KYIV: Russia attacked electrical power facilities in much of Ukraine, including the country’s largest hydroelectric plant, causing widespread outages and killing at least five people, officials said Friday.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 60 drones and about 90 rockets were used in the attack.
The attack came a day after Russia launched 31 missiles in a single attack on the capital. It was the largest assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the more than two-year-long war, said Volodymyr Kudrytsky, head of the national utility Ukrenergo.
“This attack was especially dangerous because the adversary combined different means of attack, kamikaze drones, ballistic and cruise missiles,” he told The Associated Press. He said the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest, suffered the most damage.
Last winter, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, resulting in frequent blackouts across the country. Many had warned that Russia might repeat this strategy this winter. But instead, Russia has launched massive missile and drone attacks primarily directed at Ukraine’s defense industry.
Every large-scale air attack depletes Ukraine’s capabilities to repel Russian missiles. Zelensky has been urging Ukraine’s Western allies for weeks to provide additional air defense systems and ammunition amid delays in aid from the US
“With Russian missiles, there are no delays, like with aid packages to our state. Shaheds don’t have indecisiveness, as do some politicians. It is important to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions,” Zelensky said, referring to Iranian-made Shahed drones, which are widely used by Russia in the war.
The attacks caused a fire at the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station, which supplies electricity to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power installation.
The main external power line to the plant was cut off, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said early Friday, but Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said it was restored several hours later.
The plant is occupied by Russian troops, and fighting around the plant has been a constant concern because of the potential for a nuclear accident.
The dam at the hydroelectric station was not in danger of breaching, the country’s hydroelectric authority said. A dam breach could not only disrupt supplies to the nuclear plant but could potentially cause severe flooding similar to what occurred last year when a major dam at Kakhovka further down the Dnieper collapsed.
Three people were killed and at least eight injured in the Russian attack, said Zaporizhzhia regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov.
Attacks on energy facilities in the Kharkiv region caused blackouts in the country’s second-largest city and disrupted critical air-raid siren systems. Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said police would inform residents of possible air raids through loudspeakers and walkie-talkies and that alerts would be sent to cellular phones.
Other attacks were reported in areas of western Ukraine far from the front lines. Two people died in the Khmelnytskyi region, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry.
The power outages left 1,060 miners trapped in the Dnipropetrovsk region and an evacuation was underway, according to private energy company DTEK.
“The world sees the targets of Russian terrorists as clearly as possible: power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings, even a trolleybus. Russia is fighting against the ordinary life of people,” Zelensky said Friday on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian officials said Friday that one person died and at least three were injured in Ukrainian shelling of areas near the border.
The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said a woman was killed when a shell hit nearby while she was walking her dogs and that two others were injured. The town of Tetkino in the Kursk region was shelled, injuring one person, said Gov. Roman Starovoit.
Both regions have been subject to shelling and drone attacks in recent weeks and officials have said that attempts by Ukrainian fighters to cross into Russian territory have been repelled.
Russian officials refer to the conflict as a “special military operation,” eschewing the word “war.” But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attracted attention on Friday by telling a Russian newspaper that “when the collective West became a participant in this on the side of Ukraine, for us it already became a war.”
He later told reporters in a conference call that ″This is not connected with any kind of juridical change. It is de jure an SVO,” the Russian acronym for special military operation.
Both Peskov and President Vladimir Putin have occasionally used the word “war” about the fighting in Ukraine.
Russia attacks Ukrainian electrical power facilities, including major hydroelectric plant
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Russia attacks Ukrainian electrical power facilities, including major hydroelectric plant
- It was the largest assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the more than two-year-long war, said Volodymyr Kudrytsky, head of the national utility Ukrenergo
- Every large-scale air attack depletes Ukraine’s capabilities to repel Russian missiles
Magnitude 5.8 earthquake hits off Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara
JAKARTA: A magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit off Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province on Thursday, with a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) depth and no tsunami potential, the country’s geophysics agency said.
There were no immediate reports of damage.
Taliban deny arresting or monitoring Afghans after UK data leak
- The Taliban government said Thursday it had not arrested or monitored Afghans involved in a secret British resettlement plan
KABUL: The Taliban government said Thursday it had not arrested or monitored Afghans involved in a secret British resettlement plan after a data breach was revealed this week.
Thousands of Afghans who worked with the UK were brought to Britain with their families in a secret program after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, the British government revealed on Tuesday.
The scheme was only revealed after the UK High Court on Tuesday lifted a super-gag order banning any reports of the events.
UK Defense Minister John Healey said the leak was not revealed because of the risk that the Taliban authorities would obtain the data set and the lives of Afghans would be put at risk.
“Nobody has been arrested for their past actions, nobody has been killed and nobody is being monitored for that,” said the Afghan government’s deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, in a voice message to reporters on Thursday.
“Reports of investigation and monitoring of a few people whose data has been leaked are false.”
After the Taliban swept back to power in 2021, their Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada announced an amnesty for Afghans who worked for NATO forces or the ousted foreign-backed government during the two-decade conflict.
“We don’t need to use the leaked documents from Britain. Regarding the general amnesty, nobody is investigated or monitored,” Fitrat added.
“The rumors being spread are just to scare these people and create fear and worry among their families, which we deny.”
France court orders release of Lebanese militant after four decades in prison
PARIS: A French appeals court Thursday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been imprisoned for 40 years for the 1982 killings of two foreign diplomats.
Abdallah, 74, is one of the longest serving prisoners in France, where most convicts serving life sentences are freed after less than 30 years.
He has been up for release for 25 years, but the United States — a civil party to the case — has consistently opposed his leaving prison.
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.
He has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal.”
The Paris Appeals Court ordered he be freed from a prison in the south of France next week, on Friday, July 25, on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.
Several sources before the hearing said that it was planned for him to be flown to Paris and then to Beirut.
Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said Abdallah should be freed from jail, and had written to the appeals court to say they would organize his return home.
The detainee’s brother, Robert Abdallah, in Lebanon told AFP he was overjoyed.
“We’re delighted. I didn’t expect the French judiciary to make such a decision nor for him to ever be freed, especially after so many failed requests for release,” he said.
“For once, the French authorities have freed themselves from Israeli and US pressures,” he added.
Prosecutors can file an appeal with France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, but it is not expected to be processed fast enough to halt his release next week.
Abdallah’s lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset also welcomed the decision.
“It’s both a judicial victory and a political scandal that he was not released earlier,” he said.
In November last year, a French court ordered his release conditional on Abdallah leaving France.
But France’s anti-terror prosecutors, arguing that he had not changed his political views, appealed the decision, which was consequently suspended.
A verdict was supposed to have been delivered in February, but the Paris appeals court postponed, saying it was unclear whether Abdallah had proof that he had paid compensation to the plaintiffs, something he has consistently refused to do.
The court re-examined the latest request for his release last month.
During the closed-door hearing, Abdallah’s lawyer told the judges that 16,000 euros had been placed on the prisoner’s bank account and were at the disposal of civil parties in the case, including the United States.
Abdallah still enjoys some support from several public figures in France, including left-wing members of parliament and Nobel prize-winning author Annie Ernaux, but has mostly been forgotten by the general public.
US senators approve $9 billion of Elon Musk’s federal cuts
- US Senate approves package of spending cuts proposed by Trump cancelling more than $9 blln in funding for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting
WASHINGTON: The US Senate approved early Thursday a package of spending cuts proposed by President Donald Trump that would cancel more than $9 billion in funding for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting.
The upper chamber of Congress green-lit the measure in what was seen as the first test of how easily lawmakers could usher into law savings sought by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — in the aftermath of the tech mogul’s acrimonious exit from the government.
Despite the cutbacks’ unpopularity in some sections of both parties, the Republican-led Senate passed the measure with 51 votes for and 48 against in a session that went more than two hours past midnight.
The version of the text passed in June by the House of Representatives sought to eliminate $400 million in funding allocated to health programs, including the PEPFAR global AIDS relief fund created by then-president George W. Bush.
But defunding PEPFAR — which has saved an estimated 26 million lives — was seen as a nonstarter among a handful of moderate Republican senators, and the proposal was dropped.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told AFP the bill was consistent with Trump’s promises to cut spending.
“I’ve been a big fan of the foreign aid accounts... I’m a big hawkish guy, but you need foreign aid. You need soft power,” he said.
“But when you start spending money on a bunch of junk, and liberal programs disconnected from the purpose of the aid package, it makes it difficult on a guy like me.”
The bill now goes back to the House for final approval, with lawmakers up against the clock. Congress, which had already allocated the money, has to approve the cuts by Friday or the White House must spend the cash as originally intended.
Legislation to claw back money already approved by Congress — known as a “rescissions package” — is extremely rare, and no such measure has passed in decades.
Around a dozen Republicans had voiced concerns about allowing the White House to dictate spending cuts, placing them in the crosshairs of Trump, who last week threatened to withhold his endorsements from any rebels.
The vote was the first in what Republicans have touted as a potential series of packages codifying the spending cuts made by DOGE.
Musk was tapped by Trump to lead the task force after the tech billionaire spent $290 million helping him get elected. The SpaceX and Tesla boss boasted that he would be able to save $2 trillion in federal spending — but left the White House under a cloud in late May as he feuded with Trump over deficits and spending.
DOGE acknowledges that it has saved taxpayers just $190 billion — and fact checkers even see that claim as dubious, given previous inaccuracies in its accounting.
The rescissions package slashes around $8 billion in foreign aid, with much of that approved for humanitarian organization USAID, one of DOGE’s first targets.
Around $1 billion is to be taken back from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), as well as more than 1,500 local radio and television stations.
Conservatives often accuse PBS and NPR of bias, and Trump signed an executive order in May to cease federal funding for both networks. Democrats say cutting the funding will not meaningfully reduce the deficit, but instead dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans.
“It is yet another example of the spirit and ideals of our Constitution being undermined in a terrible way. We are a nation that believes that (Congress) has a real role,” New Jersey Senator Cory Booker told AFP.
“And this is a bunch of my colleagues in thrall of the president, surrendering the powers of us, and the urgency for us to work together and do it in a bipartisan way to improve budgets.”
Who were the two pilots who flew the Air India jet that crashed?
- Veteran captain and young co-pilot named in Air India crash investigation
- Cockpit recording suggests fuel supply was manually cut before Boeing 787 went down
A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India flight that crashed last month indicates the captain cut the flow of fuel to the Boeing 787 jet’s engines, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Below is a brief profile of the two pilots based on the preliminary investigation report and media reports:
CAPTAIN SUMEET SABHARWAL
The 56-year-old had an airline transport pilot’s license that was valid until May 14, 2026.
He had obtained clearances to fly as pilot-in-command on several aircraft including the Boeing 787 and 777 and the Airbus A310.
He had total flying experience of 15,638 hours, of which 8,596 hours were on a Boeing 787.
Sabharwal had called his family from the airport, assuring them he would ring again after landing in London, according to a Times of India report. A pilot who had briefly interacted with him told Reuters he was a “gentleman.”
FIRST OFFICER CLIVE KUNDER
The 32-year-old had a commercial pilot license that was issued in 2020 and valid until September 26, 2025.
He had obtained clearances to fly Cessna 172 and Piper PA-34 Seneca aircraft as pilot-in-command and as co-pilot on Airbus A320 and Boeing 787 jets.
He had total flying experience of 3,403 hours. Of that, 1,128 hours of experience were as a 787 co-pilot.
Since his school-going days Kunder was passionate about flying, and in 2012, began serving as a pilot, Indian media reported, citing his relatives. He joined Air India in 2017.
