Beijing slams ‘irresponsible remarks’ after Zelensky says Chinese recruits fighting for Russia

Above, the Chinese embassy in Kyiv on April 8, 2025. China warned parties in the Ukraine war on Thursday against making ‘irresponsible remarks.’ (AFP)
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Updated 10 April 2025
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Beijing slams ‘irresponsible remarks’ after Zelensky says Chinese recruits fighting for Russia

  • Foreign ministry spokesman: Beijing ‘has always required that its nationals stay away from areas of armed conflict’

BEIJING: China warned parties in the Ukraine war on Thursday against making “irresponsible remarks” after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Beijing knows its citizens are being recruited by Russia to fight in the conflict.

Zelensky said on Wednesday that Kyiv had details of 155 Chinese nationals who had been deployed to assist Moscow’s invasion, a day after claiming the Ukrainian army had captured two Chinese soldiers in the eastern Donetsk region.

Asked about Zelensky’s assertion on Thursday, Beijing’s foreign ministry told “relevant parties” to “refrain from expressing irresponsible remarks.”

“We would advise the relevant parties to recognize China’s role correctly and clear-headedly,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular news briefing, without mentioning Ukraine or Zelensky by name.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in the grinding three-year war despite criticism from Western governments that its close ties to Russia have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support.

Zelensky said on Wednesday that the “overt involvement of Chinese citizens in combat operations... is a deliberate step toward expanding the war.”

“They drag other countries into war,” Zelensky said of Russia.

“I believe that they are now dragging China into this war.”

Lin said Beijing “has always required that its nationals... avoid involving themselves in armed conflicts in any form.”

“China is not a creator of or party to the Ukraine crisis. We are staunch supporters and active promoters of a peaceful resolution,” he said.


Militants kill at least 23 in Nigeria attack, security sources say

Updated 56 min 29 sec ago
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Militants kill at least 23 in Nigeria attack, security sources say

MAIDUGURI: At least 23 farmers and fishermen were killed and others abducted by suspected Islamist militants in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state this week, security sources and local residents told Reuters.
Nigeria has been grappling with a long-running insurgency in its northeast, primarily driven by the Islamist armed group Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province.
The latest attack happened in the village of Malam Karanti on Thursday morning, the security sources and residents said.
A spokesman for Nigeria’s army did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
Local resident Sani Auwal said by phone that militants had gathered farmers and fishermen near the village and killed 23 people, many of them bean farmers. They spared an elderly man who later alerted the community, he said.
Another local resident Usman Ali said the community had tried to recover the bodies of those killed but had been chased back by the militants.
Last month Borno’s governor acknowledged that Boko Haram had renewed attacks and kidnappings in the state, reversing previous gains by security forces.


India and US at odds on Kashmir truce with Pakistan — analysts

Updated 17 May 2025
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India and US at odds on Kashmir truce with Pakistan — analysts

  • Trump announced the truce after four days of missile, drone and artillery attacks from both sides, killing about 70 people
  • President Trump’s rhetoric about the ceasefire is ‘irritating’ for India, an important ally for the US, an analyst says

NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump’s claim to have helped end fighting between arch-rivals India and Pakistan has driven a wedge between him and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, analysts say.

A week since Trump announced a surprise truce between India and Pakistan to end a brief but intense conflict, New Delhi and Washington differ about the way it was achieved.

The US administration thought “an intervention at this stage might give them some basic benefit in terms of highlighting Trump’s role,” Indian foreign policy expert Harsh V. Pant told AFP.

“That... became the driver and in a sense the hurry which with Trump announced the ceasefire,” said Pant from the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation (ORF) think tank.

Fighting began when India launched strikes on May 7 against what it called “terrorist camps” in Pakistan following an April militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people.

New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing the militants it claimed were behind the attack, which Pakistan denies.

Trump announced the truce after four days of missile, drone and artillery attacks from both sides, killing about 70 people, including dozens of civilians, and sent thousands fleeing.

He later boasted about bringing India and Pakistan “back from the brink,” telling Fox News on Friday it was “a bigger success than I’ll ever be given credit for.”

New Delhi however shrugs off these claims, which go against decades-long Indian policy that opposes foreign mediation in conflicts with Islamabad.

India and Pakistan claim the currently divided Kashmir in full. New Delhi considers the Himalayan region an internal matter, with politicians long viewing external mediation as a sign of weakness.

Modi’s first speech since the ceasefire did not mention US involvement and his government has since insisted that talks with Pakistan are “strictly bilateral.”

India was also quick to dismiss Trump’s suggestion that trade pressures hastened a truce.

“The issue of trade did not come up” in discussions with US officials, the Indian foreign ministry said this week.

According to ORF fellow Manoj Joshi, Trump’s rhetoric is “irritating” for India — whose strategic location and massive market size have made the country an important ally for the United States.

But India is being “very cautious” because it is in negotiations for a trade deal with Washington to avoid steep tarriffs, he said.

“We (India) would like the agenda to go in a different direction,” said Joshi.

It is also a thorny matter domestically.

Main opposition Congress party said Trump’s announcement had “upstaged” the Hindu nationalist leader’s “much-delayed address.”

It also demanded an all-party meeting to ask whether India is changing its policy on “third-party mediation” for Kashmir, disputed between Pakistan and India.

The two South Asian rivals had in the 1970s agreed to settle “differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations.”

Modi has previously poked fun at former Congress governments for “weak” responses against Pakistan in various skirmishes.

“So India would obviously respond to that and deny that... about as politely as they feel they can get away with,” said South Asia researcher Pramit Pal Chaudhuri of political consultancy Eurasia Group.

Trump’s claimed mediation was welcomed by Islamabad, which “needed an American intervention to give them the off-ramp they needed to get out of a conflict,” Chaudhuri added.

On Thursday, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reaffirmed that “where Pakistan is concerned, our relations, our dealings with them will be bilateral, and strictly bilateral.”

But the same day, speaking from Qatar, Trump repeated claims of brokering a ceasefire and using trade as a tool.

“(I said) let’s do trade instead of war. And Pakistan was very happy with that, and India was very happy with that,” Trump said in his speech.

It has been a decade since Modi last met a Pakistani leader. Since then, relations have deteriorated, coming to a head when India unilaterally revoked in 2019 limited autonomy of the part of Kashmir it administers.

According to Joshi, “the hyphenation of India and Pakistan” is also “irritating” for New Delhi, which has tried to carve out a separate identity on the global stage.

“The optics of Trump hammering it day after day... is politically damaging for Modi,” Sushant Singh, a former Indian soldier and South Asian studies lecturer at Yale University, wrote on X.

“[Modi] can’t personally counter Trump, and despite attempts by India’s big media to play it down, social media amplifies Trump,” Singh said.


British police charge three Iranians in counter terrorism probe

Updated 17 May 2025
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British police charge three Iranians in counter terrorism probe

British police have charged three Iranian men with offenses under the National Security Act after a major counter-terrorism investigation, the police said on Saturday.
British counter-terrorism police arrested eight men including seven Iranians earlier this month in two separate operations in what the British interior minister called some of the biggest investigations of their kind in recent years.
Mostafa Sepahvand, Farhad Javadi Manesh, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori were charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, the police said in a statement.
The foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran, they added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has previously said he was “disturbed” to learn that Iranian citizens had been arrested by British authorities.
The British government has placed Iran on the highest tier of its foreign influence register, requiring Tehran to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK.


Police investigate disappearance of Melania Trump’s statue in her native Slovenia

Updated 17 May 2025
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Police investigate disappearance of Melania Trump’s statue in her native Slovenia

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia: Police in Slovenia are investigating the disappearance of a bronze statue of US first lady Melania Trump that was sawed off and carried away from her hometown.
The life-size sculpture was unveiled in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office near Sevnica in central Slovenia, where Melanija Knavs was born in 1970. It replaced a wooden statue that had been set on fire earlier that year.
Police spokeswoman Alenka Drenik Rangus said Friday that the police were informed about the theft of the statue on Tuesday. She said police were working to track down those responsible.
According to Slovenian media reports, the bronze replica was sawed off at the ankles and removed.
Franja Kranjc, who works at a bakery in Sevnica that sells cakes with Melania Trump’s name in support of the first lady, said the stolen statue won’t be missed.
“I think no one was really proud at this statue, not even the first lady of the USA,” he said. “So I think its OK that it’s removed.”
The original wooden statue was torched in July 2020. The rustic figure was cut from the trunk of a linden tree, showing her in a pale blue dress like the one she wore at Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017. The replica bronze statue has no obvious resemblance with the first lady.


They once lived the 'gangster life.' Now they tackle food insecurity in Kenya's slums

Updated 17 May 2025
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They once lived the 'gangster life.' Now they tackle food insecurity in Kenya's slums

MATHARE: Joseph Kariaga and his friends once lived the “gangster life” in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, snatching phones, mugging people and battling police. But when Kariaga's brother was shot dead by police, the young men took stock.
“We said, 'We cannot live like this. We are going to lose our lives.’ Many of our friends had died,” said Kariaga, now 27. “I reflected on my life. I had to change.”
Now the men are farmers with a social mission. Nearly a dozen of them founded Vision Bearerz in 2017 to steer youth away from crime and address food insecurity in one of Kenya’s poorest communities.
Despite challenges, Vision Bearerz makes a modest but meaningful community impact, including feeding over 150 children at lunches each week. Some residents praise the group and call the men role models.
Amid cuts to foreign funding by the United States and others, experts say local organizations like this may be the future of aid.
Vision Bearerz works on an urban farm tucked away in the muddy streets and corrugated-metal homes that make up Mathare, one of Africa's most populous slums. Estimates say about a half-million people live in this neighborhood of less than two square kilometers.
Some 2 million people, or 60% of Nairobi’s population, live in informal settlements, according to CFK Africa, a non-governmental organization that runs health and poverty reduction programs in such neighborhoods and is familiar with Vision Bearerz' work.
Lack of infrastructure is a key challenge in these communities, which are growing amid sub-Saharan Africa’s rapid urbanization and booming youth population, said Jeffrey Okoro, the group’s executive director.
Poverty pushes youth into crime, Okoro added.
“Most folks in slums such as Mathare are not able to earn enough to buy a decent meal, and kids who are under 5 are twice as likely to be malnourished,” he said. “One of the other major challenges affecting young people is gangs, and the promise of making a quick buck.”
The farmers of Vision Bearerz know this well.
“When you are born from this land, there is not much you have inherited, so you have to make it yourself,” said Ben Njoki, 28, whose face tattoos are reminders of a gang-affiliated past. “You have to use violence.”
In 2017, not long after Kariaga’s brother was killed, Njoki and other young men made a plan to change. More than a dozen people they grew up with had been killed, and they realized they would follow if they did not find an alternative to crime, said Moses Nyoike, 32, the chair of Vision Bearerz.
To keep busy, the group began collecting garbage and would split profits from trading vegetables, buying produce in another county and reselling it locally. They noticed a gap in the supply of vegetables to Mathare, and with permission from authorities they cleaned up a garbage dump and began planting.
Polluted soil, and water rationing, made it a tough start. Then, inspired by a TikTok account that showcased farming in a Colombian slum, Vision Bearerz tried their hand at hydroponics. With the help of an NGO that supports community enterprises, Growth4Change, they were able to get materials and training in urban farming methods.
Today, Vision Bearerz grows vegetables, raises pigs and farms tilapia in a small pond. They sell a portion of what they produce, with revenue also coming from running a car wash and public toilet.
With the earnings, the group buys maize flour to make ugali, a dough-like staple food, and beans, which supplement produce from their farm in weekly lunches for children.
Vision Bearerz also runs outreach programs to warn against drug use and crime, and has sessions where women teach girls about feminine health.
“The life I was living was a lie. It didn’t add up to anything. We just lost people. Now, we are winning people in the community,” Njoki said.
Davis Gichere, 28, another founding member, called the work therapeutic.
Challenges remain. Joining Vision Bearerz requires a pledge to leave crime behind, and there have been instances of recidivism, with at least one member arrested. Lingering criminal reputations have led to police harassment in the past, and finding money to buy food for Saturday feedings is a weekly struggle.
Funding cuts across the development space, including the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, make the prospect of new financing dim.
At least one other group in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, Human Needs Project, does similar work of urging youth away from crime and addressing food insecurity through urban farming.
It's a model that can be scaled up or copied elsewhere, said Okoro of CFK Africa.
“The future of development is locally led organizations," he said, noting they are best suited to understanding the needs of their communities.
Kariaga still feels the pain of his brother’s death, but is proud of his new job.
“Farming can change the world,” he said, a silver-capped tooth glinting in the sun.
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