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The U.S. Defense Department announced Friday it is allotting $300 million in “security assistance” for Ukraine to bolster the country’s defense capabilities, adding to the $1.6 billion Washington has committed since Russia invaded in late February.

The package includes laser-guided rocket systems, drones, ammunition, night-vision devices, tactical secure communications systems, medical supplies and spare parts.

“This decision underscores the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in support of its heroic efforts to repel Russia’s war of choice,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed “additional capabilities” to help the Ukrainian military, the White House said in a statement after the call.

In mid-March, Congress passed a funding bill that included $13.6 billion for humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine and NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

Shortly after, Biden announced $1 billion in new security assistance to Ukraine.

A large portion of the military equipment the United States has given to Ukraine has come from its own stockpile, through a process known as a “presidential drawdown.”

Unlike that process, the $300 million announced Friday will go towards new contracts for military equipment from the Pentagon’s defense industry partners.

One of the technologies included in the announcement are more Switchblade tactical drones.

Dubbed “kamikaze drones,” Switchblades can be directed by an operator to find and, when ready, plunge onto a target, exploding on contact.

Kirby added that the “United States also continues to work with its allies and partners to identify and provide to the Ukrainians additional capabilities.”
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The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the western Ukrainian town of Ternopil was full at lunch time — as it has been most days since Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The cathedral is full of people praying for peace,” Archbishop Vasyl Semeniuk told me. But as I reported Thursday, the Greek-Catholic prelate can sound like a holy warrior: He sees Vladimir Putin’s army as an evil that must be overcome so it cannot again attack Ukraine or others. His sentiment is not out of line with the thoughts of many in his flock.

While no one wants a long war, both growing confidence and fury with what weeks of war have done to Ukraine — with the loss of life and widespread damage — has left many Ukrainians in no mood to concede very much to Russia to end the fighting.

“You have to do what you have to do, if you want to keep what you have, or get what you want,” one of Semeniuk’s priests told me. He said he hopes for peace but suspects this might turn into a long war.

Anti-Russia sentiments are hardening. A group of lawmakers has drafted a law to strip the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate — an autonomous church subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church — of its property, churches and monasteries. More than 150 of its churches have already defected to the smaller Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Their priests and congregants have reacted furiously to the spiritual defense that Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has made for Russia’s invasion. In weekly broadcasts the 75-year-old Kirill has depicted the war as an apocalyptic battle against evil forces determined to shatter the God-given unity of Holy Russia. He has described the conflict as having a “metaphysical significance” as he echoes President Putin’s painting of a depraved and decadent West.

The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who played a key role in negotiating the 1995 Dayton Accords that put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, used to say that warring parties could only strike a peace deal when both had become exhausted. It is not clear that either Russia or Ukraine is yet exhausted.

But many people are — the millions of Ukrainians who are displaced, mainly sheltering in central and western Ukraine.

The displaced

Outside Ternopil’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, local volunteers crowd around a truck delivering humanitarian aid sent by churches in Sicily. They quickly unload its contents for distribution — the consignment including food, clothes and diapers. They make short work of the unloading.

Nearby, some of the displaced sort through items already laid out in front of the cathedral.

“People come here from the east and south of Ukraine with nothing,” says Maria, a 30-year-old local journalist. “They arrive with just what they were wearing when they crawled out of bunkers and fled.”

She has taken time off from work to help with the humanitarian effort.

“They need clothes, shampoo, soap, food and toys for the kids,” she adds. “They also have no money — most Ukrainians live from month to month and don’t have savings.”

Some 230 kilometers to the east, in the crowded central Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia, accommodating the steady influx of evacuees from farther east and south is becoming harder.

Despite local aid efforts here on the ground, most continue moving west.

“People come here in an awful state: they’re physically exhausted because the way here is long and most probably they were staying in the basements and in shelters for days and weeks in terrible conditions,” says Valeriy Dyakiv, director of a reception facility sheltering around 300 evacuees.

Dyakiv told me air raid sirens sounded at the same time a young couple was arriving with their child, after having been under shelling for days.

The couple’s daughter “got a panic attack; she started screaming and she couldn’t keep quiet and so he hugged her, and then she finally calmed, eventually,” Dyakiv said.

People from all walks of life shelter at Dyakiv’s reception — among them theater director Oleksandr Kovshun and thespian Olena Prystup. Kovshun is the director of the world famous Berezil Theater in Kharkiv, the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian town.

“The building is still intact,” he tells me. But a building next door was struck by a Russian missile.

Prystup said many of the theater company sheltered at the Berezil for 10 days mainly huddled in the capacious wardrobe. She and her photographer husband decided to leave the city when the neighboring building was hit. She has been in Vinnytsia for three weeks and with Kovshun has organized drama classes and poetry readings for the kids.

“But I so want to go back to our theater,” she says.

Journalists

Journalists are urging Ukrainian authorities to clarify and discuss wartime reporting rules following a series of ugly confrontations between TV crews and Ukrainian officials and soldiers at media centers in both Kyiv and Lviv, as well as on the streets. A team of British broadcasters was at the center of a heated confrontation Thursday when Ukrainian soldiers waved guns at the reporter and crew as they filmed blast scenes from Russian missile strikes.

Ukrainian authorities say real-time footage can be used by Russian commanders to assess the impact of missile strikes and to repeat an attack, if they judge it unsuccessful. Foreign TV crews have been accused of being “camera killers.”

Media companies say the Russians have other means for damage assessment — including footage and images they get from drones and satellites. They also point out that the Russian armed forces are notorious in Syria for striking at targets twice. The technique is called a “double tap” — when an initial strike is followed by a second attack shortly after, targeting and often killing rescuers and first responders who have converged on the site.

There have been mounting frustrations among the foreign press corps over accreditation hold-ups, resulting in applications taking weeks to receive approval or never materializing at all. Ukrainian photographers have complained of being obstructed in Kyiv and having their cameras snatched or broken. Journalists, led by the local Ukrainian media, appealed this week to authorities to develop more transparent rules for covering Russian shelling.

With relations souring, Ukraine’s defense and culture ministries issued a statement this week urging the media to adhere to the rules of martial law. They praised the media, saying: “It is difficult to overestimate the work of a journalist in wartime. Working in combat zones, they are constantly in an atmosphere of fear and tension, risking their own lives to convey the most complete, true and unbiased picture of developments.

But they continued: “Under martial law, information must be balanced and portioned, as the enemy is constantly monitoring the information field to counter Ukrainian defenders. So, we call on the media to continue to follow the rules during martial law so as not to endanger themselves and others.”

The ministries acknowledged the tensions, adding that after the war, government and media can pool their experience and “work together to develop the necessary solutions for more effective interaction.”

In the meantime, media organizations — foreign and local — are worried at the lack of clarity about what is allowed or not.
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The first European Union-China summit in nearly two years took place Friday by video link and lasted just two hours.

The European Union warned China not to support Russia’s war in Ukraine or interfere with international sanctions against Moscow, during a virtual summit that failed to ease sharp differences between the sides over the conflict.

Speaking after the meeting, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen offered this assessment of what EU officials described as frank and open discussions on Russia’s war in Ukraine: “Frank and open means we exchanged very clearly opposing views. This is not a conflict, this is a war. This is not a European affair, this is a global affair.”

The EU has called on China to pressure Russia to end the war — or at least open humanitarian corridors in Ukraine — saying that as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Beijing had a special responsibility to act.

“So we also made very clear that China should, if not support, at least not interfere with our sanctions,” von der Leyen said. “We discussed that and also the fact that no European citizen would understand any support to Russia’s ability to wage war. Moreover, it would lead to a major reputational damage for China here in Europe.”

EU officials also warn that undermining sanctions on Russia could trigger economic consequences. Von der Leyen noted the EU and China trade roughly $2.2 billion worth of goods and services every day — compared with just over $364 million between Russia and China. Meanwhile, European and other Western companies are suspending operations or exiting Russia over the war.

“The business sector is watching very closely the events and evaluating how countries are positioning themselves,” von der Leyen said. “This is a question of trust, of reliability and, of course, of decisions on long-term investments.”

China has tried to cast itself as a neutral player in the Ukraine war, while also trying to strengthen strategic ties with Moscow and keep its economic ones with Europe on track. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported President Xi Jinping saying he hoped the EU could form its view of China “independently.”

Analysts described Friday’s summit as “frosty” and said China was concerned about the closer relations between Europe and the U.S. in recent months.

Ties between the EU and China have been increasingly strained in recent years over issues including Taiwan and China’s human rights record. Both were addressed at the summit, along with areas where more cooperation is possible, including climate change and COVID-19 vaccines.

EU officials also called on China to stop barring imports from member state Lithuania over its warming ties with Taiwan.
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Ukraine’s presidential office says Ukrainian and Russian officials held online peace talks Friday, but gave no further details. The meeting follows Tuesday’s face-to-face peace talks in Istanbul, which both Turkish and Ukrainian officials described as positive.  

In a television interview Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, while acknowledging that some Russian commitments to deescalate in Ukraine remain unfulfilled, said efforts continue to build on Tuesday’s meeting. 

Cavusoglu said in the second stage, the necessary work is being carried out to bring together the foreign ministers. He said he texted Thursday with both Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmtryo Kuleba and Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and conveyed Turkey’s views on this issue to them, saying mediators will do whatever they can to make this happen.

Last month, Turkey hosted a meeting between Kuleba and Lavrov, which ended in deadlock. But Lavrov, speaking Friday during a visit to India, said peace talks needed to continue and that they were preparing a reply to Ukrainian proposals made at Tuesday’s Istanbul meeting. 

Lavrov, appearing to strike a positive note, said Kyiv had shown “much more understanding” of the situation in Crimea and Donbas, as well as demands for Ukraine’s neutrality. Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region by force and is calling for international recognition of the breakaway republic’s Donbas and Luhansk regions.  

But Kyiv insists it remains committed to retaining the country’s territorial integrity. Cavusoglu has said there were convergences in those critical areas of dispute.  

Russian expert Samuel Bendett, of the Center for Naval Analyses International Affairs Group, said Turkey is now playing an increasingly important role in peace efforts. 

“Turkey is a significant factor here because the Russian president is talking to the Turkish president, the Ukrainian president is talking to the Turkish president, so Turkey is involved and in the know,” he said. “So potentially, it could be an important mediator if both sides feel it’s time for Turkey to step up into that role.” 

Kyiv is looking to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to use his influence on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to arrange a meeting with Ukraine’s president. 

Kuleba reiterated his call Friday for a presidential summit. For now, however, Moscow insists such a meeting is only possible once there are tangible proposals to resolve the conflict.  

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich also appears to be playing a growing role in peace efforts, attending Tuesday’s Istanbul talks, with Cavusoglu saying Abramovich is making sincere efforts to end the war. 

 
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised India for not judging the Ukraine crisis in a “one-sided way,” and said that the two countries would find ways to trade using local currencies.

“Our relations were very sustainable during many difficult times in the past,” the Russian foreign minister said during a visit to New Delhi Friday. “We appreciate that India is taking this situation in the entirety of facts.”

New Delhi faces intense pressure from Western countries to join them in taking tougher action against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

India has not condemned the invasion, abstaining from United Nations resolutions censuring Moscow and is pursuing deals to purchase crude oil from Russia at discounted prices, irking the United States and its allies.

Lavrov also met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who conveyed his country was ready to contribute to the peace efforts.

India’s foreign ministry said that during discussions with Lavrov, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar emphasized the importance of cessation of violence, ending hostilities in Ukraine and called for resolving differences through dialogue and diplomacy.

Lavrov, who arrived in India from China, which has also not condemned the invasion, is seen as trying to shore up support among Moscow’s two big Asian allies in the face of tough Western sanctions.

Talking to reporters after his discussions with the Indian foreign minister, Lavrov said that Moscow developed a system to trade in national currencies many years ago and that “more and more transactions” would be done through this mechanism for trade with countries such as India, bypassing the dollar, euro and other major currencies.

Lavrov said Russia is ready to supply India with any goods it wants. “I have no doubt that a way would be (found) to bypass the artificial impediments, which illegal, unilateral sanctions by the West create. This relates also to the area of military technical cooperation.”

More than two-thirds of India’s military hardware is of Russian origin and the supply of spares is critical for New Delhi, whose tense border standoff with China shows no sign of easing.

The Indian foreign ministry, in a statement, said that that during Friday’s discussions, Foreign Minister Jaishankar stressed that “it is important to both countries that their economic, technological and people-to-people contacts remain stable and predictable.”

India has defended its decision to pursue oil deals with Moscow, which is offering crude at discounted prices.

“When the oil prices go up, I think it is natural for countries to go out into the market and look for what are the good deals for their people,” Jaishankar said on Thursday. He pointed out that Europe has remained a major buyer of Russian oil and gas even after the crisis in Ukraine unfolded.

On Thursday, U.S. and British diplomats were in New Delhi to try to persuade India not to undermine the Western sanctions on Russia.

U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics Daleep Singh, who met Indian officials in New Delhi, said Washington did not want to see a “rapid acceleration” in oil purchases from Russia or mechanisms that “are designed to prop up the ruble” or circumvent financial sanctions.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, said at a briefing on Thursday that it is not seeking to change the relationships different countries have with Russia but to “do all we can to see to it that the international community is speaking in unison, speaking loudly against this unjustified, unprovoked premeditated aggression, calling for an end to the violence using the leverage that countries including India, have to those ends.”

India’s ties with Russia, which date back to the Cold War years, have remained strong, even as it has built close ties with the United States in recent years. India is a part of the Quad alliance along with the U.S, Japan and Australia.

Analysts say India is attempting a balancing act as it navigates ties with both sides. Although annual trade between India and Russia adds up to only about $9 billion, New Delhi depends on Moscow for much of its military hardware, while it sees its partnership with the U.S. and its allies as important to countering an aggressive China.
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The besieged Southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is waiting Friday to see whether Russia will honor a humanitarian corridor that could allow aid into the city and allow evacuations out.

“We remain hopeful, we are in action moving towards Mariupol … but it’s not yet clear that this will happen today,” Ewan Watson, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday.

Convoys delivering the aid and the evacuation buses were stopped Thursday by Russian forces.

Turkey’s top diplomat, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a televised interview Thursday that Turkey is working to bring the two sides back to the bargaining table.

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, said that talks would resume Friday by videoconference.

A Russian regional official says two Ukrainian helicopters launched an airstrike on a fuel depot early Friday in the  Russian city of Belgorod, setting the facility afire.  The incident is the first time Russia has reported a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory.

Ukraine’s president said in his nightly address Thursday that he has stripped two top generals of their rank.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the generals “antiheroes.”  One of the generals had been the chief of internal security at the country’s main intelligence agency, while the other had been the intelligence agency’s chief in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian leader said he did “not have time to deal with all the traitors, but gradually they will all be punished.”

Ukrainian authorities estimate Russia overnight withdrew 700 units of equipment from the Kyiv region, moving them back into Belarus, VOA’s Jamie Dettmer writes from Vinnytsia, Ukraine.

Gen. Oleksandr Gruzevych, deputy chief of staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the departing armored personnel carriers could be redeployed to eastern Ukraine’s Donbas to strengthen forces there for an offensive.

“The troops that are leaving the area around Kyiv are pretty significant,” Gruzevych said.

The withdrawal seems to be consistent with Russian declarations that it intends to deescalate around Kyiv and to focus on the Donbas. Ukraine’s General Staff said Friday that it believes Russia aims to seize areas in the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that it does not currently occupy, as well as blockade the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and it predicts Russian will continue to relocate troops to eastern Ukraine.

However, Russian ground forces are facing stiff resistance in their efforts to enlarge their occupation in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian military officials say overnight seven Russian attacks were repelled in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. They claimed three Russian tanks, two armored personnel carriers, two artillery systems were destroyed and a Russian drone shot down.

But Russia is also transferring more missile units to Belarus — a possible prelude to an intensification of ballistic missiles attacks on targets across Ukraine.

Britain’s military intelligence division warned early Thursday that a majority of Russia’s forces near Kyiv were holding in place “despite the withdrawal of a limited number of units.”

“Heavy fighting will likely take place in the suburbs of the city in coming days,” Air Vice-Marshal Mick Smeath, the British defense attaché, said in a statement.

A senior U.S. defense official described the Russian movements as “minor,” warning that Russian forces continue to target Kyiv and other northern cities with airstrikes and artillery.

“It has not been wholesale by any means, nor has it been rapid,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said later Thursday, saying less than 20% of the Russian forces arrayed against Kyiv and Chernihiv had been moved.

“It’s not exactly clear … where they’re going to go, for how long, and for what purpose,” Kirby said. “But we do not see any indication that they’re going to be sent home.”

U.S. defense officials believe most of the repositioned Russian forces are likely headed to Belarus for supplies and maintenance before heading back into Ukraine, possibly to help Russian forces fighting in the eastern part of the country.

However, even there, U.S. officials believe, Russia’s military has been stymied.

“As for actual progress, pinching it off or sealing it off and fixing Ukrainian armed forces [in the Donbas], they have been frustrated and not successful,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence.

Russia has put more effort into the Donbas, the official added, warning that “it could mean that this could be a lengthy, more drawn-out conflict.”

Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the largest-ever release from the strategic petroleum reserve, announcing the release of 1 million barrels a day for six months — a move aimed at lowering domestic oil prices as the sanctions on Russian oil and gas have sent prices skyrocketing globally.

This is the third time Biden has ordered releases from the strategic reserve. The first two did not cause a meaningful decline in prices in global oil markets.

Sanctions

Russia on Thursday said it would expand the list of European Union officials prohibited from entering the country in response to a broad range of Western sanctions that continue to be imposed on Russia after its February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

The travel ban applies to the EU’s “top leadership,” which includes “a number of European Union commissioners and heads of EU military structures” and the “vast majority” of parliamentary members, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday. Other public officials and “media workers who are personally responsible for promoting illegal anti-Russian sanctions” were also targeted.

VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin, Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb, United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer and White House correspondent Anita Powell contributed to this report.
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Golden butterflies adorn the walls of the Netherland’s only euthanasia expertise center, put up in remembrance of thousands of patients who have chosen to die with dignity over the past two decades.

Situated in a leafy upmarket suburb of The Hague, the Euthanasia Expertise Center is the only one of its kind, giving information, assisting medical doctors and providing euthanasia as end-of-life care, which was legalized in a world first in the Netherlands on April 1, 2002.

Belgium soon followed later that year and Spain last year became the sixth country to adopt euthanasia — the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve a person’s suffering, for instance through a lethal injection given by a doctor.

The number of people seeking euthanasia is growing in the Netherlands, with some 7,666 last year, up by more than 10 percent from the year before, according to official figures.

The vast majority are aged 60 or over, suffering from cancer or other terminal illnesses.

“Twenty years ago, when the law was passed, it was known, but certainly not used as often as today,” said Sonja Kersten, director of the Euthanasia Expertise Center.

The reasons are many: an ageing Dutch population; the fact that euthanasia is no longer a taboo subject and society has opened up to the issue.

“Dying with dignity is a debate that’s growing within Dutch society, which is quite open to the subject,” Kersten said.

‘Existential question’

Euthanasia is only authorized in a few countries around the world.

In Belgium, which will mark two decades of euthanasia in May, some 40 French citizens also benefitted from the practice last year.

The decision to ask for euthanasia as end-of-life care remains a “difficult and existential question,” Kersten said.

“It’s neither a patient’s right, nor a doctor’s duty,” to have euthanasia, she added.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia can only be carried out under strict conditions set down in Dutch law.

Children aged up to 16 need the permission of their parents and guardians, while parents must be involved in the process for children aged 16 and 17. From 18, any Dutch citizen may ask for assisted death.

In all cases, the patient must have “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement” and must have requested to die in a way that is “voluntary, well considered and with full conviction”.

Other criteria apply as well, like the absence of a reasonable alternative to the patient’s situation.

Doctors, too, cannot be forced to perform euthanasia.

‘Die at home’

The Euthanasia Expertise Centre helps doctors through the process by sharing knowledge and providing guidance. At the same time, the center helps patients whose doctors refuse to help them.

The center, established in 2012, is a foundation but patient care is reimbursed by health insurers.

It first positioned itself as the “Levenseindekliniek,” Dutch for “End-of-life clinic,” offering on-site euthanasia.

But even before the start, it became apparent that most patients preferred to die at home, Kersten said.

Today, the center can call upon a network of about 140 doctors and nurses around the country, employed by the Euthanasia Expertise Center.

Most euthanasia requests, however, are handled by the patient’s own physician, with whom they already have a relationship of trust. Last year, this was true for 80 percent of euthanasia procedures performed in the country.

“There are however still doctors in the Netherlands who are opposed to euthanasia,” said Kersten, adding “they have every right.”

The center’s medical team itself provided euthanasia to nearly 900 people in 2020, out of nearly 3,000 requests, with figures on the rise.

About 20 percent had dementia or psychiatric disorders.

The Netherlands’ highest court ruled in 2020 that doctors can euthanize patients with severe dementia without the fear of prosecution.

It concerns patients with advanced dementia who are no longer mentally competent but who previously had a clear request for euthanasia.

The decision followed a landmark case, not related to the Expertise center, in which a doctor was acquitted of providing euthanasia on a woman in 2016 with severe Alzheimer’s disease, who earlier requested the procedure.
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Australia said Friday it will send armored vehicles to Ukraine after a plea for much needed military aid from its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made during an address to the Australian Parliament.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told lawmakers in Australia by video link Thursday from Ukraine that those “fighting against evil” must be armed.

He urged Australia to send Bushmaster armored personnel carriers made by a French company, Thales, in the Victorian city of Bendigo. They are built to carry up to 10 soldiers safely through conflict zones. They have extensive ballistic protection and a V-shaped floor designed to disperse the blast of explosive devices more effectively than a conventional flat floor.

Defense Minister Peter Dutton said Friday that planning for the deliveries is under way, although Australian officials have not confirmed how many vehicles would be sent or when.

“We are doing work on just logistically how we would get the Bushmasters there in the numbers that they need,” he said. “Even on one of the huge planes you can probably only put three, maybe four. Normally, we would put them on a ship and they could sail, but I just do not think we have got those sort of timelines. So, we are very, very much open to the request.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denounced “Russia’s brutal, illegal and unjustified invasion” of Ukraine.

Australia has already sent missiles and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine, now about a month into a war with Russia. Canberra has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian politicians, military commanders and businesspeople. It will now impose a 35% tariff on imports from Russia and Belarus.

Morrison called the steps “the largest ever imposition of sanctions by Australia against a single country.”
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A Russian opera said Thursday it had canceled a concert by Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko over her comments on Moscow’s military operation in neighboring Ukraine.

The 50-year-old singer who lives in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Wednesday “condemned” the operation, after she and other Russian artists in Europe and the United States came under pressure to publicly take a stance.

The Novosibirsk Opera in Siberia canceled a concert at which she was to perform on June 2.

“Living in Europe and having the opportunity to perform in European concert halls appears to be more important (for her) than the fate of the homeland,” it said in a statement.

But “our country is brimming with talent and the idols of yesterday will be replaced by others with a clear civic position.”

Netrebko, who has voiced pro-Kremlin views over the years, and in 2014 posed with a flag in the separatist Donetsk region in Ukraine, also holds Austrian citizenship.

Netrebko’s statement on Wednesday was, however, not enough for the Metropolitan Opera in New York to reconsider its ban on her performance there. 
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Turkey is in the grip of nationwide protests by doctors over surging violence and worsening economic conditions. The country is witnessing an unprecedented increase in doctors quitting to take jobs overseas, which as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, threatens one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s major achievements.
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Yulia isn’t convinced Ukraine should give up any part of its territory to Russia — even if by doing so it could end the war.

The 25-year-old from Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv is now living in a shelter in the western Ukrainian town of Lviv, and her life is on hold while the conflict rages. 

She fled Bucha as “there were bombardments and stuff like that. And a lot of times it was really scary.” Her mother went to Germany, but Yulia decided to remain in Ukraine “because it is my country.” She doesn’t want Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to offer any concessions to Russia, including territorial ones, even to stop the fighting.

Many Ukrainians feel the war is going their way following Russian reversals northwest and east of Kyiv. They are heartened by Russian announcements that military operations around Kyiv and some other northern cities will be scaled back and the focus now will turn fully on “liberating” the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainians see that as a statement of the obvious and one forced on Moscow by the valor and effectiveness of Ukraine’s defense forces, which have stymied all of Russia’s efforts to advance on Ukraine’s capital.

With the Russian invasion faltering, Ukrainian confidence is soaring despite continued missile barrages, and talk is turning to how this war may end.

Neutrality, with guarantees

This week, Ukrainian and Russian diplomats met in Turkey. Ukraine said it was ready to become a neutral state — with security guarantees — to disarm Russian fears it might join the NATO military alliance. And the proposals included a 15-year consultation period on the status of the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine and illegally annexed in 2014.

The status of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be discussed directly by Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy at a later date, according to the Ukrainian proposal. Any peace deal would then have to go to a referendum, under Ukraine’s draft proposals.

Yiannis Valinakis, Greece’s former deputy foreign minister, said Kyiv might have come up with this sequence “to alleviate public opinion pressure on Zelenskyy.” If that is the plan, it might not work — even if the Russians eventually accept something along the lines Kyiv is proposing.

Zelenskyy may face a big challenge in persuading Ukrainians to approve the proposals in a referendum, judging by interviews VOA conducted in western Ukraine. Said Yulia, “I don’t agree with giving land away because Ukraine is one country in terms of our Constitution and the territory defined by the Constitution.” She said she believed the Ukrainian army could overrun the Moscow-controlled regions in the Donbas, and she isn’t alone. Many Ukrainians say they are braced for the war to go on for a long time.

Archbishop Vasyl Semeniuk, a Greek-Catholic prelate in the western Ukraine town of Ternopil, said Ukraine has a sacred duty to vanquish the Russian army on the battlefield, and he said Kyiv should not give up on the Donbas or Crimea.

“Why should we give any land away, what for?” he asked. “So many people have died. So many cities have been destroyed. Those territories belong to us, and they grabbed them.”

“Mariupol has been destroyed. Kharkiv is destroyed, and other towns near Kyiv,” Semeniuk told VOA. “There are dead bodies in the street; they run over them with tanks. The war will continue. We have to stop this army that attacked Georgia, Syria and Transnistria.”

Both Washington and Moscow have cast doubts about the prospects for the peace talks, and U.S. officials are questioning the Kremlin’s sincerity, saying actions speak louder than words. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said midweek that he hadn’t noticed anything “really promising” in the talks so far.

Taken a turn

Nonetheless, there is a feeling in Ukraine that the war is entering a new stage. Ukrainians suspect it might be the endgame; others think it will mean fighting continues but almost exclusively in eastern Ukraine.

They echo remarks made Thursday by Britain’s Chief of the Defense Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, who said Putin has “lost” his war on Ukraine through a series of “catastrophic misjudgments.” Radakin said Russian officers had taken soldiers into combat without their realizing what they were undertaking — a move he described as “insane” and “morally bankrupt.”

Radakin said there were “early indications” that Russian forces were retreating, a move that was making Putin’s military open to attack from Ukrainian defenders. “I think we are seeing that Russia’s ambitions to take Kyiv and Russia’s ambitions to take the whole of Ukraine and do that in a very swift and impressive fashion, those ambitions have fallen apart.”

Ukrainians put more emphasis on the courage of their army for Putin’s setback.

So far, the guns have not been silenced around Kyiv, and British intelligence officials said they expected some heavy fighting around the capital in the coming days. Russian forces blasted Kharkiv Oblast midweek with Grad rockets, and Russian rocket strikes hit a Red Cross building in besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine. Dnipro in central Ukraine suffered a missile strike, and Chernihiv in northern Ukraine came under “colossal attack,” according to local officials.

But this has done nothing to stop more normal life from reappearing in much of western Ukraine, and slowly in parts of central Ukraine. In Lviv, most stores have reopened, including shopping malls, and there is bustle on the streets. Just three weeks ago, pharmacies were running low on antibiotics and even painkillers. Now they are well stocked, thanks to supplies from Europe. The occasional air raid siren doesn’t prompt people in any large numbers to rush to bunkers as they did a few weeks ago.

Outside Lviv, on highways and in nearby towns and villages, there are still checkpoints, but many are unmanned and at others traffic is waved through with few document checks. Part of the reason is farmers have been putting away their guns to focus on planting crops with the sowing season beginning.

It is also a sign that people in western Ukraine are becoming more relaxed. Many Kyivans are starting to head back to their homes, and the refugee flow across the border into Poland has decreased from a flood to a trickle.
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