National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby announced late December that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is expanding its influence, recruiting convicts and receiving arms from North Korea. Garri Knyagnitsky has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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NASA is exploring whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft can potentially offer an alternative ride home for some crew members of the International Space Station after a Russian capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbital lab.

NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, are investigating the cause of a punctured coolant line on an external radiator of Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is supposed to return its crew of two cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut to Earth early next year.

But the December 14 leak, which emptied the Soyuz of a vital fluid used to regulate crew cabin temperatures, has derailed Russia’s space station routines, with engineers in Moscow examining whether to launch another Soyuz to retrieve the three-man team that flew to ISS aboard the crippled MS-22 craft.

If Russia cannot launch another Soyuz ship, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is weighing another option.

“We have asked SpaceX a few questions on their capability to return additional crew members on Dragon if necessary, but that is not our prime focus at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said in a statement to Reuters.

SpaceX did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

It was unclear what NASA specifically asked of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capabilities, such as whether the company can find a way to increase the crew capacity of the Dragon currently docked to the station, or launch an empty capsule for the crew’s rescue.

But the company’s potential involvement in a mission led by Russia underscores the degree of precaution NASA is taking to ensure its astronauts can safely return to Earth, should one of the other contingency plans arranged by Russia fall through.

The leaky Soyuz capsule ferried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin to the space station in September for a six-month mission. They were scheduled to return to Earth in March 2023.

The station’s four other crew members — two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut — arrived in October via a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which also remains parked at the ISS.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a gumdrop-shaped pod with four astronaut seats, has become the centerpiece to NASA’s human spaceflight efforts in low-Earth orbit. Besides Russia’s Soyuz program, it is the only entity capable of ferrying humans to the space station and back.

Three possible culprits

Finding what caused the leak could factor into decisions about the best way to return the crew members. A meteroid-caused puncture, a strike from a piece of space debris or a hardware failure on the Soyuz capsule itself are three possible causes of the leak that NASA and Roscosmos are investigating.

A hardware malfunction could raise additional questions for Roscosmos about the integrity of other Soyuz vehicles, such as the one it might send for the crew’s rescue, said Mike Suffredini, who led NASA’s ISS program for a decade until 2015.

“I can assure you that’s something they’re looking at, to see what’s back there and whether there’s a concern for it,” he said. “The thing about the Russians is they’re really good at not talking about what they’re doing, but they’re very thorough.”

Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov had previously said engineers would decide by Tuesday how to return the crew to Earth, but the agency said that day it would make the decision in January.

NASA has previously said the capsule’s temperatures remain “within acceptable limits,” with its crew compartment currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.

Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s chief of crewed space programs, told reporters last week that the temperature would rise rapidly if the hatch to the station were closed.

NASA and Roscosmos are primarily focusing on determining the leak’s cause, Jones said, as well as the health of MS-22 which is also meant to serve as the three-man crew’s lifeboat in case an emergency on the station requires evacuation.

A recent meteor shower initially seemed to raise the odds of a micrometeoroid strike as the culprit, but the leak was facing the wrong way for that to be the case, NASA’s ISS program manager Joel Montalbano told reporters last week, though a space rock could have come from another direction.

And if a piece of space debris is to blame, it could fuel concerns of an increasingly messy orbital environment and raise questions about whether such vital equipment as the spacecraft’s coolant line should have been protected by debris shielding, as other parts of the MS-22 spacecraft are.

“We are not shielded against everything throughout the space station,” Suffredini said. “We can’t shield against everything.” 

 
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Italy is making coronavirus tests for visitors from China mandatory following an explosion in cases in China, the health minister said Wednesday.

“I have ordered mandatory COVID-19 antigenic swabs, and related virus sequencing, for all passengers coming from China and transiting through Italy,” minister Orazio Schillaci said.

The measure was “essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population”, he said.

Coronavirus infections have surged in China as it unwinds hardline controls that had torpedoed the economy and sparked nationwide protests.

The Italian northern region of Lombardy introduced screening from Tuesday, a day before the measure was brought in nationwide.

Lombardy, the first region to impose a lockdown when coronavirus hit Europe in early 2020, is testing arrivals from China at Milan’s Malpensa airport at least until January 30, the foreign ministry said.

Swabs collected at Malpensa in recent days are already being analyzed by the national health ministry, to help identify any new variants.

 
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Ukraine said Russia attacks Wednesday included missiles fired at civilian targets in the southern city of Kherson.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported 33 missiles fired at Kherson, which Ukraine recaptured after Russian forces withdrew last month.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military also reported fighting Wednesday around the city of Bakhmut and other parts of the eastern Donbas region.

Oil price cap

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that the country would ban any oil exports to countries that agreed to an oil price cap imposed by Western nations that took effect earlier this month.

According to a presidential decree published on a government portal and the Kremlin website, “The supply of Russian oil and oil products to foreign legal entities and individuals is prohibited if the contracts for these supplies directly or indirectly” are using a price cap.

The decree was presented as a direct response to “actions that are unfriendly and contradictory to international law by the United States and foreign states and international organizations joining them,” Reuters reported.

The oil price cap was agreed to earlier this year by the Group of Seven nations, which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union. It will be enforced by the G-7 nations, the EU and Australia, Reuters reported.

Shortly after the agreement was reached December 2, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said, “This price cap has three objectives: First, it strengthens the effect of our sanctions. Second, it will further diminish Russia’s revenues, and thirdly, at the same time, it will stabilize global energy markets.”

Russia, however, has said the cap will not affect its military campaign in Ukraine and expressed confidence it will find new buyers for its oil products.

Russia, the world’s second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, said the ban will be in effect from February 1 to July 1.

In his nightly video address on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a meeting of the military command had “established the steps to be taken in the near future.”

“We will continue preparing the armed forces and Ukraine’s security for next year. This will be a decisive year. We understand the risks of winter. We understand what needs to be done in the spring,” he said.

Zelenskyy said he also spoke with the International Monetary Fund “regarding the work of the banking system and our cooperation with the IMF. We must provide even more opportunities for Ukrainians in the coming year and guarantee the strength of our banking and financial systems.”

Retired General James Jones, the former commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, told VOA’s Eurasia service Tuesday that two military takeaways from the past 10 months of war in Ukraine are how well-trained the Ukrainian forces are and how poorly the Russian forces have performed.

“I’m quite sure that Mr. Putin was convinced that this would be a very short war. I think he was convinced that NATO would be somewhat impotent to react to that,” said Jones, a national security adviser to former President Barack Obama. “The ability … to train and equip the Ukrainian army was slow to start with but has now achieved a certain cadence that is much more encouraging.”

“I’m quite convinced that President Putin believed that this would be a very short war, and I think his military probably told him what he wanted to hear, which is what militaries do when dealing with dictators,” he said.

As far as what could happen in 2023, that “remains to be seen,” he said. “I’m hopeful that things will come to a conclusion.”

Jones said the most important thing for NATO and the United States right now is quickly meeting the needs of Ukrainian forces. Later, he added, the alliance members must “make sure that we have a plan that can help Ukraine rebuild itself.”

“Ukraine, I think, is destined to be on the forward edge of the defense of Europe for a long time, depending on what happens in Russia, of course,” Jones said.

VOA’s Eurasia Service contributed to this story. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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  Pope Francis said Wednesday that former Pope Benedict is “very sick.”  

Speaking during his general audience, the pope asked for special prayers for Benedict.    

“I can confirm that in the last few hours there has been a deterioration due to advancing age,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.  “The situation at the moment remains under control, monitored continually by doctors.” 

The Vatican said also Pope Francis went to see Benedict.  

The 95-year-old Benedict resigned in 2013, citing among other things his declining physical and mental health, becoming the first pope to do so in 600 years. Since then, he has been living in a convent on the Vatican grounds.   

In the few photographs that have emerged, Benedict has appeared frail.  

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

French authorities were Tuesday investigating as suicide the drowning of an Iranian man in the southeastern city of Lyon; he had said on social media he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the protest crackdown in Iran.

Mohammad Moradi, 38, was found in the Rhone, which flows through the center of Lyon, late on Monday, a police source, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

Emergency services intervened but were unable to resuscitate Moradi on the riverbank, the source added.

Moradi had posted a video on Instagram saying he was about to drown himself to highlight the crackdown on protesters in Iran since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.

“When you see this video, I will be dead,” Moradi said.

“The police are attacking people, we have lost a lot of sons and daughters, we have to do something,” Moradi said in the video.

“I decided to commit suicide in the Rhone River. It is a challenge, to show that we, Iranian people, we are very tired of this situation,” he added.

Lyon prosecutors said they had launched a probe to “verify the theory of suicide, in view in particular of the messages posted by the person concerned on social networks announcing his intention” to take his life.

The incident shocked the city, with a small rally to remember Moradi taking place on the banks of the Rhone on Tuesday.

Mourners placed candles and wreaths on the riverside railings, an AFP correspondent said.

“Mohammad Moradi killed himself to make the voice of revolution heard in Iran. Our voice is not carried by Western media,” said Timothee Amini of the local Iranian community.

According to several members of the Iranian community, Moradi was a history undergraduate and worked in a restaurant.

He lived in Lyon with his wife for three years.

“His heart was beating for Iran, he could no longer bear the regime,” said Amini, deploring that while the Ukraine conflict was covered “every morning,” one heard “very little about Iran” in the news.

Lili Mohadjer said Moradi hoped that “his death would be another element for Western media and governments to back the revolution underway in Iran.”

She said his death was “not suicide” but “sacrifice to gain freedom.”

Mohadjer said that in his video Moradi said he “could not live peacefully, comfortably here, where he was very well integrated,” while Iranians were being killed.

Protests have gripped Iran since late September.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Tuesday 476 protesters have been killed in the crackdown with at least 100 Iranians risking execution over the protests. Two young men have been executed.

Iran’s top security body in early December gave a toll of more than 200 people killed, including security officers.

At least 14,000 people have been arrested since the nationwide unrest began, the United Nations said last month.
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Britain’s National Trust on Wednesday said nature and wildlife at the charity’s sites had been harmed by extreme weather in the past year and warned it could become the “new normal.”

The heritage conservation charity’s climate change adviser Keith Jones said it was a “stark illustration of the sort of difficulties many of our species will face if we don’t do more to mitigate rising temperatures.”

“We’re going to experience more floods, droughts, heat waves, extreme storms and wildfires — and they will go from bad to worse, breaking records with ever alarming frequency if we don’t limit our carbon emissions,” he said.

The planet remains off track from an ambition set by the Paris climate accord in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

A cascade of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change devastated communities across the globe this year, including sweltering heat and drought across Europe that wilted crops, drove forest fires and saw major rivers shrink to a trickle.

Here is a rundown of the National Trust’s year:

January: A record warm start to the year with a temperature of 16.3 C recorded in central London on January 1. Overall, the month is around 0.8 C above the 1991-2020 long-term average.

February: Storms Eunice and Franklin bring down trees across the country.

April: Spring bird migration occurs later, and swifts return about two weeks later than normal and in lower numbers.

May: There are no sightings of toadlets by May as hot weather and lack of rain causes ponds to dry up.

June: Bird flu starts to hit many of the seabird colonies on the Farne Islands, off the northeastern English coast, wiping out seabirds that come to the islands to breed including kittiwakes, shags, gulls and puffins.

At Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, extreme weather in late June causes multiple tern colonies to fail.

July: A record-breaking heat wave peaks at 40.3 C at Coningsby in central England with exceptionally dry conditions across the south and east and wildfires across large parts of the country.

Bats have to be rescued from the heat. Experts suspect the weather has hurt the breeding success of many bird species.

Wildfires break out in a number of places and pools and streams dry up.

August: Newly planted trees fail at some National Trust sites because of prolonged drought and heat.

Many places experience a “false autumn” with trees dropping their leaves early because of drought. Butterfly numbers seem to be down, and bumblebees, hoverflies and flies vanish in the heat wave.

September: Swallows are still active at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland a month later than in previous years and do not migrate until the very end of the month.

Some wildflowers have a second flowering because of a lack of frost.

November: Winter farmland migrating birds arrive a month later on the Mount Stewart Estate likely because of milder temperatures in northern areas where they spend the summer and breed.

December: After a largely very hot year with record temperatures, much of the U.K. is hit by a freezing cold snap. This is followed by much milder conditions, prompting concerns it could bring creatures out of hibernation.
…

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II died in September after seven decades on the throne. Her passing was mourned around the world – and the funeral watched by millions. Henry Ridgwell looks back at an extraordinary period in Britain’s history
…

Russia on Monday placed a senior journalist with the Bellingcat investigative website on a wanted list, following his extensive reporting on Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.

Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev’s name was added to a list of wanted people on Russia’s interior ministry website.

The ministry did not specify the crime for which he is wanted.

But the RIA Novosti news agency quoted a source as saying that a criminal case had been opened against Grozev for “spreading fakes about the Russian army” — legislation adopted after Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February.

Russia’s FSB domestic security agency had accused Grozev of helping Ukrainian intelligence.

Grozev is Bellingcat’s chief Russia investigator and has led investigations into the poisoning of opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

This year he has focused on Russia’s military actions in Ukraine.

Moscow branded Bellingcat as an “undesirable” organization in July, saying it posed a security threat to the country.

Bellingcat already had been branded a “foreign agent” in Russia last year.

Since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February, Bellingcat has largely focused on using open-source material and social media to document alleged Russian war crimes.
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Protesting Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo erected new barricades on Tuesday, hours after Serbia said it had put its army on the highest combat alert following weeks of escalating tensions between Belgrade and Pristina.

Serbia’s defense ministry said in a statement late on Monday that in response to the latest events in the region and its belief that Kosovo was preparing to attack Serbs and forcefully remove the barricades, President Aleksandar Vucic had ordered Serbia’s army and police to be put on the highest alert.

“There is no reason to panic, but there is reason to be concerned,” Serbia’s defense minister Milos Vucevic told RTS television late on Monday.

Since December 10, Serbs in northern Kosovo have erected multiple roadblocks in and around Mitrovica and exchanged fire with police after the arrest of a former Serb policeman for allegedly assaulting serving police officers during a previous protest.

Around 50,000 Serbs live in the northern part of Albanian-majority Kosovo and refuse to recognize the Pristina government or the state. They see Belgrade as their capital and are backed by Serbia, from which Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

“Kosovo cannot engage in dialogue with criminal gangs and freedom of movement should be restored. There should not be barricades on any road,” the Kosovan government said in a statement on Monday.

It added police had the capacity and readiness to act but were waiting for NATO’s KFOR Kosovo peace-keeping force, which maintains a neutral role, to respond to their request to remove the barricades.

“We urge all sides to help enable security and freedom of movement in Kosovo, and prevent misleading narratives from affecting the dialogue process,” KFOR said in a statement.

In Mitrovica on Tuesday morning trucks were parked to block the road linking the Serb-majority part of the town with the Albanian-majority part.

The local Serbs are demanding the release of the arrested officer and have other demands before they remove the barricades.

Ethnic Serb mayors in northern municipalities, along with local judges and some 600 police officers, resigned last month in protest over a Kosovo government decision to replace Serbian-issued car license plates with ones issued by Pristina.

 
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Members of France’s Kurdish community and others held a silent march Monday to honor three people killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris that prosecutors say was motivated by racism.

Turkey summoned France’s ambassador Monday over what it called “black propaganda” by Kurdish activists after the shooting. Some have marched in Paris with flags of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or suggested that Turkey was linked to the shooting.

A 69-year-old Frenchman was handed preliminary charges Monday of racially motivated murder and weapons violations over Friday’s shooting, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. The suspect told investigators that he had wanted to kill migrants or foreigners and then had planned to kill himself, and said he had a “pathological” hatred of non-European foreigners, according to prosecutors.

He was briefly put in psychiatric care but then returned to ordinary police custody. The suspect’s name hasn’t been officially released, though he is identified by French media as William K.

The shooting shocked and infuriated the Kurdish community in France, which organized the silent march on Monday. Demonstrators marched from the site of Friday’s shooting to the location where three female Kurdish activists were found shot dead in 2013.

“Every day we ask ourselves when someone will shoot at us again. Ten years ago, we were attacked in the heart of Paris, and 10 years later again,” said Dagan Dogan, a 22-year-old Kurd at Monday’s march. “Why there was nothing done to protect us?”

The solemn march ended calmly. Skirmishes broke out in the neighborhood where the killings took place on Friday, and again on the sidelines of a mostly peaceful Kurdish-led demonstration on Saturday.

Prosecutors say the suspect had a clear racist motive for the shooting.

Anti-racism activists and left-wing politicians have linked it to a climate of hate speech online and anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric by far-right figures. The French government has reported a rise in race- or religion-related crimes and violations in recent years.

French authorities have called Friday’s attack an isolated incident, but some Kurdish activists in Paris think it was politically driven.

Turkey summoned French Ambassador Herve Magro on Monday to relay unease over what it called black propaganda being waged against Turkey by Kurdish militant groups following the attack, the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkey “expects France to act prudently over the incident and not to allow the (banned PKK) terrorist organization to advance its sneaky agenda,” Anadolu reported.

The PKK has waged an armed separatist insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 for independence, which has more recently morphed into demands for greater autonomy. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced many, with a significant number of ethnic Kurds and alleged PKK supporters migrating to European countries.

Turkey’s army has battled Kurdish militants affiliated with the PKK in southeast Turkey as well as in northern Iraq, and recently launched a series of strikes against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terror group, but Turkey accuses some European countries of leniency toward alleged PKK members. That frustration has been the main reason behind Turkey’s continued delay of NATO membership for Sweden and Finland.
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Iran on Monday blasted Britain’s “non-constructive role” a day after the Islamic republic announced the arrest of a U.K.-linked “network” involved in the three months of protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death.

Protests have gripped Iran since the September 16 death of Iranian Kurdish Amini, 22, after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.

Tehran generally calls the protests “riots” and accuses its foreign foes, including Britain, of stoking the unrest.

State news agency IRNA reported Sunday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the country’s south had arrested seven people, including dual nationals, who had operated “under the direct guidance of elements from Britain.”

Asked about their arrest during a Monday news conference, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said, “some countries, especially [Britain], had a non-constructive role in relation to the recent developments in Iran.”

“Their role was quite provocative in inciting extremism and riots,” Kanani said of the foreign nations.

The group, which IRNA described as an “organized network,” had been “leading subversive conspiracies, especially during the recent riots,” the report quoted a Guard statement as saying.

The seven arrested in Kerman province “have been involved in planning, leading and producing content as well as field actions in the recent riots,” it added.

Some of them are “dual nationals who were trying to escape from the country,” the statement said without elaborating.

Iran’s judiciary said last month that 40 foreigners, including dual nationals, had been arrested in the unrest.

The foreign ministry’s Kanani said Monday that “during the recent riots, several citizens of European countries have been arrested with varying degrees of involvement in the riots.”

“Consular and political information has been given to their respective countries,” he added. “The role of the citizens of a certain number of countries, especially European and western European countries … is quite clear and proved.”

A number of Westerners, including dual nationals, had already been in custody in Iran before the protests broke out in September.

Western governments have accused Tehran of employing a “hostage-taking” policy aimed at extracting concessions or securing the release of Iranians held abroad.
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Ukraine’s foreign minister said Monday that his government is aiming to have a peace summit by the end of February, preferably at the United Nations with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a possible mediator, around the anniversary of Russia’s war. 

But Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press that Russia could only be invited to such a summit if the country faced a war crimes tribunal first. 

Kuleba also said he was “absolutely satisfied” with the results of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week, and he revealed that the U.S. government had made a special plan to get the Patriot missile battery ready to be operational in the country in less than six months. Usually, the training takes up to a year. 

Kuleba said during the interview at the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine will do whatever it can to win the war in 2023, adding that diplomacy always plays an important role. 

“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.” 

Kuleba said the Ukrainian government would like to have a peace summit by the end of February. 

“The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favor to a certain country,” he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.” 

On December 12, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine planned to initiate a summit to implement the Ukrainian peace formula in 2023. 

At the Group of 20 summit in Bali in November, Zelenskyy presented a 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine. 

Asked about whether they would invite Russia to the summit, he said that Moscow would first need to face prosecution for war crimes at an international court. 

“They can only be invited to this step in this way,” Kuleba said. 

About Guterres’ role, Kuleba said: “He has proven himself to be an efficient mediator and an efficient negotiator, and most importantly, as a man of principle and integrity. So, we would welcome his active participation.” 

The foreign minister again downplayed comments by Russian authorities that they are ready for talks. 

“They regularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true, because everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite,” he said. 

In comments released Sunday on Russian state television, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that his country is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine but suggested that the Ukrainians are the ones refusing to take that step. Despite Putin’s comments, Moscow’s forces have kept attacking Ukraine — a sign that peace isn’t imminent. 

Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started February 24. Kuleba praised Washington’s efforts and underlined the significance of the visit. 

“This shows how both the United States are important for Ukraine, but also how Ukraine is important for the United States,” said Kuleba, who was part of the delegation to the U.S. 

Ukraine secured a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including a Patriot missile battery, during the trip. 

Kuleba said that the move “opens the door for other countries to do the same.” 

He said that the U.S. government developed a program for the missile battery to complete the training faster than usual “without any damage to the quality of the use of this weapon on the battlefield.” 

While Kuleba didn’t mention a specific time frame, he said only that it will be “very much less than six months.” And he added that the training will be done “outside” Ukraine. 

During Russia’s ground and air war in Ukraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine’s message and needs to an international audience, whether through Twitter posts or meetings with friendly foreign officials. 

On Monday, Ukraine called on U.N. member states to deprive Russia of its status as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and to exclude it from the world body. Kuleba said they have long “prepared for this step to uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.” 

The Foreign Ministry says that Russian never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and took the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

“This is the beginning of an uphill battle, but we will fight, because nothing is impossible,” he told the AP. 

 
…

NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo said Monday they were investigating a shooting incident in a tense northern region, urging calm as Serbia’s top military officials inspected their troops on the border with Kosovo in a show of combat readiness.

The incident on Sunday evening took place in Zubin Potok, a town in northern Kosovo where local ethnic Serbs have been manning road barricades for the past two weeks and where tensions have been running high between the two former wartime foes.

The peacekeepers, known as KFOR, said the incident happened near one of their patrols, involving unknown people. A statement said no one was injured, and “we are working to establish all the facts.”

Serbia’s defense minister and the army’s chief of staff traveled to the border with Kosovo, praising the combat readiness of Serbian troops and their firepower, including howitzers and other military hardware. Serbia, which has been armed through Russian donations and military purchases, has been threatening force against its former province for a long time.

Kosovo remains a potential flashpoint in the Balkans years after the 1998-99 war that ended with NATO intervention. Serbia doesn’t recognize the 2008 declaration of independence of its former province, while Western efforts to mediate a solution so far have failed.

“It is important for all involved to avoid any rhetoric or actions that can cause tensions and escalate the situation,” KFOR said in a statement. “We expect all actors to refrain from provocative shows of force and to seek the best solution to ensure the safety and security of all communities.”

Fears of violence have soared since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The United States and most European Union countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence, while Serbia has relied on Russia and China in its bid to maintain a claim on the province.

Tensions in Kosovo have risen further in recent weeks and months over several issues amid international efforts to step up mediation efforts. Most recently, ethnic Serbs in the north put up roadblocks in protest of an arrest of a former Serb police officer.

Serbs in the north previously had walked out of Kosovo’s institutions, claiming harassment by Kosovo authorities. Belgrade repeatedly has warned it would protect local Serbs “with all means” if they are attacked.

Kosovo’s government has asked NATO troops — which deployed in 1999 after the trans-Atlantic alliance bombed Serbia into leaving Kosovo — to remove the Serb roadblocks. Prime Minister Albin Kurti, KFOR commander Major General Angelo Michele Ristuccia and Lars-Gunnar Wigermark, who heads an EU law and order mission, met on Monday to discuss the situation, KFOR said on Twitter.

Kurti’s office said that “the common conclusion from this meeting is that freedom of movement should be restored and that there should be no barricades on any road.”

Serbia on Sunday held a top-level meeting after the shooting incident, with the army chief of staff later heading to the southern town of Raska, near Kosovo, where Serbian army troops are located. Local media carried a video with shots and shouts heard, but not showing clearly what happened at one of the barricades.

General Milan Mojsilovic told local media that the army received “clear and precise” directions from Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vucic. Mojsilovic described the situation as “serious,” adding that it requires the “presence of the Serbian army along the administrative line” with Kosovo, state RTS television reported.

Serbian army vehicles could be seen on the roads in the area on Monday, and the Balkan nation’s defense minister also arrived. Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic, Mojsilovic and other senior army officers discussed the security situation during a meeting in Raska, a defense ministry statement said.

Serbia has asked KFOR to deploy up to 1,000 of its troops in the Serb-populated north of Kosovo, to protect Kosovo Serbs from alleged harassment by ethnic Albanians, who are the majority in the country. The request so far hasn’t been granted.

Adding to the tensions, Serbian Patriarch Porfirije was denied entry into Kosovo at a border crossing on Monday, after saying he would like to deliver a peace message for Serbian Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7.
…

In the lush greenhouses of Kyiv’s National Botanical Garden, staff are struggling to save a decades-old collection of tropical plants after months of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid led to electricity outages, threatening the garden’s heating supply.

“These collections cannot be restored. This is not a greenhouse with cucumbers and tomatoes… The loss of this collection would be a great national loss for Ukraine,” said Lyudmyla Buiun, responsible for tropical and subtropical plants.

“Plants cannot be told… ‘please endure, because today it is -15 degrees (Celsius).’ It is impossible,” she said, pointing out signs of cold damage on some plants.

The plants would face a serious crisis if the temperature in the greenhouse dropped below 15 degrees Celsius, she added.

Finding ways to maintain a tropical climate in a freezing Kyiv hit by frequent power outages, is very difficult, and garden workers are now preemptively heating the greenhouses by burning firewood, although smoke poses a risk to plants.

They would usually create heat by burning wood in electric ovens. However, the frequent power cuts disrupt the heating cycle and it takes hours to restart the ovens, boiler room operator Yurii Nai said.

The garden’s administration has now connected to Kyiv’s central heating system to have a backup, but fears further missile strikes on the power grid.
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Police said Monday they believe no one is missing after a Christmas Day avalanche that swept across a ski trail near the town of Zuers in western Austria. 

First responders initially assumed as many as 10 people could be buried based on cell phone video from a witness showing the group near the avalanche that covered 500 meters (yards) of the trail near the 2,700-meter Trittkopf mountain, police in the Vorarlberg region said in a statement. 

One partly buried man was recovered with serious injuries and 200 rescuers were deployed to search the snow mass for more.  

It turned out that several of the people in the video had escaped and skied on down the mountain into the valley without reporting their involvement, and it took hours to track everyone down, police said. Three persons suffered minor injuries. A search was continuing Monday to make sure, but police said that “according to the current state of information, it can be assumed that no further persons are missing.” 

The avalanche followed days of heavy snow, followed by warm weather on Christmas Day, and the mountain rescue service had rated the avalanche danger as high. The head of tourism in the Zuers and Lech am Arlberg region, Hermann Fercher, said that the avalanche occurred even though explosives had been set off in that area to reduce the risk, the dpa news agency reported. Police said they would be investigating how the accident came about.  
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Dutch King Willem-Alexander welcomed the government’s apology for the Netherlands’ role in 250 years of slavery in his Christmas address on Sunday, saying it was the “start of a long journey.”    

Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday officially apologized for the Dutch state’s involvement in slavery in its former colonies, calling it a “crime against humanity.”    

“Nobody today bears responsibility for the inhumane acts that were inflicted on the lives of men, women and children,” Willem-Alexander said from the palace of Huis ten Bosch in The Hague.    

“But by honestly facing our shared past and recognizing the crime against humanity that is slavery, we lay the ground for a shared future — a future in which we stand against all modern forms of discrimination, exploitation and injustice,” the king said. “The apology offered by the government is the start of a long journey.”   

The Netherlands funded its “Golden Age” of empire and culture in the 16th and 17th centuries by shipping around 600,000 Africans as part of the slave trade, mostly to South America and the Caribbean.   

The Dutch government says several major commemorative events will be held from next year and has announced a $212 million fund for social initiatives. 

Willem-Alexander promised that the topic would retain the royal family’s attention during the commemorative year and that they would remain “involved.”    

But Rutte’s move went against the wishes of some slavery commemoration organizations who wanted the apology to be offered on July 1, 2023.  

Descendants of Dutch slavery will then celebrate 150 years of liberation from slavery in an annual celebration called “Keti Koti” (Breaking the Chains) in Suriname.   

The leaders of the Caribbean island Sint Maarten and Suriname in South America regretted the lack of dialogue from the Netherlands over the apology.   

Some former Dutch colonies have demanded compensation for slavery and criticized the government for not offering concrete actions. 
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North Macedonia’s government said it’s imposing emergency measures in the country’s capital, Skopje, and three other cities in order to protect people from severely high levels of air pollution.

No sports events will be staged Sunday or on any day with high air pollution levels, and other outdoor activities will be curtailed. Starting Monday, construction work will be limited to a six-hour period, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The government has recommended companies excuse pregnant women and people over age 60 from work.

The government also said it would reduce the use of its official vehicles by half and ordered the health and welfare ministries to provide shelter for homeless people and boost emergency services and home visits to people with chronic illnesses.

The measures were announced Saturday after days of lobbying by environmental groups asking the government to act. The new rules coincided with an announcement by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company, ranking North Macedonia’s capital as the third-most polluted city in the world for Saturday after Kyrgyzstan capital Bishkek and Lahore, Pakistan. The levels of toxic PM10 and PM 2.5 particles in the air measured by IQAir in Skopje were about 28 times higher than the safety threshold established by the World Health Organization.

PM10 particles are particles smaller than 10 micrometers, or 10 one-millionths of a meter that are so-called coarse particles that can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. PM2.5 particles can lodge deeper into the lungs, enter the bloodstream and are considered more dangerous.

North Macedonia has been one of Europe’s most polluted countries for years. Health authorities estimate that more than 3,000 people in this country of just over 2 million die each year as a result of air pollution, which is mostly a result of the heavy use of household wood-burning stoves during cold winters, an aging car fleet and the practice in some areas of garbage disposal by incineration.

The recent spike in energy prices has further boosted wood-burning stove use.
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The Iskander tactical missile systems and the S-400 air defense systems that Russia has deployed to Belarus are fully prepared to perform their intended tasks, a senior Belarusian defense ministry official said on Sunday.   

“Our servicemen, crews have fully completed their training in the joint combat training centers of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” Leonid Kasinsky, head of the Main Directorate of Ideology at the ministry, said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.   

“These types of weapons (Iskander and S-400 systems) are on combat duty today and they are fully prepared to perform tasks for their intended purpose.”   

It is not clear how many of the Iskander systems, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, have been deployed to Belarus after Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that Moscow would supply Minsk with them and the air defense systems.   

The news comes amidst Moscow’s increasing pressure on Minsk to aid its invasion of Ukraine, now in its 10 month and with no end in sight.   

Russian forces used Belarus as a launch pad for their abortive attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in February, and there has been a growing flurry of Russian and Belarusian military activity in recent months.   

The Iskander-M, a mobile guided missile system code named “SS-26 Stone” by NATO, replaced the Soviet “Scud.” Its two guided missiles have a range of up to 500 kilometers (300 miles) and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.   

That range reaches deep into neighbors of Belarus: Ukraine and NATO member Poland, which has very strained relations with Minsk.   

The S-400 system is a Russian mobile, surface-to-air missile (SAM) interception system capable of engaging aircraft, UAVs, cruise missiles, and has a terminal ballistic missile defense capability.   

Kasinsky also said the country’s military aircraft have been converted to carry “special aviation ammunition.” 
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An avalanche left up to 10 people missing in western Austria on Sunday, according to media reports.

About 200 rescue workers were searching for people feared buried under the snow near the town of Zuers, reports said.

The avalanche occurred at around 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) on the 2,700-meter (nearly 9,000-foot) high Trittkopf mountain between Zuers and Lech am Arlberg, and the cascading snow reached as far as nearby ski trails.

The avalanche followed days of snow in the high alpine region and unseasonably warm weather on Christmas Day, the Austria Press Agency reported, citing local police. The local mountain rescue service had rated the avalanche danger as “high.”

Officials said one person could be recovered quickly. Searchlights were set up on the snow mass to continue the search after darkness fell, and dogs were being used to try to find the missing.

The search would continue “all night if we have to,” Lech-Zuers tourism director Hermann Fercher said during an interview on ORF Austrian public television.
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