Ukraine announced major advancements in a strategic military counteroffensive against Russian forces, retaking a vital city and causing thousands of Russian soldiers to retreat from territory in northeastern Ukraine that they had held since the start of the war in late February.
Ukrainian forces reported Saturday that they had gained control of Izyum and pushed Russian soldiers across the Oskil River. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed it had pulled its forces out of Izyum, claiming the move was planned.
Reports of the claims could not be independently verified. Western military analysts say if the advances are confirmed, it would put the Ukrainians in control of a main railway that Moscow uses to supply thousands of troops in eastern Ukraine.
In other developments, a pro-Russia separatist leader was quoted as saying there also was fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region.
Denis Pushilin said the situation in the town of Lyman was “very difficult” and there was fighting in “a number of other localities,” particularly in the northern part of the region.
Military analysts say Russia is believed to be sending reinforcements to the area, where it plans to launch new attacks against Ukrainian controlled sections of Donetsk.
Moscow regrouping
Meanwhile, Moscow announced it was regrouping its forces in the eastern Kharkiv region of Ukraine.
“To achieve the goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas, a decision was made to regroup Russian troops stationed in the Balakliya and Izyum regions, to bolster efforts along the Donetsk front,” Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement.
The regrouping of Russian soldiers comes as residents in parts of the Kharkiv region had been advised to evacuate to Russia, according to the state-run news agency Tass. The area’s Russian-installed administrator, Vitaly Ganchev, reportedly said doing so would “save lives.”
Lightning-fast advances
The Ukrainian breakthrough near Kharkiv was the fastest advance reported by either side for months, and it is one of the biggest gains in the war since Russian forces abandoned a disastrous assault on the capital, Kyiv, in March.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country’s armed forces have liberated about 2,000 square kilometers of territory since a counter-offensive against Russia started earlier this month.
On the diplomatic front, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday pledging Berlin’s unwavering support for Ukraine.
“I have traveled to Kyiv to show that they can continue to rely on us. That we will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary with deliveries of weapons, and with humanitarian and financial support,” Baerbock said in a statement.
Over the last weeks, Germany has sent howitzers, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. Heavier weapons like anti-aircraft systems, rocket launchers mounted on pickup trucks and anti-drone equipment are also expected in a further military aid package worth more than $500 million.
Nuclear fears
Meanwhile, shelling destroyed the power infrastructure at the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar where staff operating the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant live, posing a growing threat to the plant, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday.
The plant’s off-site power supplies, vital lines of defense against a potential nuclear meltdown, have been cut. And the shelling at Enerhodar has caused a lasting blackout there.
That has prompted Ukraine to say it may have to shut down the last operating reactor supplying power to Zaporizhzhia, including the cooling systems for the plant’s nuclear fuel.
Zaporizhzhia’s operator is not confident off-site power can be restored and that is prompting it to consider shutting down the last operating reactor, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said in a statement.
“The entire power plant would then be fully reliant on emergency diesel generators for ensuring vital nuclear safety and security functions. And as a consequence, the operator would not be able to restart the reactors unless off-site power was reliably reestablished,” he noted.
Grossi this week called for the creation of a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around Zaporizhzhia, repeating his call Friday.
Military aid
The United States said Thursday it plans to send $2.2 billion in long-term military aid to Ukraine and 18 other European countries threatened by Russian aggression, and another $675 million directly to the Kyiv government in a new munitions package to fight Moscow’s invasion.
European Union finance ministers Friday backed a $5 billion loan for Ukraine to help it keep schools, hospitals and other state operations running as it fights against Russia’s invasion, the Czech Finance Ministry said.
The loan, to be backed by guarantees of EU member states, is part of an overall $9 billion package announced in May. The first $1 billion was sent in early August.
Some information in this report came from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press.
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У соцмережах з’явилися жарти, що Москва салютувала визволенню Ізюма, Куп’янська й інших міст українськими військовими
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«Я вірю, що завдяки нашим спільним зусиллям ми виграємо у цьому зіткненні цивілізації свободи з імперією брехні, зла і варварства»
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Albania has suffered a renewed cyberattack, the country’s interior ministry said Saturday, blaming Iran which Tirana also accused of an earlier assault on its digital systems.
“The national police’s computer systems were hit Friday by a cyberattack which, according to initial information, was committed by the same actors who in July attacked the country’s public and government service systems,” the ministry said in a statement.
“In order to neutralize the criminal act and secure the systems,” the authorities have shut down computer control systems at seaports, airports and border posts, the statement said.
In a tweet, Prime Minister Edi Rama denounced “another cyberattack (committed by) the same aggressors already condemned by Albania’s friendly countries and allies.”
Albania blamed Iran for the July attack and Wednesday cut diplomatic ties over the affair.
The two countries have been bitter foes for years, since the Balkan state began hosting members of the opposition People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), on its soil.
Rama on Wednesday accused Iran of directing a cyberattack against Albanian institutions July 15 in a bid to “paralyze public services and hack data and electronic communications from the government systems.”
It was the first time Tirana spoke about the alleged attack.
“The Council of Ministers has decided on the severance of diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran with immediate effect,” said Rama.
“The said attack failed its purpose. Damages may be considered minimal compared to the goals of the aggressor. All systems came back fully operational and there was no irreversible wiping of data.”
The prime minister went on to say that Iranian diplomats and embassy staff had 24 hours to leave the country.
Iranian denials
Iran rejected the accusation it was behind the cyberattack as “baseless” and called Albania’s decision to sever diplomatic ties “an ill-considered and shortsighted action.”
“Iran as one of the target countries of cyberattacks on its critical infrastructure rejects and condemns any use of cyberspace as a tool to attack the critical infrastructure of other countries,” its foreign ministry said.
The U.S. announced sanctions Friday on Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and its minister Esmail Khatib over Tehran’s alleged involvement.
The Islamic republic has also been targeted by cyberattacks, most notably in 2010 when the Stuxnet virus — believed to have been engineered by Israel and the U.S. — infected its nuclear program.
your ad hereШмигаль подякував Вашингтону, зокрема, за запит до Конгресу на виділення додаткових 11,7 мільярда доларів цього року
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Charles, the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, was publicly proclaimed king Saturday in a ceremony steeped in British pomp and pageantry at London’s St. James’s Palace.
He automatically became Britain’s king upon the death of his mother on Thursday. He will now be known as King Charles III.
Saturday’s procedure at the Accession Council was the formal proclamation of his sovereignty and was the first time the ceremony had been televised.
On Friday, Charles paid tribute to his late mother, calling her “darling Mama” during his first address as head of state.
Charles, who is 73 and the oldest monarch to ascend the throne, said he would serve with “loyalty, respect and love” as his mother had done for more than seven decades until her death Thursday at age 96.
“That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today,” Charles said Friday in his televised address from Buckingham Palace to a nation in mourning.
He said Elizabeth’s death brought a “sense of loss, beyond measure” and paid tribute to his mother.
“To my darling Mama: As you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you. Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May ‘flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,’” Charles said.
The new king said he would follow the example of his mother.
“As the queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation,” he said.
Charles was greeted by well-wishers as he arrived at the palace Friday alongside Camilla, the queen consort, from Balmoral Castle in Scotland where Elizabeth died.
The king also held his first audience Friday with Prime Minister Liz Truss at Buckingham Palace, in only her third day in the job.
Elizabeth appointed Truss to her new position as prime minister Tuesday.
Parliament held a special midday session Friday to pay its respects to the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
“She was the rock on which modern Britain was built,” Truss told lawmakers.
Around 2,000 people attended a service of remembrance for the queen at St. Paul’s Cathedral Friday, including Truss and other government officials.
Elizabeth’s funeral will be held in coming days at London’s Westminster Abbey, and other royalty and dignitaries are expected to attend. U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will travel to England for the funeral. The day will be designated as a National Day of Mourning, which is a public holiday.
Growing mountains of flowers and tributes to the queen are gathering not only at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, but also at British embassies and cathedrals around the world.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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Міноборони Росії заявило про «перегрупуванням військ» для «нарощування зусиль на Донецькому напрямку» і «досягнення цілей спеціальної військової операції»
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«Діапазон наших потреб широкий – від отримання індивідуальних навичок до тренувань у складі батальйонів, а також підготовка штабів бригад»
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A global search for alternative sources to Russian energy in light of the war in Ukraine has refocused attention on smaller, easier-to-build nuclear power stations, which proponents say could provide a cheaper, more efficient alternative to older model mega-plants.
U.K.-based Rolls-Royce SMR says its small modular reactors, or SMRs, are much cheaper and quicker to get running than standard plants, delivering the kind of energy security that many nations are seeking. France already relies on nuclear power for a majority of its electricity, and Germany kept the option of reactivating two nuclear plants it will shut down at the end of the year as Russia cuts natural gas supplies.
While Rolls-Royce SMR and its competitors have signed deals with countries from Britain to Poland to start building the stations, they are many years away from operating and cannot solve the energy crisis now hitting Europe.
Nuclear power also poses risks, including disposing of highly radioactive waste and keeping that technology out of the hands of rogue countries or nefarious groups that may pursue a nuclear weapons program.
Those risks have been accentuated following the shelling around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, which has raised fears of potential nuclear disaster.
In the wake of the war, however, “the reliance on gas imports and Russian energy sources has focused people’s minds on energy security,” Rolls-Royce SMR spokesman Dan Gould said.
An SMR’s components can be built in a factory, moved to a site in tractor trailers and assembled there, making the technology more attractive to frugal buyers, he said.
“It’s like building Lego,” Gould said. “Building on a smaller scale reduces risks and makes it a more investible project.”
SMRs are essentially pressurized water reactors identical to some 400 reactors worldwide. The key advantages are their size — about one-tenth as big as a standard reactor — the ease of construction and the price tag.
The estimated cost of a Rolls-Royce SMR is $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion, with an estimated construction time of 5 1/2 years. That’s two years faster than it took to build a standard nuclear plant between 2016 and 2021, according to International Atomic Energy Agency statistics. Some estimates put the cost of building a 1,100-megawatt nuclear plant at between $6 billion and $9 billion.
Rolls-Royce aims to build its first stations in the U.K. within 5 1/2 years, Gould said. Similarly, Oklahoma-based NuScale Power signed agreements last year with two Polish companies — copper and silver producer KGHM and energy producer UNIMOT — to explore the possibility of building SMRs to power heavy industry. Poland wants to switch from polluting, coal-powered electricity generation.
Rolls-Royce SMR said last month that it signed a deal with Dutch development company ULC-Energy to look into setting up SMRs in the Netherlands.
Another partner is Turkey, where Russia is building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant on the southern coast. Environmentalists say the region is seismically active and could be a target for terrorists.
The introduction of “unproven” nuclear power technology in the form of SMRs doesn’t sit well with environmentalists, who argue that proliferation of small reactors will exacerbate the problem of how to dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
“Unfortunately, Turkey is governed by an incompetent administration that has turned it into a ‘test bed’ for corporations,” said Koray Dogan Urbarli, a spokesman for Turkey’s Green Party.
“It is giving up the sovereignty of a certain region for at least 100 years for Russia to build a nuclear power plant. This incompetence and lobbying power make Turkey an easy target for SMRs,” said Koray, adding that his party eschews technology with an “uncertain future.”
Gould said one Rolls-Royce SMR would generate nuclear waste the size of a “tennis court piled 1-meter high” throughout the plant’s 60-year lifetime. He said initially, waste would be stored on site at the U.K. plants and would eventually be transferred to a long-term disposal site selected by the British government.
M.V. Ramana, professor of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia, cites research suggesting there’s “no demonstrated way” to ensure nuclear waste stored in what authorities consider to be secure sites won’t escape in the future.
The constant heat generated by the waste could alter rock formations where it’s stored and allow water seepage, while future mining activities could compromise a nuclear waste site’s integrity, said Ramana, who specializes in international security and nuclear energy.
Skeptics also raise the risks of possibly exporting such technology in politically tumultuous regions. Gould said Rolls-Royce is “completely compliant” with U.K. and international requirements in exporting its SMR technology “only in territories that are signatories to the necessary international treaties for the peaceful use of nuclear power for energy generation.”
Ramana said, however, there’s no guarantee nations will follow the rules.
“Any country acquiring nuclear reactors automatically enhances its capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that every SMR could produce “around 10 bombs worth of plutonium each year.”
Rolls-Royce SMR could opt to stop supplying fuel and other services to anyone flouting the rules, but “should any country choose to do so, it can simply tell the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop inspections, as Iran has done, for example,” Ramana said.
Although spent fuel normally undergoes chemical reprocessing to generate the kind of plutonium used in nuclear weapons, Ramana said such reprocessing technology is widely known and that a very sophisticated reprocessing plant isn’t required to produce the amount of plutonium needed for weapons.
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Ще 11 людей отримали поранення
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Церемонія відбулася 10 вересня у палаці Святого Якова в Лондоні
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«Ми не бачимо жодних перешкоджань здатності Росії відправляти продовольство на ринок», заявив посадовець Держдепартаменту
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Планується, що Бербок зустрінеться з Дмитром Кулебою та іншими посадовцями
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Britain’s former prince of Wales will be formally proclaimed king Saturday at St. James’s Palace in London.
Charles automatically became Britain’s king upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday. He will be known as King Charles III.
Saturday’s procedure at the Accession Council will be the formal proclamation of his sovereignty and it will be the first time the ceremony will be televised.
On Friday, Charles paid tribute to his late mother, calling her “darling Mama” during his first address as head of state.
Charles, who is 73 and the oldest monarch to ascend the throne, said he would serve with “loyalty, respect and love” as his mother had done for more than seven decades until her death Thursday at age 96.
“That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today,” Charles said Friday in his televised address from Buckingham Palace to a nation in mourning.
He said Elizabeth’s death brought a “sense of loss, beyond measure” and paid tribute to his mother.
“To my darling Mama: As you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you. Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May ‘flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,’” Charles said.
The new king said he would follow the example of his mother.
“As the queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation,” he said.
Charles was greeted by well-wishers as he arrived at the palace Friday alongside Camilla, the queen consort, from Balmoral Castle in Scotland where Elizabeth died.
The king also held his first audience Friday with Prime Minister Liz Truss at Buckingham Palace, in only her third day in the job.
Elizabeth appointed Truss to her new position as prime minister Tuesday.
Parliament held a special midday session Friday to pay its respects to the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
“She was the rock on which modern Britain was built,” Truss told lawmakers.
Around 2,000 people attended a service of remembrance for the queen at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, including Truss and other government officials.
Elizabeth’s funeral will be held in the coming days at London’s Westminster Abbey, and that day will be designated as a National Day of Mourning, a public holiday.
Growing mountains of flowers and tributes to the queen are gathering not only at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, but also at British embassies and cathedrals around the world.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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Voice-operated smartphones are aiming at a vast yet widely overlooked market in sub-Saharan Africa — the tens of millions of people who face huge challenges in life because they cannot read or write.
In Ivory Coast, a so-called “Superphone” using a vocal assistant that responds to commands in a local language is being pitched to the large segment of the population — as many as 40 percent — who are illiterate.
Developed and assembled locally, the phone is designed to make everyday tasks more accessible, from understanding a document and checking a bank balance to communicating with government agencies.
“I’ve just bought this phone for my parents back home in the village, who don’t know how to read or write,” said Floride Jogbe, a young woman who was impressed by adverts on social media.
She believed the 60,000 CFA francs ($92) she forked out was money well spent.
The smartphone uses an operating system called “Kone” that is unique to the Cerco company, and covers 17 languages spoken in Ivory Coast, including Baoule, Bete, and Dioula, as well as 50 other African languages.
Cerco hopes to expand this to 1,000 languages, reaching half of the continent’s population, thanks to help from a network of 3,000 volunteers.
The goal is to address the “frustration” illiterate people feel with technology that requires them to be able to read or write or spell effectively, said Cerco president Alain Capo-Chichi, a Benin national.
“Various institutions set down the priority of making people literate before making technology available to them,” he told AFP.
“Our way skips reading and writing and goes straight to integrating people into economic and social life.”
Of the 750 million adults around the world who cannot read or write, 27 percent live south of the Sahara, according to UN figures for 2016, the latest year for which data is available.
The continent also hosts nearly 2,000 languages, some of which are spoken by tens of millions of people and are used for inter-ethnic communication, while others are dialects with a small geographical spread.
Lack of numbers or economic clout often means these languages are overlooked by developers who have already devised vocal assistants for languages in bigger markets.
Twi and Kiswahili
Other companies investing in the voice-operation field in Africa include Mobobi, which has created a Twi language voice assistant in Ghana called Abena AI, while Mozilla is working on an assistant in Kiswahili, which has an estimated 100 million speakers in East Africa.
Telecommunications expert Jean-Marie Akepo questioned whether voice operation needed the platform of a dedicated mobile phone.
Existing technology “manages to satisfy people”, he said.
“With the voice message services offered by WhatsApp, for example, a large part of the problem has already been solved.”
Instead of a new phone, he recommended “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.
The Ivorian phone is being produced at the ICT and Biotechnology Village in Grand-Bassam, a free-trade zone located near the Ivorian capital.
It came about through close collaboration with the government. The company pays no taxes or customs duties and the assembly plant has benefited from a subsidy of more than two billion CFA francs.
In exchange, Cerco is to pay 3.5 percent of its income to the state and train around 1,200 young people each year.
The company says it has received 200,000 orders since launch on July 21.
Thanks to a partnership with French telecommunications giant Orange, the phone will be distributed in 200 shops across Ivory Coast.
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Britain’s King Charles III has addressed the nation and the Commonwealth — a day after ascending to the throne upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Charles must lead a nation that shares his sense of loss and sadness.
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From the national anthem to banknotes and coins, stamps and passports, many aspects of daily life in the U.K. will change with the accession of Charles III to the throne.
Currency and stamps
The face of the new King Charles III will begin to appear on coins and banknotes in the U.K. and other countries around the world, replacing the profile of Queen Elizabeth II.
His effigy will also appear on several other currencies used in the Eastern Caribbean, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Ditto in the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, on the Isle of Man as well as in Gibraltar, Saint Helena and in the Falklands, islands and territories controlled by the British crown.
In 1936, during the reign of King Edward VIII, which lasted 326 days, coins had been minted, but the monarch abdicated before they came into circulation.
The face of Elizabeth II also appears on the stamps, while the letters EIIR, for Elizabeth II Regina, are affixed to the post boxes, so this will need to be changed. The insignia on police helmets will also change.
Anthem and passports
The British national anthem will become “God Save the King,” with a masculinized version of the lyrics.
A habit that will undoubtedly be difficult for the British, who have been singing “God Save the Queen” since 1952. It is also one of the two national anthems of New Zealand and the royal anthem in Australia and Canada— which have their own national anthems.
Wording on the inside cover of U.K. passports, issued in the name of the crown, will need to be updated, as will similar text that appears inside Australian, Canadian and New Zealand passports.
When you raise your glass during official meetings, you should no longer say “the queen” but “the king.” In the Channel Islands, the unofficial formula “La reine, notre duc” pronounced in French when toasting will become “Le roi, notre duc.”
Politics and rights
The names of Her Majesty’s Government (“Her Majesty”), Treasury and Customs will change to “His Majesty.”
It will be the speech of the king (“the king’s speech”) and not that of the queen that will present to the parliament the program of the government, opening the parliamentary session.
The Queen’s Guard, immortalized by tourists in front of Buckingham Palace, will also change its name.
The police will no longer preserve the peace of the queen but that of the king and the experienced lawyers will pass from the status of QC (“queen’s counsel”) to that of KC (“king’s counsel”).
Prisoners will no longer be held at the pleasure of “her majesty,” but will continue their terms of imprisonment at the pleasure of “his majesty,” the king.
In the army, new recruits will no longer take “the queen’s shilling,” when enlisting, as the formula indicates. Nor will they have to submit to the queen’s regulations.
The name of “Her Majesty’s Theatre” in London’s West End theater district, where The Phantom of the Opera has been performed since 1986, will also be masculinized.
And those who aspire to speak “the queen’s English” will now have to strive to speak like Charles III: “the king’s English.”
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Рішення про штраф було ухвалене за те, що Google не обмежив доступу на YouTube до матеріалів, що містять інформацію, заборонену в Росії
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Промова практично повністю присвячена його матері, королеві Єлизаветі ІІ
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