KYIV: Thousands of Ukrainian inmates are seeking to join the military, Kyiv said Tuesday, following a decision by lawmakers enabling some categories of prisoners to join the armed forces.
The move echoes a policy in Russia, where tens of thousands of prisoners have been sent to Ukraine with the promise of amnesty and were killed in gruelling battles that produced few gains.
Ukraine is suffering critical ammunition and manpower shortages on the battlefield that have allowed Russian forces to advance on the eastern and northern front lines.
“This is more than 3,000 people. We predicted this before the adoption of this law,” Deputy Minister of Justice Olena Vysotska said, referring to the number of prisoners who have submitted applications to join the military.
She said authorities had identified 20,000 eligible prisoners and that of them, 4,500 had “expressed interest” in joining. She added that the figure was likely to fluctuate.
Only prisoners with fewer than three years left on their sentence can apply. Mobilized prisoners are granted parole rather than a pardon.
Among those not eligible to serve include those found guilty of sexual violence, killing two or more people, serious corruption and former high-ranking officials.
Russia has recruited prisoners to serve on the front lines since the first days of its invasion, initially offering presidential pardons for six months’ service.
Over 3,000 Ukrainian inmates seek to join military
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Over 3,000 Ukrainian inmates seek to join military
- Ukraine is suffering critical ammunition and manpower shortages on the battlefield
- “We predicted this before the adoption of this law,” Deputy Minister of Justice Olena Vysotska said
Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud
Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea,
The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country’s problematic international adoption system. Monday’s recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.
“The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,” Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission, told a press conference. “And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities.
“It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.”
The commission called on the government to formally apologize to adoptees and their families. Investigators found confirmed cases of child trafficking in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, including from Sri Lanka, Colombia, Poland and China.
Singer said a public apology, besides being important for those who are personally affected, can help raise awareness about the violations because there is a tendency to download the existence and significance of the abuses.
An Associated Press investigation, also documented by Frontline (PBS), last year reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea’s foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies.
The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the US, Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated child origins, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they’d been sent to new parents overseas.
The findings are challenging the international adoption industry, which was built on the model created in South Korea.
The Netherlands last year announced it would no longer allow its citizens to adopt from abroad. Denmark’s only international adoption agency said it was shutting down and Switzerland apologized for failing to prevent illegal adoptions. France released a scathing assessment of its own culpability.
South Korea sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions in the past six decades, with more than half of them placed in the US Along with France and Denmark, Sweden was a major European destination of South Korean children, adopting nearly 10,000 of them since the 1960s.
Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France
The victim, who was said to be “possibly 35,” but has not been officially identified, was killed late on Saturday night in the town of Puget-sur-Argens. A 25-year-old Turkish national was also shot in the hand by the man and taken to hospital.
The incident comes one month after the fatal stabbing of Aboubakar Cisse, a 22-year-old man from Mali, in a mosque in the southern town of La Grand-Combe, amid rising racism in France.
Last year French police recorded an 11 percent rise in racist, xenophobic or anti-religious crimes, according to official data published in March.
In a statement released late on Sunday, the prosecutor said the suspect in the weekend shooting was a 53-year-old who practices sports shooting. He had published hateful and racist content on his social media account before and after killing his neighbor, the prosecutor added.
France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering more than 6 million and making up about 10 percent of the country’s population.
Politicians across the political spectrum, including President Emmanuel Macron, have attacked what they describe as Islamist separatism in a way that rights groups have said stigmatizes Muslims and amounts to discrimination.
UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’
- “The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that the situation in Gaza was getting “worse by the day” and that it was important to ensure the Palestinian enclave receives more humanitarian aid urgently.
“The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue.
“Which is why we are working with allies ... to be absolutely clear that humanitarian aid needs to get in at speed and at volumes that it is not getting in at the moment, causing absolute devastation,” he added.
Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years
PESHAWAR: Pakistan efforts to eliminate polio suffered another blow on Monday after a northern enclave reported its first case in seven years. Overall, it was the country’s 11th case since January, despite the launch of several immunization drives.
The virus was detected in a child from the district of Diamer in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, according to the country’s polio eradication program.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the spread of the wild polio virus has not been stopped, according to the World Health Organization. There are ongoing outbreaks of polio linked to the oral vaccine in 10 other countries, mostly in Africa.
The new case was reported after Pakistan on Sunday wrapped up its third nationwide polio vaccination drive of the year, aiming to immunize 45 million children.
Mohammad Iqbal, a director at the polio program in the northwest, said local health officials were still trying to determine how the poliovirus that was found in the southern port city of Karachi had infected the child in Diamer.
During the summer season, thousands of tourists from Karachi and elsewhere visit tourist resorts in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan’s polio eradication program has been running anti-polio campaigns for years, though health workers and the police assigned to protect them are often targeted by militants who falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Since the 1990s, attacks on polio vaccination teams have killed more than 200 workers and security personnel.
Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit
- The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine, the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
VILNIUS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived Monday in Vilnius for a summit with the leaders of NATO’s eastern and Nordic members, who are some of Kyiv’s staunchest backers amid the Russian invasion.
The military alliance has bolstered its eastern defenses since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Finland and Sweden also overhauling decades of security policy to join the alliance.
The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine — the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Zelensky’s spokesman said he would hold “bilateral meetings” on the sidelines of the summit in the Lithuanian capital.
It comes ahead of a full NATO summit later in June in The Hague to which Zelensky has demanded he be invited to.
“If Ukraine is not present at the NATO summit, it will be a victory for Putin, but not over Ukraine, but over NATO,” he said last week.
Zelensky wants NATO to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal with Russia — something Moscow has called “unacceptable.”
NATO’s eastern members have been some of the strongest backers of Ukraine since Russia invaded and have repeatedly warned about the prospect of Moscow stepping up its aggression.
Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are former Soviet republics, now EU members, that fear they are in Moscow’s crosshairs.
US President Donald Trump has heaped pressure on NATO’s European members to increase their defense spending, sparking fears about the US commitment to protect the continent.
