- Trump allies disrupt 2020 election defamation case by leaking Dominion emails CNN
- ‘She did not feign ignorance’: Dominion moves to ‘promptly’ disqualify indicted ‘Kraken’ lawyer from representing ex-Overstock CEO in defamation case after discovery leak Law & Crime
- Defendant’s attorney in Dominion Voting defamation case releases company emails, risking sanctions Yahoo! Voices
- 2,000 pages of ‘confidential’ Dominion emails dumped on social media Detroit News
- Ex-Overstock CEO taps indicted pro-Trump lawyer as defense counsel in Dominion lawsuit Reuters.com
Tag Archives: disrupt
Climate Activists Disrupt Broadway’s ‘An Enemy Of The People’; Cast Member Michael Imperioli Stays In Character, Physically Confronts Protester – Deadline
- Climate Activists Disrupt Broadway’s ‘An Enemy Of The People’; Cast Member Michael Imperioli Stays In Character, Physically Confronts Protester Deadline
- ‘No theatre on a dead planet’: climate activists disrupt Jeremy Strong Broadway show The Guardian
- Climate activists halt Jeremy Strong, Michael Imperioli Broadway play ‘An Enemy of the People’ mid-show New York Post
- Protesters disrupt performance of ‘An Enemy of the People’ Broadway News
- Jeremy Strong’s ‘An Enemy of the People’ disrupted by climate protest USA TODAY
Pro-Palestinian protesters in car caravan disrupt Christmas caroling in Washington Square Park – New York Post
- Pro-Palestinian protesters in car caravan disrupt Christmas caroling in Washington Square Park New York Post
- NYC pro-Palestinian protests target major transit hubs: ‘Bring banners, bullhorns’ FOX 5 New York
- ‘No Xmas as usual’: pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate in US cities The Guardian
- ‘No Christmas as usual’: Pro-Palestinian protestors storm city streets on ‘Super Saturday’ The Hill
- Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protestors gather on 5th Avenue in Midtown, Manhattan in attempt to disrupt Christmas shopping WABC-TV
Russian oil sanctions are about to kick in. And they could disrupt markets in a big way
European oil sanctions are due to kick in on December 5. The idea is to reduce oil revenues for Russia given its war in Ukraine.
Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Upcoming sanctions on Russian oil are set to be “really disruptive” for energy markets if European nations fail to set a cap on prices, analysts warned.
The 27 countries of the European Union agreed in June to ban the purchase of crude oil from Dec. 5. In practical terms, the EU — together with the United States, Japan, Canada and the U.K. — want to drastically cut Russia’s oil revenues in a bid to drain the Kremlin’s war chest following its invasion of Ukraine.
related investing news
Goldman Sachs’ Currie says oil stocks are trading ‘far below’ their long-term trend
However, concerns that a complete ban would send crude prices soaring led the G-7 to consider setting a cap on the amount it will pay for Russian oil.
An outright ban on Russian imports could be “really disruptive” to markets, according to Henning Gloystein, director of energy, climate and resources at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
The potential for rising oil prices is “why there’s pressure from the U.S.” to agree on a cap, Gloystein told CNBC Wednesday.
A price limit would see G-7 nations buy Russian oil at a lower price, in an effort to reduce Russia’s oil income without raising crude prices across the globe.
However, EU nations have been in dispute for several days over the right level to cap prices.
The right oil cap
A proposal discussed earlier this week suggested a limit of $62 a barrel, but Poland, Estonia and Lithuania refused to agree to it, arguing it was too high to dent Russia’s revenues. These nations have been among the most vocal in pushing for action against the Kremlin for its aggressions in Ukraine.
Speaking to CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum Wednesday, the Dutch energy minister said a cap on Russian oil prices was “a very important next step.”
“If you want effective sanctions that are really hurting the Russian regime, then we need this oil cap mechanism. So hopefully we can agree on it as soon as possible,” Rob Jetten said.
On Wednesday, Russian oil traded at about $66 a barrel. Officials at the Kremlin have repeatedly said that a price cap is anti-competitive and they will not sell their oil to countries that have implemented the cap.
They’re hoping that other major buyers — such as India and China — won’t agree to the limit and so will continue to purchase Russian oil.
China and India
G-7 nations agreed to impose a limit on Russian oil back in September, and have been working on the details ever since. At the time, the EU’s energy chief, Kadri Simson, told CNBC she was hoping China and India would support the price cap too.
Both nations stepped up their purchases of Russian oil following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, benefiting from discounted rates. Their participation is seen as essential if the restrictions on Russian oil are to work.
“China and India are crucial as they buy the bulk of Russian oil,” Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute For International Economics, told CNBC.
“They won’t commit, however, for political reasons, as the cap is a U.S.-sponsored policy and [for] commercial reasons, as they already get a lot of cheap oil from Russia, so why jeopardize that? Thinking they would voluntarily join was always naive as Ukraine is not that important to them.”
India’s Petroleum Minister Shri Hardeep S Puri told CNBC in September he has a “moral duty” to his country’s consumers. “We will buy oil from Russia, we will buy from wherever,” he added.
As such, there are growing doubts about the true impact of the restrictions on Russia.
“Energy sanctions against Russia have come too late and are too timid,” Guntram Wolff, director at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said via email.
“This is just a continuation of an unfortunate series of timid decisions. The longer and later the sanctions come, the easier it will be for Russia to circumvent them.”
Exposure to blue light can up the risk of early onset puberty and even disrupt fertility
Exposure to blue light from phones and tablets in childhood can increase production of reproductive hormones and up the risk of early onset puberty and even disrupt future fertility, study finds
- Blue light exposure can increase a child’s risk of going through puberty early and having fertility issues in the future
- Researchers found that the blue light exposure increased levels of some reproductive hormones
- As a result, young girls may go through puberty earlier, carrying an increased risk of cancer and mental health issues
- Rates of precocious puberty have been increasing in the U.S. for decades to the worry of many experts
Exposure to the blue light emitted by cell phones and tablets in young age can increase a child’s risk of early onset puberty and can even damage their fertility in the future, a new study finds.
A Turkish research team found that blue light increased the levels of reproductive hormones in rats that were regularly exposed to it, causing them to go through puberty earlier and suffer changes to their ovaries that could potentially damage future fertility.
The dangers of blue light to sleep have long been explored and reported on, but experts fear that the rampant use of smartphones and tablets among the youth could be more harmful than anyone could have previously imagined.
It could also explain the jump in precocious puberty – when a child goes through puberty well before typical timing – suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions of children spent hours more each day staring at screens.
Early puberty has been linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety throughout life, and even breast and uterine cancer.
A study finds that exposure to blue light during early childhood can increase a child’s risk of going through puberty early, and also cause them long-term fertility issues. Early puberty is linked to an increased risk of mental health problems and even certain cancers later in life (file photo)
‘We have found that blue light exposure, sufficient to alter melatonin levels, is also able to alter reproductive hormone levels and cause earlier puberty onset in our rat model. In addition, the longer the exposure, the earlier the onset,’ Dr Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu said in a statement.
Researchers, who will present their findings Friday at the 60th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting, gathered 18 female rats for the study.
The rodents were split into three groups. One was placed on a normal light cycle, while the other two were exposed to either six or 12 hours of blue light each day.
In both of the blue light groups, puberty occurred significantly earlier than what would be expected.
Rats in the 12 hour group had earlier puberty than the six hour group as well, showing a correlation between increased blue light exposure and time of puberty.
The rats in the two blue light groups displayed elevated levels of oestradiol and luteinising reproductive hormones as well, which is consistent with early onset puberty.
Physical changes within the rats’ ovarian tissue was noted by the research team as well.
Researchers are unsure how consistent these findings would be with humans, but still point out a potential risk these ever-present devices can carry.
‘As this a rat study, we can’t be sure that these findings would be replicated in children but these data suggest that blue light exposure could be considered as a risk factor for earlier puberty onset,’ Uğurlu said.
The rats in the study were also found to have lower levels of melatonin than their peers – consistent with the harm that blue light has on human sleep as well.
Researchers fear that a generation of young children raised in a world where the devices are near-all-consuming will cause rates of precocious puberty to spike – carrying many negative side-effects with it.
Rates of early puberty in young girls in particular are rising, and have been for decades.
The average age of puberty in the U.S. has dropped from the typical, biologically recognized, age of 12, to 10 for females. Black and Hispanic girls in particular are going through puberty around year earlier on average.
Experts told DailyMail.com in June that America’s growing obesity crisis could be the root cause, blaming poor diets for pushing up puberty.
Others think it could be caused by violent childhoods, and there is also the theory that it is linked to imbalance of certain hormones.
There are also the negative long-term downsides, like an association between early puberty and developing cancer – which remains unexplained for now – and the traumatic experiences caused by a young girl growing up just a little too quickly.
The Turkish research team notes that rates of precocious puberty are believed to have rocketed over the past two years, and fear that the increased screen time for many children during lockdowns may have played a role.
Rise in Night Temperatures Due to Climate Change May Disrupt Sleep Patterns and Increase Mortality Rate Six-Fold by 2100
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
(IANS)
As night-time temperature climbs owing to climate change, so does your risk of death — nearly six-fold in the future — due to excessive heat that disrupts normal sleeping patterns, a new global study has warned.
Excessively hot nights caused by climate change are predicted to increase the mortality rate around the world by up to 60 per cent by the end of the century, according to researchers from China, South Korea, Japan, Germany and the US.
Ambient heat during the night may interrupt the normal physiology of sleep, and less sleep can lead to immune system damage and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic illnesses, inflammation and mental health conditions, said the study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
“The risks of increasing temperature at night were frequently neglected,” said study co-author Yuqiang Zhang, a climate scientist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US.
“The frequency and mean intensity of hot nights would increase more than 30 per cent and 60 per cent by the 2100s, respectively, compared with less than 20 per cent increase for the daily mean temperature,” said Zhang from the department of environmental sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School.
Results show that the average intensity of hot night events will nearly double by 2090, from 20.4 degrees celsius to 39.7 degrees celsius across 28 cities in east Asia, increasing the burden of disease due to excessive heat disrupts normal sleeping patterns.
This is the first study to estimate the impact of hotter nights on climate change-related mortality risk.
The findings showed that the burden of mortality could be significantly higher than estimated by the average daily temperature increase, suggesting that warming from climate change could have a troubling impact, even under restrictions from the Paris Climate Agreement.
The team estimated the mortality due to excess heat in 28 cities in China, South Korea and Japan between 1980 and 2015 and applied it to two climate change modelling scenarios that aligned with carbon-reduction scenarios adapted by the respective national governments.
Through this model, the team was able to estimate that between 2016 and 2100, the risk of death from sweltering nights would increase nearly six-fold.
This prediction is much higher than the mortality risk from daily average warming suggested by climate change models.
“From our study, we highlight that, in assessing the disease burden due to non-optimum temperature, governments and local policymakers should consider the extra health impacts of the disproportional intra-day temperature variations,” said Haidong Kan, a professor at Fudan University in China.
Since the study only included 28 cities from three countries, Zhang said that “extrapolation of these results to the whole East Asia region or other regions should be cautious”
**
The above article has been published from a wire agency with minimal modifications to the headline and text.
Protests disrupt Tour de France stage 10 before Magnus Cort Nielsen claims win | Tour de France
Senior officials from the Tour de France organisation were seen dragging climate change protestors into a ditch during the tenth stage of this year’s race from Morzine to Megeve altiport.
Despite being chained together around the neck, a small group of young protesters were dragged off the race route by tour officials. At around 36 kilometres from the finish, on a section of straight road, the protesters sat on the course and set off red flares. The stage breakaway and peloton were both halted until the road was cleared.
Climate activists from the Derniere Renovation movement said: “Since the government doesn’t care about the climate crisis, we need to come and take over the Tour de France to refocus attention on what matters for our survival. We need to make our government react as they lead us to the slaughterhouse. Non-violent disruption is our last chance to be heard and avoid the worst consequences of global warming,” the group said.
The Tour’s organisers, ASO, declined to comment on the protest. Commentating on the scene on an in-race motorbike, Sir Bradley Wiggins told Eurosport viewers: “It really was going off. It was quite crazy.
“A lot of people getting quite angry, some of the directeur sportifs got out the cars, stuck a boot in.”
The Derniere Renovation group was responsible for an interruption at the French Open tennis, when a protester jumped on to the court and tied herself to the net, wearing a T-shirt saying “We have 1,028 days left.” In the Tour protest, they were seen wearing T-shirts stating: “We have 989 days left.”
The Tour has long been the target of protests but this took place against the backdrop of the race organisers pledging their commitment to reducing their carbon footprint. This year’s ’road book,’ the manual given to all those working on the race, states that the Tour is “resolutely committed to being an increasingly eco-responsible organisation.”
In 2020, during the pandemic Tour, the race was criticised by recently elected “green” mayors in some of France’s major cities. The mayor of Lyon, Gregory Doucet, described the Tour as “macho and polluting” and lacking an environmental conscience, and there have been multiple calls for the race to further reduce its carbon footprint.
The final outcome of the race itself was put into doubt when race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Emirates team was hit by two Covid-19 positive tests, just 48 hours after all riders in the peloton were tested and declared free of the virus.
George Bennett, one of the defending champion’s key mountain support riders, and teammate Rafal Majka, both tested positive on Tuesday morning in Morzine. Bennett withdrew from the race while Majka was allowed to continue racing on the grounds that he was asymptomatic. On Saturday, another of Pogacar’s team, Vegard Stake Laengen, also tested positive and withdrew. The eight-man team that Pogacar started with in Copenhagen is now reduced to six, with Majka’s continuation uncertain.
“As per our internal protocols, Majka was tested for Covid-19 and returned a positive result this morning,” the UAE Emirates team said in a statement. “He is asymptomatic and analysing his PCR, [we] found he had a very low risk of infectiousness, similar to the case of Bob Jungels (the AG2R Citroen rider who tested positive in Copenhagen) earlier in the race.”
The Australian rider Luke Durbridge (Team BikeExchange) also tested positive and was withdrawn from the race. ASO moved to restrict media access to the team buses, or the paddock, saying that “only representatives of the UCI (jury, commissaires, anti-doping), the teams’ staff and the organisation’s personnel supervising the teams will have access to the paddock.” Access to the finish lines, for the media, remains unchanged.
Magnus Cort Nielsen (EF Education-EasyPost) won the stage in a photo finish from Nicholas Schultz, a teammate to the absent Durbridge. Lennard Kamna, of Bora Hansgrohe, one of the day’s breakaways, moved to within 11 seconds of race leader Pogacar but is expected to drop back in the next 48 hours, which includes summit finishes at Alpe d’Huez and the Col du Granon.
Proud Boys disrupt Drag Queen Story Hour event, prompting hate-crime probe
“The men were described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety,” Kelly said in a statement. In addition to the hate-crime probe, authorities have also launched an investigation of whether the Proud Boys’ actions “annoyed or harassed children,” which is a violation of the penal code.
On Monday, detectives were still investigating. They were expected to hand over any evidence to the district attorney, who will determine whether hate-crime charges should be brought against the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence.
With the Bay Area being the epicenter of the Pride movement, LGBTQ events are often uneventful and “go off without a hitch,” Kelly told The Washington Post on Monday.
“As far as hatred and being a focal point, I’ve not seen that in years past. This is kind of new,” Kelly said. He also noted that the Proud Boys members who disrupted Saturday’s reading event were not believed to be from the San Lorenzo community.
“We don’t have right-wing extremists groups that come out into the open in the Bay Area all that much,” he said. “We believe there’s a group connected in San Mateo County, so we believe these people crossed the bay for this event.”
Kelly said investigators believe the confrontation was spurred by the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, which traffics in anti-LGBTQ sentiment and propels incendiary stories into the right-wing media sphere.
Across the country, extremist groups with a far-right or white-supremacist ideology have increasingly coalesced around targeting LGBTQ events and individuals and sought to justify their attacks with false claims that gay and transgender people — and sometimes perceived ideological opponents — are preying on children.
Dulce, who is among the co-founders of the Drag Queen Story Hour program, said the men marched in making white-power hand gestures and had their “cameras blazing.”
Yesterday, a group of Proud Boys stormed a children’s story time event in San Lorenzo. It was held by the public library & Bay Area drag queen Panda Dulce. I sat down with Panda this evening to talk about the experience and will share the story tonight at 11 on @abc7newsbayarea pic.twitter.com/L8GTUupLwn
— Tim Johns (@tim_johns_) June 13, 2022
“They said: ‘Who brought the tranny? It’s a groomer. It’s a pedophile. Why do you bring your kids to this event?’” Dulce said in an interview with KGO-TV in San Francisco.
That same day in Idaho, police arrested 31 men allegedly affiliated with the white-supremacist group Patriot Front on charges that they were conspiring to riot at a local Pride event. Extremism researchers say hate groups that target LGBTQ-friendly organizations or individuals are motivated by often overlapping beliefs in hyper-masculinity and archaic gender roles, fear of people who are different and the misplaced belief queer groups are amassing power and privilege at their expense.
Over the past two years, conservative activists and lawmakers have increasingly fought over transgender and LGBTQ inclusivity and visibility in girl’s sports, school curriculums and public libraries.
Libraries throughout the United States have seen a big increase in the number of attacks and protests over inclusive reading lists or book displays in recent years, while the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has seen an overall increase in the targeting of libraries in general, said Emily Knox, who teaches at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois and serves as editor of the ALA’s Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.
Libraries are also one of the few public faces of local government where individuals feel they can be heard, Knox said. Most people don’t go to city council meetings, Knox said, but lots of people go to the library.
Story hours have long been a staple of public library programming meant to promote literacy and engage young readers, though the Drag Queen Story Hour program is organized in local chapters and hosted by a local library.
Jonathan Hamilt, executive director of Drag Queen Story Hour, said the program drew a strong positive response when it began in 2015 for bringing fun and glamour to children’s story time, though it has always experienced pushback from some conservative groups.
Over the years, however, Hamilt said, pushback has morphed to hate and is now more directed at drag culture instead of gay people overall.
“With right-wing conservatives and Republican groups, outright saying they don’t like gay people sounds homophobic. It doesn’t play well,” he said. Going after drag culture provides cover under the argument that drag queens reading to children is inappropriate or untoward.
Contrary to what Drag Queen Story Hour opponents claim, Hamilt said, the group isn’t trying to persuade or “indoctrinate” anyone. It exists for the people who want and need it, he said.
“Our program is for queer families and their allies,” he said. “It’s not our job to teach people [about] the difference between sex and gender, or to make people like us. People who are against us, no matter how much we explain what we’re doing, they’re not going to understand or listen.”
Dulce, the drag performer who was allegedly harassed by Proud Boys at the San Lorenzo Library, told KGO there’s no reason to fear or hate them.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dulce said. “I just want to tell you a story. That’s it.”
First on CNN: Biden administration launches ‘unprecedented’ operation to disrupt human smuggling as caravan moves north
The operation — which includes deploying hundreds of personnel throughout Latin America and a multi-million-dollar investment — comes as the US continues to grapple with a large flow of migrants to the US-Mexico border, including this week as a caravan of up to 5,000 migrants journeys north from southern Mexico.
“We have brought an all-of-government effort to attack the smuggling organizations. It’s not just Homeland Security Investigations, it’s not just US Customs and Border Protection. But we’re working very carefully with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a number of agencies within the Department of Justice, and, of course, our partners in Mexico,” Mayorkas told CNN.
“I think it’s scale and scope; it’s tactics and strategy. It’s really unprecedented,” he added.
Mayorkas is attending the Ninth Summit of the Americas, which is being hosted by the United States in Los Angeles. The gathering of nearly two dozen heads of states from the Western Hemisphere has focused on stabilizing the region and investing in it to, in part, stem the flow migration — an issue that has dogged US presidents, including Joe Biden, for years.
The mass migration within the hemisphere came into sharp focus again this week, as thousands of migrants joined a caravan heading to the US southern border. Asked about how the latest operation applies to that caravan, Mayorkas stressed the administration is “tackling the smuggling organizations that exploit these people.”
The “Sting Operation,” led by the Department of Homeland Security, has so far yielded around 20,000 “disruption actions” that include arrests and prosecutions, seizures of property and criminal investigations, according to the department. The US has also surged over 1,300 personnel throughout the Western Hemisphere and invested over $50 million.
In the last eight weeks, nearly 2,000 smugglers have been arrested, marking a 600% increase in law enforcement actions taken against such actors compared to efforts in previous years, DHS said.
The latest operation builds upon previous initiatives by the Biden administration to go after smugglers who migrants often depend on as they make their way to the US-Mexico border. Last spring, DHS also announced an effort to crack down on criminal smuggling organizations, alongside federal partners.
DHS also set up a new intelligence gathering and law enforcement unit to monitor the movement of migrants and helped stand up a task force, led by the Justice Department, to investigate and prosecute human smuggling and trafficking networks.
Migration looms over Summit of the Americas
At the US southern border, a new trend has been taking shape that’s posed a challenge to the Biden administration: About 40% of border crossers are now from countries outside of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
More than 6 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have fled the country, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Nicaraguans have also increasingly been migrating, as well as Haitians who had moved to the region years ago.
Over the course of Summit of the Americas, administration officials have acknowledged the mass migration in the Western Hemisphere, stressing the need for all countries to help alleviate the flow and create better conditions in country.
The gathering has served as a platform for the Biden administration, leaders of countries in the region, and the public and private sector to come to agreements about the path forward in stemming the flow of irregular migration.
Biden has aimed to demonstrate a level of cohesion across the two continents’ politics, but boycotts by leaders of several nations — including Mexico and three Central American countries — has put a damper on the summit.
The four leaders refused to attend because Biden declined to extend invitations to the three autocratic leaders, instead sending lower-level delegations.
Mayorkas dismissed concerns about key leaders skipping the summit, telling CNN: “All the countries are represented here. So, of course, the president of Mexico is not here but I had the good fortune of seeing the foreign minister of Mexico, Secretary Ebrard, here with whom I have worked very closely throughout my trips to Mexico as well as our continuing dialogue. So no, my confidence is unblemished.”
On Friday, Biden will announce a regional partnership to address mass migration in the Western Hemisphere, according to a senior administration official.
Against the backdrop of the Summit of the Americas, Biden and countries in the hemisphere will sign onto a declaration, dubbed the Los Angeles declaration, though the official declined to say how many countries would join the agreement.
The agreement, the official added, “is centered around responsibility sharing and economic support for countries that have been most impacted by refugee and migration flows.”
Under the declaration, governments are expected to commit to expanding temporary worker programs, bolstering legal pathways like refugee resettlement and family reunification, providing support to countries hosting large migrant populations, and cracking down on human smuggling networks.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive to Disrupt Russian Supply Lines
KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine began a counteroffensive toward the eastern city of Izyum aimed at disrupting Russian supply lines into the Donbas region, officials said, as Ukrainian forces continued clearing villages north of Kharkiv and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his Finnish counterpart that joining NATO would risk damaging relations with Moscow.
According to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin told Finland’s President
Sauli Niinistö
in a phone call Saturday that ending its decadeslong nonaligned defense policy by joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be a mistake for Helsinki. The Finnish leader initiated the call to explain to Mr. Putin how his invasion of Ukraine had altered the security environment, prompting Finland to seek NATO membership in the coming days.
“The conversation was direct and straightforward and was conducted without aggravations. Avoiding tension was considered important,” Mr. Niinistö said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Alexander Grushko,
meanwhile, said that Moscow would need to take “adequate precautionary measures” if NATO were to deploy infrastructure for nuclear weapons near Russia’s borders, including in Finland.
A Ukrainian soldier takes part in a reconnaissance mission in a recently retaken village on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Photo:
Bernat Armangue/Associated Press
On Saturday, Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S.,
Anatoly Antonov,
said the war in Ukraine is increasingly drawing Washington into conflict with Moscow.
“The situation today, is extremely, extremely dangerous. The U.S. is being drawn deeper and deeper into conflict with the most unpredictable consequences for relations between the two nuclear powers,” Mr. Antonov said on Russian television.
As the war entered its 80th day, Russian offensive operations in Donbas remained largely stalled following the failure of Russia’s ambitious attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets river and encircle the metropolitan area of Severodonetsk, the capital of the Ukrainian-administered Luhansk region.
With Western weapons continuing to flow into Ukraine, Ukrainian officials are beginning to say that a pivot in the war might be near, with Kyiv switching from defense to offense to reclaim large parts of southern and eastern Ukraine that remain under Russian rule.
“A strategic break in Ukraine’s favor is under way. This process will take time. But, in the long term, these trends make Russia’s defeat inevitable,” Ukrainian Defense Minister
Oleksii Reznikov
said in an address to Ukrainian citizens.
After Russia’s initial plans to seize the capital, Kyiv, failed amid Ukrainian resistance, Mr. Putin in late March ordered his forces to pull back from northern Ukraine and concentrate on seizing the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up Donbas. Mr. Putin in February recognized the independence of the Moscow-created proxy states in Donbas, the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, which controlled roughly one-third of these two regions at the time.
Russia has established the forward headquarters of its operations to conquer Donbas in the town of Izyum, which straddles the Siverskyi Donets river in the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian troops have begun to push successfully toward the town, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, Oleh Synehubov, said Saturday.
“The Izyum direction remains our hottest point. That’s where our armed forces have begun a counteroffensive,” he said in a video address. “The enemy is retreating in some directions, which is the result of the character of our armed forces.”
Workers remove documents from the ruins of Kharkiv’s regional administration building in Ukraine.
Photo:
John Moore/Getty Images
Local residents receive humanitarian aid in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Photo:
John Moore/Getty Images
With Russia’s monthlong offensive in Donbas showing only limited results, a bold attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets and encircle Severodonetsk that Russian forces began ahead of Victory Day on May 9 was meant to achieve a breakthrough. Instead, the failed crossing near the village of Bilohorivka has turned into a disaster for Russia, significantly slowing its momentum in Donbas.
The full scale of this Russian setback is emerging only now, with satellite imagery showing more than 70 Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and other armor destroyed after Ukrainian artillery and airstrikes sank three pontoon bridges and shelled the Russian beachhead in Bilohorivka.
“We have never seen such dumb stubbornness, going with a frontal assault and trying to build pontoons in the same place three times in a row. But they still keep trying,” said Luhansk Gov.
Serhiy Haidai.
He added that Ukrainian artillery keeps shelling the area and, according to intelligence intercepts, an entire Russian battalion is refusing orders to attempt yet another crossing in Bilohorivka. That claim couldn’t be independently confirmed.
While Moscow hasn’t acknowledged the events in Bilohorivka, accounts from Russian military officers and observers on Telegram have described it as one of the Russian military’s most catastrophic defeats in this war, calling for the dismissal and punishment of generals who devised the failed operation.
Reverse Side of the Medal, a channel close to the Wagner private military contractor that is actively involved in the war in Ukraine, pointed out sardonically that the Russian commanders in the Bilohorivka operation were “guided by the principle that the shell doesn’t fall into the same place twice and that if you don’t see the enemy, he cannot see you.”
Ukrainian artillery managed to destroy at least a battalion’s worth of Russian armor because it is employing drones and sophisticated reconnaissance technology to achieve precision, Wagner’s channel added. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine use the Western system of smart battle management, and we use a ruler on a paper map,” it said.
Relatives and friends attend the funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, for a serviceman who was killed in the Kharkiv region.
Photo:
Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press
In Kyiv, Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell
(R., Ky.) and GOP Sens.
Susan Collins
of Maine,
John Cornyn
of Texas and
John Barrasso
of Wyoming met Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky
on Saturday, according to Mr. Zelensky and a U.S. official. The meeting comes after House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi
(D., Calif.) and a delegation of Democratic lawmakers went to the capital city to meet with Mr. Zelensky earlier this month.
In a statement with accompanying video, Mr. Zelensky said the visit was a powerful signal of bipartisan support for Ukraine from Congress and the American people. A $40 billion aid package for Ukraine is stalled in the Senate over objections from GOP Sen.
Rand Paul
of Kentucky. Mr. McConnell and Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer
(D., N.Y.) had pushed for the bill’s passage together Thursday to request unanimous agreement from all 100 senators to allow a vote on the bill immediately.
A U.S. official confirmed the visit and said it wasn’t publicized in advance because of security concerns. Representatives for the senators didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
North of Donbas, a string of Ukrainian military victories in recent days pushed Russian forces outside of field artillery range of the city of Kharkiv, where more than 2,000 residential apartment buildings have been destroyed in more than two months of pounding. In a sign of relative normalcy returning to Kharkiv, the municipality said public-transport services would resume Monday. It will initially be free of charge given that so many city residents have lost their jobs because of the war, said Mayor
Ihor Terekhov.
Ukraine’s military has confirmed that its forces have reached the town of Ternova, on the border with Russia north of Kharkiv. “The enemy didn’t conduct active combat actions in the Kharkiv direction,” Ukraine’s General Staff said Saturday. “Its main effort was focused on pulling back troops from the city of Kharkiv, maintaining positions and protecting supply lines.”
The retreat of Russian forces from areas north of Kharkiv is covered by poorly armed recruits drafted in the Luhansk People’s Republic. In a video released on Telegram on Friday, these fighters said that their battalion, which fled to the Russian border north of Kharkiv, was stranded at the gate, with Russian authorities refusing to let them cross and threatening to imprison them if they don’t turn around and fight.
—Eliza Collins, Lindsay Wise, Dan Michaels and Vivian Salama contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
Russian troops made a failed attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets river and encircle the metropolitan area of Severodonetsk. An earlier version of this article misspelled it as Siverskiy Donets. (Corrected on May 14)
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com
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