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World

US doubts new Russian war chief can end Moscow’s floundering

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia has tapped a new Ukraine war commander to take centralized control of the next phase of battle after its costly failures in the opening campaign and carnage for Ukrainian civilians. U.S. officials don’t see one man making a difference in Moscow’s prospects.

Russia turned to Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, 60, one of Russia’s most experienced military officers and — according to U.S. officials — a general with a record of brutality against civilians in Syria and other war theaters. Up to now, Russia had no central war commander on the ground.

The general’s appointment was confirmed by a senior U.S. official who not authorized to be identified and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said, “no appointment of any general can erase the fact that Russia has already faced a strategic failure in Ukraine.”

“This general will just be another author of crimes and brutality against Ukrainian civilians,” Sullivan said. “And the United States, as I said before, is determined to do all that we can to support Ukrainians as they resist him and they resist the forces that he commands.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki echoed that thought. “The reports we’re seeing of a change in military leadership and putting a general in charge who was responsible for the brutality and the atrocities we saw in Syria shows that there’s going to be a continuation of what we’ve already seen on the ground in Ukraine and that’s what we are expecting,” she said.

The decision to establish new battlefield leadership comes as Russia gears up for what is expected to be a large and more focused push to expand Russian control in Ukraine’s east and south, including the Donbas, and follows a failed opening bid in the north to conquer Kyiv, the capital.

Dvornikov gained prominence while leading the Russian group of forces in Syria, where Moscow has waged a military campaign to shore up President Bashar Assad’s regime during a devastating civil war.

Dvornikov is a career military officer and has steadily risen through the ranks after starting as a platoon commander in 1982. He fought during the second war in Chechnya and took several top positions before being placed in charge of the Russian troops in Syria in 2015.

Under Dvornikov’s command, Russian forces in Syria were known for crushing dissent in part by destroying cities, lobbing artillery and dropping what were often crudely made barrel bombs in sustained attacks that have displaced millions of Syrian civilians. The United Nations says the more than decade-long war has killed more than 350,000 people.

In 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Dvornikov the Hero of Russia medal, one of the country’s highest awards. Dvornikov has served as the commander of the Southern Military District since 2016.

Lt. Col. Fares al-Bayoush, a Syrian army defector, said Sunday that while the situation in Syria is different than in Ukraine because the Russian military was fighting insurgent groups and not Ukraine’s professional army, he expects a similar “scorched-earth” strategy.

Al-Bayoush said he believes the aim of naming Dvornikov as Ukraine war commander is to turn the war into “rapid battles” in several places at the same time.

“I expected him to use the scorched earth policy that was used in Syria,” al-Bayoush said, referring to Russian-backed attacks in Syria in which cities and towns were put under long sieges while being subjected to intense bombardment that left many people dead and caused wide destruction to infrastructure and residential areas. “He has very good experience in this policy.”

“This commander is a war criminal,” al-Bayoush said by telephone from Turkey.

Since Russia joined the war in Syria in September 2015, Assad’s forces have taken control of most of the country after being on the verge of collapse. The Russian air force carried out thousands of airstrikes since, helping Russian-backed Syrian troops take areas after fighters were forced to choose between an amnesty in return for dropping their arms or being taken by buses into rebel-held areas.

The last major Russian-backed offensive in Syria lasted several months, until March 2020, when a truce was reached between Russia and Turkey, which supported rival sides.

Sullivan on Sunday said the Russian general has a record of brutality against civilians in Syria and “we can expect more of the same” in Ukraine. But he stressed that the U.S. strategy remains the same in supporting Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Our policy is unequivocal — that we will do whatever we can to help Ukraine succeed,” Sullivan said. “Which means that we need to keep giving them weapons so that they can make progress on the battlefield. And we need to keep giving them military support and strong economic sanctions to improve their position, their posture at the negotiating table.

In an interview Saturday with The Associated Press, Zelenskyy acknowledged that despite his hopes for peace, he must be “realistic” about the prospects for a swift resolution given that negotiations have so far been limited to low-level talks that do not include Putin.

Zelenskyy renewed his plea for more weapons before an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east. He said, with frustration in regards to supplies of weapons from the U.S. and other Western nations, “of course it’s not enough.”

Sullivan spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press. Psaki spoke on ”Fox News Sunday.”

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Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

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French Election Live Updates: Macron Faces Strong Challenge From Le Pen

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Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

VERSAILLES, France — The French, it is said, vote with their hearts in the first round and with their heads in the second.

But voters in diverse cities near Paris appeared to use both when casting their ballots on Sunday, further evidence that France’s two-round voting system encourages unusually strategic thinking.

Twelve candidates were on the ballot. But with polls showing that the second round will most likely be a rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, voters were already thinking of the showdown set for April 24.

In Versailles, a center of the conservative Roman Catholic vote, the center-right candidate, Valérie Pécresse, was the local favorite. But she was in the single digits in most polls.

After voting at City Hall, a couple who gave only their first names — Karl, 50, and Sophie, 51 — said they had voted for Éric Zemmour, the far-right TV pundit who ran an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign.

“I’m in favor of selective immigration, instead of the current situation where we have immigrants who are seeking to take advantage of the French system,” said Karl, who works in real estate. He added that he had voted for Mr. Macron in 2017, but that he had been disappointed by the president’s policies toward immigration and his failure to overhaul the pension system.

This time, he and Sophie, a legal consultant, said they would support Ms. Le Pen in the runoff because they believed that she had gained credibility.

For Grégoire Pique, 30, an engineer concerned about the environment, his choice had been Yannick Jadot, the Green candidate. But with Mr. Jadot languishing in the polls, Mr. Pique endorsed the longtime leftist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, ranked third in most polls.

In the second round, Mr. Pique said, he planned to reluctantly vote for Mr. Macron to block Ms. Le Pen.

“I don’t like this principle,” he said, “but I’ll do it.”

About 10 miles from Versailles, in Trappes, a working-class city with a large Muslim population, similar calculations were taking place.

Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

Georget Savonni, 64, a retired transportation worker, said he voted with his heart for Ms. Pécresse, even though he knew that she had little chance of making it into the second round. Two Sundays from now, he said, he planned to vote reluctantly for Mr. Macron, also to stop Ms. Le Pen.

“I agree with most of Macron’s economic programs, and I feel he handled the pandemic very well,” Mr. Savonni said. “But I feel he doesn’t respect people and that he’s arrogant.”

Bilel Ayed, 22, a university student, wanted to support a minor left-leaning candidate, but endorsed Mr. Mélenchon, the leading candidate on the left. In the second round, he said, even though he believed that Ms. Le Pen, as president, would be far more terrible for France than Mr. Macron, he was unable to forgive the president for what he said was a crackdown on personal freedoms, like the violent suppression of the anti-government Yellow Vest movement.

“I’m not voting in the second round,” he said. “I’m staying home.”

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World

China makes semi-secret delivery of missiles to Serbia

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BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.

Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.

The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.

The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China’s growing global reach.

“The Y-20s’ appearance raised eyebrows because they flew en masse as opposed to a series of single-aircraft flights,” wrote The Warzone online magazine. “The Y-20′s presence in Europe in any numbers is also still a fairly new development.”

Serbian military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that “the Chinese carried out their demonstration of force.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic all but confirmed the delivery of the medium-range system that was agreed in 2019, saying on Saturday that he will present “the newest pride” of the Serbian military on Tuesday or Wednesday.

He had earlier complained that NATO countries, which represent most of Serbia’s neighbors, are refusing to allow the system’s delivery flights over their territories amid tensions over Russia’s aggression on Ukraine.

Although Serbia has voted in favor of U.N. resolutions that condemn the bloody Russian attacks in Ukraine, it has refused to join international sanctions against its allies in Moscow or outright criticize the apparent atrocities committed by the Russian troops there.

Back in 2020, U.S. officials warned Belgrade against the purchase of HQ-22 anti-aircraft systems, whose export version is known as FK-3. They said that if Serbia really wants to join the European Union and other Western alliances, it must align its military equipment with Western standards.

The Chinese missile system has been widely compared to the American Patriot and the Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems although it has a shorter range than more advanced S-300s. Serbia will be the first operator of the Chinese missiles in Europe.

Serbia was at war with its neighbors in the 1990s. The country, which is formally seeking EU membership, has already been boosting its armed forces with Russian and Chinese arms, including warplanes, battle tanks and other equipment.

In 2020, it took delivery of Chengdu Pterodactyl-1 drones, known in China as Wing Loong. The combat drones are able to strike targets with bombs and missiles and can be used for reconnaissance tasks.

There are fears in the West that the arming of Serbia by Russia and China could encourage the Balkan country toward another war, especially against its former province of Kosovo that proclaimed independence in 2008. Serbia, Russia and China don’t recognize Kosovo’s statehood, while the United States and most Western countries do.

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World

100 Private Jets Owned by Russian Oligarchs Are Stuck in Dubai: Report

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  • Dozens of private jets belonging to Russian oligarchs are effectively grounded in Dubai.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported on a build-up of more than 100 planes at Dubai airports. 
  • Dubai may seem like a safe haven for luxury assets but sanctions effectively restrict their use. 

Private jets belonging to Russian oligarchs that flew to Dubai to seek refuge from sanctions, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are effectively stuck there, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

It’s caused a build-up of more than 100 planes that sit idle at Dubai airports since the war began. The Journal cited  satellite imagery and data from aerospace research firm WINGX.

According to WINGX’s website, “with 49 outbound flights in the first week of March, the Russia-UAE connection is three times busier than pre-pandemic, but just two-thirds of the outbound activity during the last week of February.” 

Satellite images shot by Earth-imaging company Planet Labs also show an accumulation of private jets from mid-February to the start of April, per The Journal.

When Russia attacked Ukraine, Western nations joined together to penalize Russia for its actions by imposing a number of sanctions. The sanctions aimed to destabilize not just the Russian economy, but some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies too. 

Many Russian oligarchs and billionaires had some of their most luxurious assets seized as a result of the sanctions.  Last month, for instance, Gibraltar seized a $75 million superyacht owned by billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky. 

Some of Russia’s richest have found refuge in places that have not imposed sanctions, including Dubai and the Maldives.

In March, four private jets were spotted leaving Moscow for Dubai, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24. Unlike Western destinations, Dubai has not banned Russian air traffic. 

However, as these jets fly to Dubai to evade sanctions, they resultantly become stuck there as Russian jet owners can’t fly them anywhere else, aviation lawyers and private jet brokers told The Journal.

“A lot of the Russian-related airplanes have moved to the UAE because you can fly in the airspace there,” Steve Varsano, CEO of a London-based sales brokerage firm for private planes, to the publication. “But once you get there you’re pretty much grounded because you can’t maintain the airplanes.”

Recently, the US Department of Commerce imposed sanctions that prevent Russian-linked aircraft from being refueled, maintained, or repaired. Major aviation companies, including Boeing and Airbus, also stopped supplying spare parts to Russian airlines as a result of the war.

Experts recently commented on sanctions against oligarchs, with one telling CNN he believed they were largely “symbolic.”

 

 

 

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World

Putin appoints new commander for Ukraine 

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In this pool photo taken on Thursday, March 17, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, poses with Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov during an awarding ceremony in Moscow’s Kremlin, Russia. (Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new general to direct the war in Ukraine as his military shifts plans after a failure to take Kyiv, according to a US official and a European official. 

The officials told CNN Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, has been named theater commander of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine   

“It speaks to a Russian acknowledgement that it is going extremely badly and they need to do something differently,” the European official said.

A new theater commander with extensive combat experience could bring a level of coordination to an assault now expected to focus on the Donbas region, instead of multiple fronts.  

Dvornikov, 60, was the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria, after Putin sent troops there in September 2015 to back the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. During Dvornikov’s command in Syria from September 2015 to June 2016, Russian aircraft backed the Assad regime and its allies as they laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, bombarding densely populated neighborhoods and causing major civilian casualties. The city fell to Syrian government forces in December 2016.  

Russian forces have used a similarly heavy-handed approach in parts of Ukraine, striking residential buildings in major cities and demolishing much of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.  

“We will see how effective that proves to be,” the European official said. “The Russian doctrine, the Russian tactics remain pretty much as they’ve been since Afghanistan.” 
“They do things in the same old way,” the official added. 

Military analysts and US officials familiar with intelligence assessments have speculated Russia’s generals have a goal of presenting Putin with some tangible battlefield progress ahead of Victory Day on May 9, when Russia observes the defeat of Nazi Germany and traditionally marks the occasion with a parade in Moscow’s Red Square.   

The European official described it as a “self-imposed deadline,” that could lead the Russians to make additional mistakes. 

But it could also potentially lead Russian forces to commit more atrocities, as allegedly happened in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha while under Russian occupation. “The stench of these war crimes is going to hang over these Russian armed forces for many years,” the official said. 

Former UK ambassador to Russia Sir Roderic Lyne told Sky News on Saturday Moscow has appointed a new general with a “pretty savage track record in Syria to try to at least gain some territory in Donetsk that Putin could present as a victory.”  

Assigning a new overall commander for Russia’s war in Ukraine may be an attempt to create a more cohesive strategy. CNN previously reported that Russia had no theater-wide commander for Ukraine operations, meaning units from different Russian military districts have been operating without coordination and sometimes at cross purposes, according to two US defense officials.  

The US has previously assessed Putin would likely name a general whose forces have been operating in Ukraine’s south because that is where the Russians have taken and held more territory, as opposed to the Russian bid to encircle Kyiv and cities in northern Ukraine, an effort that recently ended with a withdrawal. 

Ukraine’s General Staff said Friday Russian forces had completed their withdrawal from Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, while continuing a buildup of forces in the country’s east.  

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World

Battle looms in Ukraine’s east, grave found in town near Kyiv

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  • Civilian grave found near Kyiv, official says
  • Zelenskiy urges oil embargo, seeks arms
  • Johnson promises vehicles, anti-ship missiles
  • Nine trains laid on for evacuation in east, governor says

BUZOVA, Ukraine, April 10 (Reuters) – A grave with at least two civilian bodies has been found in Buzova village near Kyiv, a Ukrainian official said, the latest reported grave discovered after Russian forces withdrew from areas north of the capital to focus their assault on the east.

Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community that includes Buzova, told Ukrainian television earlier that a grave with dozens of bodies had been found in a ditch near a petrol station.

“Right now, as we are speaking, we are digging out two bodies of villagers, who were killed. Other details I cannot disclose,” Didych told Reuters by telephone.

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“There are other people who we cannot find. They could be in different places, but this doesn’t lessen the pain of the loss of loved ones.”

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the report.

Mounting civilian casualties have triggered widespread international condemnation and new sanctions, in particular over hundreds of deaths in the town of Bucha, to the northwest of Kyiv that until just over a week ago was occupied by Russian forces.

Moscow has rejected accusations of war crimes by Ukraine and Western countries. It has denied targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” its southern neighbour. Ukraine and Western nations have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for war.

Russia has failed to take any major cities since invading on Feb. 24 but Ukraine says Russia is gathering its forces in the east for a major assault and has urged people to flee.

Russia is seeking to establish a land corridor from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and the eastern Donbas region, which is partly held by Moscow-backed separatists, Britain’s defence ministry said.

Russian armed forces are also looking to strengthen troop numbers with personnel discharged from military service since 2012, it said in a regular intelligence update on Sunday.

Satellite images released by private U.S. firm Maxar dated April 8 showed armoured vehicles and trucks in a military convoy moving south toward Donbas through a town some 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Kharkiv.

Some cities in the east are under heavy shelling with tens of thousands of people unable to evacuate.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an address late on Saturday Russia’s use of force was “a catastrophe that will inevitably hit everyone.”

Natalia Titova, 62, reacts as she shows her house, which was destroyed by Russian shelling, amid Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Chernihiv, Ukraine April 9, 2022. Natalia and her family were staying in the basement, “When the rocket hit our house, we ran into the street, it was very scary” she said. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

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Ukraine was ready to fight for victory while looking for a diplomatic end to the war, he said, and renewed his appeal to Western allies for a total ban on Russian energy products and more weapons for Ukraine.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Saturday and pledged armoured vehicles and anti-ship missile systems, alongside support for World Bank loans and Britain’s commitment to move away from using Russian fossil fuels. read more

The European Union, which on Friday banned Russian coal imports among other products, has yet to touch oil and gas imports from Russia. read more

Ukraine itself late on Saturday announced a full ban on imports from Russia, its key trading partner before the war with some $6 billion in annual imports.

“The enemy’s budget will not receive these funds, which will reduce its potential to finance the war,” Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on Facebook.

Johnson was the latest foreign leader to visit Kyiv after Russian forces pulled back from the area, marking a return to some degree of normality for the capital. Italy said it planned to re-open its embassy this month.

NINE TRAINS

But in the east, calls by Ukrainian officials for civilians to flee gained more urgency after a missile struck a train station in the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, packed with women, children and the elderly trying to get out.

Ukrainian officials said more than 50 people were killed in Friday’s strike.

Russia has denied responsibility, saying the missiles used in the attack were only used by Ukraine’s military. The United States says it believes Russian forces were responsible.

Reuters was unable to verify the details of attack.

Residents of the region of Luhansk would have nine trains on Sunday to get out on, the region’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, wrote on the Telegram message service.

Russia’s invasion has forced about a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes, with more than 4 million fleeing abroad, turned cities into rubble and killed or injured thousands.

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Reporting by Reuters bureaus
Writing by Michael Perry and Tomasz Janowski
Editing by Robert Birsel and Frances Kerry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Live updates: Russia invades Ukraine

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Workers remove the remains of a missile after the strike. Kareem Khadder/CNN

Editor’s note: This post contains descriptions that may be upsetting.

Cleaning crews have arrived at the railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainians were killed by a Russian missile strike on Friday while waiting to flee fighting.

CNN saw workers wearing plastic gloves gather scattered human remains. Others looked through papers and documents that were strewn across the station. Plastic bags filled with food lay on the ground, alongside shredded hats, gloves and shoes.

Several points of impact from the strike were visible, including what appeared to have been a direct hit on a car. Pools of blood and a deceased dog, partially covered by white sheeting, lay by the tracks.

At least 50 people, including five children, were killed in the attack, Ukrainian officials said Friday, with dozens more taken to local hospitals.

The remains of the missile were picked up and transported by specialists.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike a war crime in a message on Friday, and said it would be investigated in detail. 

“This is another war crime of Russia, for which everyone involved will be held accountable,” he said, adding that Russian state propaganda had tried to blame Ukrainian armed forces for the attack.

“We expect a firm, global response to this war crime,” Zelensky said. “Like the massacres in Bucha, as well as many other Russian war crimes, the missile strike on Kramatorsk must be one of the charges at the tribunal, which is bound to happen.”

Some context: Russia’s military and senior officials have issued blanket denials of attacks against civilians, including claiming — without evidence — that the massacre of civilians in Bucha was staged. The killing of civilians during the Russian occupation of the town has been extensively documented.

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Macron faces a tough fight as France votes on Sunday

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  • Macron leads in opinion polls but Le Pen closes in
  • Voting starts at 0600 GMT, exit polls due at 1800 GMT

PARIS, April 10 (Reuters) – Voting was under way in France on Sunday in the first round of a presidential election, with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen posing an unexpected threat to President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election hopes.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and will close at 1800 GMT, when the first exit polls will be published. Such polls are usually very reliable in France.

Until just weeks ago, opinion polls pointed to an easy win for the pro-European Union, centrist Macron, who was boosted by his active diplomacy over Ukraine, a strong economic recovery and the weakness of a fragmented opposition.

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But his late entry into the campaign, with only one major rally that even his supporters found underwhelming and his focus on an unpopular plan to increase the retirement age, have dented the president’s ratings, along with a steep rise in inflation.

In contrast, the anti-immigration, eurosceptic far-right Le Pen has toured France confidently, all smiles, her supporters chanting “We will win! We will win!”.

She has been boosted by a months-long focus on cost of living issues and a big drop in support for her rival on the far-right, Eric Zemmour.

Opinion polls still see Macron leading the first round and winning a runoff against Le Pen on April 24, but several surveys now say this is within the margin of error.

In Pontaumur, a village in central France, Simone Astier, 88, said had voted for Macron but without real conviction.

“I am never satisfied because there is always something that’s not right. When I was young it was de Gaulle and for me no one has ever replaced him,” she said, referring to French post-war president Charles de Gaulle.

In Sevres, just outside Paris, 62-year-old Gnagne N’dry said he had voted for Jean-Luc Melenchon, attracted by the radical left-winger’s plans to raise the minimum wage, lower the retirement age and freeze petrol prices.

“His ideas are right for me, I am a taxi driver,” he said. “With him, I’d already be retired.”

Melenchon has been running third in opinion polls and his campaign has called on left-wing voters of all stripes to switch to their candidate and send him into the runoff.

In Paris, early voters included Anne Hidalgo, mayor of the capital and socialist presidential candidate who has been lagging far behind the front-runners in opinion polls.

RUNOFF RISKS FOR MACRON

Macron, 44 and in office since 2017, spent the last days of campaigning trying to make the point that Le Pen’s programme has not changed despite efforts to soften her image and that of her National Rally party.

Le Pen rejects allegations of racism and says her policies would benefit all French people, independently of their origins.

Assuming that Macron and Le Pen go through to the runoff, the president faces a problem: many left-wing voters have told pollsters that, unlike in 2017, they would not cast a ballot for Macron in the runoff purely to keep Le Pen out of power.

Macron will need to persuade them to change their minds and vote for him in the second round.

Sunday’s vote will show who the unusually high number of late undecided voters will pick, and whether Le Pen, 53, can exceed opinion poll predictions and come out top in the first round.

Macron and Le Pen agree the outcome is wide open.

“Everything is possible,” Le Pen told supporters on Thursday, while earlier in the week Macron warned his followers not to discount a Le Pen win.

“Look at what happened with Brexit, and so many other elections: what looked improbable actually happened,” he said.

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Additional reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro in Pontaumur, Mimosa Spencer in Sevres, Elizabeth Pineau and Michel Rose in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Gus Trompiz; Editing by Frances Kerry and Angus MacSwan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Russia-Ukraine War: Live News and Updates

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Lidiia, 85, shuffled through the Lviv train station in western Ukraine as a wave of faster-moving travelers rushed past. Bent over almost double from a spinal disorder, her eyes were on the floor as she tried to keep up with her son, a few steps ahead.

But her mind, she said, was on the village she had fled and the daughter she could not save when a Russian bombardment destroyed her house.

Before the war came, Lidiia had lived peacefully in the farming village of Dovhenke, near Izium, with her 61-year-old daughter, Iryna, who was paralyzed, and her two grandsons. Three weeks ago, the Russians starting bombing the village: the school, shops and people’s homes.

Lidiia and her son spoke on the condition their last names not be used, for fear of Russian reprisals.

At about 1:30 in the morning on March 26, Lidiia had gotten out of bed, freezing, to put more wood in the iron stove. Her daughter was asleep. They were alone. Her son, Volodia, 62, was sheltering at a friend’s house. One of her grandsons had been injured in a bombing the day before and was in a hospital. His brother was with him.

Then explosions sounded and the house started to shake. The roof came apart above Iryna.

“The ceiling fell and it all came down on her,” Lidiia said. “She was shouting, ‘Mom, save me’!”

There was no electricity. Lidiia tried to make her way in the dark toward her daughter’s bed, but she stumbled and fell.

“I got up and then I fell, I got up and fell, and then I crawled to her,” she said. “She was saying, ‘Quick, hurry up, I’m suffocating,’” Lidiia said, wiping her eyes with the edge of the mauve skirt she wore over flannel pajama bottoms.

The only light in the room came from the stars, visible through the hole in the roof, Lidiia said. She recalled painfully trying to move fallen wooden beams and chunks of clay from on top of her daughter. “She kept saying, ‘Quickly, quickly,’” Lidiia said. “I told her, ‘I can’t do it quickly. I don’t have the strength.’”

Lidiia did what she could, removing small pieces of debris covering her daughter until the sun rose. In the morning, a neighbor arrived, removed the biggest pieces of wood and rubble and wrapped Iryna in a blanket. She was still breathing but her hands and feet were blue. They took her to a relative’s house but with the shelling there was no way to get her treated.

“If she lives, she lives,” Lidiia said her doctor told her.

She died the next day.

Slow deaths like Iryna’s have received less attention than other horrors of the war — civilians who were found shot dead with their hands bound in places like Bucha or the bombing of a maternity hospital and a theater in Mariupol.

Lidiia blamed her daughters death on her hands, weakened by age and arthritis, and the curved spine that would not allow her to stand up straight.

“What can I say? My daughter perished,” she said, crying softly as she sat next to plastic bags holding her belongings. “If it weren’t for me she would have survived.”

At the train station, in the city of Lviv, the mother and son were on their way to stay with friends in Khmelnytski, in central Ukraine.

Volodia, with the expertise honed by years familiar with the conflict between Russian-backed separatists, recounted the types rockets he said rained down on their village: “They fired mortars and started to hit us with Grads, Smerch, Uragan.”

“My house was demolished, the barn was demolished. My car burned,” he said. “I had everything and now I have nothing.”

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French elections: Voters head to the polls in presidential race

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Twelve candidates, including incumbent Emmanuel Macron, are running for the top job. If none of them receives more than 50% of the ballots, the top two candidates will face each other in a runoff on April 24. But a second round is all but guaranteed — no French presidential candidate has ever won in the first round under the current system.

Macron is seeking to become the first French President to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

The centrist Macron faces a litany of challengers from the political extremes, including Marine Le Pen, the long-time standard-bearer for the French far-right; TV pundit and author Eric Zemmour; and leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Most analysts said the contest would be a referendum on the rise of the French right, but the war in Ukraine upended those expectations.

The President proposed a higher tax on diesel early in his tenure that set off the yellow vest movement, one of France’s most prolonged protests in decades. His record on the Covid-19 pandemic, the other defining crisis of his presidency, isn’t clear-cut. Macron’s signature policy during the Covid era — requiring people to show proof of vaccination to go about their lives as normal — helped increase vaccination rates but fired up a vocal minority opposed to his presidency.

Macron has so far done very little campaigning and refused to debate his opponents. Experts believe his strategy was to avoid the political mudslinging as long as possible to brandish his image as the most presidential of all the candidates.

Le Pen, for her part, has run a more mainstream campaign this year compared to her last attempt to win the presidency. While controlling immigration remains her campaign priority, she softened her anti-Islam tone and abandoned her calls for France to leave the European Union — especially in the wake of Brexit — to win over voters from outside her base.

Political analysts say Le Pen’s focus on the rising cost of living could pay dividends, as the spiking prices of everyday goods and energy are among the main concerns of the electorate.

Many experts also expected the war to hurt the Le Pen and Zemmour campaigns, as both had previously spoken fondly of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Le Pen scrapped a campaign leaflet with a photo of her visiting the Russian leader, while Zemmour backtracked after he promised Putin would never invade Ukraine.

Nathalie Loiseau, a member of the European Parliament and Macron’s first European affairs minister, told CNN she believes the French President is motivated by “a sense of duty.”

“He doesn’t do it for electoral reasons. He does it because he thinks he has to,” she said.

But Macron’s decision to forgo campaigning in lieu of seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine, whether motivated by politics or principles, could prove to be a liability.

“This is not rewarding. He will not have a big win. He knows it. But he has to do it,” said Loiseau.

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