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KYIV — Ukraine’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia depends on quick decisions being taken by allies this year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday during a visit by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Zelenskyy told a joint press conference with von der Leyen that Ukraine planned to use a proposed multi-billion dollar European Union loan for air defense, energy and domestic weapons purchases.

Zelenskyy singled out the importance of U.S. President Joe Biden to the victory plan, which he said the two leaders will discuss when they meet. The Ukrainian leader is travelling to the United States next week.

“Most of the decisions from the plan depend specifically on him [Biden]. On other allies too, but there are certain points which depend on the goodwill and support of the United States,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy has provided regular updates on the plan’s preparation but has given few clues to the contents, indicating only that it aims to create terms acceptable to Ukraine after more than 2-1/2 years of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“The entire plan is predicated upon quick decisions from our partners. The plan is predicated upon decisions which should take place from October to December, and not delaying these processes,” he told the press conference alongside von der Leyen.

 
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Kyiv, Ukraine — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday she had arrived in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, to discuss Europe’s support, winter preparedness, defense and progress on the G7 loans.

“My 8th visit to Kyiv comes as the heating season starts soon, and Russia keeps targeting energy infrastructure,” von der Leyen said on the X social network.

Von der Leyen said Thursday more than $160 million from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets would be allocated to meet Ukraine’s urgent humanitarian needs for this winter.

Russia has knocked out about 9 gigawatts (GW) of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which von der Leyen said was the “power equivalent of the three Baltic states.”

She also said that the EU aimed to restore 2.5 GW of power generating capacity and would increase exports to supply 2 GW of electricity to Ukraine.

Von der Leyen will meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other officials.
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Brussels — The EU’s trade chief, Valdis Dombrovskis, said Thursday he had held “constructive” talks with China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao, as Beijing seeks a deal with Brussels to avoid steep tariffs on imported electric vehicles.

The meeting was held as divisions grow in Europe over the proposed tariffs, after Spain urged the EU last week to “reconsider” plans for duties of up to 36% on Chinese electric cars, joining Germany in opposition.

“Constructive meeting with Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao. Both sides agreed to intensify efforts to find an effective, enforceable and WTO (World Trade Organization) compatible solution,” Dombrovskis said on X.

Wang also spoke to businesses in the EV sector on Wednesday in Brussels after which he said China “will certainly persevere until the final moments of the consultations,” as quoted in a statement by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the EU.

The European Commission in July announced plans to levy import duties on electric vehicles imported from China after an anti-subsidy investigation started last year found they were unfairly undermining European rivals.

The EU wants to protect its automobile industry, a jewel in Europe’s industrial crown, providing jobs to around 14 million people.

The commission is in charge of trade policy for the 27-country bloc.

The tariffs are currently provisional and will only become definitive for five years after a vote by member states that is expected before the end of October.

China has angrily responded to the EU’s plans, warning it would unleash a trade war. Last month China also filed an appeal with the WTO over the tariffs.

Beijing has already launched its own investigations into European brandy and some dairy and pork products imported into China.

Dombrovskis told Wang that the probes were “unwarranted, are based on questionable allegations, and lack sufficient evidence,” the EU’s trade spokesperson, Olof Gill, said.

“(He) thus called for these investigations to be terminated and informed the Chinese side that the EU will do its utmost to defend the interests of its industries,” Gill added in a statement. 
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Moscow’s decision this week to expand its military capabilities is a sign of the stress that its military is facing in the third year of its slow-moving, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Analysts say the mobilization’s unpopularity and other factors are driving Russia to look for mercenaries from other countries. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina.
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For the second year in a row, specialized summer camps are being held in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains for teens who have witnessed traumatic events during the war. Psychologists say instead of focusing on the trauma, they are helping these kids find friends and inner strength. Omelyan Oshchudlyak visited one such camp. Videographer: Yuriy Dankevych
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Copenhagen, Denmark — Swedish authorities on Thursday charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Islamic State group with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.

Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016, in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

The crimes “took place under IS rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that IS attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa, and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”

According to the indictment, the aim was “completely or partially annihilating the Yazidi ethnic group as such and were part of or otherwise related to an armed conflict,” the court said.

In 2014, IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison, for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, in an area that was then controlled by IS. The woman had claimed that she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkey. However, once in Turkey, the two crossed into Syria and the IS-run territory.

In 2017, when the Islamic State’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkey where she was arrested with her son and two other children, she had given birth to in the meantime, with an IS foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was extradited from Turkey to Sweden.

Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.

The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months. Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.
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AVIGNON, France — Lawyers for some of the men accused of raping an unconscious French woman who had been drugged by her husband questioned her Wednesday about her habits, personal life and sex life, and even questioned whether she was truly unconscious during the encounters.

Gisèle Pelicot’s testimony came a day after her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, told the court that for nearly 10 years, he drugged her and invited dozens of men to rape her as she lay defenseless. She fiercely rejected any suggestion that she was anything but an unwitting victim.

“Since I’ve arrived in this courtroom, I’ve felt humiliated. I am treated like an alcoholic, an accomplice. … I have heard it all,” she said at the start of the day’s proceedings, breaking at times with the remarkable calm and stoicism she has shown throughout the often harrowing trial that has gripped France.

Gisèle Pelicot, who was married to her husband for 50 years and shares three children with him, has become a hero to many rape victims and a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for waiving her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public and appearing openly in front of the media.

Her ex-husband and the 50 other men on trial, who range in age from 26 to 74, face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Many of the defendants deny having raped Gisèle Pelicot. Some claim they were tricked by Dominique Pelicot, others say they believed she was consenting, and others argue that her husband’s consent was sufficient.

Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers say the preponderance of evidence — thousands of videos and photos taken by her ex-husband of men having sex with her while she appeared to be unconscious — should be enough to prove she was a victim and was entirely unaware of what Dominique Pelicot was subjecting her to from at least 2011 until 2020.

But on Wednesday, defense lawyers focused their questions on the notion of consent and whether she was aware of what was happening at any point during some of the 90 sexual encounters that prosecutors believe were rapes.

“Don’t you have tendencies that you are not comfortable with?” one lawyer asked Gisèle Pelicot.

“I’m not even going to answer this question, which I find insulting,” she responded, her voice breaking. “I understand why victims of rape don’t press charges. We really spill everything out into the open to humiliate the victim.”

Another lawyer asked whether she was indeed unconscious during one of the encounters captured on video.

“I didn’t give my consent to Mr. Pelicot or these men behind me for one second,” she said, referring to her ex-husband’s co-defendants. “In the state I was in, I could not respond to anybody. I was in a state of coma — the videos will attest to it.”

The line of questioning upset her.

“Since when can a man decide for his wife?” she said, stressing that only one of her ex-husband’s 50 co-defendants had refused his invitation to rape her. That man met Dominique Pelicot online and invited him to rape his own wife, who was also drugged, authorities contend.

“What are these men? Are they degenerates?” she said angrily. “They have committed rapes. That’s all I have to say.”

Another questioned the time and date stamps on the videos, and whether she thought the sexual acts lasted as long as the stamps suggested. “Rape is not a question of time,” she said.

“To talk of minutes, seconds. … It does not matter how long they spent. It’s so degrading, humiliating what I am hearing in this room,” she said.

At one point, Dominique Pelicot, who already said during the trial that all of the accusations against him are true, came out in support of his ex-wife, saying, “Stop suspecting her all the time … I did many things without her knowing.”

On Tuesday, he testified that all of his co-defendants knew exactly what they were doing when he had them over, saying, “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”
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