The death toll in Russia is rising; Kherson attacked
Casualties mounted on both sides as Russia’s ferocious assault on its neighbor entered a second week on Thursday.
Russia has acknowledged that nearly 500 of its soldiers were killed in the fighting and around 1,600 wounded. Ukraine, which has not released casualty figures for its own armed forces, put Russian troop losses at 9,000.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said more than 2,000 civilians had died, although it was impossible to verify this claim. The UN human rights office said it had recorded 227 deaths, including 15 under the age of 18, and 525 injured, since the invasion began on February 24.
Meanwhile, most major Ukrainian cities are under siege. Governor Hennadiy Lahuta says the government building in the Black Sea port city of Kherson was seized by Russian troops while Russia said its troops captured the city of 300,000. Troops were also heading towards Mykolaiev, 40 miles to the northwest and home to nearly half a million Ukrainians, The New York Times reported.
The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that four large landing ships and three missile boats were crossing the Black Sea towards the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. According to the army, Russian sailors were firing on civilian ships and taking prisoners.
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Over a million people have fled Ukraine. The mass evacuation could be seen in Kharkiv, where residents desperate to escape shells and bombs swarmed the city’s railway station and crowded onto trains, not always knowing where they were heading. The Ukrainian government said at least 34 people were killed and 285 injured, including 10 children, in the bombardment of Kharkiv.
Within a week, more than 2% of Ukraine’s population was driven out of the country, according to a United Nations tally, which called the mass flight “the fastest refugee exodus of this century”.
And on Thursday, delegations from the two countries are expected to hold talks in Belarus, a second round of face-to-face talks. Member of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, said Ukraine’s minimum goal was to agree on humanitarian corridors, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Latest developments:
►In a stunning reversal, athletes from Russia and Belarus have been banned from the Paralympic Winter Games for their country’s role in the war in Ukraine, the International Paralympic Committee announced in Beijing on Thursday.
►A South Korean pharmaceutical company making Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine says it is bracing for trade complications as the US-led West steps up sanctions on Russia.
►About 3,800 troops based at Fort Stewart in southeast Georgia have been ordered to deploy quickly to reinforce US forces in Europe.
►Two of the world’s three largest credit rating agencies downgraded Russia’s rating to junk status on Wednesday, arguing that sanctions imposed by other countries in response to the Ukrainian invasion have jeopardized Russian financial stability .
►The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court opened an investigation on Wednesday into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Ukraine dating back to 2013, but also covering the conflict triggered by the Russian invasion.
Zelenskyy: Russian soldiers are “confused children”
In a video address to the nation on Thursday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to maintain their resistance but did not say whether the Russians had taken any towns.
“They won’t have peace here,” Zelenskyy said, calling on Russian soldiers to “go home” and describing them as “confused children who have been used.”
Black and brown refugees are turned back at European borders
As a growing number of reports suggest that people of color fleeing Ukraine face discrimination at the border, the crisis has once again clarified the double standard in how nations treat refugees depending on the country. origin, race, religion and more, according to scholars and refugees.
Many of the same European nations that turned back refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in the past are now largely hosting refugees from Ukraine.
“It is great that Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees. This should be the answer. But it would be even better if this response were applied to all refugees fleeing persecution and war,” said Nell Gabiam, associate professor . at Iowa State University studying forced migration.
There have been “unfortunate reports” of Ukrainian police and security personnel refusing to allow Nigerians to board buses and trains heading for the Ukraine-Poland border, the office of the President of Nigeria in a statement. Dozens of citizens from African countries have offered similar accounts to news outlets around the world. The Polish authorities, however, rejected the allegations of unfair treatment.
Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, praised governments and citizens for their “extraordinary acts of humanity and kindness”, but acknowledged that some refugees had experienced “different treatment” at the border. Learn more here.
—Grace Hauck
American universities denounce Russia and withdraw from the country
Some US colleges are joining the growing Western coalition of governments and corporations taking action against Russia — an unusual stance for the academy, which typically tries to stay out of international politics.
The response from American universities has ranged from denouncing Russia’s actions to shutting down academic partnerships and programs in Russia.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the most drastic measures in the academy, severing ties with a Russian university it helped found. And on Monday, the State Department urged all Americans to leave Russia, which could affect college students studying abroad.
The developments are particularly striking as universities celebrate their openness to cultural exchange, even with controversial governments like China or Saudi Arabia. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tests how far commitment to intellectual diversity can go in the face of war. Learn more here.
—Chris Quintana
WHO: ‘Much more likely’ COVID will spread in Ukraine due to invasion
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that the ongoing invasion by Russian forces in Ukraine will allow COVID-19 to spread easily across the country, telling health officials that the situation will lead to many undetected cases. as attacks are carried out on health facilities.
“You’re disrupting society like this and literally millions of people on the move, so infectious diseases will exploit that,” Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said during a briefing. briefing. “(People are) very susceptible to the impacts of, first of all, being infected themselves, and the disease is much more likely to spread.”
Ukraine has just experienced one of its worst waves of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to WHO data.
On February 4, a record 43,778 positive cases were reported, and although cases have continuously declined since then, the crisis could lead to the virus spreading easily with no tests available. Only 34% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, according to WHO data.
—Jordan Mendoza
Biden banned Russia from US airspace. Here’s what the area covers.
President Joe Biden announced that the United States was closing airspace to all Russian flights during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, a move with sprawling geographic impact due to the country’s many territories. Pacific Ocean.
The move is part of a global effort to isolate Russia from the rest of the world. The cut in Russian flights to the US will impact the airspace of the lower 48 states, Hawaii, Alaska and US-controlled territories that span much of the Pacific Ocean .
These territories include Palau and the Marshall Islands. And under the Compacts of Free Association, a series of treaties between the United States and these territories, the United States has access to and controls much of the airspace surrounding the islands.
— Celina Tebor
Report: China asked Russia to delay Ukraine invasion after Olympics
Senior Chinese officials told Russian officials in February not to invade Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The Times, citing a Western intelligence report and quoting senior Biden administration officials and a European official, said Chinese officials had “some level of direct knowledge of Russia’s war plans or intentions. before the invasion began last month.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Feb. 4 ahead of the start of the Winter Games in Beijing. According to the Times, it is unclear if any conversations about the invasion took place during the meeting between Xi and Putin.
After their meeting last month, the two leaders issued a joint statement highlighting what they called “interference in the internal affairs” of other states, as Xi and Putin faced criticism from the United States over their foreign and domestic policies.
Relations between China and Russia have grown over the past decades and both nations have opposed further NATO expansion. When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, China called for peace between the two countries and said the United States and its allies were escalating the conflict.
—Charles Ventura, Asha C. Gilbert
Contributor: Associated Press
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