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RIVNE, Ukraine (AP) — Along a bustling street in a western Ukrainian city, Denys Abdulin takes his first independent strides since he was severely wounded and blinded while fighting invading Russian troops more than a year ago.

The 34-year-old former soldier, wearing black glasses and gripping a white mobility cane, steps onto a more crowded stretch of sidewalk. His movements become tentative and tense. He accidentally blocks the path of a woman approaching an ATM to withdraw cash.

Like many other pedestrians, she responds with a compassionate smile and gracefully moves aside. Gradually, Abdulin covers 600 meters (almost 3/10 of a mile), guided by a trainer walking ahead of him with a bracelet of small metal bells.

Five other Ukrainian military veterans conquered similar challenges while attending a rehabilitation camp for ex-soldiers who lost their vision in combat. Over several weeks, the men would learn to navigate the city of Rivne, to prepare their own meals and to use public transportation while traveling solo.

Price of freedom

Daily tasks they previously performed without thinking now demand focus, strength and dedication.

“Everyone pays their price for freedom in Ukraine,” Abdulin, who spent months confined to a hospital bed and rarely takes off his dark shades, said.

The war Russia launched in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, has killed tens of thousands of fighters on both sides. Countless others, both Ukrainian military personnel and civilians who took up arms to defend their country, have been maimed or suffered other injuries that irreversibly reshaped their lives.

No statistics currently exist for how many service members have lost their sight due to severe wounds sustained in the war, according to Olesia Perepechenko, executive director of Modern Sight, the non-governmental organization that puts on the camp. But demand for the program is growing as the war nears its year and a half point.

Over the course of several weeks, the veterans, accompanied by their families, reside at a rehabilitation center outside of Rivne. Most receive their first canes here, take their first walks around urban and natural environments without assistance, and learn to operate sound-based programs for using cellphones and computers.

“Our goal isn’t to retrain them, not to change them, but simply to give them a chance to become independent and self-reliant,” Perepechenko, who is herself blind, said.

Wounded in battle

Abdulin voluntarily joined the military when Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 18 months ago. Completing the 600-meter walk marked a new phase in his recovery following the wounds he sustained when a mine detonated a few meters (yards) behind him in Sieverodontesk, a city in eastern Ukraine now occupied by Russians.

“It seemed to me that a flame flew out of my eyes,” he said of that day in May 2022. “I immediately realized that I had lost my eyes.”

“Of course, I expected everything, but becoming blind, I couldn’t even imagine,” Abdulin continued. “I thought that I could lose an arm or a leg, and I didn’t want to die at all. I never even thought that I would become blind. Therefore, at first, it was very difficult”.

In 2014, when Russia unlawfully annexed Crimea and armed conflict erupted in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Perepechenko yearned to be on the front lines helping in some way. Her request to join the army was declined, so she decided to embrace a new mission: helping soldiers who lost their sight to reclaim a sense of autonomy.

Modern Sight held its first rehabilitation camp in 2019 and organized around 10 more since then. However, only two camps have taken place during the war. Although there is a waiting list of 30 people for the next session, the non-profit’s primary hurdle is funding: each camp costs about 15,000 euros ($16,400) to put on.

Family care

Abdulin spent almost a year receiving treatment for his injuries, which included a shattered jaw from the shrapnel that also stole his vision and left him with breathing and balance problems. His wife, Olesia Abdulina, returned with their two children from Lithuania, where the three of them sought refuge after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“His eyes were still so swollen, with bandages over them, covered in cotton pads,” Abdulina said of seeing her husband at the hospital for the first time after their months of separation.

“The main thing is that you’re alive,” she said she responded when he told her he would never see again.

During the months after that, she fed him with a spoon and rarely left his side.

At the Modern Sight camp, the two of them were learning how to integrate his impairment into their family life.

While Denys attended physiotherapy or cooking classes, Abdulina and other women with husbands or boyfriends in the program go through their own training exercises. One purpose of the camp is reminding the spouses they are not “nannies” but life partners to their men, Perepechenko said.

During one such session, Abdulina is blindfolded and given a long cane. She tentatively probes the floor while another participant holds her hand. The purpose of the exercise is to help the women better understand what their partners experience and need.

“We remain the same people. We have the same capabilities,” Ivan Soroka, 27, who joined the Ukrainian army on the day Russia invaded and was attending the camp for a second time. “We need to stand up, take control and work on improving ourself.”

Wedding plans

A projectile wounded Soroka near Bakhmut in August 2022, when the longest battle of the war so far was just beginning. Russian forces ended up taking the city in eastern Ukraine in May after more than eight months of intense combat.

“I lost my sight immediately, thrown by the blast wave. I felt that I was dying,” Soroka said. “I lay there for about two minutes. Then I realized that no, someone isn’t letting me go there.” As he recalls those moments, he implies it was his fiancee, Vlada, now sitting beside him, who kept him alive.

The couple met when Soroka was participating in the defense of the Kyiv region in the spring of last year. Their love blossomed swiftly against the backdrop of war. Prior to Soroka’s summer deployment to the Donetsk region, he proposed to Vlada. She agreed to marry him.

But soon after, the two were spending days and nights in a hospital instead of preparing for a wedding. The happy occasion that was postponed because of Soroka’s injury is now planned for early September; after months of rehabilitation, he feels both physically and psychologically strong.

“I’ve realized that unless I rise on my own and start doing something, nothing will change,” he said.

The men and their partners spend camp breaks and evenings in a gazebo on the rehabilitation center’s grounds. An atmosphere of tranquility prevails, occasionally interrupted by hearty laughter and jokes from their time as soldiers.

By the time they leave the center, the men will know they have the tools to get around a city and gained something equally vital – a sense of community forged through shared experiences and a common trauma.

Time to celebrate

One evening, when the day’s activities were completed, the camp participants gathered in a courtyard to celebrate Oleksandr Zhylchenko’s birthday. He lost his sight late last year, though did not share details about the circumstances.

“I’m drawing you into a circle, into your family’s circle. There are about 50 of us here,” Perepechenko said, handing Zhylchenko a heart-shaped balloon in the yellow and blue of Ukraine’s national flag. “This is our collective heart.”

The trainers and trainees stood in a circle and, one by one, shared their birthday wishes for the man of the moment. Careless days. A bright future. Patience, confidence, faithfulness. A peaceful sky. The final wish was for “victory for all of us and for Ukraine.”

Moved, Zhylchenko held the balloon a moment longer, silently conjuring his own wish.

Then, he released it, without seeing it swiftly ascend into the sky.
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The city where Anne Frank wrote her World War II diary while hiding with her family from the brutal Nazi occupation is hosting an exhibition about the Ukraine war with grim echoes of her plight more than three-quarters of a century later.

The exhibition that opened Thursday at Amsterdam City Hall offers a vision of the war in Ukraine as experienced by children caught in the devastating conflict.

“This exhibition is about the pain through the children’s eyes,” Khrystyna Khranovska, who developed the idea, said at the opening. “It strikes into the very heart of every adult to be aware of the suffering and grief that the Russian war has brought our children.”

“War Diaries” includes writings like those that Anne Frank penned in the hidden annex behind an Amsterdam canal-side house, but also modern ways Ukrainian children have recorded and processed the traumatic experience of life during wartime, including photos and video.

Among them is the artwork of Mykola Kostenko, now 15, who spent 21 days under siege in the port city of Mariupol.

The relentless attack on the southern port city became a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to crush Ukraine soon after Russia invaded its neighbor in February last year, but also of resistance and resilience of its 430,000 population.

His pictures from that time are in blue ballpoint pen on pieces of paper torn out of notebooks — that’s all Kostenko had. One of them shows the tiny basement where he and his family sheltered from the Russian shells before finally managing to flee the city.

“I put my soul into all of these pictures because this is what I lived through in Mariupol. What I saw, what I heard. So this is my experience, and this is my hope,” Kostenko said through an interpreter.

A way to cope

Curator Katya Taylor said the diaries and art are useful coping mechanisms for the children.

“We talk so much about mental health and therapy, but they know better than us what they have to do with themselves,” she said. She called the diaries, art, photos and videos on display in Amsterdam “a kind of therapeutic work for many of them.”

The plight of children caught in the war in Ukraine has already attracted widespread international condemnation. More than 500 have been killed, according to Ukrainian officials.

Meanwhile, UNICEF says an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian children are at risk of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues, with potentially lasting effects.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in March for Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, holding them personally responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine.

A way to remember

For Kostenko, drawing and painting is also therapeutic — a way of processing the traumatic events and recording them so they are never forgotten.

“It also was an instrument to save the emotions that I lived through. For me to remember them in the future, because it’s important,” he said.

The youngest diarist, 10-year-old Yehor Kravtsov, also lived in besieged Mariupol. In text on display next to his diary, he writes that he used to dream of becoming a builder. But his experience living through the city’s siege changed his mind.

“When we got out from the basement during the occupation and I was very hungry, I decided to become a chef to feed the whole world,” he wrote. “So that all the people would be happy and there would be no war.”
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German authorities have said they are investigating an apparent poisoning of an exiled Russian journalist in Munich.

Elena Kostyuchenko, who had worked for the independent Russian media outlet Novaya Gazeta, fell ill with symptoms of being poisoned while traveling from Munich to Berlin last October.

Authorities reopened the investigation into the case in July, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. The inquiry comes as details emerged that two other female journalists or critics experienced similar symptoms.

The independent Russian media outlet The Insider this week revealed that at least three exiled Russians, including Kostyuchenko, appear to have been targeted with poisonings.

About a week after Kostyuchenko reported symptoms, Ekho Moskvy journalist Irina Babloyan had a similar experience while in Georgia, and Natalia Arno, head of the Free Russia Foundation, was affected by what The Insider described as a neurotoxic substance while she was in Prague.

In an interview this week with VOA’s Russian Service, Roman Dobrokhotov, founder and editor in chief of The Insider, said his team’s work on the case was just the beginning.

“Our publication is dictated by the desire to warn [exiled] Russian journalists and activists so that they realize that they need to think about their safety, that there is a real threat to their life and health,” Dobrokhotov said.

Reporters covered war in Ukraine

Kostyuchenko had reported on Russia’s war in Ukraine, including in Kherson, until one of her sources in the Ukraine military warned her of a possible assassination attempt, according to media reports.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called on authorities in Georgia and Germany to treat the suspected attacks “with the utmost seriousness.”

“Reports that Russian journalists Elena Kostyuchenko and Irina Babloyan may have been poisoned in Germany and Georgia are extremely alarming, and must be investigated at once,” CPJ’s Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement.

He called on both countries to “do all they can to safeguard the lives of journalists living in exile.”

Russian journalists fled after edicts

Many independent Russian journalists have fled since the war in Ukraine began, after Moscow imposed heavy sanctions and edicts on how media can report the war.

Moscow has also targeted foreign journalists. American reporter Evan Gershkovich marked his 20th week in prison this week.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested while on assignment on March 29 and was accused of espionage — a charge he and his media outlet denied.

And this week, Russia declined to renew media accreditation for two foreign journalists: Eva Hartog, who works for Politico and a Dutch weekly news publication, and Anna-Lena Lauren, a Finnish reporter who had worked in Russia for 16 years.

In Hartog’s case, a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on social media that its decision to not extend a visa for someone from the Netherlands should not raise questions “given the harassment of Russian journalists and media outlets by the EU.”

Moscow has also previously cited treatment of Russian journalists, including for media accreditation, for its decision to limit U.S. consular visits to Gershkovich.

VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.
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A British nurse who described herself as a “horrible evil person” was found guilty on Friday of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to kill another six in the neonatal unit of a hospital in northwest England where she worked.

Lucy Letby, 33, was convicted of killing five baby boys and two baby girls at the Countess of Chester hospital and attacking other newborns, often while working night shifts, in 2015 and 2016.

The verdict, following a harrowing 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court, makes Letby Britain’s most prolific serial child killer in modern history, local media said.

She was found not guilty of two attempted murders while the jury, who spent 110 hours deliberating, were unable to agree on six other suspected attacks.

“We are heartbroken, devastated, angry and feel numb, we may never truly know why this happened,” the families of Letby’s victims said in a statement.

Prosecutors told the jury Letby poisoned some of her infant victims by injecting them with insulin, while others were injected with air or force-fed milk, sometimes involving multiple attacks before they died.

“I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” said a handwritten note found by police officers who searched her home after she was arrested. “I am a horrible evil person,” she wrote. “I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”

Some of those she attacked were twins — in one case she murdered both siblings, in two instances she killed one but failed in her attempts to murder the other.

The youngest victim was just 1 day old.

‘Malevolent presence’

Letby will be sentenced on Monday and faces a lengthy prison term, possibly a rare full life sentence.

Her actions came to light when senior doctors became concerned at the number of unexplained deaths and collapses at the neonatal unit, where premature or sick babies are treated, over 18 months from January 2015.

With doctors unable to find a medical reason, police were called in. After a lengthy investigation, Letby, who had been involved in the care of the babies, was pinpointed as the “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse,” said prosecutor Nick Johnson.

Pictures of Letby on social media portrayed a happy and smiling woman with a busy social life, and in one photo she was seen cradling a baby. But, during months of often distressing evidence, her trial heard she was a determined killer.

The jury was told how Letby had tried on four occasions to murder one baby girl before she finally succeeded. When another of the victim’s mothers walked in on her attacking twin babies, she said “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”

At her home after her arrest, detectives found paperwork and medical notes with references to the children involved in the case. She had also carried out social media searches for the parents and families of the murdered babies.

Letby wept when she gave evidence over 14 days, saying she had never tried to hurt the babies and had only ever wanted to care for them, blaming unsafe staffing levels on the hospital ward and its dirty conditions.

She also claimed four doctors had conspired to pin the blame on her for the unit’s failings and said she had written the “I am evil” message because she had felt overwhelmed.

‘They could have stopped it’

But the prosecution said she was a cold, cruel, calculating liar who had repeatedly changed her account of events and said her notes should be treated as a confession.

Detectives said they had found nothing unusual about Letby’s life and could not determine any motive.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever know unless she just chooses to tell us,” said Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, who led the investigation.

One senior doctor at the neonatal unit, Stephen Brearey, told the BBC that hospital bosses had failed to investigate allegations against Letby and failed to act on his and his colleagues’ concerns.

“Our staff are devastated by what has happened, and we are committed to ensuring that lessons continue to be learned,” said Nigel Scawn, medical director at Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The government said it had ordered an independent inquiry, which would include how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with.

The father of twins who survived Letby’s attempts to kill the children demanded answers from the hospital.

“They could have stopped it,” said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Police are carrying out further investigations into all the time Letby had worked as a nurse at the hospital and at another hospital in Liverpool where she had trained, to identify if there were any more victims.

“There is a number of cases that are active investigations that parents have been informed of,” Hughes said.
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The World Health Organization and U.S. health authorities said Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.

The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance “due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries,” it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.

So far, the variant has been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed it is also closely monitoring the variant, in a message on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

There are four known sequences of the variant, the WHO has said.

“The potential impact of the BA.2.86 mutations are presently unknown and undergoing careful assessment,” the WHO said.

Francois Balloux, professor of computational systems biology at University College London, said the attention attracted by the new variant was warranted.

“BA.2.86 is the most striking SARS-CoV-2 strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron,” he said in a comment published Friday, referring to the variant that exploded onto the global stage in the winter of 2022, causing a surge in COVID cases.

“Over the coming weeks we will see how well BA.2.86 will be faring relative to other Omicron subvariants,” he said.

He stressed, though, that even if BA.2.86 caused a major spike in infections, “we are not expecting to witness comparable levels of severe disease and death than we did earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants spread.”

“Most people on earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus,” he said, pointing out that even if people were reinfected with the new variant, “immune memory will still allow their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively.”

The WHO is currently monitoring upwards of 10 variants and their descent lineages.

Most countries that had established surveillance systems for the virus have since dismantled operations, determining it is no longer as severe and therefore could not justify the expense — a move the WHO has denounced, calling instead for stronger monitoring.

In the last reporting period between July 17 and Aug. 13, more than 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 were detected and more than 2,300 deaths were reported, according to a WHO statement.

The case load represents a rise of 63% from the previous 28-day period, while deaths were down by 56%. 

As of Aug. 13, there were more than 769 million cases of COVID-19 confirmed and more than 6.9 million deaths worldwide, although the real toll is thought to be much higher because many cases went undetected.
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After a series of attacks on Ukrainian ports, residents say they feel the country’s now-defunct grain deal with Russia allowed them a modicum of protection, which is also now lost. Port officials say they are working to expand alternative routes where they may, at best, only export roughly a third of the agricultural goods they did before the war. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports with videographer Yan Boechat from Odesa, Ukraine.
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Angry Turkish Cypriots punched and kicked a group of international peacekeepers who obstructed crews working on a road that would encroach on a U.N.-controlled buffer zone in ethnically divided Cyprus, the United Nations said Friday.

It said the attack happened as peacekeepers stood in the way of work crews building a road to connect the village of Arsos, in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north, with the mixed Greek Cypriot-Turkish Cypriot village of Pyla, inside the buffer zone and abutting the Greek Cypriot south, where the island’s internationally recognized government is seated.

A video seen by The Associated Press showed scores of Turkish Cypriots accosting a much smaller group of Slovak and British U.N. soldiers trying to hold them back from starting work inside the buffer zone. Some peacekeepers suffered blows to the face as they linked arms to push back the advancing Turkish Cypriots. The U.N. said three soldiers had to be treated for minor injuries.

The violence constitutes a serious escalation of tensions not seen on the island in years.

The road would give Turkish Cypriots direct access to Pyla by circumventing a checkpoint on the northern fringe of a British military base, one of two bases that the U.K. retained after Cyprus gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960.

Greek Cypriots perceive the road construction as a move with a military purpose at a sensitive spot along the buffer zone, which spans 180 kilometers (120 miles).

“Threats to the safety of U.N. peacekeepers and damage to U.N. property are unacceptable and constitute a serious crime under international law which will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” the peacekeeping force, known as UNFICYP, said in a statement.

UNFICYP spokesman Aleem Siddique told The Associated Press that the U.N. wouldn’t back down from continuing to “block or frustrate construction of the road by nonviolent means,” despite Friday’s assault. He said construction of the road would violate the forces’ mandate of maintaining the status quo inside the buffer zone.

Turkish Cypriot authorities blamed U.N. peacekeepers for the altercation, calling their actions “unacceptable” and dismissing the UNFICYP statement as “unfounded allegations.”

They accused UNFICYP of being “biased” against the Turkish Cypriot side and said the force should “immediately cease” its efforts to physically obstruct construction of a “humanitarian” project.

EU Council President Charles Michel and the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, condemned the assaults and urged a de-escalation of the situation.

The embassies of the U.K., France and the United Nations issued a joint statement expressing “serious concern” over construction of the road, calling for an immediate halt to the work and condemning the assaults as “completely unacceptable.”

Maintaining the status quo of the buffer zone is enshrined in the U.N. mission’s mandate since 1974, when Turkey invaded in the wake of a coup mounted by Greek junta-backed supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey, which maintains more than 35,000 troops in the island’s northern third, recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence.

The U.N. says both sides have repeatedly infringed on the buffer zone over the years. But this road construction is seen by the Cyprus government as “an attempt at a very serious violation of the status quo.”

Cyprus government spokesman Constantinos Letymbiotis condemned what he called the “organized violence,” adding that the government is in touch with the U.N., the EU and other governments to prevent “Turkish designs.”

The situation is likely to hamper the Cypriot government’s efforts to restart negotiations to resolve the island’s division.
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The United States has given the nod to allies Denmark and the Netherlands to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to officials. It was not immediately clear when Ukraine might receive the jets, which it has been seeking for a long time to counter Russia’s air superiority.

In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said: “We welcome Washington’s decision to pave the way for sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.”

The U.S. must approve F-16 transactions because the jets are made in the United States. Despite the news, it was not immediately clear when Ukraine would receive the jets.  Pilots must undergo extensive training before Ukraine can receive the jets.

Earlier Friday, Ukraine attempted to launch a drone attack on Moscow, but Russian forces downed the unmanned aerial vehicle.

After Russia shot down the drone, debris from the attack fell on Moscow’s Expo Center, a massive exhibitions space, located less than 7 kilometers from the Kremlin.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that the wreckage from the drone fell near the Expo Center but “did not cause significant damage.”

The British Defense Ministry said Friday in its daily update on Ukraine that Russia has published a new Russian history textbook for schools “in the occupied regions of Ukraine and throughout the Russian Federation,” beginning in September.  The ministry posted on X, that “Russia’s aim is to create a pro-Kremlin information space in the occupied regions in order to erode Ukrainian national identity.”

Ukraine claimed Thursday that its counteroffensive had retaken parts of Russian-controlled land in the southeastern part of the country in a push beyond the newly liberated village of Urozhaine.

The advance is an attempted drive toward the Sea of Azov, an effort to split Russia’s occupying forces in half.

“In the direction south of Urozhaine, [Ukrainian troops] had success,” military spokesman Andriy Kovaliov said on national television. He gave no more details.

Urozhaine, in the eastern Donetsk region, was the first village Kyiv said it had retaken since July 27 in what has proved to be a difficult, grinding warfare in heavily mined Russian-controlled territory.

Urozhaine lies just over 90 kilometers north of the Sea of Azov and about 100 kilometers west of Russian-held Donetsk city.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-installed official in parts of Zaporizhzhia controlled by Moscow, said Urozhaine and the neighboring village of Staromaiorske were not under Ukrainian control.

Drone footage, however, of the intense fight for Urozhaine, has emerged in which dozens of Russian troops can be seen fleeing to the village’s south.

Russia controls nearly one-fifth of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula it annexed in 2014, most of Luhansk region and large tracts of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Kyiv says its counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than it had hoped for because of vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities

Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that Russia damaged grain infrastructure at a port in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine as part of an overnight drone attack.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Telegram that the attack targeted the port of Reni on the Danube River. 

Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that the attack damaged warehouses and grain storage facilities at the port.

Kiper said there were no reported casualties from the attack, and that Ukraine’s air force had downed 11 Russian drones over Odesa. The Ukrainian military said its air defenses destroyed 13 drones overnight and that Russia had used Iranian-made Shahed drones to target Odesa and Mykolaiv.

Black Sea shipping

The Hong-Kong-flagged container ship Joseph Schulte left Ukraine’s port of Odesa on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the vessel was the first to set off down a temporary Black Sea corridor that Ukraine established for civilian ships following Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The Joseph Schulte was carrying 30,000 metric tons of cargo, Kubrakov said. The vessel had been stuck in Odesa since Russian launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia has not said whether it will respect Ukraine’s shipping corridor. On Sunday, a Russian patrol ship fired warning shots at a vessel after what Russia said was a failure by the captain to respond to a request for an inspection.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Ukraine attempted to launch a drone attack on Moscow early Friday, but Russian forces downed the unmanned aerial vehicle.

After Russia shot down the drone, debris from the attack fell on Moscow’s Expo Center, a massive exhibitions space, located less than 7 kilometers from the Kremlin.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that the wreckage from the drone fell near the Expo Center but “did not cause significant damage.”

Ukraine claimed Thursday that its counteroffensive had retaken parts of Russian-controlled land in the southeastern part of the country in a push beyond the newly liberated village of Urozhaine.

The advance is an attempted drive toward the Sea of Azov, an effort to split Russia’s occupying forces in half.

“In the direction south of Urozhaine, [Ukrainian troops] had success,” military spokesman Andriy Kovaliov said on national television. He gave no more details.

Urozhaine, in the eastern Donetsk region, was the first village Kyiv said it had retaken since July 27 in what has proved to be a difficult, grinding warfare in heavily mined Russian-controlled territory.

Urozhaine lies just over 90 kilometers north of the Sea of Azov and about 100 kilometers west of Russian-held Donetsk city.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-installed official in parts of Zaporizhzhia controlled by Moscow, said Urozhaine and the neighboring village of Staromaiorske were not under Ukrainian control.

Drone footage, however, of the intense fight for Urozhaine, has emerged in which dozens of Russian troops can be seen fleeing to the village’s south.

Russia controls nearly one-fifth of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula it annexed in 2014, most of Luhansk region and large tracts of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Kyiv says its counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than it had hoped for because of vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified Russian defensive lines.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities

Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that Russia damaged grain infrastructure at a port in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine as part of an overnight drone attack. 

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Telegram that the attack targeted the port of Reni on the Danube River. 

Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that the attack damaged warehouses and grain storage facilities at the port.

Kiper said there were no reported casualties from the attack, and that Ukraine’s air force had downed 11 Russian drones over Odesa. The Ukrainian military said its air defenses destroyed 13 drones overnight and that Russia had used Iranian-made Shahed drones to target Odesa and Mykolaiv.

Black Sea shipping

The Hong-Kong-flagged container ship Joseph Schulte left Ukraine’s port of Odesa on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the vessel was the first to set off down a temporary Black Sea corridor that Ukraine established for civilian ships following Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The Joseph Schulte was carrying 30,000 metric tons of cargo, Kubrakov said. The vessel had been stuck in Odesa since Russian launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia has not said whether it will respect Ukraine’s shipping corridor. On Sunday, a Russian patrol ship fired warning shots at a vessel after what Russia said was a failure by the captain to respond to a request for an inspection.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Thursday visited Belarus and said his country would increase military cooperation with Russia’s neighbor and ally, where Moscow is deploying tactical nuclear weapons.

Shangfu met with strongman President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk and said “the purpose of my visit to Belarus is precisely the implementation of important agreements at the level of heads of state and the further strengthening of bilateral military cooperation.”

Neither side gave details of what the cooperation will entail, but the two countries have agreed to hold joint military exercises next year.

Li visited Russia just before going to Belarus.

Russian troops that were deployed in Belarus were part of Russia’s invading force in Ukraine and Russian troops and weapons remain there.

Belarusian forces have not taken part in the Ukraine war and Lukashenko on Thursday said China’s military assistance would not be directed against third countries. Lukashenko has previously said Belarus has taken delivery of Russian nuclear weapons and on Thursday he said they could only be used by Belarus if the country was under threat.

“Nuclear weapons, which are in Belarus, will not be used if there is no aggression against us,” Lukashenko said, adding that Belarus would not enter into hostilities against Ukraine as long as its border was not violated.

China claims to be neutral in the conflict in Ukraine but accuses the United States and its allies of provoking Russia and maintains strong economic, diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow.

Belarusian analyst Valery Karbalevich said the visit of the Chinese defense minister is “an important signal not only to the EU and the U.S., but also to Ukraine.”

“With this visit, China marks the scope of its military interests and shows that it is interested in building up ties with Minsk and Moscow, including military cooperation, despite the dissatisfaction of Western countries,” he told The Associated Press. “This is also a signal to Ukraine that the prolongation of the war can force China to take one side.”
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A total of 62 humanitarian aid workers have died this year around the world, the United Nations said Thursday as it prepared to mark 20 years since a devastating attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

The U.N. observes World Humanitarian Day on Aug. 19 each year as it remembers the suicide bombing, which claimed 22 lives, including that of Sergio Vieira de Mello, then the U.N. high commissioner for human rights and the head of the U.N. mission in Iraq.

Besides the 62 deaths this year in the world’s conflict zones, another 84 aid workers were wounded and 34 were kidnapped, according to the Aid Worker Security Database, compiled by the consulting firm Humanitarian Outcomes. The fatality figure for all of 2022 was 116.

For several years running, South Sudan has been the world’s most dangerous place for aid workers. As of Aug. 10, there had been 40 attacks on humanitarian staffers there with 22 lives lost, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Next on the list was Sudan to the north, with 17 attacks on aid workers and 19 deaths so far this year. Such high figures had not been seen since the Darfur conflict from 2006 to 2009.

Other countries where humanitarian workers died include the Central African Republic, Mali, Somalia, Ukraine and Yemen.

“The risks we face are beyond human comprehension,” says a report compiled by NGOs including Doctors of the World, Action Against Hunger and Handicap International, with help from the European Union.

Every year more than 90% of the people who die in attacks on aid workers are locals, according to the International NGO Safety Organization.

This year World Humanitarian Day marks 20 years since the bombing in Baghdad against the Canal Hotel, which was serving as the U.N. headquarters in the Iraqi capital.

That 2003 blast, carried out amid the chaos of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, killed 22 people, including the Brazilian Vieira de Mello, and wounded around 150 local and international aid workers.

“World Humanitarian Day and the Canal Hotel bombing will always be an occasion of mixed and still raw emotions for me and many others,” said the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths.

“Every year, nearly six times more aid workers are killed in the line of duty than were killed on that dark day in Baghdad, and they are overwhelmingly local aid workers,” he added. “Impunity for these crimes is a scar on our collective conscience.”

As upheavals around the world have grown, the United Nations says it is working to help nearly 250 million people living in crisis areas. That is 10 times more than in 2003.
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A civilian cargo ship sailing from Ukraine reached Istanbul on Thursday in defiance of a Moscow blockade that sent tensions soaring after Russia open fired on a Turkish-owned ship. 

The Hong Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte left the port of Odesa on Wednesday — the first vessel to directly challenge Russia’s new bid to seal Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. 

Marine traffic sites showed it approaching its final destination in Istanbul after moving along a western route that avoided international waters in favor of those controlled by NATO members Romania and Bulgaria. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ship was using a “new humanitarian corridor” Kyiv established after Russia last month pulled out of a wartime agreement to export grain along the Black Sea. 

The Joseph Schulte’s mission came days after the Russian navy fired warning shots and boarded a Turkish-owned but Palau-flagged vessel that was sailing to the Ukrainian river port of Izmail. 

The Russian attack put immense pressure on NATO member Turkey to stiffen its officially neutral line in the war. 

The Turkish presidency broke a four-day silence on Thursday by announcing that it had “warned” Moscow about the need to avoid further maritime escalations. 

But the Turkish statement stressed that it was technically up to Palau — a Pacific archipelago often used as a “flag of convenience” by global shipping companies — to lodge a formal complaint. 

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s shipping infrastructure since pulling out of the grain deal mediated by the U.N. and Turkey. 

Ukraine’s decision to confront Russia over sea access comes with world attention focusing on ways to secure grain export routes in time for this autumn’s harvest. 

Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of grain and seed oil. 

New US push

Last year’s grain agreement helped push down global food prices and provide Ukraine with an important source of revenue to fight the war. 

Ukraine is now using the Danube River to ship out its grain. 

Much of that traffic flows down the river and ends up reaching the Black Sea at Ukraine’s border with Romania. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials are holding talks with Turkey and both Ukraine and its neighbors about increasing traffic along the Danube route. 

An unnamed U.S. official told the paper that Washington was “going to look at everything” — including the possibility of military support for the Ukrainian ships. 

But a Turkish defense official appeared to push back against Washington’s initiative on Thursday. 

“Our efforts are focused on making the grain corridor deal active again,” the unnamed defense official told Turkey’s NTV television. “We are not working on other solutions.” 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this month for talks focused on the Black Sea. 

Erdogan has tried to use his good relations with Moscow and Kyiv to raise Turkey’s diplomatic profile during the war. 

Turkey hosted two early rounds of Ukraine peace talks and stepped up its trade with Russia while supplying Kyiv with arms. 

Diplomatic ‘counteroffensive’

Russia pulled out of the grain agreement after claiming that the pact had failed to fulfill the goal of relieving hunger across Africa and other famine-stricken regions. 

The Kremlin has since asked Turkey to help Russia export its grain to African countries without any involvement from Ukraine. 

African countries have become an important ally that Russia is using to counter its wartime isolation from the West. 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AFP this week that Kyiv needed to launch a diplomatic “counteroffensive” on the continent. 

“Our strategy is not to replace Russia but to free Africa from Russia’s grip,” Kuleba said in a wide-ranging interview. 

Russia’s attempts to win unilateral control of Black Sea shipping routes come as Ukraine inches forward in its high-stakes but brutal summer offensive. 

Kyiv this week announced the capture of Urozhaine, a small village lying along one of Ukraine’s main lines of attack. 

Kyiv is trying to reach its southern coast and cut Moscow’s access to Ukraine’s Russian-seized peninsula of Crimea. 

NATO row

The offensive is relying on new Western equipment and training but progressing slower than Kyiv and its allies had hoped. 

The strength of Russia’s resistance has intensified debates in some Western capitals about a need to find a diplomatic end to the war. 

A top NATO official this week outraged Kyiv by suggesting that one possible solution to the war could involve Ukraine ceding territory in exchange for Kyiv’s membership in the U.S.-led alliance. 

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg intervened on Thursday, reiterating the alliance’s position that it was “up to Ukrainians, and Ukrainians alone, to decide when the conditions for negotiations are in place.” 

Kuleba insisted that Ukraine was “not feeling” pressure from its Western allies to demonstrate quick results. 

“It’s easy to say that you want everything to be faster when you are not there,” he said.
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An Iranian journalist said Thursday she had no regrets over posting on social media a picture of herself without a headscarf in defiance of Iran’s dress laws, sharing a similar image following her latest release from jail. 

Nazila Maroufian last year interviewed the father of the young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody sparked months of protests. 

She walked out of Tehran’s Evin prison on Sunday after more than a month behind bars, posting on social media a picture of herself without a headscarf and the slogan “Don’t accept slavery, you deserve the best!” 

She was promptly detained again and moved outside of Tehran to Qarchak women’s prison, where conditions have been criticized repeatedly by human rights groups. 

But Maroufian, whose age is given by Persian media outside Iran as 23, was then released from Qarchak on Wednesday, she posted on social media. 

“Do you regret the photo you posted when you were released? Do you admit you made a mistake?” she asked herself in a rhetorical question in the post.   

“No; I didn’t do anything wrong,” she added in reply, posting a similar image of herself bareheaded in a white shirt with her right arm stretched up in a ‘V’ for victory sign. 

Arrested after publishing interview

Last October, Maroufian published an interview on the Mostaghel Online news site with Amjad Amini, the father of Mahsa Amini whose death in custody last September after she allegedly violated the dress rules sparked months of protests. 

In the interview, Amjad Amini accused authorities of lying about the circumstances of his daughter’s death. 

Iranian authorities have indicated she died because of a health problem, but the family and activists have said she suffered a blow to the head while in custody. 

Maroufian, a Tehran-based journalist from Amini’s hometown of Saqez in Kurdistan province, was first arrested in November.  

She was later released but in January said she had been sentenced to two years in jail, suspended for five years, on charges of propaganda against the system and spreading false news. 

Actions reminiscent of Gholian

Maroufian’s rapid return to prison after posting defiant images upon her release recalled the case of labor activist Sepideh Gholian.  

In March, Gholian was rearrested hours after she walked free from jail bare-headed and chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Gholian, one of the most prominent female activists detained in Iran, remains in prison. 
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The U.N. mission in ethnically divided Cyprus said Thursday it will block construction by breakaway Turkish Cypriots of a road that would encroach on a U.N.-controlled buffer zone and likely raise tensions on the Mediterranean island nation.

The world body plans to “block or frustrate construction of the road by nonviolent means,” said Aleem Siddique, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as UNFICYP. The road would violate the forces’ mandate of maintaining the status quo inside the buffer zone, he said.

Work began earlier in the day on the road to connect the village of Arsos in the Turkish Cypriot north with the mixed Greek Cypriot-Turkish Cypriot village of Pyla, just south of the buffer zone and inside the Greek Cypriot south, where the island’s internationally recognized government is seated.

The road would give Turkish Cypriots direct access to Pyla by circumventing a checkpoint on the fringes of a British military base, one of two bases that the U.K. retained after Cyprus gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960.

Greek Cypriots perceive the road construction as a move with a military purpose at a sensitive spot along the buffer zone spanning 180 kilometers (120 miles).

Maintaining the status quo of the buffer zone is enshrined in the U.N. mission’s mandate since 1974, when Turkey invaded in the wake of a coup mounted by Greek junta-backed supporters of union with Greece.

The United Natioins says there have been numerous infringements of the buffer zone by both sides over the years. But this road construction is seen as “an attempt at a very serious violation of the status quo,” according to Cyprus government spokesman Constantinos Letymbiotis.

Letymbiotis said that the Cyprus government is working with the U.N. peacekeepers to thwart the road construction.

The Cypriot government has been pushing hard to restart moribund negotiations to resolve the island’s division and warned that construction of the road would entail “negative repercussions” on efforts to resume talks and on Turkey’s relations with the EU.
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The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions on four Russian security agents it accused of being involved in the 2020 poisoning of imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

The Treasury Department said the four Russians are linked to Moscow’s Federal Security Service. Treasury officials blocked any U.S. assets they may hold and prohibited them from conducting U.S. financial transactions, while the State Department ended the possibility of visa rights to enter the U.S.

In a statement, Treasury anti-terrorism official Brian Nelson said, “Today we remind Vladimir Putin and his regime that there are consequences not only for waging a brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine, but also for violating the human rights of the Russian people.

“The assassination attempt against Alexey Navalny in 2020 represents the Kremlin’s contempt for human rights, and we will continue to use the authorities at our disposal to hold the Kremlin’s willing would-be executioners to account,” Nelson said.

Navalny, a longtime Putin critic, was detained in January 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany where Western doctors had treated him for what they said was poisoning by a Soviet-era nerve agent.

The Kremlin at one point accused Navalny of working with the CIA to undermine Russia. Moscow has denied any involvement in what happened to him and denies persecuting Navalny.

Navalny, 47, has become a target of Putin’s crackdown on dissent. Navalny had been serving a nine-year sentence on fraud and embezzlement charges but was recently sentenced to serve another 19 years on extremism-related charges.

The Russian agents were identified as Alexey Alexandrovich Alexandrov, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, Ivan Vladimirovich Osipov and Vladimir Alexandrovich Panyaev.

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
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