US Says NKorea Shipped 10,000 Containers of Munitions to Russia
Jung Pak, the U.S. Senior Official for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, told VOA on Monday that there have been at least 10 instances where North Korean missiles have been used on the battlefield in Ukraine. Pak told VOA’s Nike Ching that the U.S. still assesses North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is not currently planning an imminent attack on Washington’s allies, South Korea and Japan.
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Austin Hosts First In-Person Ukraine Defense Contact Group of 2024
Ramstein, Germany — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is in Germany to build upon the international community’s military support for Ukraine, even as the U.S. Congress has yet to approve additional funding for Kyiv.
This is Austin’s first international trip since he was hospitalized on Jan. 1 due to complications from surgery to treat his prostate cancer in late December. On Tuesday, he will host another round of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), which brings together officials from more than 50 nations to coordinate their Ukraine efforts.
Ukrainian forces have continued to fight back against Russian forces in the east while inflicting “considerable damage” to Russian forces in the Black Sea. However, Moscow— with the help of North Korea and Iran — has drastically ramped up its defense production capacity, forcing Ukraine to retreat from some battles due to ammunition shortages, according to a senior defense official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity ahead of the UDCG.
“Ukraine is heavily outgunned on the battlefield. We’ve received reports of Ukrainian troops rationing or even running out of ammunition on the front lines,” said the official.
The U.S. has contributed about $44 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, with allies and partners also committing more than $44 billion in that time frame.
But the U.S. military has run out of congressionally approved funds for replenishing its weapons stockpiles sent to Ukraine, and leadership in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has so far refused to bring new aid for Ukraine up for a vote.
Last week, the United States announced its first new round of military aid for Ukraine since late December, in what defense officials have called an “ad hoc” package made possible through U.S. Army procurement savings.
The military assistance package is valued at up to $300 million and will provide Ukraine with immediate air defense, artillery and anti-tank capabilities, along with more ammunition for HIMARS and 155-mm artillery rounds. But officials say it is unclear if there will be future procurement savings to produce another extraordinary package of aid.
“This is not a sustainable solution for Ukraine. We urgently need congressional approval of a national security supplemental,” the senior defense official said.
“There isn’t a way that our allies can really combine forces to make up for the lack of U.S. support,” the official added.
The emphasis on ammunition and air defense will likely be as strong as ever during this UDCG meeting.
“They need interceptors for a whole variety of their air defense systems, and over time, they keep running out as they try to defend against these wave upon wave of attacks that we’re seeing from Russia,” the senior official said.
Coalition leadership group
To better organize how the UDCG provides Kyiv with military weapons and equipment, the group’s members have formed capability coalitions to identify ways to increase Kyiv’s efficiency and cut costs.
Defense officials say Austin will convene a meeting of the leads and co-leads of all the capability coalitions for the first time on Tuesday, during a special coalition leadership group session.
Air Force capability is co-led by the United States, Denmark and the Netherlands. The armor capability is co-led by Poland and Italy. The artillery capability is co-led by France and the United States. De-mining is co-led by Lithuania and Iceland. Drone capability is co-led by Latvia and the United Kingdom. Information technology is co-led by Estonia and Luxembourg. Integrated air and missile defense capabilities are co-led by Germany and France, and maritime security is co-led by the United Kingdom and Norway.
Critics like Sean McFate, a professor at Syracuse University and author of “The New Rules of War,” told VOA the international community is putting its money into expensive military aid that falls short in modern warfare.
“It’s not conventional warfare that beat back Russia’s blitz. It was Ukrainian guerrilla warfare,” he said. “Ukraine was winning the unconventional fight. But then in fall of 2022, they decided to go conventional against Russia, which was strategically silly.”
McFate added that giving Ukraine more conventional war weapons was, in his view, “the strategic definition of insanity.”
Instead, he said Ukraine and its allies needed to think about unconventional ways where they can leverage their power to defeat Russia, such as guerilla operations and more direct actions deep inside Russia to build upon the Russian population’s unfavorable opinions of the war.
“Use your conventional forces to hold the line, but don’t invest them to create an offensive which requires a lot more resources,” McFate told VOA.
“M1A1 Abram tanks and F-16 fighter jets … will win tactical victories on the battlefield, but we all know that you can win every battle, yet lose the war, because wars are won on the strategic level, not at the tactical level of warfare,” he said.
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ЄС підготував законодавство, яке дозволить Україні отримувати прибутки від активів РФ вже у липні – Bloomberg
«Санкції проти Росії не працюють» – сенатор США Ліндсі Ґрем
Сенатор США також додав, що такі країни, як Індія, Китай та інші, які мають справу з Росією, «роблять це на свій страх і ризик»
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NATO Chief Visits Georgia to Discuss Cooperation, Path to Membership
Iceland Volcano Continues Spewing Lava for Third Day
39 за долар – гривня продовжує падати на валютному ринку
За даними Finance.ua, станом на 13:05 котирування становили 38 гривень 98 копійок – 39 гривень 2 копійки за долар
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Russian Opposition Activists in Seattle Remember Navalny as Putin Claims Victory
In Seattle, there were no polling stations for Russian citizens to join the worldwide movement known as “Noon Against Putin,” a symbolic protest of the re-election of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, they commemorated opposition leader Alexey Navalny and wrote letters to the growing list of political prisoners in Russia. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
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Ukraine Reports Downing 17 of 22 Russian Drones
Putin Wins Election with No Effective Opposition
Putin Says He Supported Prisoner Swap for Opposition Leader Navalny
European Far-Right Firebrand Prevented From Speaking at Swiss Event
Berlin — A prominent European far-right figure was prevented from giving a speech at an event in Switzerland and thrown out of the region where it was taking place.
Martin Sellner of the Identitarian Movement said in a video posted on social media network X, formerly Twitter, that he had been invited by a local group, Junge Tat (Young Deed), to “talk about remigration and the ethnic vote” and what happened at a recent meeting in Germany that prompted a string of large protests there. Remigration refers to the return, sometimes forced, of non-ethnically European immigrants back to their place of racial origin.
Sellner, who comes from neighboring Austria, said that a few minutes after he started speaking at the event Saturday, the electricity was turned off and he was taken to a police station, then told he was thrown out of Aargau canton (state) and escorted to Zurich.
Regional police said in a statement that they tracked down the Junge Tat event in the small town of Tegerfelden on Saturday after receiving several tips. They found some 100 people at the venue and said that, after the landlady found out about the contents of the planned meeting, she canceled the contract for it.
Police said they told organizers to end the event, but they didn’t obey. Without identifying Sellner by name, they said the speaker was held and ordered out of the region “to safeguard public security” and prevent confrontations with opponents.
Germany has seen large protests of the far right following a report that extremists met in Potsdam in November to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship. Sellner presented his “remigration” vision for the deportation of immigrants there.
That meeting has prompted widespread criticism of the Alternative for Germany party, some of whose members reportedly attended. The party has sought to distance itself from the event, while also decrying the reporting of it.
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Is the West Waging a Proxy War in Ukraine?
For as long as the U.S. and its Western allies have been sending military assistance to Ukraine, Moscow has accused the West of using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia. But, as Maxim Adams reports, the reality is much more complicated. VOA footage and video editing by Elena Matusovsky.
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Protests, Petrol, and Passports Mark Final Day of Russian Elections
An outpouring of international protests marked the third and final day of voting in Russia’s presidential elections, as supporters of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny heeded on of his last calls to action. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Greece Alarmed by Rising Tides of Migrants
Athens — Greece is facing increasing illegal immigration as the Gaza crisis continues. The trend has Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and senior European Union officials heading to Egypt Sunday to sign an aid package worth just over $8 billion intended to help ease migration.
A surge in illegal migration has seen numbers entering Greece swell by more than 400% in the last month alone.
Palestinians rank high in these flows but Egyptians are increasingly following suit.
“There is no doubt, that Egypt has suffered the greatest fallout of the crisis in Gaza,” said Migration and Asylum Minister Dimitris Keridis. “And as if the country and its economy was not strained enough, the Gaza crisis and inflow of Palestinians has exacerbated the situation, setting Egyptians to a massive flight.”
Since the start of the year, Greece’s southernmost islands of Crete and Gavdos have been hardest hit with daily flows of Egyptians landing on their shores, seeking refuge to the West via Libya.
On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will travel to Cairo with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to finalize an $8.06 billion aid package to shore up the Egyptian economy and help stem the tide of illegal immigration.
Under the planned deal, a first tranche of $1 billion will be dispersed immediately as emergency financial assistance. The rest, will be tied to economic reforms.
Greece has been a favored gateway to the European Union for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia since 2015, when nearly 1 million people landed on its islands, causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Thousands others have since then died at sea.
The migration crisis has seen Greece take a strong-arm approach to fend off illegal flows, triggering, however, accusations that it is pushing back migrants on rickety rafts, endangering their lives, even torturing them upon arrival.
Authorities have largely refuted the accusations but migrants are increasingly speaking up.
Last week, four Greek bodyguards were arrested for beating a migrant, battering his face and breaking his ribs, according to a migrant’s testimony.
An urgent investigation is underway.
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European Union Announces $8 Billion Package of Aid for Egypt
Cairo — The European Union on Sunday announced a $8 billion aid package for cash-strapped Egypt amid concerns that economic pressure and conflicts and chaos in neighboring countries could drive more migrants to European shores.
The deal is scheduled to be signed during a visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and the leaders of Belgium, Italy, Austria, Cyprus and Greece, according to Egyptian officials.
The package includes both grants and loans over the next three years for the Arab world’s most populous country, according to the European Union Mission in Cairo.
According to a document from the EU mission in Egypt, the two sides have promoted their cooperation to the level of a “strategic and comprehensive partnership,” paving the way for expanding Egypt-EU cooperation in various economic and non-economic areas.
The EU will provide assistance to Egypt’s government to fortify its borders especially with Libya, a major transit point for migrants fleeing poverty and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and will support the government in hosting Sudanese who have fled nearly a year of fighting between rival generals in their country.
Egypt has for decades been a refuge for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa trying to escape war or poverty. For some, Egypt is a destination and a haven, the closest and easiest country for them to reach. For others, it is a point of transit before attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Europe.
While the Egyptian coast has not been a major launching pad for people smugglers and human traffickers sending overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean to Europe, Egypt faces migratory pressures from the region, with the added looming threat that the Israel-Hamas war will spill across its borders.
The package drew criticism from international rights groups over Egypt’s human rights record. Amnesty International decried the deal and urged European leaders not to be complicit with human rights violations taking place in Egypt.
“EU leaders must ensure that the Egyptian authorities adopt clear benchmarks for human rights, said Amnesty International’s Head of the European Institutions Office, Eve Geddie in a statement. Geddie pointed to Egypt’s restrictions on media and freedom of expression and a crackdown on civil society.
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Putin Poised to Rule Russia for 6 More Years
Russian-Belarusian Band Returns to Stage After Detention in Thailand
Warsaw, Poland — A Russian-Belarusian rock band that denounces Moscow’s Ukraine invasion returned to the stage this week, voicing defiance after being detained in Thailand in January and threatened with deportation to Russia.
The band, Bi-2, formed in the 1980s in Belarus when it was part of the Soviet Union, left Russia in protest over the invasion and has been touring ever since in countries with large Russian-speaking communities.
Ahead of a concert in Vilnius on Thursday, band members met with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and supporters of late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month.
“We have become hostages to Russian history,” Egor Bortnik, one of the band’s two founders, told AFP ahead of a concert in Warsaw on Saturday.
But 51-year-old Bortnik, who is better known by his stage name “Lyova,” said he was “not against the war.”
“On the contrary, I’m for the war. I just want Ukraine to liberate its own territory,” he said.
“Putin has to gather his orcs and get out of Ukraine,” Bortnik said, using a disparaging term for Russian soldiers frequently used by Ukrainians.
The band was detained in Phuket, Thailand, in January on immigration charges in a case that has alarmed Russians critical of President Vladimir Putin living abroad.
The organizers of their concerts said all the necessary permits had been obtained, but the band was issued with tourist visas in error, and they accused the Russian consulate of waging a campaign to cancel the concerts.
After a week in detention, the band members were released and traveled to Israel, where they met with Foreign Minister Israel Katz who said in a statement that the episode showed that “music will win.”
Several of their concerts in Russia were canceled in 2022 after they refused to play at a venue with banners supporting the war in Ukraine, after which they left the country.
“I put my prosperity on the line when the war began, and I had to leave Russia. It was unexpected, it was not a process we had prepared for,” Bortnik said.
Bortnik, who moved to Israel while still a teenager, said he was more used to emigration than some of his peers who left Russia in the wake of the war.
“I understand how difficult it is,” he said.
Bortnik said he was no “geopolitician” and does not write explicitly “political songs” although their lyrics can “hit a nerve that is constantly vibrating.”
He said Putin’s demise could be sudden and violent and would also bring down Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for three decades.
“If something happens to Putin then there could be a civil war — the finale for any tyranny,” he said.
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Iceland Volcano Erupts 4th Time, Spewing Lava Into Sky
COPENHAGEN — A volcano in Iceland erupted on Saturday for the fourth time since December, the country’s meteorological office said, spewing smoke and bright orange lava into the air in sharp contrast against the dark night sky.
In a video shot from a Coast Guard helicopter and shown on public broadcaster RUV, fountains of molten rock soared from a long fissure in the ground, and lava spread rapidly to each side.
The eruption began at 2023 GMT, and the fissure was estimated to be about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles) long, roughly the same size as the last eruption in February, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a statement.
Authorities had warned for weeks that an eruption was imminent on the Reykjanes peninsula just south of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.
The site of the eruption was between Hagafell and Stora-Skogfell, the same area as the previous outbreak on February 8, the Met Office said.
“This was definitely expected,” said Rikke Pedersen, head of the Nordic Volcanological Centre.
“Of course, the exact time of the eruption is impossible to predict. The first cues of this moving towards the surface actually only happened about 15 minutes in advance,” she said.
Reykjavik’s Keflavik Airport’s website showed it remained open both for departures and arrivals.
Lava appeared to be flowing rapidly south toward the nearby Grindavik fishing town, where a few of the nearly 4,000 residents had returned following earlier outbreaks, the Met Office said. .
The town was again being evacuated, public broadcaster RUV reported. An outbreak in January burned several of its homes to the ground.
“We’re just like, this is business as usual,” Kristin Maria Birgisdottir, who was evacuated from Grindavik in November, told Reuters.
“My son … just called me and said, ‘Mamma, did you know the eruption has started?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, I did know.’ Oh, my grandma just told me. So it’s like we don’t even bother telling each other anymore,” she said.
Icelandic police said they had declared a state of emergency for the area.
The nearby Blue Lagoon luxury geothermal spa immediately shut its doors, as it did during previous eruptions.
Iceland, roughly the size of the U.S. state of Kentucky, boasts more than 30 active volcanoes, making the north European island a prime destination for volcano tourism, a niche segment that attracts thousands of thrill seekers.
In 2010, ash clouds from eruptions at the Eyafjallajokull volcano in the south of Iceland spread over large parts of Europe, grounding some 100,000 flights and forcing hundreds of Icelanders to evacuate their homes.
Volcanic outbreaks in the Reykjanes peninsula are so-called fissure eruptions, which do not usually cause large explosions or significant dispersal of ash into the stratosphere.
Gases from the eruption were traveling westwards out to sea, the meteorological office said.
Scientists fear the eruptions could continue for decades, and Icelandic authorities have started building dikes to divert burning lava flows away from homes and critical infrastructure.
The February eruption cut off district heating to more than 20,000 people as lava flows destroyed roads and pipelines.
Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, among the largest on the planet, Iceland is a seismic and volcanic hot spot as the two move in opposite directions.
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Latvia Starts Criminal Case Against EU Lawmaker Suspected of Russian Espionage
HELSINKI — Latvia’s state security service has started criminal proceedings against an European Parliament lawmaker and a citizen of the Baltic country who is suspected of cooperating with Russian intelligence and security services, according to Latvian media reports Saturday.
Latvian media outlets reported that the security service, known by the abbreviation VDD, has been investigating the activities of Tatjana Ždanoka, 73, and her alleged Russia ties over the past several weeks since reports were published in January by Russian, Nordic and Baltic news sites saying that she has been an agent for the Russian Federal Security Service since at least 2004.
According to news agency LETA, the Latvian security service decided to start a criminal process against Ždanoka on Feb. 22. The security service couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Ždanoka has denied all of the allegations against her.
The European Parliament said in late January that it had opened an investigation into news reports that a Latvian member of the assembly, Ždanoka, has been working as a Russian agent for several years. The European Union’s legislative body, based in Strasbourg, France, said it was taking the allegations very seriously.
Following a joint investigation, the independent Russian investigative journalism site The Insider, its Latvian equivalent Re:Baltica, news portal Delfi Estonia, and Swedish newspaper Expressen published on Jan. 29 emails that they said were leaked and showed Ždanoka’s interactions with her handler.
Expressen claimed that Ždanoka has been spreading propaganda about alleged violations of the rights of Russians living in Baltic countries and arguing for a pro-Kremlin policy, among other things. She has also refused to condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the paper said.
Latvia, a Baltic nation of 1.9 million people, and neighboring Estonia are both home to a sizable ethnic Russian minority of about 25% of the population. Both countries are ex-Soviet republics.
Over the past few years, Moscow has routinely accused Latvia and Estonia of discriminating against their Russian-speaking populations.
Ždanoka’s resume, which is posted on the European Parliament website, lists her as the president of the EU Russian-Speakers’ Alliance, a nongovernmental organization, since 2007. She was first elected to the European Parliament in 2004.
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