AFP

European Union leaders granted candidate status Thursday to Ukraine and Moldova in a strong show of support against Russia’s invasion, as the United States said it was sending Kyiv more high-precision rocket systems.

The West’s latest attempts to rally behind Ukraine came as Russia closed in on key cities in the country’s embattled east and prompted growing global concerns with restrictions in gas and grain exports.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the EU decision on his country and Moldova as “a unique and historic moment”, although the two former Soviet republics face a long path before joining the bloc and its benefits of free movement and a common market.

“Ukraine’s future is within the EU,” said Zelensky, who had been working the phones for weeks.

“We will win, rebuild, enter the EU and then will rest. Or probably we will not rest.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said that the decision by EU leaders sent a “very strong signal” to Russia that Europeans support the pro-Western aspirations of Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin had declared Ukraine to be part of Moscow’s sphere and insisted he was acting due to attempts to bring the country into NATO, the Western alliance that comes with security guarantees.

European powers before the invasion had distanced themselves from US support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations and EU membership is at least years away.

Ukraine and Moldova will have to go through protracted negotiations and the European Union has laid out steps that Kyiv must take even before that, including bolstering the rule of law and fighting corruption.

– Weapons to fight Russian gains –

The White House announced that it was sending another $450 million in fresh weapons to Ukraine including new High Mobility Artillery Rocket systems, which have been at the top of Kyiv’s wish list.

The so-called Himars system can simultaneously launch multiple precision missiles at an extended range.

An initial four units have already been delivered, with Ukrainian soldiers being trained to operate the equipment, after President Joe Biden’s administration said Kyiv had offered assurances it would not fire into Russia.

Ukraine’s needs have been increasingly urgent as Russia — which failed to take Kyiv immediately after invading on February 24 — advances in the east, tightening its grip on strategically important Severodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk across the Donets river.

Taking the cities would give Moscow control of the whole of Lugansk, allowing Russia to press further into the Donbas region and potentially farther west.

Ukraine acknowledged Thursday that it had lost control of two areas from where it was defending the cities, with Russian forces now closer to encircling the industrial hubs.

Britain’s defence ministry said some Ukrainian units had probably been forced to withdraw “to avoid being encircled”. 

“Russia’s improved performance in this sector is likely a result of recent unit reinforcement and heavy concentration of fire,” it said in its latest intelligence update.

A representative of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine told AFP the resistance of Ukrainian forces trying to defend Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was “pointless and futile.”

“At the rate our soldiers are going, very soon the whole territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic will be liberated,” said Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the army of Lugansk.

The Russian army also said Thursday that its bombings in the southern city of Mykolaiv had destroyed 49 fuel storage tanks and three tank repair depots, after strikes killed several Ukrainian troops Wednesday.

– ‘Only grannies left’ –

The northeastern city of Kharkiv near the Russian border was nearly empty on Wednesday, AFP reporters said, a day after shelling by Moscow’s forces killed five people there.

“Last night the building next to mine collapsed from the bombardment while I was sleeping,” said Leyla Shoydhry, a young woman in a park near the opera house.

Roman Pohuliay, a 19-year-old in a pink sweatshirt, said most residents had fled the city.

“Only the grannies are left,” he said.

In the central city of Zaporizhzhia, women were training to use Kalashnikov assault rifles in urban combat as Russian forces edged nearer.

“When you can do something, it’s not so scary to take a machine gun in your hands,” said Ulyana Kiyashko, 29, after moving through an improvised combat zone in a basement.

– ‘Weaponising’ grain and gas –

Western officials have also accused Russia of weaponising its key exports of gas as well as grain from Ukraine, contributing to global inflation and rising hunger in the world.

“We are very clear that this grain crisis is urgent, that it needs to be solved within the next month,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on a visit to Turkey.

“Otherwise we could see devastating consequences,” she said.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged African nations to pressure Russia for a safe route for grain.

“African capitals matter and they do influence Russia’s position,” he told African journalists.

A US official warned of new retaliatory measures against Russia at the Group of Seven summit being attended by Biden in Germany starting Sunday.

Germany ratcheted up an emergency gas plan to its second alert level, just one short of the maximum that could require rationing in Europe’s largest economy, after Russia slashed its supplies.

“Gas is now a scarce commodity,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters, urging households to cut back on use. Demand for gas is lower in the summer but shortages could cause heating shortages in the winter.

France is aiming to have its gas storage reserves at full capacity by early autumn, and will build a new floating methane terminal to get more energy supplies by sea, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said.

A Kremlin spokesman reiterated its claim that the supply cuts were due to maintenance and that necessary equipment from abroad had not arrived.

burs-sct/dw

Lawmakers investigating the attack on the US Capitol on Thursday detailed Donald Trump’s efforts to recruit the Justice Department into his scheme to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden — attempting to replace its head with a loyalist who was “meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.”

At the fifth hearing into its year-long probe of the January 2021 insurrection, the House of Representatives panel described Trump’s pressure on officials to amplify his false claims that his presidency had been stolen by widespread voter fraud.

“Donald Trump didn’t just want the Justice Department to investigate. He wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies, to baselessly call the election corrupt,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson said.

Lawmakers revisited tensions among government attorneys in the days leading to the violence, when Trump tried to install his own man at the top of the department.

“It was a brazen attempt to use the Justice Department to advance the president’s personal political agenda,” Thompson said.

Underscoring the intensity of Trump’s pressure on the department, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said that in late December 2020 and early January 2021, the president contacted him almost daily.

“At one point, he had raised the question of having a special counsel for election fraud…. he raised whether the Justice Department would file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court,” Rosen said.

“At a couple of junctures, there were questions about making public statements or about holding a press conference.”

The DOJ pursued a deluge of Trump’s election fraud claims, but Rosen said officials were presented with no evidence. 

– Oval Office showdown –

At that point Trump began elevating a little-known mid-level department official named Jeffrey Clark, who embraced the outgoing president’s debunked theories.

Clark prepared a letter to the Georgia state assembly, the hearing was told, stating falsely that the department had found evidence of widespread voter fraud, but other officials refused to sign it. Other letters had also been prepared for other states.

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee in a videotaped deposition that he had informed Clark that his plan would amount to “committing a felony.”

Trump pushed to install Clark as attorney general over Rosen, and having Clark reverse the department’s conclusion that there was no evidence of fraud that could sway the election.

But Trump was forced to back off by a rebellion in the department’s senior ranks at a January 4 Oval Office meeting outlined in detail by the witnesses.

Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, another high-ranking official named Steven Engel and White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign en masse, warning that they would take “hundreds and hundreds” of top federal prosecutors with them if Trump went ahead with his plan.

“I made the point that Jeff Clark is not even competent to serve as the attorney general. He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life,” Donoghue recalled telling Trump.

Donoghue said he told Clark: “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill?”

He also recalled warning Clark that his mission to push Trump’s election fraud claims was “nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.”

– ‘Facts, evidence and law’ –

Under live questioning, Donoghue confirmed that he had rebuffed Trump when the then-president insisted the department could simply “say that the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me.”

Rosen said Trump had asked him during a December 31 meeting to seize voting machines from state governments and again Rosen refused, explaining that there was no justification for doing so.

Donoghue recalled Trump being agitated and telling both officials he had been advised to fire them and promote Clark.

“I responded, as I think I had earlier… ‘Mr. President, you should have the leadership that you want, but understand the United States Justice Department functions on facts, evidence and law. And those are not going to change.'”

Clark didn’t appear before the committee and asserted his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself more than 100 times during his deposition. 

In a headline-grabbing coda to the affair, federal investigators searched Clark’s home on Wednesday.

The US attorney in Washington did not comment on the reason for the action but the Center for Renewing America, where Clark works, confirmed the search, calling it a “weaponization of government.”

Adding to the drama, Hollywood actor Sean Penn was at Thursday’s hearing as a guest of former police officer Michael Fanone, who was seriously injured on January 6 and testified last year about his ordeal.

Covid vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths in the first year after they were introduced, according to the first large modelling study on the topic released Friday.

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, is based on data from 185 countries and territories collected from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021. 

It is the first attempt to estimate the number of deaths prevented directly and indirectly as a result of Covid-19 vaccinations. 

It found that 19.8 million deaths were prevented out of a potential 31.4 million deaths that would have occurred if no vaccines were available.

It was a 63 percent reduction, the study found.  

The study used official figures — or estimates when official data was not available — for deaths from Covid, as well as total excess deaths from each country. 

Excess mortality is the difference between the total number of people who died from all causes and the number of deaths expected based on past data. 

These analyses were compared with a hypothetical alternative scenario in which no vaccine was administered. 

The model accounted for variation in vaccination rates across countries, as well as differences in vaccine effectiveness based on the types of vaccines known to have been primarily used in each country.  

China was not included in the study because of its large population and strict containment measures, which would have skewed the results, it said.

The study found that high- and middle-income countries accounted for the largest number of deaths averted, 12.2 million out of 19.8 million, reflecting inequalities in access to vaccines worldwide. 

Nearly 600,000 additional deaths could have been prevented if the World Health Organization’s (WHO) goal of vaccinating 40 percent of each country’s population by the end of 2021 had been met, it concluded.  

“Millions of lives have probably been saved by making vaccines available to people around the world,” said lead study author Oliver Watson of Imperial College London. 

“We could have done more,” he said.  

Covid has officially killed more than 6.3 million people globally, according to the WHO. 

But the organisation said last month the real number could be as high as 15 million, when all direct and indirect causes are accounted for. 

The figures are extremely sensitive due to how they reflect on the handling of the crisis by authorities around the world.

The virus is on the rise again in some places, including in Europe, which is seeing a warm-weather resurgence blamed in part on Omicron subvariants. 

A US teen cleared in court after killing people amid unrest over police mistreatment of African-Americans unveiled Thursday a video game centered on shooting targets representing journalists.

Kyle Rittenhouse said in online posts that money raised from sales of the game will be used to sue “leftwing media organizations” for defamation over their coverage of his 2020 case.

He did not specify which news outlets he intended to sue, nor was it clear when the game would be available for play.

“It’s time to fight back against the fake news machine,” Rittenhouse said in a video posted on Twitter.

“This is why I am launching the Kyle Rittenhouse fake news turkey shoot video game.”

A trailer for the game, priced at $10, shows a cartoon version of Rittenhouse blasting away, arcade-style, at turkey characters labeled “fake news” from behind cover.

Rittenhouse was acquitted late last year by a jury in the August 2020 shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, shot dead two white men and wounded another with his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle during riots that followed anti-police protests in Kenosha.

With Rittenhouse accused of homicide, the jury accepted his argument that he was defending himself from attack by the three men.

Rittenhouse said he had traveled to Kenosha from neighboring Illinois to help protect private property from damage in riots that erupted after Kenosha police shot and paralyzed a Black man, Jacob Blake.

Before the incident, on his Facebook page Rittenhouse had endorsed a “Blue Lives Matter” campaign to support police. This came in response to heavy criticism of law enforcement officers for killings of Black suspects, in particular the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020.

The US Supreme Court ruling in the most important gun rights case in more than a decade does not mean a New Yorker can now openly carry an AR-15 rifle into a movie theater.

But they may be able to eventually bring in a concealed and loaded handgun.

In a 6-3 decision in a case brought against New York’s gun licensing requirements, the conservative-dominated court ruled that Americans have a fundamental right to carry a concealed handgun in public.

The ruling represents a major legal shift on the issue of gun control, but it will likely take time for the real impact on the streets and citizens of US cities to make itself felt: 

– New York vows to fight back –

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the Supreme Court decision “reprehensible” and pledged to enact new state gun control legislation.

“We do not need people entering our subways, our restaurants, our movie theaters with concealed weapons,” Hochul said.

New York City police commissioner Keechant Sewell warned New Yorkers that nothing has changed yet.

“If you carry a gun illegally in New York City, you will be arrested,” she said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams vowed to use “every legal resource available” to ensure that “New Yorkers are not put in greater danger of gun violence.”

New York, the nation’s fourth-largest state with a population of 19.3 million, has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

Illegally possessing a loaded firearm outside one’s home or place of business has been a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Adams, the mayor, said the city will start identifying sensitive places where guns may legally be banned. 

– ‘Sensitive places’ –

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said it was “settled” law that guns may be prohibited in some “sensitive places” such as schools, government buildings, polling places and courthouses.

But they left it to lower courts to determine exactly what other places may be added to the list.

Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University, said the court had “created a precedent that there are extremely limited circumstances where one cannot carry a firearm.”

Fagan predicted a “cat-and-mouse game” between municipal governments seeking to restrict the right to carry on one hand and the gun lobby and constitutional conservatives who want to expand that right.

“Can one carry a firearm into a church? Can one carry a firearm onto mass transit? Can one carry a firearm into a movie theater?” he asked. “I think it’s going to be an interesting period of experimentation.”

– Impact on other states –

About half of the 50 US states allow permitless carry of concealed firearms in public while the other half allow it in some form but with restrictions, according to the gun control group Giffords.

A number of US states also allow the open carrying of rifles, including semi-automatics, and several recent protests in the United States have featured heavily-armed demonstrators.

The Supreme Court ruling will have an immediate impact on the five states with laws similar to New York’s — California, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Hawaii — and the nation’s capital, Washington.

Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University, said he expected those states to “attempt to distinguish their laws from New York.”

They may argue that their laws are less stringent and involve less discretion in the licensing authority, said Blocher, co-director of the Center for Firearms Law.

“But I would expect there to be strong pressure in litigation for their laws to be revamped or struck down,” he added.

Biden administration officials and oil industry executives huddled in Washington on Thursday to discuss potential steps to address runaway gasoline prices, and while both sides called the talks constructive, no concrete plans for relief emerged.

High prices at the pump are weighing on American consumers — and damaging President Joe Biden’s approval rating.

Heading into the gathering, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said she hoped the meeting would result in refiners boosting gasoline supplies to lower prices for the summer vacation driving season.

Afterwards, the Energy Department said the talks had had a “productive focus on dissecting the current global problems of supply and refining,” and promised “ongoing dialogue” to “alleviate the current supply and price challenges.” 

Similarly, the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers called the meeting a “constructive discussion about ways to address rising energy costs and create more certainty for global energy markets.”

Chevron, Phillips 66 and Shell all released upbeat statements, with Shell US President Gretchen Watkins praising Granholm for setting a “collaborative tone” by noting that Shell and others had shifted some refining capacity to produce biofuels.

But no practical steps to immediately boost supply were revealed.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the gathering a “first step.”

“Clearly we want to come up with solutions,” Jean-Pierre told a press briefing. “There’s going to be other steps to get there.”

– Uneasy ties –

Biden and the oil industry have an uneasy relationship, in part over the White House’s efforts to restrict drilling in some federal areas due to environmental concerns, and decisions like canceling the Keystone pipeline project on his first day in office.

The US president has also blasted industry leaders in recent days over skyrocketing profits and their reluctance to boost capital spending. 

Industry leaders released a letter to Biden ahead of Thursday’s meeting that alluded to his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, urging him to visit US refineries and other industry sites to understand the potential for “American-made energy solutions.”

But with Biden’s approval ratings plunging due to soaring inflation, the president has turned to the industry for relief.

– Short-term solutions? –

Gasoline prices currently stand at $4.94 a gallon, a bit below all-time highs, but up more than 60 percent from the year-ago level.

In a letter earlier this month to oil giants, Biden said high fuel prices were a key factor in the “intense financial pain the American people and their families are bearing.”

He urged ExxonMobil, Chevron and other industry players to “provide concrete, near-term solutions that address the crisis.”

In response, Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth pledged to work with the administration, but faulted Biden’s comments that “at times vilify” the industry — drawing a Biden quip that Wirth was being “mildly sensitive.”

The price surge follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exacerbated an already tight energy supply situation, sending crude oil prices sharply higher. 

The rise in prices also reflects the diminished state of refining capacity after the industry mothballed some plants during Covid-19 lockdowns, and did not reopen them amid uncertain long-term growth prospects with the buildup of electric vehicles.  

Biden’s policy thus far has centered on a huge increase in crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 

On Wednesday, the US president proposed a temporary fuel tax break, a measure that received a lukewarm reception on Capitol Hill.

For energy specialist Andrew Lebow of the Commodity Research Group consultancy, “there is very little refiners can do at this point.”

“If they could produce more, certainly they would be given that the margins are incredible,” he said.

On Wednesday, Granholm acknowledged that building new refineries could not be done overnight, but said the administration wanted answers about plants that had been taken offline.

She also wanted to talk about supply chain issues, questioning if the industry could help on that front.

Kevin Book, head of research at Clearview Energy Partners, said there were areas where the government could provide aid, such as facilitating procurement of truck drivers and sand for fracking. 

Adopting a broadly constructive tone on regulation could also boost investment, he said.