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Ukrainian forces are dug in around the village of Krasnopillia in the Donbas as they brace for an anticipated Russian offensive to take the eastern region. 

“We know the Russians are reinforcing and are getting ready to attack,” a senior Ukrainian officer on the ground told AFP, echoing other sources who warned of a Russian assault in the Donbas that could begin at any moment.

The village sits on the road between the Ukrainian-held cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and Izyum, to the northwest, recently captured by the Russian army.

On Tuesday, AFP journalists in Krasnopillia heard artillery explosions but not the sound of shots fired from automatic weapons, a sign of ground combat. 

While the front was stable for the moment, Russian helicopters have increased the number of flights they were making over the area, the Ukrainian officer said, often a harbinger of a large-scale operation.

“We are ready… we’ve planned some surprises for them along the way,” the officer said.

In the face of rising pressure, the forces present seemed confident. “We’re waiting for them!” said a lieutenant tasked with reinforcing the positions along the road, giving a thumbs up. 

Artillery and armoured vehicles are dug in along the sides of the route. The adjacent forest is scattered with other fortified positions and camouflaged equipment.

As winter reaches its end and the sodden terrain makes moving through the fields difficult, the road between Izyum and Sloviansk looks set to play an important strategic role in the offensive expected in the Donbas.

Since Russia announced its intention to focus on the “liberation” of the Donbas, residents in the traditional mining region in the east of Ukraine have lived in fear of an assault.

Ukrainian forces have been deployed in the region since 2014 along a frontline running between Donetsk to the south and Lugansk in the east, the capitals of the two pro-Russian, breakaway “republics” of the same name.

– Westbound train –

The Ukrainian leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the Donbas have asked civilians to evacuate west.

On Tuesday morning, a three-kilometre-long line of cars was waiting to pass a checkpoint to enter Kramatorsk and its sister city of Slavyansk before moving on.

So far evacuations have mostly been by train, with between 2,000 and 3,000 leaving the station in Kramatorsk every day.

But damages to the trainline overnight meant that the service was suspended Tuesday morning, according to the Ukrainian rail operator.

Late-afternoon, a train finally left the station, where hundreds had been patiently waiting for transport out.

The few who remain in Kramatorsk live under a nighttime curfew and to the rhythm of air-raid sirens. Fuel is hard to come by and most shops are closed. 

“The atmosphere has become tense, everyone is nervous. It’s time to go now,” a volunteer at the station told AFP.

An attacker stabbed to death an Iranian Shiite Muslim cleric Tuesday and wounded two others, one of them seriously, in the shrine city of Mashhad, officials and state media said.

The assailant and four suspected accomplices were arrested after the bloody attack in the Imam Reza shrine’s courtyard, said Mohammad-Hossein Doroudi, the chief prosecutor of the northeastern city.

“The attacker is a foreign national,” he told the Fars news agency, without specifying the country.

Mashhad, Iran’s second city, attracts pilgrims from across the country during religious events, including the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday in Iran.

Amateur video footage showed a man lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard of the site with golden domes and minarets.

“A man stabbed three Shiite clerics with knives, killing one and wounding two others,” said the governor of Khorasan Razavi province, Yaghoub-Ali Nazari, adding that “one of the injured is in serious condition”.

The assailant struck as large crowds of worshippers had gathered in the courtyard of the shrine of Imam Reza, of one of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam.

“Preliminary investigations show that the attacker committed this action under the influence of takfiri currents,” Nazari added.

The term “takfiri” is used to describe Muslims who take it upon themselves to brand others as apostates and thus condemn them to death, and usually refers to Sunni extremists.

The Astan Quds Razavi charitable foundation which runs the shrine, said: “With the vigilance of the pilgrims and the efforts of security forces, the assailant was immediately arrested and handed over to the police, and the injured were quickly taken to the hospital.

“The identity of the assailant is under investigation,” added that foundation, whose large asset portfolio was managed from 2016 to 2019 by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.

State news agency IRNA published mobile phone footage of the arrest of a presumed assailant in which several people were seen pushing a young man in the courtyard.

People were heard shouting “don’t beat him up!” in the video, as some tried to prevent him from being attacked.

Iran has a population of 83 million, 90 percent of whom are Shiite.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged the United Nations to “act immediately” or “dissolve yourself altogether” during a blistering address Tuesday in which he showed harrowing footage of dead bodies — including children — he said were victims of Russian atrocities.

Likening Russia’s actions in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities to violence carried out by “terrorists” such as the Islamic State group, Zelensky called on the 15-member Security Council — which aims to ensure international peace and security — to expel Russia “so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”

Russia, as one of the five permanent members of the Council, has a veto, which it has repeatedly wielded to block resolutions and negotiations on the global stage.

That means it cannot be expelled from the body, as it would simply veto any vote or recommendation by the Security Council to do so. 

“If there is no alternative … then the next option would be dissolve yourself altogether,” Zelensky continued.

“Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the UN? … If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.”

Bearded and dressed in his now trademark military green T-shirt, Zelensky, speaking remotely from Kyiv, gave a chilling rendition of the atrocities he said were carried out by Russian troops against civilians in Bucha, a town outside the Ukrainian capital.

Bucha had been occupied by Russian troops, but when they withdrew recently Ukrainian authorities and independent international journalists including AFP found bodies of people in civilian clothing, some with their hands tied behind their backs.

Zelensky aired a graphic, 90-second clip of what he said were images from towns including Bucha and the southern port of Mariupol. 

The footage showed partially uncovered dead people, including children, in shallow graves, several bodies in a courtyard and dead people with hands tied behind their back slumped towards a wall.

“Now the world can see what the Russian military did in Bucha,” Zelensky said. 

“They were killed in their apartments, houses, blowing up grenades, civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road, just for their pleasure. They cut off limbs… slashed their throats,” he said.

“Women were raped and killed in front of their children, their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressors did not hear what they wanted to hear from them. 

“This is no different from other terrorists such as Daesh … and here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council,” he said, using another acronym for the Islamic State group.

“Accountability must be inevitable,” he said, claiming that “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians had also been deported to Russia.

Moments later Russia’s ambassador, in his own comments, rejected the claims entirely.

– ‘No witnesses’ –

Addressing his remarks directly to Zelensky, Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow places “on your conscience the ungrounded accusations against the Russian military, which are not confirmed by any eye witnesses.”

At least one witness has told AFP of watching Russian soldiers shoot a man in cold blood in Bucha.

Russia has claimed that images presented by Ukrainian authorities to show there had been a massacre in Bucha were fake, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out of the areas. 

It has not offered evidence, and satellite imagery has shown bodies there for weeks, before Moscow withdrew its troops from the town. 

Nevertheless Nebenzia repeated those claims, telling the council: “You only saw what they showed you. You couldn’t ignore the flagrant inconsistencies in the version of events which are being promoted by Ukrainian and Western media.”

He also denied Zelensky’s allegation of mass deportations. 

Since the invasion began “over 600,000 people have been evacuated to Russia, including over 119,000 children,” Nebenzia told the body.

He said the evacuations were “voluntary,” not “coercion or abduction.”

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, sparking outrage across the world and displacing millions of Ukrainians.

Soldiers patrolled the largely empty streets of Peru’s capital Lima Tuesday, monitoring a curfew imposed after widespread protests against rising fuel and toll prices amid growing economic hardship.

Shops and schools were closed and bus services mostly suspended after President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew shortly before midnight Monday for Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao.

But many workers, at hotels or hospitals for example, ignored the shut-down which was widely criticized on social media. 

The measure took many in Lima by surprise, given that most of the protests in recent days — some of which turned violent — took place far from the capital.

Many had no choice but to take a taxi or walk to their place of work.

“It was a very late and improvised” announcement, complained Cinthya Rojas, a nutritionist who waited patiently for one of the handful of buses still running to get to work at a hospital east of Lima.

A hotel employee told AFP she had to pay the equivalent of $8, a small fortune on her salary, for a taxi to work.

– Soaring food prices –

Castillo announced the curfew would last until midnight Tuesday “to reestablish peace” after countrywide protests against fuel and toll price increases on top of biting food inflation.

Like much of the rest of the world, Peru’s economy is reeling from the damages wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

The country’s Consumer Price Index in March saw its highest monthly increase in 26 years, driven by soaring food, transport and education prices, according to the national statistics institute. 

In an attempt to appease protesters, the government over the weekend eliminated the fuel tax and decreed a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage from May 1. 

But the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) — the country’s main trade union federation — considered the measures insufficient and took to the streets again Monday in Lima and several regions in Peru’s the north.

Some protesters set fire to toll booths on highways, looted shops, and clashed with police.

Some also burnt tires and blocked the north-south Pan-American highway, the country’s most important artery for people and goods.

The disruptions halted public transport and closed schools on Monday.

“I call for calm and serenity,” the leftist president said during his brief late-night TV appearance. 

“Social protest is a constitutional right, but it must be done within the law,” he said.

– ‘Authoritarian measure’ –

The protests were the first against the government since Castillo, a 52-year-old former rural school teacher, took office eight months ago.

Two-thirds of Peruvians disapprove of his rule, according to an Ipsos opinion poll in March.

Castillo’s announcement of a curfew came just a week after he escaped impeachment by Congress, where opponents accuse his administration of a “lack of direction” and of allowing corruption in his entourage.

It also coincided with the 30th anniversary of a coup staged by ex-president Alberto Fujimori, jailed over his regime’s bloody campaign against insurgents. 

“The measure dictated by President Pedro Castillo is openly unconstitutional, disproportionate and violates people’s right to individual freedom,” tweeted lawyer Carlos Rivera, a representative of Fujimori’s victims.

Political analyst Luis Benavente added the curfew was “an authoritarian measure” that revealed “ineptitude, incapacity to govern.”

“It is like putting an end to traffic accidents by taking vehicles off the roads,” he told AFP.

A large proportion of Lima’s 10 million residents work in the informal sector, as street sellers and other traders, meaning the curfew left them without income for the day.

A football match of the Copa Libertadores between Peruvian Club Sporting Cristal and Brazil’s Flamengo, scheduled for Tuesday night in Lima, was also thrown into doubt.