Вивезення зерна: Україна підпише договір із Туреччиною і ООН, а не з Росією – Подоляк

«Ми підписуємо договір із Туреччиною та ООН і беремо на себе зобов’язання перед ними. Росія підписує дзеркальний договір із Туреччиною та ООН»

У Росію депортовано 5100 українських дітей – уповноважена з прав дитини

Україна просить міжнародні організації здійснити пошукові дії і промоніторити стан, умови перебування та права вивезених у РФ дітей

Ukrainian First Lady’s Washington Trip Bearing Results, President Says

The results of the Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington are beginning to materialize, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Thursday.

Zalenskyy said U.S. Senators James Risch, Benjamin Cardin, Roger Wicker, Richard Blumenthal, Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen and Lindsey Graham presented a draft resolution on recognition of Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide.

“According to the draft document,” Zelenskyy said, “the U.S. Senate condemns Russia for committing acts of genocide against the people of Ukraine; calls on the United States, together with NATO and EU allies, to support the government of Ukraine to prevent further acts of Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people; supports tribunals and international criminal investigations to hold Russian political leaders and military personnel accountable for war of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

“With all its terrorist attacks against Ukrainians and our country, Russia is only burying itself,” Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that after holding a meeting with his military leaders and staff earlier in the day they concluded, “We have a significant potential for the advance of our forces on the front and for the infliction of significant new losses on the occupiers.”

However, Russian forces have again pounded Ukrainian cities with long-range strikes, just a day after Russia’s foreign minister warned that Moscow is preparing to expand its war in Ukraine beyond the Donbas.

Ukrainian officials Thursday said Russian shelling hit multiple districts, including a market in Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing three people and wounding 23 others.

Regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the dead included one child, while police and other officials said there were no military targets in the area.

“The Russian army is randomly shelling Kharkiv, peaceful residential areas, civilians are being killed,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Also Thursday, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told the Reuters news agency that Russian missile strikes destroyed two schools in Ukrainian-held Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka, while at least one missile hit the city of Bakhmut.

The renewed shelling and missile strikes come just one day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state-run media outlets that Russia is looking to expand operations due to ongoing weapon deliveries to Ukraine from the United States and other Western countries.

“Now, the geography has changed,” Lavrov told the state news RT television and RIA Novosti news agency. “It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk. It’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and several other territories. This process is continuing, consistently and persistently.”

Western intelligence officials, however, are casting doubt on Russia’s ability to make good on its threat.

“I think they’re about to run out of steam,” Richard Moore, the chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, told an audience at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado, Thursday.

“Our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower, material over the next few weeks,” he said. “That will give Ukrainians the ability to strike back.”

Estonia’s foreign intelligence chief echoed similar sentiments late Wednesday.

“I am cautiously confident that Ukraine will defeat the Russian army in Ukraine sooner or later,” Mikk Marran, the director-general of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told the Aspen Forum.

“It will not come easily. It will take time and Ukraine probably might not be able to liberate all of the occupied territories, but strategically speaking Putin will not succeed,” he added.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russian forces were continuing small-scale assaults along the front line in the Donbas region, the part of eastern Ukraine that has been a focus of its war. 

The ministry said in its daily assessment that Russia was likely closing in on the Vuhlehirska power plant, northeast of Donetsk, and that Russian forces were prioritizing capturing critical infrastructure sites.

The U.S. on Wednesday announced plans to send four more such rocket systems to Ukraine, along with more artillery rounds.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States, and other systems from our allies and partners,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Ukraine’s defenders are pushing hard to hold Russia’s advances in the Donbas.”

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainians have been using U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers to hit Russian command centers and supply lines.

The future, Milley said, will depend on the number of long-range rockets and ammunition the Ukrainians have.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press,  Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Calls Rise in US Congress to Designate Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism

As the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its fifth month and Russian attacks on civilian sites are reported on a near-daily basis, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This week, according to reporting by Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that if he does not exercise the power delegated to him by Congress to make the designation, lawmakers themselves will do so.

Russia is already under crippling sanctions, imposed by the U.S. and a host of other countries, but official designation as a state sponsor of terrorism would up the ante in some significant ways. Where the international components of current sanctions have been carefully coordinated, the state sponsor of terrorism designation could trigger a stricter regime of penalties that could apply to third-country parties doing business with Russian individuals and companies.

In addition, the designation would waive Russia’s sovereign immunity in the U.S., opening the door for Americans harmed by the war in Ukraine to file civil lawsuits against the Russian government in U.S. courts.

Administration reluctant

Pelosi is the most senior lawmaker to advocate for the administration to take action, but she is not the first. Earlier this month, Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, traveled to Kyiv to highlight legislation they introduced in May that would make the designation official.

A bill with the same aim was introduced in the House by Representatives Joe Wilson, a Republican, and Ted Lieu, a  Democrat.

However, the Biden administration has appeared reluctant to take that step. In the past, a State Department spokesperson has said that the existing regimen of sanctions is sufficient to achieve the administration’s purposes.

Also, the state sponsor of terrorism designation would trigger “secondary” sanctions that the U.S. would have to apply to individuals and countries outside the U.S. who do business with Russia. Such a designation could complicate efforts to hold together a broad coalition of countries that are putting pressure on Russia to halt its aggression in Ukraine.

A potential new precedent

John Herbst, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-06, told VOA that, in his mind, there is little doubt that Russia has met the requirements to be designated a sponsor of terrorism.

“I believe that violence directed at civilians for political aims is one of the definitions of terrorism,” said Herbst, now the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “If that’s right, then clearly the Russian government is pursuing a policy of terrorism.”

However, he pointed out that in the past, nations subject to the designation have been no more than regional powers at most.

The U.S. currently considers four countries to be state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. In the past, the list has included Iraq, Libya, South Yemen and Sudan, but those countries have since been removed from the list.

Adding Russia to the list would be a significant departure from past practice and would set a new precedent.

A ‘blunt instrument’

Herbst, who has been a vocal critic of what he calls the Biden administration’s “slow and timid policy of supplying Ukraine,” said that he would support the state sponsor of terrorism designation for Russia but with some reservations.

“I support it, but it’s not my highest priority,” he said. “If the administration was completely sound on weapons and sanctions, we wouldn’t need it at all. Because they’re not, I can see the utility of the designation. But generally speaking, I’m not fond of blunt instruments myself. I’d rather have the flexibility.”

Ingrid Brunk Wuerth, the Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law at Vanderbilt Law School, agreed that the sanctions that come with a state sponsor of terrorism designation may be more broad than is necessary to further punish the Kremlin, considering that “Russia is under an enormous amount of pressure from U.S. sanctions as it is.”

In addition, though, Wuerth said that she is particularly concerned about the effects of opening up Russia to civil lawsuits filed by Americans.

Loss of ‘bargaining chip’

In theory, U.S. claimants would be entitled to sue to recover damages against Russia — damages that could be paid out from Russian assets currently frozen in U.S. financial institutions.

In the past, she said, frozen assets have been used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with hostile foreign governments. For example, she pointed to the release of frozen Iranian assets as an element of the Algiers Accords of 1981, which ended a long-running U.S. hostage crisis in Iran.

“If we give the money that we have to American claimants, it’s not available as a bargaining chip against Russia,” Wuerth said. In addition, she said, because the law limits those eligible to file lawsuits to American citizens and employees of the U.S. government, it would mean that damages recovered by Americans would reduce the pool of funds available to compensate the Ukrainian government and its citizens.

Wuerth noted that the U.S. is not the only country holding frozen Russian assets, and that if others followed the United States’ lead and allowed their citizens to sue for damages, that would further erode the pool of money that might be used to directly aid Ukraine.

Zelenska address

The discussion about further actions to punish Russia’s aggression against Ukraine took place during the same week that Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, visited Washington and delivered an address to a bipartisan group of U.S. Congress members on Wednesday.

She said that Russia’s “unprovoked invasive terrorist war” is “destroying our people” and recounted the stories of some of the untold number of civilians, many of them children, who have died in the nearly five months since the war began.

“I am asking for weapons — weapons that will not be used to wage a war on somebody else’s land but to protect one’s home and the right to make up a life in that home,” Zelenska told lawmakers. “I am asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers … and kill entire families.”

In her weekly press conference on Thursday, House Speaker Pelosi praised Zelenska’s speech, and made a further case that Russia’s actions in Ukraine have gone beyond waging war, crossing the boundary into war crimes.

Pelosi decried “the tragedy of what is happening to children and women and the rest in the course of this war, how the Russians have used rape as a weapon of war, when it is indeed a war crime.”

She alleged that rape, in particular, is happening not because of the decisions of individual soldiers, but on the orders of Russian commanders, as a means of “demoralizing” the Ukrainian people.

“Congress will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight to defend democracy, not only for their own people, but for the world,” Pelosi said.

РФ втратила на війні проти України близько 39 тисяч військових – Генштаб

Найбільших втрат російська армія зазнала на Криворізькому та Бахмутському напрямках, кажуть українські військові

Євросоюз оприлюднив нові санкції проти Росії на офіційному сайті

У списку 57 росіян та структур із Росії

Turkey’s Erdogan: Deal to Resume Ukraine’s Grain Exports Set for Signing Friday

Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will sign a deal Friday to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s office said Thursday.

Russia and Ukraine are both major global wheat suppliers, but Moscow’s February 24 invasion of its neighbor has sent food prices soaring and stoked an international food crisis. The war has stalled Kyiv’s exports, leaving dozens of ships stranded and some 20 million tons of grain stuck in silos at Odesa port.

Ankara said a general agreement was reached on a U.N.-led plan during talks in Istanbul last week and that it would now be put in writing by the parties. Details of the agreement were not immediately known. It is due to be signed Friday at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 1330 GMT, Erdogan’s office said.

Before last week’s talks, diplomats said details of the plan included Ukrainian vessels guiding grain ships in and out through mined port waters; Russia agreeing to a truce while shipments move; and Turkey – supported by the United Nations – inspecting ships to allay Russian fears of weapons smuggling.

The United Nations and Turkey have been working for two months to broker what Guterres called a “package” deal – to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports and facilitate Russian grain and fertilizer shipments.

Ukraine could potentially quickly restart exports, Ukraine’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskiy said earlier Thursday.

“The majority of the infrastructure of ports of wider Odesa – there are three of them – remains, so it is a question of several weeks in the event there are proper security guarantees,” he told Ukrainian television.

Moscow has denied responsibility for worsening the food crisis, blaming instead a chilling effect from Western sanctions for slowing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for mining its Black Sea ports.

A day after the Istanbul talks last week, the United States sought to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports by reassuring banks, shipping and insurance companies that such transactions would not breach Washington’s sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Голова британської розвідки вважає, що Росії може стати важко забезпечувати своїх військових

Оперативна пауза дасть українським силам можливість завдати удару у відповідь «дедалі більшою кількістю хорошої зброї», вважає він

Україна «має істотний потенціал» для просування на фронті – Зеленський

Про це президент повідомив за підсумками зустрічі Ставки верховного головнокомандувача

Київ припускає підписання угоди в Туреччині щодо експорту зерна з України

Переговори в Туреччині за участі представників ООН, України та Росії заплановані на 22 липня

Зеленський подякував президенту Коста-Рики за підтримку санкцій проти Росії

Президент зазначив, що це перша в історії розмова між лідерами двох країн

Лавров пообіцяв Сійярто у Москві, що Росія «негайно розгляне» прохання Угорщини про додаткові поставки газу

Із квітня поточного року жоден політик ЄС не відвідував Кремль, очільник МЗС Угорщини Петер Сійярто у цьому зв’язку – перший

Europe’s Central Bank Backs Larger-than-expected Rate Hike

The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount, joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation. 

The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the cost of easing prices for people spending more on food, fuel and everything in between. 

The ECB’s surprise hike of half a percentage point for the 19 countries using the euro currency is expected to be followed by another increase in September, possibly of another half-point. Bank President Christine Lagarde had indicated a quarter-point hike last month, when inflation hit a record 8.6%. 

She said the bigger hike was unanimous as “inflation continues to be undesirably high and is expected to remain above our target for some time.” As the bank leaves an era of negative interest rates, Lagarde said economic forecasts don’t point to a recession this year or next but she acknowledged the uncertainty ahead. 

“Economic activity is slowing. Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine is an ongoing drag on growth,” the ECB chief said at a news conference. Higher inflation, supply constraints and uncertainty “are significantly clouding the outlook for the second half of 2022 and beyond.” 

The ECB is coming late to its rate liftoff — a token of inflation that turned out to be higher and more stubborn than first expected and of the shakier state of an economy heavily exposed to the war in Ukraine and a dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Recession predictions have increased for later this year and next year as soaring bills for electricity, fuel and gas deal a blow to businesses and people’s spending power. 

The ECB made the bigger-than-expected increase to underline its determination to get inflation under control after its late start, said Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING bank. The move aims “to restore the ECB’s damaged reputation and credibility as an inflation fighter.” 

“Today’s decision shows that the ECB is more concerned about this credibility than about being predictable,” Brzeski said. 

Recession concerns have helped push the euro to a 20-year low against the dollar, which adds to the ECB’s task by worsening energy prices that are driving inflation. That is because oil is priced in dollars. 

Raising rates is seen as the standard cure for excessive inflation. The ECB’s benchmarks affect how much it costs banks to borrow — and so help determine what they charge to lend. 

But by making credit harder to get, rate increases can slow economic growth, a major conundrum for the ECB as well as for the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates by an outsized three-quarters of a point in June and could do so again at its next meeting. The Bank of England started the march higher in December, and even Switzerland’s central bank surprised with its first increase in nearly 15 years last month. 

The goal for all central banks is to get inflation back down to acceptable levels — for the ECB, it’s 2% annually — without tipping the economy into recession. It’s difficult to get right as central banks reverse what has been a decade of very low rates and inflation. 

“The most precious good that we can deliver and that we have to deliver is price stability. So we have to bring inflation down to 2% in the medium term. That is the imperative,” Lagarde said. “And it’s time to deliver.” 

Yet the European economy has the added worry of a potential cutoff of Russian natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, heat homes and fuel energy-intensive industries such as steel, glassmaking and agriculture. Even without a total cutoff, Russia has steadily dialed back gas flows, with EU leaders accusing the Kremlin of using gas to pressure countries over sanctions and support for Ukraine. 

Rising interest rates follow the end of the bank’s 1.7 trillion-euro (dollar) stimulus program that helped keep longer-term borrowing costs low for governments and companies as they weathered the pandemic recession. 

Those bond-market borrowing rates are now rising again, especially for more indebted eurozone countries such as Italy, where Premier Mario Draghi’s resignation has brought back bad memories of Europe’s debt crisis a decade ago. Markets fear the exit of the former ECB president, who has pushed policies meant to keep debt manageable and boost growth in Europe’s third-largest economy, could raise the risk of another eurozone crisis. 

The bank approved a new financial backstop that is part of its arsenal to prevent that from happening again. The ECB would step into markets to buy the bonds of countries facing excessive and unjustified borrowing rates. But it wouldn’t offer protection if the ECB determines higher borrowing costs resulted from poor government decisions. 

Buying bonds drives their price up and their yield down, because price and yield move in opposite directions, thus capping interest costs. Spiraling bond-market rates threatened to break up the euro in 2010-2012 and led Greece and countries to turn to other members and the International Monetary Fund for bailouts. 

This problem is unique to the ECB because it oversees 19 countries that are in different financial shape. The backstop aims to “safeguard the smooth transmission of our monetary policy stance throughout the euro area,” Lagarde said. 

The ECB’s lowest rate, the deposit rate on money left overnight by banks, was raised from minus 0.5% to zero. 

 

Italian Prime Minister Draghi Resigns

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned Thursday after failing in his efforts to unite the fractious pieces of his unity government.

President Sergio Mattarella’s office said in a statement the president had accepted Draghi’s resignation but asked him to stay on in a caretaker role.

The development could mean Italy heads to a parliamentary election in the coming months instead of the scheduled vote set to take place next year.

Draghi became prime minister in 2021 as Italy dealt with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and a sagging economy.

Mattarella rejected his earlier offer of resignation last week, urging Draghi to appeal to lawmakers to keep the ruling coalition together.

But several key parties boycotted a confidence vote, prompting Draghi to submit his resignation again.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

НБУ зберіг облікову ставку на рівні 25%

Раніше сьогодні Нацбанк скорегував офіційний курс гривні до долара США на 25%

OCCRP: компанії Абрамовича понад 10 років забезпечували армію РФ. Вони це заперечують

Розслідувачі вивчили численні контракти із сайту держзакупівель у РФ

Ukraine: Russian Shelling Kills 2 in Kharkiv

Ukraine reported Russian shelling Thursday on the city of Kharkiv killed at least two people and wounded 19 others.

Regional governor Oleg Synegubov said the dead included one child, and that four people were in serious condition.

Britain’s defense ministry said Thursday that Russian forces were continuing small-scale assaults along the front line in the Donbas region, the part of eastern Ukraine that has been a focus of its war.

The ministry said in its daily assessment that Russia was likely closing in on the Vuhlehirska power plant, northeast of Donetsk, and that Russian forces were prioritizing capturing critical infrastructure sites.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow wants to capture territory in southern Ukraine beyond the Donbas region.

Russia failed in early stages of its five-month offensive to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or capture the capital, Kyiv, in northern Ukraine.

But Lavrov said in an interview Wednesday with state media that Russia no longer feels constrained to fighting in the Donbas where Russian separatists have been battling Kyiv’s forces since 2014, when Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

“Now, the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk. It’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and several other territories. This process is continuing, consistently and persistently,” Lavrov told the state news RT television and RIA Novosti news agency.

Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, said Moscow’s territorial objectives would expand still further if Western countries delivered more long-range missiles to Kyiv.

The U.S. announced Wednesday plans to send four more such rocket systems to Ukraine, along with more artillery rounds.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States, and other systems from our allies and partners,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Ukraine’s defenders are pushing hard to hold Russia’s advances in the Donbas.”

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Ukrainians have been using U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launchers to hit Russian command centers and supply lines, including a strategically important bridge across the Dnieper River in the Kherson region.

Russian officials said the bridge has sustained damage but is still open to some traffic. The Russian military would be hard-pressed to keep supplying its forces in the region if the bridge were destroyed.

“The Ukrainians are making the Russians pay for every inch of territory that they gain,” Milley said, and the Donbas is “not lost yet. The Ukrainians intend to continue the fight.”

The future, Milley said, will depend on the number of long-range rockets and ammunition the Ukrainians have.

“We have a very serious grinding war of attrition going on in the Donbas. And unless there’s a breakthrough on either side — which right now the analysts don’t think is particularly likely in the near term — it will probably continue as a grinding war of attrition for a period of time until both sides see an alternative way out of this, perhaps through negotiation or something like that.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia is “laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

Kirby said the areas involved in plans that Russia is reviewing include Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and all of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

У МЗС стурбовані зміною риторики Ірану щодо війни Росії проти України

Дипломати закликають іранську сторону утримуватися від заяв або кроків, які підживлюватимуть агресію РФ проти України

US Warns Putin Falling for His Own Rhetoric

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have succumbed to his own mythmaking and hyperbole, unable to let go of his desire to conquer Ukraine, no matter what the costs, according to a public assessment by America’s top spymaster.

CIA Director William Burns, the last U.S. official to meet with Putin before he ordered Russian forces into Ukraine in February, warned late Wednesday that the Russian leader truly believes he must conquer Ukraine to fulfill his destiny.

“Putin really does believe his rhetoric, and I’ve heard him say it privately over the years, that Ukraine’s not a real country. … He really thought he could take Kyiv in less than a week,” Burns told an audience at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

“He is convinced that his destiny as Russia’s leader is to restore Russia as a great power … and he does not believe you can do that without controlling Ukraine and its choices,” Burns added. “He believes it’s his entitlement, it’s Russia’s entitlement to dominate Ukraine.”

Previous U.S, intelligence assessments have suggested that while Putin had no intention of forsaking his effort to conquer all of Ukraine, it was possible he might be willing to officially pause the fighting to give his forces time to reorganize following substantial losses since the invasion began.

“It is entirely plausible, from our perspective, that depending on how things develop over the coming months and so on that he [Putin] is convinced that there is value in effect, coming to some sort of agreement,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month.

U.S. intelligence estimates say approximately 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine, with another 45,000 wounded.

Ukrainian defense officials put the number of Russian soldiers killed at about 38,000.

Burns seemed to cast doubt on the idea a deal of some sort could be in play, describing it as inconsistent with Putin’s world view.

Putin is “a big believer in control and intimidation and getting even,” Burns said, calling the Russian leader “an apostle of payback.”

“As his grip on power has tightened, as his circle of advisers has narrowed, his own personal sense of destiny and his appetite for risk has grown,” Burns said. “Putin’s bet … is that he can succeed in a grinding war of attrition, that they can wear down the Ukrainian military, that winter’s coming and so he can strangle the Ukrainian economy, he can wear down European publics and leadership, and he can wear down the United States.”

“My own strong view is that Putin was wrong in his assumptions about breaking the [NATO] alliance and breaking Ukrainian will before the war began and I think he’s just as wrong now,” Burns said.

There are some indications that Russia has learned lessons from its early failures in Ukraine, limiting its objectives to those in the Donbas region and by increasing its use of long-range artillery, an area in which Moscow maintains an advantage over Kyiv.

At the same time, however, there are signs Putin’s ambitions are reemerging.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday warned that Russian forces could soon expand their “special operation” due to the provision of U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine.

“Now the geography has changed. It’s not just Donetsk and Luhansk, it’s Kherson, Zaporizhia, and several other territories,” Lavrov told state-run media Wednesday.

“We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that will be controlled by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, or whoever replaces him, to contain weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of the republics that have declared independence, those that want to determine their own future.”

Two hundred Ukrainian troops have been trained on the HIMARS and at least eight units have seen action so far, according to U.S. military officials, targeting and destroying Russian weapon depots and command-and-control centers.

U.S. defense officials have said four more HIMARS are being sent to the Ukrainian military and promised the delivery of yet another four systems in a security package set to be announced later this week.

“We’re not working just to provide security assistance in the short term,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. “[We’re] also looking ahead to provide Ukraine with the capabilities that it will need for deterrence and defense over the longer term.”

Other Ukrainian allies also see the war grinding on.

“We don’t see any signs that the war will end soon,” NATO Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security David Cattler told an online forum Tuesday.

“In fact, there are even more signs that this war will be a very long one,” he said.

Russia and Iran

U.S. defense and intelligence officials are warning Iran not to get involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A day after Putin met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon it would be a “really, really bad idea” for Iran to provide Russia with armed drones.

“On the issue of Iranian support to Russia, we would advise Iran to not do that,” Austin said.

Asked about Austin’s comments, Burns called Austin, “very good at understatement.”

“The reality is Russians and Iranians need each other right now, both heavily sanctioned countries, both looking to break out of political isolation,” Burns added.  “But I think as troubling as some of the steps between those two parties are, and we focus on them very sharply at CIA, there are limits I think, to the ways in which they’re going to be able to help one another right now.”

Lessons for China

Burns said Moscow is getting some help from China, with Beijing stepping up purchases of energy products to help support the Russian economy. But he cautioned the Chinese have been very cautious about lending Russia any military support.

“It seems to me that President Xi [Jinping] and the Chinese leadership has been unsettled to some extent, especially in the first phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine … unsettled by the military performance of the Russians early on and the performance of Russian weaponry, unsettled by the economic uncertainties that the war has unleashed,” he said.

However, Burns said Russia’s struggles are unlikely to change China’s calculus about using force to take Taiwan.

“Our sense is that it probably affects less the question of whether the Chinese leadership might choose some years down the road to use force to control Taiwan but how and when they will do it,” he said.

“If there’s one lesson I think they may be drawing from Putin’s experience in Ukraine, is you don’t achieve quick decisive victories with underwhelming force,” Burns said.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum earlier Wednesday, China’s ambassador to the United States played down the likelihood Beijing would use force against Taiwan.

“The last thing we wish to do is to fight with our compatriots [in Taiwan],” Ambassador Qin Gang said, accusing the U.S. of sending sophisticated weapons to support the Taiwanese military.

“We will try our best in our great sincerity to achieve the peaceful reunification,” Qin added. “The ‘One China’ principle is the political foundation for China-U.S. relations, and is the bedrock for the peace and stability across Taiwan Strait …  but we urge the United States to honor its commitments with actions.”

 

Russia Resumes Gas Deliveries Through Pipeline to Europe

Russia resumed the flow of natural gas through the Nord Stream pipeline to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day interruption for maintenance.

Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s energy regulator, tweeted that gas flows had reached 40% of capacity, the same level as before the shutdown.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom blamed the reduction on the absence of a gas turbine being repaired in Canada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted Gazprom would meet its delivery obligations, while warning that work on another turbine later this month could bring more reductions.

European Union leaders have warned of the potential for Russia to cut off supplies in response to Western pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The EU has asked member countries to voluntarily reduce their use of gas, both to seek alternative options and to save existing supplies for winter months.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

НБУ підвищив офіційний курс гривні до долара на 25% і зафіксував його

При цьому в НБУ очікують, що корекція офіційного курсу гривні матиме «лише обмежений вплив» на прискорення темпів зростання цін

Top US Defense Officials See ‘Grinding War of Attrition’ in Ukraine

As Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska reminded the U.S. Congress of the human costs of Russia’s invasion of her country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow’s military aims were no longer confined only to the east of the country. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.

Network of Fact-Checkers Unites to Stem Flow of Disinformation

When Russian missiles struck a mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk last month, the deadly attack sent ripples of disinformation across Europe.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the mall was “permanently closed” at the time of the strike and that its forces were targeting ammunition stores. Russia’s ambassador to Ireland responded to international criticism over Moscow’s targeting of a civilian area, describing claims about the attack as “yet another disinformation stunt.”

In the Hungarian capital, Budapest, Blanka Zoldi, editor-in-chief of the fact-checking site Lakmusz, watched as those and other false claims crossed her country’s borders.

“In Hungary, pro-government social media influencers and prominent journalists started to publish screenshots of the opening hours of the shopping mall, claiming that Google Maps actually showed that the shopping mall was not even open and that it has been permanently closed for a long time,” Zoldi told VOA.

“This was the story that was emerging in Hungary, but we saw the exact screenshots of Google Maps appearing in many other countries,” she said.

The quick spread of such disinformation related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to fact-checkers combining forces globally.

“When the war began, fact-checkers immediately started seeing misinformation about the Russia-Ukraine conflict spreading to other countries,” said Enock Nyariki, the community and impact manager at the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Founded in 2015, the IFCN is an initiative of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies that connects fact-checkers and journalists around the world.

“We saw that misinformation [about the Ukraine conflict] was now going viral in local languages,” Nyariki said. “Ukrainian fact-checkers could not cope with the new situation. It was difficult even for them to spot every piece.”

Maldita, a fact-checking organization based in Spain, was one of the first to alert the IFCN about the fast-spreading disinformation in Europe about the war, Nyariki said.

That led IFCN members to form a collaborative database named #UkraineFacts, where fact-checkers share information, flag mis- and disinformation, and produce content debunking false claims related to the conflict in Ukraine.

The website publishes content in English and other languages from IFCN’s 100-plus members. It has already produced more than 2,000 fact-checks about the war in Ukraine.

Maldita, which sparked the idea, last month accepted the Anne Jacobsen’s Memorial Award in Norway on behalf of the network for its work.

In honoring the initiative, the awards committee said in a statement that #UkraineFacts “has shown how we can cooperate instead of working on solving the same problem in different places or media organizations.”

US election, pandemic prompt fact-checking need

The emergence of fact-checking as a popular tool in investigative journalism largely came during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and later the coronavirus pandemic, both of which resulted in an increase in misinformation, said Nyariki.

But the spread of false information related to the Ukraine conflict has accelerated collaboration efforts.

Zoldi of Lakmusz said that in many cases, false narratives are similar in different countries.

Citing the disinformation around the mall attack, Zoldi said Lakmusz journalists relied on other fact-checking organizations to debunk the claims, including the BBC.

“The BBC is a trustworthy organization that has war reporters who spoke to eyewitnesses who confirmed that there were people and civilians in the shopping mall,” Zoldi said.

Lakmusz is a relatively new website. Co-funded by the European Union and Agence France-Presse (AFP), the site was founded in January as part of a collaboration between AFP, the Hungarian news site 444.hu, and the Media Universalis Foundation, which is linked to Lorand Eotvos University in Budapest.

Its goal: to fight misinformation in Hungary.

A shrinking space for independent journalism and lack of media pluralism in the EU member state has been flagged by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and media advocates.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government have denied taking action to dismantle the independent press, Reuters reports.

Lakmusz relies on a team of journalists and researchers including Ferenc Hammer, head of the Lorand Eotvos University’s department of media and communication.

While the journalists work on the content, researchers like Hammer help to ensure accuracy.

“Our job is basically desktop research, comparing cases and following up with fact-checks that the website publishes,” Hammer told VOA.

The initiative not only checks for potential disinformation, but it also investigates how people in Hungary respond to false narratives.

“We follow the patterns of every piece of fact-checking and see how readers interact with them on social media. It can be very instructive for the fact-checkers to see how their work reaches the audience,” Hammer said.

They may be one of the newer fact-check initiatives, but Lakmusz’s team already plans to expand its work through collaborating with others and applying for membership in the IFCN.

“It’s very important because it would give us access to look at how other fact-checking organizations are working in different countries,” Zoldi said. “So, being a member of that network would give us a good overview of other fact-checkers that work according to IFCN’s standards.”

Those standards include being at least six months old as a fact-checking organization of issues of public interest, showing transparency about funding and being politically nonpartisan, Nyariki said.

“Fact-checkers don’t compete,” he said. “They cooperate and collaborate. We see each other as partners who are trying to fight one global enemy: misinformation.”

Верещук попередила жителів окупованих територій про відповідальність за участь у «референдумах»

«Кожен, хто буде брати участь, хто буде спонукати брати участь, буде відповідати перед законом»

Boris Johnson’s Potential Replacements Announced After Last Parliament Meeting

Britain drew closer to selecting a new prime minister Wednesday after Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak were chosen as finalists by Conservative party lawmakers. Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt finished out of the running in third place in the voting to replace Boris Johnson.

Both Truss and Sunak have played key roles in public office in recent years. Truss has guided Britain’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while Sunak helped lead Britain’s economy during much of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of them will replace Johnson as prime minister come September 5, after he was forced to resign amid several scandals that undermined his leadership of the country.

Johnson gave notice of his resignation in early July after his party decided the scandals had adversely affected his ability to lead the country.

Johnson appeared in his final parliamentary meeting Wednesday and received a round of applause from Parliament members following his exit.

After three years in charge, Johnson answered his final round of “Prime Minister’s Questions,” which is a weekly question-and-answer session between members of Parliament and the prime minister. Johnson’s opponents throughout the session used their questions to grill him on current policies, ranging from soaring living costs to the unfinished Brexit process.

However, Johnson still highlighted some of his successes throughout his leadership.

“I want to use the last few seconds … to give some words of advice to my successor, whoever he or she may be. Number one: Stay close to the Americans. Stick up for the Ukrainians. Stick up for freedom, for democracy everywhere.”

Despite the number of Parliament members who resigned over Johnson’s leadership, the prime minister left with a round of applause from most members.

His final words rang through the building as he said, “We’ve helped, I’ve helped, get this country through a pandemic, and help save another country from barbarism. And frankly, that’s enough to be going on with. Mission largely accomplished,” Johnson said.

“I want to thank everybody here, and hasta la vista, baby.”

Ukrainian Refugees Forced to Escape to Enemy Soil in Russia

For weeks Natalya Zadoyanova had lost contact with her younger brother Dmitriy, who was trapped in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

Russian forces had bombed the orphanage where he worked, and he was huddling with dozens of others in the freezing basement of a building without doors and windows. When she next heard from him, he was in tears.

“I’m alive,” he told her. “I’m in Russia.”

Zadoyanov was facing the next chapter of devastation for the people of Mariupol and other occupied cities: forcible transfers to Russia, the nation that killed their neighbors and shelled their hometowns almost into oblivion.

Nearly 2 million Ukrainian refugees have been sent to Russia, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these transfers as forced journeys to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations.

An Associated Press investigation has found that while the picture is more nuanced than the Ukrainian government suggests, many refugees are indeed forced into Russia, subjected to abuse, stripped of documents and unclear about their futures — or even locations.

It starts with a choice: Die in Ukraine or live in Russia. They are taken through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being pulled aside and never seen again. Refugees described an old woman who died of the cold, her body swollen, and an evacuee beaten so severely that her back was covered in bruises.

Those who “pass” the filtrations are invited to stay and often promised a payment of about 10,000 rubles ($170) that they may or may not get. Sometimes their Ukrainian passports are taken away, and the chance of Russian citizenship is offered instead. Sometimes, they are pressured to sign documents incriminating the Ukrainian government and military.

Those with no money or contacts in Russia — the majority, by most accounts — can only go where they are sent. The AP verified that Ukrainians have received temporary accommodation in more than two dozen Russian cities and localities.

However, the AP investigation also found signs of dissent within Russia to the government narrative that Ukrainians are being rescued from Nazis. Almost all the refugees the AP interviewed spoke gratefully about Russians who quietly helped them through a clandestine network, retrieving documents, finding shelter, buying train and bus fare, exchanging Ukrainian hryvnia for Russian rubles and even lugging the makeshift baggage that holds the remains of their pre-war lives.

The investigation is the most extensive to date on the transfers, based on interviews with 36 Ukrainians mostly from Mariupol who left for Russia, including 11 still there and others in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Georgia, Ireland, Germany and Norway. The AP also drew on interviews with Russian underground volunteers, video footage, Russian legal documents and Russian state media.

Exhausted and hungry in the basement in Mariupol, Zadoyanov finally accepted the idea of evacuation. The buses went only to Russia.

Along the way, Russian authorities searched his phone and interrogated him. Zadoyanov was asked what it meant to be baptized, and whether he had sexual feelings toward a boy in the camp.

He and the others were taken to the train station and told their destination would be Nizhny Novgorod, 1,300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. From the train, Zadoyanov called Natalya in Poland. Her panic rose.

Get off the train, she said. Now.

The transfer of hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine is part of a deliberate, systemic strategy, as laid out in government documents.

Some Ukrainians stay in Russia because while they may be technically free to leave, they have nowhere to go, no money, no documents or no way to cross the distances in a sprawling country twice the size of the United States. Others may have family and strong ties in Russia or prefer to start anew in a country where they at least speak the language. And some wrongly fear that if they return, Ukraine will prosecute them for going to the enemy.

Lyudmila Bolbad’s family walked out of Mariupol and ended up taking the nine-day train trip to the city of Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border and nearly 10,000 kilometers from Ukraine.

Bolbad and her husband found work in a factory. Little else has gone as they’d hoped.

They handed over their Ukrainian passports in exchange for promises of Russian citizenship, only to discover that landlords will not rent to Ukrainians without a valid identity document. The promised payments are slow to come, and they have been stranded with hundreds of others from Mariupol in a rundown hotel with barely edible food. But if she returns, Bolbad thinks Ukraine would see her as a traitor, and she plans to stay in Russia.

“We’re trying to return to a normal life somehow, to encourage ourselves to start our life from scratch,” she said.

For Ukrainians trying to escape, help often comes from an unexpected source: Russians.

On a recent day in Estonia, a Russian tattoo artist accompanied a family from Mariupol across the border to a shelter.

The tattoo artist, who asked that his name be withheld because he still lives in Russia, was the last in a chain of volunteers that stretched 1,900 kilometers from Taganrog and Rostov to Narva, the Estonian border town. He boards in St. Petersburg a couple of times a week, going to Finland and sometimes Estonia.

He said Russians who help know each other only through Telegram, nearly all keeping anonymous “because everyone is afraid of some kind of persecution.”

“I can’t stop it,” he said of the war and the deportation of Ukrainians to Russia. “This is what I can do.”

In May, volunteers in Penza in Russia shut down their efforts to help Ukrainian refugees because of anonymous threats. The threats included slashed tires, the Russian symbol Z painted in white on a windshield and graffiti on doors and gates calling them the likes of “Ukro-Nazi” helpers.

For Zadoyanov and many others, the lifeline out of Russia was Russians.

Zadoyanov got off the train to Nizhny Novgorod with the other Ukrainians, and church contacts there gave them shelter and the first steps in finding a way out of Russia into Georgia.

“He was so emotionally damaged,” said his sister, Natalya. “Everyone was.”