KIEV, Ukraine – The head of the UN World Food Program has said people are “starving” to death in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and predicted the country’s humanitarian crisis could worsen as Russia intensifies its attacks in the coming weeks.
WFP chief executive David Beasley also warned in an interview with the Associated Press in Kyiv on Thursday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exports grain, could destabilize nations off its coast and could cause waves of displacement. life elsewhere.
The war that began on February 24 “devastated the people of Ukraine,” Beasley said, lamenting the lack of access to the WFP and other aid organizations trying to reach those in need in the midst of the conflict.
The fluid nature of the conflict, which has pushed the fighting away from areas around the capital and into eastern Ukraine, has made it particularly difficult for hungry Ukrainians to reach out.
The WFP is now trying to put food supplies in areas that could be involved in the fighting, but Beasley acknowledged that there is “a lot of complexity” as the situation develops rapidly.
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UNITED NATIONS – The US ambassador to the United Nations has accused Russia of worsening food insecurity in Yemen and elsewhere by invading Ukraine, calling it “another bleak example of the wave of unprovoked, unjust, unjust of Russia to the most vulnerable in the world. “
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a UN Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen on Thursday that the World Food Program recognized the poorest nation in the Arab world as one of the countries hardest hit by rising wheat prices and from Ukraine.
Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky replied: “The main factor for the instability and the source of the problem today is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but the sanctions imposed on our country that seeks to cut off any supplies. Russia and the supply chain, in addition to those supplies that these countries need in the West, in other words energy. “
The sharp exchange came a day after a UN task force warned that war threatened to devastate the economies of many developing countries, which now face even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult economic conditions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement: “As many as 1.7 billion people – a third of whom are already living in poverty – are now exposed to food, energy and economic disruptions. cause increases in poverty and hunger. “
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NEW YORK – A Russian lawmaker and two aides have been charged with conspiracy to commit US sanctions as they launched a covert Russian propaganda campaign in the United States to gain support for moves against Ukraine and other countries, according to an indictment that was not sealed on Thursday.
Three charges of conspiracy have been filed in Manhattan Federal Court against lawmaker Aleksandr Babakov, 59, and two of his staff members – Aleksandr Nikolayevich Vorobev, 52, and Mikhail Alekseyevich Plisyuk, 58.
All three men named are based in Russia and remain at large, authorities said. Babakov is currently serving as deputy speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, federal officials said in a statement.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Babakov’s actions show that “Russia’s illegal actions against Ukraine extend beyond the battlefield, as political influences under Russian control allegedly plan to direct geopolitical change in favor of of Russia secretly and illegally in the US and elsewhere in the West. “
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Russian authorities have accused Ukrainian forces of launching airstrikes in the Russian region of Bryansk bordering Ukraine, the latest in a series of allegations of cross-border attacks by Kyiv on Russian soil.
Russia’s Investigative Committee says two Ukrainian military helicopters entered Russian airspace on Thursday and “deliberately flew at least six airstrikes on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo,” about 11 kilometers (30 miles) from the Russian border. border.
He said at least six houses in the village were damaged and seven people, including a small child, were injured. The Commission of Inquiry has launched an investigation into the attack.
Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s state security service, the FSB, also accused Ukrainian forces of firing on a border crossing in the Bryansk region on Wednesday.
The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s top security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an airstrike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, 35 miles from the border.
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France is moving its embassy in Ukraine back to Kyiv from the western city of Lviv, following the withdrawal of Russian troops from areas around the capital and focusing on war-torn eastern Ukraine.
The French Foreign Ministry announced the move on Thursday, after Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Couleba about French military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. No relocation date announced.
France had retained its embassy in Kyiv at the start of the war, but moved its operations to Lviv in March. France sent a new convoy of fire trucks, ambulances and emergency equipment to Ukraine on Thursday, and a team of French investigators arrived this week to gather evidence of war crimes.
Russian news reports say a criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website had published content critical of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Mikhail Afanasyev, the editor-in-chief of Novy Fokus in Russia’s Khakassia region, was arrested by security forces on Wednesday for reporting on the site of 11 riot police officers who allegedly refused to deploy to Ukraine as part of Russian military action there.
Afanasyev was accused on Thursday of spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison under a law passed in early March.
Another Siberian-based journalist was also arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of violating Russia’s new media coverage of the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Mikhailov, the founder of the Altai-based weekly LIStok, has reportedly been remanded in custody over the newspaper’s alleged “calls for sanctions against Russia”.
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LONDON – The British Foreign Office has announced that it is freezing assets worth up to 10 10 billion ($ 13.1 billion) belonging to two Russian oligarchs described as longtime business associates of Russian diplomat
Officials said Thursday that Eugene Tenenbaum had taken control of Evrington Investments Ltd., an investment company linked to Abramovich, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Tenenbaum, who is also the director of the Chelsea Football Club, was hit by a freeze on assets.
The other Russian to be sanctioned is David Davidovich, who is subject to asset freezing and travel bans.
The move came after the Channel Islands of Jersey said this week it was seizing some $ 7 billion in assets suspected of links to Abramovich, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The British government said the measures “cut off key sources of revenue for Putin’s war machine” amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has refused to use the term “genocide” to describe Russia’s war in Ukraine, citing “escalation of words”.
Asked about the use of the term by US President Joe Biden, Macron said that “the word genocide should be written by lawyers and not politicians.”
Speaking to French radio station France Bleu, Macron said he had spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday and would speak to him again later that day. He said he would do “everything to end this war and stay on the side of the Ukrainians.”
Macron had previously denounced “war crimes” in Ukraine and France sent judges and police officers to assist the International Criminal Court, which opened an investigation.
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GENEVA – The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is implementing its largest cash assistance program to help more than 2 million people in Ukraine or who have fled abroad to cope with the effects of the Russian invasion.
Nicole Robicheau, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said on Thursday that the organization planned to distribute “much more than 100 million” Swiss francs – about $ 106 million – to people affected by the Russian war. seven weeks. Ukraine.
Humanitarian groups such as the IFRC have recently promoted the effectiveness of cash assistance programs for people affected by disasters such as natural disasters, droughts, famines and conflicts, as a way to “enable people to decide what they need” and ” “They are putting money back into the local economy,” Robicheau said by telephone.
The program aims to help approximately 360,000 people within Ukraine and many more in refugee countries.
The IFRC says it and national Red Cross organizations have already helped more than 1 million people with items such as blankets, food, mats and kitchen equipment.
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MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that efforts by Western countries to phase out Russian gas imports will have a negative impact on their economies.
Speaking on Thursday, Putin said that European efforts to find alternatives to Russian gas shipments would be “quite painful for the instigators of such policies.”
He claimed that “there is simply …