KYIV, Ukraine: Russian missiles struck cities and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, hitting homes, a school and a community center on Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin won strong support support from Iran for his country’s military operation.
In Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province considered a likely Russian occupation target, one person was killed and 10 wounded in an airstrike that hit a five-story apartment building, regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Fresh blood stained the concrete amid green leaves that were torn off trees as nearby apartments on at least two floors burned. Shrapnel was placed in a small pile near an empty playground.
“There was no one here. Everything is ruined,” said Halyna Maydannyk, a resident of one burned apartment. “Who knows why they’re doing this? We were all living peacefully.”
Kramatorsk residents Mykola Zavodovskyi and Tetiana Zavodovska stood in bandages outside a hospital. They heard a loud clap and went to their balcony to investigate, then everything exploded and the windows shattered.
“Probably it was a rocket, and probably it was brought down by Ukrainian forces,” Zavodovska said.
The midday strike came after Kyrylenko had reported four earlier Russian strikes in Kramatorsk and urged civilians to evacuate.
On the political front, Putin visited Tehran, where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the West opposes an “independent and strong” Russia. Khamenei said that if Russia hadn’t sent troops into Ukraine, it would have faced an attack from NATO later, echoing Putin’s own rhetoric and reflecting increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran as they both face severe Western sanctions.
NATO allies have bolstered their military presence in Eastern Europe and provided Ukraine with weapons to help counter the Russian attack. Putin and other officials at the Tehran meetings said little new about negotiations to unblock Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.
In the Odesa region in southern Ukraine, Russian forces fired seven Kalibr cruise missiles overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said strikes on the village of Bilenke achieved a legitimate military goal and “destroyed depots of ammunition for weapons supplied by the United States and European countries.”
A local official disputed Moscow’s claim and said six people were wounded.
“These strikes on peaceful people have one goal — to intimidate the population and the authorities and keep them in constant tension,” Serhiy Bratchuk, the speaker of the Odesa regional government, told Ukrainian television.
With indications that Ukraine is planning counterattacks to retake occupied areas, the Russian military in recent weeks has targeted Odesa and parts of southern Ukraine where its troops captured cities earlier in the war.
In the east, Ukrainian forces are fighting to hold onto the declining territory under their control. Donetsk has been cut off from gas supplies and partly from water and power as the Russians try to complete their capture of the province. Russia’s ground advance has slowed, in part because Ukraine is using more effective US weapons and partly because of what Putin has called an “operational pause.” Russia has been focusing more on aerial bombardment using long-range missiles.
“The infrastructure of the cities is being methodically destroyed by missile strikes, and the civilian population, cut off from bare necessities, suffers the most,” Kyrylenko said.
Russian-installed officials in the southern region of Kherson, under Moscow’s control since early in the war, said Ukrainian forces damaged the only bridge in the city of Kherson over the Dnipro River, east of Odesa. Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s Kremlin-backed administration, told the Russian news agency Interfax that Ukrainian forces used American-made rocket launchers to damage the bridge in an attempt to cut Kherson off from the left bank of the Dnipro.
Ukrainian officials have spoken of plans for a counter-offensive to retake Kherson and other southern Ukrainian territory from the Russians.
Serhiy Khlan, an official with the Ukrainian administration of the Kherson region, tacitly confirmed the strike on Ukrainian television, reporting “a precise hit” and explosion in the area of the bridge.
Also in the Kherson region, Ukraine claimed to have used anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet that had planned to attack its planes. Several ground-based videos posted on social media showed a plane breaking up in the evening sky Tuesday near Nova Kakhovka, in flames and spewing gray and black smoke as it descended and crashed into the ground, at least some pieces into a green field. Ukrainian news reports said the pilot ejected and showed a helicopter search for him. Russian officials didn’t immediately confirm the shootdown. Little information has emerged during the war about aerial battles.
Kherson — hosting a major ship-building industry at the confluence of the Dnieper River and the Black Sea near Russian-annexed Crimea — is one of several areas a US government spokesman said Russia is trying to annex. Following months of local rumors and announcements about a Russian referendum, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that US intelligence officials have amassed “ample” new evidence that Russia is looking formally to annex additional Ukraine territory and could hold a “sham” public vote as soon as September. Russia is eyeing Kherson as well as the entirety of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine sovereignty,” Kirby said in Washington.
Kirby also said the White House is expected to announce more military aid for Ukraine later this week. The aid is expected to include more High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, a critical weapon Ukrainian forces have been using with success in their fight to repel Russian troops.
On the ground, Ukraine and Russia continued their sporadic exchanges of bodies of fallen soldiers. Each side gave the other 45 soldiers’ bodies in the Zaporizhzhia region. Russia’s Ria-Novosti news agency said Tuesday the soldiers had been killed in Mariupol, the Azov Sea city that captured worldwide attention because of a weeks-long siege of a steel plant.
At least two civilians were killed and 15 wounded by Russian shelling across Ukraine over the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said in a Tuesday morning update.
With Russia’s missiles hitting cities 799 kilometers (497 miles) apart Tuesday, “there remains a high level of threat of missile strikes throughout the territory of Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesman of the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.
The missile strikes came as the British military said it believes Russia is struggling to keep up its troop strength in its grinding war of attrition that began with the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
The British Defense Ministry said in a Tuesday assessment that Russia “has struggled to sustain effective offensive combat power since the start of the invasion, and this problem is likely becoming increasingly acute” as Moscow seeks to conquer the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The British military added: “While Russia may still make further territorial gains, their operational tempo and rate of advance is likely to be very slow without a significant operational pause for reorganization and refit.”
In other developments Tuesday:
— Ukraine’s parliament approved President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dismissal of Ivan Bakanov as head of the country’s Security Service, the SBU, and the Ukrainian leader on Tuesday finalized the firing of Iryna Venediktova, who served as Ukraine’s prosecutor general. As part of the reshuffle stemming from alleged collaboration with Russian authorities, Zelensky on Tuesday also fired six other SBU officials.
— Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, visited Washington at the invitation of US first lady Jill Biden. Zelenska met Monday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who assured her of the US commitment to Ukraine, and praised her work with civilians dealing with trauma and other war damage. At the White House on Tuesday, Zelenska met with Jill Biden, embracing and posing for photos before discussing how the US is helping Ukrainians suffering mentally and emotionally from the war.
Russia pounds more Ukraine civilian centers as Putin gets Iran’s backing
https://arab.news/c7n8d
Russia pounds more Ukraine civilian centers as Putin gets Iran’s backing
- Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tells Putin that if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, it would have faced an attack from NATO later
- Khamenei's echoing of Putin’s own rhetoric reflects increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran as they both face severe Western sanctions
Wiping out polio ‘not guaranteed,’ support needed — Bill Gates
- Pakistan and the neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic
- Gates warned against complacency in tackling the disease as he welcomed $500 million pledge from Saudi Arabia
LONDON: Success in the fight to wipe out polio is not guaranteed, according to tech billionaire turned philanthropist Bill Gates, whose foundation has poured billions into the effort.
Gates warned against complacency in tackling the deadly viral disease as he welcomed a $500 million pledge from Saudi Arabia on Sunday to fight polio over the next five years, bringing it in line with the US as one of the biggest national donors.
However, there is still a $1.2 billion dollar funding gap in the $4.8 billion budget for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) up to 2026, a spokesperson said. The new money from Saudi Arabia will go some way toward closing that.
Saudi Arabia has supported polio eradication for more than 20 years, but the significant increase in funding comes amid a “challenging” situation, said Abdullah Al Moallem, director of health at the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, the kingdom’s aid arm.
Cases of polio, a viral disease that used to paralyze thousands of children every year, have declined by more than 99 percent since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns.
But the aim of getting cases down to zero, particularly in the two countries where the wild form of the virus remains endemic – Afghanistan and Pakistan – has been held up by insecurity in the regions where pockets of children remain unvaccinated.
“It’s not guaranteed that we will succeed,” Gates told Reuters in an online call last week. “I feel very strongly that we can succeed, but it’s been difficult.”
The support of powerful Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia would help, he added, particularly in addressing some lingering suspicions about vaccination.
The foundation said it would open a regional office in Riyadh to support the polio and other regional programs.
It is allocating $4 million to humanitarian relief in Gaza, to be distributed through UNICEF, it said. The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center will also allocate $4 million, it said.
The first missed target for eradicating polio was in 2000, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest donor trying to realize that goal.
“If we’re still here 10 years from now, people might be urging me to give up,” Gates said. “But I don’t think we will be. If things go well, we’ll be done in three years,” he said.
Chants of ‘shame on you’ greet guests at White House correspondents’ dinner shadowed by war in Gaza
- “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point
WASHINGTON: The war in Gaza spurred large protests outside a glitzy roast with President Joe Biden, journalists, politicians and celebrities Saturday but went all but unmentioned by participants inside, with Biden instead using the annual White House correspondents’ dinner to make both jokes and grim warnings about Republican rival Donald Trump’s fight to reclaim the U.S. presidency.
An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other often seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.
Despite being similar in age, Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.
But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.
“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
Trump did not attend Saturday's dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president. In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump's reality-television celebrity status. Obama's sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump's subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.
Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel's 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza. In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.
To get inside Saturday's dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Biden for his support of Israel's military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was undercoverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.
“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.
“Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.
Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.
Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine." They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.
Criticism of the Biden administration's support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel's offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.
Saturday's event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.
Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Jost said. “He’s only 99.”
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel's military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering," the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents' Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza."
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?" a demonstrator asked guests heading in. "You are complicit.”
___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani, Fatima Hussein and Tom Strong contributed to this report.
UK to build memorial to Muslim soldiers who fought in world wars
- Monument, featuring Islamic calligraphy, will reflect ‘incredible narrative,’ architect says
- About 8m Muslim soldiers and laborers stood alongside Allied forces
LONDON: The UK is building a war memorial to the millions of Muslim soldiers who served alongside British and Commonwealth forces during the two world wars, Sky News reported.
The 13.2-meter-tall monument, which has been several years in the planning, will stand at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Built from brick and terracotta it will be inscribed with the personal stories of the soldiers.
About 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and laborers served in the militaries of the Allied powers during the First World War and about 5.5 million in the Second World War.
Benny O’Looney, the memorial’s architect, said: “The idea is, as you approach the memorial, it draws you in. And you can see there’s more detail, more information, more craftsmanship.
“The idea is to show a panorama of the Muslim soldiers’ service in the world war from gritty 1914 — this incredible narrative of plugging the gap and saving the expeditionary forces on the Western Front.”
The inspiration for the design, which features Islamic calligraphy, came from journeys to the Indian subcontinent, O’Looney said.
The monument will be erected on a site already containing memorials to Sikhs, Gurkhas and others.
Irfan Malik, a doctor from Nottingham whose ancestors served in both world wars, said: “I’m so glad we are near to fruition now, so that we can remember this forgotten history of the Muslim soldiers in both of the great wars and looking at Muslim contributions globally as well.
“Both of my great-grandfathers — Capt. Ghulam Mohammad and Subedar (roughly equivalent to warrant officer) Mohammad Khan — were part of the Great War and my two grandfathers were part of the Second World War, serving in Burma.
“They all descended from Dulmial village, which is based in the salt range in Punjab in present-day Pakistan, a very famous military village.”
The memorial would serve as a “symbol of remembrance of those campaigns, the sacrifices made and also an opportunity to educate our younger generation to improve community cohesion in this country,” Malik said.
France charges Daesh official’s ex-wife with crimes against humanity
- The woman identified only as Sonia M. was accused by a Yazidi woman of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her, Le Parisien reported
- The Yazidi woman was 16 when she was taken captive by Daesh militants and forced into slavery by top Daesh official Abdelnasser Benyoucef
PARIS: France has charged the ex-wife of a top Daesh official with crimes against humanity on suspicion of enslaving a teenage Yazidi girl in Syria, French media reported.
A woman identified as Sonia M., the former wife of the jihadist group’s head of external operations Abdelnasser Benyoucef, was charged on March 14, Le Parisien said Saturday.
The Yazidi woman, who was 16 when she was forced into slavery by Benyoucef, accused Sonia M. of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her, the report said.
The woman, now 25, said she was held for more than a month in 2015 in Syria, where she was not allowed to eat, drink or shower without Sonia M.’s permission.
Sonia M. denied the allegations against her in a March 14 interview with French investigators, saying “only one rape” had been committed by her former husband.
The teenager “left her room freely, ate what she wanted, went to the toilet when she needed to,” she said in her interview, seen by AFP.
Sonia M.’s lawyer Nabil Boudi slammed the charges as “opportunistic accusations,” saying that prosecutors were seeking “to make her responsible for the most serious crimes, because the courts have not managed to apprehend the real perpetrators.”
An arrest warrant has been issued for Benyoucef, according to a source close to the investigation.
France launched an investigation in 2016 into genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria since 2012.
The probe has focused on crimes suffered by members of the Yazidi and Christian communities as well as members of the Sheitat tribe, according to France’s PNAT anti-terror unit.
“The aim is to document these crimes and identify the French perpetrators who belong to the Islamic State organization,” PNAT told AFP.
US announces $6 billion in security aid for Ukraine
- The package is the second this week, following another valued at $1 billion
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the US delay in approving new assistance has been costly for Kyiv
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday announced the United States will provide key air defense munitions and artillery rounds to Ukraine as part of a $6 billion military aid package that is its largest ever for Kyiv.
The package is the second this week, following another valued at $1 billion that was announced just after US President Joe Biden signed a much-delayed bill to provide new funding for Ukraine as it struggles to hold back Russian advances.
“This is the largest security assistance package that we’ve committed to date,” Austin told journalists following the conclusion of a virtual meeting of dozens of Kyiv’s international supporters.
“They need air defense interceptors, they need artillery systems and munitions. They need... armored vehicles, they need maintenance and sustainment. So all of those kinds of things are included” in the package,” he said.
Ukraine has in recent months pleaded for more air defenses from its Western allies as it struggles to fend off a surge in deadly attacks on civilian infrastructure, and the new package includes interceptors for both Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems.
But unlike the $1 billion package announced Wednesday, which featured items that will be drawn from US stocks, the latest assistance will be procured from the defense industry, meaning it will take longer to arrive on the battlefield.
Speaking at the opening of the virtual meeting, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the US delay in approving new assistance has been costly for Kyiv.
“While we were waiting for a decision on the American support, the Russian army managed to seize the initiative on the battlefield,” Zelensky said.
“We can still now not only stabilize the front, but also move forward, achieving our Ukrainian goals in the war,” he said, while noting that “Ukrainian defenders need your sufficient and timely support.”
A senior US defense official said this week that “Ukrainian forces have been rationing their ammunition for quite some time, rationing their capabilities.”
Aid from the United States and other countries “will enable the Ukrainians to begin to retake the initiative,” but “this will not be a rapid process,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
“The Ukrainians will need to rebuild quite a bit to take on board all of these new supplies... and ensure that they can defend their positions. So I would not forecast any large-scale offensive in the near-term,” the official added.
The United States has been a key military backer of Ukraine, committing tens of billions of dollars in security assistance since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
But prior to this week, Washington had announced new aid for Ukraine on just one other occasion this year, a $300 million package in March that was only made possible by using money that the Pentagon had saved on other purchases.
A squabbling Congress had not approved large-scale funding for Kyiv for nearly a year and a half, but eventually took action starting last week after months of acrimonious debate among lawmakers over how or even whether to help Ukraine defend itself.
The US House of Representatives on April 20 approved legislation authorizing $95 billion in aid funding, including $61 billion for Ukraine, while the Senate passed the measure on Tuesday and Biden signed it into law the following day.
