1UA TV

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday dismissed the reluctance of some countries fulfill Ukrainian requests for arms due to fears of being drawn into the conflict with Russia, saying that by giving Ukraine what it needs, Ukrainians will do the fighting so no one else has to.

“I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair: You give us weapons, we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine,” Kuleba said.

He spoke in Brussels alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers where Stoltenberg said allies would address Ukraine’s need for air defense systems, anti-tank weapons and other support.

“The more weapons we get, and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved, the more cities and villages will not be destructed, and there will be no more Buchas,” Kuleba said, citing the area outside the capital where retreating Russian soldiers are accused of killing civilians.

Kuleba welcomed new Western sanctions against Russia, but called for further measures, including a full embargo on Russian oil and gas, blocking all Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system and closing ports to Russian vessels and goods.

“I hope we will never face a situation again when to step up the sanctions pressure we need atrocities like at Bucha to be revealed and to impress and to shock other partners to the extent that they sit down and say, ‘OK, fine, we will introduce new sanctions,’” Kuleba said. “I don’t believe that Ukrainians have to pay with their lives, hells and sufferings for the political will of partners to impose sanctions.”

New sanctions

The United States and its Western allies said Wednesday they imposed “new, severe and immediate economic sanctions” against Russia, banning American investment there, fully blocking the country’s largest financial institutions and targeting assets held by President Vladimir Putin’s adult children.

“Together with our allies and our partners, we’re going to keep raising economic costs, to ratchet up the pain for Putin and further increase Russia’s economic isolation,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday during remarks at a North America’s Building Trades Unions event.

The new measures, according to the White House, are in retribution for atrocities against Ukrainian civilians allegedly committed by Russian troops, including those discovered in recent days in Bucha.

Biden said horrific images from Bucha, where dead civilians were left on the street, imparted “a sense of brutality and inhumanity left for all the world to see,” as he outlined the steps his administration is taking to punish those responsible. Russia has denied killing civilians in Bucha.

The most punishing of the new measures are the “full blocking sanctions” on Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and the country’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank.

Applying full blocking sanctions against Russia’s largest bank takes U.S. measures against the Russian financial sector to their maximum level, said Andrew Lohsen, a fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Until now, the Biden administration had refrained from applying the same restrictions on Sberbank as it had on other Russian banks because Sberbank is one of the main institutions handling energy payments.

“That seems to have changed as images from Bucha are circulating around the world,” Lohsen told VOA. “The aversion to carve-outs is eroding, as evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine comes to light.”

In a move to add psychological pressure on Putin’s inner circle, the White House said it is also sanctioning Putin’s adult children — daughters Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova — as well as the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and members of Russia’s Security Council. New sanctions were also applied to “critical, major Russian state-owned enterprises.”

“We’ve seen attempts and efforts to stash assets in the accounts and resources of his (Putin’s) children,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing to reporters Wednesday.

The U.S. is also blocking Russia from making debt payments with money subject to U.S. jurisdiction. This follows action earlier this week to make Russia’s frozen funds in the United States unavailable for debt payments. Psaki said Moscow will have to decide whether they are going to spend the dollars they have to avoid default or continue to fund military operations in Ukraine.

“Part of our objective is to force them into a place where they are making that decision,” Psaki said.

The move makes it more costly for Russia to remain current on foreign debt, which may eventually push it to default and lead to further consequences, Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told VOA.

“There will be investor lawsuits. They will go after Russian government assets in Western jurisdictions. So, this could potentially be a further isolation of the Russian economy in general,” he added.

Without access to its dollars held in American banks, Russia’s Finance Ministry announced Wednesday that it had used rubles to pay about $650 million in dollar-denominated debt obligations. Payments are usually required to be made in the currency the debt was sold in.

In his remarks, Biden said that the steps already taken to punish Russia are expected to shrink the country’s gross domestic product by double digits this year alone and wipe out the last 15 years of Russia’s economic gains.

“Because we’ve cut Russia off from importing technologies like semiconductors and encryption security and critical components of quantum technology that they need to compete in the 21st century, we’re going to stifle Russia’s ability in its economy to grow for years to come,” he added.

The steps announced Wednesday were sweeping and hard-hitting, but they also mean the West is running out of levers to stop Russian aggression, unless they are willing to apply direct pressure on the Russian oil and gas sector.

“The remaining large category of unused tools would likely focus on both direct sanctions on Russian energy exports and importantly, secondary sanctions on any non-Western entities that take or facilitate such trade,” said Daniel Ahn, global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, to VOA.

Alleged war crimes

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is assisting Ukrainian and European partners and the State Department to collect evidence of alleged war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine.

Federal criminal prosecutors met with prosecutors from Eurojust and Europol on Monday “to work out a plan for gathering evidence.” On Tuesday, the top Justice Department prosecutor in Paris met with French prosecutors, Garland said at a news conference. He also announced the indictment of a Russian oligarch.

VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara and Masood Farivar contributed to this report. 
…

International efforts to punish Russia for its war on Ukraine are being felt far from Europe, in the U.S. Gulf state of Louisiana, a hub of America’s energy sector.

Late last month, the European Union announced it was exploring ways to gain independence from Russian energy “well before 2030.” American firms took note.

“You can see most European countries don’t want to be seen as complicit with the barbarism of Russia,” said Brian Lloyd, vice president for communications at Sempra Energy, a U.S.-based energy infrastructure company with investments in natural gas production. “Many see every dollar sent to Russia’s state-owned energy companies as helping to fuel its aggression in Ukraine, so Europe is seeking energy alternatives.”

In late March, the U.S. announced a deal with the EU to begin replacing some of the natural gas Russia had been supplying. By the end of this year, President Joe Biden said, the United States would be able to ship enough gas to Europe to offset at least 10% of what Russia currently provides, or 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas.

LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state. Its volume is approximately 600 times smaller than its gaseous state.

“This makes shipping to Europe economical when building pipelines across an ocean wouldn’t be,” explained Eric Smith, associate director of Tulane University’s Energy Institute in New Orleans.  

 The U.S. plans to meet its new commitments to Europe by increasing domestic production of natural gas. To do so, industry leaders propose building new LNG facilities and expanding and increasing the efficiency of existing ones.

“It will be like the Marshall Plan we supported Europe with after World War II, but this one will have an energy focus,” Lloyd said. “The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the way on this because we have some of the least expensive natural gas in the world.”

Much of the existing and increased LNG production capacity is centered in the states of Louisiana and Texas, along the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico. Many state and industry leaders welcome the production of LNG in the region, while environmentalists and commercial fishers are far less enthusiastic.

“We make our living in the sea,” said Dean Blanchard, a shrimper and the president of Dean Blanchard Seafood. “I don’t know much about natural gas yet, but anything that alters the dynamics of the water really screws us.”

Energy crisis abroad

Approximately 40% of the natural gas used in Europe — as well as 25% of crude oil and refined petroleum products — is produced in Russia.

“Europe is a continent that has been dependent on Russian energy for quite some time,” Smith told VOA. “So Biden’s commitment to help supply the EU with LNG became a key component in convincing some European countries to announce sanctions against Moscow. That’s why this increased production of LNG is so important.”

But Europe’s energy crisis began long before Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Consecutive colder-than-usual winters and a world awakening from coronavirus lockdowns boosted demand for many types of energy.

Europe has moved aggressively to embrace renewable energy sources but found production to be inconsistent because it often depends on the weather.

“Europe is caught in a tough spot — they don’t want to be importing fossil fuels like natural gas as they try to reduce carbon emissions,” Smith said. “But natural gas actually makes for a perfect transition. Nuclear and coal plants take weeks to turn on and off, whereas natural gas can be switched off in minutes. When you’re low on renewables, natural gas can be an easy bridge to get you through another cold winter.”

Smith added, “It’s also, by the way, needed for fertilizer and to produce grain, which might be very important for Europe and the Middle East should this war in Ukraine continue.”

Environmental crisis at home

Much of the LNG exported by the United States will be funneled through the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“We have six or seven LNG export terminals in the United States,” explained Naomi Yoder, staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, an environmental organization focused on protecting the Gulf of Mexico. “Four of those — soon to be five — are located on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas. We have six more that are in the works in the region as well. That’s a massive number for one relatively limited region.”

And it’s a region that is no stranger to energy-related environmental disasters.

“It would take me hours to tell you about the effects of that one BP oil spill from 2010,” seafood entrepreneur Blanchard said. “Our ecosystem is still recovering from that spill — the amount of fish and shrimp and oysters are still down. And the number of humans that got sick down here in Grand Isle (small Louisiana barrier island), those people will never recover.”

Blanchard said the BP oil spill got attention only because of its magnitude. But smaller spills, he said, happen every day.

“These energy companies say they care about us and our livelihood, but they’re destroying us,” he said.

Blanchard’s hometown of Grand Isle could soon gain an LNG facility nearby. While Blanchard admits he’s unsure precisely how expanding the production and transportation of natural gas will affect the ecosystem, Yoder predicts only bad results.

“We’ve seen it many times,” Yoder said. “The production of natural gas produces air pollution through methane leaks and water pollution, too. It harms the ecosystem locally as well as the environment more generally. People like to say natural gas emits less carbon than coal, but the process of building these facilities, and liquifying that gas, and shipping it across the ocean just to turn it back into gas — that all emits a lot of carbon into the air, too. We don’t need to produce more energy from fossil fuels. We need to transition to renewables like solar, wind and water energies.”

Balancing act

Advocates of natural gas don’t oppose renewable energy, said Sempra Energy’s Lloyd. Rather, he sees them as complementing each other.

“I think we all have the same goal,” he said. “We want to see an increase in the use of renewable energy over time. But you can’t pretend like if we don’t produce this natural gas now, that Europe won’t just get it from somewhere else. They’ll probably get it from Russia, where the methane leaks are far more numerous and where they aren’t working nearly as hard as we are to further curb carbon emissions.”

Tulane University’s Smith agrees.

“Every serious analyst says we aren’t able to shift our world economy away from fossil fuels between now and 2050,” he said. “So Europe is going to get their natural gas one way or another because they’re not going to just let their people freeze or starve.”

For now, many energy industry leaders and lawmakers say, an opportunity exists to curtail a source of revenue to Russia’s war machine — and to boost jobs and revenues along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

But fishermen like Blanchard fret about a potentially costly trade-off.

“Of course I want to help Ukraine, and I’m proud of the way they’re fighting for themselves,” he said. “But how can I be expected to support something that could destroy my livelihood? I can’t do that for Ukraine or anyone else.”
…

The United States announced new sanctions against Moscow on Wednesday following allegations that Russian forces in Ukraine massacred civilians. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. Camera: Henry Ridgwell.

This video contains graphic images and may not be suitable for all viewers.
…

A Ukrainian official has provided VOA with exclusive photos of the aftermath of Russia’s five-week occupation of Ukraine’s decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, showing what he says are Russian trenches dug into radioactive soil near a 1986 nuclear accident at the site.

Evgen Kramarenko, director of the Ukrainian state agency managing the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant, sent the photos to VOA on Wednesday, saying he had taken them himself on a visit to the site with several of his colleagues the day before.

It was the first visit to the site by Kramarenko’s team since Russian troops withdrew from the plant and the surrounding area on March 31, ending an occupation that began on February 24, when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

In a phone interview with VOA, Kramarenko said the photos show trenches that Russian troops dug using heavy machinery in a grassy field covering radioactive soil near the Chernobyl plant’s destroyed No. 4 reactor.

That reactor’s explosion on April 26, 1986, was the world’s worst nuclear accident, killing 31 people in its immediate aftermath and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate surrounding communities, including in nearby Belarus. The exclusion zone set up after the accident extends to 30 kilometers from the Chernobyl plant.

The track marks from heavy vehicles can be seen in some of Kramarenko’s photos of the trenches.

His photos are the first ground-level images from a Ukrainian governmental source to corroborate multiple reports, published in the past week, that the occupying Russian troops dug the trenches, kicking up clouds of radioactive dust in the process.

In a March 31 statement, Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-run company operating the plant, said the Russian troops had been exposed to “significant doses of radiation” and withdrew from the site in a panic at the first sign of illness.

VOA cannot independently verify the health status of the Russian troops who occupied the Chernobyl plant and later retreated to Belarus, a key Russian ally that has allowed Moscow to use its territory to attack Ukraine. Russia has been silent on the troops’ condition.

Belarus-based science journalist Siarhei Besarab told VOA that the area around Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor is contaminated with the three most common types of radiation: alpha particles, beta particles and gamma ray-irradiated soil.

“Given what we know about the area where the Russian soldiers were digging, it’s the most concentrated spot with all three types of radiation,” Besarab said.

The severity of the soldiers’ radiation poisoning would depend on the time they spent in the area and the type of contact they had, he added.

Kramarenko said Russian soldiers who inhaled radioactive dust may experience a worsening of chronic diseases or new health problems in the coming months and years.

“If the Russians who withdrew to Belarus got radioactive particles onto their clothes and military equipment, this also creates a health problem for anyone who comes near those objects,” Kramarenko said.

Earlier Wednesday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry tweeted video from a drone that it said showed an aerial view of trenches that were dug by Russians near the Chernobyl plant.

The tweet references the Red Forest, a wooded area around the plant whose trees turned red after absorbing radiation from the 1986 explosion.

“Complete neglect of human life, even of one’s own subordinates, is what a killer-state looks like,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry wrote, in reference to Russia.

The drone video first appeared on Telegram. Its source was not clear.

In an article published March 28, Reuters said it spoke to two Ukrainian men who were working at the Chernobyl plant while it was under Russian occupation. Without naming them, the report quoted the two men as saying that none of the Russian troops whom they saw were wearing any gear that would protect them from radiation.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
…

The parents of a former U.S. Marine held captive in Russia pleaded for information about him on Wednesday, expressing fears about his “rapidly declining health” and that “something terrible” had happened to him.

Joe and Paula Reed, who met last week with President Joe Biden about the plight of their son, Trevor, 30, said in a statement that it has been five days since he was last heard from, in a Friday phone call with his girlfriend.

“With each passing hour, we are more and more worried that something terrible has happened,” the parents said in their statement. “We believe there is a rapidly closing window for the Biden administration to bring our son home.”

Russian news agencies reported Monday that Reed ended a hunger strike to protest his solitary confinement and was being treated in a prison medical center.

The younger Reed is serving a nine-year term after being convicted of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow in 2019. Reed denied the charges. The United States called his trial a “theater of the absurd.” 

After his parents met with Biden, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the president reiterated his commitment to continue to work to secure Reed’s release and other Americans “wrongfully held in Russia and elsewhere.” 

U.S.-Russia relations, however, are severely strained after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and U.S. imposition of economic sanctions, including new ones on Wednesday. 

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
…

Iran has moved all its machines that make centrifuge parts from its mothballed workshop at Karaj to its sprawling Natanz site just six weeks after it set up another site at Isfahan to make the same parts, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.

Iran granted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to Karaj in December to re-install surveillance cameras there after a months-long standoff that followed what Tehran said was Israeli sabotage that destroyed one camera and badly damaged another, prompting Iran to remove all four cameras.

A month later, Iran told the IAEA it was moving production of the parts for advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, to a new location in Isfahan, and the IAEA set up cameras there to monitor that work.

Little is known about the Isfahan workshop. Diplomats have said it is slightly larger than the Karaj one. On Wednesday, the IAEA said Iran had moved all the equipment from Karaj to an unspecified location at Natanz, raising the question of whether it will increase output by using both Natanz and Isfahan.

“On the same date (April 4), agency inspectors verified that these machines remained under agency seal at this location in Natanz and, therefore, were not operating,” the IAEA said in a statement summarizing a confidential report to member states seen by Reuters.

Neither the statement nor the report described the location at Natanz, a site that includes a large underground enrichment plant and various buildings above ground.

Under an arrangement that is more than a year old, the IAEA does not have access for the time being to the data collected by some of its cameras, such as those at the new Isfahan workshop.

“Without access to the data and recordings collected by these cameras, the agency is unable to confirm whether the production of centrifuge components at the workshop in Esfahan has begun,” the report to IAEA member states said.
…

After a sharp plunge in value at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Russian ruble has recovered much of its value against other world currencies, a change made possible by aggressive capital controls put in place by the government in Moscow and a continual stream of payments for the country’s oil and gas exports.

The ruble’s resilience in the face of sanctions may make it easier, at least temporarily, for the regime of President Vladimir Putin to claim a measure of victory over international efforts to turn his government into a pariah. However, the practical effects of the ruble’s recovery may be limited for ordinary Russians, who remain largely cut off from global markets.

Also, as evidence of Russian troops’ brutal treatment of Ukrainian civilians accumulates, and Western governments take further steps to wean themselves off Russian energy, the Kremlin’s ability to protect its currency may weaken.

“I think the natural next step and a big set of questions is around energy revenues,” Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told VOA.

She added, “As the images of atrocities on the ground continue, the pressure to do more is going to increase.”

Surprising recovery

One week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the ruble was worth about 1.3 cents in U.S. currency, meaning that it cost a little over 76 rubles to buy one dollar. By March 7, after governments around the world announced a range of painful sanctions on the Russian economy, the value of the ruble had fallen by nearly half. That day, a ruble was worth 0.7 cent, meaning that it cost almost 143 rubles to buy one dollar.

The expectation among many in the early days of the war was that the ruble’s loss of value was going to be a long-term problem for the Russian economy. Crucially, most of the Russian central bank’s foreign reserves — funds denominated in foreign currencies and held at banks outside Russia — were frozen. This left Moscow without the option of driving up the price of the ruble by buying it on the open market with dollars, euros and other foreign currencies.

In fact, the Russian government and its central bank took several steps that drove up the price of its currency. As of Tuesday, the ruble was worth approximately 1.2 cents, meaning that it now costs about 84 rubles to buy a dollar — a far cry from the 143 rubles required just a month previously.

“The Russian central bank more than doubled domestic interest rates to 20%. And they also put in place capital controls — that is, they limited the ability of Russian individuals to buy foreign exchange,” Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, former deputy director of the research department of the International Monetary Fund, told VOA.

Milesi-Ferretti, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, said another key factor in restoring the ruble’s value has been a new restriction on Russian exporters. 

All Russian businesses still able to sell goods internationally are required to take foreign currency earned from those sales and transfer it to the Russian central bank in exchange for rubles.

This creates a steady demand for rubles, keeping the price high, and gives the Russian central bank a new source of foreign currency.

Dubious future

But the price of the Russian ruble in currency markets does not tell the full story of the impact sanctions have had on the Russian economy in general, and on the lives of ordinary Russians in particular.

“Russia’s economy, by virtue of the sanctions and the coping mechanisms the central bank has employed, has become much more an internal economy, a smaller economy,” Ziemba, of the Center for a New American Security, told VOA.

“It’s important to remember that Russians who used to be able to use their credit cards to purchase goods abroad in the U.S. and Europe, can’t,” she said.

This is in part because banking restrictions have made it impossible for most Russian banks to hold correspondent accounts in banks outside the country, which facilitate international payments. Also, inside Russia, major payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard have stopped processing cross-border transactions.

“So, there is difficulty in actually buying goods, both from a financial perspective, but also because a lot of companies have basically said — even if the trade is legal — they don’t want to do transactions with Russia,” Ziemba added. “The ability to actually use these assets is significantly limited.”

Energy wild card

One thing that remains uncertain is the extent to which Western governments, particularly in Europe, will be willing to stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia. Currently, Russia is running a large current account surplus, meaning it is exporting far more than it is importing.

In recent days, European leaders have proposed a ban on Russian coal imports and have floated the possibility of sanctions on Russian oil as well. Russian natural gas, which makes up a large percentage of the fuels used across Europe, does not appear to be on the chopping block.

Major action against Russian energy exports could significantly damage the Russian economy, but it is unclear that Western governments are prepared to take that step.

“We’re going to have to see how the war evolves, how expectations evolve,” Milesi-Ferretti said. “Everything is shrouded in uncertainty.”
…

The U.N. General Assembly is set to vote Thursday on whether to remove Russia from the Human Rights Council because of its action in Ukraine.

Two-thirds of the 193 member states would have to vote in favor of removing Russia.

The council, which is based in Geneva, is largely symbolic, but it can authorize investigations into human rights violations.

Russia is in its second year of a three-year term on the council.

Earlier this week, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Russia’s presence on the council a “farce” and called for its removal.

Since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the General Assembly has passed two resolutions condemning Russia’s actions.

Some information in this report comes from Reuters.
…

As gruesome videos and photos of bodies emerge from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Kremlin-backed media are denouncing them as an elaborate hoax — a narrative that journalists in Ukraine have shown to be false.

Denouncing news as fake or spreading false reports to sow confusion and undermine its adversaries are tactics that Moscow has used for years and refined with the advent of social media in places like Syria.

In detailed broadcasts to millions of viewers, correspondents and hosts of Russian state TV channels said Tuesday that some photo and video evidence of the killings were fake while others showed that Ukrainians were responsible for the bloodshed.

“Among the first to appear were these Ukrainian shots, which show how a soulless body suddenly moves its hand,” a report Monday on Russia-1’s evening news broadcast declared.

“And in the rearview mirror it is noticeable that the dead seem to be starting to rise even.”

But satellite images from early March show the dead were left out on the streets of Bucha for weeks. On April 2, a video taken from a moving car was posted online by a Ukrainian lawyer showing those same bodies scattered along Yablonska Street in Bucha. High-resolution satellite images of Bucha from commercial provider Maxar Technology reviewed by The Associated Press independently matched the location of the bodies with separate videos from the scene.

Other Western media had similar reports.

Over the weekend, AP journalists saw the bodies of dozens of people in Bucha, many of them shot at close range, and some with their hands tied behind them. At least 13 bodies were located in and around a building that residents said was used as a base for Russian troops before they retreated last week.

Yet Russian officials and state-media have continued to promote their own narrative, parroting it in newspapers and on radio and television. A top story on the website of a popular pro-Kremlin newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, pinned the mass killings on Ukraine, with a story that claimed “one more irrefutable proof that ‘the genocide in Bucha’ was carried out by Ukrainian forces.”

An opinion column published Tuesday by the state-run news agency RIA Novosti surmised that the Bucha slayings were a ploy for the West to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.

Analysts note it isn’t the first time in its six-week-old invasion of Ukraine that the Kremlin has employed such an information warfare strategy to deny any wrongdoing and spread disinformation in a coordinated campaign around the globe.

“This is simply what Russia does every time it recognizes that it has suffered a PR setback through committing atrocities,” said Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank. “So the system works almost on autopilot.”

Before the war, Russia denied U.S. intelligence reports that detailed its plans to attack Ukraine. Last month, Russian officials tried to discredit AP photos and reporting of the aftermath of the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which left a pregnant woman and her unborn child dead.

The photos and video from Bucha have set off a new wave of global condemnation and revulsion.

After his video appearance Tuesday at the U.N. Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enumerated the killings in Bucha by Russian troops and showed graphic video of charred and decomposing bodies there and in other towns. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed them as staged.

Across social media, a chorus of more than a dozen official Russian Twitter and Telegram accounts, as well as state-backed media Facebook pages, repeated the Kremlin line that images and video of the dead were staged or a hoax. The claims were made in English, Spanish and Arabic in accounts run by Russian officials or from Russian-backed news outlets Sputnik and RT.

The Spanish-language RT en Español has sent more than a dozen posts to its 18 million followers.

“Russia rejects allegations over the murder of civilians in Bucha, near Kiev,” an RT en Español post said Sunday.

Several of the same accounts sought to discredit claims that Russian troops carried out the killings by pointing to a video of Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk, taken March 31, in which he talked about the suburb being freed from Russian occupation.

“He confirms that Russian troops have left Bucha. No mentioning of dead bodies in the streets,” top Russian official Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted Monday.

But Fedoruk had publicly commented on the violence before the Russian troops left in an interview with Italian news agency Adnkronos on March 28, where he accused them of killings and rapes in Bucha.

In an AP interview March 7, Fedoruk talked about dead bodies piling up in Bucha: “We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night. Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.”

Satellite images by Maxar Technologies while Russian troops occupied Bucha on March 18 and 19 back up Fedoruk’s account of bodies in the streets, showing at least five bodies on one road.

Some social media platforms have tried to limit propaganda and disinformation from the Kremlin. Google blocked RT’s accounts, while in Europe, RT and Sputnik were banned by tech company Meta, which also stopped promoting or amplifying Russian-state media pages on its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.

Russia has found ways to evade the crackdown with posts in different languages through dozens of official Russian social media accounts.

“It’s a pretty massive messaging apparatus that Russia controls — whether it’s official embassy accounts, bot or toll accounts or anti-Western influencers — they have many ways to circumvent platform bans,” said Bret Schafer, who heads the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
…

The World Health Organization ((WHO)) says, following a surge of new cases in early March, the number of new worldwide COVID-19 cases and deaths has fallen for a second consecutive week.

In its weekly update released late Tuesday, the WHO reports the number of new cases overall fell by 16 percent during the week ending April 3, compared to the previous week.

As of 3 April 2022, just over 489 million cases and over 6 million deaths had been reported globally.

The agency said global deaths from COVID-19 fell sharply – by 43 percent – in the past week. The WHO attributed a sharp rise in death numbers the previous week to a change in the way deaths were counted and the addition of death numbers not previously reported in the Americas.

At the country level, the highest number of new weekly cases was reported in

South Korea, with more than 2,058,000 new cases, Germany, with more than 1, 371,000 and France, with nearly one million new cases.

South Korea’s cases declined 16% and Germany’s declined 13 percent. In France, case numbers were up 13 percent.

Across the six WHO regions, over nine million new cases and over 26,000 new deaths were reported. All the regions show decreasing trends both in the number of new weekly cases and new weekly deaths.

The WHO continues to caution, however, several countries are progressively changing their COVID-19 testing strategies, resulting in lower overall numbers of tests performed and consequently lower numbers of cases being detected.
…