World News

By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine pleaded to Western countries for faster deliveries of weapons as better-armed Russian forces pounded the east of the country, and for humanitarian support to combat growing outbreaks of deadly diseases.

In Sievierodonetsk, the small city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war well into its fourth month, further heavy fighting was reported.

The war in the east, where Russia is focussing its attention, is now primarily an artillery battle in which Kyiv is severely outgunned, Ukrainian officials say. That means the tide of events could be turned only if Washington and others fulfil promises to send more and better weaponry, including rocket systems.

“This is an artillery war now,” Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Everything now depends on what (the West) gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces.”

Germany, among the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia invaded but criticised for being slow to supply the heavy weaponry Kyiv says it needs, plans to revise its rules on arms exports to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.

CHOLERA

To the south, the mayor of Mariupol – reduced to ruins by a Russian siege – said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.

“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera,” Vadym Boichenko told national television. “The war which took over 20,000 residents … unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” he said, adding some wells had been contaminated by corpses.

Boichenko called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to establish a humanitarian corridor to allow remaining residents to leave the city, which is now under Russian control.

In a snapshot of the war’s wider impact, the U.N. food agency said reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia could inflict chronic hunger on up to 19 million more people globally over the next year.

IN RUINS

Russia is hoping to capture all of the eastern province of Luhansk, which it demands Ukraine cede to separatists along with neighbouring Donetsk. The two provinces make up the Donbas region, where Moscow has backed a revolt by separatist proxies since 2014.

To that end, the Kremlin has concentrated its forces into a battle for Sievierodonetsk, which is in Luhansk.

Ukrainian troops have largely pulled out of the city’s residential areas but have not yielded their foothold on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets River. Russian forces are also pushing from the north and south to try to encircle the Ukrainians, but have made limited progress.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was trying to “break every town in the Donbas.”

“Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Sloviansk, many, many others,” he said in his nightly address. “All these ruins were once happy towns.”

Both sides say they have inflicted mass casualties. Reuters could not immediately verify battlefield reports.

Zelenskiy adviser Oleksiy Arestovych estimated the Russian army is losing on average five to six times as many fighters as the Ukrainian side.

Asked in a social media interview whether that suggested the Ukrainian army had lost up to 10,000 fighters in the first 100 days of the war, Arestovych said, “Yes, something like that.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he terms his “special military operation” in Ukraine in February, saying his aim was to disarm and “denazify” Russia’s neighbour. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday reinforced Washington’s commitment to the region in light of Russia’s actions.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is what happens when oppressors trample the rules that protect us all,” Austin told an Asian security forum in Singapore. “It’s a preview of a possible world of chaos and turmoil that none of us would want to live in.”

Zelenskiy is expected to give a virtual address to the conference later in the day from 0800 GMT.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Kim Coghill, Peter Graff, John Stonestreet and Michael Martina; Editing by Grant McCool, Cynthia Osterman and William Mallard)

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By Lucy Craymer

(Reuters) -Australia’s new Labor-led government has reached a 555 million euro($583.58 million)settlement over a controversial decision last year to scrap the French submarine deal, a move Canberra hopes will help repair the rift between the two countries.

Australia last year cancelled a multi-billion-dollar order for submarines with French military shipyard Naval Group and opted instead for an alternative deal with the United States and Britain.

The move enraged Paris and triggered an unprecedented diplomatic crisis. It has also riled China, the major rising power in the Indo-Pacific region.

Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday in a news conference in Sydney that his government had reached a “fair and equitable” settlement with Naval Group.

The cancellation last year of Canberra’s order for a new conventional submarine fleet with Naval Group – valued at $40 billion in 2016 and reckoned to cost much more today – came after the previous government signed a trilateral security partnership with the United States and Britain.

The trilateral deal was for a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines with U.S. and British technology.

Albanese said the settlement would allow Australia to move forward in its relationship with France.

“Given the gravity of the challenges that we face both in the region and globally, it is essential that Australia and France once again unite to defend our shared principles and interests,” Albanese said in a separate statement.

Australia, the United States, France and its partners have all expressed concern about China’s growing influence in the Pacific, a region that has traditionally been under their sway. Their concerns increased after China and the Solomon Island’s signed a security pact earlier in the year.(nL2N2WH2D3)

“We deeply respect France’s role and active engagement in the Indo-Pacific,” Albanese said.

He added he was looking forward to taking up French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to visit Paris.

($1 = 0.9510 euros)

(Reporting by Lucy CraymerEditing by Shri Navaratnam)

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By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine sought more help from the West on Friday, pleading for faster deliveries of weapons to hold off better-armed Russian forces and for humanitarian support to combat the march of deadly diseases.

In Sievierodonetsk, the small city that has become the focus of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine and one of the bloodiest flashpoints in a war well into its fourth month, further heavy fighting was reported.

To the south, the mayor of the port city of Mariupol – reduced to ruins by a Russian siege – said sanitation systems were broken and corpses were rotting in the streets.

“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera… The war which took over 20,000 residents … unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” he told national television.

He called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work on setting up a humanitarian corridor to allow remaining residents to leave the city, which is now under Russian control.

In a snapshot of the war’s wider impact, the U.N.’s food agency said reduced exports of wheat and other food commodities from Ukraine and Russia could inflict chronic hunger on up to 19 million more people globally over the next year.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called in a videolinked speech for Ukraine to be incorporated as a part of the West, with binding guarantees for its protection.

Asking the EU to accept Ukraine as a membership candidate, he told a conference in Copenhagen: “The European Union can take a historic step that will prove that words about the people of Ukraine belonging to the European family are not just words.”

The war in the east, where Russia is focusing its attentions, is now primarily an artillery battle in which Kyiv is severely outgunned, Ukrainian officials say.

That means the tide of events could be turned only if the West fulfils promises to send more and better weaponry including rocket systems that Washington and others have promised.

‘ARTILLERY WAR’

“This is an artillery war now,” Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Everything now depends on what (the West) gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces.”

Germany, among the largest suppliers of weapons since Russia invaded but criticised for its slowness in supplying the heavy weaponry Kyiv says it needs, plans to revise its rules on arms exports to make it easier to arm democracies like Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.

Russia is hoping to capture the full territory of eastern Luhansk province, which it demands Ukraine cede to separatists along with neighbouring Donetsk – an area known as the Donbas where it has backed a revolt by separatist proxies since 2014.

To that end, the Kremlin has concentrated its forces into a battle for Sievierodonetsk.

Ukrainian troops have largely pulled out of the city’s residential areas but have not yielded their foothold on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets river. Russian forces are also pushing from the north and south to try to encircle the Ukrainians, but so far have made limited progress.

Both sides say they have inflicted massive casualties in the battle for the city.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he terms his “special military operation” in Ukraine in February saying his aim was to disarm and “denazify” Russia’s neighbour. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.

Ukraine said a speech delivered on Thursday by Putin – who drew a parallel between what he portrayed as a new quest to win back Russian lands and the historic achievements of Tsar Peter the Great – proved that Moscow’s aim was conquest.

“Putin’s confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no ‘conflict’, only the country’s bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people’s genocide,” tweeted Zelenskiy aide Mykhailo Podolyak.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff and John Stonestreet; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Edmund Blair and Alex Richardson)

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By Steve Scherer

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada is suspending random COVID-19 testing at all its airports for the rest of June to ease the long wait times that travelers have encountered in recent weeks, a government statement said on Friday.

The random testing will be discontinued from Saturday and will resume “off-site” on July 1, the statement said.

Random testing was blamed by some industry officials for lengthening already long wait times at airports. Toronto’s Pearson airport has had planes stuck at gates and hours-long security lines because of staffing shortages.

The government “recognizes the impact that significant wait times at some Canadian airports are having on travelers,” the statement said, adding that it would continue to “implement solutions to reduce delays as we approach the summer peak season.”

Reuters previously reported the testing suspension, citing a government source.

The country’s largest carrier Air Canada canceled almost 10% of flights from Pearson during the first week of June, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

Suzanne Acton-Gervais, interim president of the National Airlines Council of Canada (NACC) which represents Air Canada and privately held WestJet Airlines, said the move “will improve conditions at Canada’s airports and reduce complexity for travelers.”

Officials at Pearson had no immediate comment.

Airlines around the globe that faced a travel slump during the pandemic have been counting on a strong summer. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) has hired 865 screening officers since April to help manage an increase in travelers.

Canada’s opposition Conservative Party has said Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been slow to act to remedy airport congestion.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal;Editing by Chris Reese and Grant McCool)

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(Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda accused each other of firing rockets across their shared border on Friday, including a strike that killed two Congolese children, a spokesperson for the Congolese army said.

The alleged attacks are part of an escalating dispute between the Central African neighbours linked to a fresh offensive by the M23 rebel group that Congo accuses Rwanda of supporting.

The spokesman for the Congolese Army in the eastern North Kivu province said troops had been battling M23 rebels in a mountain area close to the border with Rwanda and Uganda, when five rockets fired from Rwanda landed in Congolese territory away from the area of fighting.

“We recorded two children killed and one seriously wounded and also a school which was thoroughly damaged,” spokesperson Guillaume Ndjike Kaiko said.

Reuters could not independently verify the report. The Rwandan authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Rwandan Defence Ministry meanwhile accused Congolese forces of firing two 122mm calibre rockets into Rwanda from the Bunagana area, where they were fighting M23 rebels.

“There were no casualties but the local population is terrified,” it said in a statement.

Kaiko denied the accusation and said Congolese forces had not been using rockets of that calibre in the area.

The dispute centres on Congo’s accusation that Rwanda is actively supporting M23, which has been waging its most sustained offensive in Congo’s eastern borderlands since capturing vast swathes of territory in 2012-2013.

Rwanda denies this and in turn accuses Congo of fighting alongside the FDLR, an armed group run by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide.

It has accused Congolese forces of firing rockets across the border in two previous incidents in March and May.

(Reporting by Djaffar Al Katanty; Additional reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana in Kigali; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank may soon get a taste of the military rule that Palestinians have been living under for 55 years.

If Israel’s parliament does not act, a special legal status accorded to the settlers will expire at the end of the month, with wide-ranging consequences. Lawyers who live in the settlements, including two members of Israel’s Supreme Court, will no longer be allowed to practice law. Settlers would be subject to military courts usually reserved for Palestinians and would lose access to some public services.

While few expect things to reach that point, the looming deadline has put Israel’s government on the brink of collapse and drawn dire warnings.

“Without this law, it would be a disaster,” said Israel Ganz, governor of the Benyamin Regional Council, a cluster of settlements just outside Jerusalem. “The Israeli government will lose any control here. No police, no taxes.”

For over half a century, Israel has repeatedly renewed regulations that today extend a legal umbrella to nearly 500,000 settlers — but not to the more than 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank. After failing to pass on Monday, the bill will be brought for another vote in the Knesset next week in a last-ditch effort to save the governing coalition — and the legal arrangement.

The law underpins separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank, a situation that three major human rights groups say amounts to apartheid. Israel rejects that allegation as an attack on its legitimacy.

“This is the piece of legislation that enables apartheid,” said Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which provides legal aid to Palestinians.

“The whole settlement enterprise depends on them enjoying all the rights and benefits of being Israelis even though they are in occupied territory.”

An overwhelming majority in the Knesset support maintaining the separate systems. The main reason the bill didn’t pass was that the nationalist opposition — which strongly supports it — paradoxically refused to vote in favor in an attempt to bring down Israel’s broad-based but fragile coalition government. In a similar vein, anti-settlement lawmakers voted in favor of the legislation to keep the coalition afloat.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built more than 130 settlements there, many of which resemble small towns, with apartment blocks, shopping malls and industrial zones. The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the main part of their future state. Most countries view the settlements as a violation of international law.

Israel refers to the West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, and considers it the heartland of the Jewish people. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett supports settlement expansion and is opposed to Palestinian statehood. Israel officially views the West Bank as disputed territory whose fate is subject to negotiations, which collapsed more than a decade ago.

The emergency regulations, first enacted in 1967 and regularly renewed, extend much of Israeli law to West Bank settlers — but not to the territory itself.

“Applying the law to the territory could be considered as annexing the territory, with all the political consequences that Israel did not want to have,” said Liron Libman, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former top Israeli military prosecutor.

Failure to renew the bill by the end of this month would have far-reaching consequences.

The Israel Bar Association requires lawyers and judges to reside in the country. Without the law’s carve-out, settlers would not be able to practice law in Israeli courts. That would include two Supreme Court justices, one of whom recently upheld an order to forcibly relocate hundreds of Palestinians.

The bill’s lapse could also result in more settlers who run afoul of the law being tried in military courts — something Israel authorities have long tried to reserve for Palestinian suspects.

The settlers could lose their ability to use national health insurance for treatment inside the West Bank, and the ability to update their status in the population registry and get national ID cards — something routinely denied to Palestinians.

The law also provides a legal basis for Israel to jail thousands of Palestinians who have been convicted by military courts in prisons inside Israel, despite international law prohibiting the transfer of prisoners out of occupied territory. The law’s lapse could force Israel to move those prisoners back to the West Bank, where there is currently only one Israeli prison.

The various consequences are seen as so catastrophic that many Israelis expect the bill to pass or the government to be replaced. It’s also possible that Israeli authorities, who often bend to the settlers’ demands, will find workarounds to blunt the worst effects.

“I’m not worried,” said Ganz, the settler leader. “It’s like when you owe the bank 1 million dollars, you are worried about it, but when you owe 1 billion, the bank manager is worried.”

Asked if the separate legal systems amount to apartheid, Ganz said: “I agree with you, 100%.”

His preferred solution is that Israel annex what’s known as Area C, the 60% of the West Bank where, under interim peace accords, Israel already exercises complete control. Area C includes the settlements, as well as rural areas that are home to some 300,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N.

Most Palestinians live in Areas A and B — scattered, disconnected population centers where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule.

“It’s strange that different populations in the same area have different laws,” Ganz said. “So we have to bring Israeli law to everyone here in Area C.”

Two years ago, Israel’s then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu flirted with annexation before putting it on hold as part of an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to normalize relations.

The Palestinians, and much of the international community, view annexation as a violation of international law that would deal a fatal blow to any hope for a two-state solution, still widely seen internationally as the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu, now opposition leader, and his allies strongly support the West Bank bill but hope its defeat will speed his return to power. The coalition cannot pass it on its own because a handful of lawmakers — mainly Palestinian citizens of Israel — refuse to vote for it.

The law may have been designed with an eventual partition in mind. But many Palestinians see its longevity as proof that Israel was never serious about a two-state solution.

“They could have easily undone the occupation by just not passing this law, time and again,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and former adviser to the Palestinian Authority. “It gets passed by the left and it gets passed by the right. That’s why this idea of two states is such a fiction.”

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Associated Press reporter Alon Bernstein in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds into its fourth month, officials in Kyiv have expressed fears that the specter of “war fatigue” could erode the West’s resolve to help the country push back Moscow’s aggression.

The U.S. and its allies have given billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine. Europe has taken in millions of people displaced by the war. And there has been unprecedent unity in post-World War II Europe in imposing sanctions on President Vladimir Putin and his country.

But as the shock of the Feb. 24 invasion subsides, analysts say the Kremlin could exploit a dragged-out, entrenched conflict and possible waning interest among Western powers that might lead to pressuring Ukraine into a settlement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy already has chafed at Western suggestions he should accept some sort of compromise. Ukraine, he said, would decide its own terms for peace.

“The fatigue is growing, people want some kind of outcome (that is beneficial) for themselves, and we want (another) outcome for ourselves,” he said.

An Italian peace proposal was dismissed, and French President Emmanuel Macron was met with an angry backlash after he was quoted as saying that although Putin’s invasion was a “historic error,” world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia, so when the fighting stops, we can build a way out together via diplomatic paths.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said such talk “can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.”

Even a remark by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Ukraine should consider territorial concessions drew a retort from Zelenskyy that it was tantamount to European powers in 1938 letting Nazi Germany claim parts of Czechoslovakia to curb Adolf Hitler’s aggression.

Kyiv wants to push Russia out of the newly captured areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as retaking Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and parts of the Donbas under control of Kremlin-backed separatists for the past eight years.

Every month of the war is costing Ukraine $5 billion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, political analyst with the Penta Center think tank, and that “makes Kyiv dependent on the consolidated position of the Western countries.”

Ukraine will need even more advanced weaponry to secure victory, along with Western determination to keep up the economic pain on Russia to weaken Moscow.

“It is obvious that Russia is determined to wear down the West and is now building its strategy on the assumption that Western countries will get tired and gradually begin to change their militant rhetoric to a more accommodating one,” Fesenko said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The war still gets prominent coverage in both the United States and Europe, which have been horrified by images of the deaths of Ukrainian civilians in the biggest fighting on the continent since World War II.

The U.S. continues to help Ukraine, with President Joe Biden saying last week that Washington will provide it with advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable it to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield.

In a New York Times essay on May 31, Biden said, “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions.”

Germany, which had faced criticism from Kyiv and elsewhere for perceived hesitancy, has pledged its most modern air defense systems yet.

“There has been nothing like it, even in the Cold War when the Soviet Union appeared most threatening,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

While he doesn’t see a significant erosion in the “emphatic support for Ukraine,” Gould-Davies said “there are hints of different tensions over what the West’s goals should be. Those have not yet been clearly defined.”

Europe’s domestic concerns are nudging their way into the discourse, especially as energy prices and raw materials shortages start to take an economic toll on ordinary people who are facing higher electricity bills, fuel costs and grocery prices.

While European leaders hailed the decision to block 90% of Russian oil exports by the end of the year as “a complete success,” it took four weeks of negotiations and included a concession allowing Hungary, widely seen as the Kremlin’s closest EU ally, to continue imports. Weeks more of political fine-tuning are required.

“It shows that unity in Europe is declining a bit on the Russian invasion,’’ said Matteo Villa, an analyst with the ISPI think tank in Milan. “There is this kind of fatigue setting in among member states on finding new ways to sanction Russia, and clearly within the European Union, there are some countries that are less and less willing to go on with sanctions.’’

Wary of the economic impact of further energy sanctions, the European Commission has signaled it won’t rush to propose fresh restrictive measures targeting Russian gas. EU lawmakers are also appealing for financial aid for citizens hit by heating and fuel price hikes to ensure that public support for Ukraine doesn’t wane.

Italy’s right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, who has been seen as close to Moscow, told foreign journalists this week that Italians are ready to make sacrifices, and that his League supports the sanctions against Russia.

But he indicated that backing is not unlimited, amid signs the trade balance under sanctions has shifted in Moscow’s favor, hurting small business owners in northern Italy who are part of his base.

“Italians are very available to make personal economic sacrifices to support Ukraine’s defense and arrive at a cease-fire,’’ Salvini said.

“What I would not like is to find us back here in September, after three months with the conflict still ongoing. If that is the case, it will be a disaster for Italy. Beyond the deaths, and saving lives, which is the priority, economically, for Italy, if the war goes on, it will be a disaster,” he said.

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Barry reported from Milan. Angela Charlton in Paris, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, and Aya Batrawy in Davos, Switzerland, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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(Adds latest reports from frontline, British defence ministry)

By Pavel Polityuk and Abdelaziz Boumzar

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in intense street fighting and under day and night shelling in Sievierodonetsk, officials said, as Russia pushes to control the bombed-out city, key to its objective of controlling eastern Ukraine.

Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk, on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river, are the last Ukrainian-controlled parts of Luhansk province, which Russia is determined to seize as one of its principal war objectives.

Ukraine’s Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Thursday the situation in Sievierodonetsk was “extremely complicated” and Russian forces were focusing all of their might in the area.

“They don’t spare their people, they’re just sending men like cannon fodder … they are shelling our military day and night,” Danilov told Reuters in an interview.

Ukraine says its only hope to turn the tide in its favour in the small industrial city is more artillery to offset Russia’s massive firepower.

In a rare update from the city, the commander of Ukraine’s Svoboda National Guard Battalion, Petro Kusyk, said Ukrainians were drawing the Russians into street fighting to neutralise their artillery advantage.

“Yesterday was successful for us – we launched a counteroffensive and in some areas we managed to push them back one or two blocks. In others they pushed us back, but just by a building or two,” he said in a televised interview.

But he said his forces were suffering from a “catastrophic” lack of counter-battery artillery to fire back at Russia’s guns, and getting such weapons would transform the battlefield.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

In the south, where Russia is trying to impose its rule on a tract of occupied territory spanning Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, Ukraine’s defence ministry said it had captured new ground in a counter-attack in Kherson province.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an evening address that Ukraine had “some positive developments in the Zaporizhzhia region, where we are succeeding in disrupting the occupiers’ plans”. He did not provide details.

Reuters could not independently verify the situation on the ground in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson. Russian-installed proxies in both provinces say they are planning referendums to join Russia.

Thousands of people have been killed and millions have fled since Russia launched its “special military operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbour on Feb. 24. Ukraine and its allies call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.

Speaking in Moscow to mark the 350th anniversary of Russian Tsar Peter the Great’s birth, President Vladimir Putin drew a parallel between what he portrayed as their historic quests to win back what he called Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned (what was Russia’s),” Putin said.

‘WE ARE STAYING’

Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said about 10,000 civilians were still trapped in the city – roughly a tenth of its pre-war population.

To the west of Sievierodonetsk, Russia is pushing from the north and south, trying to trap Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region, comprising Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province.

Russia shelled more than 20 towns in Donetsk and Luhansk on Thursday, destroying or damaging 49 homes, several manufacturing plants, farm buildings and a rail station, said the Ukraine military. Two civilians were killed, it said.

Russia says it does not target civilians.

“Sabotage groups attempts to infiltrate the area have increased. But we see them and prevent them from entering the area,” said Ivan, a Ukrainian soldier on the frontline in New York, Donetsk.

In Soledar, a salt-mining town near Bakhmut close to the front line, buildings had been blasted into craters.

Remaining residents, mostly elderly, were sheltering in a crowded cellar. Antonina, 65, had ventured out to see her garden. “We are staying. We live here. We were born here,” she sobbed. “When is it all going to end?”

The devastated eastern port of Mariupol, under siege by Russian troops for months until it fell, is now at risk of a major cholera outbreak, Britain’s defence ministry said on Friday.

There is likely a critical shortage of medicines in Kherson, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a Twitter update https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1535130749774479363. Russia is struggling to provide basic public services to the population in Russian-occupied territories, it added.

GRAIN

In the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine, a court sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan who were captured while fighting for Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

Britain condemned the court’s decision as a “sham judgment” with no legitimacy.

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain and food oil exporters, and international attention has focused in recent weeks on the threat of international famine seen as caused by Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

“Millions of people may starve if the Russian blockade of the Black Sea continues,” Zelenskiy said in televised remarks.

Russia blames the food crisis on Western sanctions restricting its own grain exports. It says it is willing to let Ukrainian ports open for exports if Ukraine removes mines and meets other conditions. Ukraine calls such offers empty promises.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Robert Birsel and Kim Coghill)

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By Riham Alkousaa

BAD AROLSEN, Germany (Reuters) -Authorities had yet to establish a motive on Thursday for a 29-year-old German-Armenian man who rammed his car into a group of schoolchildren in Berlin, killing a teacher and leaving another fighting for his life, but said he had no known link to terrorism.

Investigators, with the help of a translator, were trying to make sense of the “at times confused statements he was making” during questioning, Berlin’s mayor, Franziska Giffey, told RBB inforadio, describing a “dark day in the history of Berlin”.

The crash injured around 30 people, including 14 students, seven of whom were severely hurt and rushed to hospital after the car veered onto a pedestrian area of Berlin’s busy shopping district of Charlottenburg, according to police.

Families were in mourning for the teacher who was killed while taking schoolchildren on an end of term trip to the German capital from the small town of Bad Arolsen, in the state of Hesse.

The suspect, who was naturalised as a German citizen in 2015, was previously known to the police in connection with incidents of bodily harm and trespassing, said Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior affairs minister.

Police had searched his home. State prosecutor Sebastian Buechner told reporters, “as part of the searches, medication was found and the man through his lawyers released his doctors from the secrecy obligation… so quite a lot points to paranoid schizophrenia.”

The incident took place near the site of a fatal attack in 2016, when a truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market.

A witness at the scene said the driver had immediately shown remorse when confronted after the crash.

“He was surrounded by five or six men, not detained but surrounded (gestures) so that he couldn’t flee,” Markus Leppmeier said. “He too was injured, he had a laceration on his head, a very large bump and he kept on saying ‘sorry, sorry, I did not want that, sorry.’”

FLOWERS, CANDLES AND HEAVY HEARTS

Residents of Bad Arolsen fought back tears over an incident that brought back memories of an attack in the neighbouring town of Volkmarsen, when a man rammed his car into a carnival parade in 2020, injuring dozens, including 20 children.

“It brings back lots of pictures from Volkmarsen,” said Ellen Schreck, 45, whose son went to the school the group was from. She described the situation as an “absolute horror”.

“It’s usually a quiet little town … you always think you’re in a safe bubble here. But that’s not the case anymore.”

People laid flowers and candles at the Kaulbach school, which was closed on Thursday. Parents and a team from the school have travelled to Berlin to help look after the children.

“We’re all deeply saddened,” said Almut Will-Olivieri, who owns a pizzeria by the school. “The town is simply in shock.”

Of the students who had gone to Berlin, 17 have returned to Hesse, some with their parents and others in a specially organised bus. Along with police, a team of mental health workers was working at the school to give the children support.

“This is a very difficult day for us and we have really heavy hearts,” said the state premier Boris Rhein during a visit to the school.

“It will continue to have an effect for a long time to come.”

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Writing by Matthias Williams and Rachel More; Editing by Robert Birsel, Miranda Murray, Alex Richardson, Alexandra Hudson)

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Bandits on motorcycles killed 32 people and set fire to houses in several villages in the Kajura area of Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state on Sunday, authorities said on Thursday.

Armed gangs are rife across Nigeria’s northwest where they rob or kidnap for ransom, and violence has increasingly spread to other areas.

The attackers hit the villages of Dogon Noma, Ungwan Sarki and Ungwan Maikori, the statement from the state’s ministry of internal security and home affairs said.

“An Air Force helicopter … dispatched to the location, had earlier scanned the first two locations and sighted burnt houses and properties on fire,” it added.

“The helicopter intercepted the bandits at the last location (Ungwan Maikori) and engaged them as they retreated, before the arrival of ground troops.”

At the end of March, bandits blew up a train between the state’s capital, Kaduna, and the national capital Abuja, killing eight passengers, injuring 26 and holding others for ransom.

(Reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja, Writing by Julia Payne, Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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