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World

In a first, EU moves to cut money for Hungary over damaging democracy

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  • EU executive proposes taking 7.5 billion euros from Hungary
  • Says remedies proposed by Hungary could work if well implemented
  • 27 EU countries have three months to decide, no veto
  • EU tests new democracy sanction for the first time

BRUSSELS, Sept 18 (Reuters) – The European Union executive recommended on Sunday suspending some 7.5 billion euros in funding for Hungary over corruption, the first such case in the 27-nation bloc under a new sanction meant to better protect the rule of law.

The EU introduced the new financial sanction two years ago precisely in response to what it says amounts to the undermining of democracy in Poland and Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban subdued courts, media, NGOs and academia, as well as restricting the rights of migrants, gays and women during more than a decade in power.

“It’s about breaches of the rule of law compromising the use and management of EU funds,” said EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn. “We cannot conclude that the EU budget is sufficiently protected.”

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He highlighted systemic irregularities in Hungary’s public procurement laws, insufficient safeguards against conflicts of interest, weaknesses in effective prosecution and shortcomings in other anti-graft measures.

Hahn said the Commission was recommending the suspension of about a third of cohesion funds envisaged for Hungary from the bloc’s shared budget for 2021-27 worth a total of 1.1 trillion euros.

The 7.5 billion euros in question amounts to 5% of the country’s estimated 2022 GDP. EU countries now have up to three months to decide on the proposal.

Hahn said Hungary’s latest promise to address EU criticisms was a significant step in the right direction but must still be translated into new laws and practical actions before the bloc would be reassured.

CORRUPTION

Orban’s government proposed creating a new anti-graft agency in recent weeks as Budapest came under pressure to secure money for the ailing economy and forint, the worst-performing currency in the EU’s east.

Orban, who calls himself a “freedom fighter” against the world view of the liberal West, denies that Hungary – an ex-communist country of some 10 million people – is any more corrupt than others in the EU.

The Commission is already blocking some 6 billion euros in funds envisaged for Hungary in a separate COVID economic recovery stimulus over the same corruption concerns.

Reuters documented in 2018 how Orban channels EU development funds to his friends and family, a practice human rights organisations say has immensely enriched his inner circle and allowed the 59-year-old to entrench himself in power.

Hungary had irregularities in nearly 4% of EU funds spending in 2015-2019, according to the bloc’s anti-fraud body OLAF, by far the worst result among the 27 EU countries.

Orban has also rubbed many in the bloc the wrong way by cultivating continued close ties with President Vladimir Putin and threatening to deny EU unity needed to impose and preserve sanctions on Russia for waging war against Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/hungary-orban-balaton/

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Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by David Evans

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Taiwan quake: Tsunami warnings issued after 6.9-magnitude earthquake

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Japan’s Meteorological Agency has issued a tsunami warning for Miyako island in the East China Sea following the quake, which hit the Yujing district in rural Taiwan and had a depth of 10 kilometers.

Photos showed collapsed buildings in southern Taiwan following the powerful earthquake. The USGS initially registered it at 7.2, before downgrading it to 6.9.

Three people are trapped under the rubble of one building, the island’s official Central News Agency (CNA) reported. A fourth person was rescued.

About 20 passengers were evacuated after a train derailed in the area, but there were no casualties from the incident, the Taiwan Railway Administration said.

Kolas Yotaka, a former presidential spokeswoman who is running for local elections in Hualien county, said that damages were also reported at a local school.

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EU calls for war crimes tribunal over Ukraine mass graves | Russia-Ukraine war News

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The European Union has called for a war crimes tribunal as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said new evidence of torture has been found as more bodies are exhumed from a mass burial site in a town re-taken from Russian forces.

Jan Lipvasky, foreign minister of the Czech Republic which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said on Saturday that Russia’s attacks “against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent” in the 21st century.

“We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” he wrote in a message on Twitter. “I call for the speedy establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression.”

The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities of about 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izyum, with some of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture.

Zelenskyy, in his daily evening address, said “new evidence of torture was obtained” from the bodies buried there.

“More than 10 torture chambers have already been found in various cities and towns liberated in Kharkiv region,” he added, describing the discovery of electrical implements for torture.

“That’s what the Nazis did. This is what Ruscists do. And they will be held accountable in the same way – both on the battlefield and in courtrooms,” he said, using the term “Ruscists” for “Russian fascists”.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kharkiv, said the situation in Izyum looks “gruesome on many levels”.

“Izyum is now a desolate city, completely destroyed. There’s barely a building that hasn’t been at least partially damaged, and I’m talking about civilian targets here – apartment blocks, schools, pharmacies, the church – a very desolate picture,” Abdel-Hamid said.

“It’s a place where you see the real toll of this war. It’s a city that has been besieged, that has been bitterly fought between the two sides. It’s now firmly under Ukrainian control. You see the soldiers roaming the streets, but there’s barely any sign of life.”

‘Probably 1,000 tortured and killed’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the mass graves likely provided more evidence that Russia is committing war crimes in its pro-Western neighbouring country. French President Emmanuel Macron described what had happened in Izyum as atrocities.

The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said there were “probably more than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region”.

The United Nations in Geneva has said it hopes to send a team to determine the circumstances of the deaths.

The macabre discoveries came a little more than five months after the Russian army, driven out of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, left behind hundreds of corpses of civilians, many of whom had signs of torture and summary executions.

On Thursday, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to face the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden meanwhile warned his Russian counterpart against using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the wake of serious losses in his war in Ukraine.

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” Biden said, in an excerpt from an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes aired on Friday evening.

“You would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” Biden said.

The US response would be “consequential,” he said, but declined to give detail. Russia “would become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been,” he added. “Depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur.”

Russian government officials have dismissed Western suggestions that Moscow would use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but it remains a worry for some in the West.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the “director of the CIA in April warned Congress that there’s a possibility that President Putin could deploy nuclear devices”.

“It’s also important to note that President Putin in 2020 signed a Russian military doctrine, which states clearly that Russia will use nuclear devices if other countries utilise nuclear devices against them, but then – and this is the key point – it could also respond with nuclear weapons to the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened,” Hanna said. “Many military experts do not see a possibility of Putin using a nuclear weapon. However, many say that this does not rule out the fact that he may threaten the use, in other words, to escalate, to de-escalate, to get out the parties to the negotiating table.”

‘Pushing them back’

On the ground, Ukrainian forces have recaptured thousands of square kilometres in recent weeks, thanks to a counteroffensive in the northeast, and now threaten enemy positions in the south, as the fighting and bombings continue.

The Russians “are angry because our army is pushing them back in its counteroffensive”, said Svitlana Shpuk, a 42-year-old worker in Kryvyi Rih, a southern town, and Zelenskyy’s hometown, which was flooded after a dam was destroyed by Russian missiles.

Synegubov said an 11-year-old girl had been killed by missile fire in the region.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine which has been partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, said on social media that a thermal power plant was “shelled by Russian invaders” on Saturday morning in Mykolaivka.

Ukrainian firefighters were battling the blaze, he said, adding that the Russian shelling had led to interruptions to drinking water supply.

“The occupiers are deliberately targeting infrastructure in the area to try to inflict as much damage as possible, primarily on the civilian population,” he charged.

He had earlier reported that two civilians had been killed and 11 wounded in the past 24 hours by Russian fire.

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World

Biden arrives in London two-day visit honoring the Queen

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Biden is joining leaders from dozens of other nations to pay their respects to the late sovereign, whom he met last year and declared afterward reminded him of his own mother.

On Sunday afternoon, the President and first lady Jill Biden will pay their respects to the Queen, whose coffin has been lying in state at Westminster Hall, before signing a book of condolence and attending a reception for visiting leaders hosted by Britain’s new king, Charles III.

For Biden, it is a moment to reflect on a monarch who embodied a commitment to public service and whose life charted the major historical events of the last 100 years.

Biden and the Queen first met in 1982, when as a young senator, Biden’s own Irish American mother instructed him: “Don’t you bow down to her.”

He didn’t bow down then, or when he met the Queen as President last year while attending a Group of 7 summit in England. But his respect for a woman whose constancy on the world stage over the last century was unparalleled has been plain.

“She was a great lady. We’re so delighted we got to meet her,” Biden said on the day that she died.

The Queen’s surprise decision last year to travel to the Cornish coast to meet world leaders at the G7 summit was a signal of her desire to remain engaged in global affairs.

Later that week, when she hosted Biden and first lady Jill Biden for tea at Windsor Castle, she inquired about two authoritarian leaders, Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia, the President told reporters afterward.

“She had such curiosity. She wanted to know all about American politics, what was happening. So, she put us at ease,” Jill Biden said recently in an interview with NBC.

At Sunday evening’s reception, Biden will see Charles for the first time since he became King. The two men have met previously and spoke last week by phone.

As Prince of Wales, Charles was a passionate campaigner for certain issues Biden has also championed, including combating climate change. It remains to be seen how involved the new King will be on those issues going forward.

Relatively close in age — Charles is 73, Biden is 79 — the two men have a shared experience of being in the public eye for decades before assuming their current roles as heads of state.

On his call with the King, Biden “conveyed the great admiration of the American people for the Queen, whose dignity and constancy deepened the enduring friendship and special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom,” the White House said. “President Biden conveyed his wish to continue a close relationship with the King.”

Security in the British capital is at its highest level in memory as Biden and dozens of other world leaders convene to remember the late Queen, who met 13 sitting US Presidents during her reign.

White House aides have declined to provide specific security details for the President’s visit but say they are working well with their British counterparts to ensure the demands of presidential security are met.

Plans for the Queen’s funeral have been in place for years, allowing US advisers greater insight into precisely what will happen over the coming days as they make security arrangements. The White House said it received an invitation only for the President and first lady, making for a slimmed-down American footprint.

Biden traveled with his national security adviser, communications director and other personal aides aboard Air Force One to London.

When reports emerged last week that world leaders would be required to ride on a bus to the funeral, US officials were skeptical and shot down the suggestion Biden that would travel to Westminster Abbey in a coach.

In 2018, when other world leaders traveled together in a bus to a World War I memorial in Paris, then-US President Donald Trump traveled separately in his own vehicle. The White House explained at the time that the separate trip was “due to security protocols.”

The Queen’s death came at a moment of economic and political turmoil for the United Kingdom. A new prime minister, Liz Truss, entered office after months of uncertainty following the decision of her predecessor, Boris Johnson, to step down.

Truss invited several visiting world leaders to meet individually at 10 Downing Street this weekend. In the role for only a little more than a week, it will be Truss’ first time meeting face to face with many of her foreign counterparts.

While her office initially said Biden would be among the leaders visiting Downing Street, it was later announced that Truss and the President would meet for formal bilateral talks on Wednesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

A host of issues are currently testing the US-UK “special relationship,” which has been heralded repeatedly in the days since the Queen’s death.

It was only two days after Truss traveled to Balmoral Castle in Scotland to formally accept the Queen’s appointment as prime minister that the long-reigning monarch passed away. Since then, the country has been in a formal period of mourning.

Truss inherited a deep economic crisis, fueled by high inflation and soaring energy costs, that has led to fears the UK could soon enter a prolonged recession. The challenges have been aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has caused volatility in oil and gas markets.

While few in the Biden administration shed tears at Johnson’s resignation– Biden once described him as the “physical and emotional clone” of Trump — the US and the UK were deeply aligned in their approach to Russia under his leadership.

White House officials expect that cooperation will continue under Truss, even as she comes under pressure to ease economic pressures at home.

Less certain, however, is whether Truss’s hard-line approach to Brexit will sour relations with Biden. The President has taken a personal interest in the particular issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit arrangement that requires extra checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The rules were designed to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland open and avoid a return to sectarian violence. But Truss has moved to rewrite those rules, causing deep anxiety in both Brussels and Washington.

Biden, who makes frequent references to his Irish ancestry, has made his views clear on the issue, even though it does not directly involve the United States. Congressional Democrats have similarly expressed concern over any steps that could reignite the Northern Ireland conflict.

In their first phone call as counterparts earlier this month, Biden raised the matter with Truss, according to the White House. A US readout of their conversation said they discussed a “shared commitment to protecting the gains of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and the importance of reaching a negotiated agreement with the European Union on the Northern Ireland Protocol.”

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World

China lost its Yangtze River dolphin. Climate change is coming for other species next

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“The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was this unique and beautiful creature — there was nothing quite like it,” said Samuel Turvey, a British zoologist and conservationist who spent more than two decades in China trying to track the animal down.

“It was around for tens of millions of years and was in its own mammal family. There are other river dolphins in the world but this one was very different, so unrelated to anything else,” Turvey said. “Its demise was more than just another species tragedy — it was a huge loss of river diversity in terms of how unique it was and left huge holes in the ecosystem.”

Experts have expressed grave concern that other rare native Yangtze animal and plant species are likely to suffer a similar fate to the baiji river dolphin as worsening climate change and extreme weather conditions take their toll on Asia’s longest river.

China has been grappling with its worst heat wave on record and the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world, is drying up.
With rainfall below average since July, its water levels have plunged to record lows of 50% of their normal levels for this time of year, exposing cracked river beds and even revealing submerged islands.
The drought has already had a devastating effect on China’s most important river, which stretches an estimated 6,300 kilometers (3,900 miles) from the Tibetan plateau to the East China Sea near Shanghai and provides water, food, transport and hydroelectric power to more than 400 million people.
The human impact has been enormous. Factories were shut to preserve electricity and water supplies for tens of thousands of people have been affected.

Less talked about, experts say, is the environmental impact that climate change and associated extreme weather events have had on the hundreds of protected and threatened wildlife and plant species living in and around the river.

“The Yangtze is one of the world’s most ecologically critical rivers for biodiversity and freshwater ecosystems — and we are still discovering new species yearly,” said conservation ecologist Hua Fangyuan, an assistant professor from Peking University.

“Many of the little (known) and unknown fish and other aquatic species are most likely facing extinction risks silently and we simply do not know enough.”

Hundreds of species at risk

Over the years conservationists and scientists have identified and documented hundreds of wild animal and plant species native to the Yangtze.

Among them are the Yangtze finless porpoise which, similar to the baiji, faces extinction due to human activity and habitat loss, and critically endangered reptiles like the Chinese alligator and Yangtze giant softshell turtle — believed to be the largest living species of freshwater turtle in the world.

Experts have also noticed a drastic decline of many native freshwater species of fish, like the now extinct Chinese paddlefish and sturgeon.

At high risk is the Chinese giant salamander, one of the largest amphibians in the world. Wild populations have crashed, Turvey the zoologist said, and the species is “now on the verge of extinction.”

“Although they are a protected species, Chinese giant salamanders are under greater threat from climate change — increasing global temperatures and droughts will definitely do it no good when it is already extremely vulnerable,” Turvey said.

“They have for a long time faced threats like poaching, habitat loss and pollution but when you add climate change into the mix, their chances of survival become drastically thin,” he added.

“They can only live within freshwater environments and lower water levels would inevitably place greater pressure on their numbers across China.”

A problem for the world

Nature conservation groups like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) say the Yangtze’s plight is a major concern not only for the Chinese people and government, but also for the wider international community.

“Rivers around the world, from Europe to the United States, have declined to historically low flow levels that are negatively impacting ecosystems,” said its lead scientist Jeff Opperman.

“Reduced river flow and warmer waters in the Yangtze are a threat to freshwater species and increase pressure on already critically endangered animals like the remaining Yangtze finless porpoises and Chinese alligators left in the wild. Lower river levels also impact the health of (nearby) lakes and wetlands, which are vital to millions of migratory birds along the East Asian Flyway.”

Hua, the conservation ecologist, said more public awareness and greater efforts were needed to help China’s shrinking great river. “Humans depend on nature for survival, period. This is a lesson for any civilization,” she said.

“The Yangtze is the longest river in China and (all of) Asia and has long been a cradle of civilization. Despite severe conservation threats and losses over the years, there is still much biodiversity to conserve in and along the Yangtze.”

Few would deny the importance and symbolism of the Yangtze. But experts say unless action is taken — and soon — more species will follow the fate of the baiji and Chinese paddlefish.

Turvey, the British zoologist, warned against the sort of complacency that allowed the baiji to disappear.

“The Yangtze was a jewel in Asia’s crown. There is still so much biodiversity to fight for and we must not give up hope for saving species like giant salamanders, river reptiles and others,” Turvey said.

“If there’s anything we can learn from the death of the Yangtze River dolphin, it’s that extinction is forever and we can’t afford to take it lightly.”

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World

8 endangered Namibian cheetahs arrive in India

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who was celebrating his 72nd birthday — was there to welcome the cheetahs to their new home. “A long wait is over,” Modi wrote on Twitter alongside pictures of the cats in their new environment.

Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952 and are the only large carnivore in the country to have suffered that fate.

But the endangered cats used to have a much larger range. Historically, cheetahs roamed throughout the Middle East and central India as well as most of sub-Saharan Africa. Habitat loss, poaching, and conflict with humans have greatly reduced their populations.

There are now less than 7,000 cheetahs left in the wild, says the WWF. In Iran, there are just 12 adult cheetahs in the wild.
The release of the eight animals is part of a larger plan to reintroduce the cats to their former range. In January, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced in a news release that the government planned to release 50 cheetahs into Indian national parks over the next five years.
The group that arrived in Kuno consists of three male and five female adult cheetahs from Namibia, according to a news release from the CCF. Each cheetah was vaccinated, fitted with a satellite collar and kept in isolation at the fund’s location in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, according to the release.

The animals chosen for the 11-hour trek were selected “based on an assessment of health, wild disposition, hunting skills, and ability to contribute genetics that will result in a strong founder population,” says the organization.

It took a multi-step journey to get the cats from Namibia, on Africa’s southwestern coast, to central India. On Friday, the cheetahs traveled from the CCF’s center to the Hosea Kutako International Airport in Windhoek, Namibia. Then, they took a private jet to Jaipur, India. Finally, on Saturday the cats were taken to Kuno National Park and released into their new home.

“As a conservationist, I am thrilled, and as CCF’s leader, I am exceptionally proud of the work of our CCF reintroduction team,” Laurie Marker, the founder and executive director of the CCF, said in the release. “Without research and dedication to cheetah conservation, this project could not take place.”

Jhala Yadvendradev, dean of the Wildlife Institute of India and principal scientist for India’s Project Cheetah, said that the project will benefit India’s ecoystems at large — not just cheetahs.

“Bringing back a top predator restores historic evolutionary balance, resulting in cascading effects, leading to better management and restoration of wildlife habitat, for the benefit of all species, and will uplift the livelihoods of poor forest dwelling communities,” Yadvendradev said in the release.

A previous attempt to bring African cheetahs to Kuno National Park in 2012 was halted by India’s Supreme Court, which suggested that introducing a non-native species was problematic and warned the there might not be enough prey in the park to keep them fed.

SP Yadav, Director General of Project Cheetah, said India has worked to prepare the park over several years, through anti-poaching measures and boosting the amount of prey.

However, Faiyaz Khudsar, a conservation biologist who worked at the Kuno National Park for around eight years, is concerned the cheetahs may still not have enough to eat.

“If naturally you build up the population of the prey base and then you bring in a new species or predator, it’s sustainable. (But if you bring in a) prey base from somewhere else … I don’t know which direction it will go after six months or a year,” Khudsar told CNN.

Khudsar also said the cheetahs would have competition from aggressive other predators like leopards.

But Adrien Tordiff, associate professor at the University of Pretoria, who has been involved with Project Cheetah since 2020, said the cheetahs from South Africa had been selected with the National Park’s other creatures in mind.

“Because they’re going into areas where there’s quite a high leopard density, we wanted animals that are really quite wild and very used to being with other large carnivores, lions, leopards and so on. So they’re not naïve of those carnivores, and they can avoid them, they can defend themselves against them, they’re really aware of what they are and the risks that they pose to them,” Tordiff told CNN.

India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change believes that bringing cheetahs back to India “will likely result in better conservation of open forest, grassland, and scrub ecosystems for which they will serve as a flagship species.”

The Indian government believes the factors that led to the cheetah’s extinction within the country — primarily hunting and habitat loss — have “abated.”

Under the British Raj, forests were cleared to develop settlements and set up plantations, resulting in the loss of habitat for big cats, such as the cheetah. Considered less dangerous than tigers and relatively easy to tame, cheetahs were also frequently used by Indian nobility for sport-hunting.

According to Jhala, the last cheetahs were shot in 1947, shortly before they were officially declared extinct.



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Queen Consort Camilla’s moving TV tribute to the woman who asked a nation to embrace her | UK News

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The Queen Consort is to pay a personal televised tribute to the late Queen, recalling her “wonderful blue eyes” and saying: “I will always remember her smile.”

Camilla will speak of how Queen Elizabeth II carved out her own role for many years in the “difficult position” of being a “solitary woman” in a male-dominated world.

“I can’t remember anyone except the Queen being there,” the Queen Consort will add, being among the majority of the nation for whom, until now, the Queen was the only British monarch they had ever known or could recall.

The Queen Consort’s tribute to her mother-in-law is set to be aired on Sunday – the eve of the Queen’s state funeral – on the BBC, shortly before the national minute’s silence at 8pm.

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Royals hold meeting at palace

Queen’s grandchildren stand vigil around her coffin; funeral to be shown on big screens across UK – all latest news, live

Camilla will say: “She’s been part of our lives forever. I’m 75 now, and I can’t remember anyone except the Queen being there.

“It must have been so difficult for her, being a solitary woman.

“There weren’t women prime ministers or presidents. She was the only one, so I think she carved her own role.”

Image:
The Queen and now Queen Consort Camilla on a visit to Dumfries House in Cumnock together in 2014

Remembering the late monarch, Camilla will add: “She’s got those wonderful blue eyes, that when she smiles they light up her whole face.

“I will always remember her smile. That smile is unforgettable.”

On the eve of her Platinum Jubilee in February 2022, Queen Elizabeth endorsed the then Duchess of Cornwall as “Queen Consort” when the time came, saying it was her “sincere wish”.

She called on the public to back both her daughter-in-law and Charles when he became King.

It was a shrewd move from the monarch, in her twilight years, setting her affairs in order and ensuring as smooth a transition as possible.

It ended years of debate over what Camilla – Charles’s former mistress – would eventually be called.

Camilla was blamed for the breakdown of the prince’s marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, and, when news of their affair first came to light, she faced vitriolic criticism.

Image:
King Charles III and his Queen Consort at Westminster Hall, London, following the Queen’s death

But in the decades after the Waleses’s divorce, the untimely death of Diana in 1997 and Camilla’s acceptance into The Firm, the public mood towards the former Mrs Parker Bowles has softened.

Following her wedding to Charles in 2005, Camilla very gradually took on a more prominent position within the Royal Family, including riding next to the Queen in her Diamond Jubilee carriage procession in 2012.

Crowned Queen?

She also began to attend the state opening of parliament and was made a privy counsellor in 2016 ahead of the Queen’s official 90th birthday.

The Privy Council is a formal body of advisers to the UK Sovereign.

When addressed in full, she is now referred to as Her Majesty, Queen Consort Camilla, and is expected to be crowned Queen at the King’s coronation.

Image:
Watch and follow the Queen’s funeral on TV, web and apps on Monday from 9am

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World

Camilla to pay tribute to Queen in TV broadcast | Camilla (Queen Consort)

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The Queen Consort is to pay a televised tribute to the Queen on Sunday, praising her for carving out her own role for many years while being in the “difficult position” of being a “solitary woman” in a male-dominated world.

In prerecorded words, she will also recall the late monarch’s “wonderful blue eyes” and say: “I will always remember her smile.”

The Queen Consort’s tribute to her mother-in-law is to be broadcast shortly before the national minute’s silence at 8pm.

Camilla will say: “She’s been part of our lives for ever. I’m 75 now and I can’t remember anyone except the Queen being there. It must have been so difficult for her being a solitary woman.

“There weren’t women prime ministers or presidents. She was the only one so I think she carved her own role.”

Remembering the late monarch, Camilla will add: “She’s got those wonderful blue eyes, that when she smiles they light up her whole face. I will always remember her smile. That smile is unforgettable.”

Two of the Queen’s granddaughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, also paid their own tribute to their grandmother prior to participating in a vigil ceremony with her six other grandchildren, keeping watch over her coffin in Westminster Hall.

The sisters, who are the daughters of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, said there had been “tears and laughter, silences and chatter, hugs and loneliness, and a collective loss for you, our beloved Queen and our beloved grannie”.

Their statement said: “We’ve not been able to put much into words since you left us all. We, like many, thought you’d be here for ever. And we all miss you terribly.

“You were our matriarch, our guide, our loving hand on our backs leading us through this world. You taught us so much and we will cherish those lessons and memories for ever.

“For now dear grannie, all we want to say is thank you.”

Agencies contributed to this report

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Ukrainian strikes on Russian towns puts pressure on Putin

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After a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeast of the country, the messy war that Russian President Vladimir Putin started is now being fought directly on his doorstep, with artillery strikes hitting military targets in Russia and Russian officials in cities and towns along the border ordering hasty evacuations.

On Saturday, a new round of strikes hit the Belgorod region in Western Russia, killing at least one person and wounding two.

On Friday, Ukraine reportedly struck the base of the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division near Valuyki, just nine miles north of the Russia—Ukraine border. Russian officials did not acknowledge that a military target was hit but said one civilian died, and the local electrical grid experienced a temporary disruption.

Russia blamed the attacks on Ukraine, but Kyiv did not claim responsibility for striking targets in Russian territory.

Kyiv has assured U.S. officials that donated weapons would not be used to strike targets inside Russia proper. But Ukrainian forces are now so close to the border that they can hit targets using their own less-advanced weaponry.

That Russian citizens are starting to seriously feel the impact of the war directly is another new source of pressure on Putin, who returned home this weekend from a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan where he faced a remarkable public rebuke by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and questions about the war from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In a stunning public rebuke, Modi told Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this.” That followed an acknowledgment by Putin that he had heard “concerns and questions” about the war from the Chinese president.

Torture, killings, abductions: Russian retreat from Izyum reveals horrors

Ukraine has made stunning advances in the Kharkiv region, in the northeast of the country, in the past two weeks. During its advances, it has also uncovered hundreds of mass graves and stories of Russian forces terrorizing residents in the liberated city of Izyum.

Ukrainian officials have cited the gains and the evidence of torture and killings to reiterate pleas for modern battle tanks and other heavily armored vehicles which NATO allies have been slow to send.

Modi rebukes Putin over war in Ukraine

Valuyki and Krasny Khutor are among dozens of small settlements in Russia that the Russian military uses as a staging ground, putting them in the middle of Moscow’s faltering invasion and Kyiv’s mounting counteroffensive.

The local governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, has ordered the evacuation of hundreds of people and shut down schools in border towns over the past months. But now the authorities in Belgorod are under increasing pressure from unnerved residents who are experiencing what many Ukrainians have lived with for months: nighttime explosions, destroyed homes and sometimes casualties.

“I’m asking once again, where is our army, the one that must be protecting us?” Belgorod resident Tatyana Bogacheva wrote on Gladkov’s VKontakte social media page. “We are on the border; they are shooting at us, so we need an army and protection. Who will wake up the President?”

Russian forces have been depleted after battlefield blunders and are scrambling to find personnel and working equipment to hold their ground in northeastern Ukraine. A recent hasty retreat from Izyum and Balakliya as well as concerns among local Russians who fear the war is coming home appear to have prompted Moscow to reinforce the border with young conscripts.

Russian soldiers who had been conscripted to serve in the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Regiment of the Taman Division as part of this year’s spring draft are reportedly being transferred from the Moscow region to “protect the state border.”

The BBC Russian Service, citing the families of troops, reported that many conscripts in the Taman Division had died at the beginning of the invasion and those who survived were returned to the Russian territory. But instead of returning to headquarters in Naro-Fominsk near Moscow, they were stationed in Valuyki. The new group of conscripts is supposed to replace those who are due to be demobilized in October, the BBC said.

According to Russian laws, conscripts can’t be sent into battle unless they have at least four months of training. Putin has repeatedly denied that Russia is using conscripts in Ukraine. But the country’s defense ministry acknowledged as early as March that some had been mistakenly sent to fight.

Russia’s problems along the border are drawing criticism from staunch pro-Kremlin quarters inside Ukraine as well. “I am curious whether the Russian leadership is going to somehow react to the constant shelling of Russian territory?” Igor Girkin, a hard-line former commander of separatists in Ukraine, lamented in his Telegram blog. “Or do I understand correctly that the Kremlin no longer considers the Belgorod region to be the territory of Russia?”

The war also appears to be weakening Russia’s capacity to put out fires to the south, in the region the Kremlin has long considered its backyard.

This week, for example, Armenia sought Russia’s help amid a renewed Azerbaijani attack on its border towns, according to the country’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, who formally appealed to the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a regional security alliance of post-Soviet states, including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

But the response so far has been slow and tepid, perhaps undermining Armenia’s trust in Moscow as an ally and in the CSTO as a reliable security broker.

Azerbaijan and Armenia exchange fire in Nagorno-Karabakh border zone

Azerbaijan is not part of the CSTO but is backed by Turkey, an essential mediator in the Ukrainian war. Azerbaijan accused Armenia of “provocations” in the border area, something Yerevan denies.

More than 200 officers have been killed on both sides this week, in what turned into the deadliest confrontation since the six-week war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.

On Friday, in a face-to-face meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev said the border conflict had “stabilized,” and a cease fire had been in place for the last three days.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she plans to make a weekend visit to Armenia.

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World

‘Look, these are our boys’: Ukrainian troops drive Russian tanks on new front line

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September 17, 2022 at 4:28 p.m. EDT

Vehicles are seen on and around a damaged bridge in Kupyansk. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

KUPIANSK, Ukraine – The front line is now a river, the Oskil, that runs through the middle of the eastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk. On one side are the charging Ukrainian forces who have pushed their Russian enemies almost entirely out of the northeastern Kharkiv region during a sweeping counteroffensive this month.

From her bedroom window, Liza Udovik, 26, has a view of the other side, to where the Russians have retreated. The sound of outgoing fire from the Ukrainians rocked her apartment these past few days, when the Ukrainian military moved into Kupiansk and the town became a battleground. Russian tanks and armored vehicles still patrol the streets, but it’s the Ukrainians driving them, using the Russians’ own abandoned weapons against them.

Udovik started counting the seconds between hearing the deafening boom of artillery launched and the appearance of smoke in the distance. From just Tuesday to Wednesday, the gap got longer, stretching from 9 seconds to 13.

“They’re getting pushed back,” she said with a smile.

The Oskil became a shield for the Russians on Sept. 9. As the Ukrainians closed in, the invading forces crossed the bridge and blew it up behind them to slow Kyiv’s advance. And Kupiansk was suddenly cut off from its second half. The next morning, 55-year-old Lena Danilova stared in confusion at the Ukrainian vehicles driving down the town’s streets. A man next to her tugged on her sleeve, pointing out the different uniforms on the soldiers now patrolling the area.

“Look, these are our boys,” he whispered to her. Danilova said she wiped away tears of joy.

“Finally,” she said. But then she had a sick realization. Two of her children were stuck on the other side of the river. They had gone to attend a school there just days before. Now it’s the line where the Russians are desperate to stop Ukraine’s hard-charging advance further south, into the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

After Kupiansk was captured without a fight just three days into the war, the town was at least spared Russian bombardment. Now people here are confronting some of the horrors of war that other Ukrainians lived through months ago. They waited and hoped for Ukrainian liberation, many said, but they didn’t imagine it would be like this: the threat of Russian shelling, no power in the city and no way to get basic medicines. Locals packed their most essential belongings quickly and evacuated in a rush with volunteers this week, evoking images of the first days of the war.

Valya, 58, left behind her cats. Bowls of water lined the floor of her apartment, and she left a key with her friend to feed them.

With only Russian state television channels, a Kremlin propaganda tool, available in Kupiansk for the past six months, people were cut off from independent news about what was happening in Ukraine. The Russian government prohibits media from even naming this a war, preferring to call it a “special military operation,” and information is tightly controlled.

While evacuating with her mother, Udovik was asked if she knew about the atrocities Russian soldiers committed against civilians in Bucha, including torture and killings – what had been major international news in April. Udovik shook her head.

“Bucha?” Udovik said. “I think I heard something about it, but I’m not sure.” The Russian channels she sometimes watched focused instead on how Europe might be facing an energy crisis this winter with Russian natural gas flows cut, she said.

People spoke in hushed voices about what transpired during occupation because they say a portion of the population is sympathetic to Moscow, and if the Russian soldiers return, then neighbors could inform on neighbors. Udovik’s own family was torn apart by it. Her grandmother stopped speaking to her sister after she hung a Russian flag outside her home.

On Feb. 27, just three days after Russia launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion, Kupiansk’s mayor, Gennady Matsegora, posted a video on Facebook admitting that he surrendered the city over to the Russian military. Matsegora was a member of Ukraine’s pro-Russian party.

“Today at 7:30 a.m. the commander of a Russian battalion called to propose negotiations,” he said. “If declined, the city would be stormed ‘with all the consequences.’ I decided to take part in the talks to avoid casualties and destruction in the city.”

Udovik, who considers herself a Ukrainian patriot, acknowledged that Matsegora will almost certainly be considered a traitor. But her own feelings are complicated.

“For citizens of course, that decision probably did save lives,” she said. “We didn’t hear these explosions we hear now. In the beginning it was quiet, but we knew that eventually, this would all start.”

The Russians used Kupiansk as the seat of their occupation government. A propaganda radio station, called “Kharkiv-Z” – the letter “Z” has become a symbol of the Russian military – blared through local shops. Residents could only make calls to Russia. Even without formal annexation, the town became so integrated into Russia that Udovik even had a relative visit from Vladivostok, the Far East Russian city near the North Korean border. The Moscow-established authorities advertised that people could receive Russian passports.

Danilova said she was forced to send her children to school, even though she knew Russian curriculum would be taught. People were threatened that if they didn’t, their parental rights could be revoked. Others said they feared the strict 8 p.m. curfew because there were rumors of people disappearing if they were caught outside past time.

The Russians had used Kupiansk as a transport hub, moving hundreds of tanks and armored personnel vehicles through it and toward what was then the front line. Some of those same vehicles are back – trophies of the Ukrainian military using the equipment Russians left behind during their retreat.

On Thursday, as the sounds of outgoing fire reverberated through the town, shells crashing on the liberated side of the river were scarcely heard – a sign that Russians’ ammunition depots could be depleted after Ukrainian strikes and a quick withdrawal that forced them to abandon or destroy much of it.

On the road into Kupiansk, the Ukrainians were transporting pontoon bridges, preparing to cross the river and continue their advance. The sign announcing the town, painted white, red and blue — the colors of the Russian flag — was torn down and in ruins.

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