MOSCOW: Ukraine targeted the south Russian region of North Ossetia with drones for the first time ever on Saturday, causing minor damage, local authorities said.
The drones were aimed at a military airfield near the town of Mozdok, more than 700 kilometers from the frontline, according to North Ossetia governor Sergei Menyailo.
“The attack was foiled by the Russian Defense Ministry’s air defense forces. Minor damage and fires were recorded. No one was injured,” he said.
Three drones were shot down in the attack, he added.
Social media videos purportedly filmed in the region showed drones flying overhead, while pictures showed what appeared to be drone fragments scattered on the ground.
“All services have been put on high alert. For the safety of citizens, we have decided to cancel all mass events in Mozdoksky district,” Menyailo added.
Ukraine often targets military and energy facilities on Russian territory in drone attacks, sometimes hundreds of kilometers from the frontline.
Ukraine did not immediately comment, however the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper quoted Kyiv’s military intelligence as saying they were behind the attack.
Ukraine fires drones at south Russian region
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Ukraine fires drones at south Russian region
- Ukraine often targets military and energy facilities on Russian territory in drone attacks, sometimes hundreds of kilometers from the frontline
UK goes to polls in national election with results expected early Friday
- UK PM Rishi Sunak surprised his party on May 22 when he called election earlier than January 2025
- After 14 years in power, Sunak’s Conservatives are widely expected to lose to left-of-center Labour Party
LONDON: Britain is going to the polls Thursday at a time when public dissatisfaction is running high over a host of issues.
From the high cost of living and a stagnating economy to a dysfunctional state health care system and crumbling infrastructure, some disillusioned voters have turned to the populist Reform Party.
Its divisive leader Nigel Farage, who championed Brexit, is drawing growing numbers of Conservative voters with his pledge to “take our country back.”
Opponents have long accused Farage of fanning racist attitudes toward migrants and condemned what they call his scapegoat rhetoric. They say that underfunding of schools, hospitals and housing under governments on the right and left is the problem, not migrants.
Polls show Farage has a comfortable lead in Clacton-on-Sea — a town on England’s southeast coast where many older, white voters used to staunchly support the governing Conservatives.
It’s unclear how much impact his party will have in capturing seats and Parliament, though it could be a spoiler by siphoning votes from Conservative candidates.
Farage, who has lost seven campaigns for Parliament, was the rare party leader who didn’t go to the polls Thursday. He voted in advance by mail.
All voters must bring ID for the first time in a general election.
All voters in the UK were required to bring identification with them Thursday for the first time in a general election.
A change in the law has required voters in England, Scotland and Wales to prove their identity since 2023 by showing a passport, drivers’ license and more than a dozen other acceptable forms of ID.
Voters in Northern Ireland have had to show identification since 1985, and photo ID since 2003.
The Elections Act introduced by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022 was enforced, ironically, earlier this year when Johnson tried to vote without ID in a local election in South Oxfordshire.
He was turned away, but returned later with his identification and cast his vote.
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, who urged voters to take ‘a leap of faith,’ votes in his suburban London district.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey voted Thursday in an election that could see his left-of-center party gain a larger share of seats in Parliament.
Davey’s Lib Dems have been trying to make inroads in areas of southern England where Conservatives are vulnerable as their party has plunged in popularity after 14 years in power.
Davey’s stunt-filled campaign has been a publicity bonanza. He has tumbled off a paddleboard into a lake, braved roller coaster rides and bungee jumped, urging voters to take “a leap of faith.”
The party had 15 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons when Parliament was dissolved in May.
The party has vowed to improve Britain’s ailing health and social care systems, including introducing free nursing care at home. It wants to lower voting age to 16 and rejoin the European Union’s single market. Davey has championed the cause of hold water companies accountable for dumping sewage in rivers.
Davey, first elected to Parliament in 1997, greeted members of the news media as he arrived with his wife, Emily, to vote at a Methodist church in Surbiton, a suburb in southwest London.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he said as he left the polls. “I hope lots of people come out to vote.”
Communities all over the United Kingdom such as Henley-on-Thames are locked in tight contests in which traditional party loyalties come second to more immediate concerns about the economy, crumbling infrastructure and the National Health Service.
Though it has traditionally been a Conservative Party stronghold, the area known for its famous regatta may change its stripes. The Conservatives, which took power during the depths of the global financial crisis, have been beset by sluggish growth, declining public services and a series of scandals, making them easy targets for critics on the left and right.
“This is a blue (Conservative) town, always has been,’’ said Sam Wilkinson, a restaurant manager. “My generation won’t necessarily vote blue, not necessarily, but at the same time who else do you vote for? It’s really tricky. I’m just kind of looking out for my kids really, hopefully more money into education and the arts.”
Residents steadily streamed to the polling station, including Patricia Mulcahy, who is retired.
“The younger generation are far more interested in change,’’ she said. “So, I think whatever happens in Henley, in the country, there will be a big shift. But whoever gets in, they’ve got a heck of a job ahead of them. It’s not going to be easy.”
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is running for reelection as an independent, posted a photo of himself voting Thursday in his North London district.
Corbyn, a socialist who has won his seat for Labour at every general election since 1983, was suspended from the party and barred from running by Labour after his leadership faced antisemitism allegations.
He became deeply unpopular after Labour in 2019 suffered its worst defeat since 1935.
Keir Starmer was chosen as leader to replace Corbyn and he has rebuilt it and moved it closer to the center. Pollsters and politicians expect Labour to win the largest number of seats.
Corbyn posted a photo of himself on the social media platform X with his right thumb up, saying: “Just voted for the independent candidate in Islington North. I heard he’s alright.”
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer voted Thursday in an election that is widely expected to return his party to power for the first time in 14 years and make him prime minister.
Starmer, who has warned his supporters not to take the election for granted despite polls and politicians predicting a landslide, voted in his London neighborhood.
Pollsters have given Labour a double-digit lead since before the campaign began six weeks ago.
Starmer has spent his time crisscrossing Britain and urging voters to vote for change.
He has pledged to revive a sluggish economy, invest in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and repair the broken National Health Service, which his center-left party founded in 1945.
Scottish National Party leader John Swinney has voted as his party fights to hold off a wave of support from the rival Labour Party.
Swinney, who became the SNP’s third leader in just over a year in May, has tried to bring stability to a party in turmoil.
Scotland’s long-serving First Minister Nicola Sturgeon abruptly stepped down last year during a campaign finance investigation that eventually led to criminal charges against her husband, who was the party’s chief executive.
Swinney joined the party at 15 years old, and previously led the party from 2000 to 2004.
Swinney has said that if his party wins a majority of seats in Scotland he will try to open Scottish independence negotiations with the London-based UK government. He wants to rejoin the European Union and the European single market.
Swinney walked to the polls in Burrelton Village Hall, Perthshire, with his 13-year-old son Matthew.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cast his ballot Thursday in a national election that will determine if he remains in office.
Sunak, who tried to bring stability to a Conservative Party in chaos when he was picked as leader in October 2022, spent the past six weeks trying to persuade voters across the UK to give his party another term after 14 years in power.
Pollsters and politicians widely expect the Labour Party to win for the first time since 2005.
Sunak’s campaign got off to a soggy start when he called the snap election in a downpour outside 10 Downing Street in May.
He had been expected to wait until the fall, when expected improvements in the economy would give him a better chance.
Sunak voted shortly after polls opened in his constituency in Yorkshire in northern England.
British voters are picking a new government on Thursday after polls opened at 7 a.m. for a parliamentary election that is widely expected to bring the opposition Labour Party to power.
Against a backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust of government institutions and a fraying social fabric, a fractious electorate is delivering its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010.
The center-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but Labour leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried their supporters will stay home.
Sunak, for his part, has tried to rally his supporters, saying on Sunday that he still thought the Conservatives could win and defending his record on the economy.
Ukraine’s army retreats from positions as Russia gets closer to seizing strategically important town
Ukraine’s army retreats from positions as Russia gets closer to seizing strategically important town
- For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location
- The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn
KYIV: Ukraine’s army has retreated from a neighborhood in the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a monthslong Russian assault, a military spokesperson said Thursday.
Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle. For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy, compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation, told The Associated Press in a written message Thursday.
Ukraine’s defensive positions in the town were “destroyed,” he said, adding that there was a threat of serious casualties if troops remained in the area and that Russia did not leave “a single intact building.”
Months of relentless Russian artillery strikes have devastated Chasiv Yar, with homes and municipal offices charred, and a town that once had a population of 12,000 has been left deserted.
Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 255 assault battalion which has been based in the area for six months, said after Russian troops captured the neighborhood, they burned every building not already destroyed by shelling.
Shyriaiev said Russia is deploying scorched-earth tactics in an attempt to destroy anything which could be used as a military position in a bid to force troops to retreat.
“I regret that we are gradually losing territory,” he said, speaking by phone from the Chasiv Yar area, but added, “we cannot hold what is ruined.”
Russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 10-to-1 in the area but Shyriaiev suggested that, even with that ratio, they have not been able to make significant progress in the past six months of active fighting.
The intensity of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s defensive line in the area of Chasiv Yar has increased over the last month, Voloshyn said.
In the past week alone, Voloshyn said Russia has carried out nearly 1,300 strikes, fired nearly 130 glide bombs and made 44 ground assaults.
Other Russian attacks in recent weeks have focused on capturing nearby settlements that would allow them to advance to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the biggest cities in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian commanders in the area say their resources remain stretched, largely due to a monthslong gap in military assistance from the United States which threw Ukraine’s military onto the defensive.
Shyriaiev, the assault battalion commander, said ammunition from allies is arriving, but more slowly than needed by the army.
“We are determined to hold on to the end,” said the commander, who has been fighting on the front line since the outbreak of the war.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the governor of the northern Chernihiv region, Viacheslav Chaus, said Russia launched 22 drones over Ukraine last night. One hit a power infrastructure facility in the northern Chernihiv region, leaving nearly 6,000 customers without electricity, he said, adding that the rest were shot down.
Russia is continually targeting Ukraine’s badly damaged energy infrastructure, resulting in hours of rolling blackouts across the country. Ukrainian officials have warned that the situation may worsen as winter approaches.
India’s Modi to visit Russia next week
- This will be Modi’s first visit to Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022
- Moscow’s military campaign has tested relations between India and Russia
MOSCOW: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia on July 8 and 9, the Kremlin said Thursday, in his first trip to the country since Moscow launched its military offensive in Ukraine.
That campaign has tested relations between Moscow and New Delhi, even though India has ramped up its purchases of Russian oil and not joined Western sanctions.
Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss “prospects for further development of traditionally friendly Russian-Indian relations, as well as relevant issues on the international and regional agenda,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin sees Modi as a key potential diplomatic and economy ally, with Russia isolated in the West.
But Ukraine has complicated ties.
In a September 2022 meeting between Putin and Modi at a regional summit in Uzbekistan, the Russian president told Modi he understood he had “concerns” about the conflict and that Modi wanted it to end “as soon as possible.”
Earlier this year, India said it was pushing Russia to release some of its citizens who had signed up for “support jobs” with the Russian army, following reports some were stranded in Russian border towns and forced to fight in Ukraine.
India urged its citizens to “stay away from this conflict.”
New Delhi has not been a staunch backer of Kyiv, notably declining to sign a joint statement at a peace summit in Switzerland last month that called for Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be respected in any peace agreement.
India has also become a major buyer of Russian oil, providing a much-needed export market for Russia after it was cut off from traditional markets in the West.
But there have been reports of payments problems and Russian exporters not being able to repatriate earnings due to India’s capital controls.
Recently re-elected for a historic third term, Modi last visited Russia in September 2019 for an India-Russia annual summit in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.
Russia’s ambassador to US says his assignment coming to an end
- The US and Russia are at odds over Moscow’s war in Ukraine
- “My assignment is coming to an end. I hope that together we will continue to defend the interests of our Fatherland!” Antonov wrote
MOSCOW: Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, has said his assignment is coming to an end, a move that would pave the way for Moscow to send a new envoy to Washington at a time when relations are at their worst in decades.
The United States and Russia are at odds over Moscow’s war in Ukraine and ties have deteriorated to their lowest level since at least the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Antonov’s exit was flagged on Thursday by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, which spotted a handwritten note that Antonov had sent to congratulate a Moscow think-tank on its 30th anniversary.
“My assignment is coming to an end. I hope that together we will continue to defend the interests of our Fatherland!” Antonov wrote in the congratulatory letter, dated June 29.
When asked about the matter on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was cited by the Interfax news agency as telling reporters:
“There is no reason to comment here. Everyone can have their own personal plans. Decisions on the appointment and change of ambassadors are made by the president.”
Antonov, 69, took up his role in Washington in September 2017. Before that, he served as a deputy defense minister and as a deputy foreign minister.
India’s top diplomat seeks resolution of border issues with China
- S. Jaishankar meets Chinese FM Wang Yi at Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
- Tensions broke out between India and China after clashes at Himalayan border in 2020
New Delhi: India seeks to increase efforts to resolve border issues with China, its top diplomat said on Thursday, as he met his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in Kazakhstan.
The 10-member transregional economic and security body established by China and Russia, and comprising also Central Asian republics, India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus, held a two-day meeting of its heads of state in the Kazakh capital Astana on July 3-4.
All countries were represented by their leaders and top diplomats, except for India, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the summit. The Indian delegation was led by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar.
Jaishankar and Chinese FM Wang Yi held talks on Thursday aiming to address the tensions that broke out between New Delhi and Beijing in 2020, following deadly clashes on their de facto Himalayan border known as the Line of Actual Control.
Both have since deployed thousands of troops to the area and downscaled engagements. Multiple talks aiming to resolve the standoff have not succeeded in normalizing the ties.
“Discussed early resolution of remaining issues in border areas. Agreed to redouble efforts through diplomatic and military channels to that end,” Jaishankar said in an X post after the meeting with Wang.
“The three mutuals — mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest — will guide our bilateral ties.”
The spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the ministers “agreed to work toward stability in the border area and hold a new round of consultations on the border issue as soon as possible.”
She quoted Wang as saying that both countries, as representatives of the Global South, should work together to “safeguard the common interests of developing countries, and make due contributions to regional and world peace, stability and development.”
India and China have been unable to agree on their 3,500-km border since they fought a war in 1962.
Jaishankar and Wang’s meeting was the first high-level engagement between the countries since India’s election and the start of Modi’s third term last month.
“In that context, it is important to note that primarily the discussion seems to have revolved around addressing the standoff,” said Manoj Kewalramani, China studies fellow and chairperson of the Indo-Pacific studies program at the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore.
“It is useful that the two foreign ministers met at the sidelines of the SCO summit. Maintaining channels of dialogue between the two sides is important. To that extent, it is good that this meeting took place.”
Kewalramani told Arab News that the presence of Chinese troops in the Ladakh area on the border was, however, posing a main obstacle to normalization.
“It does seem like Delhi will be unwilling to restore normalcy unless additional disengagement takes place. It would be strategically imprudent and politically difficult to do so,” he said.
“Unless there is a meaningful change in Chinese policies, it is very difficult for the Indian government to pursue normalization.”
