Month: April 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has driven home the importance of NATO and the European Union for many of their newest members, according to Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, who was in Washington this week for the funeral of Czech emigre and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

“The reason we joined these two organizations is that it won’t happen to us,” Lipavsky, said at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council.

The fact that Ukraine did not manage to enter the two Western institutions “created a gray zone” that Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited, said Lipavsky, who had discussed the challenge facing Ukraine, among other topics, in an interview with VOA earlier in the day.

The people of Ukraine “want to be part of the Western society, they want democratic elections, they want freedom of speech,” and they want to enjoy the prosperity that comes with them, he said. “I feel our moral responsibility to help them.”

Lipavsky is part of a newly sworn-in coalition government comprising both conservatives and progressives. Led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala, the new Czech administration is expected to pursue an internationalist foreign policy that promotes democracy and human rights, harkening back to an era when the country was led by playwright-turned political leader Vaclav Havel.

On his limited itinerary in Washington, Lipavsky paid tribute to Havel, who is memorialized in what is known as the “Freedom Foyer” of the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. There, his bust sits in close proximity to those of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Lipavsky gifted his American hosts with a collection of Havel photographs, including photos of Havel with Albright, who was born in then-Czechoslovakia and whose father was a member of the Czechoslovakian diplomatic corps.

The friendship between Havel and Albright was stressed by Lipavsky and other Czech dignitaries who came to Washington for the funeral. Among them were Czech senate president Milos Vystrcil, the senate foreign affairs committee chairman and three former ambassadors to the United States.

Albright is credited with having played a critical role in ushering the Czech Republic and other Central and Eastern European countries into NATO.

“Madeleine Albright made that possible, because she knew — she had suffered the consequences of policy failures, including American policy failures” in the 1930s and ’40s, said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, at the Atlantic Council event alongside Lipavsky.

“Vaclav Havel, along with Poland’s Lech Walesa, pushed [then U.S. President] Bill Clinton on NATO enlargement,” Fried recalled. “One of their arguments was — I was around, I remember — ‘we have a window now to do it, don’t you Americans blow it!’ ”

Fried added that Havel and Walesa might not have “quite put it that way, but that was more or less their way, what they were saying.”

Speaking to VOA earlier by telephone, Fried took issue with widespread reports of “backsliding” on democratic governance in the former Soviet bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe. “Except for Hungary,” he said, he sees the countries in the region “going back to their roots” of fighting for freedom and democracy.

Lipavsky, for his part, said he believes the countries of the region are attracted to the West by its “democratic identity.”

“This identity is built upon the vision that every person can pursue his and her own happiness, and you have very basic values like human rights, rights to own [property], rights to think, freedom of speech,” he said. “Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, want to be part of that, is part of that.”

The Ukrainian people are “literally fighting and dying” for the very same choice, he said, and the Czech Republic will do its utmost to help them to prevail against Russia and become a member of the club of like-minded nations that is the EU.
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The continuation of negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine is in doubt, with Ukraine’s president saying it is hard to discuss peace amid public anger over alleged atrocities carried out by Russian troops, while Russia’s foreign minister said Western sanctions and arms shipments were impeding the talks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.  

Ukrainian forces fought Saturday to counter a Russian advance in their country’s south and east, where the Kremlin is seeking to capture the industrial Donbas region. Western military analysts said Moscow’s offensive was going much slower than planned.

While Russia claimed on Saturday to have struck more than 380 targets overnight as it sought to take full control of the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said the Russian military’s efforts to capture targets were “not succeeding — the fighting continues.” Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, reportedly was targeted by mortar and artillery shelling Saturday.  

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a televised address Friday night that Ukrainian forces had recaptured a strategically important village near the city and evacuated hundreds of civilians.  

RFE/RL reported that in a daily briefing Saturday, the Ukrainian military said the greatest enemy losses were taking place in the Izyum area, near Kharkiv.

Appeals in Rome

Meanwhile, the United Nations continued working to negotiate the evacuation of civilians from the increasingly hellish ruins of Mariupol, the southern port city that Russia has sought to capture since it invaded Ukraine more than nine weeks ago.  

Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were in Rome on Friday, calling for any evacuation of civilians to also include an estimated 2,000 soldiers holed up in the plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic and now bombed-out port city. They cited fears the troops would be tortured and killed if left behind and captured by Russian forces.  

“The lives of soldiers matter, too. We can’t only talk about civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol; she was joined by Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband Denys Prokopenko, is the Azov commander.  

“We are hoping that we can rescue soldiers, too, not only dead, not only injured, but all of them,” Fedusiuk said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya Television there was no need for anybody to provide help to open up humanitarian corridors out of Ukraine’s besieged cities.  

“We appreciate the interest of the [U.N.] secretary-general to be helpful,” he added. “[We have] explained … what is the mechanism for them to monitor how the humanitarian corridors are announced.”

Lavrov also accused the West of being “Russia phobic,” and he complained that his country never lived a day without being subject to sanctions by the West.  

“So … to believe that this latest wave of sanctions is going to make Russia cry ‘Uncle’ and to beg for being pardoned, those planners are lousy, and of course, they don’t know anything about [the] foreign policy of Russia and they don’t know anything about how to deal with Russia,” Lavrov said.
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Serbia on Saturday showed off its new Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles and other military hardware purchased from both Russia and the West, as the country seeks to perform a delicate balancing act over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Members of the public and the media were invited to the display at the Batajnica military airfield near Belgrade, where Chinese and French missiles were lined up beside European Airbus helicopters, Chinese-armed drones and Russian MIG-29 jets.

Serbia is striving to balance its partnership with NATO and aspirations to join the European Union with its centuries-old religious, ethnic and political alliance with Russia.

The Chinese FK-3 surface-to-air defense system, similar to Russia’s S-300 or the U.S. Patriot system, was purchased by Belgrade in 2019 and delivered earlier this month.

Serbia is the only European country to operate the Chinese missile system and CH-92A combat drones.

President Aleksandar Vucic toured Saturday’s display flanked by military commanders and watched an aerobatics show featuring overhauled MIG-29 jets donated by Russia in 2017.

“I’m proud of the Serbian army, I’m proud of a great progress,” Vucic told a news conference. “We’re going to significantly strengthen our fighter air force … Serbia is a neutral country and Serbia must find solutions enabling it to preserve its sky and its state.”

The delivery of the FK-3 missile system prompted several Western countries, including Germany, to warn Belgrade it expected the Balkan country to align its foreign policy with the EU if it wanted to become a member.

Belgrade has voted against Russia three times at the United Nations but stopped short of imposing sanctions against it.

Serbia’s military is loosely based on ex-Soviet technology and Russia is one of its main suppliers. Belgrade is also dependent on natural gas and oil supplies from Russia.

Vucic said Serbia expects to purchase 12 Rafale multipurpose fighter jets from France by the end of the year or early next year, a move seen by political analysts as a sign of Belgrade distancing itself from Russia.

He said Serbia is also negotiating to buy 12 Typhoon combat aircraft from Britain.
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A sandy-colored tower glints in the sunlight and dominates the skyline of the Swedish town of Skelleftea as Scandinavia harnesses its wood resources to lead a global trend towards erecting eco-friendly high-rises.

The Sara Cultural Center is one of the world’s tallest timber buildings, made primarily from spruce and towering 75 meters over rows of snow-dusted houses and surrounding forest.

The 20-story timber structure, which houses a hotel, a library, an exhibition hall and theater stages, opened at the end of 2021 in the northern town of 35,000 people.

Forests cover much of Sweden’s northern regions, most of it spruce, and building timber homes is a longstanding tradition.

Swedish architects now want to spearhead a revolution and steer the industry towards more sustainable construction methods as large wooden buildings sprout up in Sweden and neighboring Nordic nations thanks to advancing industry techniques.

“The pillars together with the beams, the interaction with the steel and wood, that is what carries the 20 stories of the hotel,” Therese Kreisel, a Skelleftea urban planning official, tells AFP during a tour of the cultural center.

Even the lift shafts are made entirely of wood. “There is no plaster, no seal, no isolation on the wood,” she says, adding that this “is unique when it comes to a 20-story building.”

Building materials go green

The main advantage of working with wood is that it is more environmentally friendly, proponents say.

Cement — used to make concrete — and steel, two of the most common construction materials, are among the most polluting industries because they emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

But wood emits little CO2 during its production and retains the carbon absorbed by the tree even when it is cut and used in a building structure. It is also lighter in weight, requiring less of a foundation.

According to the U.N.’s IPCC climate panel, wood as a construction material can be up to 30 times less carbon intensive than concrete, and hundreds or even thousands of times less than steel.

Global efforts to cut emissions have sparked an upswing in interest for timber structures, according to Jessica Becker, the coordinator of Trastad (City of Wood), an organization lobbying for more timber construction.

Skelleftea’s tower “showcases that is it possible to build this high and complex in timber,” says Robert Schmitz, one of the project’s two architects.

“When you have this as a backdrop for discussions, you can always say, ‘We did this, so how can you say it’s not possible?'”

Only an 85-meter tower recently erected in Brumunddal in neighboring Norway and an 84-meter structure in Vienna are taller than the Sara Cultural Centre.

A building under construction in the U.S. city of Milwaukee and due to be completed soon is expected to clinch the title of the world’s tallest, at a little more than 86 meters.

‘Stacked like Lego’

Building the cultural center in spruce was “much more challenging” but “has also opened doors to really think in new ways,” explains Schmitz’s co-architect Oskar Norelius.

For example, the hotel rooms were made as prefabricated modules that were then “stacked like Lego pieces on site,” he says.

The building has won several wood architecture prizes.

Anders Berensson, another Stockholm architect whose material of choice is wood, says timber has many advantages.

“If you missed something in the cutting you just take the knife and the saw and sort of adjust it on site. So it’s both high tech and low tech at the same time,” he says.

In Stockholm, an apartment complex made of wood, called Cederhusen and featuring distinctive yellow and red cedar shingles on the facade, is in the final stages of completion.

It has already been named the Construction of the Year by Swedish construction industry magazine Byggindustrin. 

“I think we can see things shifting in just the past few years actually,” says Becker.

“We are seeing a huge change right now, it’s kind of the tipping point. And I’m hoping that other countries are going to catch on, we see examples even in England and Canada and other parts of the world.” 
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First came a court summons alleging Mikhail Samin had discredited the Russian army. Then came the threatening calls.

Samin, a 22-year-old from Moscow who has been posting commentary about the war in Ukraine on social media, shared details of those chilling calls with VOA.

In one expletive-laden call, a man warned that Samin had 24 hours to delete his posts, saying that only then, “you may sleep peacefully.”

When Samin tried to reason with the caller, saying that people, children, were dying in Ukraine, the caller replied, “If you don’t stop being stupid, we will throw you off the balcony.”

The legal action and threats are becoming the new normal for those in Russia who defy the strict censorship around the war in Ukraine. Moscow in March passed a law to limit coverage of the military and invasion, and a mix of fines and website blocks has resulted in most independent news outlets being forced out.

Risky work

With traditional media limited, citizen journalists and activists like Samin are filling the void, but at great personal risk. Samin and student Ilya Kursov have both faced legal action for posts about the war and protests.

That new law was cited by authorities when Samin was summoned to court for “discrediting” the Russian army.

He had condemned the invasion in a March 6 Facebook post.

“A terrible thing is happening right now on behalf of [Russian] people,” Samin had posted. “My compatriots — brainwashed or following criminal orders — have invaded the territory of a foreign country, destroying houses and killing people. Thousands of people are dying and suffering needlessly. There can be no justification for this. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who started this war, cannot be justified.”

For Samin, the death threats were more concerning than the threat of prison.

The door to his apartment was defaced with the letter Z, a pro-Kremlin symbol of war against Ukraine. Samin’s sister was scared when she saw the mark as she left to walk the dog.

Samin was at a loss for words when describing his view of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

“Nothing discredits the armed forces of the Russian Federation more than the war crimes they commit, like torturing people, killing civilians,” he told VOA.

“There was a feeling of some unreality of what was happening because, before that, I was convinced that Putin would not do this,” said Samin. “It was apparent that this [war] would immediately destroy the future of Russia.”

Police pressure

When Ilya Kursov heard details of an anti-war protest in Barnaul, a city in the Altai Krai region of Siberia, at the end of February, the 24-year-old student shared the information on Instagram.

His post quickly came to the attention of police.

“I was abducted at 8 a.m. by [Russian police], right from my bed in the dormitory,” said Kursov, who was studying at the Altai State Pedagogical University.

At the police station he was questioned about the social media post. The police officers pressured him, threatening him with a prison term, Kursov said. He wasn’t allowed to call either his parents or lawyer and his laptop was confiscated.

The student believes the authorities are reacting so aggressively to any protest activity because, despite what the propaganda suggests, many Russians disapprove of the war.

Although many residents were afraid to join the protest openly, people approached the anti-war activists and spoke out for peace with Ukraine, he said.

Like Samin, Kursov is accused of “discrediting” the Russian army. Under the law, if the offense is repeated within a year, it can result in criminal prosecution, with a maximum punishment of up to 15 years in prison.

But the posts cited by police in Kursov’s case were published before the law was enacted.

“I have two fines for 50,000 rubles [approximately $700],”said Kursov.

The fine is about 1½ times the median monthly income for his city, according to the Federal Service for State Statistics in Russia.

The student said that in court documents he saw, authorities had flagged more of his social media posts on the war.

“I am afraid the prosecutors would have an opportunity to use it against me, which leads to a criminal case,” he said.

Both he and Samin have since left Russia, fearing for their safety.

‘Next to be targeted’

With independent media blocked off in Russia, ordinary citizens like Samin and Kursov have become a key source of war information in Russia, media freedom experts said.

“After this huge blow against independent media, the next to be targeted are the citizen journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders.

“We can draw a parallel with what happened in Belarus, because when all major independent media were blocked and journalists were in prison or exile, the Belarusian authorities started to target citizen journalists,” Cavelier told VOA.

Another factor is the chilling effect. As well as making arrests and blocking platforms, Russia wants to extend its foreign agents law to citizens as well as media.

“It frightens people; it makes them think twice before sharing any information, even if they feel very strong in their opinions or their criticism of the Russian authorities, so that’s always a downside of any crackdown and repressive measures,” said Gulnoza Said, the Europe and Central Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.

But while Kursov and Samin have been forced to leave their homes, both are adamant they will keep using social media to inform Russians about the war.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
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Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has put the websites of two major French broadcasters back online in Mali, after the country’s military government pulled the broadcasters off the air in March and officially banned them from the Malian airwaves this week.

RSF put the sites back online Thursday, creating mirrors of the sites that can be accessed in Mali and are updated in real time.

Using a virtual private network had previously been the only way to access those websites in Mali since the military government blocked them and took their corresponding TV and radio stations off the air March 17. 

Arnaud Froger, head of the RSF Africa desk, said that the action is part of the organization’s work toward media freedom.

He said RSF has been getting banned media websites back online since 2015, so far having put 47 websites back online in 24 countries, most recently in Russia. 

“It’s basically restoring your right to access to information that has been wrongfully denied by this censorship,” Froger said.

On Wednesday, France Medias Monde, the parent company of RFI and France 24, said it was notified of the decision of Mali’s High Communication Authority to definitively ban the two stations in the country.

The High Communication Authority is the communication regulatory body in Mali, whose website says its primary mission is to protect “freedom of information and communication” and “freedom of the press.”

RFI and France 24 were taken off the air in March after RFI reported on alleged human rights abuses by Mali’s army around the town of Diabaly. Mali’s government said the report contained false allegations aimed at “destabilizing” the government. 

In late March, after the French broadcast ban, Human Rights Watch and several media outlets reported on a Mali army operation in the town of Moura, where witnesses said 300 civilians were killed. 

Tensions have been running high between the Malian and French governments.  This month, France accused Russian mercenaries of staging a mass grave in Gossi, Mali, in order to blame it on French forces who had recently handed over a military base in Gossi to the Malian army. 

Mali’s government then accused France of spying, but did not mention or refute the claim that Russian mercenaries are working with the Malian army.
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Russia made what appeared to be a late u-turn to avoid a default on Friday, as it made a number of already-overdue international debt payments in dollars despite previously vowing they would only be paid in rubles.

Whether the money would make it to the United States and other Western countries that sanctioned Russia was still not clear, but it represented another major twist in the game of financial chicken that has developed about a possible default.

Russia’s finance ministry said it had managed to pay $564.8 million on a 2022 Eurobond and $84.4 million on a 2042 bond in dollars – the currency specified on the bonds.

The ministry said it had channeled the required funds to the London branch of Citibank, one of the so-called paying agents of the bonds whose job is to disburse them to the investors that originally lent the money to Moscow.

Russia has not had a default of any kind since a financial crash in 1998 and has not seen a major international or ‘external’ market default since the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

The risk of another one though is now a flashpoint in the economic tussle with Western countries which have blanketed Russia with sanctions in response to its actions in Ukraine that Moscow has termed a “special military operation.”

The bonds were originally supposed to be paid earlier this month but an extra 30-day ‘grace period’ that government bonds often have in their terms meant Moscow’s final deadline was on May 4.
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Millions of Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries since Russia invaded their homeland. Others have moved to western Ukraine and the city of Lviv, which for now are relatively safe. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story of volunteers in Lviv who are opening their homes to the displaced families. Camera – Yuriy Dankevych.
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The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that refugee and migrant deaths are increasing at an alarming rate.  More than 3,000 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean or Atlantic last year on attempts to reach Europe.

In comparison, 1,439 people died or went missing on those routes in 2019, and about 1,800 in 2020.

Since the beginning of this year, the U.N. refugee agency reports an additional 553 people also have died or gone missing while attempting to reach Europe.

UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said desperation is driving more people to make perilous sea journeys in search of protection and a better life.   

“Most of the sea crossings took place in packed, unseaworthy, inflatable boats—many of which capsized or were deflated leading to the loss of life,” she said. “The sea journey from the West African coastal states such as Senegal, Mauritania to the Canary Islands is long and perilous and can take up to 10 days.  Many boats drifted off course or otherwise went missing without trace in these waters.”

Mantoo pointed out that land routes also are highly dangerous, and even more people have died on journeys through the Sahara Desert and remote border areas than on the sea. 

She said many people are subjected to horrific forms of abuse at the hands of smugglers or traffickers, armed and criminal gangs, and sometimes by law enforcement authorities. 

“Among the litany of abuses reported by people traveling these routes are extrajudicial killings, unlawful and arbitrary detention, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labor, slavery, forced marriage and other gross human rights violations,” Mantoo said. “UNHCR warns that continued political instability and conflicts, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, as well as the impact of climate change, may increase displacement and dangerous onward movements.”   

The UNHCR is calling for support to provide credible alternatives to the dangerous journeys.  It is appealing for $163.5 million to provide increased humanitarian assistance and solutions for people who need international protection. 

The appeal covers some 25 countries in four regions.  All are connected by the same land and sea routes used by migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.  The UNHCR aims to provide essential services and protection to people on the move or stranded on route, intercepted at sea, or held in detention. 
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A Turkish court on Friday acquitted 33 people, including two Bloomberg reporters and other journalists from local media, of spreading false information about the economy in an article and tweets at the height of a currency crisis in 2018.

The case followed a criminal complaint filed in August 2018 by the BDDK banking watchdog over an article by Bloomberg about the effects of a sharp decline in the lira and how authorities and banks were responding.

Fercan Yalinkilic and Kerim Karakaya were on trial over the article, while other defendants in the case, including journalists Sedef Kabas and Merdan Yanardag, as well as economist Mustafa Sonmez, were tried for their tweets about the economy.

Turkey’s lira plummeted in 2018 on concerns over President Tayyip Erdogan’s influence on monetary policy and deteriorating ties between Ankara and Washington. In August 2018, it fell to 7.24 against the dollar, its lowest at the time.

At the end of last year, another currency crisis sparked by series of rate cuts requested by Erdogan saw the lira fall as low as 18.4 before rebounding. The currency crisis stoked inflation, which hit 61% in March.

The defendants had always denied the charges.

The court ruled on Friday that the defendants’ actions did not constitute a crime and acquitted 33 defendants.
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Ukraine’s leader accused Russia of trying to humiliate the United Nations by raining missiles on Kyiv during a visit by Secretary-General António Guterres, an attack that shattered the capital’s tentative return to normality as the focus of the war moved east.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s forces were holding off Russia’s attempted advance in the south and east, as efforts continued to secure safe passage for residents trapped in Mariupol, which has been largely reduced to rubble in a 2-month-long siege.

Russia pounded targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building. U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said its journalist Vira Hyrych, who lives in one of the buildings hit, died. Her body was found in the rubble on Friday.

Ten people were wounded in the attack, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

In an apparent reference to the same strike, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that it had destroyed “production buildings” at the Artem defense factory in Kyiv.

The attack on Kyiv came barely an hour after Zelenskyy held a news conference with Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around Kyiv and condemned attacks on civilians during his visit.

“This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards global institutions, about attempts of Russian authorities to humiliate the U.N. and everything that the organization represents,” Zelenskyy said in an overnight video address to the nation. “Therefore, it requires corresponding powerful reaction.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko derided the attack as equivalent to Russian President Vladimir Putin showing Guterres “his middle finger.”

The strikes were the boldest Russian bombardment of the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago following their failure to take the city in what they hoped would be a lightning offensive. Instead, stiff Ukrainian resistance, bolstered by Western arms, stalled Putin’s advance and forced his troops to pull back to regroup.

Some have now started to push into the country’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas, which Moscow now says is its focus. Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east also have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.

But so far, Russia’s troops and the separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, and Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday that those have been achieved at significant cost to Russia’s forces.

One aim of Guterres’ visit was to secure the evacuation of people from the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, including a shattered steelworks where Ukrainian defenders are holed up and hundreds of civilians are also sheltering, Previous evacuation attempts have collapsed.

“I cannot confirm the exact details of the operation to make sure it is done with safety for our people and for civilians stranded in Mariupol” said Saviano Abreu, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s humanitarian office.

An official in Zelenskyy’s office said negotiations were underway with U.N. mediation, and did not rule out an evacuation of the plant happening Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mariupol has seen some of the most dramatic suffering of the war. Under siege since the early days of the invasion, many of its residents became trapped with scarce access to food, water, medicine or electricity.

An estimated 100,000 people are believed to still be in the city, and the city council warned Thursday that a lack of safe drinking water or a working sewer system could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery. It added that bodies lay decaying under the rubble.

Russian forces largely control the city, but some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are holed up at the steel plant, the last known pocket of resistance. About 1,000 civilians are with them, and the fighters said recent concentrated bombings killed and wounded people.

Video posted online by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment inside the steel plant showed people combing through the rubble to remove the dead and help the wounded. The regiment said the Russians hit an improvised underground hospital and its operating room, killing an unspecified number of people. The video couldn’t be independently verified.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on Feb. 24 upended the post-Cold War security order. Putin, long irked by NATO’s expansion to eastern Europe, says the operation seeks the “demilitarization” of Ukraine, aims to protect people in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas and ensure Russia’s own security. One of Moscow’s demands has been that Ukraine drop its bid to join the western NATO alliance.

Ukraine and the West say it was an unprovoked and illegal invasion launched to topple the government in Kyiv.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote Friday on Twitter that a “security vacuum” had led to the war.

“We have then been knocking on NATO’s door, but it never opened,” he wrote. “The world owes Ukraine security, and we ask states to decide which security guarantees they are ready to provide.”

A day after Russia pounded a wide area of Ukraine, the governor of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said two towns there were hit by Russian Grad rockets on Friday. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage. Separately, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said that a border post came under mortar fire from Ukraine and that Russian border forces returned fire. He said there were no casualties on the Russian side.

Thursday’s explosions in northwestern Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district shook the city and flames poured out the windows of the residential high-rise and another building. The capital had been relatively unscathed in recent weeks, and cafes and other businesses have started to reopen, while a growing numbers of people have been out and about, enjoying the spring weather.

The terrible human cost of the war, which has driven more than 11 million Ukrainians from their homes, continues to climb.

In Lyman, a town in Donetsk where Russian forces are reportedly trying to advance as part of their Donbas push, shells rained on Tatiana Maksagory’s home this week, devastating her family.

Maksagory’s 14-year-old grandson, Igor, was declared dead after emergency services drove him to the hospital. Her daughter was in serious condition and her son-in-law was also killed.

“Grandma, will I live?” she said Igor asked her when they were in the basement waiting for help. “I said that he would live. But look what happened, I betrayed him.”
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RFE/RL journalist Vira Hyrych has died in Kyiv after a Russian air strike hit the residential building where she lived in the Ukrainian capital.

Hyrych’s body was found early in the morning on April 29 amid the wreckage of the building, which was hit by a Russian missile the night before, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting Kyiv on April 28 as air strikes hit the capital, including the apartment block.

Videos and pictures from the site showed the lower floors of the building heavily damaged. Cars in the area had their windows blown out.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed “long-range, high-precision” missiles had hit factory buildings in Kyiv of Ukrainian rocket manufacturer Artem on April 28.

Ukrainian officials have not commented on whether the factory had been hit during the attack.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram on April 29 that one body had been retrieved from the rubble and another 10 people had been injured in the strikes. He gave no further details.

Hyrych, born in 1967, began working for RFE/RL in February 2018. Before that she worked at a leading television channel in Ukraine.
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The Biden administration is asking Congress for additional legal authority to make it easier for the U.S. government to seize Russian government and oligarch assets and transfer the proceeds to Ukraine.

The White House released the package of legislative changes Thursday as President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion in additional aid for Ukraine as it seeks to fend off a devastating Russian invasion, now in its third month.

If enacted, the proposed measures would “establish new authorities for the forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy, allow the government to link the proceeds to support Ukraine, and further strengthen related law enforcement tools,” the White House said in a statement.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urged Congress to quickly enact the changes.

“The proposals the president announced today will give the Justice Department critical resources and tools to continue and strengthen this work,” Garland said Thursday during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Garland during a hearing earlier this week that “there will be a receptive audience to give you more money if that’s what it takes to go after the people who profited from destroying the Russian economy.”

The proposal comes as Ukrainian officials asked Western governments to hand over Russian oligarch and government assets seized since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said seized Russian assets, including frozen Russian Central Bank reserves, “have to be used to rebuild Ukraine after the war, as well as to pay for the losses caused to other nations.”

So far, European countries in which Putin’s wealthy associates have long maintained homes and investments, have led in seizing their assets.

According to the White House, European Union member states have reported freezing more than $30 billion in Russian assets, including $7 billion worth of boats, helicopters, real estate and artwork.

By contrast, the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned and blocked boats and aircraft belonging to Russian elites worth more than $1 billion, the White House said.

The confiscations include the seizure earlier this month of a $90 million yacht owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

In addition, the department has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in assets belonging to Russian elites held in U.S. bank accounts, the White House said.

U.S. lawmakers have voiced support for stepped-up enforcement of sanctions imposed on Russian individuals and companies.

Critics say some of the proposed legislative changes go too far and could lead to government abuse of civil forfeiture authority.

“It’s not just aimed at ‘oligarchs’ and ‘Russian elites,’ whatever that means,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “Many of the provisions would greatly expand the government’s civil forfeiture powers in other cases, as well.”

Here is a look at the new enforcement tools the administration is seeking.

Transferring Russian assets to Ukraine

The administration’s key proposal would allow the departments of Justice, Treasury and State to hand over to Ukraine Russian assets forfeited to the U.S. government.

At present, forfeited property goes into the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeitures Fund, which is primarily used to compensate victims of crime and to fund investigations.

To empower the government to give the money to Ukraine, “multiple statutes” would have to be amended, according to the Justice Department.

These include the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a 1970 law enacted to fight organized crime.

Garland said during the House hearing that the proposed changes would make it “easier” to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

Seizing property used to evade sanctions

Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the primary U.S. sanctions statue, proceeds from violating sanctions are subject to forfeiture to the government.

The administration wants Congress to amend the 1977 law, extending the government’s authority to forfeit – or take ownership of – “property used to facilitate sanctions violations,” not just “proceeds of the offenses.”

The IEEPA authorizes the president to impose sanctions on foreign actors, including individuals and government officials.

Defining sanctions evasion as ‘racketeering activity’

The administration wants sanctions evasion to be defined as a “racketeering activity” under RICO.

Famously used in the 1980s to bring down mob leaders, the law includes a long list of crimes as racketeering, from bribery and money laundering to drug trafficking and kidnapping.

The proposed change “would extend a powerful forfeiture tool against racketeering enterprises engaged in sanctions evasion,” according to the Justice Department.

Creating a new criminal offense

The proposal would create a new criminal offense, making it illegal to possess proceeds obtained from “corrupt dealings” with the Russian government.

Smith said the proposed creation of a new offense is “scary.”

“How are ‘corrupt dealings’ to be defined?” he wrote in an email to VOA.  “Presumably to make it as easy as possible for the government to seize and forfeit ‘oligarchs’ assets.”

Extending the time limit for prosecuting oligarchs

The proposal would extend the so-called statutes of limitations for prosecuting money laundering and seeking forfeiture of their assets from five years to 10 years.  A statute of limitations limits the prosecution of an offense within a specified time.

Conducting such investigations can be complicated and time-consuming.

“Extending the statute of limitations would provide additional time for investigators and prosecutors to hold oligarchs criminally accountable,” the White House said in a statement.
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