Russian forces pull back from Kyiv, exposing horrors of war – Newstrends
Connect with us

International

Russian forces pull back from Kyiv, exposing horrors of war

Published

on

Ukrainian troops recaptured territory around Kyiv on Saturday as Russian forces pulled back from towns they had seized in the opening days of the war and left in their wake scenes of destruction and horror, including the abandoned bodies of dead civilians.

Journalists entered the town of Bucha, a suburb northwest of the capital, and saw numerous corpses strewn on the streets. Video posted to social media and verified by The Washington Post showed what appeared to be at least nine dead, including one child.

Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, said in an interview that around 270 local residents had been buried in two mass graves. He estimated that 40 people were lying dead in the streets. Some had been bound and executed — shot in the back of the head, he said.

The mayor added that officials are worried that the bodies could be booby-trapped with explosives. In a video address to Ukrainians early Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was “mining the whole territory.”

“They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed,” he said. The Post has not verified those claims.

Revelations of atrocities and alleged war crimes, including reports of soldiers firing on civilian protesters in the east, cast a pall over what has in some ways been a hopeful period for Ukrainians as they resist the Russian invaders.

The capital appears safe for the moment, but at the same time, shelling and intense fighting in the east and south of the country are continuing. Efforts to rescue civilians in besieged cities have been slowed by the extremely dangerous conditions on the ground.

The war, in its 38th day, remained a grinding conflict with no clear resolution in sight. The Russian strategic pivot may foreshadow a long war of attrition. That would prolong the already severe humanitarian crisis in which millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes, becoming refugees in neighboring countries.

A cease-fire in the largely destroyed coastal city of Mariupol has been in place for several days, creating a corridor to leave the city. A team from the Red Cross failed to reach the city Friday or Saturday, citing the unsafe environment. A Red Cross spokesperson emailed a note with few details saying that teams are en route but have yet to reach Mariupol.

READ ALSO:

Western military analysts are still trying to interpret the decision by Russian military commanders to reposition their forces. Russian officials have said they are concentrating their forces in the eastern part of the country. The repositioning could signal an intense battle for control of the Donbas region. It appears that, at least for now, Russian President Vladimir Putin has recalculated what he can and can’t achieve with his invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said late Saturday that the entire Kyiv administrative region is fully under Ukrainian control.

Zelensky had said earlier that the movement of Russian forces was “slow but noticeable.”

But he continued his ongoing appeal to allied nations to do more to aid his war-scorched country. He cited the suffering in Mariupol, where tens of thousands of residents have been trying to survive amid the rubble.

“Europe has no right to react in silence to what is happening in our Mariupol. The whole world must react to this humanitarian catastrophe,” Zelensky said in his video address.

Zelensky’s demand for help came amid significant battlefield developments that potentially could alter the geography of the war.

If, as some Western analysts believe, Putin focuses on expanding his control of territory in the east, it would open a broad corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. But a more limited strategic goal could undermine support within Russia for the war effort.

But after Moscow’s negotiators agreed in talks with Ukraine to de-escalate the fighting around Kyiv and Chernihiv, and focus instead on the eastern Donbas region, propagandists and pro-war politicians expressed dismay. Prominent state television anchor Vladimir Solovyov said Thursday that “that any negotiation with the Nazis until the boot is on their throat is weakness. You shouldn’t shake hands with this creep,” he said, apparently referring to Zelensky.

Another pro-Kremlin journalist and blogger Semyon Pegov, from the outlet War Gonzo, which reports from the Russian side of the war, said the invasion was just beginning and that Russia would continue “to the end.” He called Russian soldiers “real Russian heroes.”

“No one and nothing will take away their feat from them,” he posted to Telegram on Friday. “It’s already gone down in history.”

As part of their retreat, Russian forces abandoned an airport seized at the start of the invasion. Near the border with Belarus, Ukrainian forces regained control of the disabled Chernobyl nuclear power plant that had been attacked and captured by Russian forces. The national flag once again was raised over the plant.

The repositioning of troops so far has been relatively modest and is possibly a tactic to fool the Ukrainians into lowering their defensive posture in the capital, Brookings Institution defense analyst Michael O’Hanlon said Saturday. He added the Russians may be hoping that Zelensky reveals his whereabouts.

“If they can get the Ukrainians to lower their guard, that would be for them potentially an opportunity to make a strike against Zelensky and/or his inner circle and the top tier of the government,” O’Hanlon said. “I still think there’s a possibility that they’re trying to lure the Ukrainians into making a mistake.”

READ ALSO:

On-and-off negotiations for a broad cease-fire have been on again in recent days, but the sincerity of the Russians at the table has been questioned by their Ukrainian counterparts. They fear, as do security analysts in the West, that Russian gestures toward a cease-fire and a negotiated peace could be a diversion to help the attackers reposition their forces after the initial thrust of the invasion yielded disappointing results.

According to Ukrainian media reports, David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks, said officials are preparing for a possible meeting between Zelensky and Putin in Turkey.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told national television that Ukrainians should prepare for “difficult fights” ahead in Mariupol and in the southern and eastern regions of the country.

In the east, four people were “injured and severely burned” after Russian forces fired mortars at protesters in a city near Zaporizhzhia, the site of a nuclear plant that Russia captured last month, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman.

Residents of Enerhodar, a satellite town of Zaporizhzhia, which has been occupied by Russian forces for nearly four weeks, held a rally in support of Ukraine on Saturday. Russian soldiers used light and noise grenades to disrupt the protest and opened mortar fire on residents, the ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said in a statement posted to Telegram.

“Such treatment of civilians is a crime against humanity and a war crime as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” Denisova said.

The Washington Post verified two videos recorded by witnesses and posted to Telegram. The images were filmed at the same time from separate angles and show at least nine flashes followed by large booms. Gunfire is audible as people run away from the site of the protest.

“There is a fight in the city center!” a man yells in a third video, verified by The Post, while rushing away from multiple loud booms. “Russian occupiers attacked civilians. There was a peaceful protest here.”

Tens of thousands of people in recent weeks have fled Ukrainian cities under attack by Russian forces after Kyiv and Moscow agreed on fragile evacuation deals.

Across Ukraine, seven humanitarian corridors have been established, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, including the one from MariupolShe said in a Telegram post that more than 6,000 people were evacuated from front-line cities to other parts of the country on Friday.

Vereshchuk said those evacuees included more than 1,400 people who left in their vehicles along planned routes from the southern cities of Berdyansk and Melitopol, which are under Russian control, to the nearby Zaporizhzhia region.

Among them were hundreds of people from Mariupol who had managed to escape in private vehicles. Separately, she said, a convoy of 42 buses carried Mariupol residents to Zaporizhzhia from Berdyansk, which they had previously reached on their own.

In southern Ukraine, the death toll from a missile strike that hit a main government building in the city of Mykolaiv this week has risen to 32, the governor of the region, Vitaliy Kim, said Saturday on Telegram.

Dozens of people remain unaccounted for after that attack blasted a hole through part of the building, Dmytro Pletenchuk, a press officer of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, said earlier. More than 30 people were injured, he said as rescue workers continued to clear rubble Friday and funerals were held for many of the victims.

The war continues to stir tensions globally and could have ramifications in low Earth orbit: The director of Russia’s space agency suggested he would submit a proposal to end his country’s cooperation in the International Space Station program.

In tweets on Saturday, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the agency Roscosmos, pointed to sanctions against a “number of enterprises in the Russian rocket and space industry.” He said that he appealed to the heads of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency to lift sanctions and that in their responses, the “position of our partners is clear: the sanctions will not be lifted.”

“I believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,” Rogozin wrote.

Rogozin has frequently used threatening and blustery rhetoric, including to repeatedly suggest Russia could exit the partnership. His latest remarks came three days after two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned from the space station, a symbol of partnership in space even amid mounting tensions over the war in Ukraine.

Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, NASA has maintained that the station has been operating as normal, unaffected by the conflict. NASA has said it would be unable to operate the space station without the Russians because the nation provides the propulsion necessary to keep the station in orbit.

In China, officials on Saturday renewed their criticism of sanctions placed on Russia. The remarks came a day after a high-level virtual summit between China and the European Union.

“We oppose sanctions, and the effects of these sanctions also risk spilling to the rest of the world,” Wang Lutong, director general of European affairs at China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters on Saturday.

Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, E.U. leaders have taken a tougher stance on China, urging it to drop its tacit support for the invasion and work for peace — but Beijing is pushing back.

“China is not a related party on the crisis of Ukraine. We don’t think our normal trade with any other country should be affected,” Wang said. He added that China is contributing to the global economy by conducting normal trade with Russia.

Pope Francis said Saturday that he is considering making a trip to Kyiv. While traveling from Rome to Malta, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church was asked by a reporter on his plane whether a visit to Ukraine was a possibility following invitations from Ukrainian political and religious officials.

“Yes, it is on the table,” Francis answered, but he offered no further details, according to Reuters.

Zelensky has spoken twice with the pope by telephone, according to the Vatican, and along with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has extended invitations to Francis to visit Ukraine. The country has a sizable Roman Catholic population. However, most Ukrainian Catholics identify with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Francis has vocally condemned the war in Ukraine, calling it a “senseless massacre where every day slaughters and atrocities are being repeated.”

THE WASHINGTON POST

International

Google blocks 5.5bn adverts, suspends 12.7m accounts

Published

on

Google blocks 5.5bn adverts, suspends 12.7m accounts

Google has said that it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

READ ALSO:

In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added: “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5bn adverts, suspends 12.7m accounts

Continue Reading

International

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Published

on

Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

READ ALSO:

“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Continue Reading

International

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

Published

on

Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

Continue Reading

Trending

Skip to content