Putin says Ukraine trying to destabilize Russia with Kursk offensive

Update Putin says Ukraine trying to destabilize Russia with Kursk offensive
Ukrainian servicemen sitting in a military vehicle drive past a destroyed building by shelling in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 11, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (File/AFP)
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Updated 12 August 2024
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Putin says Ukraine trying to destabilize Russia with Kursk offensive

Putin says Ukraine trying to destabilize Russia with Kursk offensive
  • Ukraine sent troops into Russia last week in its biggest cross-border operation since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022

KYIV/MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Ukraine was trying to undermine Russian stability with its incursion into the south of the country, but it would not succeed.

“The losses of the Ukrainian armed forces are increasing dramatically for them, including among the most combat-ready units, units that the enemy is transferring to our border,” Putin told a televised meeting with top security officials and regional governors.

“The enemy will certainly receive a worthy response, and all the goals facing us will, without a doubt, be achieved.”

Two Russian regions bordering Ukraine ordered more evacuations on Monday as Moscow battled to contain an unprecedented push onto its territory.

Ukraine sent troops into Russia last week in its biggest cross-border operation since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022 and the most significant by a foreign army since World War II.

Authorities in the Kursk region announced they were widening their evacuation area to include Belovsky district, home to some 14,000 people. The neighboring Belgorod region said it was evacuating its border district of Krasnoyaruzhsky.

“For the health and security of our population, we’re beginning to move people who live in Krasnoyaruzhsky to safer places,” Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

The assault on Kursk had already led to 76,000 people being ordered out.

A top Ukrainian official said over the weekend that the operation was aimed at stretching Russian troops and destabilizing the country after months of slow Russian advances across the frontline.

The assault appeared to catch the Kremlin off guard. Russia’s army rushed in reserve troops, tanks, aviation, artillery and drones in a bid to quash it.

But the army on Sunday conceded that Ukraine had penetrated up to 30 kilometers (20 miles) into Russian territory in places.

In a briefing, the defense ministry said it had “foiled attempts” by Ukraine’s forces to “break through deep into Russian territory” using armored vehicles.

But it said some forces were near the villages of Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, some 25 kilometers and 30 kilometers from the Russia-Ukraine border.

A Ukrainian security official said, on condition of anonymity, that “the aim is to stretch the positions of the enemy, to inflict maximum losses and to destabilize the situation in Russia as they are unable to protect their own border.”

The Ukrainian official said thousands of Ukrainian troops were involved in the operation.

Russia’s defense ministry said on Monday that its air defense systems had destroyed 18 Ukrainian drones — including 11 over the Kursk region.

On Sunday, each country blamed the other for a fire at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine. Both sides — and the UN’s nuclear watchdog — said there was no sign of a nuclear leak.

“No impact has been reported for nuclear safety,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has experts at the site. Kyiv and Moscow said there had been no rise in radiation levels.

In a later statement, the IAEA said it had requested “immediate access to the cooling tower to assess the damage.”

A Moscow-installed official, Vladimir Rogov, said the blaze has been “completely extinguished” in a Telegram post Monday.

The plant’s Russian-installed operator said on Monday that it was working normally following the incident and that all six reactors remained in “cold shutdown.”

Russia’s emergency situations ministry said on Sunday that over 44,000 residents in the Kursk region have applied for financial assistance, TASS news agency reported.

At an aid center in Moscow, 28-year-old midwife Daria Chistopolskaya was critical of the response.

“I think that the state does not care enough about such people, and people themselves should help each other in these kinds of situations,” she said.

Russia’s rail operator organized emergency trains from Kursk to Moscow, around 450 kilometers away, for those fleeing.

“It’s scary to have helicopters flying over your head all the time,” said Marina, refusing to give her surname, who arrived by train in Moscow on Sunday. “When it was possible to leave, I left.”

Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov conceded on Sunday that the situation was “difficult.”

Across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region, AFP journalists on Sunday saw dozens of armored vehicles daubed with a white triangle — the insignia apparently being used to identify Ukrainian military hardware deployed in the attack.

At an evacuation center in the regional capital of Sumy, 70-year-old retired metal worker Mykola, who fled his village of Khotyn some 10 kilometers from the Russian border, welcomed Ukraine’s push into Russia.

“Let’s let them find out what it’s like,” he said. “They don’t understand what war is. Let them have a taste of it.”

Analysts think Kyiv may have launched the assault to try to relieve pressure on its troops in other parts of the front line.

But the Ukrainian official said: “Their pressure in the east continues, they are not pulling back troops from the area,” even if “the intensity of Russian attacks has gone down a little bit.”

The Ukrainian official said he expected Russia would “in the end” stop the incursion.

Ukraine was bracing for a large-scale retalliatory missile attack, including “on decision-making centers” in Ukraine, the official said.


Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case
Updated 21 sec ago
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Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case

Indonesia’s Supreme Court reverses acquittal of former official in slavery case
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Supreme Court jailed a former government official accused of human trafficking for four years, reversing a lower court decision to acquit him after people were found in cages in his palm oil plantation.
Condemned internationally and at home, the senior official in the provincial government in North Sumatra, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, had been accused of human trafficking, torture, forced labor, and slavery.
Prosecutors launched an appeal after a lower court acquitted him of the charges in July.
Indonesia’s Supreme Court said he would serve four years in jail, without specifying reasons, in a ruling dated Nov. 15 and seen on the court’s website on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court and prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters has sought comment from Terbit’s lawyer.
The macabre case came to light in 2022, when a police corruption investigation into Terbit found people detained in cages on his property, drawing condemnation from rights groups.
A police investigation found 665 people had been held in cells on his property since 2010, court documents showed.
Terbit, who was jailed for nine years for corruption in 2022, had previously claimed the detained individuals were participating in a drug rehabilitation program.
Prosecutors said they had been tortured and forced to work on his plantation. Six had died in captivity, Indonesia’s rights body found.

Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital
Updated 24 min 19 sec ago
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Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood capital

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani protesters demanding the release of ex-prime minister Imran Khan on Tuesday killed four members of the nation’s security forces, the government said, as the crowds defied police and closed in on the capital’s center.
More than ten thousand protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in central Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon, AFP journalists saw, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the government enclave they aim to occupy.
Khan was barred from standing in February elections that were marred by allegations of rigging, sidelined by dozens of legal cases that he claims were confected to prevent his comeback.
But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has defied a government crackdown with regular rallies. Tuesday’s is the largest in the capital since Khan was jailed in August 2023.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “miscreants” involved in the march had killed four members of the paramilitary Rangers force on a city highway leading toward the government sector.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the men had been “run over by a vehicle.”
“These disruptive elements do not seek revolution but bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “This is not a peaceful protest, it is extremism.”
The government said Monday that one police officer had also been killed and nine more were critically wounded by demonstrators who set out toward Islamabad on Sunday.


The capital has been locked down since late Saturday, with mobile Internet sporadically cut and more than 20,000 police flooding the streets, many armed with riot shields and batons.
The government has accused protesters of attempting to derail a state visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrived for a three-day visit on Monday.
Last week, the Islamabad city administration announced a two-month ban on public gatherings.
But PTI convoys traveled from their power base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the most populous province of Punjab, hauling aside roadblocks of stacked shipping containers.
“We are deeply frustrated with the government, they do not know how to function,” 56-year-old protester Kalat Khan told AFP on Monday. “The treatment we are receiving is unjust and cruel.”
The government cited “security concerns” for the mobile Internet outages, while Islamabad’s schools and universities were also ordered shut on Monday and Tuesday.
“Those who will come here will be arrested,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters late Monday at D-Chowk, the public square outside Islamabad’s government buildings that PTI aims to occupy.
PTI’s chief demand is the release of Khan, the 72-year-old charismatic former cricket star who served as premier from 2018 to 2022 and is the lodestar of their party.
They are also protesting alleged tampering in the February polls and a recent government-backed constitutional amendment giving it more power over the courts, where Khan is tangled in dozens of cases.


Sharif’s government has come under increasing criticism for deploying heavy-handed measures to quash PTI’s protests.
“It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents,” read one opinion piece in the English-language Dawn newspaper published Monday.
“This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said “blocking access to the capital, with motorway and highway closures across Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has effectively penalized ordinary citizens.”
The US State Department appealed for protesters to refrain from violence, while also urging authorities to “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to ensure respect for Pakistan’s laws and constitution as they work to maintain law and order.”
Khan was ousted by a no-confidence vote after falling out with the kingmaking military establishment, which analysts say engineers the rise and fall of Pakistan’s politicians.
But as opposition leader, he led an unprecedented campaign of defiance, with PTI street protests boiling over into unrest that the government cited as the reason for its crackdown.
PTI won more seats than any other party in this year’s election but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to military influence shut them out of power.


Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine
Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

Russia’s Medvedev warns West over discussing nuclear weapons for Ukraine

MOSCOW: Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.
“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.
Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.
“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.


China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait
Updated 26 November 2024
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China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait

China sends naval, air forces to shadow US plane over Taiwan Strait
  • The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait

BEIJING: China’s military said on Tuesday it deployed naval and air forces to monitor and warn a US Navy patrol aircraft that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denouncing the United States for trying to “mislead” the international community.
Around once a month, US military ships or aircraft pass through or above the waterway that separates democratically governed Taiwan from China — missions that always anger Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and says it has jurisdiction over the strait. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the strait is an international waterway.
The US Navy’s 7th fleet said a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft had flown through the strait “in international airspace,” adding that the flight demonstrated the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” it said in a statement.
China’s military criticized the flight as “public hype,” adding that it monitored the US aircraft throughout its transit and “effectively” responded to the situation.
“The relevant remarks by the US distort legal principles, confuse public opinion and mislead international perceptions,” the military’s Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement.
“We urge the US side to stop distorting and hyping up and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.”
In April, China’s military said it sent fighter jets to monitor and warn a US Navy Poseidon in the Taiwan Strait, a mission that took place just hours after a call between the Chinese and US defense chiefs. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)


Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight
Updated 26 November 2024
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Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

Ukraine says Russia launched ‘record’ 188 drones overnight

KYIV: Russia staged a record number of drone attacks overnight over Ukraine, damaging buildings and “critical infrastructure” in several regions, the air force said Tuesday.
“During the night attack, the enemy launched a record number of Shahed strike unmanned aerial vehicles and unidentified drones,” the air force said, referring to Iranian-designed drones and putting the figure at 188.