KYIV: Ukraine’s army has retreated from a neighborhood in the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a monthslong Russian assault, a military spokesperson said Thursday.
Chasiv Yar is a short distance west of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle. For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy, compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia ground forces formation, told The Associated Press in a written message Thursday.
Ukraine’s defensive positions in the town were “destroyed,” he said, adding that there was a threat of serious casualties if troops remained in the area and that Russia did not leave “a single intact building.”
Months of relentless Russian artillery strikes have devastated Chasiv Yar, with homes and municipal offices charred, and a town that once had a population of 12,000 has been left deserted.
Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 255 assault battalion which has been based in the area for six months, said after Russian troops captured the neighborhood, they burned every building not already destroyed by shelling.
Shyriaiev said Russia is deploying scorched-earth tactics in an attempt to destroy anything which could be used as a military position in a bid to force troops to retreat.
“I regret that we are gradually losing territory,” he said, speaking by phone from the Chasiv Yar area, but added, “we cannot hold what is ruined.”
Russian troops outnumber Ukrainians 10-to-1 in the area but Shyriaiev suggested that, even with that ratio, they have not been able to make significant progress in the past six months of active fighting.
The intensity of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s defensive line in the area of Chasiv Yar has increased over the last month, Voloshyn said.
In the past week alone, Voloshyn said Russia has carried out nearly 1,300 strikes, fired nearly 130 glide bombs and made 44 ground assaults.
Other Russian attacks in recent weeks have focused on capturing nearby settlements that would allow them to advance to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the biggest cities in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian commanders in the area say their resources remain stretched, largely due to a monthslong gap in military assistance from the United States which threw Ukraine’s military onto the defensive.
Shyriaiev, the assault battalion commander, said ammunition from allies is arriving, but more slowly than needed by the army.
“We are determined to hold on to the end,” said the commander, who has been fighting on the front line since the outbreak of the war.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the governor of the northern Chernihiv region, Viacheslav Chaus, said Russia launched 22 drones over Ukraine last night. One hit a power infrastructure facility in the northern Chernihiv region, leaving nearly 6,000 customers without electricity, he said, adding that the rest were shot down.
Russia is continually targeting Ukraine’s badly damaged energy infrastructure, resulting in hours of rolling blackouts across the country. Ukrainian officials have warned that the situation may worsen as winter approaches.
Ukraine’s army retreats from positions as Russia gets closer to seizing strategically important town
https://arab.news/mbhxm
Ukraine’s army retreats from positions as Russia gets closer to seizing strategically important town
- For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies an elevated location
- The Ukrainian army retreated from a northeastern neighborhood in the town, Nazar Voloshyn
Australia will pay Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals
Nauru has become a political solution for the government after Australia’s High Court ruled in 2023 that non-citizens with no prospects of being resettled outside Australia could no longer be held indefinitely in immigration detention.
Albanese did not confirm media reports that Australia would pay the tiny Pacific Island nation, population 13,000, 400 million Australian dollars ($262 million) to establish the deal then AU$70 million ($46 million) annually to maintain it.
“People who have no right to be here need to be found somewhere to go, if they can’t go home,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“If they can’t be sent back to their country-of-origin because of refoulement provisions and obligations that we have, then we need to find another country for them to go to,” Albanese added.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke surprised Australian media on Friday by visiting Nauru, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Nauruan President David Adeang.
Adeang said in a statement on Sunday the agreement “contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received by Nauru.”
“Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience,” Adeang said.
The agreement will be activated when Nauru received the first “transferees,” who will be given long-term visas, the president said.
Australia’s Asylum Seeker Resource Center, an advocacy group, reported Nauru planned to issue 280 visas to non-citizens that Australia wanted to deport.
The center said legislation to be introduced to Australia’s Parliament on Tuesday would strip the right of fairness from deportation decisions under the new Nauru deal. Canceled visas that are under appeal in court would be canceled by the new law.
The center’s deputy chief executive Jana Favero said the legislation could enable 80,000 people to be deported.
“That’s tens of thousands of lives at risk — not the tiny number the government would have Australians believe,” Favero said in a statement.
Albanese said the full details of the agreement would be made public simultaneously by both governments.
“There’re complexities and detail here, including the number of people who go,” Albanese said.
An Australian High Court decision in 2023 overturned the government’s policy of leaving in detention immigrants who failed Australia’s character test, usually because of criminal conduct. The government said they could not be deported.
Countries including Afghanistan are considered unsafe for their nationals to be repatriated. Iran refuses to accept Iranians who are not returning voluntarily.
The test case was brought by a member of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority identified in court as NZYQ. He was brought to Australia in a smuggler’s boat in 2012, and raped a child soon after being released into the Australian community. He served a prison sentence and was then transferred into indefinite immigration detention until he won his court case.
More than 200 immigrants who cannot be deported have been released from detention as a result of the NZYQ case. Some have committed more crimes and have returned to prison.
Burke announced in February that three violent criminals, including a convicted murderer, had been issued with 30-year visas to live in Nauru. But their deportations have been challenged in Australian courts.
Putin meets Erdogan, praises Turkiye’s mediation efforts on Ukraine
TIANJIN: Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Turkiye’s mediation attempts around the Ukraine war at a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in China on Monday.
“I’m confident that Turkiye’s special role in these matters will continue to be in demand,” the Russian president said during talks with Erdogan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.
Putin added that the three rounds of direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul have made some progress on the humanitarian track.
The talks have failed to yield a breakthrough over Russia’s three-and-a-half-year invasion and resulted only in exchanges of prisoners and soldiers’ bodies.
The warring sides have radically different positions and Ukraine has accused Russia of sending low-level officials with no real decision-making power to the Istanbul talks.
Russia has called on Ukraine to effectively cede four regions that Moscow claims to have annexed, a demand Kyiv has called unacceptable.
US President Donald Trump has called for a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Moscow said it was too early to do so before key issues are resolved.
Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.
Zelensky to meet European leaders in Paris
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet European leaders on Thursday in Paris, a source told AFP, amid international efforts to broker an end to Russia’s three-and-a-half-year invasion.
“We’re planning such a meeting” between Zelensky and “European leaders,” the source said, adding that “(US President Donald Trump) is not so far expected to be there.”
Ukraine suspects Russia involved in killing of former parliamentary speaker, says police chief
- ‘We know that this crime was not accidental. There is Russian involvement. Everyone will be held accountable before the law’
- Russia has not commented on the killing or on the suggestion that it was involved in the incident
KYIV: Ukraine suspects Russian involvement in the murder of former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy, the head of the Ukrainian police said on Monday.
Parubiy was shot dead in the western city of Lviv on Saturday and President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier on Monday that a suspect had been arrested for what he called “a horrific murder” that impacted “security in a country at war.”
“We know that this crime was not accidental. There is Russian involvement. Everyone will be held accountable before the law,” police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi said on Facebook.
Russia has not commented on the killing or on the suggestion that it was involved in the incident.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app that the suspected shooter had been detained overnight in the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine.
“Many details cannot be shared at this time,” Klymenko said. “I will only say that the crime was carefully planned: the victim’s movements were studied, a route was mapped out, and an escape plan was thought through.”
Police chief Vyhivskyi said the suspect had disguised himself as a courier and had opened fire on Parubiy in broad daylight, firing his weapon eight times.
The shooter even made sure that the victim was dead, Vyhivskyi added.
“He spent a long time preparing, watching, planning, and finally pulling the trigger. It took us only 36 hours to track him down and arrest him,” Vyhivskyi added.
Police published two photographs from the scene of the arrest that show two special forces officers holding a handcuffed man by the arms. Naked to the waist, he has his back to the camera and his face is not visible.
Parubiy, 54, was a member of Ukraine’s parliament and had served as parliamentary speaker from April 2016 to August 2019. He was one of the leaders of protests in 2013-14 demanding closer ties with the European Union that led to the ousting of Ukraine’s then pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich.
Parubiy was also secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council from February to August 2014, a period when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula and Moscow-backed separatists began fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine.
Afghan earthquake of magnitude 6 kills 622, injures over 1,500
- The disaster will further stretch the resources of the South Asian nation
- Rescuers race to reach remote hamlets dotting an area with a long history of earthquakes and floods
KABUL: More than 600 people were killed and over 1,500 injured in one of Afghanistan’s worst earthquakes, authorities said on Monday, as helicopters ferried the wounded to hospital after they were plucked from rubble being combed for survivors.
The disaster will further stretch the resources of the South Asian nation already grappling with humanitarian crises, from a sharp drop in aid to a huge pushback of its citizens from neighboring countries.
The quake of magnitude 6 killed at least 622 people in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, the Taliban-run Afghan interior ministry said, with more than 1,500 injured and numerous houses destroyed.
“All our ... teams have been mobilized to accelerate assistance, so that comprehensive and full support can be provided,” ministry spokesperson Abdul Maten Qanee told Reuters, citing efforts in areas from security to food and health.
In Kabul, the capital, health authorities said rescuers were racing to reach remote hamlets dotting an area with a long history of earthquakes and floods.
The earthquake was Afghanistan’s deadliest since June 2022, when tremors of magnitude 6.1 killed at least 1,000 people.
Images from Reuters Television showed helicopters ferrying out the affected, while residents helped soldiers and medics carry the wounded to ambulances.
The quake razed three villages in Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, authorities said. At least 610 people were killed in Kunar with 12 dead in Nangarhar, they added.
Rescuers were scrambling to find survivors in the area bordering Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, where homes of mud and stone were levelled by the midnight quake that hit at a depth of 10 kilometers.
Military rescue teams fanned out across the two provinces, the defense ministry said in a statement, adding that 40 flights had carried out 420 wounded and dead.
“So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work,” a foreign office spokesperson said.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A series of earthquakes in its west killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest countries to natural disasters.
