This handout photograph released by Ukrainian presidential press service on Feb. 8, 2024, shows Ukrainian prisoners of war posing for a photo following a swap at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (AFP)
Russia’s Defense Ministry said returning soldiers would undergo medical examinations in Moscow
Ukraine’s Coordinating Committee on Dealing with Prisoners of War said 28 of the returning servicemen were injured or ill
Updated 08 February 2024
Reuters
KYIV: Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 100 prisoners of war from each side in the nearly two-year-old war, with the United Arab Emirates acting as an intermediary, both countries said on Thursday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, provided few details of the exchange, but said returning soldiers would undergo medical examinations in Moscow.
It noted the UAE’s “humanitarian mediation,” as did the Ukrainian body overseeing exchanges of POWs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, writing on Telegram, said the majority of those brought home had taken part in the three-month defense of the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol, eventually captured by Russian forces in May 2022.
Pictures alongside the post showed servicemen draped in the blue and yellow national flag, embracing and speaking on mobile telephones.
Ukraine’s Coordinating Committee on Dealing with Prisoners of War said 28 of the returning servicemen were injured or ill.
It said 84 had taken part in the defense of Mariupol, with the others serving in other parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, partly occupied by Russian forces.
Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram jihadists
Updated 13 sec ago
AFP
N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
Undocumented immigrants in US ‘terrified’ as Trump returns
Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants during the election campaign
Updated 08 November 2024
AFP
PHOENIX: Since learning that Donald Trump will return to the White House, undocumented immigrant Angel Palazuelos has struggled to sleep. The 22-year-old, a graduate student in biomedical engineering who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is haunted by the incoming president’s promises of mass deportations. “I was terrified,” said Palazuelos, reflecting on the moment he heard the news. “I am in fear of being deported, of losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for, and, most importantly, being separated from my family.” Born in Mexico, he has lived in the United States since he was four years old. He is one of the country’s so-called “Dreamers,” a term for migrants who were brought into the country as children and never obtained US citizenship. Throughout the election campaign, Palazuelos heard Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants, employing violent rhetoric about those who “poison the blood” of the United States. Trump has never specified how he intends to go about his plan for mass deportation, which experts warn would be extremely complicated and expensive. “What do mass deportations mean? Who does that include?” Palazuelos asked. “Does it include people like me, Dreamers, people that came here from a very young age, that had no say?“ Compounding the stress, the southwestern state of Arizona has just approved by referendum a law allowing state police to arrest illegal immigrants. That power was previously reserved for federal border police. If the proposition is deemed constitutional by courts, Palazuelos fears becoming the target of heightened racial profiling. “What makes someone a suspect of being here illegally, whether they don’t speak English?” he asked. “My grandma, she’s a United States citizen, however, she doesn’t speak English very well. Meanwhile, I speak English, but is it because of the color of my skin that I would possibly be suspected or detained?“ Jose Patino, 35, also feels a sense of “dread” and “sadness.” His situation feels more fragile than ever. Born in Mexico and brought to the United States aged six, he now works for Aliento, a community organization helping undocumented immigrants. He personally benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigrant policy brought in by Barack Obama, offering protections and work permits for those in his situation. But for Patino, those safeguards will expire next year, and Trump has promised to end the DACA program. Indeed, Trump already tried to dismantle it during his previous term, but his decree was scuppered by a US Supreme Court decision, largely on procedural grounds. Faced with this uncertainty, Patino is considering moving to a state that would refuse to report him to federal authorities, such as Colorado or California. He remembers well the struggle of being undocumented in his twenties — a time when he could not obtain a basic job like flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and could not apply for a driver’s license or travel for fear of being deported. “I don’t personally want to go back to that kind of life,” Patino said. For him, Trump’s electoral win is not just scary, but an insult. “We’re contributing to this country. So that’s the hard part: me following the rules, working, paying my taxes, helping this country grow, that’s not enough,” he said. “So it’s frustrating, and it’s hurtful.” Patino understands why so many Hispanic voters, often faced with economic difficulties, ended up voting for Trump. Those who are here legally “believe that they’re not going to be targeted,” he said. “A lot of Latinos associate wealth and success with whiteness, and they want to be part of that group and to be included, rather than be outside of it and be marginalized and be considered ‘the other,’” he said. Still, he is angry with his own uncles and cousins who, having once been undocumented themselves, voted for Trump. “We cannot have a conversation together, because it’s going to get into argument and probably into a fight,” he said.
Putin says Ukraine must remain neutral for there to be peace
“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said
Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral
Updated 08 November 2024
AFP
SOCHI, Russia: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine should remain neutral for there to be a chance for peace, adding that the borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the wishes of the people living in Russian-claimed territory.
“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral. The US-led NATO military alliance has repeatedly said that Ukraine would one day join.
If Ukraine was not neutral, it would be “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine after more than two and a half years of war. Putin on
June 14
set out his terms for an end to the conflict: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of the regions claimed by Russia.
Ukraine rejects those conditions as tantamount to surrender and President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented a “victory plan” for which he has requested additional Western support.
“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” Putin said.
Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said: “The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories.”
Ukraine says that it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory though even US generals say that such an aim would take massive resources that Ukraine currently does not have.
Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia kills four, wounds 40
Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days
“The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said
Updated 07 November 2024
KYIV: Russian aerial attacks on the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded another 40, including children, officials said.
Another two were killed in a separate attack on the eastern Donetsk region, strikes that followed a wave of overnight drone attacks, including on the capital Kyiv.
Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days and are making rapid advances in the industrial territory of Donetsk, both of which the Kremlin says are Russian territory.
“The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media.
“Forty were wounded, including four children,” governor Ivan Fedorov said in a separate statement.
Officials said earlier that a hospital had been damaged in Zaporizhzhia, which had a pre-war population of more than 700,000 people and lies around 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the nearest Russian positions.
A four-month old girl and boys aged one, five and 15 were wounded in the attacks, Fedorov said.
Officials posted images showing rescue workers pulling victims from the rubble and holding back distressed locals from getting to the destroyed buildings.
The strikes later in the Donetsk region killed two people and wounded five more in the village of Mykolaivka, the region’s governor Vadym Filashkin announced on social media.
“One of the shells hit a five-story building and four buildings nearby were damaged,” he wrote on social media.
He posted a photo of a Soviet-era residential building on fire, dozens of its windows blown out with debris littering the ground beneath it.
Grenade attack targeted Israeli embassy in Denmark: report
The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy
Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 have been detained
Updated 07 November 2024
AFP
COPENHAGEN: Israel’s embassy in Denmark was likely the target of grenades thrown nearby last month, Danish media reported Thursday, citing the pre-indictment of two teenage suspects detained in the case.
Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 went before a judge in Copenhagen who remanded them for another 20 days.
Their pre-indictment, citing investigations, said they were suspected of violating terrorism laws by “throwing hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Denmark on October 2,” the Ritzau news agency reported.
The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy, where they exploded, causing no injuries.
The two suspects were arrested at a Copenhagen railway station hours later initially on suspicion of violating gun laws.
They have since been accused of a terror offense and police, who have arrested a man in his fifties in connection with the incident, are also looking for other accomplices.
“It makes no sense to imagine this is an act they committed alone. There must be accomplices,” Ritzau quoted prosecutor Soren Harbo as saying at the start of the hearing.
The teens deny the accusations.
The case comes against a backdrop of severe tensions in the Middle East, with conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as increasing gang violence with Danish criminal gangs suspected of recruiting underage Swedes to settle scores.
