MOSCOW: Ukrainian shelling on the eastern occupied city of Lysychansk killed at least 20 people, Russia said Saturday, with at least 10 others wounded and rescue operations ongoing.
Moscow’s occupation forces said Kyiv had targeted a bakery that is popular on weekends.
The attack hit almost two years into Russia’s Ukraine offensive.
Lysychansk, a city in the Lugansk region that had a population of around 110,000 people before Moscow’s offensive, fell to Russian forces after a brutal battle in the summer of 2022.
“In Lysychansk, employees of the Russian emergency ministry recovered the bodies of 20 people from under the rubble,” the ministry said on Telegram.
It showed a video of rescuers working in the dark, pulling out one dead body from the rubble before finding a wounded woman alive and putting her on a stretcher to take her out of the heavily destroyed building.
The ministry earlier said it had pulled out 10 survivors from under the rubble and said rescue operations will continue into the night.
The Moscow-installed governor of Lugansk, Leonid Pasechnik, said earlier that Kyiv had targeted a bakery that was known to have fresh bread on weekends.
RIA Novosti published a video of a heavily damaged building, with emergency workers pulling out an entirely crushed car.
The one-story building had a large sign on it that read “Restaurant Adriatic” and appeared entirely destroyed and covered in rubble.
Russia’s foreign ministry claimed western Weapons were used in the attack and said it expected “quick and unconditional condemnation” from international organizations.
The front in eastern Ukraine has barely moved in months but battles continue to be bloody with intensified attacks on both sides this winter.
The attack came as Kyiv said Russia hit it with a fresh barrage of Iranian-made drones, which targeted energy facilities in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, leaving thousands without power.
Moscow-installed authorities said one wounded man in “serious condition” was taken to hospital in the city of Lugansk.
Lysychansk lies some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Russia took control of it and its twin city of Severodonetsk in summer 2022 after some of the most brutal battles of its almost two-year offensive.
Ukraine, meanwhile, said its airforce had downed nine out of 14 Iranian-made drones Russia launched at central and southern regions Saturday.
Kyiv said most of the drones were directed at energy facilities in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where thousands have been without power since Russian strikes on Friday.
The outages have mainly affected the main city of Krivyi Rig — the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Regional head Sergey Lysak said 15,000 people were without electricity in the city after the drone strikes.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said it was working to restore critical infrastructure.
Zelensky, meanwhile, praised his country’s security services for hitting Moscow’s forces outside the battlefield “both at land and at sea.”
He spoke two days after Ukraine said it had destroyed a Russian warship off the Crimea peninsula and on the same day as Russia said a Ukrainian drone strike had caused a fire at an oil refinery in southern Russia.
“Russia really feels pain from your actions,” Zelensky said.
On Thursday, Kyiv said it had destroyed a Russian warship — the “Ivanovets” — on Donuzlav Bay on the western coast of Crimea.
“A spectacular act,” Zelensky said of the alleged downing.
“The less Russian navy in the Black Sea, the more security there is in the region and in the world,” he said.
Moscow had said earlier that a Ukrainian drone in the Russian southwestern Volgograd region had set a major oil refinery ablaze.
A Ukrainian defense source told AFP that Kyiv’s SBU security service had “organized” the attack.
“Last night, the air defense and electronic jamming repelled an attack by drones in the Volgograd region’s Kalachyovsky and Zakanalye districts,” Volgograd governor Andrei Bocharov said on Telegram.
“A fire started at the Volgograd refinery after one of the downed drones fell,” he said, adding that the fire service had already brought the blaze under control by early morning.
No one was hurt, Bocharov said.
At least 20 dead in Ukrainian shelling of occupied city: Russia
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At least 20 dead in Ukrainian shelling of occupied city: Russia
- “In Lysychansk, employees of the Russian emergency ministry recovered the bodies of 20 people from under the rubble,” the ministry said on Telegram
- It showed a video of rescuers working in the dark, pulling out one dead body from the rubble before finding a wounded woman alive
US congratulates Modi, hopes to work for ‘free and open’ Asia
- Modi is set for a third term in office after the election, but his Bharatiya Janata Party lost seats and will need coalition partners
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday congratulated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his coalition’s election win, saying it hoped to work with the Hindu nationalist leader on a “free and open” Asia.
“The friendship between our nations is only growing as we unlock a shared future of unlimited potential,” President Joe Biden wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The White House later announced that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would be traveling to New Delhi for talks with the government on “shared US-India priorities, including the trusted, strategic technology partnership.”
Separately, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States hoped to keep advancing “our partnership with the Indian government to promote prosperity and innovation, address the climate crisis and ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” a US catchphrase for opposing assertive moves by China.
Miller in a statement called the election “the largest exercise in democracy in human history,” and commended “Indian voters, poll workers, civil society and journalists.”
The United States since the late 1990s has put a high priority on building relations with India, seeing the billion-plus democracy as like-minded on key areas including the rise of China and the threat of Islamist extremism.
Biden has kept up the courtship, welcoming Modi on a state visit last year and boosting the role of the “Quad” — a group bringing together the United States, India, Japan and Australia, all major democracies with degrees of friction with China.
The embrace of Modi comes despite criticism from human rights groups and some left-wing members of Biden’s Democratic Party over what they see as rising authoritarianism by the Hindu nationalist prime minister.
The Biden administration, while gently raising concerns on human rights, has largely brushed off concerns and moved full-speed ahead with Modi.
But senior US officials quietly warned India of consequences to the relationship after federal prosecutors last year alleged that an Indian intelligence officer was involved in an assassination plot against a Sikh separatist on US soil.
Modi is set for a third term in office after the election, but his Bharatiya Janata Party lost seats and will need coalition partners, falling short of early hopes of a landslide.
Putin threatens to arm countries that could hit Western targets
- Putin warned that Western arms deliveries to Ukraine were “a very negative step,” saying that donors were “controlling” the weapons
SAINT PETERSBURG: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday criticized the West’s delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine, arguing Moscow could arm other countries with similar weapons to attack Western targets.
The comment — which Putin made at a rare press conference with foreign news outlets — came after several Western countries including the United States gave Ukraine the green light to strike targets inside Russia, a move Moscow has called a grave miscalculation.
“If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a warzone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those (Western) countries,” Putin said.
“That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it,” he told reporters.
But the 71-year-old Kremlin chief dismissed as “bollocks” suggestions Russia planned to attack NATO members.
“There is no need to look for some imperial ambitions of ours. There are none,” he said.
Putin warned that Western arms deliveries to Ukraine were “a very negative step,” saying that donors were “controlling” the weapons.
The Russian leader singled out Germany for particular criticism, saying that when the first German-supplied tanks “appeared on Ukrainian soil, it provoked a moral and ethical shock in Russia” because of the legacy of World War II.
Referring to German authorities, he said: “When they say that there will be more missiles which will hit targets on Russian territory, this definitively destroys Russian-German relations.”
Sitting opposite representatives from news outlets including AFP, Putin repeated that his country “did not start the war against Ukraine,” instead blaming a pro-Western revolution in 2014.
“Everyone thinks that Russia started the war in Ukraine. I would like to emphasize that nobody in the West, in Europe, wants to remember how this tragedy started,” Putin said.
He declined to give the number of Russia’s battlefield losses in the more than two-year conflict, saying only that Ukraine’s were five times higher.
“I can tell you that as a rule, no one talks about it,” Putin rebuffed, when asked why Russia had not yet disclosed a figure.
“If we talk about irrecoverable losses, the ratio is one to five,” he said.
The issue of military casualties is extremely sensitive in Russia, where all criticism of the conflict is banned and “spreading false information” about the army carries a maximum 15 year jail sentence.
When asked about the killing of AFP video journalist Arman Soldin in Ukraine last year, likely as a result of Russian rocket fire, Putin indicated Moscow was ready to help investigate.
“We will do everything in our power,” he said.
“We are ready to do this work. I do not know how it could be done in practice since this person died in a warzone.”
Putin was also probed about what a victory for former US President Donald Trump or incumbent Joe Biden would mean for US-Russia relations — an issue the Russian leader shrugged off.
“By and large there’s no difference,” he said.
However he called Trump’s recent criminal charges for business fraud politically motivated, arguing his conviction “burned” the idea that Washington was a leading democracy.
“It is obvious all over the world that the prosecution of Trump... is simply the utilization of the judicial system during an internal political struggle,” Putin said.
“Their supposed leadership in the sphere of democracy is being burned to the ground,” the Russian leader added.
Trump became the first former US head of state ever convicted of a crime last week after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony charges in a hush money case.
Trump, who faces an election in November that could see him return to the White House, has praised Putin as a “smart guy.”
Putin also said Russia and the United States were in “constant contact” over a possible prisoner exchange that would free jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich who was arrested on espionage charges last year.
“The relevant services in the US and Russia are in constant contact with one another and of course they will decide only on the basis of reciprocity,” Putin said.
Appeals court halts Trump’s Georgia case during appeal of order allowing Willis to stay on case
- The Georgia Court of Appeals’ order on Wednesday prevents Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee from moving forward with pretrial motions as he had planned while the appeal is pending
ATLANTA: An appeals court has halted the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others while it reviews the lower court judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case.
The Georgia Court of Appeals’ order on Wednesday prevents Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee from moving forward with pretrial motions as he had planned while the appeal is pending. While it was already unlikely that the case would go to trial before the November general election, when Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee for president, this makes that even more certain.
The appeals court on Monday docketed the appeals filed by Trump and eight others and said that “if oral argument is requested and granted” it is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. The court will then have until mid-March to rule, and the losing side will be able to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment on the appeals court ruling.
A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. It is one of four criminal cases against Trump.
Trump and eight other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.
McAfee wrote that “an odor of mendacity remains.” He said “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He said Willis could remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.
The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February.
Russia’s Lavrov takes anti-western tour to Chad
- Chad is one of the last pieces Moscow is trying to put together in the Sahel region, which not long ago was France’s sphere of influence
- Russia FM Sergei Lavrov: ‘France has a different approach: either you are with us or you are against us’
ABIDJAN: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday arrived in Chad, the last leg of a tour of African nations marked by strong anti-Western sentiment and the promise of greater military backing against extremists.
The veteran diplomat has offered to strengthen economic, trade and above all military cooperation with Guinea, Congo and Burkina Faso, his first stops.
The Kremlin has seen relations with the West plummet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has doubled down on efforts to boost its influence in Africa, replacing western powers, above all France.
“It’s not peace that the Westerners want to preserve,” in Ukraine, Lavrov told journalists, but “the following principles: you have to choose between supporting Russia or supporting” Ukraine.
“And if you support Russia, you will be punished,” he said.
Chad is one of the last pieces Moscow is trying to put together in the Sahel region, which not long ago was France’s sphere of influence.
France has seen its troops dismissed from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso by their military regimes since 2022.
Mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group have arrived, all presented as military instructors.
Paris still deploys about 1,000 soldiers in Chad, and says it intends to stay there, if in reduced numbers.
Rumours of armed Russians working alongside Chadian soldiers, notably in the south, are rife on social media.
But officially for now, N’Djamena is the last hold-out against the Russian influx.
Lavrov held talks with Chad’s General Mahamat Idriss Deby who has just been elected president after three years at the head of a military junta.
Deby paid a visit to Moscow in January, raising questions about his plans to broaden his international allies.
“For six months we’ve seen a veritable warming of relations between Russian and Chad,” African studies expert Vsevolod Sviridov told AFP in Moscow.
Paris has remained solidly behind Deby even though other western capitals have voiced concern at the contested election and the violent crackdown on all opposition.
“Our friendship with Chad will not influence its relations with France,” Lavrov said in N’Djamena.
“France has a different approach: either you are with us or you are against us,” he added.
In Burkina Faso on Wednesday, Lavrov said the number of Russian military instructors there “will increase.”
“At the same time, we are training in Russia representatives of the armed forces and security forces of Burkina Faso,” he said in the capital Ouagadougou.
Extremists affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group have waged a grinding insurgency since 2015 in Burkina Faso that has killed thousands of people and displaced two million.
“I have no doubt that thanks to this cooperation, the pockets of terrorists which remain in Burkina Faso will be destroyed,” the Russian minister said.
In Guinea on Monday, Lavrov congratulated the country for being “in the avant-guard of the decolonization process.”
On Tuesday, in Congo, Lavrov took aim at the West’s support of Ukraine and its supposed “objectives” elsewhere, such as Libya.
Last July, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited African leaders to a summit in Saint Petersburg where he said they agreed to promote a multipolar world order and to fight neo-colonialism.
Putin hailed the “commitment of all our states to the formation of a just and democratic multipolar world order.”
Liftoff, finally: Boeing Starliner launches first crew to space station
- The third time turned out to be the charm for the aerospace giant
CAPE CANAVERA: Boeing on Wednesday launched its very first astronauts bound for the International Space Station aboard a Starliner capsule, which joins a select club of spacecraft to carry humans beyond Earth.
The third time turned out to be the charm for the aerospace giant, after two previous bids to fly were aborted with the crew strapped in and ready to go.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both of whom have two previous spaceflights under their belts, blasted off at 10:52 am (1452 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Their Starliner, named “Calypso” after famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’s ship, is now chasing the ISS in orbit. It should rendezvous with the research lab at 12:15 p.m. (1615 GMT) Sunday to begin a roughly one-week stay.
“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,” Wilmore, who is commander of the test flight, said just before liftoff. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket, and let’s push it to the heavens.”
Starliner becomes just the sixth type of US-built spaceship to fly NASA astronauts, following the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the Space Shuttle from 1981 to 2011, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon from 2020.
“This is another milestone in this extraordinary history of NASA,” the space agency’s chief Bill Nelson told reporters.
“And I want to give my personal congratulations to the whole team that went through a lot of trial and tribulation. But they had perseverance. And that’s what we do at NASA, we don’t launch until it’s right.”
A successful mission will help dispel the bitter taste left by years of safety scares and delays, and provide Boeing a much-needed reprieve from the intense safety concerns surrounding its passenger jets.
“I think about over the years how many bad headlines I read about the Shuttle program, about the International Space Station — and I look back now at how successful they were,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president and program manager of Commercial Crew Program.
“Someday, we’ll be looking back at this program the same way.”
NASA meanwhile is seeking to certify Boeing as a second commercial operator to ferry crews to the ISS — something Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already been doing for the US space agency for four years.
Both companies received multibillion-dollar contracts in 2014 to develop their crew capsules, following the end of the Space Shuttle program that left the US temporarily reliant on Russian rockets for rides.
Boeing, with its 100-year history, was heavily favored, but its program fell badly behind.
Setbacks ranged from a software bug that put the spaceship on a bad trajectory on its first uncrewed test, to the discovery that the cabin was filled with flammable electrical tape after the second.
The first crewed launch attempt on May 6 was scuppered in the final hours due to a buzzy valve on the Atlas V rocket the capsule is fixed atop.
Saturday’s launch attempt was even more dramatic, aborted with just minutes left on the countdown due to a ground launch computer issue.
Ex-Navy test pilots Wilmore and Williams are now charged with probing Starliner “from izzard to gizzard,” in Nelson’s words — from piloting it manually, to tracking the stars around them to recover the spacecraft’s orientation.
During their stay on the orbital outpost, they will continue to evaluate the spacecraft, including simulating whether the ship can be used as a safe haven in the event of problems.
NASA’s Steve Stich said teams were monitoring just one issue so far: excessive water use in a spacecraft cooling system called a sublimator, but expected there was enough in reserve for a safe return.
After undocking from the ISS, Starliner will re-enter the atmosphere, with the crew experiencing 3.5G as they slow down from 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kph) to a gentle parachute and airbag-assisted touchdown on land in the western United States.
