World

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday declared martial law in four regions of Ukraine recently annexed by Moscow as his proxy officials in a southern city pulled out with Ukraine troops advancing.

The decree came as Ukraine said it had downed “several Russian rockets” over Kyiv in a third consecutive day of missile and drone attacks on the capital after a string of battlefield defeats for Moscow. 

The introduction of military rule in the Moscow-controlled territories also gives additional power to authorities in southern Russian regions bordering Ukraine.

“We are working on solving very complex large-scale tasks to ensure security and protect the future of Russia,” Putin said.

Pro-Kremlin officials meanwhile said they were pulling out of the key southern Ukraine city of Kherson on Wednesday, as Kyiv’s forces advanced on territory in Russian hands since the war’s earliest days.

In parts of Ukraine recently re-captured from Russian forces, meanwhile, repairs are underway before winter begins, but many residents still depend on humanitarian aid.

“Apart from this, nothing is working,” said Ivan Zakharchenko, a 70-year-old resident of Izyum queueing for aid in the square where President Volodymyr Zelensky celebrated the town’s liberation just over a month ago.

– Ukrainians ‘will not give up’ –

Kherson was the first and only major city to fall to Moscow’s troops since the February invasion began and retaking it would be a crucial prize in Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

“The entire administration is already moving today,” to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, the Kherson region’s Moscow-installed head, Vladimir Saldo, told Russian state television.

But Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian presidency’s chief of staff, called the moves a “propaganda show” and accused Russia of “trying to scare the people of Kherson”.

Ukrainian forces “do not fire at Ukrainian cities,” Yermak wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s resilience has won plaudits around the world and the European Parliament on Wednesday awarded the annual Sakharov Prize for human rights to “brave” Ukrainians.

After the award Zelensky tweeted that “Ukrainians prove dedication to the values of freedom, democracy every day on the battlefield”.

– Evacuations by ferry –

Kherson is located on the western bank of the Dnieper, the same side where Ukrainian troops have been moving forward in a counter-offensive that began in August.

Saldo said the pull-out, along with the organised movement of civilians from the city, was a precaution and vowed that Russian forces would continue to fight Ukraine.

Local officials said they were planning to move up to 60,000 civilians from the city of Kherson over a period of around six days.

Ukrainian forces have targeted bridges across the river to disrupt supply lines, with Russian-installed officials saying that evacuations were being undertaken with ferries.

Russia’s Rossiya 24 state TV showed images of people waiting to board ferries to cross the river.

Pro-Russian officials have said civilians would only be allowed to leave towards Russia or Russian-held parts of Ukraine.

Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said the evacuation “is equal to deportation”.

Separately, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said on Wednesday that around five million people from Russian-held parts of Ukraine have “found shelter” in Russia.

– Nuclear plant staff detained –

Ukraine has re-captured occupied territory in the east of the country in recent weeks.

Its advance in the south has been far slower but has been gaining momentum in recent days.

There have been some Russian advances too.

Russian forces on Tuesday claimed to have retaken territory from Ukrainian troops in the eastern Kharkiv region.

Moscow has also been building up its defences in the territory it still holds.

Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said it was working on building a fortified line of defence in Ukraine’s eastern Lugansk region.

“It is a multi-level and layered defence,” the group’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on the social media of his company Concord.

Russian forces meanwhile continue to occupy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest.

Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency Energoatom, told AFP on Wednesday that Russian forces were currently holding “about 50” plant employees.

– EU to sanction Iran –

Kyiv’s recapturing of swathes of its territory in the east and parts of the south has however been followed by missile and drone strikes that have demolished large parts of Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter.

The government has warned of the risk of blackouts, saying about 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed.

Drones bombarded Kyiv on Monday, leaving five dead.

An energy facility in the city was then hit by strikes on Tuesday, killing at least two people.

On Wednesday, several explosions were heard in the centre before Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said “several Russian rockets” had been successfully shot down.

Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones, with Ukraine saying it had successfully shot down 223 of them since mid-September.

The Kremlin and Iran have denied this, but EU foreign policy spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said the EU has “sufficient evidence” and would prepare fresh sanctions on Iran.

The European Union on Wednesday readied new sanctions on Iran over its supply of drones to Russia ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the unmanned attacks that have caused destruction in Ukraine.

The United States, France and Britain requested the closed-door Security Council discussion at which they will voice alarm, diplomats said.

Russia holds veto power at the Security Council and would be sure to kill any resolution. But the United States and France have warned that Iran is violating a Security Council resolution by arming Russia in its war in Ukraine.

Ukraine has for weeks reported attacks by Russia with Iranian Shahed-136 drones — unmanned aircraft whose warheads explode in kamikaze landings — and has moved to cut relations with Tehran.

Iran and Russia have both denied the use of the drones, with Tehran saying it wants talks with Ukraine. But the European Union said Wednesday it had confirmed that Iran has supplied the drones to Russia.

Nabila Massrali, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, said the bloc had “gathered our own evidence” and would prepare “a clear, swift and firm EU response.”

A list seen by AFP showed the bloc planned sanctions on three senior military officials, including General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces.

The sanctions, set to be approved Thursday before an EU summit in Brussels, would also hit drone maker Shahed Aviation Industries, an aerospace company linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guards.

The Ukrainian military said Wednesday that it had shot down more than 220 Iranian-made drones in little more than a month, although a drone bombardment on the capital Kyiv on Monday left five people dead.

– US sees UN violation –

The United States has charged that the drones, formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231 of 2015 that blessed a now moribund nuclear deal.

The resolution’s ban on Iran’s conventional arms sales expired in 2020, despite attempts by the then-US administration of Donald Trump.

But the resolution still bans through October 2023 any transfers that could benefit nuclear-capable ballistic missiles unless there is permission from the Security Council.

“Iran’s supply of these specific types of UAVs to Russia is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, and it is an issue for the UN Security Council,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Wednesday.

The alleged arms transfers come as Iran is facing growing pressure over its crackdown on the biggest protests in years, which were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old detained by the clerical state’s notorious “morality police.”

The unrest has led to new Western sanctions over human rights and put on the backburner efforts by US President Joe Biden to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, from which Trump pulled the United States.

Western officials have highlighted the Iranian drones as evidence that Russia, historically one of the world’s largest arms exporters, has seen its arsenal badly depleted from losses on the battlefield.

The United States has released intelligence saying that the Iranian drones have frequently malfunctioned and that Russia has also turned to North Korea, although China has reportedly rebuffed calls to send weapons.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, on a visit to Washington, said that Russia was relying on drones both because of low supplies and due to Ukraine’s success in the skies.

The Russians “understand that in air, they don’t have supremacy at the moment because there is air defense from the Ukrainian side. They’ve lost many airplanes already,” Pevkur told reporters.

A US citizen jailed in Saudi Arabia is being punished for “mild” Twitter posts on topics including the war in Yemen and the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, his son told AFP on Wednesday. 

Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old of Saudi origin, was this month sentenced to 16 years in prison, the latest in a spate of what human rights groups describe as draconian sentences for social media criticism of the government. 

The case risks further ratcheting up tensions between Riyadh and Washington, longtime partners currently at odds over oil output cuts approved by the OPEC+ cartel, which the White House says amount to “aligning with Russia” in the Ukraine war. 

Almadi was detained on arrival in Saudi Arabia in November last year for what was meant to be a two-week trip, said his son Ibrahim, who went public with the case this week, criticising US officials for failing to do more to secure his release. 

The State Department said on Tuesday it had “consistently and intensively raised our concerns regarding the case at senior levels of the Saudi government”, and that “exercising freedom of expression should never be criminalised”. 

On Wednesday, Ibrahim shared with AFP a list of Twitter posts he said had been used in evidence against his father — information he said had been confirmed by the State Department.

They include posts on taxes as well as controversial demolition work in Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, and the Red Sea city of Jeddah. 

One post questions why Saudi Arabia is unable to prevent attacks by Huthi rebels in war-wracked Yemen, where the kingdom heads a military coalition in support of the internationally recognised government. 

Another refers to the “sacrifice” of Khashoggi, whose killing by Saudi agents in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate sparked global outrage. 

Saudi officials also found an unflattering caricature of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, on Almadi’s phone, Ibrahim said. 

– Case ‘mishandled’ –

Almadi was charged in part with supporting and funding terrorism and trying to destabilise the kingdom, Ibrahim said. 

Ibrahim accused the State Department of having “mishandled” his father’s case, including by not sending a representative to the October 3 sentencing — something the State Department acknowledged on Tuesday, saying Saudi Arabia originally gave a later date for the hearing before moving it up. 

“My father should be their biggest worry from day one,” Ibrahim said, referring to US officials. 

“The problems and the tensions between Saudi and the US shouldn’t start because of oil. It should start because senior American citizens are detained over tweets.” 

Ibrahim also expressed concern for his father’s health. 

“They prevent him from sleeping. They make him stand up. He’s 72 years old and his health condition is just decreasing,” Ibrahim said by phone from the United States, where he lives. 

“He had back problems. He needs surgery done as soon as possible in his back. I already have an appointment for him here.” 

Almadi received a 16-year travel ban on top of his jail sentence.

Saudi officials have not commented on Almadi’s case or on other recent verdicts against people who criticised the government on social media. 

Nourah al-Qahtani, a mother of five in her late 40s, was recently sentenced for 45 years for using Twitter to “challenge” the country’s leaders.

Salma al-Shehab, a doctoral candidate at Britain’s University of Leeds, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for allegedly aiding dissidents seeking to “disrupt public order” by retweeting their posts. 

Democracy for the Arab World Now, a US-based rights group founded by Khashoggi, said last week the verdicts could reflect recent appointments to the Specialised Criminal Court, which handles such cases. 

“The Crown Prince is appointing loyalist security officials who lack even basic training as judges to its kangaroo ‘counter-terrorism’ court, punishing the mildest social dissent with shocking sentences,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, DAWN’s Gulf director. 

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst close to the government, said on Twitter on Tuesday that Saudi authorities were “managing a tricky transition that could easily slip into civil strife”. 

“Govt. is prioritizing stability as it imposes change on a very polarized society,” he said. 

“This is a very imperfect process + prosecutorial/judicial overreach is happening.”

A damning report Wednesday found that 45 babies who died at two English hospitals might have survived if their care had been up to standard, the latest scandal to hit UK maternity services.

Bill Kirkup, who led the official independent investigation, described his findings as “stark” and “shocking”.

Seventeen other babies suffered brain damage, while another 12 might have avoided harm with better care, the report said.

Thirty-two mothers died or were injured, with 23 of those cases also being possibly avoidable.

“Had care been given to the nationally recognised standards, the outcome could have been different… in 45 of the 65 baby deaths” examined, Kirkup told reporters.

There had been “failures of professionalism, of compassion and of kindness” at the hospitals run by East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust in southeast England, he added.

“Women were not listened to… they were disregarded and that led directly to instances of harm” including baby deaths, he said.

Reacting to the report, Danielle Clark, mother to Noah, whose case was investigated, said people needed “to be held accountable”.

“Things have got to change. Babies are dying just through bad care and pure neglect.”

– ‘Horrific’ –

Kirkup, who seven years ago published similar findings after probing baby deaths at another group of hospitals in northwestern England, said that once again, lessons had not been learned.

“On at least eight separate occasions over a 10-year period, the trust board (at East Kent) was presented with what should have been inescapable signals that there were serious problems.

“They could have put it right. The first instance was in 2010 but they didn’t. In every single case they found a way to deny that there were problems.”

The crisis in England’s maternity services has been highlighted by two other similar scandals and another probe announced in May.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt, a former health minister, described the report as “horrific”.

“It’s simply unthinkable that on top of all the other maternity care scandals we’ve heard about in recent years, another one has been uncovered with 45 baby deaths,” he wrote on Twitter.

The East Kent investigation was sparked by the death of baby Harry Richford, who died seven days after he was born by emergency caesarean in November 2017.

An inquest into his death concluded that he died due to seven gross failings amounting to neglect.

– ‘This cannot go on’ –

Kirkup’s findings echoed his own 2015 probe of maternity services at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.

“When I reported on Morecambe Bay maternity services in 2015, I did not imagine for one moment that I would be back in seven years’ time talking about a rather similar set of circumstances and that there would have been another two large, high-profile maternity failures as well on top of that,” he said.

“This cannot go on.”

Another report, published in March, found that more than 200 babies could have survived if they had been given better care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust in central England.

Babies were stillborn, died shortly after birth or were left severely brain-damaged over a 20-year period from 2000 to 2019, according to that review.

Here again, nine of 12 mothers who died during the period could have had “significantly” better treatment. Others were made to have natural births when they should have been offered Caesarean sections.

The findings prompted an apology in parliament by the then health minister Sajid Javid.

Two months later in May it was announced that Donna Docken, who led the Shrewsbury and Telford inquiry, would also chair a review of services in Nottingham in central England after numerous families there also came forward.

Kirkup’s Morecambe Bay inquiry had concluded that a “lethal mix” of failures led to the unnecessary deaths of 11 babies and one mother.

East Kent chief executive Tracey Fletcher said she wanted to “say sorry and apologise unreservedly”.

Health Secretary Caroline Johnson apologised to families and said the NHS was “committed to preventing families from going through the same pain in future”.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss vowed on Wednesday not to quit as she faced booing lawmakers at her first parliamentary questions since abandoning a disastrous tax-slashing economic plan.

Truss faced hostile queries from opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, who asked the House of Commons: “What’s the point of a prime minister whose promises don’t even last a week?”

Starmer mocked Truss by leading his MPs in chants of “Gone, gone!” as he read out a list of her dropped policies. “Why is she still here?” he concluded.

Truss responded defiantly: “I am a fighter and not a quitter”, insisting that “I am someone who is prepared to front up. I’m prepared to take the tough decisions”.

She said: “I have acted in the national interest to make sure that we have economic stability.”

The session took place less than 48 hours after new finance minister Jeremy Hunt dismembered Truss’s flagship tax plans in a humiliating blow. He sat at her side in parliament, nodding along to her responses.

While castigating Truss for conducting “an economic experiment on the British public”, Starmer said dismissively: “How could she be held to account when she’s not in charge?”

At least five Conservative party MPs have already publicly called for her to be replaced amid catastrophic popularity ratings.

In a sign of her weak hold on power, she pulled out of a planned event on Wednesday, reportedly over fears she may lose a key vote on a fracking ban.

Polls show Truss’s personal and party ratings have plummeted, with YouGov saying Tuesday that — within six weeks of taking power — she had become the most unpopular leader it has ever tracked.

A separate survey of party members found that less than two months after electing her as Tory leader and prime minister, a majority now think she should go.

Foreign minister James Cleverly defended Truss on Sky News on Wednesday, however, saying he was “far from convinced” that “defenestrating another prime minister will either convince the British people that we’re thinking about them or convince the markets to stay calm”.

Meanwhile, the main Labour opposition has opened up huge poll leads over the ruling Conservatives, amid the recent fallout as well as the worsening cost-of-living crisis, with inflation jumping above 10 percent on Wednesday on soaring food prices.

More than three-quarters of people disapprove of the government — the highest in 11 years, YouGov said. 

– ‘Difficult decisions’ –

The government’s September 23 mini-budget — which slashed a host of taxes without curbing spending — sent bond yields spiking and the pound collapsing to a record dollar-low on fears of rocketing UK debt.

Truss last week staged two U-turns, scrapping planned tax cuts for the richest earners and on company profits, and fired her close ally Kwasi Kwarteng as finance minister.

After appointing Hunt as his successor, she agreed to further reverse course, axing almost all the other cuts and partially rowing back on energy price support for consumers.

A cap on costs was set to last two years, but will now end for many next April.

Hunt’s warnings of further “eye watering cuts” prompted reports that the government could stop indexing current pensions to inflation and use earnings as a benchmark instead, breaking a manifesto commitment and dividing MPs.

Truss said in parliament that she would maintain the commitment, however. 

During the summer leadership campaign which saw Truss beat former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak to succeed ex-premier Boris Johnson, she vowed not to reduce public spending.

But after the economic tumult of recent weeks saw government borrowing rates spiral, Truss and Hunt have warned of “difficult decisions” and urged government departments to find savings. 

Opposition parties are demanding she stand down and a general election — not due for two years — is held. 

“Will she do the decent thing and go and call a general election?” Labour MP Sarah Owen asked in parliament.

Under current party rules Truss cannot be challenged by a no-confidence vote in her first year, but speculation is rife the rules could be changed to allow for a ballot.

Conservative lawmakers so far have failed to coalesce around a contender to replace her, with Johnson and Sunak both touted but each likely to draw significant opposition from factions within the party.