LVIV, Ukraine: Russian forces stepped up overnight shelling of Ukrainian cities in the center, north and south of the country late Sunday, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said. “The latest wave of missile strikes came as darkness fell,” he said on Ukrainian television. He said the areas that came under heavy shelling include the outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv in the north, Mykolaiv in the south, and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. Kharkiv officials said the shelling damaged the television tower, and that heavy artillery was hitting residential areas. Arestovich said the city was fending off a Russian attack. In Chernihiv, officials said all regions of the city were coming under missile attack. Arestovich described a “catastrophic” situation in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where efforts to evacuate residents on Sunday failed. He said the government was doing all it could to resume evacuations. Evacuations also failed in Mariupo in the south and Volnovakha in the east because of the shelling.
A second attempt to evacuate civilians from a besieged city in southern Ukraine collapsed Sunday during renewed Russian shelling, while Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted blame for the war to Ukraine and said Moscow’s invasion could be halted “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities.” Food, water, medicine and almost all other supplies were in desperately short supply in the port city of Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire that would allow civilians and the wounded to be evacuated. But Russian attacks quickly closed the humanitarian corridor, Ukrainian officials said. “There can be no ‘green corridors’ because only the sick brain of the Russians decides when to start shooting and at whom,” Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on Telegram. The news dashed hopes that more people could escape the fighting in Ukraine, where Russia’s plan to quickly overrun the country has been stymied by fierce resistance. Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine and along the coast, but many of its efforts have become stalled, including an immense military convoy that has been almost motionless for days north of Kyiv. Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy rallied his people to remain defiant, especially those in cities occupied by Russians. “You should take to the streets! You should fight!” he said Saturday on Ukrainian television. “It is necessary to go out and drive this evil out of our cities, from our land.” Zelenskyy also asked the United States and NATO countries to send more warplanes to Ukraine, though that idea is complicated by questions about which countries would provide the aircraft and how those countries would replace the planes. He later urged the West to tighten its sanctions on Russia, saying that “the audacity of the aggressor is a clear signal” that existing sanctions are not enough. The war, now in its 11th day, has caused 1.5 million people to flee the country. The head of the UN refugee agency called the exodus “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.” As he has often done, Putin blamed Ukraine for the war, telling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday that Kyiv needed to stop all hostilities and fulfill “the well-known demands of Russia.” Putin launched his invasion with a string of false accusations against Kyiv, including that it is led by neo-Nazis intent on undermining Russia with the development of nuclear weapons. The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday announced that its forces intend to strike Ukraine’s military-industrial complex with what it said were precision weapons. A ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, claimed in a statement carried by the state news agency Tass that Ukrainian personnel were being forced to repair damaged military equipment so that it could be sent back into action. Zelenskyy criticized Western leaders for not responding to Russia’s latest threat. “I didn’t hear even a single world leader react to this,” Zelenskyy said Sunday evening. “The audacity of the aggressor is a clear signal to the West that the sanctions imposed on Russia are not sufficient.” Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke about the nuclear situation in Ukraine, which has 15 nuclear reactors at four power plants and was the scene of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The men agreed in principle to a “dialogue” involving Russia, Ukraine and the UN’s atomic watchdog, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with the presidency’s practices. Potential talks on the issue are to be organized in the coming days, he said. Putin also blamed the fire last week at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which Ukrainian officials said was caused by Russian attackers, on a “provocation organized by Ukrainian radicals.” “Attempts to shift responsibility for this incident onto the Russian military are part of a cynical propaganda campaign,” he said, according to the French official. International leaders, as well as Pope Francis, appealed to Putin to negotiate. In a highly unusual move, the pope said he had dispatched two cardinals to Ukraine to try to end the conflict. “In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing,” the pontiff said in his traditional Sunday blessing. After the cease-fire in Mariupol failed to hold Saturday, Russian forces intensified their shelling of the city and dropped massive bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. About eight civilians were killed by Russian shelling in the town of Irpin, on the northwest outskirts of Kyiv, according to Mayor Oleksander Markyshin. The dead included a family. Video footage showed a shell slamming into a city street, not far from a bridge used by people fleeing the fighting. A group of fighters could be seen trying to help the family. The handful of residents who managed to flee Mariupol before the humanitarian corridor closed said the city of 430,000 had been devastated. “We saw everything: houses burning, all the people sitting in basements,” said Yelena Zamay, who fled to one of the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists. “No communication, no water, no gas, no light, no water. There was nothing.” British military officials compared Russia’s tactics to those Moscow used in Chechnya and Syria, where surrounded cities were pulverized by airstrikes and artillery. “This is likely to represent an effort to break Ukrainian morale,” the UK Ministry of Defense said. Zelenskyy reiterated a request for foreign protectors to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which NATO so far has ruled out because of concerns such an action would lead to a far wider war. “The world is strong enough to close our skies,” Zelenskyy said Sunday in a video address. The day before, Zelenskyy pleaded with American lawmakers in a video call to help get more warplanes to Ukraine. US officials say Washington is discussing ways to get the planes to Ukraine in a complex scenario that would include sending American-made F-16s to former Soviet bloc nations, particularly Poland, that are now members of NATO. Those countries would then send Ukraine their own Soviet-era MiGs, which Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly. But because of production backlogs on the US warplanes, the Eastern European nations would essentially have to give their MiGs to the Ukrainians and accept US promises that they would get F-16s as soon as that was possible. Adding to the difficulties is the fact that the next shipment of F-16s is destined for Taiwan, and the US Congress would be reluctant to delay those deliveries. The Russian military has warned Ukraine’s neighbors against hosting its warplanes, saying that Moscow may consider those counties part of the conflict if Ukrainian aircraft fly combat missions from their territory. The death toll remains lost in the fog of war. The UN says it has confirmed just a few hundred civilian deaths but also warned that the number is a vast undercount. Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian officials and international humanitarian organizations were working with Russia through intermediaries to establish humanitarian corridors from Bucha and Hostomel, which are Kyiv suburbs where there has been heavy fighting. Ukraine’s military is greatly outmatched by Russia’s, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity. In Kyiv, volunteers lined up Saturday to join the military. Even in cities that have fallen, there were signs of resistance. Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as they watched a Russian military plane fall from the sky and crash, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, “Go home.” Russia has made significant advances in southern Ukraine as it seeks to block access to the Sea of Azov. Capturing Mariupol could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that most other countries considered illegal. The West has broadly backed Ukraine, offering aid and weapon shipments and slapping Russia with vast sanctions. But no NATO troops have been sent to Ukraine, leaving Ukrainians to fight Russian troops alone. Russia has become increasingly isolated in the days since the invasion began, closing itself off to outside sources of information as sanctions bite deeply into its economy. The ruble has plunged in value, and dozens of multinational companies ended or dramatically scaled back their work in the country. On Sunday, American Express announced it would suspend operations in Russia, as well as in Russian-allied Belarus. A few hours later, TikTok said Russian users would not be able to post new videos or see videos shared from elsewhere in the world. The company blamed Moscow’s new “fake news” law, which makes it illegal, among other things, to describe the fighting as an invasion. Netflix also cut its service to Russia but provided no details. Facebook and Twitter have already been blocked in Russia, along with access to the websites of a number of major international media outlets. TikTok is part of the Chinese tech company ByteDance.
UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council scheduled a meeting Friday at Russia’s request to discuss what Moscow claims are “the military biological activities of the US on the territory of Ukraine,” allegations vehemently denied by the Biden administration. “This is exactly the kind of false flag effort we have warned Russia might initiate to justify a biological or chemical weapons attack,” Olivia Dalton, spokesperson for the US Mission to the United Nations said late Thursday. “We’re not going to let Russia gaslight the world or use the UN Security Council as a venue for promoting their disinformation.” The Russian request, announced in a tweet Thursday afternoon from its first deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, follows the US rejection of Russian accusations that Ukraine is running chemical and biological labs with US support. In response to this week’s accusations by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova — without evidence — White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a public warning Wednesday that Russia might use chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine, the neighbor it has invaded. Psaki called Russia’s claim “preposterous” and tweeted: “This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday called the Russian claim “a bunch of malarkey.” Dalton said “Russia has a well-documented history of using chemical weapons and has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law” as well as “a track record of falsely accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating.” Dmitry Chumakov, another Russian deputy UN ambassador, repeated the accusation Wednesday, urging Western media to cover “the news about secret biological laboratories in Ukraine.” A tweet from Russia’s Ministry of Defense, after Polyansky’s tweet calling for a council meeting, referred to a “briefing on the results of the analysis of documents related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine.” The UN announced Thursday evening that the meeting will take place at 10am EST but then pushed it back to 11am EST. UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu and UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo are scheduled to brief the council. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated Thursday what he said Wednesday — that the World Health Organization, which has been working with the Ukrainian government, “said they are unaware of any activity on the part of the Ukrainian government which is inconsistent with its international treaty obligations, including on chemical weapons or biological weapons.” The United States for months has warned about Russian “false flag” operations to create a pretext for the invasion. The White House warning, and Dalton’s statement Thursday, suggested Russia might seek to create a pretense for further escalating the two-week-old conflict that has seen the Russian offensive slowed by stronger than expected Ukrainian defenders, but not stopped. The international community for years has assessed that Russia used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin enemies like Alexey Navalny, now in a Russian prison, and former spy Sergei Skripal, who lives in the United Kingdom. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in an 11-year-long civil war. The Security Council held its monthly meeting Thursday on Syria’s chemical weapons with disarmament chief Nakamitsu criticizing the Syrian government for repeatedly refusing to answer questions about its chemical weapons program and urging the Assad government to do so.
Last June, the head of the international chemical weapons watchdog, Fernando Arias, said its experts investigated 77 allegations against Syria and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used. Nakamitsu ended her statement on Thursday by saying: “The use of chemical weapons is a grave violation of international law and an affront to our shared humanity.” “We need to remain vigilant to ensure that those awful weapons are never used again, and are eliminated, not only in Syria, but everywhere,” she said. US deputy ambassador Richard Mills said that unfortunately Syria has help on the council from its ally Russia, which he said “has repeatedly spread disinformation regarding Syria’s repeated use of chemical weapons.” “The recent web of lies that Russia has cast in an attempt to justify the premeditated and unjustified war it has undertaken against Ukraine, should make clear, once and for all, that Russia also cannot be trusted when it talks about chemical weapon use in Syria,” Mills said. Britain’s deputy ambassador, James Kariuki, told the council that “the parallels” between Russia’s action in Ukraine — “besieging cities, killing civilians indiscriminately, forcing millions to flee in search of safety” — and its actions in Syria “are clear.” “Regrettably, the comparison also extends to chemical weapons, as we see the familiar specter of Russian chemical weapons disinformation raising its head in Ukraine,” he said.
TIJUANA, Mexico: US authorities allowed a Ukrainian woman and her three children to seek asylum Thursday, a reversal from a day earlier when she was denied entry under the Biden administration’s sweeping restrictions for seeking humanitarian protection. The 34-year-old woman and her children — ages 14, 12 and 6 — entered San Diego for processing after authorities blocked her path hours earlier, triggering sharp criticism from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. Blaine Bookey, legal director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, was returning to San Diego Wednesday from Tijuana, where she was helping Haitian migrants. She saw the Ukrainian woman crying with her children, looking “very uncomfortable” with a reporter “in her face.” Bookey’s tweets and media coverage sparked renewed criticism of a Trump-era order to deny people a chance to seek asylum under an order to prevent spread of COVID-19 known as Title 42 authority. Schumer raised the Ukrainian woman’s case as he called for an end to use of Title 42, which the Biden administration has defended as health risks from COVID-19 have subsided. “They requested refuge in one of the ports of entry on our southern border, but were turned away because of Title 42,” Schumer said on a conference call with reporters. “This is not who we are as a country. Continuing this Trump-era policy has defied common sense and common decency.” US Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Migrants have been expelled more than 1.6 million times since Title 42 was introduced in March 2020. The Ukrainian woman, who identified herself to reporters only as Sofiia, tried entering the US in a car with a relative this week but was blocked, Bookey said. Another attempt on foot Wednesday was also stopped but Bookey found her before she returned to her Tijuana hotel to wait for news. Erika Pinheiro, litigation and policy director for Al Otro Lado advocacy group, said she got a call from CBP early Thursday, telling the woman to pack her bags and be ready on short notice. She was told to come hours later. “She’s just been very stoic for her kids and I think she let herself get emotional,” Bookey said. The woman left Ukraine with her children Feb. 27 as friends warned her that Russia might invade. She went to Moldova, Romania and Mexico, arriving in Tijuana on Monday. She plans to settle with family in the San Francisco area and seek asylum. The woman pulled a small red suitcase and carried a pink backpack patterned with tiny dogs as she walked into the US with her 6-year-old daughter beside her and her older children behind. Mexico accepts citizens from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who are expelled under Title 42 authority. People of other nationalities are subject to expulsion but many are released in the United States to seek asylum due to difficulties flying them home. They must be on US soil to claim protection, though, and authorities often block their path. Thousands of Russians have sought asylum at San Diego border crossings in recent months after flying to Mexico. People from Ukraine and other former Soviet republics use the same route but in much lower numbers. In January, 248 Ukrainians crossed the US-Mexico border, with three out of four in San Diego. A 27-year-old Ukrainian who asked to be identified only as Kristina was left behind on the Mexican side of the border Thursday with her fiancé, a US citizen. She said she had been living in Kyiv when the fighting started. “It was so scary,” Kristina said. “We just woke up and there was bombing. We never expected this.” Kristina fled to Poland but hotels and apartments were full. She flew to Mexico where her fiancé was trying to help her get into the US They spent hours waiting at the border. “They don’t listen to us,” she said. ___ Associated Press writers Ben Fox in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.
WASHINGTON/BOGOTA: President Joe Biden told Colombian President Ivan Duque on Thursday he plans to designate Colombia as a major non-NATO ally, granting the strategic status to a key country in a turbulent region as the United States seeks to isolate Russia. In White House talks, Biden and Duque said they would work toward signing a regional migration agreement at the Summit of the Americas in June in Los Angeles. Colombia is currently home to 1.9 million migrants from neighboring Venezuela. Major non-NATO ally status is a designation bestowed by the US to close allies that have strategic working relationships with Washington but are not members of NATO. Argentina gained this status in 1998 and Brazil in 2019. “Colombia is the linchpin” in the Southern Hemisphere, Biden told Duque. The two countries have had diplomatic ties for 200 years. The two leaders gave no details on the shape of the expected framework on migration. The United States has struggled to contend with thousands of migrants seeking asylum on its southern border with Mexico. Their meeting took place days after secret negotiations between senior US officials and representatives of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arranged the release of two American detainees. The move had raised eyebrows in Colombia, which has tense relations with Venezuela. There was no sign of tension in their public remarks. Both presidents condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Duque said Colombia was offering assistance to countries in that region on handling the mass of people evacuating “the bloodbath” in Ukraine. Asked about the contacts between the United States and Maduro representatives after the meeting, Duque told reporters, “I’m not going to start questioning” US policy. “We will maintain our same foreign policy, condemning the dictatorship, calling Nicolas Maduro what he is, a criminal who has committed crimes against humanity, and we will continue to support our Venezuelan brothers in Colombia with fraternity,” Duque said. In a joint statement following the meeting, the two leaders underscored their mutual commitment to “support the restoration of democracy” in Venezuela. The US delegation’s weekend visit to Venezuela and talks with Maduro focused on the fate of the detained Americans and the possibility of easing US oil sanctions on OPEC member Venezuela to fill a supply gap if Biden banned Russian oil imports — something he did on Tuesday. Venezuela is Russia’s closest ally in South America, and the United States is gauging whether the country would distance itself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Maduro’s management of Venezuela has caused a humanitarian crisis that has affected Colombia. Duque’s visit came ahead of legislative elections and presidential primaries in Colombia on Sunday, where several left-leaning candidates have floated changes to the cornerstone of the US-Colombia relationship — the fight against drug trafficking. Duque, who will leave office in August, came under sustained pressure from the Trump administration to decrease cultivation of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine. Colombia has long been a top producer of the drug, despite billions in US funds meant to combat it. In their joint statement, Biden and Duque agreed to work on a more holistic approach to counternarcotics that includes better access to prevent, treatment and recovery services, and renewed efforts to block money-laundering and beef up interdiction. During the meeting, Biden also pledged to donate an additional two million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Colombia.
JAIPUR: The Jaipur Literature Festival, known as the “greatest literary show on Earth,” returned to the Rajasthan capital on Thursday for its 15th edition.
The festival, which has put the northern Indian city of Jaipur on the world map of literature events, was held virtually last year due to COVID-19 restrictions.
This year, it began online on March 5 with “A Life in Stories,” a session in which Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tanzanian-born laureate of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, took attendees on a chronological tour of his life.
On Thursday, the festival moved to its on-ground venue at Hotel Clarks Amer in Jaipur, where it will run through March 14.
“It’s a pleasure to be back in the physical form and hosting the festival in the presence of the people,” Sanjoy K. Roy, the festival’s managing director, told Arab News. “We thought we would have to host the festival online again, but we are happy that we managed to find a conducive atmosphere to host the festival in the physical format, too. The festival this year is happening in the hybrid mode and people have the option to watch the sessions both online and offline.”
Addressing the audience during the inaugural session, festival co-director Namita Gokhale said: “Coming back again to the festival makes me emotional as I remember previous editions of the literary extravaganza featuring various writers and their stories.”
Author and historian William Dalrymple, who also serves as the festival’s co-director, said the pandemic had been an “existential threat” to artists, whose livelihoods were upended by lockdowns.
“But now we are back,” he said, “with four Nobel Prize winners!”
Besides Gurnah, the festival features Abhijit Banerjee, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019; Daniel Kahneman, who won the same prize in 2002; and Giorgio Parisi, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021.
Visitors were welcomed in the morning with a performance of “Raag Miya Ki Todi” by Ujwal Nagar, a maestro of Hindustani classical music.
Thursday’s sessions covered the issues of climate change and geopolitics.
German Ambassador to India Walter J. Lindner, who took part in a discussion on the importance of world peace, told Arab News that he visited the event because of the panel.
“This is my first time at this literature festival and I was thinking whether I should come because of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine,” he said. “I thought I should come because there was a panel on war and peace.”