The Washington Post

2022-05-13 19:12:34 Turkey’s Erdogan voices opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has voiced his country’s opposition to Sweden and Finland gaining NATO membership.

On Friday, Sweden’s foreign minister argued that joining the 30-strong alliance would help prevent conflict, while leaders in neighboring Finland have said their country must seek immediate membership in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey has walked a delicate line during the conflict in Ukraine, trying not to offend Russia, with which it has close economic ties, or the government in Kyiv, an ally that is also a buyer of Turkish-made combat drones.

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2022-05-13 17:23:04 After escape from Moscow, Pussy Riot begins tour to support Ukraine

BERLIN — Russian feminist arts collective and punk rock band Pussy Riot took to the stage with an antiwar message Thursday, performing for the first time in three years after their lead singer escaped Russia by disguising herself as a food courier to evade police.

Speaking in Berlin at the start of a planned 19-show European tour to raise money for victims of the war in Ukraine, Maria Alyokhina, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, described her decision to leave Russia as “spontaneous.”

It came after Russian authorities announced she would have to serve a 21-day sentence in a penal colony. Alyokhina has been arrested six times over the past year on charges related to her political activism, with Putin expanding an already stifling crackdown on political dissent since his invasion of Ukraine.

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2022-05-13 15:53:03 Inside Mariupol’s besieged steel plant, a symbol of bravery and terror

Holding fast to her infant son, Anna Zaitseva ran toward a pair of metal doors at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. It was the last Thursday of February, barely 24 hours after the start of the Russian invasion. In soon-to-be devastated Mariupol, the Kremlin’s bombs were already falling.

They had driven that morning to a lot at the Soviet-era steel plant. One of Europe’s largest, it employed 10,702 people, including her husband. Now, for workers and their families, it was the shelter of last resort.

A commercial complex, Azovstal was also ideal for war. A network of tunnels rested beneath an industrial site twice. Its deep nuclear shelters, complete with old maps and radiation containment plans, dated to the Cold War. The bunker quality of the place also made it a perfect fortress for Ukrainian fighters — a brave and ultimately besieged force that her husband, a new metal worker at the plant, would soon join.

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2022-05-13 14:15:04 Here’s the latest from Ukraine.

- A 21-year-old Russian soldier is standing before a Kyiv court on Friday in the first war crimes trial of the conflict, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office. Now in Ukrainian custody, Vadim Shishimarin is accused of killing an unarmed 62-year-old civilian in the first week of the war.

- A security policy review unveiled by Sweden on Friday said joining NATO would help deter conflict in northern Europe. The report outlined Sweden’s vulnerability to attack if it remains the only Nordic or Baltic country outside the defense alliance, while noting the risk of Russian retaliation if it does apply.

- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he stood by his objection to a Senate vote on sending $39.8 billion in aid for the country. The decision delayed passage of the bill and hampered a bipartisan push for steady assistance to Kyiv.

- A UNICEF official said nearly 100 children were killed in Ukraine in the past month.

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2022-05-13 11:11:07 Here’s the latest on key battlegrounds in Ukraine.

Kharkiv: Ukrainian forces have mounted an effective counterattack in the area around this northeastern city, British and Ukrainian military officials said. Even though Russian forces encircled the city in the war’s early days, Ukrainian resistance appears to have pushed them to withdraw, the British defense ministry said. Still, shelling on Thursday killed at least two on the city’s outskirts, local authorities said.

Novgorod-Siversky: In this northern city, just 30 miles from the Russian border, airstrikes early Thursday killed three people and injured 12, regional and national officials said. The strikes destroyed administrative buildings, homes and schools. Russia also claimed to have hit ammunition depots nearby.

Donetsk oblast: Russian strikes killed at least four civilians in villages dotting this eastern region, one of the two that make up Donbas, its governor said. Five people were injured.

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2022-05-12 23:06:23 Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- Finland’s leaders announced Thursday that they will seek NATO membership in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine — a move that would mark a tectonic shift in the military alliance and Europe’s security order and that the Kremlin promptly said would “definitely” pose a threat to Russia’s security.

- Ukraine said its troops were pushing back Russian forces around the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, as airstrikes hit the Chernihiv region farther north.

- European Union leaders are planning to assess Ukraine’s application for E.U. membership in June, according to the French Foreign Ministry.

- Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said the country is continuing negotiations to rescue 38 wounded fighters remaining in the embattled Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

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2022-05-12 22:05:07 U.S. Intelligence-sharing with Ukraine designed to prevent wider war

The United States is sending billions of dollars in military equipment to Ukraine, including heavy artillery, drones and antitank missiles. Administration officials have publicly enumerated those contributions, practically down to the number of bullets. But they are far more cautious when describing another decisive contribution to Ukraine’s battlefield success: intelligence about the Russian military.

Information about the location and movements of Russian forces is flowing to Ukraine in real-time, and it includes satellite imagery and reporting gleaned from sensitive U.S. sources, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the cooperation.

“The intelligence is very good. It tells us where the Russians are so that we can hit them,” one Ukrainian official said, using his finger to pantomime a bomb falling on its target.

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2022-05-12 21:03:01 U.K. law could send Ukrainian refugees who enter via Ireland to Rwanda

If Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion reach Britain via Ireland without travel documents, they could be caught up in a contentious new plan under which migrants who don’t meet strict asylum criteria will be flown to Rwanda for possible resettlement there, U.K. lawmakers have been told by a top immigration official.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the Rwanda plan as part of a crackdown on smuggling routes across the English Channel. Under the plan, which passed into law late last month, most migrants who cross illegally will be deemed inadmissible to claim asylum because their journeys will have taken them through safe countries before their arrival in Britain.

“You are leaving open the possibility that Ukrainians who have crossed from Dublin to Belfast could conceivably end up in Rwanda,” said Stuart C. McDonald, the Scottish National Party member of Parliament who posed the question.

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2022-05-12 20:43:01 In a soccer friendly, German fans cheer on a loss to Ukraine

Fans of German soccer club Borussia Mönchengladbach don’t usually hope for their team to lose.

But as the team was defeated by the Ukraine men’s national squad, 2-1, on Wednesday night, the German stadium erupted in cheers. Mönchengladbach fans chanted Ukrainian songs, sporting yellow-and-blue flags painted on their cheeks and Ukrainian scarves around their necks.

The match, a friendly that benefited Ukrainian humanitarian causes and was free for all Ukrainian fans to attend, was a bittersweet return by the country’s national team. As some refugees appeared close to tears while watching their squad compete, the match in many ways also captured the country’s broader hopes for a quick return to some degree of normality and peace.

The team’s coach, Oleksandr Petrakov, said it was a sign “that life returns.”

“It distracts the [Ukrainian] people from the war, and it distracts the players from the war,” he told The Post.

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2022-05-12 19:24:01 Finland’s leaders seek to join NATO ‘without delay’ after Ukraine invasion

Finland’s leaders announced Thursday that they would seek NATO membership for the Nordic nation as soon as possible — an extraordinary move that demonstrates the far-ranging effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin said in a statement after weeks of discussions about whether the traditionally nonaligned nation should aim to join the military alliance.

“The war started by Russia jeopardizes the security and stability of the whole of Europe,” Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told European lawmakers Thursday. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered the European and Finnish security environment."

NATO leaders have said that Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Russia, will be welcomed by the alliance if it decides to join.

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