MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed Friday to put Ukraine under external governance under the UN aegis as part of efforts to reach a peaceful settlement, a blustery statement that reflected the Kremlin leader’s determination to achieve his war goals.
Speaking to the crew of a Russian nuclear submarine in televised remarks broadcast early Friday, Putin reaffirmed his claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term expired last year, lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal.
Under Ukraine’s constitution it is illegal for the country to hold national elections while it’s under martial law.
Putin claimed that any agreement that is signed with the current Ukrainian government could be challenged by its successors and said new elections could be held under external governance.
“Under the auspices of the United Nations, with the United States, even with European countries, and, of course, with our partners and friends, we could discuss the possibility of introduction of temporary governance in Ukraine,” Putin said, adding that it would allow the country to “hold democratic elections, to bring to power a viable government that enjoys the trust of the people, and then begin negotiations with them on a peace treaty.”
He added that such external governance is just “one of the options,” without elaborating.
‘They’re playing for time’
Putin’s remarks came hours after the conclusion of a summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron that considered plans to deploy troops to Ukraine to cement an eventual peace deal. Macron said “several” other nations want to be part of the force alongside France and Britain.
Russia has warned it wouldn’t accept any troops from NATO members as part of a prospective peacekeeping force.
Macron and other participants of the Paris summit on Thursday accused Russia of only pretending to want a negotiated settlement.
“They are playing games and they’re playing for time,” said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “We can’t let them drag this out while they continue prosecuting their illegal invasion.”
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a tentative U.S-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, but quickly accused each other of violations, underscoring the challenges to negotiating a broader peace.
Drone attacks continue
Russia launched 163 strike and decoy drones at Ukraine late Thursday, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said that 89 of them were downed and 51 more jammed.
The drones damaged multiple residential buildings and injured a 19-year-old in Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said. In Poltava, drones damaged warehouses, administrative building, and a high-voltage transformer, according to regional head Volodymyr Kohut.
Damage to buildings and infrastructure facilities was also reported by the authorities in the Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Mykolaiv regions.
Ukraine’s state-run gas company, Naftogaz, said Friday that its facilities came under Russian fire without specifying its time and location.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian forces struck a gas metering station in Sudzha in the Kursk region with US-made HIMARS rockets, completely destroying the facility. It said another Ukrainian strike on an energy facility in Russia’s Bryansk region led to a power cutoff, and added that air defenses downed 19 Ukrainian drones that attempted to strike an oil refinery in Saratov.
The ministry said the continuing strikes show that Kyiv’s pledge of adherence to a US-proposed halt on strikes on energy facilities was just “another ruse by Zelensky to prevent the collapse of Ukrainian defenses and to restore military potential with the help of European allies.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy assets was a sign that Zelensky can’t control his military.
“The Ukrainian armed forces aren’t following orders from the country’s leadership and are continuing attempts to strike Russia’s energy infrastructure,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
He said that Russia will continue sticking to the halt on strikes on energy facilities but reserves the right to opt out of the deal if violations continue.
‘Strictly adhering to agreements’
Ukraine’s military rejected Russia’s claims of Ukrainian strikes on energy facilities as fake, aimed at “discrediting Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts of Ukraine and its partners.”
“We emphasize that the Ukrainian Defense Forces are strictly adhering to the agreements reached with partners to stop strikes on energy facilities,” the General Staff said, emphasizing that the military only has struck Russia’s military targets.
It also accused Russia of violating the “energy ceasefire,” saying that it has struck energy infrastructure in the city of Kherson and Poltava region of Ukraine over the last 24 hours.
“The Russian tactic of dragging out the war remains unchanged,” Ukraine’s General Staff said.
While Ukraine has agreed to a full, 30-day ceasefire that US President Donald Trump has proposed, Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kyiv and a suspension of Ukraine’s military mobilization — demands rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.
Russia’s battlefield gains
Russian troops have made slow but steady gains in several sectors of the more than 1,000-kilometer (over 620-mile) frontline, and Zelensky warned Thursday that Russia was trying to drag out talks in preparation for bigger offensives.
Putin declared in overnight remarks that the Russian troops have “gained steam” and “are holding strategic initiative all along the line of contact.”
He noted that Russia is open to a peaceful settlement, but emphasized the need to “remove root causes that led to the current situation.”
“We certainly need to ensure Russia’s security for a long historic perspective,” he said.
Putin has demanded that Kyiv withdraw its forces from the four regions Moscow has partially seized. He also wants Ukraine to renounce joining NATO, sharply cut its army and legally protect Russian language and culture to keep the country in Moscow’s orbit.
Russian officials also have said that any prospective peace deal should involve unfreezing Russian assets in the West and lifting other US and European Union sanctions. The Trump administration has said it would consider potential sanctions relief.
Putin suggests putting Ukraine under UN-sponsored external governance, boasts battlefield gains
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Putin suggests putting Ukraine under UN-sponsored external governance, boasts battlefield gains
- Putin reaffirmed his claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term expired last year, lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal
- He added that such external governance is just “one of the options,” without elaborating
Police detain more than 20 people during Los Angeles protest curfew
But there were fewer clashes between police and demonstrators than on previous nights, and by daybreak, the downtown streets were bustling with residents walking dogs and commuters clutching coffee cups.
Officials said the curfew was necessary to stop vandalism and theft by agitators after five days of protests, which have mostly been concentrated downtown. Demonstrations have also spread to other cities nationwide, including Dallas and Austin in Texas, and Chicago and New York, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made.
LA’s nightly curfew, which the mayor said would remain in effect as long as necessary, covers a 1-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometer) section that includes an area where protests have occurred since Friday in the sprawling city of 4 million. The city of Los Angeles encompasses roughly 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).
“If there are raids that continue, if there are soldiers marching up and down our streets, I would imagine that the curfew will continue,” Mayor Karen Bass said.
The tensions in LA and elsewhere emerged as immigration authorities seek to dramatically increase the number of daily arrests across the country.
Bass said the raids spread fear across the city at the behest of the White House.
“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers,” she told a news conference. “But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”
Referring to the protests, she added: “If you drive a few blocks outside of downtown, you don’t know that anything is happening in the city at all.”
Some 2,000 National Guard soldiers are in the city, and about half of them have been protecting federal buildings and agents, said Army Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, head of Task Force 51, which is overseeing the deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles.
About 700 Marines will soon join the Guard troops, but they are still undergoing training and will not be mobilized Wednesday, Sherman said. Another 2,000 Guard troops should be on the streets by Thursday, he said.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has accused Trump of drawing a “military dragnet” across the nation’s second-largest city with his escalating use of the National Guard, which Trump activated, along with the Marines, over the objections of city and state leaders.
Newsom asked a court to put an emergency stop to the military helping federal immigration agents. The assistance includes some guardsmen now standing protectively around agents as they carry out arrests.
A judge set a hearing for Thursday, giving the administration several days to continue its activities.
The change moves the military closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations, as Trump has promised as part of his immigration crackdown. The Guard has the authority to temporarily detain people who attack officers, but any arrests would be made by law enforcement.
The president posted on the Truth Social platform that the city “would be burning to the ground” if he had not sent in the military.
Meanwhile in New York City, police said they took 86 people into custody during protests in lower Manhattan that lasted into Wednesday morning. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the vast majority of demonstrators were peaceful.
A 66-year-old woman in Chicago was injured when she was struck by a car during downtown protests Tuesday evening, police said. Video showed a car speeding down a street where people were protesting.
In Texas, where police in Austin used chemical irritants to disperse several hundred demonstrators Monday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said Texas National Guard troops were “on standby” in areas where demonstrations are planned.
Guard members were sent to San Antonio, but Police Chief William McManus said he had not been told how many troops were deployed or their role ahead of planned protests Wednesday night and Saturday.
Authorities announce arrests in protests
Two people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at police during the LA protests over the weekend face charges that could bring up to 10 years in prison, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. No one was injured by the devices.
One of the suspects is a US citizen, and the other overstayed a tourist visa and was in the US illegally, authorities said.
“We are looking at hundreds of people,” US Attorney Bill Essayli said. “If you took part in these riots and were looking to cause trouble, we will come looking for you.”
Trump, Newsom locked in a war of words
Trump has called the protesters “animals” and “a foreign enemy” and described Los Angeles in dire terms that the governor says is nowhere close to the truth.
Newsom called Trump’s actions the start of an “assault” on democracy.
“California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next,” he said.
The protests began Friday after federal immigration raids arrested dozens of workers in Los Angeles. Protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades.
Thousands of people have peacefully rallied outside City Hall and hundreds more protested outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids.
Despite the protests, immigration enforcement activity has continued throughout the county, with city leaders and community groups reporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement present at libraries, car washes and Home Depots. School graduations in Los Angeles have increased security over fears of ICE action, and some have offered parents the option to watch on Zoom.
Los Angeles police detained 200 people related to the protests throughout the day on Tuesday, including 67 who were occupying a freeway, according to the city’s chief.
The majority of arrests since the protests began have been for failing to disperse, while a few others were for assault with a deadly weapon, looting and vandalism. At least seven police officers have been injured.
Bangladesh’s Yunus says will step down after polls
- Yunus has long said elections will be held before June 2026, but says the more time the interim administration had to enact reforms, the better
LONDON: Bangladesh interim leader Mohammed Yunus said Wednesday that there was “no way” he wanted to continue in power after elections he has announced for April, the first since a mass uprising overthrew the government.
The South Asian nation of around 170 million people has been in political turmoil since a student-led revolt ousted then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, ending her 15-year rule.
Speaking in London, Yunus, asked if he himself was seeking any political post, the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner said there was “no way,” waving his hands in the air for emphasis.
“I think none of our Cabinet members would like to do that, not only me,” he said.
Yunus was answering questions after speaking at London’s foreign policy think tank Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
He also said he wanted to unveil a “big package” of proposals next month that he dubbed a “July Charter” — one year on since the students launched the demonstrations that toppled Hasina.
The aim of the package, he added, was to overhaul democratic institutions after Hasina’s tenure.
“We want to say goodbye to the old Bangladesh and create a new Bangladesh,” Yunus said.
The charter is being drafted by a government “consensus commission,” talking to political parties to “find that which are the recommendations they will accept,” he added.
Yunus has long said elections will be held before June 2026, but says the more time the interim administration had to enact reforms, the better.
But after political parties jostling for power repeatedly demanded he fix a timetable, he said earlier this month that elections would be held in April 2026.
“Our job is to make sure that the transition is managed well, and that people are happy when we hand over power to the elected government,” he said.
“So we want to make sure that the election is right, that is a very critical factor for us. If the election is wrong, this thing will never be solved again.”
Yunus is also expected to meet in London with Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is widely seen as likely to sweep the elections.
Rahman, 59, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has lived in London since 2008 after being sentenced in absentia under Hasina — convictions since quashed.
He is widely expected to return to Dhaka to lead the party in polls.
Child labor ‘may continue for centuries at current pace’
- One of the main factors, free compulsory education, not only helps minors escape child labor, but also protects children from vulnerable or indecent conditions of employment when they grow up, she said
NEW YORK: Nearly 138 million children were still working in the world’s fields and factories in 2024, the UN said on Wednesday, warning that given the slow pace of progress, eliminating child labor could be delayed by “hundreds of years.”
Ten years ago, upon adopting the so-called Sustainable Development Goals, the world’s countries set themselves the ambitious target of putting an end to child labor by 2025.
“That timeline has now come to an end. But child labor has not,” UNICEF and the International Labor Organization said in a joint report.
Last year, according to data published every four years, 137.6 million children aged 5-17 were working, or around 7.8 percent of all children in that age group.
The figure is equivalent to twice the total population of France.
FASTFACT
Last year, 137.6 million children aged 5-17 were working, or around 7.8 percent of all children in that age group. The figure is equivalent to twice the total population of France.
This nevertheless represents a drop since 2000, when 246 million children were forced to work, often to help their impoverished families.
After a worrying rise between 2016 and 2020, the trend has now reversed, with 20 million fewer children working in 2024 than four years prior.
“Significant progress” has been recorded in reducing the number of children forced into labor, UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said.
“Yet far too many children continue to toil in mines, factories, or fields, often doing hazardous work to survive.”
According to the report, nearly 40 percent of the 138 million child laborers were employed in 2024 doing particularly hazardous work “likely to jeopardize their health, safety, or development.”
Despite some rays of hope, “we must not be blindsided by the fact that we still have a long way to go before we achieve our goal of eliminating child labor,” ILO Director-General Gilbert Houngbo said.
At the current rate of reduction, “it will take hundreds of years,” said UNICEF expert Claudia Cappa.
Even if countries quadruple the pace of progress recorded since 2000, “we will already be in 2060,” she added.
Progress for the youngest children is particularly slow, the report found. Last year, nearly 80 million children aged five to 11 were working — about 8.2 percent of all children in that age group.
And yet the societal elements that reduce child labor are well-known, according to Cappa.
One of the main factors, free compulsory education, not only helps minors escape child labor, but also protects children from vulnerable or indecent conditions of employment when they grow up, she said.
Another, she added, is “universalizing social protection” as a way to offset or ease burdens on families and vulnerable communities.
But global funding cuts “threaten to roll back hard-earned gains,” UNICEF’s Russell said.
According to the report, agriculture is the sector making the most use of child labor (61 percent of all cases), followed by domestic work and other services (27 percent) and industry (13 percent, including mining and manufacturing).
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the hardest hit, with around 87 million child laborers.
Asia-Pacific has seen the greatest progress, with the number of working children falling from 49 million in 2000 to 28 million in 2024.
UK to trim asylum backlog, saving ‘$1.3 billion a year’
LONDON: Britain’s Labour government pledged to cut a backlog in asylum applications and end “the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers,” saving £1 billion ($1.3 billion) annually, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced on Wednesday.
“Funding that I have provided today ... will cut the asylum backlog, hear more appeal cases and return people who have no rights to be here, saving the taxpayer a billion pounds a year,” Reeves said in her Spending Review that sets out Treasury expenditure and savings over the next few years.
The number of UK asylum seekers has risen sharply in recent years, with tens of thousands of applications waiting to be decided, according to official figures.
Labour, which came to power last July, has set about tackling the situation.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has started formal talks with unspecified countries to create “return centers” outside the UK for those who have exhausted all legal avenues to remain in the country.
The number of asylum seekers in the UK tripled to 84,200 in 2024 from an average of 27,500 between 2011 and 2020.
In 2022, there were approximately 13 asylum applications per 10,000 people in the UK, compared with 25 applications per 10,000 people in the EU at the same time.
Some 11 percent of migrants in the UK were asylum seekers or refugees in 2023 — almost twice as high as the 2019 figure of six percent.
The number of people crossing the Channel in makeshift boats, a route that virtually did not exist before 2018, has meanwhile increased sharply in recent years.
In 2024, the largest group of asylum seekers hailed from Pakistan, followed by Afghanistan.
In previous years, they came mainly from Syria and Iran.
2 Chinese aircraft carriers are operating in the Pacific for the first time. Why?
- Two Chinese aircraft carriers operating together for the first time in the Pacific fuel concern about Beijing’s rapidly expanding military activity far beyond its borders
- China routinely sends coast guard vessels, warships and warplanes to areas around the disputed East China Sea islands, but never east of the second-island chain until now
TOKYO: Japan this week confirmed that two Chinese aircraft carriers have operated together for the first time in the Pacific, fueling Tokyo’s concern about Beijing’s rapidly expanding military activity far beyond its borders.
Carriers are considered critical to projecting power at a distance. China routinely sends coast guard vessels, warships and warplanes to areas around the disputed East China Sea islands, but now it is going as far as what’s called the second-island chain that includes Guam — a US territory. A single Chinese carrier has ventured into the Pacific in the past, but never east of that chain until now.
Here’s what to know about the latest moves by China, which has the world’s largest navy numerically.
What happened?
Japan’s Defense Ministry said the two carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong, were seen separately but almost simultaneously operating near southern islands in the Pacific for the first time. Both operated in waters off Iwo Jima, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Tokyo, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Monday.
The Liaoning also sailed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone of Minamitorishima, the country’s easternmost island. There was no violation of Japanese territorial waters. Still, Nakatani said Japan has expressed “concern” to the Chinese embassy.
Both carriers had warplanes take off and land. Late Wednesday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said a Chinese J-15 fighter jet that took off from the Shandong on Saturday chased a Japanese P-3C aircraft on reconnaissance duty in the area and came within an “abnormally close distance” of 45 meters (50 yards).
The Chinese jet on Sunday crossed 900 meters (980 yards) in front of the Japanese P-3C, the ministry said, adding it has strongly requested China to take measures to prevent such an “abnormal approach” that could cause accidental collisions.
Why is Japan worried?
China’s military buildup and expanding area of activity have raised tensions in the region.
The Chinese carriers sailed past the first-island chain, the Pacific archipelago off the Asian mainland that includes Japan, Taiwan and part of the Philippines. The Liaoning reached farther to the second-island chain, a strategic line extending to Guam, showing China also can challenge Japan’s ally, the United States.
“China apparently aims to elevate its capability of the two aircraft carriers, and to advance its operational capability of the distant sea and airspace,” Nakatani said.
The defense minister vowed to further strengthen Japan’s air defense on remote islands.
Japan has been accelerating its military buildup especially since 2022, including counter-strike capability, with long-range cruise missiles as deterrence to China.
What does China want?
China’s navy on Tuesday confirmed the deployments, calling it part of routine training in the western Pacific “to test their capabilities in far seas protection and joint operations.” It said the deployment was in compliance with international laws and not targeted at any country.
China is pursuing a vast military modernization program including ambitions of a true “blue-water” naval force capable of operating at long ranges for extended periods.
Beijing has the world’s largest navy numerically but lags far behind the United States in its number of aircraft carriers. China has three, the US 11.
Washington’s numerical advantage allows it to keep a carrier, currently the USS George Washington, permanently forward-deployed to Japan.
The Pentagon has expressed concern over Beijing’s focus on building new carriers. Its latest report to Congress on Chinese defense developments noted that it “extends air defense coverage of deployed task groups beyond the range of land-based defenses, enabling operations farther from China’s shore.”
What are the carriers’ abilities?
The two Chinese carriers currently in the western Pacific employ the older “ski-jump” launch method for aircraft, with a ramp at the end of a short runway to assist planes taking off. China’s first carrier, the Liaoning, was a repurposed Soviet ship. The second, the Shandong, was built in China along the Soviet design.
Its third carrier, the Fujian, launched in 2022 and is undergoing final sea trials. It is expected to be operational later this year. It is locally designed and built and employs a more modern, electromagnetic-type launch system like those developed and used by the US
All three ships are conventionally powered, while all the US carriers are nuclear powered, giving them the ability to operate at much greater range and more power to run advanced systems.
Satellite imagery provided to The Associated Press last year indicated China is working on a nuclear propulsion system for its carriers.
Any other recent concerns?
In August, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft violated Japan’s airspace off the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, and a Chinese survey ship violated Japanese territorial waters off another southern prefecture, Kagoshima. In September, the Liaoning and two destroyers sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni — just east of Taiwan — and nearby Iriomote, entering an area just outside Japan’s territorial waters where the country has some control over maritime traffic.
China routinely sends coast guard vessels and aircraft into waters and airspace surrounding the Japanese-controlled, disputed East China Sea islands to harass Japanese vessels in the area, forcing Japan to scramble jets.
Tokyo also worries about China’s increased joint military activities with Russia, including joint operations of warplanes or warships around northern and southwestern Japan in recent years.
