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moscow — Marina and her family were used to hearing the distant boom of explosions from their village in Russia’s Kursk region, just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

On the night of August 6, the explosions became so loud their beds began shaking.

“Nobody knew anything,” the 39-year-old hairdresser told Agence France-Presse at a humanitarian aid center run by the Orthodox Church in Moscow.

Ukrainian soldiers and armored vehicles began pouring into the region in the early hours of that morning, mounting the biggest cross-border attack on Russian soil since World War II.

The operation came almost 2½ years into Russia’s assault on Ukraine, which has seen Moscow capture large swaths of Ukrainian territory and strike Ukrainian cities.

But for many living in the border region, the attack came as a surprise.

“Drones started flying over the farms, over fields, over cars,” said Marina. “We couldn’t get through to anyone to find out how to leave, and where to go.”

‘Can’t get out’

When her village some 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from the border was cut off from electricity and water, Marina knew they had to leave.

“Some said maybe it’ll blow over, and so maybe they stayed till the last minute. Now, they can’t get out of there,” she said.

Despite the risks, Marina’s partner, Yevgeny, decided to take her and their two children to the region’s capital, Kursk, a place that was still safe “for a few days,” he thought.

They left their dog and cat behind.

As they saw the long line of cars on the road and deserted villages, they finally realized the scale of the attack under way.

The family reached Kursk in the early morning, where they found accommodation in a center for evacuees.

Their neighbors were not so lucky: They were injured by a drone as they fled.

“We hoped it would all be over soon,” Marina said.

But on Sunday, debris from a downed Ukrainian missile fell on a residential building in Kursk, injuring 15 people, according to the authorities.

At least 12 civilians have been killed and more than 100 injured since the incursion began, according to authorities.

‘There’s nothing left’

The family went to Moscow, where their friends were waiting for them — four of them already living in a tiny studio flat north of the capital.

Now living eight to a room, Marina and Yevgeny have been desperately trying to find out what’s happening in their home region.

Half an hour before meeting AFP at the Moscow aid center, Yevgeny managed to contact a neighbor, who confirmed the Ukrainian army was now occupying their village.

“They’ve moved into my father-in-law’s house, which he’d just renovated, right next to the shop that they’ve already emptied,” he said.

Ukraine has said it will open humanitarian corridors for civilians in the captured territory so they can evacuate toward Russia or Ukraine.

Russia says more than 120,000 people have fled fighting in the region, but Yevgeny said many of his neighbors were stuck.

“Honestly, it’s a tricky situation. Nobody’s going to kick them out in a day and a half,” Yevgeny told AFP of the Ukrainian army.

“The longer it goes on, the more time they have, the better their position is, and the harder it will be to drive them out.”

“In short, there’ll be nothing left to live in. There’s nothing left,” he said.

A neighbor managed to let Marina and Yevgeny’s cat and dog out of the house, where they had been locked for several days.

“Now, they’ll have to find their own food in the village,” he said sadly.
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Authorities in Britain are trying to work out the origins of the violent far-right protests that erupted in towns and cities across the country earlier this month. While some blame simple racism and false news spread on social media, others say deeper social and economic forces are at work. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Berlin — Germany has asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian diving instructor who was allegedly part of a team that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines two years ago, according to reports in German media published on Wednesday. 

However, one media outlet said the man appeared to be no longer living in Poland.  

The multi-billion-dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of blasts in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

German investigators believe the Ukrainian diver was part of a team that planted the explosives, the SZ and Die Zeit newspapers reported alongside the ARD broadcaster, citing unnamed sources. 

The German prosecutor general’s office declined to comment on the reports, which said the German government had handed a European arrest warrant to Poland in June. The Polish National Public Prosecutor’s Office made no immediate comment. 

The German interior ministry declined to comment and the justice ministry did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment. 

Suspected accomplices 

Another man and a woman — also Ukrainian diving instructors — have been identified in Germany’s investigation into the sabotage but so far no arrest warrants have been issued for them, according to SZ, Zeit and ARD. 

The explosions destroyed three out of four Nord Stream pipelines, which had become a controversial symbol of German reliance on Russian gas in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia blamed the United States, Britain and Ukraine for the blasts, which largely cut Russian gas off from the lucrative European market. Those countries have denied involvement. 

Germany, Denmark, and Sweden all opened investigations into the incident, and the Swedes found traces of explosives on several objects recovered from the explosion site, confirming the blasts were deliberate acts. 

The Swedish and Danish probes were closed this February without identifying any suspect. 

In January 2023, Germany raided a ship that it said may have been used to transport explosives and told the United Nations that it believed trained divers could have attached devices to the pipelines at a depth of about 70 to 80 meters (230-262 ft). 

 
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Vancouver, British Columbia — Tens of thousands of people have signed online petitions for the release of environmentalist Paul Watson, the controversial activist arrested in Greenland on an extradition request by the Japanese government.

Watson’s latest legal journey started July 21 in Nuuk, Greenland, when he was arrested aboard his foundation’s ship, the John Paul DeJoria.

His arrest and extradition appear to be tied to alleged actions in 2010 against the Japanese whaling vessel Shonan Maru 2.

For the past several decades, Watson has been known to take severe measures, including the ramming and disabling of whaling ships, to stop the commercial harvesting of whales. Many of the ships were from Japan. He also gained further notoriety as the focus of the reality TV series “Whale Wars.”

The John Paul DeJoria’s captain, Lockhart MacLean, said it made a regular stop for provisions when Danish national police came aboard after a friendly visit by Greenlandic police. Greenland is a territory of Denmark.

“So, these were police that had been flown in from Copenhagen, came on board, and they had a very different attitude,” MacLean said. “They’re much more, much more aggressive and firm, and obviously, within a few minutes, they had taken Paul Watson in cuffs into a van, off the ship.”

MacLean said the ship will continue to travel via the Panama Canal into the Pacific Ocean in an effort to stop Japanese whaling.  

 

Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian American, has been arrested many times.

 

Among the original members of Greenpeace, created in 1972 in Vancouver, he split from that organization five years later to form the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Under that group, he garnered worldwide headlines for ramming whaling ships at sea. He formed the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in 2022.

 

Rex Weyler was the director of the original Greenpeace and co-founded Greenpeace International in 1979.

 

He says Watson’s arrests usually strengthen his cause.

“Paul Watson being arrested is one of his tactics, and it was one of our tactics at Greenpeace, which is to challenge what the whalers or sealers or other extractors of ecological resources were doing,” Weyler said. “And if they wanted to arrest us, that’s fine, because when they arrest us, it only heightens the story. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

For Teale Phelps Bondaroff, research director of OceansAsia, Watson’s arrest was a surprise. Bondaroff, who has worked for Sea Shepherd in the past, said the arrest shows that commercial harvesting of whales still exists.

 

“Anything like this draws attention to the issue. One of the things I find is interesting is a lot of folks, when you talk about whaling, see it as something of the past and aren’t aware of the fact that there are still countries that are whaling today,” Bondaroff said.

MacLean said because of Watson’s age, a 15-year prison sentence in Japan would amount to a life sentence. He hopes that a freed Watson will manage to rejoin them on their campaign against Japanese whaling.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry was asked to comment on this story through the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa but did not respond.
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LONDON — The Chinese government has resubmitted its plans to build a “super embassy” in London, a decision testing the new British government’s strategy for dealing with China after the victory of the Labour Party in the general election last month.

According to the new plan, the super embassy will be built on the former Royal Mint Court site near the Tower of London, with a total area of about 576,000 square meters (620,000 square feet) — 10 times the size of China’s existing embassy in London.

The project includes not only the embassy building but also 225 residences and a cultural exchange center. 

The proposal was rejected by the Tower Hamlets Council in 2022 and was set aside after China failed to appeal in time. 

Since China bought the land for roughly $327 million in 2018, the plan has faced ongoing opposition from members of parliament and local residents concerned about security, particularly as protests in the surrounding area could increase significantly.

A Tower Hamlets Council spokesperson told VOA the planning team is reviewing the latest application, and public consultation has begun, but a target committee date has not been scheduled.

Politicians and activists believe that China’s choice to resubmit its plan is a test of the bottom line of the new British government’s China policy. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith believes the Labour Party may not be as tough on China as the Conservatives.

“The Labour government has become ambivalent about China and has in no way seemed to be taking any interest in the threat that China is posing,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

With the Labour government coming to power in early July, the United Kingdom’s relationship with China is undergoing a process of re-examination. Foreign Minister David Lammy said the administration would conduct a comprehensive review of its relationship with China to ensure that it could cooperate with China in areas of common interest while addressing global threats.

George Robertson, the former NATO secretary-general and head of the British government’s strategic defense assessment, warned that China was one of the countries that posed a deadly threat to the U.K.

The “Strategic Defense Review,” expected to be published in the first half of 2025, will help define the government’s defense policy for the next decade. The re-application of China’s super embassy program will undoubtedly be a test in this review process and policy shift.

The Tower Hamlets Council is dominated by the Labour Party. According to The Daily Telegraph, representatives of the Chinese Embassy in the U.K. said in a document submitted to the district council that the 2022 refusal decision was baseless and urged officials to reconsider the plan.

“I have no doubt that this will be classified as a risk and be evaluated continuously by the Labour Party,” said Rex Lee, a media spokesman for ESEA4Labour. 

East and Southeast Asians for Labour was founded in 1999 with the mission of promoting the Labour Party’s values, civic conscience and duties, according to its website.

“The Labour Party has been clear in their support of Hong Kongers and Uyghurs and all others who try to hold the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] into account in human rights breaches. There is no space for CCP to maneuver under the Labour government,” he said.

Megan Khoo, policy adviser for Hong Kong Watch, told VOA that the proposal “should feature in the new government’s audit of U.K.-China relations, including how such an establishment would hold the potential to threaten the more than 190,000 Hong Kongers which now call Britain home. 

“This site could serve as a vessel for the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] increasing transnational repression against Hong Kongers and other Chinese dissident groups, and as such, has no place on U.K. soil. The new government must not allow itself to be toyed with and make it immediately clear that it will not allow the PRC to call the shots,” she said.

VOA requested comment from the Chinese Embassy but did not receive a response by the time of publication.  

The Royal Mint site has sparked many discussions about the preservation and safety of history, due to its historical value. 

“It’s a historic building, which would not lend itself to be an embassy,” said Smith, the former Conservative Party leader. “It would be the loss of a historic building under the ownership of China. It would become Chinese territory forever, and that is not to be allowed. Certainly not the CCP.”

In 2022, pro-democracy protesters were assaulted by Chinese diplomats outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester. Opponents of the new embassy site argue that this incident demonstrates China’s intention to use the location to suppress protests, as the site offers limited space for demonstrations.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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LONDON — British authorities have arrested more than 1,000 people following days of rioting involving violence, arson and looting as well as racist attacks targeting Muslims and migrants, a national policing body said Tuesday. 

The riots, which followed the killings of three young girls in the northern English town of Southport, began after the July 29 attack was wrongly blamed on an Islamist migrant based on online misinformation. 

Violence broke out in cities across England and also in Northern Ireland, but there have been fewer instances of unrest since last week after efforts to identify those involved were ramped up.  

Many have been swiftly jailed, with some receiving long sentences. 

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said in its latest update that 1,024 had been arrested and 575 charged across the U.K. 

Those arrested include a 69-year-old accused of vandalism in Liverpool and an 11-year-old boy in Belfast. 

A 13-year-old girl pleaded guilty to violent disorder at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court, prosecutors said, having been seen on July 31 punching and kicking the entrance to a hotel for asylum-seekers. 

“This alarming incident will have caused genuine fear amongst people who were being targeted by these thugs — and it is particularly distressing to learn that such a young girl participated in this violent disorder,” prosecutor Thomas Power said. 

The last time Britain witnessed widespread rioting was in 2011, when the fatal shooting of a Black man by police triggered several days of street violence. 

Fast and tough judicial action was viewed as helping quell the unrest in 2011, when around 4,000 people were arrested over several weeks.
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Warsaw, POLAND — Poland on Tuesday signed a $10 billion deal to buy 96 Apache attack helicopters from U.S. manufacturer Boeing in an upgrade to the country’s military capabilities.

Poland has sharply accelerated the modernization of its armed forces since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in 2022.

“This is the landmark purchase by Poland for its armed forces of … 96 state-of-the-art AH-64E Apache attack helicopters,” Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters.

“Today we are taking a milestone in the transformation and equipping of the army,” he added, speaking at the Inowroclaw air base, where the Apaches are to be stationed.

The deal is the latest in a string of contracts signed by Poland with the United States in recent days.

On Friday, Warsaw announced a deal to buy hundreds of AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. On Monay there was a contract to build 48 launchers for the U.S.-designed Patriot air defense systems.

Poland, a staunch ally of Ukraine, has announced it would spend more than 4% of its annual economic output on defense this year — twice NATO’s target of 2%.

The Ukraine war has also solidified the relationship between the United States and Poland, a country on NATO’s eastern flank that sees Washington as one of its main allies.

The Apache helicopter sale was approved last year by the U.S. State Department and Congress.

The deal “changes the face of the Polish army’s operations and complements” previous purchases, Kosiniak-Kamysz said, pointing notably at the Abrams tanks that Poland bought in the past years.

According to the Polish government, the Apaches are designed to work with the tanks.

“For the Abrams, the Apache is an essential element,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

In 2022, Poland bought 250 Abrams tanks in a modern M1A2 variant, which are expected to be delivered later this year. It will be the first country outside the United States with the tanks.

The attack helicopter agreement also envisages providing the Polish army with maintenance equipment, technical and training support, flight simulators and spare parts.

“Offset, purchase, leasing, pilot training, technology, armament — it was all negotiated together. It’s a historic day for helicopter aviation,” Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Bejda said.

“These $10 billion are the insurance of our country, the insurance of our freedom,” Bejda added, saying that the Apaches would serve the Polish efforts to “deter those who have evil intentions.”

The first U.S.-made helicopters are to be delivered in 2028, but some Polish pilots have already begun training on them.

The Apaches will replace outdated Russian Mi-24 helicopters.
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