Major internet outages reported across Africa

Major internet disruption has been reported in various countries across Africa.

Outages have been reported in countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

The cause of the cable failures is not immediately clear.

“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” said Cloudflare Radar, which provides information on internet connections.

Internet connectivity in the Ivory Coast was down to around just 4% on Thursday morning, according to Netblocks, which tracks cybersecurity and internet connectivity.

Liberia at one point dropped to 17% while Benin was at 14% and Ghana 25%, Netblocks said.

In South Africa, Vodacom said that “customers are currently experiencing intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures”.

A fault has also been reported on the MainOne cable system which serves Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos.

The Liberian government said internet disruption had been reported from Thursday morning.

Citizens are unable to access the basic internet as well as social media across the vast majority of the country. International bank transfers are also reported to be affected while there are limited international voice calls.

“It seems like 50% of my life is gone today,” Benjamin Garkpah told the BBC from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Fatumata Barry said her business had stalled because she can’t receive payments through mobile money.

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority said it was caused by an incident involving the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine communications cable in Ivory Coast.

In Ghana, the National Communications Authority (NCA) reported that multiple undersea cable disruptions were responsible for the outage.

Cloudflare posted on social media that major internet disruptions were ongoing in The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.

 

 

Australian farm grows world’s biggest blueberry

An Australian farm has smashed the record for the world’s largest blueberry with a fruit the size of a ping-pong ball.

Picked in November and stashed in a freezer since, the monster was almost 4cm wide and weighed in at 20.4g – about 10 times the average blueberry.

The title was previously held by a 16.2g berry grown in Western Australia.

The specimen is of a new variety developed by the Costa Group, to meet consumer demands for larger berries.

Brad Hocking says the Eterna breed consistently yields huge fruit, but recent growing conditions had spurned a bumper crop at their farm in Corindi in northern New South Wales.

His team had noticed some promising berries on the trees but were shocked and “stoked” when they were weighed.

“It wasn’t really until we put them on the scale that we realised what we found,” the lead horticulturalist told the BBC.

“The record-breaking fruit was obviously particularly large, but we would have picked 20 or more fruit on that morning that would have broken the previous world record.”

After 12 weeks, the berry was this week certified by Guinness World Records as the heaviest ever documented.

So what does a world-record breaking blueberry taste like?

Mr Hocking laughs and says he doesn’t know – while tempting, his team decided to save the berry from an immediate end, and instead ate its compatriots.

“We get second breakfast every day… we don’t have to eat this one,” he said.

And now the growers are considering what to do with it.

“There’s been a few ideas, maybe like a resin cast and mounting it on the wall or something.”

But in general, the Eterna berries – while larger – don’t compromise on flavour, he promises.

“It’s a different experience, eating a berry that is that large.

“We see it more as people who are consuming them as snacks, more than maybe the traditional uses in breakfasts and baking. But certainly, the flavour and the firmness is there – it’s got a really nice crunch to it and a high level of blueberry aromatics.”

 

 

Elon Musk’s Starship goes ‘farther than ever’

US company SpaceX’s Starship rocket made major progress in its third test flight on Thursday, completing many of its objectives.

The two-stage vehicle produced a clean getaway from its Texas launch site, to send its upper portion around the globe to a re-entry over the Indian Ocean.

Radio contact was lost towards the end but the firm said it was “incredible to see how far we got this time around”.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk was delighted with the outcome of the flight, too.

He posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “Starship will take humanity to Mars”.

When the 120m-tall (395ft) vehicle launched in April and November last year, it blew apart not long into the missions.

Mr Musk was looking for significant improvement from his SpaceX team this time – and he got it.

The rocket left its launch mount with a huge rumble from its 33 engines, and the vehicle then proceeded to step perfectly through all of the anticipated phases in the climb to space.

Separation of the bottom half, the booster, from the top half, the Ship, occurred right on cue, two minutes and 44 seconds into the flight.

The ship then powered on, crossing the Atlantic and southern Africa.

Video cameras sent back spectacular views of Earth from more than 100 miles up.

Then came the task of re-entry, when the ship needed to descend to a splashdown in the ocean.

Video imagery once again captured incredible scenes as hot gases enveloped the vehicle, just before radio contact was interrupted.

Controllers reported shortly after that the Ship had been “lost”, presumably because it had broken up.

Not every milestone was ticked off. It was hoped the booster after separation might have been able to power its way back to a controlled drop into the sea just off the Texas coast. It got close but it looked as though the vehicle came in way too fast and hit the water very hard.

The Ship, too, was expected to re-ignite an engine to initiate the re-entry, but this was skipped for a reason not immediately apparent.

These are issues that can be re-visited once all the data is in hand. The upsum, however, is that engineers now know the development of the world’s most powerful rocket is firmly on track. And Elon Musk is promising perhaps six more test flights this year.

The 33 engines at the base of the booster produce 74 meganewtons of thrust. This dwarfs all previous vehicles, including those that sent men to the Moon in the 1960s/70s.

If engineers can perfect Starship, it will be revolutionary.

The rocket is intended to be fully and rapidly reusable, to operate much like an aeroplane that can be refuelled and put back in the air in quick order.

This capability, along with the heft to carry more than a hundred tonnes to orbit in one go, would radically lower the cost of space activity.

For Elon Musk, Starship is key to his Starlink project which is establishing a global network of broadband internet satellites. The current count in orbit is more than 5,500. The new rocket will be able to put up many more spacecraft for the network.

To that end, this test flight demonstrated the opening and closing of a payload bay door, through which future Starlink satellites could be dispensed.

And Starship will also help Mr Musk realise that long-held ambition of taking people and supplies to Red Planet to build a human settlement.

Among the keenest observers on Thursday will have been the US space agency.

Starship is central to Nasa’s Artemis programme to put astronauts back on the Moon this decade.

A version of Starship would act as the landing craft, taking the crew from lunar orbit down to the surface – and then lifting them back off again.

SpaceX will have to show it can produce a safe and reliable vehicle before astronauts are permitted to climb aboard. Nasa has scheduled late 2026 for when it would like to see this happen.

Bill Nelson, the Nasa Administrator, issued a statement on X: “Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon — then look onward to Mars.”

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial spaceflight in the US, immediately announced there would be a mishap investigation following the mission, given the way the booster and Ship ended their flights. This is standard practice, and SpaceX will lead the inquiry into what it got right and what it got wrong. This, too, is standard practice.

 

 

Palestinian president appoints long-time adviser as prime minister

President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed Mohammad Mustafa as the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the occupied West Bank.

Mr Mustafa, a US-educated economist and former senior World Bank official, is a long-time adviser to the president.

His predecessor, Mohammed Shtayyeh, resigned three weeks ago, citing the “emerging reality in the Gaza Strip”.

Mr Abbas is under pressure from the US to reform the PA so it can govern Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented last month a vision for the territory that made no mention of any role for the PA.

The Israeli military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 other people hostage.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says at least 31,300 people have been killed in the territory since then.

The presidential decree issued on Thursday appointing Mr Mustafa said his priorities included leading humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza and organising the reconstruction of what has been destroyed during the war.

Another priority was to develop plans for the “reunification of institutions across the homeland’s governorates as a single geographical, political, national, and institutional unit”, it added.

It also called for “continuing the reform process” of Palestinian institutions, with the aim of “a robust and transparent governance system subject to accountability, combating corruption, and ensuring good governance”.

Mr Mustafa, who has a PhD in economics from George Washington University, has been chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund since 2015.

Before that, he served for two years as deputy prime minister and economy minister and was involved in reconstruction efforts in Gaza following the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.

The White House welcomed Mr Mustafa’s appointment and called for the formation of a “reform cabinet” as soon as possible.

“The United States will be looking for this new government to deliver on policies and implementation of credible and far-reaching reforms,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

“A reformed Palestinian Authority is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people and establishing the conditions for stability in both the West Bank and Gaza.”

However, Ramallah-based Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shaheen said Mr Mustafa’s closeness to the president might limit the prospects for reforms.

“In the end, [he] remains the right-hand man of President Abbas,” he told AFP news agency. “Abbas wants to say that he supports reforms, but they remain under his control.”

Another analyst said they would reserve judgement until they saw who Mr Mustafa named in his cabinet.

Some reports have said he will appoint technocrats in the hope that Israel could be persuaded to let them govern Gaza after the war.

The PA, which was established in 1994 under the Oslo accords, has limited governance powers in parts of the occupied West Bank not under full Israeli control and is dominated by Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement, Hamas’s rival.

It lost control of Gaza in 2007, when Hamas ousted forces loyal to Mr Abbas a year after winning the last Palestinian elections, and is deeply unpopular among many Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza.

In November, US President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank “should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalised Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution”.

Mr Netanyahu’s plan for post-war, “demilitarised” Gaza did not rule out a role for the PA. But it also did not specifically mention the body either. It instead talked about handing responsibility for civilian management and public order to “local elements with managerial experience”.

 

 

Al-Shabab attacks hotel in Somali capital

Militants from the Islamist al-Shabab group have attacked a hotel near the presidential palace in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, security sources and witnesses said.

The group has attacked the Syl Hotel before, which is popular with government officials.

Witnesses reported blasts and gunfire coming from the hotel, telling Reuters that fighters were still inside.

It was not immediately clear if there were casualties.

“The armed Mujahideen control the hotel and are shooting workers and officers” of the government in the hotel, al-Shabab said in a statement claiming responsibility for the attack.

Resident Farah Ali, who lives near the president’s office, told Reuters: “We first heard a huge blast, and then gunfire followed. We understand the fighters are inside [the hotel] for we hear exchange of gunfire.”

“Several gunmen forced their way into the building after destroying the perimeter wall with a heavy explosion,” a security officer told AFP.

Hassan Nur, who escaped by scaling a wall, said: “I don’t know about the casualties but there were many people inside when the attack started.”

Other witnesses reported seeing police arriving within minutes of the attack, which triggered a gun battle with militants.

Attacks had reduced in recent weeks amid heightened security after the government intensified its military offensive against the Islamist group.

Al-Shabab controls large parts of southern and central Somalia.

The group is affiliated to al-Qaeda and has waged a brutal insurgency for nearly 20 years against the UN-backed government in Somalia.

Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Thursday met defence officials to plan how to reclaim lost territory, Somalia’s national news agency Sonna reported.

It is a proscribed terrorist group by countries including the UK and US. The US has intervened militarily to fight against the group.

Its fighters are known for targeting hotels, including the Syl Hotel in 2019.

In 2022, the group stormed the Villa Rays hotel in the capital, killing at least 14 people.

Three years before the storming of the Villa Rays hotel, at least 26 people, including a prominent journalist and several foreigners, were killed in an attack on the Asasey hotel in the port of Kismayo, southern Somalia.

 

 

Top Democrat Chuck Schumer calls for new Israel election as rift grows

US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called for Israel to hold elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as cracks appear in a once stable and friendly alliance.

Mr Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in US government, said on Thursday Mr Netanyahu had lost his way.

Leaders in Washington have avoided directly criticising Mr Netanyahu’s approach to the conflict in Gaza

It is a sharp escalation in US criticism of Mr Netanyahu’s government.

Mr Schumer, who has backed Israel throughout his 25 years in the Senate, warned those casualties in Gaza risked turning Israel into a “pariah”.

Speaking in the Senate on Thursday, Mr Schumer, a long-time supporter of Israel, harshly criticised the Israeli leader, who he said had come to allow “his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”.

Israel, Mr Schumer said, must make “course corrections” and take steps to better protect civilians in Gaza.

Israel’s leaders were quick to reproach the senator, with Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party saying Israel is not a “banana republic” and that the prime minister’s policies are “supported by a large majority”.

“It is expected of Senator Schumer to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it,” the party said.

Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog, also attacked the remarks, writing on X that it was “unhelpful” and “counterproductive” to comment on “the domestic political scene of a democratic ally”.

The statement from one of America’s most powerful political leaders come on the heels of pointed critiques from White House.

Washington leaders from both parties, including President Joe Biden, have mostly refrained from criticising how Mr Netanyahu has handled the conflict, which began when Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 others hostage.

While the US remains Israel’s closest ally and biggest provider of military aid, concerns have been mounting within the Biden administration and among some members of his own party over Israel’s handling of the war.

Mr Biden, who is running again for the White House, is also facing political pressures in this presidential election year.

A coalition of Arab-American voters have organised successful protest efforts during the Democratic primary process, a sign of growing restlessness in the Democratic base about the situation in Gaza.

Cracks began to publicly emerge between the two governments recent weeks, with Mr Biden warning Israel against expanding its invasion into the city of Rafah, which he called a “red line”.

In his State of the Union address last week, Mr Biden also called Israel’s response in the territory “over the top”.

After the speech, he was caught on a hot mic telling a concerned senator that he and the Israeli leader would soon have a “come to Jesus moment”.

When alerted to the live audio, Mr Biden replied: “That’s good.”

And President Biden has become increasingly vocal in calling for Israel to let more humanitarian aid into the enclave, with “no excuses”.

Nonetheless, the White House was quick to distance itself from Mr Schumer’s comments on Thursday.

Spokesperson John Kirby said that while the Senate leader had a right to his opinion, administration officials were focused on working with Israel on its defence.

More than 30,000 Palestinians – the majority of them children and women – have now been killed in Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry said last month.

The actual number of dead is likely to be far higher as the count does not include those who have not reached hospitals, among them thousands of people still lost under the rubble of buildings hit by Israeli air strikes.

Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday that he could not accept the figure of 30,000. He said Israel’s military had killed 13,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza and that it estimated the ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths was 1 to 1.5.

In his Thursday remarks, Mr Schumer said: “As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may.

“But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel.”

“In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election,” he added. Israel is next due to hold a general election by October 2026.

For peace talks to advance, Mr Schumer said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank, must also step down. The Palestinian leader, who is 88, has been little seen throughout the conflict and his government has not held elections since 2006.

On Wednesday, Mr Abbas, who has been under pressure from the US to reform the Palestinian Authority, appointed his former adviser as prime minister.

Mr Schumer’s comments prompted a rebuke from outgoing Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who called the 40-minute speech “grotesque” and “unprecedented”.

He said it was “hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel”.

Opinion polls show most Israelis support the war, but one survey released in January suggested just 15% of voters wanted Mr Netanyahu to remain in office once the conflict ends.

Meanwhile, the US revealed sanctions against three more settlers and for the first time against two Israeli settlement outposts it accused of undermining stability in the occupied West Bank.

There were nearly 500 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians between 7 October and 31 January, according to UN figures.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements and outposts illegal under international law, though Israel and the US dispute this interpretation.

 

 

A decade later, Liberians remember those who died in Ebola outbreak

Liberians gathered this week to mark a decade since the country was hit by a devastating Ebola outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people in West Africa, adding to the region’s economic and political troubles.

The second Wednesday of March in Liberia, National Decoration Day, is always one of remembrance and people gathered this year at a memorial site where many victims of the virus were buried outside the capital, Monrovia, to pay their respects to family and friends. It was a grim milestone for those who lost loved ones to the virus, even though cultural stigma leads many to insist they died of other causes.

The Ebola outbreak killed some 11,000 people mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the United Nations. Liberia was declared free of the virus in 2016, after almost 5,000 deaths.

Many Liberians who lost loved ones during the outbreak deny the virus was to blame. Stigma and fear of the disease remain widespread in the population that survived.

Yasa Johnson told The Associated Press she has looked after her younger siblings since Ebola killed their mother.

“I have come to honor my mother,” she said at the Disco Hill Safe Burial Site in Margibi County, where many victims were buried on the outskirts of the capital.

Some 4,500 people are buried or cremated at the site, the National Public Health Institute of Liberia said. Relatives stood in groups carrying flowers and singing religious songs.

Elizabeth Brown and her husband, who operate an orphanage for children who lost their parents to the virus, also came to pay their respects.

“It saddens me, because their lives were cut off too soon,” she said. “We just want to help them.”

Since the outbreak, Liberia has been marked by ongoing economic struggles. Its newly elected president, Joseph Boakai, 79, came to office in January on a pledge to fix the economy, improve security and fight corruption.

 

 

Russian passports become universal in Ukraine’s occupied territories, through force and incentives

He and his parents were among the last in their village to take a Russian passport, but the pressure was becoming unbearable.

By his third beating at the hands of the Russian soldiers occupying Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vyacheslav Ryabkov caved. The soldiers broke two of his ribs, but his face was not bruised for his unsmiling passport photo, taken in September 2023.

It wasn’t enough.

In December, they caught the welder on his way home from work. Then one slammed his rifle butt down on Ryabkov’s face, smashing the bridge of his nose.

“Why don’t you fight for us? You already have a Russian passport,” they demanded. The beating continued as the 42-year-old fell unconscious.

“Let’s finish this off,” one soldier said. A friend ran for Ryabok’s mother.

Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship ahead of elections Vladimir Putin has made certain he will win, an Associated Press investigation has found. But accepting a passport means that men living in occupied territory can be drafted to fight against the same Ukrainian army that is trying to free them.

A Russian passport is needed to prove property ownership and keep access to health care and retirement income. Refusal can result in losing custody of children, jail – or worse. A new Russian law stipulates that anyone in the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport by July 1 is subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen.”

But Russia also offers incentives: a stipend to leave the occupied territory and move to Russia, humanitarian aid, pensions for retirees, and money for parents of newborns – with Russian birth certificates.

Every passport and birth certificate issued makes it harder for Ukraine to reclaim its lost land and children, and each new citizen allows Russia to claim a right – however falsely – to defend its own people against a hostile neighbor.

The AP investigation found that the Russian government has seized at least 1,785 homes and businesses in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions alone. Ukraine’s Crimean leadership in exile reported on Feb. 25 that of 694 soldiers reported dead in recent fighting for Russia, 525 were likely Ukrainian citizens who had taken Russian passports since the annexation.

AP spoke about the system to impose Russian citizenship in occupied territories to more than a dozen people from the regions, along with the activists helping them to escape and government officials trying to cope with what has become a bureaucratic and psychological nightmare for many.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said “almost 100% … of the whole population who still live on temporary occupied territories of Ukraine” now have Russian passports.

Under international law dating to 1907, it is forbidden to force people “to swear allegiance to the hostile Power.” But when Ukrainians apply for a Russian passport, they must submit biometric data and cell phone information and swear an oath of loyalty.

“People in occupied territories, these are the first soldiers to fight against Ukraine,” said Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer who helped Ukraine bring a war crimes case against Putin before the International Criminal Court. “For them, it’s logical not to waste Russian people, just to use Ukrainians.”

The combination of force and enticement when it comes to Russian passports dates to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian citizenship was automatically given to permanent residents of Crimea and anyone who refused lost rights to jobs, health care and property.

Nine months into the Russian occupation of the peninsula, 1.5 million Russian passports had been issued there, according to statistics issued by the Russian government in 2015. But Ukrainians say it was still possible to function without one for years afterward.

Beginning in May 2022, Russia passed a series of laws to make it easier to obtain passports for Ukrainians, mostly by lifting the usual residency and income requirements. In April 2023 came the punishment: Anyone in the occupied territories who did not accept Russian citizenship would be considered stateless and required to register with Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry.

Russian officials threatened to withhold access to medical care for those without a Russian passport, and said one was needed to prove property ownership. Hundreds of properties deemed “abandoned” were seized by the Russian government.

“You can see it in the passport stamps: If someone got their passport in August 2022 or earlier, they are most certainly pro-Russian. If a passport was issued after that time – it was most certainly forced,” said Oleksandr Rozum, a lawyer who left the occupied city of Berdyansk and now handles the bureaucratic gray zone for Ukrainians under occupation who ask for his help, including property records, birth and death certificates and divorces.

The situation is different depending on the whims of the Russian officials in charge of a particular area, according to interviews with Ukrainians and a look at the Telegram social media accounts set up by occupation officials.

In an interview posted recently, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor in Zaporizhzhia, said anyone who opposed the occupation was subject to expulsion. “We understood that these people could not be won over and that they would have to be dealt with even more harshly in the future,” he said. Balitsky then alluded to making “some extremely harsh decisions that I will not talk about.”

Even children are forced to take Russian passports.

A decree signed Jan. 4 by Putin allows for the fast-tracking of citizenship for Ukrainian orphans and those “without parental care,” who include children whose parents were detained in the occupied territories. Almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have disappeared into Russia or Russian-held territories, according to the Ukrainian government, where they can be given passports and be adopted as Russian citizens.

“It’s about eradication of identity,” said Rashevska, the lawyer involved in the war crimes case.

Natalia Zhyvohliad, a mother of nine from a suburb of Berdyansk, had a good idea of what was in store for her children if she stayed.

Zhyvohliad said about half her town of 3,500 people left soon after for Ukrainian-held lands, some voluntarily and some deported through the frontlines on a 40-kilometer (25-mile) walk. Others welcomed the occupation: Her goddaughter eagerly took Russian citizenship, as did some of her neighbors.

But she said plenty of people were like her – those the Russians derisively call “waiters”: People waiting for a Ukrainian liberation. She kept her younger children, who range in age from 7 to 18, home from school and did her best to teach them in Ukrainian. But then someone snitched, and she was forced to send them to the Russian school.

At all hours, she said, soldiers would pound on her door and ask why she didn’t have a passport yet. One friend gave in because she needed medicine for a chronic illness. Zhyvohliad held out through the summer, not quite believing the threats to deport her and send her brood to an orphanage in Russia or to dig trenches.

Then last fall, the school headmaster forced her 17-year-old and 18-year-old sons to register for the draft and ordered them to apply for passports in the meantime. Their alternative, the principal said, was to explain themselves to Russia’s internal security services.

By the end of 2023, at least 30,000 Crimean men had been conscripted to serve in the Russian military since the peninsula was annexed, according to a UN report. It was clear to Zhyvohliad what her boys risked.

With tears in her eyes and trembling legs, she went to the passport office.

“I kept a Ukrainian flag during the occupation,” she said. “How could I apply for this nasty thing?”

She hoped to use it just once — at the last Russian checkpoint before the crossing into Ukrainian-held territory.

When Zhyvohliad reached what is known as the filtration point at Novoazovsk, the Russians separated her and her two oldest boys from the rest of the children. They had to sign an agreement to pass a lie detector. Then Zhyvohliad was pulled aside alone.

For 40 minutes, they went through her phone, took fingerprints and photos and questioned her, but they ultimately let her through. The children were waiting for her on the other side. She misses her home but doesn’t regret leaving.

“I waited until the last moment to be liberated,” she said. “But this thing with my kids possibly being drafted was the last straw.”

Often the life-or-death decision is more immediate.

Russian occupation officials have said the day is coming soon when only those with Russian passports and the all-important national health insurance will be able to access care. For some, it’s already here.

The international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least 15 cases of people being denied vital medical care in occupied territories between February 2023 and August 2023 because they lacked a Russian passport. Some hospitals even featured a passport desk to speed the process for desperate patients. One hospital in Zaporizhzhia oblast was ordered to close because the medical staff refused to accept Russian citizenship.

Alexander Dudka, the Russian-appointed head of the village of Lazurne in the Kherson region, first threatened to withhold humanitarian aid from residents without Russian citizenship. In August, he added medicine to the list of things the “waiters” would no longer have access to.

Residents, he said in the video on the village Telegram channel, “must respect the country that ensures their safety and which is now helping them live.”

As of Jan. 1, anyone needing medical care in the occupied region must show proof they have mandatory national health insurance, which in turn is only available to Russian citizens.

Last year, “if you weren’t scared or if you weren’t coerced there were places where you could still get medical care,” said Uliana Poltavets, a PHR researcher. “Now it is impossible.”

Dina Urich, who arranges the escapes from occupied territory with the aid group Helping to Leave, said about 400 requests come in each month, but they only have the money and staff for 40 evacuations. Priority goes to those who need urgent medical care, she said. And Russian soldiers at the last checkpoints have started turning back people without the Russian passports.

“You have people constantly dying while waiting for evacuation due to a lack of health care,” she said. ““People will stay there, people will die, people will experience psychological and physical pressure, that is, some will simply die of torture and persecution, while others will live in constant fear.”

Along with turning Ukrainians into Russians throughout the occupied territories, the Russian government is bringing in its own people. It is offering rock bottom mortgage rates for anyone from Russia who wants to move there, replacing the Ukrainian doctors, nurses, teachers, police and municipal workers who are now gone.

Half of Zhyvohliad’s village left, either at the start of the war when things looked dark for the Kherson region or after being deported across the frontline by occupation officials. The school principal’s empty home was taken over by a Russian-appointed replacement.

Artillery and airstrikes damaged thousands of homes in the port city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian forces for months before falling under their control. Most of the residents fled into Ukrainian-held territory or deep inside Russia. Russians often take over the property.

Russia also offered “residential certificates” and a 100,000 ruble ($1,000) stipend to Ukrainians willing to accept citizenship and live in Russia. For many people tired of listening to the daily sounds of battle and afraid of what the future might bring, it looked like a good option.

This again follows Russia’s actions after the annexation of Crimea: By populating occupied regions with Russian residents, Russia increasingly cements its hold on territories it has seized by force in what many Ukrainians describe as ethnic cleansing.

The process is only accelerating. After capturing the town of Adviivka last month, Russia swooped in with the passports in a matter of days.

The neighboring Kherson town of Oleshky essentially emptied after the flooding caused by the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. The housing stipend in Russia looked fabulous by comparison to the shelling and rising waters, said Rima Yaremenko.

She didn’t take it, instead making her way through Russia to Latvia and then to Poland. But she believes the Russians took the opportunity to drive the “waiters” from Oleshky.

“Maybe they wanted to empty the city,” she said. “They occupied it, maybe they thought it would be theirs forever.”

Ryabkov said he was offered the housing stipend when he filled out his passport paperwork but turned it down. He knows plenty of people who accepted though.

By the time the Russian soldiers caught Ryabkov in the street, in December, everyone in his village was either gone or had Russian citizenship. When his mother arrived, he was barely recognizable beneath all the blood and the Russian guns were trained on him. She flung herself over his body.

“Shoot him through me,” she dared them.

They couldn’t bring themselves to shoot an elderly woman, and she eventually dragged him home. They started preparations to leave the next day.

It took time, but they made it out using the Russian passports.

“When I saw our yellow and blue flag, I started to cry,” he said. “I wanted to burn the Russian passport, destroy it, trample it.”

 

 

Trump will end the war in Ukraine by not giving ‘a penny’— Hungarian leader

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said Donald Trump would effectively end the war in Ukraine by cutting off funding to Kyiv, should the former US president return to power in November.

“He (Trump) has a very clear vision,” Orbán said in an interview to Hungarian broadcaster M1 broadcast on Sunday. “He says the following: first, he will not give a single penny for the Russo-Ukrainian war. That’s why the war will end, because it’s obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own two feet.”

Orbán’s comments came after Trump hosted the Hungarian strongman at Mar-a-Lago on Friday. The former president and a small group of close advisers met with Orbán at the Florida resort for roughly an hour Friday night, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, with one of the sources describing it as a “social meeting” with no agenda. A separate source called it “friendly.”

Orbán has been a longstanding opponent to European Union and NATO efforts to assist Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago. Hungary has consistently bogged down Western aid negotiations, though it did recently sign off on a 50 billion euro aid package for Kyiv and approve Sweden’s accession to NATO after holding out for months.

“If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war will end. And if the Americans don’t give money, then the Europeans won’t be able to fund this war alone. And then the war will end,” Orbán said.

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Orbán, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s few allies left in Europe, frames his position as “pro-peace” despite the fact that it would effectively reward Moscow for waging war against a weaker neighbor and allow it to sue for peace on its own terms.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and former US President Donald Trump are seen at the White House in 2019.

Trump, who last week effectively locked up the Republican nomination for president, has taken a similar isolationist approach as he campaigns to retake the White House in November. He has vowed to end the war in Ukraine, if he’s elected, within 24 hours – a process that could happen only on Putin’s terms and reward his illegal invasion.

Orbán and Trump, both far-right populists defined by anti-immigrant and demagogic rhetoric, have long expressed mutual admiration for each other – despite the fact that critics say Orbán has weakened the country’s democratic institutions since returning to power in 2010.

Trump’s lavish praise for Orban has sparked concern that he is doubling down on his support for autocrats as Western democracies struggle to stay united in their support for Ukraine.

“He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

Trump’s former advisers say he consistently lavished praise on Putin, and several of them believe that in a potential second term Trump would bring a fundamental shift in America’s vision of itself and its role in the world – including potentially pulling the US out of NATO and reducing its commitment to other defense alliances.

“NATO would be in real jeopardy,” Bolton said.

 

 

Senegal’s top opposition leaders released from prison as elections loom

Senegal’s top opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, has been released from prison, triggering jubilant celebrations outside the prison as well as across Dakar, the capital.

State broadcaster RTS reported Sonko was freed along with key ally Bassirou Diomaye Faye late on Thursday.

Their release comes after a crisis triggered by President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone the February 25 presidential vote and was expected following last week’s passage of an amnesty law for acts committed in connection with political demonstrations since 2021.

The election, which authorities wanted to postpone for 10 months, is now due to take place on March 24.

“They came out in front of us,” said lawyer Cheikh Koureyssi Ba.

Sonko was at the heart of a bitter two-year standoff with the state and has been in prison since July.

The legal case against him, along with rising economic and social tensions, led to deadly unrest between 2021 and 2023.

Sonko came third in the 2019 presidential election but was barred from running as a candidate in this year’s poll.

News of his release brought thousands of supporters onto the streets of Dakar, chanting Sonko’s name on the street outside his house. Some lit flares, danced or blasted their motorbike and car horns.

“We’ve been waiting for this day for so long. Prayed for it,” said 52-year-old health worker Fatima, who gave only her first name. She had rushed to join the crowd when she heard Sonko and Faye were free.

“I believe Sonko can change the country,” she said.

The opposition leader is popular among young people and his fiery campaign to tackle corruption has resonated in a country where the cost of living is rising and many people are struggling.

“It’s a joy. It’s incredible. They released Ousmane Sonko!”, said 31-year-old Mamadou Mballo Mane.

After he was disqualified from contesting the election, Sonko endorsed Faye to replace him on the ballot.

Faye, who was jailed in April 2023, has been unable to address voters in person since campaigning kicked off on March 9.

Incumbent Macky Sall is not standing for re-election this year. His last-minute decision to defer the February presidential vote led to unrest in which four people were killed.

Bouts of unrest since 2021 have left dozens dead and led to hundreds of arrests in a country often viewed as a pillar of stability in West Africa, where there have been dozens of coups and attempted coups in recent decades.

Sonko has always maintained there was a plot to keep him out of the 2024 election, while his camp and the government have traded blame for the violence.

He had been jailed since the end of July on a string of charges, including provoking insurrection, conspiracy with terrorist groups and endangering state security.

His political party was also dissolved.

 

 

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