Андрій Єрмак каже, що Росія не зупинить «західну допомогу»
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«Ми ще не отримали відповіді, і ми все ще наполягаємо», – сказав папа
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Pope Francis said in an interview published on Tuesday that he has asked for a meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to stop the war in Ukraine but had not received a reply.
The pontiff also told the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera that Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has given the war his backing, “cannot become Putin’s altar boy.”
Francis told the newspaper that about three weeks into the war, he asked the Vatican’s top diplomat to send a message to Putin about setting up a meeting.
“We have not yet received a response and we are still insisting,” the pope said.
He added: “I fear that Putin cannot, and does not, want to have this meeting at this time. But how can you not stop so much brutality?”
Francis also said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had told him that Putin planned to end the war on May 9, which Russia celebrates as Victory Day marking Nazi Germany’s surrender in 1945.
The 85-year-old pontiff made an unprecedented visit to the Russian Embassy in Rome when the war started.
Information from Reuters and AFP was used in this report.
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The mayor of Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol said Tuesday 100,000 citizens remained in the city, while Ukrainian officials awaited the arrival of the first group of people who were able to leave a bombed-out steel plant.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko said those still in the city included some civilians trapped in the bunkers and tunnels under the Azovstal iron and steel works. There are an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian troops holed up there as well.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday that only civilians had so far been able to leave the plant and that Ukraine’s government was continuing to work to negotiate an evacuation for soldiers holed up inside. Evacuated civilians were heading to Zaporizhzhia, about 200 kilometers away, although their progress was reported to be slow.
Russia’s military said Monday that 69 people who came out of the steel mill chose to be evacuated to Ukraine-controlled territories, while 57 others asked to stay in areas controlled by Russia.
Ukraine has previously accused Russia of taking Ukrainians to Russia against their will, a charge Moscow denies.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Greek state television Monday that the remaining civilians in the steel plant had been afraid to board buses because they believed they would be taken to Russia.
Economic pressure
As soon as Tuesday the European Union is expected to propose a new package of sanctions on Russia, including limits on Russian oil. German officials indicated Monday that country could support a full EU embargo of Russian oil.
“We have managed to reach a situation where Germany is able to bear an oil embargo,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Monday, “We expect a new package from the European Union soon. This package should include clear steps to block Russia’s revenues from energy resources.”
Tuesday U.S. President Joe Biden is visiting the state of Alabama where Lockheed Martin manufactures weapons including the Javelin anti-tank missiles that are among the arms the United States is sending to Ukraine.
The White House said Biden will also “deliver remarks highlighting his request to Congress to pass funding quickly to help Ukraine continue to succeed against Russian aggression and make sure the United States and our allies can replenish our own stocks of weapons to replace what we have sent to Ukraine.”
The CIA on Monday released instructions on social media explaining how Russians disaffected by the war could get in touch with U.S. intelligence.
“We are providing Russian-language instructions on how to safely contact the CIA — via our dark web site or a reputable VPN — for those who feel compelled to reach us because of the Russian government’s unjust war,” a CIA spokesperson said.
A senior U.S. defense official described continuing problems for Russia’s military, including poor command and control issues and low morale in many units.
“We continue to see minimal at best progress by the Russians” in capturing the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine,” the official said, adding, “They’ll move in, declare victory and then pull out, allowing the Ukrainians to take it back.”
The official described Russia’s advances as “very cautious, very tepid, very uneven,” adding that “in some places, quite frankly, the best word to describe it would be ‘anemic.'”
VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Reuters.
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«Ця пожертва бронетехніки допоможе захистити невинних українців, які намагаються врятуватися від російських обстрілів, і підтримати українських працівників, які виконують життєво важливу роботу»
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За словами президента, відсутність парламентаря на робочому місці у час війни можуть виправдати лише робота за кордоном чи в регіонах заради інтересів держави або смерть
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Раніше «слуги народу» зазначили, що поведінка Ковальова «викликає підозру у здійсненні ним державної зради»
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Satellite imagery and underwater robotics are among the technologies that played a crucial role in the recent discovery of the Endurance, renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship that sank in frozen Antarctic waters in 1915. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Європейський союз розглядає можливість активізувати співпрацю з країнами Африки щодо постачання газу, аби зменшити імпорт російського палива, повідомила агенція Bloomberg із посиланням на відповідний проєкт документу ЄС.
Країни ЄС мають намір скоротити цьогоріч залежність від Москви в енергетичній сфері майже на дві третини. Документ, який розширює зовнішню енергетичну взаємодію, може бути ухвалений Єврокомісією вже наприкінці травня.
У документі йдеться, що такі країни Африки, як Нігерія, Сенегал та Ангола, «мають значною мірою нереалізований потенціал у сфері скрапленого газу».
Євросоюз має намір збільшити імпорт скрапленого газу на 50 мільярдів кубометрів на рік, а постачання трубопровідного газу не з Росії – на 10 мільярдів кубометрів. У проєкті документа йдеться, що для цього потрібно встановити відносини з традиційними постачальниками на нових умовах та розширити торгівлю з новими постачальниками палива.
План Євросоюзу також передбачає постачання додаткових 15 мільярдів кубометрів скрапленого газу зі США у 2022 році та близько 50 мільярдів кубометрів щорічно до 2030 року. Крім того, ЄС планує збільшити постачання газу з Азербайджану до 20 мільярдів кубометрів на рік.
Раніше агентство Bloomberg повідомляло, що влада Євросоюзу збирається запропонувати ембарго на російську нафту до кінця року, а до цього поступово вводити обмеження на імпорт. Нові санкції проти Москви посли країн ЄС планують обговорити найближчими днями.
Нафтогазовий сектор приносить Росії близько половини доходів бюджету та складає понад половину експорту. 70 відсотків газу та 60 відсотків нафти і нафтопродуктів Росія продає якраз до Європи.
Більшість країн Євросоюзу вживають заходів щодо скорочення імпорту російських енергоносіїв, щоб обмежити можливості Кремля фінансувати війну в Україні. Відмовляється зробити це лише Угорщина.
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У компанії кажуть: нині в Запорізькій області у звичайному режимі працюють 80% базових станцій «Київстару», в Херсонській області – 30%
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Spain said Monday that the mobile phones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles were tapped using Pegasus spyware in an “illicit and external” intervention.
Their phones were infected last year by software owned by the Israeli-based firm NSO, which is the target of numerous investigations worldwide, according to a senior official.
“It is not a supposition, they are facts of enormous gravity,” said the minister of the presidency, Felix Bolanos.
“We are absolutely certain that it was an external attack…because in Spain, in a democracy like ours, all such interventions are carried out by official bodies and with judicial authorization,” he said.
“In this case, neither of the two circumstances prevailed, which is why we have no doubt that it was an external intervention. We want the judiciary to investigate,” Bolanos said.
He did not say whether the Spanish authorities had any indication yet where the attack originated from or whether another country was behind it.
Bolanos said that Sanchez’s phone had been tapped in May 2021 and Robles’ in June of the same year.
“A determined amount of data” was extracted from both phones, he added.
“There is no evidence that there was other tapping after those dates.”
Official phones targeted
The El Pais newspaper said the hackers extracted 2.6 gigabytes of information from Sanchez’s phone and nine megabytes from Robles’s phone, but the government still does not know “the nature of the stolen information and the degree of sensitivity.”
The attack targeted their work phones provided by the state, not their private phones.
Bolanos said experts were checking whether other members of the Spanish government were targets of spying involving Pegasus.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also led to another casualty: freedom of the press in Russia, according to a new report by Reporters Without Borders.
The media advocacy group has ranked Russia near the bottom of its 2022 World Press Freedom index, which was issued Tuesday in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day. The annual index classifies a record 28 countries as “having very bad media freedom.”
The Reporters Without Borders, also known as RSF, says Moscow’s assault on a free press ramped up as Russian troops invaded Ukraine through such means as propaganda, laws aimed at discrediting credible media, website bans and arrests.
Russia is just one of several countries highlighted in the updated index whose governments have either curtailed or outright suppressed media freedoms. They include:
– Afghanistan, where the Taliban pledged to uphold press freedom after regaining power last year, but instead imposed restrictive laws and blocked female journalists from the airwaves, and where media outlets are facing financial hardship after bans on entertainment and advertising cut revenue;
– Hong Kong, where pro-democracy news sites have been shut down after a series of raids and arrests since Beijing approved a sweeping national security law in 2020 after massive anti-government protests the year before;
– Ethiopia, which has imposed communications blackouts and restricted access amid the war in the Tigray region;
– and Myanmar, where the 2021 coup that overthrew the civilian government led to journalists being detained, media licenses revoked, and many news outlets driven back into exile, marking a 10-year setback for media rights.
“There is a contagion effect with authoritarian regimes,” said Clayton Weimers, the U.S. deputy director of RSF, “and when we allow a culture of impunity to exist where authoritarians are allowed to go after journalists, harass them, arrest them, beat them in the streets and kill them, it has a knock-on effect. It emboldens that same authoritarian to do it again next time, and it emboldens other authoritarians who are watching to do the same.”
More troubling, Weimars told VOA, is the impact media polarization and disinformation has on society: “In 2022, it’s really undeniable that media polarization and information chaos are really fueling social divisions in ways that are pretty new.”
Democracies play an important role in safeguarding press freedom. But this rise in disinformation and propaganda is having a disastrous effect on independent news, RSF finds.
The 2022 index reveals the United States made a slight improvement compared with 2021, but journalists and media outlets are flagging barriers to coverage, including of state governments and protests.
“We typically find that this is either due to just a blatant disregard for the laws governing open records or meetings, or they’re simply misinterpreting them,” Beth Francesco, the senior director of the National Press Club Journalism Institute, told VOA. “An individual is misinterpreting whether a journalist can be present at a particular event.”
Richard Green contributed to this report.
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Повідомляється, що автозак «горів кілька хвилин», потім його загасили
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В організації наголошують, що реальні цифри – значно вищі
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Олаф Шольц також наголосив, що Путін не побачить зняття санкцій без досягнення мирної угоди з Україною
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«Зруйнували гуртожиток. Вбили хлопчика 14 років. Поранили дівчину 17 років, у неї – осколкове поранення. Що це взагалі? Для чого?»
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BRINC, a company based in Seattle, Washington, is producing special drones to assist Ukraine’s armed forces. The drones are used in search and rescue missions and can provide eyes in places where it’s too dangerous to send people. Khrystyna Shevchenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
Videographer: Khrystyna Shevchenko
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The European Union on Monday accused Apple of abusing its dominant Apple Pay market position to prevent other companies from competing in contactless payment technologies.
“Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system, iOS. And Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “By excluding others from the game, Apple has unfairly shielded its Apple Pay wallets from competition.”
The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, said Apple’s practice “has an exclusionary effect on competitors and leads to less innovation and less choice for consumers for mobile wallets on iPhones.”
The commission has not disclosed what, if any, fines could be levied against Apple should it be found in violation of antitrust laws.
In response, Apple said it would cooperate with the Commission.
The company said it “will continue to engage with the Commission to ensure European consumers have access to the payment option of their choice in a safe and secure environment.”
The Commission has been investigating several aspects of Apple’s business practices in Europe since 2020, including the possibility the company violates European antitrust laws over music streaming and the app store.
Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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