KYIV: Russia launched a rush-hour barrage of missiles toward Ukraine on Thursday, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.
Moscow had reacted with fury to the German and American announcements, and has in the past responded to apparent Ukrainian successes with air strikes that have left millions without light, heat or water.
The Ukrainian military said it had shot down all 24 drones sent overnight by Russia, including 15 around the capital, with no damage reported.
But soon afterwards, air raid alarms sounded across Ukraine as people were heading to work, and senior officials said air defenses were shooting down incoming missiles.
In the capital, crowds of people took cover in underground metro stations, and a loud explosion was heard.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy producer, said it was conducting emergency power shutdowns in Kyiv, the surrounding region and also the regions of Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk because of the imminent danger.
Kyiv’s military administration said more than 15 missiles fired at Kyiv had been shot down, but urged people to remain on shelters.
“Missiles are flying inside the territory of Ukraine. At least two northwest through Mykolaiv region,” Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.
An air force spokesman said impacts had been registered in the central Vinnytsia region.
Western analysts say the attacks on Ukraine’s cities are more an attempt to break morale than a strategic campaign.
Both sides are expected to mount new ground offensives come the spring, and Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks in the hope of using them to break Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the south and east.
Both Ukraine and Russia have so far relied primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
“We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
Drumbeat of requests
Maintaining Kyiv’s drumbeat of requests, Zelensky said he had spoken to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and asked for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine’s allies have already provided billions of dollars worth of military support, including sophisticated US missile systems that have helped turn the tide of the war in the last six months.
The United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams but had to change tack to persuade Germany to send to Ukraine its more easily operated German-built Leopards.
Germany will send an initial company of 14 tanks from its stocks, which it said could be operational in three or four months, and approve shipments by allied European states with the aim of equipping two battalions — in the region of 100 tanks.
The Leopard is a system that any NATO member can service, and crews and mechanics can be trained together on a single model, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
“If we have been brought into this club by providing us with these vehicles, I would say our prospects look good.”
US President Joe Biden said the 31 M1 Abrams tanks that Washington will provide posed “no offensive threat” to Russia.
But Sergei Nechayev, Russia’s ambassador to Germany, on Wednesday called Berlin’s decision “extremely dangerous,” saying that it “takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation.”
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, Russia has shifted its publicly stated goals from “denazifying” and “demilitarising” its neighbor to confronting a purportedly aggressive and expansionist US-led NATO alliance.
The Russian invasion has killed thousands of civilians, forced millions from their homes and reduced entire cities to rubble.
The heaviest fighting for now is around Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 70,000 that has seen some of the most brutal fighting of the war.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was attacking “with the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region and regardless of its own casualties.”
The Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said on Wednesday that units of Russia’s Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighborhoods recently held by Ukraine.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
Russia launches wave of missiles at Ukraine after Kyiv secures tanks
https://arab.news/wnke9
Russia launches wave of missiles at Ukraine after Kyiv secures tanks
- In the capital, people sheltered in a metro station
- Overnight, the military said its anti-aircraft defenses had shot down all 24 drones sent by Russia
India’s Naga separatists threaten to resume violence after decades-long truce
- “The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said
GUWAHATI, India: An armed separatist group in a remote northeast Indian state on Friday threatened to “resume violent armed resistance” after nearly three decades of ceasefire, accusing New Delhi of failing to honor promises in earlier agreements.
The Naga insurgency, India’s oldest, is aimed at creating a separate homeland of Nagalim that unites parts of India’s mountainous northeast with areas of neighboring Myanmar for ethnic Naga people. About 20,000 people have died in the conflict since it began in 1947.
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997 and the group signed an agreement with New Delhi in 2015 toward striking a resolution on their demands.
BACKGROUND
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997.
But talks have stagnated since and in a statement Friday, the group’s chief, Thuingaleng Muivah, accused India of “betrayal of the letter and spirit” of the 2015 agreement.
India’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Muivah’s remarks.
In a statement, Muivah urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government to “respect and honor” the 2015 agreement, which he said “officially recognized and acknowledged” the right to a sovereign flag and constitution for the separatists.
Muivah proposed a “third party intervention” to resolve the impasse, threatening that it would resume violence if “such a political initiative was rejected.”
“The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said.
“India and its leadership shall be held responsible for the catastrophic and adverse situation that will arise out of the violent armed conflict between India and Nagalim,” he said.
Comoros arrests suspected key smuggler
- The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers”
MORONI, Comoros: Police in the Comoros said on Friday they had arrested the alleged leader of a smuggling network involved in the capsizing of a migrant boat that claimed around two dozen lives.
The boat sank on a well-known smuggling route between the Comoros island of Anjouan and the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte on Nov. 1.
“The smuggling ringleader who owned the capsized boat was arrested on Thursday in Anjouan,” Col. Tachfine Ahmed said.
“He admitted that he owned the boat and bought all the material needed for the trip,” he added, saying the 37-year-old suspect was a resident of Mayotte.
The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers.”
The Comoros police said they knew of 17 deaths.
Fishermen rescued five survivors who said the boat was carrying around 30 people, including women and young children, the IOM said.
A survivor said the smugglers sank the vessel before fleeing on a speedboat.
Police confirmed the survivor’s account, saying the two smugglers escaped.
“We are actively looking for the two smugglers who got on another boat,” the colonel added.
In addition to homicide charges, the arrested suspect faces up to 10 years imprisonment for belonging to an organized criminal group as well as three years for illegal transport of passengers.
Anjouan is one of three islands in the nation of Comoros, located around 70 km northwest of Mayotte, which became a department of France in 2011.
Despite being France’s poorest department, Mayotte has French infrastructure and welfare, which makes it attractive to migrants from Comoros seeking a better life.
Many pay smugglers to make the dangerous sea crossing in rickety fishing boats known as “kwassa-kwassa.”
UK court awards Manchester bomb victims £45,000 over hoax claims
- Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors“
- Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom”
LONDON: Two survivors of the 2017 bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on Friday won £45,000 ($58,000) in damages from a former TV producer who claimed the attack was a hoax.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors” employed by the state as part of an elaborate deception.
Hibbert sustained a spinal cord injury in the attack, and his daughter suffered severe brain damage.
Hall argued that he was acting in the public interest by filming Hibbert’s daughter outside her home, but the High Court in London agreed with Hibbert’s claim for harassment.
Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” and on Friday ordered him to pay Hibbert and his daughter each £22,500 in damages.
Hall must also pay 90 percent of their legal costs, currently estimated at £260,000.
“The claimants are both vulnerable. The allegations are serious and distressing,” said the judge.
Jonathan Price, lawyer for the claimants, said that Hall “insisted that the terrorist attack in which the claimants were catastrophically injured did not happen and that the claimants were participants or ‘crisis actors’ in a state-orchestrated hoax, who had repeatedly, publicly and egregiously lied to the public for monetary gain.”
Hibbert welcomed the ruling, adding: “I want this case to open up the door for change, and for it to protect others from what we have been put through.
“It proves and has highlighted... that there is protection within the law, and it sends out a message to conspiracy theorists that you cannot ignore all acceptable evidence and harass innocent people.”
Islamic extremist Salman Abedi, aided by his brother, Hashem Abedi, killed 22 people and injured 1,017 during the suicide bombing at the end of the concert by the US singer.
US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Donald Trump
- Shakeri told the FBI he didn’t plan to propose a plan to murder Trump
- The plot reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with assassinating the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plot to kill Trump while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.
He told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to put together a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot.
Russia says summoned Canadian diplomat to reject Western sabotage accusations
- Moscow said the Canadian diplomat “was told that these speculations” were being spread in a “coordinated manner, in the context of the hybrid war” being waged against Russia
- Russia blasted the allegations as “false,” “unacceptable” and part of a “provocation” being led by the US
MOSCOW: Moscow summoned a Canadian diplomat on Friday to rebut Western allegations that Russia’s secret services had orchestrated a campaign to mail explosive packages to addresses in NATO countries, including Canada.
After a series of fires at DHL depots in Britain and Germany this summer, Russia was accused of being behind a brazen plot to ship explosive parcels via commercial airliners.
Ottawa expressed its concern earlier this week to Russian officials after Poland and Lithuania announced several arrests as a result of a probe into attempts to send parcels packaged with explosives on cargo flights to the United States and Canada.
“The deputy head of the Canadian diplomatic mission in Moscow was summoned and handed an official note in connection with the false accusations of alleged planned ‘Russian sabotage’ against NATO countries,” Russia’s foreign ministry said.
Moscow said the Canadian diplomat “was told that these speculations” were being spread in a “coordinated manner, in the context of the hybrid war” being waged against Russia by the West.
Russia blasted the allegations as “false,” “unacceptable” and part of a “provocation” being led by the United States.
Canada’s public safety ministry said Ottawa is “aware of and deeply concerned with Russia’s intensifying campaign, from cyber incidents and disinformation operations to sabotage activities.”
It confirmed the Canadian government had “expressed this concern directly to Russian officials and unequivocally stated that any threat to the safety and security of Canadians is unacceptable.”
The ministry added there was “no imminent threat” to the public but said Canada “will continue to monitor the situation very closely.”
Canada’s Transport Minister Anita Anand told reporters on Wednesday that she required “more information” on the alleged plot but said she would taking “additional steps” to ensure the safety of passengers and packages, without providing details.
The reported plot, involving civilian airlines, comes amid growing concern in the West at what it sees as Russia’s increasingly reckless espionage and sabotage operations inside NATO countries.
“Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly,” Richard Moore, head of Britain’s MI6 secret intelligence service said in September in rare public remarks.
