World

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were “holding on” in the flashpoint eastern city Severodonetsk where intense street battles with Russian troops could determine the fate of the Donbas region. 

Moscow has concentrated its firepower on the industrial city, which it now mostly controls, with the area’s governor saying on Friday that Russian forces had destroyed a major sports arena.  

Pro-Russian rebels sentenced one Moroccan and two British fighters to death on Thursday after they were captured while fighting for Ukraine and accused of acting as mercenaries for Kyiv.

Zelensky said in his evening address on Thursday night that several “cities in Donbas, which the occupiers now consider key targets, are holding on”. 

He added that Ukrainian forces have made positive strides in the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions, and are in the process of “liberating our land”.  

With the fiercest fighting now concentrated in Severodonetsk, governor Sergiy Gaiday — who earlier called for Western artillery to quickly help secure a Ukrainian victory — said “one of the symbols of Severodonetsk was destroyed. The Ice Palace burned down”.

Western countries have provided weapons and aid for Ukraine since the February 24 invasion, while several people from abroad have joined the fight against Russian forces.

Up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed every day in frontline fighting and as many as 500 wounded, Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.

– Death sentence –

Separatist authorities in the Donetsk region of the Donbas ordered the death penalty for Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Saadun Brahim, Russian media reported.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss called the sentence “a sham judgment with absolutely no legitimacy”.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the sentence contravenes the Geneva Convention, under which “prisoners of war are entitled to combatant immunity”.

Britons Aslin and Pinner surrendered in April in the southern port city Mariupol, which was captured by Russian troops after a weeks-long siege. They later appeared on Russian TV calling on Johnson to negotiate their release.

Moroccan Brahim surrendered in March in the eastern town of Volnovakha.

During a trial that lasted three days, the men pleaded guilty to committing “actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, Russian news agency Interfax said.

A lawyer representing one of them told the TASS news agency that they would appeal.

– ‘Foreign mercenaries’ –

After being repelled from Kyiv weeks into their invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops have refocused their offensive on the eastern Donbas. 

Pro-Russian separatists have held part of the region since 2014.

Moscow, which has repeatedly warned the West against getting involved, said it had targeted a Ukrainian training centre for “foreign mercenaries” in the Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian presidency said four people were killed in a Russian air strike on Toshkivka, a village around 25 kilometres (16 miles) south of Severodonetsk.

It reported seven other deaths in fighting across the country. 

In Kyiv, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said the capital was in no immediate danger, but troops were keeping a line of defence all the same.

Putin, meanwhile, appeared to compare his actions to Peter the Great’s conquest of the Baltic coast during his 18th-century war against Sweden.

“By fighting Sweden he was grabbing something… He was taking it back,” he told young entrepreneurs in Moscow.

“It is our responsibility also to take back and strengthen”.

– ‘Every day something burns’ –

Zelensky on Thursday called for Russia to be expelled from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), blaming Moscow for “causing hunger” and spurring the global grain crisis by invading his country.

Ukraine’s Black Sea ports export millions of tonnes of grain each year but have been blocked since the invasion, while western sanctions on Russia have prevented Moscow from selling much of its grain abroad, sending food prices soaring.

The FAO warned that poor countries will suffer the most from the crisis as they were “paying more but receiving less food”.

Africa has been hard hit by the shortage, and the African Union (AU) on Thursday urged Kyiv to demine waters around the Ukraine-controlled Odessa port to ease exports, warning of “serious famine” and destabilisation on the continent.

Moscow has also called for Ukraine to demine, but Kyiv has refused for fear of a Russian attack.

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President Xi Jinping said China must stick “unswervingly” to its zero-Covid strategy, as more than half of Shanghai’s 25 million lockdown-weary residents gird Friday for a weekend virus testing drive.

China is the last major economy still pursuing a policy of stamping out all outbreaks, wielding snap lockdowns, mass testing and mandatory quarantines.

But the strategy has come under heightened scrutiny after the fast-spreading Omicron variant triggered sweeping restrictions in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, hammering the world’s second-biggest economy.

Chinese leaders have attempted to thread the needle between crushing the virus and limiting the damage of lockdowns, with Xi on Thursday calling for “efficiently coordinating Covid-19 prevention and control with economic and social development”.

But he said China’s “dynamic zero-Covid approach must be unswervingly upheld”, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Experts predict that China will struggle to meet its economic growth target of around 5.5 percent this year as virus lockdowns force business shutdowns and snarl supply chains.

The World Bank has sharply slashed its 2022 growth forecast for China to 4.3 percent, warning this week that Covid disruptions could further slow recovery.

– Shifting mosaic of curbs –

The shockwaves from China’s Covid lockdowns have hit the global economy as well, especially after the lockdown in Shanghai — the country’s biggest city and a major global shipping hub.

The metropolis said Thursday it would test more than half of its residents for the coronavirus starting Saturday, less than two weeks after it began stumbling out of a gruelling lockdown marked by food shortages and scattered protests.

Shanghai loosened many restrictions last week after finally containing China’s worst outbreak in two years, but skittish authorities have continued to impose a shifting mosaic of curbs to guard against a resurgence.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still unable to leave their homes, and a city health official said Thursday that residents in seven districts must get swabbed from Saturday under a drive to “test all who should be tested”.

The districts — including the financial hub of Pudong and several downtown areas — have a combined population of about 14 million.

In many areas, people will be confined to their homes until all samples are collected.

Parts of Beijing have also reimposed some restrictions after loosening work-from-home orders and allowing restaurants in the capital to reopen for indoor dining earlier this week.

The central district of Dongcheng on Thursday ordered the closure of bars, nightclubs and internet cafes, local media reported, after the capital reported a cluster of infections linked to entertainment venues.

China reported 73 new local infections on Friday, including eight in Beijing and 11 in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission.

The horrors of the bloodiest chapter so far in the Ukraine conflict are poignantly captured in the words and drawings of an eight-year-old boy.

Yegor Kravtsov kept a secret diary in Mariupol as Ukrainian forces fought an increasingly desperate defence against Russian troops.

Spending weeks in a basement with his family, Yegor filled the pages of a small blue book with an idyllic image of Greece on its cover.

“I slept well, then I woke up, smiled and read 25 pages. Also, my grandfather died on April 26th,” Yegor says, reading from a page in his diary after escaping the now Russian-held city with his mother and sister.

The family have managed to flee to Zaporizhzhia — 100 kilometres (62 miles) across the frontline from devastated Mariupol.

A missile strike had caused the ceiling of their home to fall in on them — all three suffered injuries.

“I have a wound on my back, the skin is ripped off. My sister’s head is broken, my mum tore her hand muscles and has a hole in the leg,” Yegor reads from another entry.

– ‘Everybody was crying’ –

On a sunny day in Zaporizhzhia, he plays badminton and rides his scooter — a world away from the images of destruction he scrawled in his diary with a blue pen.

There are armed men, tanks, a helicopter and exploding buildings. In one drawing, the ceiling of his house is shown collapsing following the missile strike on their home.

“The noise scared me,” reads one entry. In another, he describes how the family bandaged each other and went looking for water.

“I want to leave so badly,” he wrote.

His mother, Olena Kravtsova, a single mum, burst out crying when she first found the diary.

“I took it to my family to show them. Everybody was crying,” she tells AFP.

“Maybe he just needed to express himself so as not to keep all the emotions inside.”

His sister Veronika, 15, who has a deep scar on her head, said she hoped the diary “will be useful to someone in the future”.

Images of the diary were first posted online by Yegor’s great-uncle Yevgeniy Sosnovsky, a photographer who documented the battle for Mariupol before leaving the city last month.

The family used to live near the Azovstal steel works — the site of a last stand by Ukrainian soldiers who only surrendered at the end of May after three months of fighting.

Now they are being housed in a shelter for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia and intend to travel to the capital Kyiv within days.

Yegor’s mother says he is still in shock and reluctant to speak about his experiences.

Asked if he wanted to continue writing in future, Yegor just says: “Probably”.

Traces of blood have been found on the boat of a suspect arrested in connection with the disappearance of a British journalist and a Brazilian indigenous expert in the Amazon, authorities said Thursday, as calls grew to intensify the search.

Dom Phillips, 57, a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and Bruno Pereira, 41, a specialist in indigenous peoples, were reported missing on Sunday after they ventured into the middle of the Amazon rainforest.

“Traces of blood were found on the boat of Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, 41,” Brazil police said in a statement, adding that the suspect known as “Pelado” was arrested on Tuesday. 

“The material collected is on its way to Manaus,” the capital of the Amazonas state, for expert analysis, the statement added.

It was accompanied by images of investigators taking photos of what appeared to be a small bloodstain on a blue tarp inside a motorboat with peeling paint. 

The statement is a grim twist in the ongoing search for the two men, whose fate remains unknown.

The Brazilian authorities said they are hopeful of finding the pair alive but do not exclude any outcome, including that of homicide, in a region where trafficking is rife. 

High-profile personalities and environmental and human rights groups have rallied to the cause, urging President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search. 

“Where is Dom Phillips? Where is Bruno Pereira?” asked the journalist’s sister, Sian Phillips, in a statement to the media during a gathering of around 30 people in front of Brazil’s embassy in London. 

“We want the UK authorities to put pressure on the Brazilian government,” she added, before she and other family members were received by the ambassador.

“We want to carry on with the search. We want to find out what is happening to them and we want anyone responsible for any criminal act to be brought to justice. We want a persistent deep and open investigation,” she added. 

She blamed the Brazilian authorities for delaying the search but said they “all have hope” that the pair will be found.

“He is a great writer and journalist. He is a caring man. He cares about the environment. He loves Brazil,” Phillips said of her brother.

“He’s a great guy and we love him with all our heart.”

Paul Sherwood, Phillips’ brother-in-law, told AFP the family had “been assured that everything has been done that can be done.”  

– Bolsonaro says hopes ‘fade’ each day –

Bolsonaro, who was attending the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, said Thursday: “Let’s pray to God that they are still alive.”

But, he added, “With each day that passes, those chances fade.”

He had drawn criticism in past days for appearing to blame the missing men, saying they had undertaken an “unadvisable adventure.”

Phillips and Pereira went missing in the Javari Valley in Amazonas state, located in the west of the Amazon basin, near Peru.

Witnesses said they saw the suspect speeding by in a boat going in the same direction as Phillips and Pereira when they were last seen. Police said the man had been arrested for carrying unlicensed caliber ammunition and drugs.

The remote region is experiencing an escalation in armed violence due to the presence of miners, gold diggers, poachers and drug traffickers.

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