KYIV: Ukraine’s security services said Saturday they had struck a Russian ammunition factory in a border region, as Moscow’s forces claimed yet another advance on the battlefield.
Ukraine also said it had thwarted a “massive” overnight Russian aerial attack that saw drones launched toward the capital Kyiv.
The attacks come after a week of intense Russian bombardments across Ukraine that killed at least 55 in the central city of Poltava, and seven in Lviv — hundreds of kilometers from the frontlines and close to Ukraine’s western border with EU and NATO members.
A large fire and several explosions were reported overnight in the Russian region of Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, prompting officials to evacuate locals living near the blaze.
Russian anti-air defense systems “detected and neutralized a drone” early on Saturday morning over the western part of the region, under 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Ukraine, Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram.
“No-one was injured” but when the drone fell, it sparked a large fire “that spread to explosive devices and caused them to detonate,” Gusev continued, without providing details of which facility was hit.
“A decision was taken to evacuate residents of a village” because of the blaze, he said.
Russian Telegram channels said the fire broke out in a local munitions depot.
Ukraine’s SBU security services later claimed it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.
A source in the SBU told AFP that Kyiv was targeting “military airfields, ammunition depots and infrastructure facilities” in order to “create a demilitarised zone in the regions of Russia adjacent to Ukraine.”
It called them all “legitimate targets.”
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 67 drones at the country overnight, adding that it shot down 58 of them.
AFP reporters in Kyiv heard loud explosions overnight.
“There are almost no nights when Russian attack drones do not attack the territory of Ukraine. And today was another night, massive drone attack,” the Kyiv city administration said in a social media post on Saturday.
Debris from one downed drone landed near the Ukrainian parliament in the center of the city.
In the east of the country, three people were killed in Russian shelling on Kostyantynivka — in the Donetsk region where Russian troops are advancing — the local governor said.
Russia’s military said Saturday it had seized the village of Kalynove, around 25 kilometers (16 miles) southeast of the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk, which Russia is seeking to capture.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia’s “primary objective” in the conflict was to capture the entire Donbas region — which consists of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Moscow claimed to have annexed them, along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in 2022, months after it launched its full-scale military offensive and despite not having full control over them.
The head of Ukraine’s neighboring Dnipropretovsk region said the number of wounded in a missile attack on the city of Pavlograd a day earlier had increased to 82, including seven children.
“Sixty people remain in hospital,” Governor Sergiy Lysak said.
On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on the sidelines of an economic forum in the country on Saturday.
Meloni reaffirmed her strong support for Kyiv.
Zelensky was using the brief trip to Europe, which also included meetings with Germany’s Olaf Scholz and an address to the Ramstein defense summit, to press allies for more weapons supplies.
Kyiv hits Russian ammo depot as Moscow advances in east
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Kyiv hits Russian ammo depot as Moscow advances in east
- A large fire and several explosions were reported overnight in the Russian region of Voronezh
- Russian anti-air defense systems “detected and neutralized a drone” early on Saturday morning over the western part of the region
Russia evacuates border villages in Kursk region
More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6
MOSCOW: Russia is evacuating a number of villages in the Kursk region close to the Ukrainian border, the local governor said on Monday, almost six weeks after Ukraine launched its surprise incursion.
Moscow appears to be mounting a counter-offensive in the region, claiming to have retaken at least a dozen villages from Ukraine’s control since last week.
Authorities have decided to order the “obligatory evacuation of settlements in the Rylsky and Khomutovsky districts that are within a 15-kilometer (nine-mile) zone adjacent to the border with Ukraine,” Governor Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram.
He did not say which villages would be evacuated or the number of evacuees. There are dozens of villages and towns within this 15-kilometer radius.
More than 150,000 people in the region have had to flee their homes since Kyiv’s offensive began on August 6, state media reported Smirnov as saying last week.
Ukraine says its forces have advanced across tens of kilometers of Russian territory and seized dozens of settlements, including the border town of Sudzha.
Ukraine’s incursion — which began more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale military assault on its neighbor — caught Moscow off-guard.
It is the biggest incursion by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II.
Biden says Secret Service ‘needs more help’ after apparent Trump assassination bid
- “The Secret Service needs more help,” Biden told reporters at the White House
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Monday that the US Secret Service needed more help to perform its duties after a second apparent assassination attempt against Republican election candidate Donald Trump.
“The Secret Service needs more help,” Biden told reporters at the White House, following Sunday’s incident in which the Secret Service opened fire on a gunman, who was later arrested, at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says
- It comes as a setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious
- Any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress
DUBAI: The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.
Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.
The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”
Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.
During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.
But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20 percent in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.
Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.
“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”
There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.
The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.
The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN says
- News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start
- No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
DUBAI: The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday. It’s a devastating setback for polio eradication, since the virus is one of the world’s most infectious and any unvaccinated groups of children where the virus is spreading could undo years of progress.
Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan. It’s likely that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions for other countries in the region and beyond.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.
The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”
Polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.
During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.
But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20 percent in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.
Pakistani health official Anwarul Haq said the polio virus would eventually spread and continue affecting children in both countries if vaccination campaigns aren’t run regularly and in a synchronized manner.
“Afghanistan is the only neighbor from where Afghan people in large numbers come to Pakistan and then go back,” said Haq, the coordinator at the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication. “People from other neighboring countries, like India and Iran, don’t come to Pakistan in large numbers.”
There needs to be a united effort to eliminate the disease, he told The Associated Press.
The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.
French researcher Vinatier pleads guilty to foreign agent law violations in Russian court
- The Moscow district court where Vinatier is being tried has agreed to consider his case under a special regime
MOSCOW: Laurent Vinatier, a French researcher on trial in Russia for non-compliance with Russia’s foreign agent laws, pleaded guilty on Monday, Russian news agencies said.
State news agency RIA said the Moscow district court where Vinatier is being tried has agreed to consider his case under a special regime, which guarantees a lighter sentence.
