Month: May 2022

Ambassadors from the 27 European Union member states on Sunday examined a compromise that could enable them to break the deadlock on a Russian oil embargo ahead of an emergency summit in Brussels this week.

The bloc’s officials fear the absence of an agreement will cast a shadow over the two-day meeting starting Monday between European leaders.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the gathering by video link to press the bloc to “kill Russian exports” three months after the invasion of Ukraine.

The latest round of proposed sanctions by the EU has been blocked by landlocked Hungary, which has no access to seafaring oil cargo ships.

Hungary is dependent for 65% of its oil needs on Russian crude supplied via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs from Russia to various points in eastern and central Europe.

Budapest has rejected as inadequate a proposal to allow it two years longer than other EU states to wean itself off Russian oil. 

It wants at least four years and at least $860 million in EU funds to adapt its refineries to process non-Russian crude and boost pipeline capacity to neighboring Croatia.

Slovakia and the Czech Republic, also supplied by the Druzhba pipeline, accepted exemptions of two and half years, diplomatic sources said.

The compromise solution put to national negotiators on Sunday consists of excluding the Druzhba pipeline from a future oil embargo and only imposing sanctions on oil shipped to the EU by tanker vessel, European sources said.

The Druzhba pipeline accounts for a third of all EU oil supplies from Russia. Maritime cargos account for the remaining two-thirds.

The compromise was tabled by France, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and by the European Council, which represents the governments of the EU nations. 

Its aim is to break a stalemate that has, since early May, prevented the EU from imposing a sixth round of sanctions on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.

This embargo on sea deliveries would involve stopping purchases of oil within six months and of petroleum products by the end of the year.

It would also impose additional sanctions on Russian banks and expand the list of Russian individuals blacklisted by the bloc.

Another option under consideration would be to postpone the entire package of new sanctions until a solution can be found to provide Hungary with alternative oil supplies, the sources said.

“A limited embargo that excludes pipelines will be much less painful for Putin’s Russia, because finding new clients for oil supply by tankers is much less difficult,” said Thomas Pellerin-Carlin of the Jacques Delors Institute think tank.

The EU wants to cut funding for the Kremlin’s war effort. Last year’s bill for Russian oil imports was $86 billion, four times greater than that for natural gas.

If the EU ambassadors succeed on Sunday in reaching a compromise on an oil embargo, it will still need to be approved by their governments before it can be put to the summit.
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Chaotic scenes at the French national stadium before and during Saturday night’s Champions League final were branded a national embarrassment, while French ministers blamed Liverpool fans for the trouble.

The final between Liverpool and Real Madrid kicked off with a 35-minute delay after police tried to hold back people attempting to force their way into the Stade de France without tickets, while some ticket holders complained they were not let in.

Television footage showed images of young men, who did not appear to be wearing the red Liverpool jerseys, jumping the gates of the stadium and running away. Other people outside, including children, were tear-gassed by riot police, a Reuters witness said.

Some riot police officers stormed into the stadium while others charged at people trying to knock down stadium gates.

European soccer’s governing body UEFA blamed fake tickets for causing the issue and said it would review the events together with the French authorities and the French Football Federation, in a statement welcomed by the British ambassador in Paris, Menna Rawlings.

“We need to establish the facts,” Rawlings tweeted, adding her “commiserations” to Liverpool after a “valiant performance” in their 1-0 defeat by Real.

France’s Interior and Sports ministers squarely put the blame on “British” supporters.

“Thousands of British ‘supporters’, without any ticket or with fake ones have forced their way in and, at times, used violence again stadium staff,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter, thanking French police.

“The attempts at intrusion and fraud by thousands of English supporters complicated the work of the stadium staff and police but will not tarnish this victory,” Sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera tweeted.

Some 68 people had been arrested by 1.20 local time on Sunday while there were 238 interventions by medics for people who were very lightly injured, Paris police said in a statement.

UEFA issued a statement late on Saturday saying: “In the lead-up to the game, the turnstiles at the Liverpool end became blocked by thousands of fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles.”

Liverpool Football Club also issued a statement, saying: “We are hugely disappointed at the stadium entry issues and breakdown of the security perimeter that Liverpool fans faced.

“We have officially requested a formal investigation into the causes of these unacceptable issues.”

The scenes at the stadium caused outrage in France, with politicians of all sides calling it a national disgrace.

“This a shame for France!”, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a hard-right former presidential candidate, said on Twitter.

Even some in French President Emmanuel Macron’s camp lamented the events, which occurred two years before Paris hosts the Olympic Games.

“Scuffles at the Stade de France, brawls in bars, green spaces turned into trash… One observation: we are not ready for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” Nathalie Loiseau, a European lawmaker in Macron’s party said on Twitter.

 
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Standing in the middle of a stretch of land surrounded by dunes and pine forest, Juan Romero examines the cracked ground then stares at the dusty horizon.

“It’s dry… really dry,” the retired teacher said at the huge Donana National Park in southern Spain, home to one of Europe’s largest wetlands, which is threatened by intensive farming.

“At this time of the year this should be covered with water and full of flamingos,” added Romero, a member of Save Donana, a group that has been fighting for years to protect the park.

Water supplies to the park have declined dramatically due to climate change and the over-extraction of water by neighboring strawberry farms, often through illegal wells, scientists say.

The situation could soon get worse as the regional government of Andalusia, where Donana is located, has proposed expanding irrigation rights for strawberry farmers near the park.

It’s a battle pitting environmentalists against politicians and farmers, and the proposal to widen irrigation rights has drawn backlash from the EU, the UN and major European grocery store chains.

The proposal would regularize nearly 1,900 hectares (4,700 acres) of berry farmland currently irrigated by illegal wells, said Juanjo Carmona of the local branch of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

“For Donana it would be a disaster,” he added.

The park, whose diverse ecosystem of lagoons, marshes, forests and dunes stretch across 100,000 hectares, is on the migratory route of millions of birds each year and is home to many rare species such as the Iberian lynx.

“Donana is a paradise for migrating birds. But this ecosystem is threatened,” said Romero.

The driving force behind the plan to extend irrigation rights is the conservative Popular Party (PP), which governs the southern region of Andalusia with the support of far-right party Vox.

The plan’s fate will be decided after a snap poll in Andalusia on June 19 but with both parties riding high in the polls the controversial proposal looks set to go head.

‘Red gold’

Defenders of the proposal argue it will aid those who unfairly missed out during a previous regularization of farms in the area put in place in 2014 under a Socialist government.

About 9,000 hectares of farms were regularized but another 2,000 hectares that started being farmed after 2004 were deemed illegal.

“This plan was badly done. It should have used 2014 as the cut-off date,” said Rafael Segovia, a lawmaker with Vox in Andalusia’s outgoing regional parliament.

The proposed amnesty “does not present any danger for Donana”, Segovia said, adding people should take into account the “economic importance of the sector”.

Huelva, the drought-prone province where the park is located, produces 300,000 tonnes of strawberries a year, 90 percent of Spain’s output.

Known locally as “red gold”, strawberry farming employs some 100,000 people and accounts for nearly eight percent of Andalusia’s economic output.

UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency, has designated the park one of its World Heritage sites and has called for illegal farms near Donana to be dismantled.

It has warned that the regional government’s plan would have an impact that would be “difficult to reverse”.

The European Commission has also weighed in.

It has threatened to impose “hefty fines” if any steps were taken to extract more water from Donana park after a European court ruling last year scolded Spain for not protecting its ecosystem.

And around 20 European supermarket chains, including Lidl, Aldi and Sainsbury’s, sent the regional government a letter urging it to abandon the plan.

‘Ruin us’

Consumers may get the impression that all strawberries in Huelva come from illegal farms, said Manuel Delgado, the spokesman of an association that represents some 300 local farms.

“This situation will likely cause a major reputational problem,” he said.

The group, the association of farmers Puerta de Donana, argues the plan to extend irrigation rights would “only serve the interests of a minority”.

“Water resources are limited,” said Delgado, who fears farms will be forced to drastically reduce the amount of land they cultivate due to a lack of water.

“That would ruin us,” he said.

Backers of the plan, including other larger farmers’ associations, reject these concerns.

“There is no water problem in Huelva, it’s a lie,” said Segovia, the Vox lawmaker.

He said water could be diverted to the province’s farms from the Guadiana River on the border with Portugal, a solution rejected as “not sustainable” by the WWF.

“When there is no rain, there is no rain everywhere,” said the WWF’s Carmona, adding Spain should instead rethink its agricultural model.

Passions are running high. Romero said ecologists who oppose the plan have received death threats.

“Without radical changes to curb the overexploitation of water resources, Donana will be a desert,” he said.
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As Russian forces press their offensive to take the eastern Ukrainian cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, civilians who have managed to flee say intensified shelling over the past week left them unable to even venture out from basement bomb shelters.

Despite the attacks, some managed to make it to the town of Pokrovsk, 130 kilometers to the south, and boarded an evacuation train Saturday heading west, away from the fighting.

Fighting has raged around Lysychansk and neighboring Sievierodonetsk, the last major cities under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region. Luhansk and the Donetsk region to its south make up the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland which is the focus of Russia’s current offensive. Moscow-backed separatists have controlled parts of the Donbas for eight years and Russian forces are now trying to capture at least the whole Donbas.

Bouncing her 18-month-old son on her lap, Yana Skakova choked back tears as she described living in a basement under relentless bombing and having to leave her husband behind when she fled with her baby and 4-year-old son.

Initially after the war broke out, there were quiet times when they could come out of the basement to cook in the street and let the children play outdoors. But about a week ago, the bombing intensified. For the past five days, they hadn’t been able to venture out of the basement at all.

“Now the situation is bad, it’s scary to go out,” she said.

It was the police who came to evacuate them Friday from the basement where 18 people, including nine children, had been living for the past two and a half months.

“We were sitting there, then the traffic police came and they said: ‘You should evacuate as fast as possible, since it is dangerous to stay in Lysychansk now,’” Skakova said.

Despite the bombings and the lack of electricity, gas and water, nobody really wanted to go.

“None of us wanted to leave our native city,” she said. “But for the sake of these small children, we decided to leave.”

She broke down in tears as she described how her husband stayed behind to take care of their house and animals.

“Yehor is 1 1/2-years old, and now he’s without a father,” Skakova said.

Oksana, 74, who was too afraid to give her surname, said she was evacuated from Lysychansk on Friday by a team of foreign volunteers along with her 86-year-old husband. There were still other people left behind in the city, she said, including young children.

Sitting on the same evacuation train as Skakova, she broke down and cried. The tears came hard and fast as she described leaving her home for an uncertain future.

“I’m going somewhere, not knowing where,” she wept. “Now I am a beggar without happiness. Now I have to ask for charity. It would be better to kill me.”

She had worked for 36 years as an accountant, a civil servant, she said, and the thought of now having to rely on others was unbearable.

“God forbid anyone else suffers this. It’s a tragedy. It’s a horror,” she cried. “Who knew I would end up in such a hell?”
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Louis Bloomsfield inspects the kegs of beer at his brewery in north London, eagerly awaiting June, when he will get an extra day off every week.

The 36-year-old brewer plans to use the time to get involved in charity work, start a long-overdue course in particle physics and spend more time with family.

He and colleagues at the Pressure Drop brewery are taking part in a six-month trial of a four-day working week, with 3,000 others from 60 U.K. companies.

The pilot — touted as the world’s biggest so far — aims to help companies shorten their working hours without cutting salaries or sacrificing revenues.

Similar trials have also taken place in Spain, Iceland, the United States and Canada. Australia and New Zealand are scheduled to start theirs in August.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a program manager at 4 Day Week Global, the campaign group behind the trial, said it will give firms “more time” to work through challenges, experiment with new practices and gather data.

Smaller organizations should find it easier to adapt, as they can make big changes more readily, he told AFP.

Pressure Drop, based in Tottenham Hale, is hoping the experiment will not only improve their employees’ productivity but also their well-being.

At the same time, it will reduce their carbon footprint.

The Royal Society of Biology, another participant in the trial, says it wants to give employees “more autonomy over their time and working patterns.”

Both hope a shorter working week could help them retain employees, at a time when U.K. businesses are confronted with severe staff shortages, and job vacancies hitting a record 1.3 million.

Not all rosy

Pressure Drop brewery’s co-founder Sam Smith said the new way of working would be a learning process.

“It will be difficult for a company like us which needs to be kept running all the time, but that’s what we will experiment with in this trial,” he said.

Smith is mulling giving different days off in the week to his employees and deploying them into two teams to keep the brewery functioning throughout.

When Unilever trialed a shorter working week for its 81 employees in New Zealand, it was able to do so only because no manufacturing takes place in its Auckland office and all staff work in sales or marketing.

The service industry plays a huge role in the UK economy, contributing 80% to the country’s GDP.

A shorter working week is therefore easier to adopt, said Jonathan Boys, a labor economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

But for sectors such as retail, food and beverage, health care and education, it’s more problematic.

Boys said the biggest challenge will be how to measure productivity, especially in an economy where a lot of work is qualitative, as opposed to that in a factory.

Indeed, since salaries will stay the same in this trial, for a company to not lose out, employees will have to be as productive in four days as they are five.

Yet Aidan Harper, author of The Case for a Four Day Week, said countries working fewer hours tend to have higher productivity.

“Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands work fewer hours than the U.K., yet have higher levels of productivity,” he told AFP.

“Within Europe, Greece works more hours than anyone, and yet have the lowest levels of productivity.”

‘Hiring superpower’

Employees in the U.K. work roughly 36.5 hours every week, against counterparts in Greece who clock in upward of 40 hours, according to database company Statista.

Phil McParlane, founder of Glasgow-based recruitment company 4dayweek.io, says offering a shorter workweek is a win-win, and even calls it “a hiring superpower.”

His company only advertises four-day week and flexible jobs.

They have seen the number of companies looking to hire through the platform rise from 30 to 120 in the past two years, as many workers reconsidered their priorities and work-life balance in the pandemic.
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As Slovenia transitions to a new prime minister, the country’s media look for signs of a reset after the hostile rhetoric and pressure that many say they experienced under the outgoing administration.

Former power company manager Robert Golob and his center-left Freedom Movement celebrated a victory in elections last month. They are expected to formally take power in early June.

Golob indicated that one of the first tasks will be legislation to limit political pressure on journalists and protect the independence of public media.

The pledge strikes a different tone from outgoing leader Janez Jansa, whom the European Parliament criticized for hostile rhetoric and pressure directed at media. During his time in office, Jansa was handed a suspended prison sentence for verbal assaults on two female journalists. A high court upheld that ruling on May 24.

Jansa’s administration introduced changes seen by many as an attempt to disrupt press agency STA and broadcaster RTV Slovenia.

The government at the time defended its actions, saying it was addressing bias at the networks. The Government Communications Office (GCO) echoed that view, publishing criticism of RTV on its website.

Golob secured 41 out of 90 seats in parliament: more than any other party since Slovenia declared independence in 1991. His party formed a coalition with the Social Democrats and the Left. Together they hold a comfortable majority in parliament, with 53 seats.

The new administration’s pledge to protect media is welcomed by media analysts.

“I am optimistic regarding the (media) plans of the incoming government particularly since I cannot imagine that conditions at RTV Slovenia could be any worse,” said Slavko Splichal, a professor of communication at the University of Ljubljana faculty of social sciences.

Splichal, who sits on RTV’s program council, added, “I have no reason to doubt that the new government will indeed reduce political interfering in the public media.”

Period of change

As well as accusations of bias, Jansa’s Cabinet stopped paying the national news agency STA for almost a year in 2021. Funding resumed after the head of STA resigned and the new head managed to reach a deal with the government.

At RTV Slovenia, a leadership change in 2021 led to the shortening or cancellation of several popular news programs.

Many media associations and trade unions expressed support for RTV journalists.

But the Association of Journalists and Publicists in a May 23 statement said that some changes “were necessary to increase pluralism and professionalism of the RTV.”

The association, described by some groups as supporting right-leaning media, added, “The incumbent leadership of the RTV has not done anything that would limit journalistic autonomy.”

Critics, however, saw the changes at RTV as a way to curb criticism of the government.

An agreement signed by the new coalition partners on May 24 now seeks to address those changes with action to “prevent constant political meddling” at public media.

“Our priority is to protect the independence of the STA and the RTV Slovenia and enable uninterrupted running of public service,” the agreement states.

The new administration did not detail how it plans to achieve those goals.

Splichal, who sits on the RTV’s program council as a representative of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, said any change needs to be fast to save the broadcaster.

The program council, which is legally obliged to act independently, runs RTV. Currently, parliament appoints the majority of its 29 members.

Analysts believe that one way to protect editorial independence could be to reduce the number of council members that parliament appoints.

International view

The European Parliament and rights groups have cited concerns about a decline in media freedom in Slovenia.

But, says Jamie Wiseman of the International Press Institute (IPI), there is “hope among the European media freedom community that this new government can unwind some of the more detrimental aspects of the previous government’s program regarding the media.”

The IPI will be watching for concrete actions from the incoming government.

“Vital here will be the implementation of reforms which strengthen the editorial independence of the public broadcaster RTV Slovenia,” said Wiseman, who is the IPI’s Europe advocacy officer.

Other areas that need attention, Wiseman said in an email to VOA, is “the normalization of the work of the Government Communications Office (GCO); and refraining from the attempts to attack and discredit critical journalism that was so damaging under the previous administration.”

The GCO in recent months has posted articles to its website titled Analysis of Reporting of RTV Slovenia.

The posts list content that the GCO believes shows bias against the government, including what it sees as hate speech or reports that fail to seek a government response.

Journalists and academics generally see the GCO posts as improper political commentaries.

The GCO has said previously that no one has dismissed the claims it makes, and that previous center-left governments have also tried to pressure the media.

For their part, journalists at RTV have been vocal in their protest at changes to their network and described political pressure in the past year as unbearable.

“We are here because we want to stop the aggression, we are here because we want freedom of speech,” Helena Milinkovic, head of the coordination of trade unions of journalists of RTV, said during a protest and one-hour strike on May 23.

“We fear for the existence of a public RTV,” she said, adding that the journalists demand “editorial autonomy, and the depoliticization of the public RTV.”

The broadcaster is one of the country’s most popular channels, with a monthly combined audience of about 700,000, according to station data.

But withstanding political pressure is not the only challenge for RTV, said Splichal. The academic believes that the broadcaster needs to increase its presence on the internet and social media to attract younger viewers and ensure its long-term future. 
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Europe’s frantic search for alternatives to Russian energy has dramatically increased the demand — and price — for Norway’s oil and gas. 

As the money pours in, Europe’s second-biggest natural gas supplier is fending off accusations that it’s profiting from the war in Ukraine. 

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is looking to the Scandinavian country to replace some of the gas Poland used to get from Russia, said Norway’s “gigantic” oil and gas profits are “indirectly preying on the war.”

He urged Norway to use that windfall to support the hardest-hit countries, mainly Ukraine.

The comments last week touched a nerve, even as some Norwegians wonder whether they’re doing enough to combat Russia’s war by increasing economic aid to Ukraine and helping neighboring countries end their dependence on Russian energy to power industry, generate electricity and fuel vehicles. 

Taxes on the windfall profits of oil and gas companies have been common in Europe to help people cope with soaring energy bills, now exacerbated by the war. Spain and Italy both approved them, while the United Kingdom’s government plans to introduce one. Morawiecki is asking Norway to go further by sending oil and profits to other nations. 

Norway, one of Europe’s richest countries, committed 1.09% of its national income to overseas development — one of the highest percentages worldwide — including more than $200 million in aid to Ukraine. With oil and gas coffers bulging, some would like to see even more money earmarked to ease the effects of the war — and not skimmed from the funding for agencies that support people elsewhere. 

“Norway has made dramatic cuts into most of the U.N. institutions and support for human rights projects in order to finance the cost of receiving Ukrainian refugees,” said Berit Lindeman, policy director of the human rights group, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. 

She helped organize a protest Wednesday outside Parliament in Oslo, criticizing government priorities and saying the Polish remarks had “some merits.” 

“It looks really ugly when we know the incomes have skyrocketed this year,” Lindeman said. 

Oil and gas prices were already high amid an energy crunch and have spiked because of the war. Natural gas is trading at three to four times what it was at the same time last year. International benchmark Brent crude oil burst through $100 a barrel after the invasion three months ago and has rarely dipped below since. 

Norwegian energy giant Equinor, which is majority owned by the state, earned four times more in the first quarter compared with the same period last year. 

The bounty led the government to revise its forecast of income from petroleum activities to 933 billion Norwegian kroner ($97 billion) this year — more than three times what it earned in 2021. The vast bulk will be funneled into Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund — the world’s largest — to support the nation when oil runs dry. The government isn’t considering diverting it elsewhere. 

Norway has “contributed substantial support to Ukraine since the first week of the war, and we are preparing to do more,” State Secretary Eivind Vad Petersson said by email. 

He said the country has sent financial support, weapons and over 2 billion kroner in humanitarian aid “independently of oil and gas prices.” 

European countries, meanwhile, have helped inflate Norwegian energy prices by scrambling to diversify their supply away from Russia. They have been accused of helping fund the war by continuing to pay for Russian fossil fuels. 

That energy reliance “provides Russia with a tool to intimidate and to use against us, and that has been clearly demonstrated now,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, told the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. 

Russia has halted natural gas to Finland, Poland and Bulgaria for refusing a demand to pay in rubles. 

The 27-nation European Union is aiming to reduce reliance on Russian natural gas by two-thirds by year’s end through conservation, renewable development and alternative supplies. 

Europe is pleading with Norway, along with countries like Qatar and Algeria, for help with the shortfall. Norway delivers 20% to 25% of Europe’s natural gas, versus Russia’s 40% before the war. 

It is important for Norway to “be a stable, long-term provider of oil and gas to the European markets,” Deputy Energy Minister Amund Vik said. But companies are selling on volatile energy markets, and “with the high oil and gas prices seen since last fall, the companies have daily produced near maximum of what their fields can deliver,” he said. 

Even so, Oslo has responded to European calls for more gas by providing permits to operators to produce more this year. Tax incentives mean the companies are investing in new offshore projects, with a new pipeline to Poland opening this fall. 

“We are doing whatever we can to be a reliable supplier of gas and energy to Europe in difficult times. It was a tight market last fall and is even more pressing now,” said Ola Morten Aanestad, a Equinor spokesman. 

The situation is a far cry from June 2020, when prices crashed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Norway’s previous government issued tax incentives for oil companies to spur investment and protect jobs. 

Combined with high energy prices, the incentives that run out at the end of the year have prompted companies in Norway to issue a slew of development plans for new oil and gas projects. 

Yet those projects will not produce oil and gas until later this decade or even further in the future, when the political situation may be different, and many European countries are hoping to have shifted most of their energy use to renewables. 

By then, Norway is likely to face the more familiar criticism — that it is contributing to climate change. 
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

10:38 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’s willing to talk about resuming grain shipments from Ukraine. In a Saturday phone call, Putin told the leaders of France and Germany that shipments of grain might be able to leave Black Sea ports if sanctions against Russia are lifted, Reuters reported. Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies. The war in Ukraine, as well as Western sanctions against Russia, have disrupted supplies of wheat, fertilizer and other commodities from both countries, triggering concerns about world hunger.

10:06 a.m.: Ukraine’s defense minister says his country has started receiving anti-ship missiles from Denmark and self-propelled howitzers from the United States. Oleksiy Reznikov said Saturday that the weapons will help Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian invasion, Reuters reported.

9:29 a.m.: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Germany and France Saturday that continuing weapons supplies to Ukraine is “dangerous.” Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that sending arms to Ukraine could lead to the “further destabilization of the situation and aggravation of the humanitarian crisis,” the Kremlin said, according to Agence France-Presse.

8:37 a.m.: Russia said it has successfully tested hypersonic missiles in the Arctic, according to Agence France-Presse. The defense ministry said the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile traveled 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) and “successfully hit” a target in the Arctic.

7:50 a.m.: Russia says it has seized Lyman, a strategic town in eastern Ukraine.

“Following the joint actions of the units of the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Russian armed forces, the town of Krasny Liman has been entirely liberated from Ukrainian nationalists,” the defense ministry said in a statement, Agence France-Presse reported. Lyman is a railway hub in the Donetsk region and its capture signals a potential momentum shift in the war, helping Russia prepare for the next phase of Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donbas, Reuters reported.

5:29 a.m.: In early May, VOA Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze spoke with Mark Brzezinski, the U.S. ambassador to Poland. He says Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has united Europe.

“What’s happened in Ukraine alarms everyone — with the genocide that is occurring there, the attacks on civilians, the mass destruction of villages, apartments, old people’s homes, hospitals — it defies any kind of human belief. And I think there is unity among all the allies in Europe about how bad this is and that something needs to be done. ​So, I don’t want to assess who’s taking it most seriously, because I don’t know anyone who’s not taking this seriously.”

4:15 a.m.: Reuters reports that Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian peace talks negotiator, said on Telegram that any agreement with Russia “isn’t worth a broken penny.”

“Is it possible to negotiate with a country that always lies cynically and propagandistically?” he wrote.

3:12 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry says most of the strategically important Ukrainian town of Lyman has likely fallen to the Russians. Lyman’s the site of a major rail junction and offers access to rail and road bridges over the Siverskyy Donets River.

That’ll be a key point as Russian troops aim to cross the river as part of the next stage of Russia’s Donbas offensive.

2:20 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region insists that Russian forces have not surrounded the city of Severodonetsk.

They have, he says, taken control of a hotel and a bus station. He said it was still possible that Ukrainian forces would have to retreat from the area.

1:13 a.m.: The Associated Press reports that a Communist Party leader in Russia’s Far East has called for an end to the war with Ukraine.

“We understand that if our country doesn’t stop the military operation, we’ll have more orphans in our country,” Legislative Deputy Leonid Vasyukevich said at a meeting of the Primorsk regional Legislative Assembly in the Pacific port of Vladivostok on Friday.

12:02 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that Lithuanians have raised more than $3 million to buy a military drone for Ukraine. They’re aiming to raise a total of $5.4 million to purchase the Bayraktar TB2 armed drone.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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