«Якщо окупанти думають, що Лиман чи Сєвєродонецьк будуть їхніми, то вони помиляються. Донбас буде українським»
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In a small orthopedic clinic in Kyiv, Daviti Suleimanishvili listens as doctors describe various prostheses that could replace his left leg, torn off during the battle for Mariupol.
Born in Georgia but with Ukrainian citizenship, Suleimanishvili — whose nom de guerre is “Scorpion” — is one of countless people who have lost arms or legs in the war and now impatiently awaiting a replacement limb.
A member of the Azov regiment, he was based in the city of Mariupol, which underwent a relentless battering by Russian forces for three months before the last troops at the Azovstal steelworks finally laid down their arms last week.
He was badly wounded on March 20 when a Russian tank located about 900 meters away fired in his direction.
“The blast threw me four meters and then a wall fell on top of me,” he said, saying he was also hit by shrapnel. “When I tried to stand up, I could not feel my leg. My hand was injured and a finger was gone.”
Carried by his comrades into a field hospital in the heart of the sprawling steelworks, his leg was amputated just below the knee.
He was then evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Dnipro in central Ukraine.
Two months later he’s getting around with crutches and hopes to soon have a prosthetic leg fitted, funded by the Ukrainian government.
“If possible, I want to continue serving in the army and keep fighting,” he said. “A leg is nothing because we’re in the 21st century and you can make good prostheses and continue to live and serve.
“I know many guys in the war now have prostheses and are on the front lines.”
Resources needed
On Wednesday afternoon, he had his first consultation with the medics who will fit him with a new limb.
Inside the clinic at a rundown building in Kyiv, a dozen specialists are making prosthetic limbs inside a workshop covered in plaster, while in the consultation rooms, doctors are considering which might be the right model for each of their patients.
But Suleimanishvili’s case is not so straightforward.
One suggests a vacuum-attached prosthesis in which a pump draws out the air between the residual limb and the socket, creating a vacuum; another pushes for a different type of attachment which he says would be better for war-time conditions, that is “stable, flexible and easy to clean.”
“There were almost no military people two weeks ago, but now they’re coming,” explained Dr. Oleksandr Stetsenko, who heads the clinic.
“They weren’t ready before as they needed to be treated for injuries to other parts of their bodies.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in mid-April that 10,000 soldiers had been wounded while the United Nations has given a figure of more than 4,600 injured civilians.
Amplitude Magazine, a specialist American publication aimed at amputees, said Ukraine would need significant resources.
“To assist the hundreds or thousands of Ukrainian amputees who reportedly need treatment, aid volunteers will need to work from centralized locations that are well stocked,” it said.
However, “there are a limited number of such clinics within Ukraine, and the supply chains that serve them are spotty at best.”
‘Up and running in weeks’
Stetsenko said Ukraine has around 30 facilities that made prostheses, with his clinic normally producing around 300 every year. The clinic won’t be able to step up production because each prosthesis is “customized” to suit the injury and needs of each patient.
In the case of Suleimanishvili, who is a gunner, the doctors will add 15 kilograms to the weight of his new leg so it can support his use of heavy weaponry.
“I want the prosthetic so I can do most maneuvers,” he insisted.
In a week’s time, Suleimanishvili will be back to have a temporary prosthesis fitted so he can start learning to walk.
“In two or three weeks, he will be running,” another doctor, Valeri Nebesny, told AFP, saying that like Suleimanishvili, “90%” of military amputees want to get back to the battlefield as quickly as possible.
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When Mick North’s 5-year-old daughter was gunned down at her school, he vowed through his grief that it must never happen again.
And it hasn’t — in Britain, at least. The 1996 massacre of 16 elementary school students in Dunblane, Scotland, led to a ban on owning handguns in the U.K. While Britain is not immune to gun violence, there have been no school shootings in the quarter century since.
The deep-rooted gun culture in the United States makes similar action unlikely in the wake of the killing of 19 students and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas.
North, who helped set up Britain’s Gun Control Network after his daughter Sophie was killed, said his reaction to the Uvalde killings was “shock, but no surprise.” He knows like few others just what the Uvalde families are going through and says “my sympathy is not going to make them feel better. And it’s just dreadful. It’s just dreadful.”
Carrying four guns
North’s life was shattered on March 13, 1996, when Thomas Hamilton, 43, entered the gym at Dunblane Primary School in central Scotland, where a class of 5- and 6-year-olds was assembled. The former Scout leader killed 16 children and a teacher with four handguns before shooting himself. An additional 12 children and two teachers were wounded.
Public horror at the slaughter, and campaigning by bereaved families that put pressure on politicians, brought about rapid change to Britain’s gun laws.
Soon after the carnage, a small group of local mothers launched what became the “Snowdrop Campaign” — named after the only flower in bloom at that time of spring — and began a petition demanding a ban on private ownership of handguns.
The movement quickly gained momentum across the country, and campaigners eventually took boxes full of paper signed by some 750,000 people to politicians in London.
“I think our strength was in numbers,” said Rosemary Hunter, one of the campaign’s founders. Her 3-year-old daughter was at a nursery in Dunblane when the shooting occurred. Hunter said “the mood in the country was so overwhelmingly in support of the change that it was not difficult to overcome” opposition from gun advocates.
“I don’t know how you translate that to a country where there are more guns than people,” Hunter said of the United States. “In many ways it’s quite overwhelming to think that people are going through what we went through here in our town. And it’s happened so, so many times.”
Like Uvalde, Dunblane is a small town, where many of the 9,000 residents know one another. For those who lived there in 1996 — including tennis star Andy Murray, then a 9-year-old pupil at Dunblane Primary School — the pain has never completely faded. Murray responded to the Texas shooting with a tweet labeling it “madness.”
The year after the Dunblane shooting, and with the support of both Conservative and Labour politicians, Parliament passed new laws to ban private ownership of almost all handguns in Britain. Gun owners surrendered more than 160,000 weapons under a government buyback program.
Britain had banned semiautomatic weapons a decade earlier after a 1987 shooting rampage in Hungerford, England, that left 16 adults dead. People can still own shotguns and rifles with a license.
Other responses
Other countries have also responded to mass shootings by toughening laws. Canada imposed stricter checks on gun buyers and clamped down on military-style weapons — but did not ban them — after the 1989 slaying of 14 female students by a misogynist killer at L’Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal.
A month after Dunblane, a gunman armed with two semiautomatic assault rifles killed 35 people and wounded 23 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Within two weeks, Australia’s federal and state governments had agreed to standardize gun laws with a primary aim of getting rapid-fire weapons out of public hands.
In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass gun homicides in Australia, defined as at least four dead victims. Since then, there have been three such shootings.
But for the pain in Texas to translate into a national reckoning with gun violence would take a major political shift in the United States, where the right to bear arms is embedded in the Constitution and efforts to tighten laws after past massacres have foundered.
“Nothing has happened [in the U.S.] since Columbine and the other school shootings that followed shortly after Dunblane, when we started being asked, ‘Well, what would you recommend Americans do?’ ” North said. “We thought, well, follow our example. Try and change and tighten gun legislation after a tragedy. But it never happened.”
While President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for stricter gun laws — with Biden stating that “the Second Amendment is not absolute” — Republican politicians and the National Rifle Association say issues such as mental health are the problem, not access to firearms.
Looking to youth
Jack Crozier, 28, lost his sister Emma in the Dunblane attack and now campaigns for gun control. He has traveled to the U.S. to meet American activists and thinks change will have to come from young people, like the survivors of a 2018 school shooting that killed 14 students and three staff in Parkland, Florida.
“Kids are not willing to grow up like this and go to school in fear anymore,” he said. “The kids in Parkland are now studying in universities and college, and they are the youth campaigners that can change things.”
He said the families in Uvalde “have the support of every single family in Dunblane.”
“The people of Dunblane stand with you.”
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A documentary about discrimination within the ranks of Dutch police has sparked a national conversation in the Netherlands about racism, with many officers and others hoping it will finally bring about change.
The Blue Family, or De Blauwe Familie in Dutch, discusses a culture of bullying and fear in the national police force. It premiered on Dutch television Monday, timed around the second anniversary this week of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police.
“There is no way back,” Peris Conrad, one of the officers featured in the film, told The Associated Press.
Born in the former Dutch colony Surinam, Conrad dreamed of being a police officer as a child. He moved to the Netherlands when he was 4 years old, and after a stint in the military, became a security guard.
While in that job, he had an encounter with police officers who were looking for information about crime in the Surinamese community. The officers encouraged him to join the force himself, which he did, ultimately spending 26 years in service.
But Conrad, who is Black, recalled how in his first year at the police academy, colleagues hung a picture of him with cell bars drawn on it. The caption read: “Our monkey in a cage.”
Police leaders received an early showing of the film and promised action.
“The personal stories make it painfully clear how great the impact is (of the racism), and how long it will last,” Police Chief Henk van Essen said in a statement. “We all have something to do; not just executives, but all 65,000 colleagues. Because safety outside starts with safety inside.”
“There is no room for racism and discrimination in our police,” Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgöz told Dutch talk show RTL Boulevard.
The Dutch parliament voted by a large majority this week to place police leaders under stricter supervision, citing the suicides in recent years of three officers who had complained about discrimination.
Last year, a Dutch newspaper published messages from police group chats that showed officers making racial slurs and joking about killing non-white people. “One less Turk” one officer wrote, in response to the slaying of a 16-year-old girl who was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend in her high school’s bicycle shed.
As in other countries, the problems in the Netherlands have a long history. A 1998 report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs said discrimination was driving out police officers with a “migration” background — defined as having at least one parent born abroad.
While 24% of the Dutch population meets that definition, only 14% of the police force does. The National Police Corps employs some 65,000 people, and around 40,000 work as officers.
Margot Snijders has spent 30 years on the national force, including several years working on diversity and inclusion efforts. After years of frustration, she took a step back from that role.
“People don’t trust us, and they don’t want to work for us,” Snijders, who also appears in The Blue Family, told The Associated Press.
George Floyd’s death in the U.S. two years ago prompted protests of racial injustice in the Netherlands and around the world. Controle Alt Delete, an advocacy organization that pushes for better law enforcement practices, wanted to highlight problems within the Dutch police force.
The group brought on board filmmakers Maria Mok and Meral Uslu to direct and produce the documentary, which was backed by Dutch public broadcaster KRO-NCRV.
Problems with racism, as well as discrimination against women and members of the LGBTQ community, are widespread and systemic within police ranks, said Jan Struijs, the chairperson of the country’s largest police union.
Struijs also took part in the film. “I hope this is a historic turning point,” he told the AP.
The first article of the country’s constitution, which is displayed on posters in every police station, outlaws discrimination against any group. The Dutch consider themselves to be some of the most open-minded, tolerant people in the world.
There’s been no significant criticism of the The Blue Family, those involved in the documentary welcomed the response to it.
“I have been saying the same things for years, only now do they get a positive reaction,” Snijders said.
The Dutch police union is calling for better mental health counseling for officers and more accountability for ones who make racist jokes.
Conrad sees a need for widespread change, both in policy and leadership.
In the meantime, he’s forbidden his 20-year-old son from joining the force.
“I don’t want him to experience this,” he said.
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26 травня Маріо Драгі розмовляв з російським президентом Володимиром Путіним.
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Dutch Airline KLM has announced it was temporarily stopping ticket sales for most of it flights from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport through Sunday, due to the airport’s ongoing crowding issues caused by staff shortages.
In a statement Thursday, the airline said it is taking the action to guarantee seats for customers whose flights had been cancelled due to the long security lines at Schiphol. The airline said the restrictions do not apply to premium bookings.
Air France-KLM spokesperson Gerrie Brand said Thursday, “KLM is putting a brake on ticket sales for flights leaving up until and including Sunday because Schiphol can’t get its security problems fixed.” Amsterdam is KLM’s hub city, and it is the largest airline serving the airport.
Schiphol, one of Europe’s busiest airports – has been experiencing extremely long security lines in recent weeks due to a shortage of security personnel, as well as labor issues earlier in this year.
Lines routinely run out of the building and onto the street with customers reporting wait times as long as six hours, resulting in missed flights. Media reports say Monday alone more than 500 flights were delayed from Schiphol, while over 50 were cancelled.
Airport officials said Thursday they are working to recruit more security staff before the summer holidays begin, while it would also work with airlines to guarantee better planning of flights during the busiest weeks.
The airport said it was also in talks with unions about higher wages for security personnel.
Some information for this report was provided by the Reuters news agency.
your ad hereThe arrival of the pandemic intensified feelings of loneliness and social isolation for millions of older people, many of whom were already battling depression and other health issues. For those struggling, a robot companion might make a difference, and states like New York are starting to provide them to residents free of charge. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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Саміт «Групи 20» запланований на листопад 2022 року.
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«Може, час дати відповідь нелюдам і передати Україні РСЗВ?»
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Загалом, за словами речника, США схвалили надання 108 таких гаубиць
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«Можемо говорити про те, що рівень дезертирства насправді абсолютно мінімальний»
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
4:02 a.m.: The BBC, citing an update from the Ukrainian military, reports that Russia is firing missiles in the Donetsk region. It’s also hitting the eastern city of Lyman with artillery.
3:04 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that the Russian-occupied region of Zaporizhzhia has switched from Kyiv time to Moscow time. The move comes from the Russian military administration in the region, and it means an end to daylight saving changes in summer and winter.
2:02 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry says Russia continues to target the cities of Severodonetsk and Lyschansk.
Russia has likely pulled T-62 tanks out of storage to use, the update says. The 50-year-old tanks “will almost certainly be particularly vulnerable to anti-tank weapons and their presence on the battlefield highlights Russia’s shortage of modern, combat-ready equipment,” the update says.
1:04 a.m.: The New York Times reports that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used his nightly address to express frustration that the European Union hasn’t approved new sanctions against Russia.
The sanctions, which would be the sixth such package, would include an oil embargo.
12:02 a.m.: Al Jazeera, citing the mayor of Severodonetsk, reports that at least 1,500 people have been killed in the east Ukrainian city.
Mayor Oleksandr Stryuk said only 12 people were evacuated Thursday and some 12,000-13,000 remained.
your ad hereA former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of archaeological treasures that investigators suspect were smuggled out of Egypt in the chaos of the Arab Spring, a French judicial source said Thursday.
Jean-Luc Martinez was charged Wednesday after being taken in for questioning along with two French specialists in Egyptian art, who were not charged, another source close to the inquiry told AFP.
The Louvre, which is owned by the French state, is the world’s most visited museum with around 10 million visitors a year before the COVID-19 pandemic and is home to some of Western civilization’s most celebrated cultural heritage.
The museum declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
French investigators opened the case in July 2018, two years after the Louvre’s branch in Abu Dhabi bought a rare pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works for 8 million euros ($8.5 million).
Martinez, who ran the Paris Louvre from 2013-21, is accused of turning a blind eye to fake certificates of origin for the pieces, a fraud thought to involve several other art experts, according to French investigative weekly Canard Enchaine.
He has been charged with complicity in fraud and “concealing the origin of criminally obtained works by false endorsement,” according to the judicial source.
Martinez is currently the French foreign ministry’s ambassador in charge of international cooperation on cultural heritage, which focuses in particular on fighting art trafficking.
“Jean-Luc Martinez contests in the strongest way his indictment in this case,” his lawyers told AFP in a statement.
Arab Spring looting
“For now, he will reserve his declarations for the judiciary, and has no doubt that his good faith will be established,” they said.
French investigators suspect that hundreds of artifacts were pillaged from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries during protests in the early 2010s that became known as the Arab Spring. They suspect the artifacts were then sold to galleries and museums that did not ask too many questions about previous ownership.
Martinez’s indictment comes after the German-Lebanese gallery owner who brokered the sale, Robin Dib, was arrested in Hamburg in March and extradited to Paris for questioning.
Marc Gabolde, a French Egyptologist, was quoted by Canard Enchaine as saying that he informed Louvre officials about suspicions related to the Tutankhamun stele but received no response.
The opening of the inquiry in 2018 roiled the Paris art market, a major hub for antiquities from Middle Eastern civilizations.
In June 2020, prominent Paris archaeology expert Christophe Kunicki and dealer Richard Semper were charged with fraud for false certification of looted works from several countries during the Arab Spring.
They also had a role in certifying another prized Egyptian work, the gilded sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh that was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2017.
Gabolde said an Egyptian art dealer, Habib Tawadros, was also involved in both suspect deals.
After New York prosecutors determined that the sarcophagus had been stolen during the revolts against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the Met said it had been a victim of false statements and fake documentation, and returned the coffin to Egypt.
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Росія розмістила в Україні 110 оперативних батальйонних тактичних груп, більшість – на півдні, решта угруповань воює на Донбасі, кажуть у Міноборони США
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Прем’єр-міністр Італії Маріо Драгі сказав, що під час розмови з Путіним не відчув навіть проблиску надії на мир
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The reign of new Islamic State terror group leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi may be over, less than three months after it began.
The Turkish website OdaTV first reported the arrest of Abu al-Hassan Thursday, saying Turkish police captured him without firing a single bullet during a raid on a house in Istanbul last week.
The website further reported the IS leader was being questioned and that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to formally announce the arrest and share additional details in the coming days.
Separately, two senior Turkish officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrest to Bloomberg News, adding that Erdogan has been informed.
U.S. officials, however, remained cautious.
“[We] can’t confirm the reports about al-Qurashi,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Thursday. “Obviously we’ve been looking at this all day, but we’re just not in a position where we can actually confirm that press reporting.”
IS named Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as the terror group’s third leader in March, saying he took over shortly after the death of his predecessor during a raid by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria in February.
IS followers quickly lined up behind the new leader, with the terror group’s media division sharing photos and videos of fighters from Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Philippines and elsewhere pledging their allegiance to Abu al-Hassan.
Yet despite the show of support, there are still questions about the new leader’s true identity, which may be making it more difficult to verify Turkey’s claims.
Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is a nom-de-guerre meant to indicate the new leader is a descendant of the Hashemite clan of the Qurashi tribe, which by bloodline would link him to Prophet Muhammed — an IS requirement for any would-be caliph.
And so far, Western counterintelligence officials have yet to form a firm consensus about who is really leading IS.
There are, however, several theories.
New Lines Magazine in February identified Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaidai as next in line to lead the terror group.
“Known by numerous noms de guerre, including Ustath Zaid (Teacher or Professor Zaid), Abu Khattab al-Iraqi, Abu al-Moez al-Iraqi and Abu Ishaq, he returned to Syria from Turkey about a year ago,” New Lines said, adding that al-Sumaidai had become increasingly popular in jihadist circles.
But Iraqi and Western officials told Reuters in March that the new leader was actually Juma Awad al-Badri, the brother of former IS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Still, no matter who it is that Turkey ultimately captured, some analysts say as long as Turkish officials have a senior IS leader, it could help further weaken IS operations.
“It could end up being an intelligence boon once he’s interrogated and questioned,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA.
“We’ve long known that the organization’s financiers and logisticians had strong networks in Turkey, but now it seems like senior leadership is active there as well,” Clarke said.
“A country like Turkey is a double-edged sword for groups like ISIS,” he added, using another acronym for the terror group.
“On the one hand, Turkey has capable security forces,” Clarke said. “On the other hand, unlike a country like Afghanistan that is somewhat isolated, Turkey can serve as a safe haven for terrorists, and it’s connected to the illicit financial system, communications, [and] transportation.”
your ad hereMoscow pressed the West on Thursday to lift sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, seeking to shift the blame for a growing food crisis that has been worsened by Kyiv’s inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the conflict.
Britain immediately accused Russia of “trying to hold the world to ransom,” insisting there would be no sanctions relief, and a top U.S. diplomat blasted the “sheer barbarity, sadistic cruelty and lawlessness” of the invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Moscow “is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizer on the condition that politically motivated restrictions imposed by the West are lifted,” according to a Kremlin readout of the call.
Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but the war and a Russian blockade of its ports has halted much of that flow, endangering world food supplies. Many of those ports are now also heavily mined.
Russia also is a significant grain exporter, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said the West “must cancel the unlawful decisions that hamper chartering ships and exporting grain.” His comments appeared to be an effort to lump the blockade of Ukrainian exports with what Russia says are its difficulties in moving its own goods.
Western officials have dismissed those claims. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted last week that food, fertilizer and seeds are exempt from sanctions imposed by the U.S. and many others — and that Washington is working to ensure countries know the flow of those goods should not be affected.
With the war grinding into its fourth month, world leaders have ramped up calls for solutions. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said about 25 million tons of Ukrainian grain is in storage and another 25 million tons could be harvested next month.
European countries have tried to ease the crisis by moving grain out of the country by rail — but trains can carry only a small fraction of what Ukraine produces, and ships are needed for the bulk of the exports.
At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry proposed corridors to allow foreign ships to leave ports along the Black Sea, as well as Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
Mikhail Mizintsev, who heads Russia’s National Defense Control Center, said 70 foreign vessels from 16 countries are in six ports on the Black Sea, including Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv. He did not specify how many might be ready to carry food.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country was ready to agree on safe corridors in principle — but that it was not sure it could trust that Russia “will not violate the agreement on the safe passage and its military vessels will not sneak into the harbor and attack Odesa.”
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Putin was “trying to hold the world to ransom” by demanding some sanctions be lifted before allowing Ukrainian grain shipments to resume.
“He’s essentially weaponized hunger and lack of food among the poorest people around the world,” Truss said on a visit to Sarajevo. “What we cannot have is any lifting of sanctions, any appeasement, which will simply make Putin stronger in the longer term.”
Putin said “it’s impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world” to isolate Russia. Speaking via video to members of the Eurasian Economic Forum, which is comprised of several ex-Soviet nations, he said those who try would “primarily hurt themselves,” citing broken food supply chains.
Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, urged its members to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself against Putin’s “revanchist delusions.”
If Russia achieved “success” in Ukraine, “there would be more horrific reports from filtration camps, more forcibly displaced people, more summary executions, more torture, more rape and more looting,” Carpenter said in Vienna.
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«Змушені відпрацьовувати захист південних рубежів», каже Олександр Лукашенко
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Судно було тимчасово затримане грецькою владою ще 15 квітня, коли стало на якір біля порту Карістос на острові Еввія
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Російську крилату ракету було збито у четвер близько 22:30
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Тиск на Росію – це буквально питання збереження життів, каже президент
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