramp to save a little face. I'm not sure what that is, but if it can be achieved before winter, Russia loses what little advantage they have remaining. And that little advantage is heating oil for the European winter.
could be considered an act of war against nato countries using that.
I suppose, but there isn't going to be shooting over that. It would be an expensive winter and Putin would be gambling that the Euro countries will lose stomach for financing the Ukrainians.
at what point do Russian troops get so demoralized that they just stop fighting?
if putin is anything at all like stalin, the retreating soldiers will either be forced to fight the ukranians, or will be shot by their own troops upon retreat.
Because deposing or "unconditional surrender" isn't a strategic objective here, I think the West still needs to give Putin an off ramp to save a little face. I'm not sure what that is, but if it can be achieved before winter, Russia loses what little advantage they have remaining. And that little advantage is heating oil for the European winter.
could be considered an act of war against nato countries using that.
Conversely wouldn't Nato sanctions against Russia be considered an act of war?
I agree with Mrussel, there needs to be some type of face saving off ramp for Putin that makes both Putin and the Ukrainians happy, otherwise I really don't see an end to the fighting. Both sides seem pretty dug into their positions and viewpoints.
As Ukraine pursues counteroffensive, Russia strikes Kharkiv
By ELENA BECATOROS
12 mins ago
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Among the boarded-up windows and blast-scarred buildings of Ukraine’s second-largest city, where Russian missiles and rockets strike during the day and the night, fear forms the backdrop of life.
As Ukrainian forces advance in their counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, pushing Russian forces out of territory they have held for months, strikes have continued unabated on the city, already hammered by artillery during months of war.
A missile strike on a power station Sunday night sparked a major fire and plunged Kharkiv into darkness for hours. In the blackness, another missile slammed into a residential building at around midnight, collapsing part of it and killing one person, local officials said.
“It’s dangerous to live in Kharkiv, every day is dangerous. It’s dangerous during the day and night,” said Kateryna Protsenko, a 29-year-old veterinarian living across the street from the apartment building.
“The nights are sleepless, but anyway you continue to live because you have a family and you need to survive and work somehow,” she said, visibly shaken at the sight of the building, a gaping hole where part of the third story used to be.
The building’s facade had peeled off and piles of rubble lay strewn on the ground, mixed with the twisted metal shrapnel of the missile. On the building’s second story, a closet stood suddenly exposed, a single coat hanger dangling precariously from its rail.
Protsenko said she couldn’t leave Kharkiv — she needed to work, and there were still sick animals to treat.
“So you live where you can live, and you understand that today you are alive but you can be gone in a minute," she said.
More explosions sounded out in the middle of the day Monday, with a police administrative building set on fire by a strike that killed one person in a neighboring building.
“Russia carried out a rocket attack against a peaceful city, where peaceful people live, just the same as the people living in the United States of America, or anywhere else in the world, who go to school, have their ordinary lives, raise their children,” Kharkiv regional police chief Volodymyr Timoshko said.
Behind him, firefighting crews clambered up ladders with hoses, dousing the flames leaping out of the top story of the building as choking smoke billowed out over the city.
Timoshko said authorities believed the building was hit by a rocket from a Smerch multiple rocket launcher.
“It’s quite a powerful weapon which is used for mass destruction, I repeat, mass destruction of the population,” he said. “They are using it during the daytime in the city center, the city which is living a normal life.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
It will not be a picnic in the US either. Nat gas commodity prices are already quadruple normal, and heating season hasn’t even started yet in most US locations
If we get an artic winter in the NE, it will very expensive.
Any thoughts on Nordstream sabotage? I think it is unlikely that Russia would self sabotage what they could just turn off. I am open to other opinions. It doesn't look like too much info has been released.
Meta disables Russian propaganda network targeting Europe
By DAVID KLEPPER
Yesterday
A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday.
The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before it was able to gain a large audience. Nonetheless, Facebook said it was the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort that it has found since the invasion began.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Putin illegally annexes Ukraine land; Kyiv seeks NATO entry
By JON GAMBRELL and HANNA ARHIROVA
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties Friday to illegally annex more occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his war. Ukraine's president countered with a surprise application to join the NATO military alliance.
Putin’s land-grab and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signing of what he said is an “accelerated” NATO membership application sent the two leaders speeding faster on a collision course that is cranking up fears of a full-blown conflict between Russia and the West.
Putin vowed to protect newly annexed regions of Ukraine by “all available means," a renewed nuclear-backed threat he made at a Kremlin signing ceremony where he also railed furiously against the West, accusing the United States and its allies of seeking Russia's destruction.
Zelenskyy then held his own signing ceremony in Kyiv, releasing video of him putting pen to papers he said were a formal NATO membership request.
Putin has repeatedly made clear that any prospect of Ukraine joining the military alliance is one of his red lines and cited it as a justification for his invasion, now in its eighth month, in Europe's biggest land war since World War II.
In his speech, Putin urged Ukraine to sit down for peace talks but insisted he won’t discuss handing back occupied regions. Zelenskyy said there'd be no negotiations with Putin.
“We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but … with another president of Russia," the Ukrainian leader said.
At his signing ceremony in the Kremlin's ornate St. George's Hall, Putin accused the West of fueling the hostilities to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowd of soulless slaves.” The hardening of his position, in the conflict that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people, further raised tensions already at levels unseen since the Cold War.
Global leaders, including those from the Group of Seven leading economies, responded with an avalanche of condemnation. The U.S. and the U.K. announced more sanctions.
U.S. President Joe Biden said of Putin's annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions: “Make no mistake: These actions have no legitimacy.”
“America and its allies are not going to be intimidated by Putin and his reckless words and threats,” Biden added, noting that the Russian leader “can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it.”
The European Union said its 27 member states will never recognize the illegal referendums that Russia organized “as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Friday that would have condemned the referendums, declared that they have no validity and urged all countries not to recognize the annexation. China, India, Brazil and Gabon abstained on the vote in the 15-member council.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called it “the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.”
The war is at “a pivotal moment,” he said, and Putin’s decision to annex more territory – Russia now claims sovereignty over 15% of Ukraine – marks “the most serious escalation since the start of the war.” Stoltenberg was noncommittal on Zelenskyy’s fast-track NATO application, saying alliance leaders “support Ukraine’s right to choose its own path, to decide what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Zelenskyy’s move toward the military alliance amounts to “begging NATO to accelerate the start of World War III.”
Zelenskyy vowed to keep fighting, defying Putin's warnings that Kyiv shouldn't try to recapture what it has lost.
“The entire territory of our country will be liberated from this enemy," he said. “Russia already knows this. It feels our power."
The immediate ramifications of the “accelerated” NATO application weren't clear, since approval requires members' unanimous support. The supply of Western weapons to Ukraine has, however, already put it closer to the alliance's orbit.
“De facto, we have already proven compatibility with alliance standards," Zelenskyy said. “We trust each other, we help each other, and we protect each other.”
The Kremlin ceremony came three days after the completion in the occupied regions of Moscow-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that Kyiv and the West dismissed as a blatant land grab held at gunpoint and based on lies. In his fiery speech, Putin insisted Ukraine treat the votes “with respect.”
As the ceremony concluded, the Moscow-installed leaders of the occupied regions gathered around Putin, linked hands and chanted “Russia! Russia!” with the audience.
Putin cut an angry figure as he accused the United States and its allies of seeking to destroy Russia. He said the West acted “as a parasite” and used its financial and technological strength “to rob the entire world.”
He portrayed Russia as pursuing a historical mission to reclaim its post-Soviet great power status and counter Western domination he said is collapsing.
“History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations,” he said.
Moscow has backed eastern Ukraine's separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions since they declared independence in 2014, weeks after Russia's annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia captured the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the annexation treaties, sending them to Putin for final approval.
The orchestrated process went into a celebratory phase Friday night, with thousands gathered in Red Square for a concert and rally that Putin joined. Many waved Russian flags as entertainers from Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine performed patriotic songs. Russian media reported employees of state-run companies and institutions were told to attend, and students were allowed to skip classes.
Putin's land grab and a partial troop mobilization were attempts to avoid more battlefield defeats that could threaten his 22-year rule. By formalizing Russia’s gains, he seemingly hopes to scare Ukraine and its Western backers by threatening to escalate the conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing.
Russia controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions, about 60% of the Donetsk region and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region, where it seized Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
But the Kremlin is on the verge of another stinging military loss, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern city of Lyman. Retaking it could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into Luhansk, one of the annexed regions.
“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter-turned-analyst Abbas Gallyamov said, adding that "the Kremlin cannot offer anything сomforting to the Russians.”
Russia pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones in Moscow’s heaviest barrage in weeks, with one strike in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital killing 30 and wounding 88.
In the Zaporizhzhia attack, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down on people waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could bring family members back across front lines, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces, but gave no evidence.
The strike left deep craters and sent shrapnel tearing into the humanitarian convoy, killing passengers. Nearby buildings were demolished. Bodies were later covered with trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive has deprived Moscow of battlefield mastery. Its hold on the Luhansk region appears increasingly shaky, as Ukrainian forces make inroads with the pincer assault on Lyman, a key node for Russian military operations in the Donbas and a sought-after prize. The Russian-backed separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian forces have “half-encircled” Lyman. Ukraine maintains a large foothold in the neighboring Donetsk region.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. Regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said at least three people were killed and five were wounded.
Ukraine’s air force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa were targeted with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed.
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By LORI HINNANT, EVGENIY MALOLETKA and VASILISA STEPANENKO
Today
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.
Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.
“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”
The brutal encounter at the end of March was just the start. Andriy Kotsar would be captured and tortured twice more by Russian forces in Izium, and the pain would be even worse.
Russian torture in Izium was arbitrary, widespread and absolutely routine for both civilians and soldiers throughout the city, an Associated Press investigation has found. While torture was also evident in Bucha, that devastated Kyiv suburb was only occupied for a month. Izium served as a hub for Russian soldiers for nearly seven months, during which they established torture sites everywhere.
Based on accounts of survivors and police, AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town and gained access to five of them. They included a deep sunless pit in a residential compound with dates carved in the brick wall, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine and rotting food, a medical clinic, a police station and a kindergarten.
The AP spoke to 15 survivors of Russian torture in the Kharkiv region, as well as two families whose loved ones disappeared into Russian hands. Two of the men were taken repeatedly and abused. One battered, unconscious Ukrainian soldier was displayed to his wife to force her to provide information she simply didn't have.
The AP also confirmed eight men were killed under torture in Russian custody, according to survivors and families. All but one were civilians.
At a mass grave site created by the Russians and discovered in the woods of Izium, at least 30 of the 447 bodies recently excavated bore visible marks of torture — bound hands, close gunshot wounds, knife wounds and broken limbs, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. Those injuries corresponded to the descriptions of the pain inflicted upon the survivors.
AP journalists also saw bodies with bound wrists at the mass grave. Amid the trees were hundreds of simple wooden crosses, most marked only with numbers. One said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. At least two more mass graves have been found in the town, all heavily mined, authorities said.
A physician who treated hundreds of Izium’s injured during the Russian occupation said people regularly arrived at his emergency room with injuries consistent with torture, including gunshots to their hands and feet, broken bones and severe bruising, and burns. None would explain their wounds, he said.
“Even if people came to the hospital, silence was the norm,” chief Dr. Yuriy Kuznetsov said. He added that one soldier came in for treatment for hand injuries, clearly from being cuffed, but the man refused to say what happened.
Men with links to Ukrainian forces were singled out repeatedly for torture, but any adult man risked getting caught up. Matilda Bogner, the head of the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine, told the AP they had documented “widespread practices of torture or ill-treatment of civilian detainees” by Russian forces and affiliates. Torture of soldiers was also systemic, she said.
Torture in any form during an armed conflict is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, whether of prisoners of war or civilians.
“It serves three purposes,” said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch. “Torture came with questions to coerce information, but it is also to punish and to sow fear. It is to send a chilling message to everyone else.”
NO SAFE HAVEN
AP journalists found Kotsar, 26, hiding in a monastery in Izium, his blond hair tied back neatly in the Orthodox fashion and his beard curling beneath his chin. He had no way to safely contact his loved ones, who thought he was dead.
Back in March, after his first round of torture, Kotsar fled to the gold-domed Pishchanskyi church. Russian soldiers were everywhere, and nowhere in Izium was safe.
Hiding amid the icons, Kotsar listened to the rumble of Russian armored vehicles outside and contemplated suicide. He had been a soldier for just under a month and had no idea if anyone in his little unit had survived the Russian onslaught.
When he emerged from the church a few days later, a Russian patrol caught him. They kept him a week. His captors’ idea of a joke was to shave his legs with a knife, and then debate aloud whether to slice off the limb entirely.
“They took, I don’t know what exactly, some iron, maybe glass rods, and burned the skin little by little,” he said.
He knew nothing that could help them. So they set him free again, and again he sought refuge with the monks. He had nowhere else to go.
By then, the church and monastery compound had become a shelter for around 100 people, including 40 children. Kotsar took up a version of the monastic life, living with the black-robed brothers, helping them care for the refugees and spending his free hours standing before the gilt icons in contemplation.
In the meantime, Izium was transforming into a Russian logistical hub. The town was swarming with troops, and its electricity, gas, water and phone networks were severed. Izium was effectively cut off from the rest of Ukraine.
It was also in the spring that the Russians first sought out Mykola Mosyakyn, driving down the rutted dirt roads until they reached the Ukrainian soldier’s fenced cottage. Mosyakyn, 38, had enlisted after the war began, though not in the same unit as Kotsar.
They tossed him into a pit with standing water, handcuffed him and hung him by the restraints until his skin went numb. They waited in vain for him to talk, and tried again.
“They beat me with sticks. They hit me with their hands, they kicked me, they put out cigarettes on me, they pressed matches on me,” he recounted. “They said, ‘Dance,’ but I did not dance. So they shot my feet."
After three days they dropped him near the hospital with the command: “Tell them you had an accident.”
At least two other men from Mosyakyn’s neighborhood, a father and son who are both civilians, were taken at the same time. The father speaks about his two weeks in the basement cell in a whisper, staring at the ground. His adult son refuses to speak about it at all.
That family, along with another man who was also tortured in the basement cell on Izium’s east bank, spoke on condition of anonymity. They are terrified the Russians will return.
Mosyakyn was captured again by a different Russian unit just a few days later. This time, he found himself in School No. 2, subject to routine beatings along with other Ukrainians. AP journalists found a discarded Ukrainian soldier’s jacket in the same blue cell he described in detail. The school also served as a base and field hospital for Russian soldiers, and at least two Ukrainian civilians held there died.
But the soldiers again freed Mosyakyn. To this day, he doesn’t know why.
Nor does he understand why they’d release him just to recapture him a few days later and haul him to a crowded garage of a medical clinic near the railroad tracks. More than a dozen other Ukrainians were jailed with him, soldiers and civilians. Two garages were for men, one for women and a bigger one — the only one with a window — for Russian soldiers.
Women were held in the garage closest to the soldiers’ quarters. Their screams came at night, according to Mosyakyn and Kotsar, who were both held at the clinic at different times. Ukrainian intelligence officials said they were raped regularly.
For the men, Room 6 was for electrocution. Room 9 was for waterboarding, Mosyakyn said. He described how they covered his face with a cloth bag and poured water from a kettle onto him to mimic the sensation of drowning. They also hooked up his toes to electricity and shocked him with electrodes on his ears.
It was here that Mosyakyn watched Russian soldiers drag out the lifeless bodies of two civilians they’d tortured to death, both from Izium’s Gonkharovka neighborhood.
Kotsar was taken to the clinic in July and received a slightly different treatment, involving a Soviet-era gas mask and electrodes on his legs. AP journalists also found gas masks at two schools.
By the time Kotsar arrived, people had already been there for 12 to 16 days. They told him arms and legs were broken, and people taken out to be shot. He vowed that if he survived, he would never allow himself to be captured again.
They released him after a couple of weeks. He craved familiar faces and people who meant him no harm. He returned to the monks.
“When I came out, everything was green. It was very, very strange, because there had been absolutely no color,” he said. “Everything was wonderful, so vivid.”
In mid-August, the bodies of three men were found in a shallow forested pit on the town’s outskirts.
Ivan Shabelnyk left home with a friend on March 23 to collect pine cones so the family could light the samovar and have tea. They never came back.
Another man taken with them reluctantly told Shabelnyk’s family about the torture they’d all endured together, first in the basement of a nearby house and then in School No. 2. Then he left town.
Their bodies were found in mid-August, in the last days of the occupation, by a man scavenging for firewood. He followed the smell of death to a shallow grave in the forest.
Shabelnyk’s hands were shot, his ribs broken, his face unrecognizable. They identified him by the jacket he wore, from the local grain factory where he worked. His grieving mother showed the AP a photo.
“He kept this photo with him, of us together when he was a small boy,” said Ludmila Shabelnyk, in tears. “Why did they destroy people like him? I don’t understand. Why has this happened to our country?”
His sister, Olha Zaparozhchenko, walked with journalists through the cemetery and looked at his grave.
“They tortured civilians at will, like bullies,” she said. “I have only one word: genocide.”
The Kharkiv region’s chief prosecutor, Oleksandr Filchakov, told the AP it was too soon to determine how many people were tortured in Izium, but said it easily numbered into the dozens.
“Every day, many people call us with information, people who were in the occupied territories,” he said. “Every day, relatives come to us and say their friends, their family, were tortured by Russian soldiers.”
After his final escape, Kotsar hid in the monastery for more than a month. Without documents and a phone connection to prove his identity, he was too afraid to leave.
Kotsar’s family had no idea what happened to him. They had simply reported him missing, like so many other Ukrainian soldiers caught on the wrong side of the frontline.
He spoke with effort to AP journalists, and at one point asked them to turn off the camera so he could compose himself. The AP contacted the Commissioner for Issues of Missing Persons Under Special Circumstances, which confirmed the missing person report and his identity through a photo on file. Then Kotsar’s own unit, which had left Izium in disarray, returned and tracked him down.
Kotsar doesn't know what comes next. Ukrainian officials are still in the process of restoring his identity documents, and without them he can’t go anywhere. He would like psychological treatment to deal with the trauma from repeated torture, and for now he’s staying with the monks.
“If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have survived at all,” he said. “They saved me.”
Kotsar’s first call was to the sister of his best friend — the only person in his entire circle of loved ones he was certain was in a safe place. He grinned as the connection went through.
“Tell him I’m alive,” he said. “Tell him I’m alive and in one piece.”
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Ukraine presses on with counteroffensive; Russia uses drones
By JON GAMBRELL
20 mins ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets Sunday with suicide drones, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.
Russia’s loss of the eastern city of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening threats to use nuclear force.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's land grab has threatened to push the conflict to a dangerous new level. It also prompted Ukraine to formally apply for fast-track NATO membership.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that his forces now control Lyman: “As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors," he said in a video address.
Russia's military didn't comment Sunday on Lyman, after announcing Saturday that it was withdrawing its forces there to more favorable positions.
The British military described the recapture of Lyman as a “significant political setback” for Moscow, and Ukraine appeared to swiftly capitalize on its gains.
Hours after Zelenskyy's announcement, Ukrainian media shared an image of Ukrainian troops carrying the country's yellow-and-blue flag in front of a statue marking the village of Torske, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Lyman and within sight of the Russian-held Luhansk region.
Shortly later, a video posted online showed one Ukrainian soldier saying that Kyiv's forces had begun to target the city of Kreminna, just across the border in Luhansk. Outgoing artillery could be heard in the background. Russian military correspondents also acknowledged Ukrainian attacks targeting Kreminna.
In another online photo, an Ukrainian soldier stood before giant watermelon landmark just south of the village of Novovorontsovka on the banks of the Dnieper River, along the Russian-controlled province of Kherson's northern edge. A Ukrainian flag flew above the statue as several apparently deactivated landmines lay beside it.
While Ukrainian forces did not immediately acknowledge a breakthrough, writers close to the Russian military have described a new offensive by Kyiv in the Kherson region.
In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy's hometown of Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that destroyed two stories of a school early Sunday, the regional governor said. The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.
A car carrying four men seeking to forage for mushrooms in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region struck a mine, killing all those inside, authorities said Sunday.
The reports of military activity couldn't be immediately verified.
Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks that has embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted rare domestic criticism of Putin's war.
Lyman, which Ukraine recaptured by encircling Russian troops, is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing what was left of the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”
In a daily intelligence briefing Sunday, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”
The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.
AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town, including a deep pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.
Recent developments have raised fears of all-out conflict between Russia and the West.
Putin frames the recent Ukrainian gains — along with NATO's post-Soviet expansion — as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Nine central and eastern European NATO members fearful that Russia’s aggression could eventually target them, too, issued a letter of support Sunday for Ukraine.
The leaders of Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint statement Sunday backing a path to NATO membership for Ukraine, and calling on all 30 members of the U.S.-led security bloc to ramp up military aid for Kyiv.
Germany's defense minister on Sunday announced the delivery of 16 wheeled armored howitzers produced in Slovakia to Ukraine next year. The weapons will be financed jointly with Denmark, Norway and Germany,
Russia moved ahead Sunday with steps meant to make its land grab look like a legal process aimed at helping people allegedly persecuted by Kyiv, with rubber-stamp approval by the Constitutional Court and draft laws being pushed through the Kremlin-friendly parliament.
Outside Russia, the Kremlin's actions have been widely denounced as violating international law, with multiple EU countries summoning Russian ambassadors since Putin on Friday signed annexation treaties with Moscow-backed officials in southern and eastern Ukraine.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is in one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians have continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it but its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.
Pope Francis on Sunday decried Russia's nuclear threats and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”
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By MICHAEL BIESECKER, SARAH EL DEEB and BEATRICE DUPUY
Today
BEIRUT (AP) — When the bulk cargo ship Laodicea docked in Lebanon last summer, Ukrainian diplomats said the vessel was carrying grain stolen by Russia and urged Lebanese officials to impound the ship.
Moscow called the allegation “false and baseless,” and Lebanon’s prosecutor general sided with the Kremlin and declared that the 10,000 tons of barley and wheat flour wasn’t stolen and allowed the ship to unload.
But an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” has found the Laodicea, owned by Syria, is part of a sophisticated Russian-run smuggling operation that has used falsified manifests and seaborne subterfuge to steal Ukrainian grain worth at least $530 million — cash that has helped feed President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
AP used satellite imagery and marine radio transponder data to track three dozen ships making more than 50 voyages carrying grain from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to ports in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and other countries. Reporters reviewed shipping manifests, searched social media posts, and interviewed farmers, shippers and corporate officials to uncover the details of the massive smuggling operation.
This story is part of an AP/FRONTLINE investigation that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and and upcoming documentary, “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” which premieres 10/9c Oct. 25 on PBS.
___
The ongoing theft, which legal experts say is a potential war crime, is being carried out by wealthy businessmen and state-owned companies in Russia and Syria, some of them already facing financial sanctions from the United States and European Union.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has attacked farms, grain silos and shipping facilities still under Ukrainian control with artillery and air strikes, destroying food, driving up prices and reducing the flow of grain from a country long known as the breadbasket of Europe.
The Russians “have an absolute obligation to ensure that civilians are cared for and to not deprive them their ability of a livelihood and an ability to feed themselves,” said David Crane, a veteran prosecutor who has been involved in numerous international war crime investigations. “It’s just pure pillaging and looting, and that is also an actionable offense under international military law.”
The grain and flour carried by the 138-meter-long (453 feet) Laodicea likely started its journey in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, which Russia seized in the early days of the war.
Video posted to social media on July 9 shows a train pulling up to the Melitopol Elevator, a massive grain storage facility, with green hopper cars marked with the name of the Russian company Agro-Fregat LLC in big yellow letters, along with a logo in the shape of a spike of wheat.
Russian occupation official Andrey Siguta held a news conference at the depot the following week where he said the grain would “provide food security” for Russia-controlled regions in Ukraine, and that his administration would “evaluate the harvest and determine how much will be for sale.”
As he spoke, a masked soldier armed with an assault rifle stood guard as trucks unloaded wheat at the facility to be milled. Workers loaded flour into large white bags like those delivered by the Laodicea to Lebanon three weeks later.
VIDEO: Stolen Ukrainian Grain Fueling Putin’s War Machine
Siguta, along with four other top Russian occupation officials, was sanctioned by the U.S. government on Sept. 15 for overseeing the theft and export of Ukranian grain.
Putin signed treaties Friday to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, in defiance of international law. The United States and European Union immediately rejected “the illegal annexation.”
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov told AP the occupiers are moving vast quantities of grain from the region by train and truck to ports in Russia and Crimea, a strategic Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has occupied since 2014. Despite Russian claims to have annexed Crimea, the United Nations ruled that land grab was also illegal.
Videos posted on social media in recent months show a steady stream of grain transport trucks moving south through occupied areas of Ukraine with the letter “Z” painted on their sides, a wartime symbol for Russia and its military forces. Agro-Fregat train cars have been recorded rolling through the Crimean port town of Feodosia, where satellite imagery shows trucks and trains lined up as grain was being loaded onto ships.
A July 11 satellite image shows the Laodicea tied up at a pier in Feodosia. The ship’s radio transponder was turned off and its cargo holds were open, being filled with a white substance from waiting trucks. Two weeks later, when it arrived at the Lebanese port city Tripoli, it claimed to be carrying grain from a small Russian port on the other side of the Black Sea.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Dennis Rodman plans Russia visit to seek release of Brittney Griner
NBA hall of famer Dennis Rodman says he has permission to travel to Russia as he attempts to secure the release of fellow basketball star Brittney Griner.
Griner was sentenced to nine years in Russian jail for drug possession earlier this month. Her lawyers have filed an appeal and there are understood to be separate talks underway over a possible prisoner swap. But Rodman told NBC this weekend that he plans to make a trip of his own to negotiate the Olympic champion’s release.
“I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC News. “I’m trying to go this week.” He did not specify who had given him permission to travel to Russia.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Rodman has taken a fair amount of flack from some PJ fans over the years, and I can understand some misgivings- he's made some what I would call dumb moves- but he's an interesting character and I've always liked him despite some things he's done that left me head scratching. But he's a true blue Pearl Jam fan and no one else has been able to bride the U.S. and North Korea the way Rodman has. Fallible (like all of us), but fascinating.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As Russia's war on Ukraine drags on, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the package is expected to be announced Wednesday, the day the war hits the six-month mark and Ukraine celebrates its independence day. The money will fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two, they said.
The total of the aid package — which is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — could change overnight, but not likely by much. Several officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the aid before its public release.
Unlike most previous packages, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments, most of them done under Presidential Drawdown Authority, have focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel that the Pentagon already has in stock that can be shipped in short order.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
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AP PHOTOS: 6 months of war told in shutter clicks
In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for potential future defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the United States intends to keep up its support, regardless of the day-to-day back and forth of the conflict, the officials said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the more extended focus Tuesday as he reaffirmed the alliance’s support for the conflict-torn country.
“Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term, so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a virtual conference about Crimea, organized by Ukraine.
Six months after Russia invaded, the war has slowed to a grind, as both sides trade combat strikes and small advances in the east and south. Both sides have seen thousands of troops killed and injured, as Russia’s bombardment of cities has killed countless innocent civilians.
There are fears that Russia will intensify attacks on civilian infrastructure and government facilities in Ukraine in the coming days because of the independence holiday and the six-month anniversary of the invasion.
Late Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the State Department issued a new security alert for Ukraine that repeated a call for Americans in the country to leave due to the danger.
“Given Russia’s track record in Ukraine, we are concerned about the continued threat that Russian strikes pose to civilians and civilian infrastructure,” it said.
To date, the U.S. has provided about $10.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including 19 packages of weapons taken directly from Defense Department stocks since August 2021.
U.S. defense leaders are also eyeing plans that will expand training for Ukrainian troops outside their country, and for militaries on Europe’s eastern and southern flanks that feel most threatened by Russia’s aggression.
___
Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Isolated incident or a sign of things to come if the sanctions keep driving inflation and energy costs into winter? Or is it just 70,000 people moved by Russian propaganda and xenophobia? Inflation and energy problems seem real enough predicted at20% we can hardly deal with 9. But then again there is the xenophobia aspect. I'm wondering if the fear of refugee angle would be less if the citizens weren't dealing with insane inflation?
"Tens of thousands of Czechs protested in Prague against the government to demand more state help with rising energy bills, the largest manifestation of public discontent over the worst cost-of-living crisis in three decades.
About 70,000 people filled Wenceslas Square in the center of the Czech capital on Saturday, according to police estimates, with some carrying signs denouncing the country’s membership of the European Union and the NATO military alliance.
Czech inflation, driven mainly by surging housing costs and spiking energy prices, is currently the highest since 1993 and the central bank forecasts it to peak at around 20% in the coming months."
continues
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Saturday that it was pulling back troops from two areas in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region where a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made significant advances in the past week.
The news came after days of apparent advances by Ukraine south of Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, in what could become the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said troops would be regrouped from the Balakliya and Izyum areas to the eastern Donetsk region. Izyum was a major base for Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, and earlier this week social media videos showed residents of Balakliya joyfully cheering as Ukrainian troops moved in.
Konashenkov said the Russian move was being made “in order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas,’” one of the eastern Ukraine regions that Russia has declared sovereign.
The claim of a withdrawal to concentrate on Donetsk is similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling back its forces from the Kyiv region earlier this year when they failed to take the capital.
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Earlier Saturday, Ukrainian officials claimed major gains in the Kharkiv region, saying their troops had cut off vital supplies to Izyum.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko also suggested troops had retaken Kupiansk, a town along the main supply route to Izyum, long a focus on the Russian front line and the site of heavy artillery and other fighting. Nikolenko tweeted a photo showing soldiers in front of what he said was a government building in Kupiansk, 73 kilometers (45 miles) north of Izyum.
The Ukrainian Security Service posted a message hours later saying troops were in Kupiansk, further suggesting it had been seized. The military did not immediately confirm entering the town, a railway hub that Russia seized in February.
Videos on social media appeared to show Ukrainian forces on the outskirts of Izyum at a roadside checkpoint. A large statue with the city’s name could be seen in the images. Ukrainian forces did not acknowledge holding the city.
Britain's Defense Ministry said Saturday that it believed Ukrainian troops had advanced as much as 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Kharkiv, and described Russian forces around Izyum as “increasingly isolated.”
“Russian forces were likely taken by surprise. The sector was only lightly held and Ukrainian units have captured or surrounded several towns,” the British military said, adding that the loss of Kupiansk would greatly affect Russian supply lines.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, likewise referenced sweeping Ukrainian gains, estimating that Kyiv has seized around 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) in its eastern breakthrough. The institute said it appeared that “disorganized Russian forces (were) caught in the rapid Ukrainian advance,” and cited social media images of apparent Russian prisoners seized around Izyum and surrounding towns.
The same report said Ukrainian forces “may collapse Russian positions around Izyum if they sever Russian ground lines of communication” north and south of the town.
Vladislav Sokolov, head of the Russian-appointed local administration, said on social media that authorities in Izyum had started evacuating residents to Russia.
The fighting in eastern Ukraine comes amid an ongoing offensive around Kherson in the south. Analysts suggest Russia may have taken soldiers from the east to reinforce the latter area, offering the Ukrainians the opportunity to strike a weakened front line.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the television channel Ukraina that the Russians had no food or fuel for their troops in the area as Kyiv had cut off their supply lines.
“It will be like an avalanche,” he said, predicting a Russian fallback. “One line of defense will shake, and it will fall.”
The Ukrainian military was more circumspect, claiming to have taken “more than 1,000 square kilometers” (386 square miles) from pro-Kremlin forces this week. It said that “in some areas, units of the Defense Forces have penetrated the enemy’s defenses to a depth of 50 kilometers,” matching the British assessment, but did not disclose geographical details.
Officials in Kyiv have for weeks been tight-lipped about plans for a counteroffensive to retake territory overrun by Russia early in the war, urging residents to refrain from sharing information on social media.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that troops had reclaimed more than 30 settlements in the Kharkiv region since the start of the counteroffensive.
“We are gradually taking control over more settlements, returning the Ukrainian flag and protection for our people,” Zelenskyy said.
He spoke after the Ukrainian governor of Kharkiv reported that the national flag had been raised over Balakliya, recaptured by Ukrainian troops Thursday following six months of occupation.
“Balakliya is Ukraine!” Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian emergency services reported that a 62-year-old woman was killed in a Russian missile strike in the Kharkiv region when her home was flattened overnight.
Syniehubov also accused Moscow of pummeling settlements retaken by Kyiv. He said via Telegram that five civilians were hospitalized in the Izyum district, while nine others suffered injuries elsewhere in the region.
In the embattled Donbas, the Ukrainian governor said civilians were killed and wounded overnight by Russian shelling near the city of Bakhmut, a key target of the stalled Russian offensive. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram that two people died and two were injured in Bakhmut and the neighboring village of Yahidne.
In the Russina-held city of Enerhodar, home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, electricity and water were restored after a four-day outage due to an explosion, the city's Ukrainian mayor, Dmytro Orlov, said.
Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have come under repeated shelling in recent weeks, which Russia and Ukraine each other the other of committing. The shelling has raised fears of a radiation leak at the plant, which has been cut off from outside power sources; the facility has been forced to rely on power from its only working reactor for systems cooling and other safety measures.
Orlov said workers from the plant assisted in restoring Enerhodar's power, but it was not clear if the electricity was coming from the plant or from a nearby thermal generating station.
Also Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv and said Europe would not tire of helping Ukraine, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to raise the pressure by withholding energy supplies.
Baerbock said Germany will assist Ukraine in finding and removing mines and other unexploded ordnance left by Russian troops in areas where they have been pushed back.
Despite Ukraine's gains, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned Friday that the war would likely drag on for months. Blinken said the conflict was entering a critical period and urged Ukraine's Western backers to keep up their support through what could be a difficult winter.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
___
Follow all AP stories on the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops on Sunday successfully pressed their swift counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country, even as a nuclear power plant in the Russia-occupied south completely shut down in a bid to prevent a radiation disaster as fighting raged nearby.
Kyiv's action to reclaim Russia-occupied areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to prevent them from being surrounded, leaving behind significant numbers of weapons and munitions in a hasty retreat as the war marked its 200th day on Sunday.
A jubilant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked the Russians in a video address Saturday night, saying “the Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back."
He posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the national flag over Chkalovske, another town reclaimed in the counteroffensive.
Yuriy Kochevenko, of the 95th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, tweeted a video from what appeared to be the city center of Izyum. The city was considered an important command and supply hub for Russia’s northern front.
“Everything around is destroyed, but we will restore everything. Izyum was, is, and will be Ukraine,” Kochevenko said in his video, showing the empty central square and destroyed buildings.
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While most attention was focused on the counteroffensive, Ukraine's nuclear energy operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid, allowing engineers to shut down its last operational reactor to safeguard the plant amid the fighting.
The plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for shelling around it.
Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by shelling knocked the plant off transmission lines, the reactor was powering crucial safety equipment in so-called “island mode” — an unreliable regime that left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a potential nuclear accident.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog that has two experts at the plant, welcomed the restoration of external power. But the agency's director-general, Rafael Grossi, said he remains “gravely concerned about the situation at the plant, which remains in danger as long as any shelling continues.”
He said talks have begun on establishing a safety and security zone around the plant.
In a call Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the withdrawal of Russian troops and weaponry from the plant in line with IAEA recommendations.
In fighting, Ukraine's military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy, said its forces had recaptured about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles) since the counteroffensive began in early September. He said Ukrainian troops are only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the Russian border.
Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops have reclaimed control of more than 40 settlements in the region, noting he couldn't give a precise number because the operation is still unfolding.
Widespread power outages were reported Sunday night by Ukrainian media, including in the regions of Kharkiv, Poltava, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy. Officials in various regions said Russian forces had caused the outages by attacking infrastructure, knocking out electricity and water, with explosions preceding the outages.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov called the power outage “revenge by the Russian aggressor for the successes of our army at the front, in particular, in the Kharkiv region.”
Local officials said they were trying to repair the damage, and none of the outages were believed to be related to the shutdown of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Defense Minister Anna Malyar said Ukrainian forces are firing shells containing propaganda into areas where they seek to advance.
”One of the ways of informational work with the enemy in areas where there is no Internet is launching propaganda shells," she wrote on Facebook. "Before moving forward, our defenders say hello to the Russian invaders and give them the last opportunity to surrender. Otherwise, only death awaits them on Ukrainian soil.”
The Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces had also left several settlements in the Kherson region as Ukrainian forces pressed the counteroffensive. It did not identify the towns.
An official with the Russian-backed administration in the city of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said on social media that the city was safe and asked everyone to stay calm.
The Russian pullback marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, near the start of the war. The Kharkiv campaign came as a surprise for Moscow, which had relocated many of its troops from the region to the south in expectation of a counteroffensive there.
In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday the troops' withdrawal from Izyum and other areas was intended to strengthen Moscow's forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south. The explanation sounded similar how Russia justified its pulling back from Kyiv earlier this year.
Igor Strelkov, who led Russia-backed forces when the separatist conflict in the Donbas erupted in 2014, mocked the Russian Defense Ministry's explanation of the retreat, suggesting that handing over Russia's own territory near the border was a “contribution to a Ukrainian settlement.”
The retreat drew an angry response from Russian military bloggers and nationalist commentators, who bemoaned it as a major defeat and urged the Kremlin to step up its war efforts. Many criticized Russian authorities for continuing with fireworks and other lavish festivities in Moscow that marked a city holiday on Saturday despite the debacle in Ukraine.
Putin attended the opening of a huge Ferris wheel in a Moscow park on Saturday, and inaugurated a new transport link and a sports arena. The action underlined the Kremlin's narrative that the war it calls a “special military operation" was going according to plan without affecting Russians' everyday lives.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov criticized the Moscow festivities as a grave mistake.
“The fireworks in Moscow on a tragic day of Russia’s military defeat will have extremely serious political consequences,” Markov wrote on his messaging app channel. “Authorities mustn’t celebrate when people are mourning.”
In a sign of a potential rift in the Russian leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya, said the retreat resulted from blunders by the Russian brass.
“They have made mistakes and I think they will draw the necessary conclusions,” Kadyrov said. “If they don’t make changes in the strategy of conducting the special military operation in the next day or two, I will be forced to contact the leadership of the Defense Ministry and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground."
Despite Ukraine’s gains, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned Friday the war would likely drag on for months, urging the West to keep supporting Ukraine through what could be a difficult winter.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Ukrainian advances very encouraging.
“I’m proud that the U.S. and our allies have locked arms to support the Ukrainian people in this fight,” Kaine said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We and our allies must keep standing with Ukraine. Putin needs to recognize that the only way out is to end his failed war.”
—-
Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
could be considered an act of war against nato countries using that.
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Conversely wouldn't Nato sanctions against Russia be considered an act of war?
I agree with Mrussel, there needs to be some type of face saving off ramp for Putin that makes both Putin and the Ukrainians happy, otherwise I really don't see an end to the fighting. Both sides seem pretty dug into their positions and viewpoints.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Among the boarded-up windows and blast-scarred buildings of Ukraine’s second-largest city, where Russian missiles and rockets strike during the day and the night, fear forms the backdrop of life.
As Ukrainian forces advance in their counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, pushing Russian forces out of territory they have held for months, strikes have continued unabated on the city, already hammered by artillery during months of war.
A missile strike on a power station Sunday night sparked a major fire and plunged Kharkiv into darkness for hours. In the blackness, another missile slammed into a residential building at around midnight, collapsing part of it and killing one person, local officials said.
“It’s dangerous to live in Kharkiv, every day is dangerous. It’s dangerous during the day and night,” said Kateryna Protsenko, a 29-year-old veterinarian living across the street from the apartment building.
“The nights are sleepless, but anyway you continue to live because you have a family and you need to survive and work somehow,” she said, visibly shaken at the sight of the building, a gaping hole where part of the third story used to be.
The building’s facade had peeled off and piles of rubble lay strewn on the ground, mixed with the twisted metal shrapnel of the missile. On the building’s second story, a closet stood suddenly exposed, a single coat hanger dangling precariously from its rail.
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Protsenko said she couldn’t leave Kharkiv — she needed to work, and there were still sick animals to treat.
“So you live where you can live, and you understand that today you are alive but you can be gone in a minute," she said.
More explosions sounded out in the middle of the day Monday, with a police administrative building set on fire by a strike that killed one person in a neighboring building.
“Russia carried out a rocket attack against a peaceful city, where peaceful people live, just the same as the people living in the United States of America, or anywhere else in the world, who go to school, have their ordinary lives, raise their children,” Kharkiv regional police chief Volodymyr Timoshko said.
Behind him, firefighting crews clambered up ladders with hoses, dousing the flames leaping out of the top story of the building as choking smoke billowed out over the city.
Timoshko said authorities believed the building was hit by a rocket from a Smerch multiple rocket launcher.
“It’s quite a powerful weapon which is used for mass destruction, I repeat, mass destruction of the population,” he said. “They are using it during the daytime in the city center, the city which is living a normal life.”
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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If we get an artic winter in the NE, it will very expensive.
Any thoughts on Nordstream sabotage? I think it is unlikely that Russia would self sabotage what they could just turn off. I am open to other opinions. It doesn't look like too much info has been released.
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
A sprawling disinformation network originating in Russia sought to use hundreds of fake social media accounts and dozens of sham news websites to spread Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine, Meta revealed Tuesday.
The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it identified and disabled the operation before it was able to gain a large audience. Nonetheless, Facebook said it was the largest and most complex Russian propaganda effort that it has found since the invasion began.
continues....
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties Friday to illegally annex more occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his war. Ukraine's president countered with a surprise application to join the NATO military alliance.
Putin’s land-grab and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signing of what he said is an “accelerated” NATO membership application sent the two leaders speeding faster on a collision course that is cranking up fears of a full-blown conflict between Russia and the West.
Putin vowed to protect newly annexed regions of Ukraine by “all available means," a renewed nuclear-backed threat he made at a Kremlin signing ceremony where he also railed furiously against the West, accusing the United States and its allies of seeking Russia's destruction.
Zelenskyy then held his own signing ceremony in Kyiv, releasing video of him putting pen to papers he said were a formal NATO membership request.
Putin has repeatedly made clear that any prospect of Ukraine joining the military alliance is one of his red lines and cited it as a justification for his invasion, now in its eighth month, in Europe's biggest land war since World War II.
In his speech, Putin urged Ukraine to sit down for peace talks but insisted he won’t discuss handing back occupied regions. Zelenskyy said there'd be no negotiations with Putin.
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“We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but … with another president of Russia," the Ukrainian leader said.
At his signing ceremony in the Kremlin's ornate St. George's Hall, Putin accused the West of fueling the hostilities to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowd of soulless slaves.” The hardening of his position, in the conflict that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people, further raised tensions already at levels unseen since the Cold War.
Global leaders, including those from the Group of Seven leading economies, responded with an avalanche of condemnation. The U.S. and the U.K. announced more sanctions.
U.S. President Joe Biden said of Putin's annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions: “Make no mistake: These actions have no legitimacy.”
“America and its allies are not going to be intimidated by Putin and his reckless words and threats,” Biden added, noting that the Russian leader “can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it.”
The European Union said its 27 member states will never recognize the illegal referendums that Russia organized “as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Friday that would have condemned the referendums, declared that they have no validity and urged all countries not to recognize the annexation. China, India, Brazil and Gabon abstained on the vote in the 15-member council.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called it “the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.”
The war is at “a pivotal moment,” he said, and Putin’s decision to annex more territory – Russia now claims sovereignty over 15% of Ukraine – marks “the most serious escalation since the start of the war.” Stoltenberg was noncommittal on Zelenskyy’s fast-track NATO application, saying alliance leaders “support Ukraine’s right to choose its own path, to decide what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Zelenskyy’s move toward the military alliance amounts to “begging NATO to accelerate the start of World War III.”
Zelenskyy vowed to keep fighting, defying Putin's warnings that Kyiv shouldn't try to recapture what it has lost.
“The entire territory of our country will be liberated from this enemy," he said. “Russia already knows this. It feels our power."
The immediate ramifications of the “accelerated” NATO application weren't clear, since approval requires members' unanimous support. The supply of Western weapons to Ukraine has, however, already put it closer to the alliance's orbit.
“De facto, we have already proven compatibility with alliance standards," Zelenskyy said. “We trust each other, we help each other, and we protect each other.”
The Kremlin ceremony came three days after the completion in the occupied regions of Moscow-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that Kyiv and the West dismissed as a blatant land grab held at gunpoint and based on lies. In his fiery speech, Putin insisted Ukraine treat the votes “with respect.”
As the ceremony concluded, the Moscow-installed leaders of the occupied regions gathered around Putin, linked hands and chanted “Russia! Russia!” with the audience.
Putin cut an angry figure as he accused the United States and its allies of seeking to destroy Russia. He said the West acted “as a parasite” and used its financial and technological strength “to rob the entire world.”
He portrayed Russia as pursuing a historical mission to reclaim its post-Soviet great power status and counter Western domination he said is collapsing.
“History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations,” he said.
Moscow has backed eastern Ukraine's separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions since they declared independence in 2014, weeks after Russia's annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia captured the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the annexation treaties, sending them to Putin for final approval.
The orchestrated process went into a celebratory phase Friday night, with thousands gathered in Red Square for a concert and rally that Putin joined. Many waved Russian flags as entertainers from Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine performed patriotic songs. Russian media reported employees of state-run companies and institutions were told to attend, and students were allowed to skip classes.
Putin's land grab and a partial troop mobilization were attempts to avoid more battlefield defeats that could threaten his 22-year rule. By formalizing Russia’s gains, he seemingly hopes to scare Ukraine and its Western backers by threatening to escalate the conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing.
Russia controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions, about 60% of the Donetsk region and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region, where it seized Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
But the Kremlin is on the verge of another stinging military loss, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern city of Lyman. Retaking it could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into Luhansk, one of the annexed regions.
“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter-turned-analyst Abbas Gallyamov said, adding that "the Kremlin cannot offer anything сomforting to the Russians.”
Russia pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones in Moscow’s heaviest barrage in weeks, with one strike in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital killing 30 and wounding 88.
In the Zaporizhzhia attack, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down on people waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could bring family members back across front lines, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces, but gave no evidence.
The strike left deep craters and sent shrapnel tearing into the humanitarian convoy, killing passengers. Nearby buildings were demolished. Bodies were later covered with trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive has deprived Moscow of battlefield mastery. Its hold on the Luhansk region appears increasingly shaky, as Ukrainian forces make inroads with the pincer assault on Lyman, a key node for Russian military operations in the Donbas and a sought-after prize. The Russian-backed separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian forces have “half-encircled” Lyman. Ukraine maintains a large foothold in the neighboring Donetsk region.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. Regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said at least three people were killed and five were wounded.
Ukraine’s air force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa were targeted with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
By LORI HINNANT, EVGENIY MALOLETKA and VASILISA STEPANENKO
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.
Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.
“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”
The brutal encounter at the end of March was just the start. Andriy Kotsar would be captured and tortured twice more by Russian forces in Izium, and the pain would be even worse.
Russian torture in Izium was arbitrary, widespread and absolutely routine for both civilians and soldiers throughout the city, an Associated Press investigation has found. While torture was also evident in Bucha, that devastated Kyiv suburb was only occupied for a month. Izium served as a hub for Russian soldiers for nearly seven months, during which they established torture sites everywhere.
Based on accounts of survivors and police, AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town and gained access to five of them. They included a deep sunless pit in a residential compound with dates carved in the brick wall, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine and rotting food, a medical clinic, a police station and a kindergarten.
The AP spoke to 15 survivors of Russian torture in the Kharkiv region, as well as two families whose loved ones disappeared into Russian hands. Two of the men were taken repeatedly and abused. One battered, unconscious Ukrainian soldier was displayed to his wife to force her to provide information she simply didn't have.
The AP also confirmed eight men were killed under torture in Russian custody, according to survivors and families. All but one were civilians.
At a mass grave site created by the Russians and discovered in the woods of Izium, at least 30 of the 447 bodies recently excavated bore visible marks of torture — bound hands, close gunshot wounds, knife wounds and broken limbs, according to the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office. Those injuries corresponded to the descriptions of the pain inflicted upon the survivors.
AP journalists also saw bodies with bound wrists at the mass grave. Amid the trees were hundreds of simple wooden crosses, most marked only with numbers. One said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. At least two more mass graves have been found in the town, all heavily mined, authorities said.
A physician who treated hundreds of Izium’s injured during the Russian occupation said people regularly arrived at his emergency room with injuries consistent with torture, including gunshots to their hands and feet, broken bones and severe bruising, and burns. None would explain their wounds, he said.
“Even if people came to the hospital, silence was the norm,” chief Dr. Yuriy Kuznetsov said. He added that one soldier came in for treatment for hand injuries, clearly from being cuffed, but the man refused to say what happened.
Men with links to Ukrainian forces were singled out repeatedly for torture, but any adult man risked getting caught up. Matilda Bogner, the head of the U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine, told the AP they had documented “widespread practices of torture or ill-treatment of civilian detainees” by Russian forces and affiliates. Torture of soldiers was also systemic, she said.
Torture in any form during an armed conflict is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, whether of prisoners of war or civilians.
“It serves three purposes,” said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch. “Torture came with questions to coerce information, but it is also to punish and to sow fear. It is to send a chilling message to everyone else.”
NO SAFE HAVEN
AP journalists found Kotsar, 26, hiding in a monastery in Izium, his blond hair tied back neatly in the Orthodox fashion and his beard curling beneath his chin. He had no way to safely contact his loved ones, who thought he was dead.
Back in March, after his first round of torture, Kotsar fled to the gold-domed Pishchanskyi church. Russian soldiers were everywhere, and nowhere in Izium was safe.
Hiding amid the icons, Kotsar listened to the rumble of Russian armored vehicles outside and contemplated suicide. He had been a soldier for just under a month and had no idea if anyone in his little unit had survived the Russian onslaught.
When he emerged from the church a few days later, a Russian patrol caught him. They kept him a week. His captors’ idea of a joke was to shave his legs with a knife, and then debate aloud whether to slice off the limb entirely.
“They took, I don’t know what exactly, some iron, maybe glass rods, and burned the skin little by little,” he said.
He knew nothing that could help them. So they set him free again, and again he sought refuge with the monks. He had nowhere else to go.
By then, the church and monastery compound had become a shelter for around 100 people, including 40 children. Kotsar took up a version of the monastic life, living with the black-robed brothers, helping them care for the refugees and spending his free hours standing before the gilt icons in contemplation.
In the meantime, Izium was transforming into a Russian logistical hub. The town was swarming with troops, and its electricity, gas, water and phone networks were severed. Izium was effectively cut off from the rest of Ukraine.
SCREAMS IN THE NIGHT
It was also in the spring that the Russians first sought out Mykola Mosyakyn, driving down the rutted dirt roads until they reached the Ukrainian soldier’s fenced cottage. Mosyakyn, 38, had enlisted after the war began, though not in the same unit as Kotsar.
They tossed him into a pit with standing water, handcuffed him and hung him by the restraints until his skin went numb. They waited in vain for him to talk, and tried again.
“They beat me with sticks. They hit me with their hands, they kicked me, they put out cigarettes on me, they pressed matches on me,” he recounted. “They said, ‘Dance,’ but I did not dance. So they shot my feet."
After three days they dropped him near the hospital with the command: “Tell them you had an accident.”
At least two other men from Mosyakyn’s neighborhood, a father and son who are both civilians, were taken at the same time. The father speaks about his two weeks in the basement cell in a whisper, staring at the ground. His adult son refuses to speak about it at all.
That family, along with another man who was also tortured in the basement cell on Izium’s east bank, spoke on condition of anonymity. They are terrified the Russians will return.
Mosyakyn was captured again by a different Russian unit just a few days later. This time, he found himself in School No. 2, subject to routine beatings along with other Ukrainians. AP journalists found a discarded Ukrainian soldier’s jacket in the same blue cell he described in detail. The school also served as a base and field hospital for Russian soldiers, and at least two Ukrainian civilians held there died.
But the soldiers again freed Mosyakyn. To this day, he doesn’t know why.
Nor does he understand why they’d release him just to recapture him a few days later and haul him to a crowded garage of a medical clinic near the railroad tracks. More than a dozen other Ukrainians were jailed with him, soldiers and civilians. Two garages were for men, one for women and a bigger one — the only one with a window — for Russian soldiers.
Women were held in the garage closest to the soldiers’ quarters. Their screams came at night, according to Mosyakyn and Kotsar, who were both held at the clinic at different times. Ukrainian intelligence officials said they were raped regularly.
For the men, Room 6 was for electrocution. Room 9 was for waterboarding, Mosyakyn said. He described how they covered his face with a cloth bag and poured water from a kettle onto him to mimic the sensation of drowning. They also hooked up his toes to electricity and shocked him with electrodes on his ears.
It was here that Mosyakyn watched Russian soldiers drag out the lifeless bodies of two civilians they’d tortured to death, both from Izium’s Gonkharovka neighborhood.
Kotsar was taken to the clinic in July and received a slightly different treatment, involving a Soviet-era gas mask and electrodes on his legs. AP journalists also found gas masks at two schools.
By the time Kotsar arrived, people had already been there for 12 to 16 days. They told him arms and legs were broken, and people taken out to be shot. He vowed that if he survived, he would never allow himself to be captured again.
They released him after a couple of weeks. He craved familiar faces and people who meant him no harm. He returned to the monks.
“When I came out, everything was green. It was very, very strange, because there had been absolutely no color,” he said. “Everything was wonderful, so vivid.”
SHALLOW GRAVE
In mid-August, the bodies of three men were found in a shallow forested pit on the town’s outskirts.
Ivan Shabelnyk left home with a friend on March 23 to collect pine cones so the family could light the samovar and have tea. They never came back.
Another man taken with them reluctantly told Shabelnyk’s family about the torture they’d all endured together, first in the basement of a nearby house and then in School No. 2. Then he left town.
Their bodies were found in mid-August, in the last days of the occupation, by a man scavenging for firewood. He followed the smell of death to a shallow grave in the forest.
Shabelnyk’s hands were shot, his ribs broken, his face unrecognizable. They identified him by the jacket he wore, from the local grain factory where he worked. His grieving mother showed the AP a photo.
“He kept this photo with him, of us together when he was a small boy,” said Ludmila Shabelnyk, in tears. “Why did they destroy people like him? I don’t understand. Why has this happened to our country?”
His sister, Olha Zaparozhchenko, walked with journalists through the cemetery and looked at his grave.
“They tortured civilians at will, like bullies,” she said. “I have only one word: genocide.”
The Kharkiv region’s chief prosecutor, Oleksandr Filchakov, told the AP it was too soon to determine how many people were tortured in Izium, but said it easily numbered into the dozens.
“Every day, many people call us with information, people who were in the occupied territories,” he said. “Every day, relatives come to us and say their friends, their family, were tortured by Russian soldiers.”
MISSING NO MORE
After his final escape, Kotsar hid in the monastery for more than a month. Without documents and a phone connection to prove his identity, he was too afraid to leave.
Kotsar’s family had no idea what happened to him. They had simply reported him missing, like so many other Ukrainian soldiers caught on the wrong side of the frontline.
He spoke with effort to AP journalists, and at one point asked them to turn off the camera so he could compose himself. The AP contacted the Commissioner for Issues of Missing Persons Under Special Circumstances, which confirmed the missing person report and his identity through a photo on file. Then Kotsar’s own unit, which had left Izium in disarray, returned and tracked him down.
Kotsar doesn't know what comes next. Ukrainian officials are still in the process of restoring his identity documents, and without them he can’t go anywhere. He would like psychological treatment to deal with the trauma from repeated torture, and for now he’s staying with the monks.
“If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have survived at all,” he said. “They saved me.”
Kotsar’s first call was to the sister of his best friend — the only person in his entire circle of loved ones he was certain was in a safe place. He grinned as the connection went through.
“Tell him I’m alive,” he said. “Tell him I’m alive and in one piece.”
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Sarah El Deeb contributed from Beirut.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked the Ukrainian president’s hometown and other targets Sunday with suicide drones, and Ukraine took back full control of a strategic eastern city in a counteroffensive that has reshaped the war.
Russia’s loss of the eastern city of Lyman, which it had been using as a transport and logistics hub, is a new blow to the Kremlin as it seeks to escalate the war by illegally annexing four regions of Ukraine and heightening threats to use nuclear force.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's land grab has threatened to push the conflict to a dangerous new level. It also prompted Ukraine to formally apply for fast-track NATO membership.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that his forces now control Lyman: “As of 12:30 p.m. (0930 GMT) Lyman is cleared fully. Thank you to our militaries, our warriors," he said in a video address.
Russia's military didn't comment Sunday on Lyman, after announcing Saturday that it was withdrawing its forces there to more favorable positions.
The British military described the recapture of Lyman as a “significant political setback” for Moscow, and Ukraine appeared to swiftly capitalize on its gains.
Hours after Zelenskyy's announcement, Ukrainian media shared an image of Ukrainian troops carrying the country's yellow-and-blue flag in front of a statue marking the village of Torske, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Lyman and within sight of the Russian-held Luhansk region.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
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AP PHOTOS: Ukraine bakery supplies bread for the front lines
9 NATO members urge support for Ukraine after annexation
Pope warns of nuclear war risk; appeals to Putin on Ukraine
Shortly later, a video posted online showed one Ukrainian soldier saying that Kyiv's forces had begun to target the city of Kreminna, just across the border in Luhansk. Outgoing artillery could be heard in the background. Russian military correspondents also acknowledged Ukrainian attacks targeting Kreminna.
In another online photo, an Ukrainian soldier stood before giant watermelon landmark just south of the village of Novovorontsovka on the banks of the Dnieper River, along the Russian-controlled province of Kherson's northern edge. A Ukrainian flag flew above the statue as several apparently deactivated landmines lay beside it.
While Ukrainian forces did not immediately acknowledge a breakthrough, writers close to the Russian military have described a new offensive by Kyiv in the Kherson region.
In southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy's hometown of Krivyi Rih came under Russian attack by a suicide drone that destroyed two stories of a school early Sunday, the regional governor said. The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down five Iranian-made drones overnight, while two others made it through air defenses.
A car carrying four men seeking to forage for mushrooms in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region struck a mine, killing all those inside, authorities said Sunday.
The reports of military activity couldn't be immediately verified.
Ukrainian forces have retaken swaths of territory, notably in the northeast around Kharkiv, in a counteroffensive in recent weeks that has embarrassed the Kremlin and prompted rare domestic criticism of Putin's war.
Lyman, which Ukraine recaptured by encircling Russian troops, is in the Donetsk region near the border with Luhansk, two of the four regions that Russia illegally annexed Friday after forcing what was left of the population to vote in referendums at gunpoint.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said: “Over the past week, there have been more Ukrainian flags in the Donbas. In a week there will be even more.”
In a daily intelligence briefing Sunday, the British Defense Ministry called Lyman crucial because it has “a key road crossing over the Siversky Donets River, behind which Russia has been attempting to consolidate its defenses.”
The Russian retreat from northeast Ukraine in recent weeks has revealed evidence of widespread, routine torture of both civilians and soldiers, notably in the strategic city of Izium, an Associated Press investigation has found.
AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town, including a deep pit in a residential compound, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine, a medical clinic and a kindergarten.
Recent developments have raised fears of all-out conflict between Russia and the West.
Putin frames the recent Ukrainian gains — along with NATO's post-Soviet expansion — as a U.S.-orchestrated effort to destroy Russia, and last week he heightened threats of nuclear force in some of his toughest, most anti-Western rhetoric to date.
Nine central and eastern European NATO members fearful that Russia’s aggression could eventually target them, too, issued a letter of support Sunday for Ukraine.
The leaders of Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint statement Sunday backing a path to NATO membership for Ukraine, and calling on all 30 members of the U.S.-led security bloc to ramp up military aid for Kyiv.
Germany's defense minister on Sunday announced the delivery of 16 wheeled armored howitzers produced in Slovakia to Ukraine next year. The weapons will be financed jointly with Denmark, Norway and Germany,
Russia moved ahead Sunday with steps meant to make its land grab look like a legal process aimed at helping people allegedly persecuted by Kyiv, with rubber-stamp approval by the Constitutional Court and draft laws being pushed through the Kremlin-friendly parliament.
Outside Russia, the Kremlin's actions have been widely denounced as violating international law, with multiple EU countries summoning Russian ambassadors since Putin on Friday signed annexation treaties with Moscow-backed officials in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, international concerns are mounting about the fate of Europe's largest nuclear plant after Russian forces detained its director for alleged questioning.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Sunday that its director-general, Rafael Grossi would visit Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Grossi is continuing to push for “a nuclear safety and security zone” around the site.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is in one of the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed on Friday, and repeatedly has been caught in the crossfire of the war. Ukrainian technicians have continued running the power station after Russian troops seized it but its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure.
Pope Francis on Sunday decried Russia's nuclear threats and appealed to Putin to stop “this spiral of violence and death.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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By MICHAEL BIESECKER, SARAH EL DEEB and BEATRICE DUPUY
BEIRUT (AP) — When the bulk cargo ship Laodicea docked in Lebanon last summer, Ukrainian diplomats said the vessel was carrying grain stolen by Russia and urged Lebanese officials to impound the ship.
Moscow called the allegation “false and baseless,” and Lebanon’s prosecutor general sided with the Kremlin and declared that the 10,000 tons of barley and wheat flour wasn’t stolen and allowed the ship to unload.
But an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” has found the Laodicea, owned by Syria, is part of a sophisticated Russian-run smuggling operation that has used falsified manifests and seaborne subterfuge to steal Ukrainian grain worth at least $530 million — cash that has helped feed President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
AP used satellite imagery and marine radio transponder data to track three dozen ships making more than 50 voyages carrying grain from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to ports in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and other countries. Reporters reviewed shipping manifests, searched social media posts, and interviewed farmers, shippers and corporate officials to uncover the details of the massive smuggling operation.
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This story is part of an AP/FRONTLINE investigation that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and and upcoming documentary, “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” which premieres 10/9c Oct. 25 on PBS.
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The ongoing theft, which legal experts say is a potential war crime, is being carried out by wealthy businessmen and state-owned companies in Russia and Syria, some of them already facing financial sanctions from the United States and European Union.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has attacked farms, grain silos and shipping facilities still under Ukrainian control with artillery and air strikes, destroying food, driving up prices and reducing the flow of grain from a country long known as the breadbasket of Europe.
The Russians “have an absolute obligation to ensure that civilians are cared for and to not deprive them their ability of a livelihood and an ability to feed themselves,” said David Crane, a veteran prosecutor who has been involved in numerous international war crime investigations. “It’s just pure pillaging and looting, and that is also an actionable offense under international military law.”
The grain and flour carried by the 138-meter-long (453 feet) Laodicea likely started its journey in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, which Russia seized in the early days of the war.
Video posted to social media on July 9 shows a train pulling up to the Melitopol Elevator, a massive grain storage facility, with green hopper cars marked with the name of the Russian company Agro-Fregat LLC in big yellow letters, along with a logo in the shape of a spike of wheat.
Russian occupation official Andrey Siguta held a news conference at the depot the following week where he said the grain would “provide food security” for Russia-controlled regions in Ukraine, and that his administration would “evaluate the harvest and determine how much will be for sale.”
As he spoke, a masked soldier armed with an assault rifle stood guard as trucks unloaded wheat at the facility to be milled. Workers loaded flour into large white bags like those delivered by the Laodicea to Lebanon three weeks later.
VIDEO: Stolen Ukrainian Grain Fueling Putin’s War Machine
Siguta, along with four other top Russian occupation officials, was sanctioned by the U.S. government on Sept. 15 for overseeing the theft and export of Ukranian grain.
Putin signed treaties Friday to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, in defiance of international law. The United States and European Union immediately rejected “the illegal annexation.”
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov told AP the occupiers are moving vast quantities of grain from the region by train and truck to ports in Russia and Crimea, a strategic Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has occupied since 2014. Despite Russian claims to have annexed Crimea, the United Nations ruled that land grab was also illegal.
Videos posted on social media in recent months show a steady stream of grain transport trucks moving south through occupied areas of Ukraine with the letter “Z” painted on their sides, a wartime symbol for Russia and its military forces. Agro-Fregat train cars have been recorded rolling through the Crimean port town of Feodosia, where satellite imagery shows trucks and trains lined up as grain was being loaded onto ships.
The Kremlin has denied stealing any grain, but Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported on June 16 that Ukrainian grain was being trucked to Crimea, resulting in long lines at border checkpoints. Tass later reported that grain from Melitopol had arrived in Crimea and that additional shipments were expected, bound for customers in the Middle East and Africa.
A July 11 satellite image shows the Laodicea tied up at a pier in Feodosia. The ship’s radio transponder was turned off and its cargo holds were open, being filled with a white substance from waiting trucks. Two weeks later, when it arrived at the Lebanese port city Tripoli, it claimed to be carrying grain from a small Russian port on the other side of the Black Sea.
continues....
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