ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine: Russia plans to annex much of eastern Ukraine later this month, a senior US official warned, and the Mariupol steel mill that is the city’s last stronghold of resistance came under renewed assault a day after the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.
Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the US believes the Kremlin also will recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said.
Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
Mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, Internet and cellphone service has been severed and a Russian school curriculum will soon be imposed, Carpenter said. Ukraine’s government says Russia has introduced its ruble as currency there.
More than 100 people — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left Mariupol’s rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the northwest. Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress.
Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.
At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists. The Russian military said some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia or Russian-controlled areas. The Kremlin has denied it.
The Russian bombardment of the sprawling plant by air, tank and ship resumed after the partial evacuation, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which is helping to defend the mill, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Orlov said high-level negotiations were underway among Ukraine, Russia and international organizations on evacuating more people.
The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would be rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the southern port city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-on evacuation routes.
Before the weekend evacuation, overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the plant along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders who have refused Russian demands they surrender.
As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Russian forces have pounded much of the city into rubble, trapping civilians with little food, water, heat or medicine.
Some Mariupol residents left on their own, often in damaged private cars.
As sunset approached, Mariupol resident Yaroslav Dmytryshyn rattled up to a reception center in Zaporizhzhia in a car with a back seat full of youngsters and two signs taped to the back window: “Children” and “Little ones.”
“I can’t believe we survived,” he said, looking worn but in good spirits after two days on the road.
“There is no Mariupol whatsoever,” he said. “Someone needs to rebuild it, and it will take millions of tons of gold.” He said they lived just across the railroad tracks from the steel plant. “Ruined,” he said. “The factory is gone completely.”
Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the cease-fire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, said she could see the steelworks from her window, when she dared to look.
“We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the steel plant were afraid to board buses, fearing they would be taken to Russia. He said the UN assured him they could go to areas his government controls.
Mariupol lies in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, and is key to Russia’s campaign in the east. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere.
More than 1 million people, including nearly 200,000 children, have been taken from Ukraine to Russia, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday, according to state-owned news agency TASS.
Defense Ministry official Mikhail Mizintsev said that number included 11,550 people, including 1,847 children, in the previous 24 hours, “without the participation of the Ukrainian authorities.”
Those civilians “were evacuated to the territory of the Russian Federation from the dangerous regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” and other parts of Ukraine, according to the report. No details were provided.
Zelensky said Monday that at least 220 Ukrainian children have been killed by the Russian army since the war began, and 1,570 educational institutions have been destroyed or damaged.
Failing to seize Kyiv, the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted his focus to the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Russia said it struck dozens of military targets in the region, including concentrations of troops and weapons and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, west of the Donbas.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Moscow’s troops are firing indiscriminately, killing many civilians while making only slow progress.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea Coast, Maksym Marchenko, said on Telegram that a Russian missile strike Monday caused deaths and injuries. He gave no details. Zelensky said the attack destroyed a dormitory and killed a 14-year-old boy.
Ukraine said Russia also struck a strategic road and rail bridge west of Odesa. The bridge was heavily damaged in previous Russian strikes, and its destruction would cut a supply route for weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania.
However a satellite image captured by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed the bridge still standing as of noon Monday.
Another image, taken Monday, showed nearly 50 Russian military helicopters at Stary Oskol, a Russian base close to the Ukrainian border and some 175 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The helicopters were stationed on the tarmac, runway and grass of the otherwise civilian airport, with military equipment nearby.
In the war in Ukraine, Russia has been flying military attack helicopters low to the ground to try to avoid anti-aircraft missiles.
US official: Russia plans to annex parts of eastern Ukraine
https://arab.news/494tk
US official: Russia plans to annex parts of eastern Ukraine
- Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions
- At least some of the civilians were apparently taken to a village controlled by Russia-backed separatists
France holds Algerian influencers on charges of urging violence
- Prosecutors announced the arrests of Imad Tintin and Yousseff on Friday and Interior minister Bruno Retailleau on Sunday announced a third arrest
LYON: French authorities on Sunday held three Algerians suspected of inciting violence in TikTok videos, with at least two of them facing terror-related charges.
The arrests come amid growing political tensions between Paris and its former North African colony.
A video blogger known as “Imad Tintin” was arrested Friday outside Grenoble after publishing a video urging followers to “burn alive, kill and rape on French territory.”
The post was taken down after receiving 800,000 views but hard-line right-wing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau published a video grab on his social media accounts, condemning the publication as “vile.”
A judge on Sunday placed the 31-year-old blogger under judicial supervision, Grenoble prosecutors said.
He was due to appear Monday in a fast-track trial on charges of “direct incitement of an act of terrorism,” the state prosecution service said.
“Imad Tintin” entered France in December 2021 and applied for a residence permit in August 2023 after his marriage to a French woman. But his application was refused and he is also subject to an expulsion order.
In a second case, a 25-year-old Algerian identified as Youcef A. but known on social media as Zazou Youssef was remanded in custody Friday in the western city of Brest, prosecutor Camille Miansoni said in a statement.
He will stand trial there on February 24 on a charge of “publicly advocating an act of terrorism” in posts to his hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers, she said.
He faces up to seven years in jail and a 100,000-euro ($103,000) fine if convicted, the statement added.
Zazou Youssef appeared in a video posted on TikTok on December 31, calling for attacks in France and violence in Algeria.
He was living in France on a temporary residency permit.
TikTok told AFP the account from which the video was posted had been banned for posting several videos that broke its rules on hate speech.
Prosecutors announced the arrests of Imad Tintin and Yousseff on Friday and Interior minister Bruno Retailleau on Sunday announced a third arrest.
The third man was detained in the southern coastal city of Montpellier for violent comments targeting an Algerian activist opposed to that country’s government.
Prosecutors told AFP local authorities had reported a video in which the influencer said of the activist: “Kill him, let him suffer.”
The regional prefect’s office told AFP it was considering withdrawing that blogger’s residence permit and issuing an expulsion order.
Tensions have surged between France and Algeria after President Emmanuel Macron renewed French support for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara during a landmark visit to the kingdom last year.
Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, is mostly under the de facto control of Morocco. But it is claimed by the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, who are demanding a self-determination referendum and are supported by Algiers.
French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, a major figure in modern francophone literature, has meanwhile been imprisoned by the Algerian authorities since mid-November on national security charges.
Mentioning Sansal’s case on Sunday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said he had “doubts” over Algeria’s commitment to a roadmap set out by the two sides in 2022 to smooth post-colonial relations.
“Zazou Youssef” and “Imad Tintin” have joined “the war waged in France by the Algerian regime,” Chawki Benzehra, an Algerian dissident, told AFP.
Benzehra took refuge in France after taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.
He accused the Algerian authorities of mobilizing a “significant” number of influencers calling for “violence.”
FBI looking into New Orleans attack suspect’s visits to Egypt, Canada
- The FBI said Jabbar made at least two trips to New Orleans in the months prior to the attack, one in October and the other in November
WASHINGTON: The FBI is looking into past visits to Egypt and Canada by the suspect in the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people after a truck was rammed into a crowd of revelers, an FBI official told reporters on Sunday.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US Army veteran aged 42 who had pledged allegiance to the Daesh extremist group, was the suspect in the attack and the FBI says he acted alone. He was killed in a shootout with police after the rampage, which also injured dozens of people and has been labeled by the FBI as an act of terrorism.
“We have also tracked that Jabbar traveled to Cairo, Egypt, from June 22 until July 3 of 2023. A few days later he flew to Ontario, Canada, on July 10 and returned to the US on July 13 of 2023,” Lyonel Myrthil, FBI special agent in charge of the New Orleans field office, said at a press briefing.
“Our agents are getting answers as to where he went, who he met with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions in our city in New Orleans,” he added.
The FBI also said Jabbar made at least two trips to New Orleans in the months prior to the attack, one in October and the other in November.
The suspect stayed in a rental home in New Orleans during that time, the FBI said, adding he recorded videos with Meta glasses traveling through the French Quarter, the neighborhood in New Orleans where the attack occurred on Bourbon Street.
The New Orleans coroner’s office has identified all 14 deceased victims, among whom the youngest was aged 18 and the oldest was 63. Most were in their 20s.
Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor, who devoted his life for peace, dies
- Fukahori was only 14 when the US dropped the bomb on Nagasaki on Aug.9, 1945, killing tens of thousands of people, including his family
TOKYO: Shigemi Fukahori, a survivor of the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bombing, who devoted his life to advocating for peace and campaigning against nuclear weapons, has died. He was 93.
Fukahori died at a hospital in Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, on Jan.3, the Urakami Catholic Church, where he prayed almost daily until last year, said on Sunday. Local media reported he died of old age.
The church, located about 500 meters from ground zero and near the Nagasaki Peace Park, is widely seen as a symbol of hope and peace, as its bell tower and some statues and survived the nuclear bombing.
Fukahori was only 14 when the US dropped the bomb on Nagasaki on Aug.9, 1945, killing tens of thousands of people, including his family. That came three days after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people. Japan surrendered days later, ending World War II and the country’s nearly half-century of aggression across Asia.
Fukahori, who worked at a shipyard about 3 kilometers from where the bomb dropped, couldn’t talk about what happened for years, not only because of the painful memories but also how powerless he felt then.
About 15 years ago, he became more outspoken after encountering, during a visit to Spain, a man who experienced the bombing of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War when he was also 14 years old. The shared experience helped Fukahori open up.
“On the day the bomb dropped, I heard a voice asking for help. When I walked over and held out my hand, the person’s skin melted. I still remember how that felt,” Fukahori told Japan’s national broadcaster NHK in 2019.
Blinken wades into South Korea political crisis
- Blinken will meet his counterpart Cho Tae-yul later on Monday, the same day a warrant to arrest Yoon expires
- Trip is meant to highlight US President Biden’s efforts to build alliances and Blinken will head afterwards to Tokyo
SEOUL: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday opened a visit to crisis-riven South Korea, where he will seek delicately to encourage continuity with the policies, but not tactics, of the impeached president.
The visit comes after a weekend that saw thousands of South Koreans brave a snowstorm to stage dueling rallies in support of and opposition to President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was suspended over a failed martial law bid and resisting arrest.
Blinken will meet his counterpart Cho Tae-yul later on Monday, the same day a warrant to arrest Yoon expires.
Yoon had once been a darling of the Biden administration with his bold moves to turn the page on friction with Japan and his eye on a greater role for South Korea on global issues.
The South Korean leader joined Biden for a landmark three-way summit with Japan’s prime minister and — months before declaring martial law — was picked to lead a global democracy summit, a signature initiative for the outgoing US administration.
Blinken’s trip is meant to highlight US President Joe Biden’s efforts to build alliances. He will head afterwards to Tokyo.
It was crucial, in the eyes of his advisers, not to snub South Korea, which has a fraught and often competitive relationship with Japan, also home to thousands of US troops.
It will likely be his final trip as secretary of state before US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
An attempt to arrest Yoon by investigators on Friday failed when a tense six-hour standoff with his presidential security service ended over fears of violence, with his supporters also camped outside.
Thousands descended on his residence again Sunday despite bitterly cold and snowy conditions blanketing the capital — with one camp demanding Yoon’s arrest while the other called for his impeachment to be declared invalid.
“Snow is nothing for me. They can bring all the snow and we’ll still be here,” said anti-Yoon protester Lee Jin-ah, 28.
“I quit my job to come to protect our country and democracy,” she said.
Yoon has pledged to “fight” those questioning his short-lived martial law move, and supporter Park Young-chul, in his 70s, likened the current situation to “war.”
“I went through war and minus 20 degrees in the snow to fight the commies. This snow is nothing. Our war is happening again,” he told AFP.
Yoon faces criminal charges of insurrection, one of a few crimes not subject to presidential immunity, meaning he could be sentenced to prison or, at worst, the death penalty.
If the warrant is executed, Yoon would become the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested.
Blinken may face some criticism from the South Korean political left for the visit but should be able to navigate the political crisis, said Sydney Seiler, a former US intelligence officer focused on Korea who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Blinken would mainly seek to keep the focus on challenges such as China and North Korea, he said.
In a statement, the State Department did not directly mention the political crisis but said Blinken would seek to preserve trilateral cooperation with Japan, which has included enhanced intelligence sharing on North Korea.
Blinken’s visit comes at a time of change for both countries, with Trump returning to the White House on January 20.
Paradoxically, while Biden worked closely with the conservative Yoon, Trump in his first term enjoyed a warm relationship with progressive then-president Moon Jae-in, who encouraged the US president’s groundbreaking personal diplomacy with North Korea.
The Biden administration has stressed since the crisis that it is reaching out to South Korean politicians across the divide, amid the uncertainties on who will lead Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Progressive opposition leader Lee Jae-myung — who himself faces election disqualification in a court case — supports diplomacy with North Korea.
But the former labor activist has also taken stances that differ from those of both Biden and Trump.
Lee has criticized deployment of US-made THAAD missile defenses, which Washington says are meant to protect against North Korea but which China sees as a provocation.
South Korea’s left has long championed a harder stance on Japan over its brutal 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
US officials said they had no warning of Yoon’s imposition of martial law, which brought masses of protesters to the streets.
Eight civilians killed in central Mali attack
- The Mali military seized power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021 and has since broken off its anti-militant alliance with former colonial power France and European partners
DAKAR: At least eight civilians have been killed in central Mali, several sources said on Sunday, accusing the Malian army for the latest attack in the troubled West African country.
The country is embroiled in a political, security and economic crisis, and has since 2012 been ravaged by different groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda and Daesh.
It also faces a separatist insurgency in the volatile desert north.
“A Hilux four-by-four vehicle ... was heading toward a refugee camp in Mauritania when ... the Malian army fired. At least eight civilians were killed” on Thursday, a local official said.
HIGHLIGHT
The country is embroiled in a political, security and economic crisis, and has since 2012 been ravaged by militant groups.
“All of the vehicle’s passengers died. They were buried in a mass grave,” a parent of one of the victims said.
A local humanitarian source confirmed the incident, saying the eight civilians were “killed by bullets ... between the localities of Niono and Nampala.”
In a statement, the Azawad Liberation Front, which groups several separatist outfits in Mali’s north made up of the Tuareg ethnic minority, blamed the Malian army for the “deliberate criminal act,” which it said left nine people dead.
The Mali military seized power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021 and has since broken off its anti-militant alliance with former colonial power France and European partners.
On Saturday, Mali’s army said its forces had arrested two men, one of them a leading figure in the Sahel branch of Daesh.
The army announced they had also killed several of the group’s fighters during an operation in the north of the country.
A statement from the army said they had arrested “Ould Erkehile alias Abu Rakia,” as well as “Abu Hash,” who they said was a leading figure in the group.
They blamed them for coordinating atrocities against people in the Menaka and Gao regions in the northeast of the country, as well as attacks against the army.
Elsewhere, in neighboring Burkina Faso, security officials said five civilian volunteers with the country’s army were killed in an attack this week in the west of the country.
“A forward security forces position, composed mainly of auxiliaries from the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland, was targeted by armed terrorist groups,” said one official.
“Unfortunately five people, all volunteers, were killed,” he said of Thursday’s incident in the Gnangdin area, near the border with Togo and Ghana.
The volunteers, who work with the army, are recruited locally, given weapons and three months’ training. They may operate with professional soldiers or on their own.
The incident triggered a protest among locals who blocked the main highway linking the region to the Togolese border, a local inhabitant said.
The blockade continued for several hours before the authorities broke it up, he said.
“There is a (military) unit in the area but it took them a while to react, which shouldn’t have happened. If groups can still carry out attacks despite the presence of this unit, then there’s still work to do,” he said.
Since the unrest spread to Burkina Faso in 2015, it has killed around 26,000 people and forced some 2 million people to flee their homes, according to monitoring group ACLED.
