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GRAKOVE, Ukraine: Electric pylons toppled, cables strewn across the ground; gutted houses and roads dotted with craters — the village of Grakove in eastern Ukraine bears the scars of Ukraine’s bitter counter-offensive. “It was frightening,” said 61-year-old Anatoli Vasiliev, recalling this week’s battle when Ukrainian troops recaptured Grakove from the Russians. “There were bombings and explosions everywhere.” Vasiliev stood in front of the local church, whose bell had been damaged by a projectile. Some of the Russian soldiers “took phones, but I managed to keep mine by hiding it so I could communicate with my family,” he said. Ukrainians have announced significant territorial gains in the eastern Kharkiv region. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday 30 towns and cities had been recaptured there. Among the debris scattered through Grakove — and in front of houses still inhabited — dogs and cats search for scraps of food. Only about 30 of the village’s 800 pre-war inhabitants remain. The road leading to Grakove from Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, a regional hub, is lined with the skeletons of cars destroyed in explosions or crushed by tanks. Disarmed mines are scattered around the side of the road, waiting to be picked up. A tow truck carries off a captured Russian military vehicle. Traveling in the opposition direction are two armored cars taking troops to the front. Artillery fire echoes in the distance. In the village, police and a team from the Kharkiv region’s prosecutors office exhume the bodies of two men aged in their thirties. The officials here suspect a war crime: the remains show signs of torture and execution. Village resident Sergiy Lutsay said Russian soldiers had forced him to bury the bodies at gunpoint. “They came to my house. I was with my 70-year-old father,” he said. “I was scared they would threaten him. They told me to come to dig a hole.” This, he said, was soon after the Russian invasion began on February 24. An official from the prosecutors’ office said the bodies would be sent for an medical examination to determine the cause of death. Sergiy Bolvinov, deputy chief of police for the Kharkiv region, said Lutsay had told them that the victims “had wounds on the back of the head and their ears had been cut off.” Lutsay did not confirm the details to journalists. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of a string of war crimes in towns and villages outside Kyiv that its forces recaptured in March. Ukraine reoccupied the territory when Moscow pulled back its forces after a failed bid to capture the capital at the start of the invasion. “This is not the only evidence of atrocities committed by the Russians,” said Bolvinov. “There are two other sites like this one in the village. We will be investigating them.” Police warned journalists warned from straying off roads or investigating abandoned buildings because demining work was still under way.
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden met Friday with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and another American detained in Russia, Paul Whelan, the first face-to-face encounter that the president has had with the relatives. In a statement after the meetings, which were held separately, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden stressed to the families his “continued commitment to working through all available avenues to bring Brittney and Paul home safely.” “He asked after the well-being of Elizabeth and Cherelle and their respective families during this painful time,” Jean-Pierre said. “The President appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Brittney and Paul from those who love them most, and acknowledged that every minute they are being held is a minute too long.” Still, administration officials have said the meetings were not an indication that negotiations with Russia for their release have reached a breakthrough. Earlier Friday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that Russia has not responded to what administration officials have called a substantial and serious offer to secure Griner and Whelan’s release. “The president is not going to let up,” Kirby told reporters. “He’s confident that this is going to remain in the forefront of his mind and his team’s mind, and they’re going to continue to work as hard as they can.” Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty and has appealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false. The US government regards both as wrongfully detained, placing their cases with the office of its top hostage negotiator. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of announcing two months ago that the administration had made a substantial proposal to Russia. Though he did not elaborate on the proposal, a person familiar with the matter has said the US has offered to release convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The administration carried out a prisoner swap last April, with Moscow releasing Marine veteran Trevor Reed in exchange for the US releasing a Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy. Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, participated in both meetings. Biden sat down with Elizabeth Whelan, the sister of Paul Whelan. Then the president met with Cherelle Griner, the wife of Brittney Griner, as well as the player’s agent, Lindsay Colas, according to the White House. Cherelle Griner thanked Biden for the meeting in a statement late Friday. “It was an honor to speak with him directly about the Brittney we know and love, and to thank him for the Administration’s efforts to secure her release.” she said. “I’ve felt every minute of the grueling seven months without her. I look forward to the day my wife is back home.”
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan: Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Friday to press his attack on Ukraine despite Kyiv’s latest counteroffensive and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the country’s vital infrastructure if Ukrainian forces target facilities in Russia. Speaking to reporters Friday after attending a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, Putin said the “liberation” of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region remained Russia’s main military goal and that he sees no need to revise it. “We aren’t in a rush,” the Russian leader said, adding that Moscow has only deployed volunteer soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Some hard-line politicians and military bloggers have urged the Kremlin to follow Ukraine’s example and order a broad mobilization to beef up the ranks, lamenting Russia’s manpower shortage. Russia was forced to pull back its forces from large swaths of northeastern Ukraine last week after a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukraine’s move to reclaim control of several Russian-occupied cities and villages marked the largest military setback for Moscow since its forces had to retreat from areas near the capital early in the war.
In his first comment on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Putin said: “Let’s see how it develops and how it ends.” He noted that Ukraine has tried to strike civilian infrastructure in Russia and “we so far have responded with restraint, but just yet.” “If the situation develops this way, our response will be more serious,” Putin said. “Just recently, the Russian armed forces have delivered a couple of impactful strikes,” he said in an apparent reference to Russian attacks earlier this week on power plants in northern Ukraine and a dam in the south. ”Let’s consider those as warning strikes.” He alleged, without offering specifics, that Ukraine has attempted to launch attacks “near our nuclear facilities, nuclear power plants,” adding that “we will retaliate if they fail to understand that such methods are unacceptable.” Russia has reported numerous explosions and fires at civilian infrastructure in areas near Ukraine, as well munitions depots and other facilities. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks and refrained from commenting on others. Putin also sought Friday to assuage India’s concern about the conflict in Ukraine, telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Moscow wants to see a quick end to the fighting and alleging that Ukrainian officials won’t negotiate. “I know your stand on the conflict in Ukraine and the concerns that you have repeatedly voiced,” the Russian leader told Modi. “We will do all we can to end that as quickly as possible. Regrettably, the other side, the leadership of Ukraine, has rejected the negotiations process and stated that it wants to achieve its goals by military means, on the battlefield.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says it’s Russia that allegedly doesn’t want to negotiate in earnest. He also has insisted on the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine as a precondition for talks. Putin’s remarks during the talks with Modi echoed comments the Russian leader made during Thursday’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping when Putin thanked him for his government’s “balanced position” on the Ukraine war, while adding that he was ready to discuss China’s unspecified “concerns” about Ukraine. Speaking to reporters Friday, Putin said he and Xi “discussed what we should do in the current conditions to efficiently counter unlawful restrictions” imposed by the West. The European Union, the United States and other Western nations have put sanctions on Russian energy due to the war in Ukraine. Xi, in a statement released by his government, expressed support for Russia’s “core interests” but also interest in working together to “inject stability” into world affairs. China’s relations with Washington, Europe, Japan and India have been strained by disputes about technology, security, human rights and territory. Zhang Lihua, an international relations expert at Tsinghua University, said the reference to stability “is mainly related to China-US relations,” adding that “the United States has been using all means to suppress China, which forced China to seek cooperation with Russia.” China and India have refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine while increasing their purchases of Russian oil and gas, helping Moscow offset the financial restrictions imposed by the US and its allies. Putin also met Friday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss bolstering economic cooperation and regional issues, including a July deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume from the country’s Black Sea ports. Speaking at the Uzbekistan summit on Friday, Xi warned his Central Asian neighbors not to allow outsiders to destabilize them. The warning reflects Beijing’s anxiety that Western support for democracy and human rights activists is a plot to undermine Xi’s ruling Communist Party and other authoritarian governments. “We should prevent external forces from instigating a color revolution,” Xi said in a speech to the leaders of Shanghai Cooperation Organization member nations, referring to protests that toppled unpopular regimes in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. Xi offered to train 2,000 police officers, to set up a regional counterterrorism training center and to “strengthen law enforcement capacity building.” He did not elaborate. His comments echoed longtime Russian grievances about the color-coded democratic uprisings in several ex-Soviet nations that the Kremlin viewed as instigated by the US and its allies. Xi is promoting a “Global Security Initiative” announced in April following the formation of the Quad by the US, Japan, Australia and India in response to Beijing’s more assertive foreign policy. US officials complain it echoes Russian arguments in support of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Central Asia is part of China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to expand trade by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across an arc of dozens of countries from the South Pacific through Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed by Russia and China as a counterweight to US influence. The group also includes India, Pakistan and the four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran is on track to receive full membership.
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month. The department told the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold was impeding the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfering with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It said the hold needed to be lifted immediately so work could resume. “The government and the public would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay,” department lawyers wrote in their brief to the appeals court. The judge’s appointment of a “special master” to review the documents, and the resulting legal tussle, appear certain to further slow the department’s criminal investigation. It remains unclear whether Trump, who has been laying the groundwork for another potential presidential run, or anyone else might be charged. US District Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this month directed the department to halt its use of the records until further court order, or until the completion of a report of an independent arbiter who is to do his own inspection of the documents and weed out any covered by claims of legal privilege. On Thursday night, she assigned Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court based in Brooklyn, to serve as the arbiter — also known as a special master. She also declined to lift an order that prevented the department from using for its investigation about 100 seized documents marked as classified, citing ongoing disputes about the nature of the documents that she said merited a neutral review. “The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she wrote. The Justice Department last week asked Cannon to put her own order on hold by Thursday, and said that if she did not, it would ask the appeals court to step in. The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home. Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to do an independent review of the records. In her Sept. 5 order, Cannon agreed to name a special master to sift through the records and filter out any that may be potentially covered by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege. In appointing Dearie on Thursday, she granted him access to the entire tranche of documents, including classified records. She directed him to complete his review by Nov. 30 and to prioritize the review of classified documents, and directed the Justice Department to permit the Trump legal team to inspect classified records with “controlled access conditions.” The Justice Department disagreed with the judge that the special master should be empowered to inspect the classified records. It said the classified records that were seized do not contain communication between Trump and his lawyers that could be covered by attorney-client privilege, and said the former president could not credibly invoke executive privilege to shield government documents that do not belong to him from the investigation. Though the department had argued that its work was being unduly impeded by the judge’s order, Cannon disagreed, noting in her order Thursday that officials could proceed with other aspects of their investigation, such as interviewing witnesses.
WASHINGTON: Russia’s setbacks and stretched resources in Ukraine show its forces are incapable of achieving President Vladimir Putin’s initial aims in invading the country as things stand now, the Pentagon’s intelligence chief said Friday. “We’re coming to a point right now where I think Putin is going to have to revise what his objectives are for this operation,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told an intelligence and national security conference outside Washington. “Because “it’s pretty clear right now that he’s ... not going to be able to do what he initially intended to do.” Putin sent troops into neighboring Ukraine in February with what US officials say was the objective of unseating Ukraine’s Western-friendly government. Ukrainian forces drove Russian fighters from their positions around Ukraine’s capital earlier in the war. And Russia suffered another major setback last week, when a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced its troops back from large swaths of Ukraine’s northeast. “The Russians planned for an occupation, not necessarily an invasion, and that has set them back,” Berrier said, citing Putin’s reluctance so far to fully mobilize Russian forces to get more manpower into the fight. President Joe Biden and other administration officials have taken care not to call Russia’s latest retreat a Ukrainian victory or turning point in the war, and analysts caution it’s impossible to assess what may lie ahead. “He’s coming to a decision” point,” Berrier said of Putin. “What that decision will be we don’t know. But that will largely drive how long this conflict lasts.” Berrier spoke at a panel with other senior officials at the intelligence community’s Intelligence and National Security Summit at National Harbor in Maryland just outside Washington. Asked about concerns that Putin could unleash weapons of mass destruction if he’s thwarted on the battlefield by US and NATO-backed Ukrainian forces, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said, “I don’t think we should underestimate Putin’s adherence to his original agenda, which was to control Ukraine. I don’t think we’ve seen any reason to believe he has moved off that.” Nor should the US underestimate Putin’s “risk appetite,” Cohen said. Putin and his officials early in the war made allusions to Russia’s nuclear arsenal and to massive retaliation in warning NATO not to get involved in the conflict. “That being said, we have not seen concrete evidence of planning for the use of WMD,” Cohen said. The more likely form of any Russian retaliation against the United States would be more attempts at interfering with the US political system, other security and intelligence officials said. Separately, in a major regional summit in Uzbekistan on Friday, Putin vowed to press the attack on Ukraine and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the country’s infrastructure if Ukrainian forces target facilities in Russia. The conference included the leaders of China, India, Turkey and several other countries. Putin said the “liberation” of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region was Russia’s main military goal and that he saw no need to revise it. “We aren’t in a rush,” the Russian leader said.
UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly voted Friday to allow Ukraine’s president to deliver a pre-recorded address to next week’s gathering of world leaders because of his need to deal with Russia’s invasion, making an exception to its requirement that all leaders speak in person. The 193-member world body approved Volodymyr Zelenskky’s virtual address by a vote of 101-7 with 19 abstentions including China. The seven countries voting “no” were Belarus, Cuba, Eritrea, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The assembly first voted on an amendment put forward by Belarus, a close ally of Russia, that would have allowed any leader facing exceptional difficulties and unable to attend to deliver a pre-recorded address. It was defeated by a vote of 23-67 with 27 abstentions. The document that was approved expresses concern that leaders of “peace-loving” UN sovereign nations can’t participate in person “for reasons beyond their control owing to ongoing foreign invasion, aggression, military hostilities that do not allow safe departure from and return to their countries, or the need to discharge their national defense and security duties and functions.” The document, which was proposed by Ukraine and had more than 50 co-sponsors, permits Zelensky to submit a pre-recorded statement to be played in the General Assembly hall. It stresses that this will not set a precedent for future high-level assembly meetings. Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya expressed satisfaction that the assembly will have a chance to hear directly from Zelensky “about how he sees the end of this war and how he evaluates the impact of this war on global affairs and on the United Nations in particular.” He expressed gratitude in an interview with The Associated Press that 101 UN member nations gave such strong support to hearing from Zelensky, saying it was “pathetic” that Russia mustered only six other countries to oppose his speech. Kyslytsya said Zelensky was scheduled to address the assembly Wednesday afternoon and there is no reason that would be changed. The document refers to the General Assembly resolution adopted at an emergency special session on March 2 — six days after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine — demanding an immediate halt to Moscow’s offensive and withdrawal of all Russian troops. The vote on the resolution, titled “Aggression against Ukraine,” was 141-5 with 35 abstentions. British Counsellor Philip Reed told the assembly before the votes that the reason it is necessary “is because Russia has invaded its neighbor and for that reason Ukraine’s president cannot travel to New York for the General Debate,” the official name of the high-level meeting. Nicaragua’s representative, whom its mission refused to identify, said the proposed decision “reflects a clear trend toward exceptionalisms” and violates the UN Charter’s principle “of sovereign equality of all members.” He urged members to oppose the proposal and avoid “double standards” and “selfish interests.” As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly was all virtual in 2020 and hybrid in 2021. But this year the assembly decided that all speeches must be in person.