SUMY, Ukraine: The roar of artillery fire was deafening as Tetyana conferred with neighbors in her small village, which hugs the Russian border, over whether they should hold tight or flee.
The days were relatively calm in Myropillya, she said, but the nightly bombardments had become so unbearable that even sheltering in basements no longer felt safe.
“You know what they say, it’s only when we start to feel the burning ourselves that we leave,” the 59-year-old told AFP.
Finally prompted to flee after Ukraine’s shock border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, she was at a gathering point for evacuees in the eastern city of Sumy.
The offensive has been one of Ukraine’s speediest operations since Moscow invaded in February 2022. Analysts say it is the most significant ground operation by a foreign army inside Russia since World War II.
Moscow has been forced to redeploy troops and carry out mass civilian evacuations as it struggles to stem the advance.
For Ukraine, it has been a morale boost at an otherwise perilous moment in the war.
But Russia has also responded by pounding Ukrainian border areas — where it says troops and equipment are stationed — prompting Ukrainian officials to order the evacuation of some 20,000 people on its side of the new frontline.
Sitting alone and disoriented at the Sumy evacuation center, 80-year-old Anna was tearful as she described the intensifying artillery fire in her village of Yunakivka, near the border.
“I was about to hang myself. But God saved me,” she told AFP.
“But I don’t know what to do now,” she added, perched on a temporary bed next to the few plastic bags of belongings she had been able to bring with her.
Overseeing efforts to help those who fled, aid worker Vitaliy Kaporukhin said the Ukrainian attack — planned in secret and launched without warning — had caught border residents off guard.
“People are upset,” said Kaporukhin, who works with the aid organization, Pluriton. “They’re having to leave their homes. They’re having to leave everything behind.
“Fortunately, it’s an operation from our side, and Russian forces didn’t come here. That would have been worse.”
AFP journalists saw dozens of Ukrainian military vehicles daubed with white triangles, the insignia apparently used to identify forces involved in Kursk operation, kicking up dust on roads in the Sumy border territory.
Kyiv has been tight-lipped about the operation but a top Ukrainian official told AFP its aim was to destabilize Russia by showing up its weaknesses.
In one frontier village, servicemen who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said they had been deployed inside Russia. They described intensive Russian bombardments along the border and in the Kursk region.
Another group preparing to cross into Kursk voiced confidence they could hold ground there, citing weak Russian resistance — for now.
Ukrainian troops have carved rows of new defensive lines into the Sumy region’s landscape.
Closer to the Russian border, smoke trails from Ukrainian projectiles could be seen marking the sky above sweeping fields of bright sunflowers.
The fresh scrutiny on Sumy represents a dramatic shift for a region that, compared with other eastern regions, has been spared the brunt of more than two years of devastating fighting with Russia.
But windows covered by plywood and gutted carcases of Soviet-era buildings point to frequent and deadly aerial attacks on Sumy and the surrounding area.
Air raid sirens and explosions rang out over the city, itself just 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border, at regular intervals.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army stormed into the surrounding region when he ordered the invasion in February 2022, but within several weeks had been pushed by an unexpectedly resolute Ukrainian resistance.
This weekend the Ukrainian army said it was the region most heavily targeted by Russian aerial attacks, retaliatory strikes for the ongoing offensive.
“The border villages have already been wiped out,” said Tetyana, whose first regret was having to leave behind the pickles she had spent the summer preparing. “There is nothing left there.”
Despite the evacuations and the looming threat of Russian retaliation, life has seemed relatively normal in the region’s main civilian hub in recent days.
Shouting children played in a water fountain in the center of the Sumy, which had a population of around 250,000 before the war. Residents enjoyed evening meals on restaurant terraces dotting the historic center.
At the evacuation center, residents who had fled reported that Moscow had stepped up attacks, using devastating glide bombs on border areas.
Retired metal worker Mykola, who left his village of Khotyn some 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Russia, admitted it had pained him to have to leave his home.
But he found some consolation from Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk.
“Let’s let them find out what it’s like,” the 70-year-old said. “They don’t understand what war is.
“Let them have a taste of it.”
‘God saved me’: Kursk rout sparks panic, bombs along Ukraine border
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‘God saved me’: Kursk rout sparks panic, bombs along Ukraine border
- Moscow has been forced to redeploy troops and carry out mass civilian evacuations as it struggles to stem the advance
Man suspected in apparent assassination attempt on Trump charged with federal gun crimes
- Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number
- Additional and more serious charges are possible as the investigation continues and prosecutors seek an indictment from a grand jury
FLORIDA: A man suspected in an apparent assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump was charged Monday with federal gun crimes, making his first court appearance in the final weeks of a White House race already touched by violence.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, faces charges of possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Additional and more serious charges are possible as the investigation continues and prosecutors seek an indictment from a grand jury.
Routh appeared briefly in federal court in West Palm Beach, where he answered perfunctory questions about his work status and income. Shackled and wearing a blue jumpsuit, he smiled as he spoke with a public defender and reviewed documents ahead of his initial appearance. The lawyer declined to comment after the court appearance.
The episode occurred Sunday afternoon when Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing golf noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away.
An agent fired and Routh dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, authorities said. Routh was later stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county.
It was the second apparent assassination attempt targeting Trump in as many months.
On July 13, a bullet grazed Trump’s ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Eight days later, Democratic President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, giving way for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s nominee.
Germany wants trade with Kazakhstan, won’t circumvent Russia sanctions, Scholz says
- “I am grateful for the trusting dialogue between us, through which we want to prevent trade between us from being misused to circumvent sanctions,” Scholz said
- Both Scholz and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said their countries were interested in increasing trade in oil, rare earths, lithium and other raw materials
ASTANA: Germany is interested in expanding trade with Kazakhstan while also ensuring such trade is not used to circumvent EU sanctions on Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on a visit to the Central Asian nation.
“I am grateful for the trusting dialogue between us, through which we want to prevent trade between us from being misused to circumvent sanctions,” Scholz said.
After Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, prompting Moscow to seek circuitous routes for importing technology and goods.
Sources have told Reuters that Russian businesses seeking goods banned by the West sometimes procured them from companies based in neighboring Kazakhstan or other former Soviet nations. The Astana government has said it would abide by the sanctions.
Both Scholz and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said their countries were interested in increasing trade in oil, rare earths, lithium and other raw materials.
“Both sides benefit from this exchange because it allows us to diversify our economies and make them more resilient,” Scholz said. “A very concrete example of this is the oil supplies from Kazakhstan, which helped us a lot after Russia failed as a supplier.”
The two met ahead of a broader meeting between Scholz and all five Central Asian leaders, an example of more active Western diplomacy in what has traditionally been Russia’s backyard.
Kazakhstan has already stepped in to replace Russia as the supplier of crude for Berlin’s Schwedt refinery. Scholz’s visit comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to curb sales of metals such as titanium to “unfriendly” nations.
Russia evacuates border villages in Kursk region
- Moscow appears to be mounting a counter-offensive in the region
- More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6
MOSCOW: Russia is evacuating a number of villages in the Kursk region close to the Ukrainian border, the local governor said on Monday, almost six weeks after Ukraine launched its surprise incursion.
Moscow appears to be mounting a counter-offensive in the region, claiming to have retaken at least a dozen villages from Ukraine’s control since last week.
Authorities have decided to order the “obligatory evacuation of settlements in the Rylsky and Khomutovsky districts that are within a 15-kilometer (nine-mile) zone adjacent to the border with Ukraine,” Governor Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram.
He did not say which villages would be evacuated or the number of evacuees. There are dozens of villages and towns within this 15-kilometer radius.
More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6, state media reported Smirnov as saying last week.
Ukraine says its forces have advanced across tens of kilometers of Russian territory and seized dozens of settlements, including the border town of Sudzha.
Ukraine’s incursion — which began more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale military assault on its neighbor — caught Moscow off-guard.
It is the biggest incursion by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II.
Secret Service ‘needs more help’ after apparent Trump assassination bid: Biden
- “The (secret) service needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs,” Biden told reporters at the White House
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Monday that the US Secret Service needs more personnel to perform its duties after a second apparent assassination attempt against Republican election candidate Donald Trump.
“One thing I want to make clear, the (secret) service needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
“I think we may need more personnel.”
Biden added that “thank God the president’s OK” following Sunday’s incident in which the Secret Service opened fire on a gunman, who was later arrested, at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, UN says
- It comes as a setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious
- Any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress
DUBAI: The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.
Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.
The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”
Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.
During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.
But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20 percent in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.
Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.
“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”
There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.
The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.
