Russia’s air defense systems destroyed 75 drones launched by Ukraine overnight, including eight near the town of Tuapse on the Black Sea where Russia’s oil major Rosneft has a refinery, the Russian defense ministry said on Monday.
Forty-seven drones were downed over the Rostov region in Russia’s southwest, 17 over the waters of the Black and Azov seas, eight over the Krasnodar region, where Tuapse is located, and single drones over the Belgorod, Voronezh and Smolensk region, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
The ministry did not say whether its defense systems destroyed the drones, or whether the attack had caused any damage.
Sergei Boiko, head of the Tuapse district in the Krasnodar region, said on Telegram infrastructure and residential buildings had not been damaged.
Russian officials rarely disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks. The Tuapse refinery has been a target of several Ukrainian air attacks since the start of the war that Russia launched against its smaller neighbor in 2022.
Russia’s SHOT and Mash Telegram news channels reported that a series of blasts were heard near the refinery early Monday.
Reuters could not independently verify the Russian reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has often said that the attacks on Russia’s military, energy and transport infrastructure are in response to Russia’s continuous attacks on Ukraine’s territory.
Russia downs 75 Ukraine drones, some near Tuapse oil refinery
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Russia downs 75 Ukraine drones, some near Tuapse oil refinery
- Russian defense ministry did not say whether its defense systems destroyed the drones, or whether the attack had caused any damage
- Russian officials rarely disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks
Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians
Magyar’s center-right Tisza party emerged last year to mount the most serious challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he rose to power in 2010.
Most opinion polls now put Tisza ahead of Orban’s Fidesz party with the next parliamentary elections due in early 2026. No date has been set yet.
Carrying Hungary’s national flag, Magyar walked across the border on Saturday morning with a group of supporters.
“We are not going (to Romania) to escalate tensions or to cause any harm to our Hungarian brothers and sisters living there. We are going there to express our solidarity,” Magyar said on May 14 when he set out on foot in hiking gear.
On his way to the border, Magyar stopped in small towns to talk to rural voters, who have traditionally supported conservative Orban.
Orban’s government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and in 2014 granted the right to vote to Hungarians living abroad. In the last election in 2022 94 percent of these voters supported Fidesz.
The latest poll by the Publicus think tank, published on Friday, showed Tisza with 43 percent support among decided voters in Hungary while Fidesz had 36 percent.
Magyar announced his march on May 12 after Orban flagged he could cooperate with Romanian hard-right presidential candidate George Simion ahead of the May 18 election there.
The RMDSZ party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania, said Simion’s win would pose a threat to minorities’ rights and urged its voters to support centrist Nicusor Dan who ended up winning the vote.
'Seventh heaven': Tears and laughter as Ukrainian POWs return
- A number of Ukrainian detainees are released following a prisoner exchange agreement between Ukraine and Russia in Türkiye last week.
- Former detainees recount stories of mistreatment and torture in Russian captivity.
CHERNIGIV: Waxy and emaciated, Konstantin Steblev spoke to his mother for the first time in three years after being released as part of the biggest ever prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
“Hello mum, how are you?,” the 31-year-old soldier said, moments after stepping back onto Ukrainian soil on Friday.
“I love you. Don’t be sad. It wasn’t my fault. I promised I would come back safe and sound,” he said, smiling but with watery eyes.
Steblev, who was captured at the start of Russia’s invasion, was one of 390 military and civilian prisoners released in exchange for 390 sent back to Russia.
More swaps are expected on Saturday and Sunday to bring the total to 1,000 for 1,000 as agreed in talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last week.
Steblev arrived with the other former captives by coach at a local hospital where hundreds of relatives were waiting, shouting, crying and singing “Congratulations!“
During the journey back to Ukraine, Steblev told AFP he experienced “indescribable” emotions.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” he said.
During his years of captivity, Steblev said he managed to keep going thanks to his wife.
“She knows I am strong and that I am not going to give up just like that,” he said, adding that now he just wants to be with his family.
“It’s my absolute priority,” he said.
After that, he said it would be up to his wife to decide on the next steps.
“She will tell me and will show me how to act in future,” he said.
Thin, tired and looking slightly lost, the freshly released prisoners filed into a local hospital for medical checks.
But Olena and Oleksandr stayed outside, locked in a tight embrace despite the cameras pointed at them.
They said they had not seen each other in 22 months since Oleksandr was captured by Russia.
“I am in seventh heaven,” the 45-year-old said in his wife’s arms.
He said his dream now was to “eat... eat and spend time with my family.”
As the buses arrived at the hospital, relatives of soldiers who are still in prison ran toward the freed men to show them images of their loved ones and ask if they had seen them during their captivity.
Some women walked away crying when they failed to get any news.
Some know that their relatives are jailed but others have no news at all and desperately hope for any scrap of information.
Moments after being reunited with her husband Andriy after three years apart, Elia, 33, embraced the tearful mother of a soldier who had no news about her son.
When she saw her husband, Elia said her “heart was beating out of my chest” and she cried with joy.
“I have been waiting so long for this,” she said.
Several former prisoners of war interviewed by AFP in the past have spoken of harsh conditions and torture in Russian prisons.
Elia is now thinking about the future and about having a child with her husband.
But she said she knew that the path to rehabilitation would be a long one for him.
“He has an empty stare but I know they did not break him. The guys with him told me he was very strong,” she said.
Pope takes message of dialogue, unity to the Curia
- Pope Leo XIV promotes dialogue and building bridges to the Roman Curia in his first meeting with the Church's governing body.
- Pope Leo XIV urges people to welcome “with open arms, everyone who needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
VATICAN: Pope Leo XIV took his message of building bridges and promoting dialogue to the Roman Curia on Saturday, in his first audience with members of the Catholic Church’s governing body.
The late Pope Francis had sometimes difficult relations with the Curia and Vatican officials, accusing them early in his papacy of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and a lust for power.
The new pontiff, the first from the United States, said Saturday that his inaugural meeting was an opportunity to say thanks for all their work.
“Popes come and go, the Curia remains,” Leo told the audience of officials, staff and their families in the Vatican’s vast Paul VI hall.
He repeated his first words from St. Peter’s Basilica when he became pope on May 8, where he urged people to “build bridges” and to welcome “with open arms, everyone who needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
“If we must all cooperate in the great cause of unity and love, let us try to do so first of all with our behavior in everyday situations, starting from the work environment,” the pope said.
“Everyone can be a builder of unity with their attitudes toward colleagues, overcoming inevitable misunderstandings with patience and humility, putting themselves in the shoes of others, avoiding prejudices, and also with a good dose of humor, as Pope Francis taught us.”
From decentralising power and increasing transparency to providing greater roles for lay people and women, Francis implemented several reforms of the Roman Curia.
But his criticism left a lasting impression among many officials, and he also drew accusations of being too authoritarian in his governance, regularly bypassing the administrative bodies of the Holy See.
In 2024, the Vatican — where trade unions are not recognized — also saw an unprecedented strike by around 50 employees of the Vatican Museums over their working conditions.
The pope spent two decades working in Peru but for the past two years was head of the Vatican department responsible for appointing bishops worldwide.
US ‘deeply concerned’ over activists’ treatment in Tanzania
- Prominent East African activists are facing detention and torture following government crackdown on dissent in Uganda and Tanzania.
- The United States voiced its concern over the mistreatment of several activists and called for an investigation into human rights abuses.
NAIROBI: The United States expressed concern Saturday over the “mistreatment” of two east African activists in Tanzania, days after they were detained and reportedly tortured.
Prominent campaigners Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda traveled to Tanzania this week in solidarity with detained opposition leader Tundu Lissu ahead of his court hearing on charges of treason, which carries a potential death penalty.
But they themselves were detained before being deported and then found abandoned near the Tanzanian border.
Mwangi and rights groups allege that both were tortured while held “incommunicado” for days.
The US Bureau of African Affairs said on X it was “deeply concerned by reports of the mistreatment” of Atuhaire and Mwangi while in Tanzania.
“We call for an immediate and full investigation into the allegations of human rights abuses,” it said, urging “all countries in the region to hold to account those responsible for violating human rights, including torture.”
Atuhaire received in 2023 the EU Human Rights Defender Award for her work in Uganda and was honored last year with the International Women of Courage Award by former US First Lady Jill Biden.
Mwangi is a longtime critic of the Kenyan government, frequently denouncing instances of alleged injustice and rights abuses.
Human rights groups say Tanzania and neighboring Uganda have accelerated crackdowns on opponents and dissidents as they prepare for presidential elections in the next seven months.
But Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has slammed what she called interference in the country’s affairs and had urged security services “not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here.”
India’s monsoon rains arrive eight days early, says weather bureau
- Summer rains, critical for economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, usually begin to lash Kerala around June 1
MUMBAI: Monsoon rains hit the coast of India’s southernmost state of Kerala on Saturday, eight days earlier than usual, the weather office said, offering respite from a grueling heat wave while boosting prospects for bumper harvests.
Summer rains, critical for economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, usually begin to lash Kerala around June 1 before spreading nationwide by mid-July, allowing farmers to plant crops such as rice, corn, cotton, soybeans and sugarcane.
