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Ukrainian and Russian forces were fighting for “literally every metre” in Severodonetsk, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as fighting intensified in an eastern region where the country’s top commander said the land “is covered in blood”.

Severodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk have been targeted for weeks as the last areas in the Lugansk region still under Ukrainian control.

Russia’s massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage, said Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military. 

But, “despite everything, we continue to hold positions”, he said. 

“Every metre of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood — but not only ours, but also the occupier’s.”

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said the latest fighting in Severodonetsk was “very fierce”, adding that Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as “cannon fodder”.

By attacking Severodonetsk’s last remaining bridges, the Russians were aiming to cut the key industrial city off completely from the rest of the country, said regional governor Sergiy Gaiday. 

“Most likely (in the next two days), they will throw all the reserves to capture the city,” Gaiday said.

He also accused Russia of shelling the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge.

But Leonid Pasechnik, leader of Lugansk’s pro-Russian separatists, pointed the finger at the Ukrainian battalions, saying they were the ones shelling Severodonetsk from the plant.

He told reporters that pro-Russian forces were not pressing aggressively “because it is a chemical industry facility”, warning of the risk of “an environmental catastrophe”.

– ‘War crimes’ –

Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv — many using banned cluster bombs — had killed hundreds of civilians. 

“The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes,” the rights group said in a report on Ukraine’s second biggest city.

Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday, and at the top of the agenda was the issue of tackling global food security threatened by Russia’s invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where several delegates took the floor to condemn Russia’s war, including Kyiv’s envoy who was met with a standing ovation, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

Then, just before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, around three dozen delegates “walked out”, the spokesman said.

That came a day after the head of the European Commission promised Ukraine would receive a clear signal within a week on its bid to join the European Union.

EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at an upcoming summit, although with strict conditions attached. 

In Brussels, demonstrators brandishing blue and yellow Ukrainian flags circled European Commission headquarters Sunday in a show of support.

– Chortkiv strike –

The war has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

But Turkey is blocking their bids and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday the issue may not be resolved by an alliance summit later this month.

The United States and Europe have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine blunt Russia’s advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strike destroyed a “large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries”.

The strike — a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine — left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

He added that four missiles fired Saturday evening from the Black Sea had partially destroyed a military installation in the town, about 140 kilometres (85 miles) from the border with Romania.

Concerns eased Sunday over Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. Captured months ago by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainians, the station had ceased transmitting vital safeguards data two weeks ago.

But plant officials working with the International Atomic Energy Agency have succeeded in restoring transmission, the IAEA said. 

Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said it still wanted to send inspectors to the plant “as soon as possible”.

– Sentences defended –

Alongside the physical fighting, the war is being played out through the courts.

Pro-Moscow separatist authorities in the Donetsk region this week sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

The sentences sparked outrage in Western countries, but separatist Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin said Sunday he would not alter them.

“They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money,” he told reporters, calling the punishment “perfectly fair”.

The families of Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner say they have been living in Ukraine since 2018.

Ukrainian courts have handed three Russian soldiers long prison sentences at war crimes trials.

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Brazilian authorities say they have found a backpack and personal effects of a British journalist and an Indigenous expert who disappeared in the Amazon last week, with the Briton’s mother-in-law saying she has lost hope that they will emerge alive.

Fears have been mounting over the fate of Dom Phillips, 57, a veteran contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and 41-year-old Bruno Pereira, an expert with Brazil’s government agency for Indigenous affairs (Funai), since they disappeared last Sunday after receiving threats during a research trip to Brazil’s Javari Valley.

After a slow start, the Brazilian federal police and the army have intensified the search for the two men, who were last seen in the town of Sao Gabriel, not far from their destination, Atalaia do Norte.

“Objects belonging to the two missing persons have been found: a health card, black pants, a black sandal and a pair of boots belonging to Bruno Pereira, and a pair of boots and a backpack belonging to Dom Phillips containing personal clothing,” the Federal Police in Amazonas state said Sunday in a statement.

The Amazonas Fire Department had previously told local media that personal effects possibly belonging to the missing men had been found “near the house” of Amarildo Costa de Oliveira, the only person arrested so far in the case and who witnesses say pursued the men upriver.

Police said search teams on Sunday covered about 25 square kilometers (10 square miles) with “thorough searches through the jungle, roads in the region and flooded vegetation,” especially in the area where a boat belonging to Oliveira was found.

Earlier, authorities described 41-year-old Oliveira as a “suspect,” and said they were analyzing traces of blood found on his boat.

The finding of the men’s belongings came just hours after friends and relatives of the pair held a vigil on a beach in Rio de Janeiro.

– ‘We want an answer’ –

“At first we had a crazy faith that they had noticed some danger and had hidden in the jungle,” said Maria Lucia Farias, 78.

“Now, not anymore.”

In a statement posted online and reported by The Guardian, a British newspaper to which Phillips contributed, his mother-in-law said: “They are no longer with us. Mother Nature has snatched them away with a grateful embrace.”

She added: “Their souls have joined those of so many others who gave their lives in defence of the rainforest and Indigenous peoples.”

Few of those gathered at the beach expressed much hope in the men’s survival, especially after authorities said they had found a second boat with blood marks, and had located possible human remains, still being analyzed.

One who did voice hope was Phillips’s 13-year-old nephew, Mateus Duarte.

“I used to come for walks on this beach with my uncle,” he said.

Phillips, who has contributed dozens of reports on the Amazon to The Guardian, had traveled to the Javari Valley while working on a book on environmental protection. Pereira went along as a guide.

“We have to know what happened,” said Fabiana Castilho, 47, a friend of Phillips, who wore a T-shirt bearing a photo of the two together.

“We want an answer.”

Others in attendance said they hoped the men’s disappearance would not be in vain.

“It should serve to raise awareness” about the environmental destruction of the Amazon, said Zeca Azevedo, Phillips’s brother-in-law and Mateus Duarte’s father.

“We have to honor their work.”

She has half a million followers on Instagram, leads a glamorous lifestyle and describes herself as the “little girl” of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra — one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Thai history.

The 35-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra, youngest of billionaire tycoon Thaksin’s three children, is now launching herself into the country’s deeply divided political scene ahead of a national election due by March 2023.

The move brings the Shinawatras’ influence to a new generation and sets the stage for the latest round in the ultra-rich clan’s 20-year tussle with the kingdom’s royalist-military elites.

For now, Paetongtarn has a low-key role with the main opposition Pheu Thai party but she is widely tipped to be named its candidate for prime minister when an election is called.

The 72-year-old Thaksin, ousted as PM in a military coup in 2006, pops up regularly in Paetongtarn’s social media posts hugging her baby or posing with his daughter over a bowl of noodles.

Paetongtarn says she draws strength from her father’s “unwavering support” and insists she will always be his “little girl”.

It is a sentiment that endears her to the legion of supporters, many of them poor and rural, who swept Thaksin to election victories in 2001 and 2005. 

“We need you. We miss your father,” a well-wisher told her during campaigning for Bangkok local elections last month.

But it will also raise the hackles of the powerful royalist and military elites who despise Thaksin and have long suspected him of manipulating the opposition to their political dominance from abroad.

Parties linked to the tycoon have won the most seats at every Thai election since 2001, only to find themselves toppled by coups or court rulings preceded by massive street protests.

Thaksin, the former Manchester City owner who built a telecoms empire with a fortune estimated by Forbes at nearly $1.9 billion, now lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid corruption charges he says are politically motivated.

His sister Yingluck was elected PM in 2011, but was herself deposed by General Prayut Chan-O-Cha in a 2014 coup.

– Proud daughter – 

Despite her current placeholder role with Pheu Thai’s inclusion and innovation committee, Paetongtarn makes no secret of her ambitions.

“We can transform Thailand from a country that is riddled with debt, filled with misery, with no future in sight, into a country filled with opportunity and hope for us and future generations,” she told AFP at a party conference last month.

Prayut — who became PM in a controversial election in 2019 — is viewed as a poor economic manager and increasingly unpopular, particularly among the young, thousands of whom took to the streets in 2020 to demand democratic change.

In a further sign of his weakening grip, the candidate Prayut backed for Bangkok governor was thrashed in last month’s election, won resoundingly by a former Pheu Thai minister.

This was a first taste of campaigning for Paetongtarn, who manages the hotel branch of her family’s real estate company.

Thaksin’s five years in power saw an economic upturn and a boost for the rural poor, but critics say the period was marked by graft, nepotism and authoritarianism.

Paetongtarn insists Thailand improved under his rule, and says that like her father, she feeds off adversity.

“How could I not be proud of my dad after all he has done for our country?” she says.

“Thanks to him, not only am I not afraid of criticism, but I see it as an opportunity for improvement.”

– Major obstacles –

Given Prayut’s unpopularity, and the lack of a charismatic alternative in the army-linked Palang Pracharat Party, Pheu Thai believe they can win the election.

Paul Chambers, of the Center of ASEAN Community Studies at Naresuan University in Thailand, said the party was hoping to capitalise on the “perfect storm” facing the current government.

Victory for Paetongtarn might also mean a way back to Thailand for the 72-year-old Thaksin. Last year he vowed to return to the kingdom “through the front door”.

But despite the power of the Shinawatra brand, Pheu Thai and Paetongtarn face formidable hurdles to winning power.

To become prime minister a candidate must win a majority in the 500-seat lower house and the 250-seat senate.

But under the constitution drafted by the junta in 2017, the senate is full of handpicked military loyalists.

A similar scenario unfolded in the 2019 election — Pheu Thai won most seats in the lower house but the military-controlled senate allowed Prayut to form a coalition.

“Whatever happens following the next election, the pro-military parties will do all they can to take office and try to legitimise why Pheu Thai should not form a coalition,” Chambers says.

North Korea fired a series of artillery shots over the weekend, Seoul’s military said, days after leader Kim Jong Un vowed to use “power for power” to defend the country’s sovereignty.

The South Korean military detected “several flight trajectories” that are understood to be shots from North Korean artillery, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said late Sunday.

The suspected shots were fired between 8:07 am (2307 GMT) to 11:03 am Sunday morning, the JCS said, stressing Seoul maintains a firm military readiness in collaboration with treaty ally United States.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency — which typically reports on successful weapons tests 24 hours after the fact — has not released information on Sunday’s shots, nor on other recent missile launches.

The nuclear-armed North has carried out a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017.

Seoul’s presidential national security office held a meeting to discuss the artillery shots late Sunday, and reaffirmed the South’s position of “responding calmly and sternly” to Pyongyang’s provocations, the office said.

The presidential office added Seoul did not immediately release its findings on the suspected artillery fire on Sunday morning, as the shots were of a “traditional” type with relatively low altitude and short range.

The latest volley of fire follows warnings from both Seoul and Washington that Kim’s regime is preparing to carry out what would be its seventh nuclear test — a move that US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said would provoke a “swift and forceful” response.

Kim last week announced plans to enhance the country’s military power during a major three-day political conference that wrapped up on Friday.

South Korean Defence Minister Lee Jong-sup said on Sunday Seoul would “strengthen” its defence capabilities, as well as its security cooperation with Washington and Tokyo, to counter the nuclear threat from Pyongyang.