Month: May 2022

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a once-powerful Italian prelate who long served as the Vatican’s No. 2 official but whose legacy was tarnished by his support for the pedophile found of an influential religious order, has died. He was 94.

The Vatican in its Saturday announcement of his death said the Sodano had died on Friday. Italian state radio said that Sodano recently had contracted COVID-19, complicating his already frail health. Corriere della Sera said he died in a Rome clinic where he had been admitted a few weeks ago.

Pope Francis in a condolence telegram Saturday to Maria Sodano, the retired prelate’s sister, noted that Sodano had held many roles in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, culminating in his being named secretary of state on June 28, 1991, by the then-pontiff, John Paul II. A day later, John Paul, who later was made a saint, elevated Sodano to the rank of cardinal.

In the condolence message, Francis expressed “sentiments of gratitude to the Lord for the gift of this esteemed man of the church” and paid tribute to his long service as a Vatican diplomat in Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile in South America, Francis’ native continent.

But late in his Vatican career, Sodano’s church legacy was tarnished by his staunch championing of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the deceased Mexican founder of the Legion of Christ, a religious order, who was later revealed to be a pedophile. Maciel’s clerical career was discredited by the cult-like practices he imposed on the order’s members. An internal investigation eventually identified 33 priests and 71 seminarians in the order who sexually abused minors over some eight decades.

Sodano for years, while secretary of state under John Paul, had prevented the Vatican from investigating sex abuse allegations against Maciel. The Holy See had evidence dating back decades that the founder of the religious order — an organization that was a favorite of John Paul’s for producing so many priests — was a drug addict and a pedophile.

The Vatican’s biography, issued after Sodano died, made no mention of the scandals. Instead, it noted Sodano’s accomplishment as a top Vatican diplomat, including his work for “the peaceful solution to the controversy of the sovereignty of 2 states,” a reference to the territorial dispute that erupted in the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and Britain.

Speaking of Sodano’s career at the Vatican, which saw him serve until 2006 as the Holy See’s No. 2 official in the role of secretary of state, Francis said the prelate had carried out his mission with “exemplary dedication.”

In December 2019, Francis accepted Sodano’s resignation as Dean of the College of Cardinals, an influential role, especially in preparing for conclaves, the closed-door election of pontiffs. Sodano had held that position from 2005.

Sodano was born in Isola d’Asti, a town in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, on Nov. 23, 1927. He was ordained a priest in 1950 and obtained a doctorate in theology at the prestigious Pontifical Gregorian University and in canon law from the Pontifical Lateral University, both in Rome.

He joined the Vatican’s diplomatic corps in 1959, eventually representing the Holy See at foreign ministers’ meetings across Europe.

In 2000, Sodano played a role in ending an enduring mystery at the Vatican by disclosing the so-called third secret of Fatima.

In 1917, three Portuguese shepherd children said they saw the Virgin Mary appear above an olive tree and she told them three secrets. The first two were said to have foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. Some speculated that the third, unrevealed secret, was a doomsday prophecy.

While the pope was visiting the popular shrine in Fatima, Portugal, Sodano said that the “interpretations” of the children spoke of a “bishop clothed in white,” who “falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.” That description evoked the assassination attempt on John Paul in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, in which the pope was gravely wounded. 

Sodano’s funeral is to take place on Tuesday in St Peter’s Basilica. It will be celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re, while Pope Francis will perform a traditional funeral rite at the end of the ceremony.
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To a threatening soundtrack of air raid sirens and booming artillery, civilians are fleeing towns and cities in eastern Ukraine as Russian forces advance.

Negotiating narrow apartment building staircases, volunteers carry the elderly and infirm in their arms, in stretchers or in wheelchairs to waiting minibuses, which then drive them to central staging areas and eventually to evacuation trains in other cities.

“The Russians are right over there, and they’re closing in on this location,” Mark Poppert, an American volunteer working with British charity RefugEase, said during an evacuation in the town of Bakhmut on Friday.

“Bakhmut is a high-risk area right now,” he said. “We’re trying to get as many people out as we can in case the Ukrainians have to fall back.”

He and other Ukrainian and foreign volunteers working with the Ukrainian charity Vostok SOS, which was coordinating the evacuation effort, were hoping to get about 100 people out of Bakhmut on Friday, Poppert said.

A few hours earlier, the thud of artillery sounded and black smoke rose from the northern fringes of the town, which is in the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s industrial east. Donetsk and the neighboring region of Luhansk makes up the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled some territory for eight years.

The evacuation process is painstaking, physically arduous and fraught with emotion.

Many of the evacuees are elderly, ill or have serious mobility problems, meaning volunteers have to bundle them into soft stretchers and slowly negotiate their way through narrow corridors and down flights of stairs in apartment buildings.

Most people have already fled Bakhmut: only around 30,000 remain from a pre-war population of 85,000. And more are leaving each day.

Fighting has raged north of Bakhmut as Russian forces intensify their efforts to seize the key eastern cities of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk, 50 kilometers to the northeast. The two cities are the last areas under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region.

Northwest of Bakhmut in Donetsk, Russia-backed rebels said Friday they had taken over the town of Lyman, a large railway hub near the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, both which are still under Ukrainian control. On Thursday, smoke rising from the direction of Lyman could be seen clearly from Slovyansk.

But even when faced with shelling, missiles and an advancing Russian army, leaving isn’t easy.

Svetlana Lvova, the 66-year-old manager for two apartment buildings in Bakhmut, huffed and rolled her eyes in exasperation upon hearing that yet another one of her residents was refusing to leave.

“I can’t convince them to go,” she said. “I told them several times if something lands here, I will be carrying them — injured — to the same buses” that have come to evacuate them now.

She’s tried to persuade the holdouts every way she can, she says, but nearly two dozen people just won’t budge. They’re more afraid to leave their homes and belongings for an uncertain future than to stay and face the bombs.

She herself will stay in Bakhmut with her husband, she said. But not because they fear leaving their property. They are waiting for their son, who is still in Sieverodonetsk, to come home.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I have to know he is alive. That’s why I’m staying here.”

Lvova plays the last video her son sent her, where he tells his mother that he is fine, and that they still have electricity in the city but no longer running water.

“I baked him a big cake,” she said, wiping away tears.

Poppert, the American volunteer, said it was not unusual to receive a request to pick people up for evacuation, only for them to change their minds once the van arrives.

“It’s an incredibly difficult decision for these people to leave the only world that they know,” he said.

He described one man in his late 90s evacuated from the only home he had ever known.

“We were taking this man out of his world,” Poppert said. “He was terrified of the bombs and the missiles, and he was terrified to leave.”

In nearby Pokrovsk, ambulances pulled up to offload elderly women in stretchers and wheelchairs for the evacuation train heading west, away from the fighting. Families clustered around, dragging suitcases and carrying pets as they boarded the train.

The train slowly pulled out of the station, and a woman drew back the curtain in one of the train carriages. As the familiar landscape slipped away, her face crumpled in grief and the tears began to flow.
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Ukrainian presidential adviser and peace talks negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Saturday that any agreement with Russia cannot be trusted and Moscow can only be stopped in its invasion by force.

“Any agreement with Russia isn’t worth a broken penny,” Podolyak wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Is it possible to negotiate with a country that always lies cynically and propagandistically?”

Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other after peace talk stalled, with the last known face-to-face negotiations on March 29. The Kremlin said earlier this month Ukraine was showing no willingness to continue peace talks, while officials in Kyiv blamed Russia for the lack of progress.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that President Vladimir Putin was the only Russian official he was willing to meet with to discuss how to end the war.

Putin says Russian forces are on a special operation to demilitarize Ukraine and rid it of radical anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and its allies call that a false pretext to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“Russia has proved that it is a barbarian country that threatens world security,” Podolyak said. “A barbarian can only be stopped by force.”
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In mid-May, VOA Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze spoke with Alexandra Vasylenko, special envoy on coordination of humanitarian assistance to the minister for foreign affairs of Ukraine. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: The devastation of the war (in Ukraine) is affecting food security in the world. How can we estimate and assess what’s going on and how it would affect Ukrainian agricultural business and world business?

Vasylenko: Given that Ukraine is one of the main exporters of grain — of wheat, corn, buckwheat and sunflower oil — the implications of this war will be really hard, and we will feel it not only this year but also in coming years, three to five years at least. We already started sowing campaigns in almost all regions of Ukraine, but because of a huge mine decontamination mission there, it is very insecure for our farmers to perform sowing campaigns. But they already started doing this, even in the Zaporizhzhia region close to the front line. They’re performing their duty in helmets and vests.

The problem is not only with the sowing campaigns. We have an acute shortage of fuel, which is required for sowing campaigns, and it will be required for harvesting. Russian troops are trying to shell our railway stations, and they are focusing on the main railway complex. They destroyed a lot of grain storage as well, so we need to find out how we can store grain before we export it.

We also have very limited logistics capacity right now from the south and southeast because our Black Sea ports are blocked by Russian troops and mines. And to be figuring out alternative logistics routes can be really different from looking at the south in Romania. You’re looking at Poland, and you’re trying to figure out alternative routes with the European Union, using multimodal connections such as grain cargo lorries and, of course, seaports.

We get what we can see. If COVID-19 worsens world hunger, this war will have even more effects. According to the first quarterly report of FAO (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) for crops and production for harvest, already 44 countries in the world are experiencing hunger; almost plus seven countries have been added to this list.

Projections for the harvest season in Ukraine are still very high. But as I said before, this situation is really complex with logistics, and we do not know how it will unfold and how we can harvest. So, sowing campaigns have started, and we will try to do our best to provide the world with the grain and to keep the world food security on the same and stable level, but we need help — and need to see how we can solve our problems.

VOA: There is a lot of talk about Ukraine entering the European Union. Is Ukraine ready for it? Do you see this as an opportunity and possibility?

Vasylenko: Ukraine is already a part of the huge and complex logistic partnership of Europe, and we are already one of the biggest trading partners of the European Union. And I think this situation is an opportunity to simplify procedures for both partners. And this is an opportunity.

VOA: What do you mean, “this situation”?

Vasylenko: I mean, it’s a given situation. Because, you know, their integration into the European Union, and the trade agreement with the European Union, it took us years to proceed with it, and we were very, like, step by step integration with different types of quotas for different types of trade commodities, even in terms of food production. Yes, it’s for the grain, for oil, for poultry. For example, two years ago, we started this quarter to increase it for, for Ukrainian poultry.

VOA: That was a big issue, right?

Vasylenko: It was a big issue, but we made it. And I think that both partners benefited from it. If we take a look at Ukrainian production in terms of European legislation and in terms of European expectation, even in terms of the European Green Deal, our production is already much, much more sustainable than European because we are not using so many different types of plant protection for our crops.

Ukraine is a transit country. It’s always been a transit country. And this is the moment when we can really use all these transport corridors, and Europe can really see how Ukraine can add value to the trades and to different types of economies.

Food system production is very complex. It’s logistics. It’s production, produce and manufacturing, growing, harvesting, planting, everything. And it’s really important for communities, for the environment.

VOA: When we are talking about storing the grain and maybe helping to demine the fields and give more technical support, my understanding is that the Russians are stealing a lot of equipment from Ukraine. What are your expectations, and what is the relationship you have right now with the world’s biggest companies that provide equipment for agriculture? 

Vasylenko: Well, I would say in terms of demining, the problem is really huge. And we are working on the demining problem on different levels with our international organizations and with the government on a bilateral level. And EU and NATO countries, they are already providing help. They are sending teams for demining. And I think this process already started, and it will unfold very rapidly.

You’re absolutely right, a lot of our equipment was stolen, and things for information technology. We can identify where it is and, if we can, switch it off.

Private foundations — for example, Howard G. Buffett Foundation — really are focused on food security and resolving military conflict. They are working hard to provide us with different types of equipment for planting and harvesting — for combines, for tractors, for drilling machines. So we can use it, and we can help.

I’m not talking about the big companies in Ukraine; I’m talking about small and medium farmers who have around 150 to 300 hectares. They can really benefit from all the stuff that can be provided by private donors or by private companies.

VOA: One more issue you’re working on is humanitarian work for Ukraine, coordination. How is it going? What exactly does Ukraine need?

Vasylenko: We established a working mechanism of communication and coordination between the Ukrainian government and our partners on multilateral and bilateral levels, of course. We established effective logistics to the Ukrainian border and within Ukrainian borders. On a weekly basis, we are providing our partners with updates on what Ukraine needs in terms of general needs for civilians and specific needs.

Each government party provides us with a list of needs. We clarify it with them and then provide it as a request for our partner countries through different types of mechanisms — for example, the civil protection mechanism, which works within the EU’s borders and through EADRCC (Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre). It’s a NATO mechanism. They provide more specific help.

In terms of priorities and in terms of help, I would like to divide it into two groups. I mean, like goods, it can be medicine, equipment — generators, etc. — and services. In terms of goods, we, on a very constant and a systematic basis, are providing our needs. We provide an exact consignee who receives these needs, so we can definitely deliver tracking information for our partners when they request it. So we are working hard to make this process more transparent.

Already we have several logistic hubs in the cross-border countries — Slovakia, Romania and Poland, of course. Poland is the biggest one. Where they are, all the operations are performed by the government of the cross-border country, which is really effective, and we can easily make customs clearance, we can sort everything. For example, in Romania, we already established a mechanism, thanks to our Israeli and American partners, with QR codes, so you can track where a pallet is going. It’s good information for our partners so they can see that the assistance is really delivered to those in need. So we are working really hard to make the system effective.

Nobody expected war in the center of Europe in the 21st century, and this is a huge crisis for all institutions. Even for U.N. system institutions, this is a huge crisis. And we can see how they are struggling with the bureaucracy, but struggling to help us. Ukraine is absolutely different from where they have worked before.

Ukraine is a developed country. We have an operating government, we have established logistics within our borders so we can deliver goods by ourselves, and we can work as an equal partners. And I would say that on the 17th day of war, we already reached this point where they understood the situation, and they are willing and they are collaborating.

VOA: Are you getting what you need?

Vasylenko: Definitely, in different volumes, we’re receiving different types of goods. Yes, we have certain problems with the clearing of proposals of the donor countries, but we are trying hard with this communication process to deliver accurate information about our needs and to help them clear those proposals for help.

But we need more because the war, unfortunately, is continuing, and we still have a lot of problems with food for civilians, with medicine. As the summer is approaching, we also need to start working, and we already started to, again, for the water purification systems and water purification tools, because we need to provide fresh water, clean water to our citizens so we can avoid this communicable disease spread.

VOA: The United States government is sending additional money to help Ukraine. A lot of that money will go through USAID (United States Agency for International Development). How is your relationship with American humanitarian assistance and U.N. humanitarian assistance? Are you getting what you need?

Vasylenko: Well, we are in close collaboration with USAID. We have a constant conversation on what is needed and how it can be provided. They are providing us with different types of services.

I think that this support can be and could be and should be increased because the humanitarian catastrophe that we already experienced will be much bigger. Because this is not only about how they can help during the war. We also need to think how they can help postwar. And this is something that we need to start building like already.

In terms of U.N., yes, I see that they started the process of providing what is needed, and they started this communication and consultation with the Ukrainian government to be more precise about the help that they providing. For example, WFP (World Food Program).

VOA: Are you saying it’s on the developing level?

Vasylenko: I would say it’s on a development level because they were not prepared for the Ukrainian war. This is a huge difference from all of the conflicts that they were involved in before. And they really needed to adjust. And because it’s a huge system, very bureaucratic, it really took time, but they started coping with this problem.

And WFP also now started delivering bigger amounts of help for those people in need. They are focusing on the south and southeast regions, and they are trying to reach those regions, and they are succeeding. And this is a huge help because under the flag of the U.N., it’s much easier to provide humanitarian assistance for those in need in the occupied territories.

And this is something that we need. We need to show the people of Ukraine that the government of Ukraine is working hard to help them and support them, and that they cannot be victims to Russian propaganda and cannot be used by Russian troops as a living shield.

So for us this is the highest priority: that the people of Ukraine will understand that the government is caring and trying to find solutions to help and support and advocate.

I really appreciate the work of U.N. agencies on establishing humanitarian corridors. We can see the recent success, and hopefully it will be a very sustainable process. And we definitely hope that we can provide help, together with them, to our civilians who are stuck in occupied cities.

VOA: In terms of corridors and delivering goods, do you see enough workers on the ground? I heard a lot of concerns about the security situation, obviously, and maybe there is a way to hire Ukrainians to work for those agencies, maybe. What kind of cooperation are you looking for to better assist each other?

Vasylenko: I think that you are absolutely right. We need to increase the number of people on the ground, and international agencies need to work with local people because local people know better. This is something that we are thinking not only in terms of the people on the ground, for minor work, like sorting and delivering goods. But this is something that we’re thinking in terms of the greater scale. We’re thinking that we definitely need to use resources of U.N. to train Ukrainian people so they can run the process and build the processes because Ukrainians know their country better and they can adjust accordingly.

But using the high standards of training of U.N. personnel and NATO will be a great benefit for U.N. and for Ukraine, because if we have high-profile employees trained accordingly to those high standards, and they can deliver, I will say it will be a huge success. Not only for something specialized, like demining training and training for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) helpers, but also something high-profile: managers that can really manage the situation.

VOA: This crisis will not be over soon, and the war is ongoing. The Russians have started bombarding delivery facilities and train railway stations and so on — logistics hubs. How long do you think the international community should be ready to help? And should they be ready for the long run?

Vasylenko: Well, definitely they should be prepared for the long run. So this is a marathon.

I would say it’s an ultramarathon for all of us. We cannot predict how the enemy will behave. We cannot predict what they will do. But what we definitely can predict is that Ukraine will win, and Ukraine is standing for all the democratic values of the world, and the world should be ready to run this marathon for Ukraine. And this is not only about humanitarian assistance. And this is not only about a humanitarian catastrophe. This is also — we are a huge economy.

We are an integrated part of the world economy. And if we are suffering, the world will also feel the implication of this suffering.

Yes, the world needs to think, as I said before, in terms of humanitarian assistance. This is not only about delivering the goods but also about helping the people of Ukraine regain what was lost. And this is something that we need to think not only in terms of mental health support, because all people are under a huge stress.

We need to think about how to help Ukrainians start small businesses and microbusinesses so they can support the economy, how to train them, how to encourage them. The small and micro entrepreneurs are a backbone of the big economy. Small entrepreneurs can provide help for their local communities, and we need to help them to source it and to establish their small and micro enterprises. And this is something that the world can help with.

A lot of countries that were working before with Ukraine — Sweden, U.K., Canada —were focusing on the support of small entrepreneurs.

A project of Canada, supported by SURGe Victory Gardens, is working with small local communities to provide them with vegetables and berries so they can eat something that they’ve grown on their land. And they can serve it and share it with the community and then hire people who lost their jobs.

And this is not only about the money. This is also about gaining dignity because you can provide for yourself. You’re feeling like an established person. Because a lot, a lot, a lot of people lost their homes. They lost everything. They lost families; they lost businesses. Some lost not only a family business, but they left their homes barefoot. And this is something that can help them regain dignity.

VOA: Thank you.
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Looping in the air at lightning speed, Turkish drones like those used against Russian forces in Ukraine draw cheers from the crowd at an air show in Azerbaijan.

Turkey is showcasing its defence technology at the aerospace and technology festival Teknofest that started in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku this week.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to attend Saturday.

Turkey’s TB2 drones are manufactured by aerospace company Baykar Defence, where Erdogan’s increasingly prominent son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar is chief technology officer.

On Wednesday, Bayraktar flew over Baku aboard an Azerbaijani air force Mikoyan MiG-29 plane. One of his combat drones, the Akinci, accompanied the flight.

A video showing Bayraktar in command of the warplane, dressed in a pilot’s uniform decorated with Turkish and Azerbaijani flag patches, went viral on social media.

“This has been a childhood dream for me,” Bayraktar told reporters after the flight.

Proximity to ‘threats’

Turkey’s drones first attracted attention in 2019 when they were used during the war in Libya to thwart an advance by rebel commander, General Khalifa Haftar, against the government in Tripoli.

They were then again put into action the following year when Turkey-backed Azerbaijan in recapturing most of the land it lost to separatist Armenian forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijani audience members at the aviation festival applauded during a display of TB2 drones, which are now playing a prominent role against invading Russian forces in Ukraine.

A senior official from the Turkish defense industry said his country was facing a wide spectrum of “threats,” including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Islamic State group jihadists.

The PKK is listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

But with NATO allies — including the United States — having imposed embargoes on Turkey, Ankara was forced to take matters into its own hands to build defense equipment, the official told AFP.

“The situation is changing now with the war in Ukraine,” the official said.

Turkey has been looking to modernize its air force after it was kicked out of the F-35 fighter jet program because of its purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system.

But Ankara’s role in trying to mediate an end to the Ukraine conflict through direct negotiations may have helped improve its relations with Washington in the past months.

In April, US President Joe Biden’s administration said it now believed that supplying Turkey with F-16 fighter jets would serve Washington’s strategic interests.

Exports to 25 countries

Michael Boyle, of Rutgers University-Camden in the United States, said Turkish drones such as Bayraktar TB2 drones were “increasingly important to modern conflicts because they have spread so widely.”

For years, leading exporters like the United States and Israel limited the number of countries they would sell to, and also limited the models they were willing to sell, he told AFP.

“This created an opening in the export market which other countries, notably Turkey and China, have been willing to fill,” added the author of the book The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and Peace.

The Turkish official said Turkey has been investing in the defense industry since the 2000s, but the real leap came in 2014 after serious investments in advanced technologies and a shift towards using locally made goods.

While Turkey’s export of defense technologies amounted to $248 million in early 2000, it surpassed $3 billion in 2021 and was expected to reach $4 billion in 2022, he said.

Today Turkey exports its relatively cheap and effective drones to more than 25 countries.

Boyle said these drones could be used “for direct strikes, particularly against insurgent and terrorist forces, but also for battlefield reconnaissance to increase the accuracy and lethality of strikes.”

“So they are an enabler of ground forces, and this makes them particularly useful for countries like Ukraine which are fighting a militarily superior enemy,” he said.  
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U.S. military officials acknowledge they have spoken to Ukrainian officials repeatedly about Kyiv’s requests for newer, more advanced weapons that could help stave off Russian gains in the Donbas but refuse to say publicly whether those systems will be delivered anytime soon.

Ukraine has been pleading for weeks with the U.S. to get American-made Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, or MLRS, which are more powerful and more maneuverable than the howitzers and other artillery systems Washington and the West have provided to date.

Those pleas have only gotten louder as Russian forces have pushed ahead in eastern Ukraine, making what senior U.S. defense officials have described as “incremental gains” in a fight that has largely featured artillery and other so-called long-range fire.

“We’re mindful and aware of Ukrainian asks privately and publicly for what is known as a Multiple Launch Rocket System,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters. “But I won’t get ahead of a decision that hasn’t been made yet.”

“We’re in constant communication with them about their needs,” he added. “We’re working every single day to get weapons and systems into Ukraine, and every single day there are weapons and systems getting into Ukraine that are helping them, literally, in the fight.”

There are some indications, however, that U.S. officials may be ready to send Ukraine MLRS to help push back the latest Russian offensive.

Tilt indicated

Multiple U.S. officials, speaking to CNN on the condition of anonymity, said the Biden administration is leaning toward sending some MLRS to Ukraine, with an announcement possible in the next week.

Later Friday, two U.S. officials speaking to Politico confirmed that the U.S. is inclined to send MLRS to Ukraine but said a final decision has not yet been made.

The United States has two multiple launch rocket systems — the M270 and M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Both fire similar 227 mm rockets. The M270 can fire up to 12 rockets, while the more agile M142 can fire up to six.

Depending on the type of rocket, the M270 can hit targets as far away as 70 kilometers, which is twice the range of the U.S. howitzers currently in Ukraine’s arsenal. The HIMARS system can hit targets as far away as 300 kilometers.

Ukraine’s top military official, Lieutenant General Valery Zaluzhny, on Thursday took to Telegram, calling for “weapons that will allow us to hit the enemy at a big distance.” 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by warning that supplying Ukraine with weapons that could reach Russian territory would be a “a serious step towards unacceptable escalation.”

The debate over how best to supply Ukraine with weapons comes as Russian forces in eastern Ukraine appeared to be making more progress despite what U.S. military officials described as stiff resistance from Ukrainian troops.

Lyman, Sievierodonetsk

Russian-backed separatists Friday claimed to have captured the center of Lyman, a key railway hub in the Donbas.

Other Russian forces encircled most of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city under Ukrainian control, with some reports indicating Russian forces are also now in the city itself.

Ukrainian officials in Sievierodonetsk said 90% of the city has been destroyed by shelling. But Luhansk regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai remained defiant in a message Friday on social media.

“The Russians will not be able to capture Luhansk region in the coming days as analysts have predicted,” he said. “We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves.”

But Gaidai also admitted “it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Friday that Russia is carrying out “an obvious policy of genocide” against Ukrainians, but the “catastrophic developments” in Ukraine could have been avoided “if the strong of the world had not played with Russia, but really pressed to end the war.”

Zelenskyy said Russia “receives almost a billion euros a day from Europeans for energy supplies,” while “the European Union has been trying to agree on a sixth package of sanctions against Russia.”

He asserted, however, that “Ukraine will always be an independent state and will not be broken.” The only remaining questions, he said, are “what price our people will have to pay for their freedom” and what price Russia will have to pay “for this senseless war against us.”

No hint of negotiations

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday spoke by phone with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. According to Nehammer, Putin offered to complete natural gas deliveries to Austria and to discuss a prisoner swap with Ukraine.

“The Russian president has given a commitment that there must be and should be access to the prisoners of war, including to the International Red Cross,” the Austrian chancellor said. “On the other side, of course, he also demands access to Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine.”

However, Nehammer said he was doubtful Putin was interested in any negotiations to end the war.

“I have the impression that Putin wants to create facts now that I assume he will take into the negotiations [later],” he said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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In a small orthopedic clinic in Kyiv, Daviti Suleimanishvili listens as doctors describe various prostheses that could replace his left leg, torn off during the battle for Mariupol.

Born in Georgia but with Ukrainian citizenship, Suleimanishvili — whose nom de guerre is “Scorpion” — is one of countless people who have lost arms or legs in the war and now impatiently awaiting a replacement limb.

A member of the Azov regiment, he was based in the city of Mariupol, which underwent a relentless battering by Russian forces for three months before the last troops at the Azovstal steelworks finally laid down their arms last week.

He was badly wounded on March 20 when a Russian tank located about 900 meters away fired in his direction.

“The blast threw me four meters and then a wall fell on top of me,” he said, saying he was also hit by shrapnel. “When I tried to stand up, I could not feel my leg. My hand was injured and a finger was gone.”

Carried by his comrades into a field hospital in the heart of the sprawling steelworks, his leg was amputated just below the knee.

He was then evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Dnipro in central Ukraine.

Two months later he’s getting around with crutches and hopes to soon have a prosthetic leg fitted, funded by the Ukrainian government.

“If possible, I want to continue serving in the army and keep fighting,” he said. “A leg is nothing because we’re in the 21st century and you can make good prostheses and continue to live and serve.

“I know many guys in the war now have prostheses and are on the front lines.”

Resources needed

On Wednesday afternoon, he had his first consultation with the medics who will fit him with a new limb.

Inside the clinic at a rundown building in Kyiv, a dozen specialists are making prosthetic limbs inside a workshop covered in plaster, while in the consultation rooms, doctors are considering which might be the right model for each of their patients.

But Suleimanishvili’s case is not so straightforward.

One suggests a vacuum-attached prosthesis in which a pump draws out the air between the residual limb and the socket, creating a vacuum; another pushes for a different type of attachment which he says would be better for war-time conditions, that is “stable, flexible and easy to clean.”

“There were almost no military people two weeks ago, but now they’re coming,” explained Dr. Oleksandr Stetsenko, who heads the clinic.

“They weren’t ready before as they needed to be treated for injuries to other parts of their bodies.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in mid-April that 10,000 soldiers had been wounded while the United Nations has given a figure of more than 4,600 injured civilians.

Amplitude Magazine, a specialist American publication aimed at amputees, said Ukraine would need significant resources.

“To assist the hundreds or thousands of Ukrainian amputees who reportedly need treatment, aid volunteers will need to work from centralized locations that are well stocked,” it said.

However, “there are a limited number of such clinics within Ukraine, and the supply chains that serve them are spotty at best.”

‘Up and running in weeks’

Stetsenko said Ukraine has around 30 facilities that made prostheses, with his clinic normally producing around 300 every year. The clinic won’t be able to step up production because each prosthesis is “customized” to suit the injury and needs of each patient.

In the case of Suleimanishvili, who is a gunner, the doctors will add 15 kilograms to the weight of his new leg so it can support his use of heavy weaponry.

“I want the prosthetic so I can do most maneuvers,” he insisted.

In a week’s time, Suleimanishvili will be back to have a temporary prosthesis fitted so he can start learning to walk.

“In two or three weeks, he will be running,” another doctor, Valeri Nebesny, told AFP, saying that like Suleimanishvili, “90%” of military amputees want to get back to the battlefield as quickly as possible.
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When Mick North’s 5-year-old daughter was gunned down at her school, he vowed through his grief that it must never happen again.

And it hasn’t — in Britain, at least. The 1996 massacre of 16 elementary school students in Dunblane, Scotland, led to a ban on owning handguns in the U.K. While Britain is not immune to gun violence, there have been no school shootings in the quarter century since.

The deep-rooted gun culture in the United States makes similar action unlikely in the wake of the killing of 19 students and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas.

North, who helped set up Britain’s Gun Control Network after his daughter Sophie was killed, said his reaction to the Uvalde killings was “shock, but no surprise.” He knows like few others just what the Uvalde families are going through and says “my sympathy is not going to make them feel better. And it’s just dreadful. It’s just dreadful.”

Carrying four guns

North’s life was shattered on March 13, 1996, when Thomas Hamilton, 43, entered the gym at Dunblane Primary School in central Scotland, where a class of 5- and 6-year-olds was assembled. The former Scout leader killed 16 children and a teacher with four handguns before shooting himself. An additional 12 children and two teachers were wounded.

Public horror at the slaughter, and campaigning by bereaved families that put pressure on politicians, brought about rapid change to Britain’s gun laws.

Soon after the carnage, a small group of local mothers launched what became the “Snowdrop Campaign” — named after the only flower in bloom at that time of spring — and began a petition demanding a ban on private ownership of handguns.

The movement quickly gained momentum across the country, and campaigners eventually took boxes full of paper signed by some 750,000 people to politicians in London.

“I think our strength was in numbers,” said Rosemary Hunter, one of the campaign’s founders. Her 3-year-old daughter was at a nursery in Dunblane when the shooting occurred. Hunter said “the mood in the country was so overwhelmingly in support of the change that it was not difficult to overcome” opposition from gun advocates.

“I don’t know how you translate that to a country where there are more guns than people,” Hunter said of the United States. “In many ways it’s quite overwhelming to think that people are going through what we went through here in our town. And it’s happened so, so many times.”

Like Uvalde, Dunblane is a small town, where many of the 9,000 residents know one another. For those who lived there in 1996 — including tennis star Andy Murray, then a 9-year-old pupil at Dunblane Primary School — the pain has never completely faded. Murray responded to the Texas shooting with a tweet labeling it “madness.”

The year after the Dunblane shooting, and with the support of both Conservative and Labour politicians, Parliament passed new laws to ban private ownership of almost all handguns in Britain. Gun owners surrendered more than 160,000 weapons under a government buyback program.

Britain had banned semiautomatic weapons a decade earlier after a 1987 shooting rampage in Hungerford, England, that left 16 adults dead. People can still own shotguns and rifles with a license.

Other responses

Other countries have also responded to mass shootings by toughening laws. Canada imposed stricter checks on gun buyers and clamped down on military-style weapons — but did not ban them — after the 1989 slaying of 14 female students by a misogynist killer at L’Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal.

A month after Dunblane, a gunman armed with two semiautomatic assault rifles killed 35 people and wounded 23 in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Within two weeks, Australia’s federal and state governments had agreed to standardize gun laws with a primary aim of getting rapid-fire weapons out of public hands.

In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass gun homicides in Australia, defined as at least four dead victims. Since then, there have been three such shootings.

But for the pain in Texas to translate into a national reckoning with gun violence would take a major political shift in the United States, where the right to bear arms is embedded in the Constitution and efforts to tighten laws after past massacres have foundered.

“Nothing has happened [in the U.S.] since Columbine and the other school shootings that followed shortly after Dunblane, when we started being asked, ‘Well, what would you recommend Americans do?’ ” North said. “We thought, well, follow our example. Try and change and tighten gun legislation after a tragedy. But it never happened.”

While President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for stricter gun laws — with Biden stating that “the Second Amendment is not absolute” — Republican politicians and the National Rifle Association say issues such as mental health are the problem, not access to firearms.

Looking to youth

Jack Crozier, 28, lost his sister Emma in the Dunblane attack and now campaigns for gun control. He has traveled to the U.S. to meet American activists and thinks change will have to come from young people, like the survivors of a 2018 school shooting that killed 14 students and three staff in Parkland, Florida.

“Kids are not willing to grow up like this and go to school in fear anymore,” he said. “The kids in Parkland are now studying in universities and college, and they are the youth campaigners that can change things.”

He said the families in Uvalde “have the support of every single family in Dunblane.”

“The people of Dunblane stand with you.”
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Dutch Airline KLM has announced it was temporarily stopping ticket sales for most of it flights from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport through Sunday, due to the airport’s ongoing crowding issues caused by staff shortages.

In a statement Thursday, the airline said it is taking the action to guarantee seats for customers whose flights had been cancelled due to the long security lines at Schiphol.   The airline said the restrictions do not apply to premium bookings. 

Air France-KLM spokesperson Gerrie Brand said Thursday, “KLM is putting a brake on ticket sales for flights leaving up until and including Sunday because Schiphol can’t get its security problems fixed.” Amsterdam is KLM’s hub city, and it is the largest airline serving the airport.

Schiphol, one of Europe’s busiest airports – has been experiencing extremely long security lines in recent weeks due to a shortage of security personnel, as well as labor issues earlier in this year.

Lines routinely run out of the building and onto the street with customers reporting wait times as long as six hours, resulting in missed flights. Media reports say Monday alone more than 500 flights were delayed from Schiphol, while over 50 were cancelled.  

Airport officials said Thursday they are working to recruit more security staff before the summer holidays begin, while it would also work with airlines to guarantee better planning of flights during the busiest weeks.

The airport said it was also in talks with unions about higher wages for security personnel.

Some information for this report was provided by the Reuters news agency.

 
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