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Business

Baker Hughes joins oil rivals in pausing Russian operations

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Baker Hughes, a major U.S. oil services company, added its name Saturday to the growing list of U.S. companies that are pulling back from  Russia in response to Moscow’s war against Ukraine

March 19, 2022, 10:39 PM

3 min read

NEW YORK — Baker Hughes, a major U.S. oil services company, added its name Saturday to the growing list of U.S. companies that are pulling back from Russia in response to Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

Baker Hughes made its announcement one day after similar moves by oil rivals Halliburton Co. and Schlumberger. The steps from the Houston-based businesses come as they respond to U.S. sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In its statement, Baker Hughes, which also has headquarters in London, said the company is suspending new investments for its Russia operation and is complying with applicable laws and sanctions as it fulfills current contractual obligations. It said the announcement follows an internal decision made with its board and shared with its top leadership team.

“The crisis in Ukraine is of grave concern, and we strongly support a diplomatic solution,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, chairman and CEO of Baker Hughes.

Halliburton announced Friday that it suspended future business in Russia. Halliburton said it halted all shipments of specific sanctioned parts and products to Russia several weeks ago and that it will prioritize safety and reliability as it winds down its remaining operations in the country.

Schlumberger said that it had suspended investment and technology deployment to its Russia operations.

“Safety and security are at the core of who we are as a company, and we urge a cessation of the conflict and a restoration of safety and security in the region,” Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch said in a statement.

As the war continues, and the deadly violence and humanitarian crisis worsens, companies that remain are under increasing pressure to leave.

More than 400 U.S. and other multinational firms have pulled out of Russia, either permanently or temporarily, according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for Executive Programs at Yale University’s School of Management, who has publicized a list of corporate actions in Russia.

Oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP, along with some major tech companies like Dell and Facebook, were among the first to announce their withdrawal or suspension of operations. Many others, including McDonald’s, Starbucks and Estee Lauder, followed. Roughly 30 companies remain.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday asked Congress to press U.S. businesses still operating in Russia to leave, saying the Russian market is “flooded with our blood.”

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World

Macron: Putin told him Russia won’t escalate Ukraine crisis

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him in their marathon talks a day earlier that Moscow would not further escalate the Ukraine crisis.

Macron’s remarks on a visit to Kyiv came as the Kremlin denied reports that he and Putin struck a deal on de-escalating the crisis. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “in the current situation, Moscow and Paris can’t be reaching any deals.”

Macron met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid mounting fears of a Russian invasion. Moscow has massed over 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, but insists it has no plans to attack.

The Kremlin wants guarantees from the West that NATO will not accept Ukraine and other former Soviet nations as members, that it halt weapon deployments there and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands the U.S. and NATO reject as nonstarters.

At a news conference after meeting Zelenskyy, Macron said Putin told him during their more than five-hour session Monday that “he won’t be initiating an escalation. I think it is important.”

According to the French president, Putin also said there won’t be any Russian “permanent (military) base” or “deployment” in Belarus, where Russia had sent a large number of troops for war games.

Peskov said withdrawing Russian troops from Belarus after the maneuvers was the plan all along.

Zelenskyy said he would welcome concrete steps from Putin for de-escalation, adding he didn’t “trust words in general.”

He called his talks with Macron “very fruitful.”

“We have a common view with President Macron on threats and challenges to the security of Ukraine, of the whole of Europe, of the world in general,” Zelenskyy said.

He said France was giving 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in financial aid to Ukraine and helping restore infrastructure in the war-ravaged east of the country.

Western leaders in recent weeks have engaged in multiple rounds of diplomacy to try to de-escalate the crisis, and more are planned. High-level talks have taken place against the backdrop of military drills in Russia and Belarus. On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said six large warships were moving from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea for exercises.

Macron said he had not expected Putin to make any “gestures” during their talks Monday, saying his objective was to “prevent an escalation and open new perspectives. … That objective is met.”

Macron said Putin “set a collective trap” by initiating the exchange of written documents with the U.S. Moscow submitted its demands to Washington in the form of draft agreements that were released to the public, and insisted on a written response, which was then leaked to the press.

“In the history of diplomacy, there was never a crisis that has been settled by exchanges of letters which are to be made public afterward,” he said, adding that’s why he decided to go to Moscow for direct talks.

Putin said after the meeting that the U.S. and NATO ignored Moscow’s demands, but signaled his readiness to continue talking. He also reiterated a warning that Ukraine membership in NATO could trigger a war between Russia and the alliance should Kyiv move to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

NATO, U.S. and European leaders reject the demands that they say challenge NATO’s core principles, like shutting the door to Ukraine or other countries that might seek membership; but they have offered to talk about other Russian security concerns in Europe.

U.S. President Joe Biden has said that any prospect of Ukraine entering NATO “in the near term is not very likely,” but he and other NATO member nations and NATO itself refuse to rule out Ukraine’s entry into the alliance at a future date.

Biden met Monday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who also will travel to Kyiv and Moscow on Feb. 14-15. They threatened Russia with grave consequences if it invaded, and Biden vowed that the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, which has been completed but is not yet operating, will be blocked. Such a move would hurt Russia economically but also cause energy supply problems for Germany.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an article in the Times of London, also urged allies to finalize heavy economic sanctions that would take effect if Russia crosses into Ukraine. He said the U.K. is ready to bolster NATO forces in Latvia and Estonia as he prepared to meet the Lithuanian prime minister in London to show support for the Baltic nations.

Johnson said he was considering dispatching RAF Typhoon fighters and Royal Navy warships to southeastern Europe. Britain said Monday it is sending 350 troops to Poland to bolster NATO’s eastern flank. It already has sent anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

More than 100 U.S. military personnel arrived in Romania ahead of a deployment of about 1,000 NATO troops expected in the country in the coming days, Romania’s Defense Minister Vasile Dincu said.

U.S. officials have said that about 1,000 alliance troops will be sent from Germany to Romania, a NATO member since 2004. Romania borders Ukraine to the north. About 1,700 U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne are also going to Poland.

U.S. officials have portrayed the threat of an invasion of Ukraine as imminent — warnings Moscow has scoffed at, accusing Washington of fueling tensions.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president was ousted, Moscow annexed Crimea and then backed a separatist insurgency in the east of the country. The fighting between Russia-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces has killed over 14,000 people.

In 2015, France and Germany helped broker a peace deal, known as the Minsk agreements, that ended large-scale hostilities but failed to bring a political settlement of the conflict. The Kremlin has repeatedly accused Kyiv of sabotaging the deal, and Ukrainian officials in recent weeks said that implementing it would hurt Ukraine.

After meeting Macron, Putin said without elaboration that some of the French president’s proposals could serve as a basis for a settlement of the separatist conflict, adding that they agreed to speak by phone after Macron’s visit to Kyiv.

Peskov said such a call would take place “in the nearest future.”

Macron said both Putin and Zelenskyy confirmed they were willing to implement the Minsk agreements — “the only path allowing to build peace … and find a sustainable political solution.”

Macron also said the presidential advisers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine will meet Thursday in Berlin on the next steps. “It will take time to get results,” he said.

Zelenskyy was mum on where Ukraine stands on implementing the Minsk agreements and whether he assured Macron that Kyiv is committed to do so, saying only that his country views Thursday’s meeting “very positively” and hoped for a subsequent meeting by the four leaders.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, visiting the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, said she wanted “to get an impression of what it means that we still have war in the middle of Europe.”

Germany has given Ukraine about 1.8 billion euros in aid since 2014, part of which is helping those displaced by fighting.

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Litvinova reported from Moscow. Jill Lawless in London, Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, Stephen McGrath in Bucharest, Romania, and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.

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US

EXPLAINER: What are US military options to help Ukraine?

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is not planning to answer a further Russian invasion of Ukraine by sending combat troops. But he could pursue a range of less dramatic yet still risky military options, including supporting a post-invasion Ukrainian resistance.

The rationale for not directly joining a Russia-Ukraine war is simple. The United States has no treaty obligation to Ukraine, and war with Russia would be an enormous gamble, given its potential for expanding in Europe, destabilizing the region, and escalating to the frightening point of risking a nuclear exchange.

Doing too little has its risks, too. It might suggest an acquiescence to future Russian moves against other countries in eastern Europe, such as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, although as NATO members those three have security assurances from the United States and the rest of the alliance.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is in Europe this week to speak with officials in Ukraine, consult NATO allies and then meet Friday with his Russian counterpart, has asserted “an unshakable U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” But he has not publicly defined the limits of that commitment.

How far, then, might the United States and its allies go to help Ukraine defend itself if the buildup of Russian forces along Ukraine’s borders leads to an invasion?

WHY NOT CONTEST A RUSSIAN INVASION?

Going to war against Russia in Ukraine could tie up U.S. forces and resources for years and take a heavy toll in lives with an uncertain outcome at a time when the Biden administration is trying to focus on China as the chief security threat.

On Wednesday, Biden said it was his “guess” that Russian President Vladimir Putin will end up sending forces into Ukraine, although he also said he doesn’t think Putin wants all-out war. Biden did not address the possibility of putting U.S. ground troops in Ukraine to stop an invasion, but he previously had ruled that out.

Biden said he is uncertain how Putin will use the forces he has assembled near Ukraine’s border, but the United States and NATO have rejected what Moscow calls its main demand — a guarantee that the Western alliance will not expand further eastward. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 after the ouster of Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly leader and also intervened in eastern Ukraine that year to support a separatist insurgency. More than 14,000 people have been killed in nearly eight years of fighting there.

The stakes in Ukraine are high — militarily and politically. Lawmakers have intensified their criticism of Biden’s approach to Putin. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused Biden of “handwringing and appeasement,” but he has not urged sending combat troops. Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, called for an urgent “nonstop airlift” of military equipment and trainers into Ukraine.

Philip Breedlove, a retired Air Force general who served as the top NATO commander in Europe from 2013 to 2016, said in an interview he does not expect or recommend that the United States send combat troops into Ukraine. Instead, Washington and its allies should be looking for ways to help Ukraine defend its own airspace and territorial waters, where it faces overwhelming Russian superiority, he said.

“Those are things we should be considering as an alliance and as a nation,” he said. “If Mr. Putin is allowed to invade Ukraine and there were to be little or no consequence, we will see more of the same.”

WHAT ARE BIDEN’S OTHER OPTIONS?

Given its clear military inferiority, Ukraine could not prevent Russian forces from invading. But with help from the United States and others, Ukraine might deter Putin from acting if he were convinced that the costs would be too high.

“The key to thwarting Russian ambitions is to prevent Moscow from having a quick victory and to raise the economic, political, and military costs by imposing economic sanctions, ensuring political isolation from the West, and raising the prospect of a prolonged insurgency that grinds away the Russian military,” Seth Jones, a political scientist, and Philip Wasielewski, a former CIA paramilitary officer, wrote in a Jan. 13 analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Biden administration has suggested it is thinking along similar lines.

HOW IS THE U.S. SUPPORTING UKRAINE’S MILITARY NOW?

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby says there are about 200 National Guard soldiers in Ukraine to train and advise local forces, and on Tuesday he said there are no plans to augment their number. There also are an undisclosed number of U.S. special operations troops providing training in Ukraine. Kirby wouldn’t say whether the U.S. soldiers would pull out in the event of a Russian invasion, but he said the Pentagon would “make all the appropriate and proper decisions to make sure our people are safe in any event.”

The administration said Wednesday it is providing a further $200 million in defensive military aid to Ukraine. Since 2014 the United States has provided Ukraine with about $2.5 billion in defense assistance, including anti-tank missiles and radars.

HOW MIGHT THE U.S. HELP UKRAINE AFTER AN INVASION?

It’s not clear. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the U.S. would “dramatically ramp up” support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty.” But he did not spell out how that might be done.

The administration says it also is open to sending military reinforcements to NATO allies on the eastern front who want American reassurance.

Jones and Wasielewski say that in addition to implementing severe sanctions against Russia in the event of an invasion, the United States should provide Ukraine with a broad range of military assistance at no cost. This would include air defense, anti-tank and anti-ship systems; electronic warfare and cyber defense systems; small arms and artillery ammunition, and other items.

“The United States and NATO should be prepared to offer long-term support to Ukraine’s resistance no matter what form it ends up taking,” they wrote. This aid could be delivered overtly with the help of U.S. troops, including special operations forces, or it could be a CIA-led covert action authorized by President Biden, they added.

That would carry the risk of putting U.S. personnel in the line of fire — and drawing the United States into the very combat it’s determined to avoid.

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World

Putin blames West for tensions, demands security guarantees

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MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian president on Tuesday reiterated his demand for guarantees from the U.S. and its allies that NATO will not expand eastwards, blaming the West for “tensions that are building up in Europe.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at a meeting with Russia’s top military brass came just days after Moscow submitted draft security documents demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliance’s military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.

The demands — contained in a proposed Russia-U.S. security treaty and a security agreement between Moscow and NATO — were drafted amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has stoked fears of a possible invasion. Russia has denied it has plans to attack its neighbor but pressed for legal guarantees that would rule out NATO expansion and weapons deployment there.

Putin charged Tuesday that if U.S. and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, it will take those missiles only minutes to reach Moscow.

“For us, it is the most serious challenge — a challenge to our security,” he said, adding that this is why the Kremlin needs “long-term, legally binding guarantees” from the West, as opposed to “verbal assurances, words and promises” that Moscow can’t trust.

Putin noted that NATO has expanded eastward since the late 1990s while giving assurances that Russia’s worries were groundless.

“What is happening now, tensions that are building up in Europe, is their (U.S. and NATO’s) fault every step of the way,” the Russian leader said. “Russia has been forced to respond at every step. The situation kept worsening and worsening, deteriorating and deteriorating. And here we are today, in a situation when we’re forced to resolve it somehow.”

Russia’s relations with the U.S. sank to post-Cold War lows after it annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that still controls territory there. Tensions reignited in recent weeks after Moscow massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s border.

Putin has pressed the West for guarantees that NATO will not expand to Ukraine or deploy its forces there and raised the issue during a video call with U.S. President Joe Biden two weeks ago.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu charged Tuesday that more than 120 staff of U.S. private military companies are currently operating in two villages in war-torn eastern Ukraine, training Ukrainian troops and setting up firing positions in residential buildings and different facilities.

Putin said the U.S. “should understand we have nowhere to retreat.”

“What they are now trying to do and plan to do at Ukraine’s territory, it’s not thousands of kilometers away, it’s happening right at the doorstep of our house,” he said.

Putin added that Moscow hopeds “constructive, meaningful talks with a visible end result — and within a certain time frame — that would ensure equal security for all.”

“Armed conflicts, bloodshed is not our choice, and we don’t want such developments. We want to resolve issues by political and diplomatic means,” Putin said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, said at a briefing Tuesday that Washington is “prepared to discuss those proposals that Russia put on the table.”

“There are some things we’re prepared to work on, and we do believe there is merit in having discussion,” Donfried told reporters after a visit to Kyiv, Moscow and Brussels.

“There are other things in those documents that the Russians know will be unacceptable,” she added, without specifying which ones.

Donfried said bilateral U.S.-Russia meetings are likely to happen in January, and talks within NATO-Russia Council, as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, are likely to see movement in January as well.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that he intends to call a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council as soon as possible in the New Year.

“Any dialogue with Russia needs to be based on the core principles of European security and to address NATO’s concerns about Russia’s actions. And it needs to take place in consultation with NATO’s European partners, including with Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.

On Tuesday evening, Putin talked about Russia’s proposals in phone calls with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

According to readouts released by the Kremlin, Putin informed Macron about Moscow’s “diplomatic efforts on the subject,” and gave Scholz “detailed comments” on the drafts Russia-U.S. security treaty and a security agreement between Russia and NATO submitted last week.

In the conversation with Scholz, “hope was expressed that serious negotiations would be organized on all the issues raised by” Moscow, the readout said.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine was also discussed in both phone calls, with Putin claiming that Kyiv was reluctant to implement the Minsk agreements — a peace deal brokered by France and Germany in 2015 that helped end large-scale hostilities in the region.

Efforts to reach a political settlement of the Ukraine conflict, which has killed more than 14,000 people, have failed, however, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.

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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

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World

With vaccine resistance high, Poland faces surge of deaths

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — As 83-year-old Hanna Zientara endured subfreezing temperatures to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in Warsaw, her 30-year-old grandson was starting a Canary Islands vacation while unvaccinated and stubbornly refusing his grandmother’s repeated pleas to protect himself.

“I am worried about him, but I have no influence over him. None,” Zientara said. “He has many doctor friends who aren’t getting vaccinated, and he says if they aren’t getting vaccinated, then he doesn’t have to.”

Poland and several other countries in Central and Eastern Europe are battling their latest surges of coronavirus cases and deaths while continuing to record much lower vaccinations rates than in Western Europe.

In Russia, more than 1,200 people with COVID-19 died every day for most of November and on several days in December, and the daily death toll remains over 1,100. Ukraine, which is recording hundreds of virus deaths a day, is emerging from its deadliest period of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the mortality rate in Poland, while lower than it was than in the spring, recently climbed to more than 500 deaths per day and still has not peaked. On Wednesday, the country reported 592 more virus deaths, the highest number of its current wave and bringing the pandemic death toll to nearly 87,000 in the nation of 38 million.

Intensive care units are full, and doctors report that more and more children require hospitalization, including some who went through COVID-19 without symptoms but then suffered strokes.

The situation has created a dilemma for Poland’s government, which has urged citizens to get vaccinated but clearly worries about alienating voters who oppose vaccine mandates or any restrictions on economic life.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki received his vaccine booster publicly last week and urged others to get their shots to protect older adults at Christmas. He noted that some family gatherings during the pandemic have “ended tragically, ended with the departure of our grandfathers, grandmothers.”

To promote vaccines, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski pointed out Monday that of the 1,085 people under 44 who died with COVID-19 so far this year in Poland, only 3% were fully vaccinated. “This black statistic could be different thanks to vaccinations,” he said.

With a health system already stretched to its limits, Poland’s government announced Tuesday that it is requiring doctors, other medical personnel, teachers and uniformed workers like police officers, members of the military and firefighters to be vaccinated by March 1.

Critics of the right-wing government denounced the step as too little too late, while a far-right party, Confederation, slammed it as discriminating against unvaccinated Poles.

The resistance to vaccines in Eastern Europe is rooted in distrust of pharmaceutical companies and government authorities, while disinformation also appears to be playing a role.

As worried grandmother Zientara got a Pfizer vaccine booster dose on Tuesday, the Polish government reported 504 deaths.

Sitting nearby was Andrzej Wiazecki, a 56-year-old who needed no convincing to come in for a booster shot. He said he has several friends hospitalized with COVID-19, including a previously healthy and athletic 32-year-old who is fighting for his life.

“I expect him to die, especially since there is no room for him in the intensive care unit because there are so many patients that he is lying somewhere in a corridor,” he said.

“He didn’t want to get vaccinated,” Wiazecki said. “His siblings are also not vaccinated, and even though he is dying, they still don’t want to get vaccinated.”

With 54% of Poles fully vaccinated, the country has a higher coronavirus inoculation rate than some nearby countries. Ukraine’s vaccination rate is 27%, and in Russia, where domestically developed vaccines like Sputnik V are on offer, it is about 41%. Bulgaria, which like Poland belongs to the European Union, has a vaccination rate of 26%, the lowest in the bloc.

The discovery of the omicron variant last month has fueled fears in Poland, where experts believe the variant is likely already circulating though no cases have been confirmed. Many critical questions about omicron remain unanswered, including whether the virus causes more severe illness and how much it might evade immunity from past COVID-19 illness or vaccines.

According to Polish media reports, the variant’s emergence led some holdouts to finally get their first vaccine shots, including in the southern mountain region of Podhale, where the vaccination rates are far below the national average.

But at the vaccination center in Warsaw, located in a blood donation center, there were not many first-timers. Coordinator Paula Rekawek said only one person had turned up in the center’s first three hours Tuesday to request an initial dose.

Warsaw restauranteur Artur Jarczynski has found a business opportunity in the high level of vaccine resistance. His popular Der Elefant was the first restaurant in Poland, and until recently the only one, to require customers to show proof of vaccination to enter.

Jarczynski said while traveling in Western Europe, he was asked for proof of vaccination to dine and thought it was a good practice. When he first introduced the requirement at Der Elefant, anti-vaxxers demonstrating in front of parliament brought their protest to his restaurant and he got police protection. Jarczynski says he also was bombarded by hateful phone calls for a couple of days.

Yet many patrons appreciate the rare public space where they can feel safe while enjoying a meal, such as the mussel soup, steaks and other fare served for lunch on Tuesday. One diner, Ryszard Kowalski, said he liked knowing everyone around him was vaccinated but the restaurant’s policy was proof “there is no need for government orders” to create safe environments.

But Jarczynski has not yet dared to impose the vaccine requirement in several other Warsaw restaurants he owns.

He described Der Elefant as “an island in a country of almost 40 million people, which on the one hand makes us happy, but also sad that we are just such a tiny island.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

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World

Russia: Death toll in Siberian coal mine blast raised to 52

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Russian officials say 52 miners and rescuers have died after a devastating blast in a Siberian coal mine about 250 meters (820 feet) underground

November 25, 2021, 9:16 PM

3 min read

MOSCOW — A devastating explosion in a Siberian coal mine Thursday left 52 miners and rescuers dead about 250 meters (820 feet) underground, Russian officials said.

Hours after a methane gas explosion and fire filled the mine with toxic fumes, rescuers found 14 bodies but then were forced to halt the search for 38 others because of a buildup of methane and carbon monoxide gas from the fire. Another 239 people were rescued.

The state Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies cited emergency officials as saying that there was no chance of finding any more survivors in the Listvyazhnaya mine, in the Kemerovo region of southwestern Siberia.

The Interfax news agency cited a representative of the regional administration who also put the death toll from Thursday’s accident at 52, saying they died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

It was the deadliest mine accident in Russia since 2010, when two methane explosions and a fire killed 91 people at the Raspadskaya mine in the same Kemerovo region.

A total of 285 people were in the Listvyazhnaya mine early Thursday when the blast sent smoke that quickly filled the mine through the ventilation system. Rescuers led to the surface 239 miners, 49 of whom were injured, and found 11 bodies.

Later in the day, six rescuers also died while searching for others trapped in a remote section of the mine, the news reports said.

Regional officials declared three days of mourning.

Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Dmitry Demeshin told reporters that the fire most likely resulted from a methane explosion caused by a spark.

The miners who survived described their shock after reaching the surface.

“Impact. Air. Dust. And then, we smelled gas and just started walking out, as many as we could,” one of the rescued miners, Sergey Golubin, said in televised remarks. “We didn’t even realize what happened at first and took some gas in.”

Another miner, Rustam Chebelkov, recalled the dramatic moment when he was rescued along with his comrades as chaos engulfed the mine.

“I was crawling and then I felt them grabbing me,” he said. “I reached my arms out to them, they couldn’t see me, the visibility was bad. They grabbed me and pulled me out, if not for them, we’d be dead.”

Explosions of methane released from coal beds during mining are rare but they cause the most fatalities in the coal mining industry.

The Interfax news agency reported that miners have oxygen supplies normally lasting for six hours that could only be stretched for a few more hours.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal probe into the fire over violations of safety regulations that led to deaths. It said the mine director and two senior managers were detained.

President Vladimir Putin extended his condolences to the families of the dead and ordered the government to offer all necessary assistance to those injured.

Thursday’s fire wasn’t the first deadly accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine. In 2004, a methane explosion left 13 miners dead.

In 2007, a methane explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in the Kemerovo region killed 110 miners in the deadliest mine accident since Soviet times.

In 2016, 36 miners were killed in a series of methane explosions in a coal mine in Russia’s far north. In the wake of the incident, authorities analyzed the safety of the country’s 58 coal mines and declared 20 of them, or 34%, potentially unsafe.

The Listvyazhnaya mine wasn’t among them at the time, according to media reports.

Russia’s state technology and ecology watchdog, Rostekhnadzor, inspected the mine in April and registered 139 violations, including breaching fire safety regulations.

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World

Bus swerves off road in Croatia; 10 killed, 44 injured

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Croatian police say 10 people have been killed and at least 44 others injured when a bus swerved off a highway and crashed

July 25, 2021, 3:35 PM

2 min read

ZAGREB, Croatia — A bus swerved off a highway and crashed in Croatia early Sunday after the driver apparently fell asleep, killing 10 people and injuring at least 44 others — some of them seriously, authorities said.

The crash happened about 6 a.m. near the town of Slavonski Brod on the highway between the Croatian capital of Zagreb and the Serbian border, a key artery over the summer due to tourists and workers coming home from Western Europe. Police said the bus had Kosovo license plates and was traveling from Frankfurt, Germany, to Kosovo’s capital of Pristina, which is south of Serbia.

Officials said the bus was carrying 67 passengers, including children, and two drivers, one of whom died in the crash. The 44 injured were transferred to local hospitals. Slavonski Brod hospital chief Josip Samardzic said eight people had serious injuries.

Authorities said the bus driver was detained after he apparently lost control of the vehicle after briefly falling asleep.

“He said he fell asleep for a moment,” local deputy prosecutor Slavko Pranjic said, according to Index news site in Croatia.

Police said the bus slid off the road into the grass before flipping on its side.

One passenger, Ramo Gashi, told state HRT television that “something burst.”

“I saw, in a split second, all these people, the entire meadow, the channel below, behind the motorway,” he said. “I saw the wounded, the dead, I saw everything.”

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic expressed “sadness and grief” and extended his condolences to the victims’ relatives and the people of Kosovo. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic also expressed condolences and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.

Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, who cut short her stay in Tokyo at the Olympic Games because of the crash, extended her sorrow in a message on Facebook and declared Monday a national day of mourning in Kosovo.

“With our heart and in spirit, we are close to the families who lost their loved ones in this tragedy,” Osmani said. “It is an indescribable pain and a great loss.”

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said “this is a tragic day for our country and for our people.” He planned to visit the injured in the hospital later Sunday with Croatia’s prime minister.

Traffic on the highway was halted for hours before the bus was removed and one lane was reopened.

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World

LGBT+ campaigners in Georgia call off pride match after office attack

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Irakli Gedenidze/Reuters

Anti-LGBT protesters take part in a rally on Monday ahead of the planned march in Tbilisi, Georgia.

LGBT+ campaigners in Georgia called off plans to stage a pride march on Monday after violent groups opposed to the event stormed and ransacked their office in the capital Tbilisi and targeted activists and journalists.

Activists launched five days of LGBT+ Pride celebrations last Thursday and had planned a “March for Dignity” on Monday in central Tbilisi, shrugging off criticism from the church and conservatives who said the event had no place in Georgia.

The march plan was disrupted on Monday by counter protesters before it could begin.

Video footage posted by LGBT+ activists showed their opponents scaling their building to reach their balcony where they tore down rainbow flags and were seen entering the office of Tbilisi Pride.

Other footage showed a journalist with a bloodied mouth and nose and a man on a scooter driving at journalists in the street.

Campaigners said some of their equipment had been broken in the attack and that they had been forced to cancel.

Irakli Gedenidze/Reuters

Anti-LGBT protesters burn a rainbow banner as they take part in a rally ahead of the march on Monday.

“No words can explain my emotions and thoughts right now. This is my working space, my home, my family today. Left alone in the face of gross violence,” Tamaz Sozashvili, one LGBT activist, tweeted.

The interior ministry urged activists to abandon their march for security reasons. It said in a statement that various groups were gathering and protesting on Monday and that journalists had been targeted with violence.

“We once again publicly call on the participants of ‘Tbilisi Pride’ to refrain from the ‘March of Dignity’ … due to the scale of counter-manifestations planned by opposing groups…” it said.

In the run-up, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said he viewed the march as “not reasonable,” saying it risked causing public confrontation and that it was not acceptable to most Georgians, the Civil Georgia media outlet reported.

Rights campaigners condemned the violence and accused Garibashvili of emboldening hate groups.

“Violent far-right crowds supported by (the) Church & emboldened by (an) incredibly irresponsible statement of PM @GharibashviliGe gathered in Tbilisi center to prevent Pride March, attacking journalists & breaking into Pride office,” wrote Giorgi Gogia, who works for US-based Human Rights Watch.

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