Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday in his nightly address, nine months to the day into Russia’s full-scale invasion, that the enemy had failed to find a way to “break us, and will not find one,” adding the Ukrainian military was holding “key lines” in all directions.

He said that Ukrainian advances were planned in some unnamed areas.

The grim nine-month milestone came with much of Ukraine still plunged in darkness and without reliable water supplies as a result of a furious series of Russian missile attacks on civilian infrastructure that cut off power all over the country Wednesday.

“Together we have endured nine months of full-scale war and Russia has not found any way to break us, and it will not find one,” Zelenskyy said.

He said Russian forces were heavily bombing the city of Kherson, which occupying forces abandoned earlier this month. It was the only regional capital they have captured so far in the full-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy said “almost every hour” brings reports of new Russian air strikes on the city, and seven people had been killed and 21 more wounded there Thursday, according to local officials.

“Such terror began immediately after the Russian Army was forced to flee from the Kherson region. This is the revenge of the losers,” Zelenskyy said. “They do not know how to fight. The only thing they can do for now is terrorize. Either energy terror, or artillery, or missile terror — that’s all that Russia has degraded to under its current leaders.”

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian troops “are holding key milestones in all directions…and there are directions in which we are preparing to move forward.”

He said the Russian side appeared to be transferring additional forces to certain areas.

RFE/RL was unable to confirm battlefield claims and casualty reports on either side in areas of heavy fighting.

The Ukrainian Army’s General Staff reported that the Russians have “intensified counter-sabotage and policing measures” in the occupied area of Skadovskiy in the Kherson region.

It said Russian troops were also strengthening fortification equipment and logistical support of advanced units in the Kherson, Kryviy Rih, and Kryvorizka areas.

It said Russians were concentrating their main efforts on offensives in the areas of Bakhmut and Avdiyivka.

Some information for this story came from Reuters.
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Lawmakers in France’s lower house of parliament on Thursday adopted a bill to enshrine abortion rights in the country’s constitution, the first step in a lengthy and uncertain legislative battle prompted by the rollback of abortion rights in the United States. 

The vote was 337-32 in the 557-member National Assembly. 

To be added into the constitution, any measure must be first approved by majorities in the National Assembly and the upper house, the Senate, and then in a nationwide referendum. 

Authors of the proposal, from a left-wing coalition, argued the measure was aimed at “protecting and guaranteeing the fundamental right to voluntary termination of pregnancy.” 

Abortion in France was decriminalized under a key 1975 law, but there is nothing in the constitution that would guarantee abortion rights. 

Mathilde Panot, head of the hard-left France Unbowed group at the National Assembly and co-signatory of the proposal, said that “our intent is clear: we want not to leave any chance to people opposed to the right to abortion.” 

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said the centrist government supports the initiative. 

He referred to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June, which eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion and left the decision to the states. 

“The right to abortion we thought was acquired for 50 years [in the U.S.] was in reality not at all acquired,” he said. 

A recent poll showed that more than 80% of the French population supported the right to abortion. The results were consistent with those in previous surveys. The same poll also showed that a solid majority of people were in favor of enshrining it in the constitution. 

Centrists’ proposal dropped

French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, Renaissance, on Thursday decided to withdraw a similar proposal that was meant to be debated Monday also in the National Assembly. Centrist and leftist lawmakers agreed instead on supporting a single bill saying that “the law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy.” 

Success isn’t guaranteed for supporters of the bill. The Senate, where the conservative party, the Republicans, has a majority, rejected a similar bill in September. The Republican senators argued the measure was not needed since the right to abortion was not under threat in France. 

Dupond-Moretti said he was “hopeful” that some senators could change their minds and form a majority in favor. 

He and other proponents of constitutional change argue that French lawmakers should not take any chances on fundamental rights, since it is easier to change the law than the constitution. 

The right to abortion enjoys broad support across the French political spectrum, including from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Yet Le Pen in recent days said she was opposed to the leftist proposal because she thought it could lead to extending or abolishing the time limit at which a pregnancy can be terminated. 

Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June, Macron had tweeted that “abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected.”
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More than three years since a devastating fire burned parts of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, reconstruction is underway, and organizations from the United States are helping. Karina Bafradzhian has the story.
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Chinese refugees in Italy, some of whom are dissidents, are increasingly wary of the presence of what appear to be four outposts of Beijing’s security apparatus operating without official diplomatic trappings, according to experts.

Beijing acknowledges the presence of the so-called “police stations” in Rome, Milan, Florence and Prato, which were first revealed by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization based in Spain, in September.

The 110 overseas offices, named after China’s emergency telephone line similar to 911 in the U.S., operate in cities with significant Chinese populations and are affiliated with civic associations in Chinese cities or provinces.

The Chinese government has denied the outposts are police stations, describing them more as service centers for Chinese citizens living overseas.

Italian police have conducted investigations into the offices but found no illegal activities, according to La Nazione, which reported on November 8 that the outposts in Italy were managed by civilians who provided Chinese expatriates with services such as drivers licenses or passport renewals.

The Italian government has not commented on the existence of the 110 offices overseas. In 2019, Italy signed a memorandum of understanding with China as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a package of deals worth $2.8 billion at the time.

But for Chinese refugees carving out new lives in a country where they often don’t speak the language, the Chinese outposts are reminders of Beijing’s global reach.

“I know for sure that they are very scared about this,” said Marco Respinti, an Italian journalist who has written extensively on China’s human rights record. “There are two main reasons. One is some of them have families in China” who can be pressured by authorities there, so the outposts in Italy are “a very sensitive and dangerous development. Another thing is that technically they are illegal immigrants … so they are even more scared to speak out. They fled China for humanitarian reasons and don’t have all the documents. Many times (the refugees) don’t speak the language.”

The 110 overseas offices in Italy are among more than 50 such operations that China has established overseas in countries, including the U.S., according to Safeguard Defenders. On November 2, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian denied the outposts were “police stations” or “police service centers.” During a daily press briefing, he said the offices are to “assist overseas Chinese nationals who need help in accessing the online service platform to get their driver’s licenses renewed and receive physical check-ups for that purpose.”

Staff in the offices “are not police personnel from China. There is no need to make people nervous about this,” he added.

The 110 overseas offices represent “the latest iteration in [China’s] growing transnational repression, where it seeks to police and limit political expression far beyond its own borders,” said the Safeguard Defenders report.

Since the report’s release, at least 14 governments, including those of the U.S., Britain, Canada and Germany, have opened investigations into the operations, Safeguard Defenders research shows.

On October 26, Ireland ordered the closure of the 110 overseas office doing business in Dublin as the Fuzhou Police Service Overseas Station that opened earlier this year in an office building that had other Chinese organizations as tenants, according to the BBC. The Chinese embassy denied any wrongdoing in Dublin and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs said no Chinese authority had sought its permission to set up the “police station,” according to the BBC report.

On November 1, the Dutch government ordered the 110 overseas offices in the Netherlands to be closed immediately. The outposts purported to offer diplomatic assistance, but they had not been declared to the Netherlands government, Dutch media reported last month.

On November 17, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing that the FBI was investigating an unauthorized “police station” that China is running out of New York. The Chinese operation “violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes,” Wray said.

Jing-Jie Chen, a researcher at Safeguard Defenders, told VOA Mandarin that European countries have no clear concept of cross-border law enforcement by Chinese police.

Chen said, “Many countries in Europe have signed agreements on mutual criminal assistance or extradition with China, so they may begin to think that there is no big problem in this matter. Only after the report is published and the media follows up, do they feel that this matter involves the internal affairs” of any country with 110 overseas offices.

Daniele Brigadoi Cologna, associate professor of Chinese language and culture at the University of Insubria in Como, Italy, told VOA Mandarin these outposts have been helping Chinese expatriates maintain their Chinese residency renewals during the pandemic when people could not return home. The Chinese government issues to each citizen a permit that details their identity and address. It governs where they can live, attend school and work.

Cologna said, “I am confident that in the coming months, we will get to learn more about the outcome of such investigations, but I doubt that anything of interest will come of it, given that right now the media and the politicians are chasing nonexistent policemen and Chinese migrant spies that are unlikely to exist.”

Chen questioned why the ID renewal services are carried out by operations inside restaurants or grocery stores when the Chinese consulates should provide the same services.

“You don’t know whether the address (for the 110 office) is real, which is the weirdest thing. If you want to serve overseas expats, you should have an organization to run these businesses in an open and honest way. Why hide like this?” he said during a phone interview on November 16.

Respinti, the Italian journalist, said, “We know that bureaucracy and documents are one of the most important tools for controlling people and repressing people, because they have a partial recognition to prosecute people, to recognize them where they, when they move from one place to another.”

Members of the Italian Parliament have raised questions about the so-called police stations to the government.

La Nazione reported on October 29 that Italian Senator Mara Bizzotto wrote Matteo Piantedosi, Italy’s minister of the interior, to say, “Full light should be shed on the case of the Chinese police station in Prato known as Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, which turns out to be a real body of agents on duty for Beijing but hidden behind a façade of cultural association.”

According Bizzotto, “The affair presents dangerous profiles of a serious violation of our national sovereignty. And these overseas stations could hide a broader architecture of espionage and control located on Italian territory.”

According to Jiemian News, Chinese news media affiliated with the Chinese-government-owned Shanghai United Media Group, since 2016, China has sent several groups of police to Italy to conduct joint patrols with Italian police in major tourist cities.

A reciprocal arrangement had Italian police officers patrolling in four cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Guangzhou — to help local officers address safety concerns of Italian tourists.

The project was suspended after the outbreak of COVID-19.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Ukrainian officials are pushing back against growing pressure to enter negotiations with Moscow even as relentless Russian airstrikes take a mounting toll on Ukrainian lives, wealth and infrastructure.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, dismissed Russian signals of a readiness for talks as simply part of an influence campaign to undermine support for Ukraine among its partners.

“We expect our partners to stop paying attention to Russia’s provocative statements regarding the negotiation process,” Podolyak said in an interview Friday with VOA, speaking from Kyiv.

So far, U.S. administration officials agree. At a November 11 press conference en route to Cambodia, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Russian overtures cannot be taken seriously as long as Moscow seeks to illegally annex Ukrainian territory.

Laying out what he described as “four core elements of consensus” in the U.S. government, Sullivan reiterated that only Ukraine could decide when and on what terms to negotiate. He added that any just peace must be based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and that the U.S. will do all it can to make sure that in any future talks, Ukraine will be able to negotiate from a position of strength.

Nevertheless, Moscow’s state representatives have been increasingly speaking about their openness to negotiations in the wake of Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson — their country’s third major reversal of the war.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this month that his government is “open to dialogue, without preconditions,” Russian mass media reported. He was quoted as saying that Moscow had been ready to engage in negotiations earlier, but that Kyiv had interrupted the dialogue “at the command of its Western curators.”

Four days after Ryabkov’s remarks, Russian began its heaviest shelling of Ukrainian territory since its invasion in February. On November 15, up to 100 missiles and drones were launched, leaving almost half of Ukraine’s energy system disabled. Another massive attack on Wednesday further crippled the energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

The shelling on November 15 came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented a 10-point “Ukrainian peace formula” to the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. It included measures to ensure radiation and nuclear safety, food and energy security, an exchange of prisoners and the return of the deported Ukrainians from Russia, restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and prosecution of war crimes.

Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian reporters that the shelling — which left millions of Ukrainians without heat, water or electricity, at least for hours at a time — was due to Ukrainian authorities’ refusal to negotiate.

“The unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to solve the problem, to enter into negotiations, moreover, the actions of the Ukrainian side to abandon the agreed understandings of the text, and so on, these are all the consequences,” Peskov said, according to a Russian news agency.

Podolyak told VOA that Peskov’s statement was “the type of ultimatum that terrorists would issue: Either I kill the hostages — the civilian population of Ukraine — or you do what we say.”

He believes Russia developed the negotiation narrative to improve its reputation worldwide.

“For them, the word ‘negotiations’ does not mean the same as for you and me — sitting down, presenting positions and looking for a compromise,” Podolyak said. “No. They say ‘negotiate,’ meaning ‘meeting their demands’ — for example, not joining European organizations, NATO or any other military alliances and giving away territories.”

He argued that Russia, losing on the battlefield, has resorted to attacks on the Ukrainian population to compel the leaders in Kyiv to comply with its demands.

“There cannot be a negotiation process that says: ‘Yes, you [Ukraine] win the war. Stop, give away the territory, and de facto capitulate to the Russian Federation,” Podolyak said.

He said negotiations can begin once Ukrainian territorial integrity is restored and Russia returns to the framework of international law. Such talks, he suggested, can focus on issues such as prosecuting war crimes and providing compensation for damages.

Media reports have suggested that some U.S. government officials would like to see Kyiv take advantage of its battlefield successes by moving to early negotiations. But Ambassador William Taylor, vice president for Russia and Europe at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the position outlined by Sullivan is the official stance of the administration.

“Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, spoke for the president and the entire administration,” said Taylor, who served as chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in 2019. “It is in the U.S. national interest for Ukraine to win this war and for Russia to lose.”

Cease-fire: Who benefits?

Most experts who spoke to VOA believe that a cease-fire at this time would benefit the Kremlin and would not end the war.

Any negotiated cease-fire would allow Russian forces to regroup and rebuild, said Nataliya Bugayova, Russia fellow at the Institute for the Study of War.

“Ukraine has momentum on the ground. A cease-fire would freeze the front lines in the best possible configuration that Putin can hope for in this war. It is one of the few ways for Russia to break the momentum of Ukrainian forces,” she said in a written response to VOA.

David Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, believes that Ukraine can prevail on the battlefield and that the only way to end the war is for Ukraine’s allies to help it to win.

“Nobody wants this war to end more than Ukrainians, who are fighting and dying to defend their country and freedom, but they have been remarkably successful so far and think they can prevail. Calling for negotiations now undercuts their momentum,” Kramer said in a written response to VOA.

Taylor said that any cease-fire reached while the Ukrainian military is succeeding in pushing the Russian forces out of the country “would allow the Russians to keep what they now illegally occupy.”

This would put the Russians in an advantageous position for future attacks, said Bugayova.

“Any Russian foothold, especially in the critically strategic south, would constitute a permanent threat to Ukrainian sovereignty because Putin’s maximalist goal of controlling Ukraine has not changed and will most likely outlast Putin — by design. The Kremlin will use any cease-fire to adjust, not scale back, its effort to establish control over Ukraine.”

A fiscal argument

A contrary view was expressed by columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. She argued that it’s time for the U.S. to start setting conditions for a diplomatic solution to the war because of the growing costs for the warring parties, the U.S. and the other countries supporting Ukraine.

“The stakes are too high for us to sit idly by as the catastrophe spreads and the costs — and the risks — keep growing,” she wrote.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden received congressional approval for $40 billion in aid for Ukraine for 2022; more than $19 billion has been spent on military defense since February 24.

Economist Timothy Ash acknowledged in an article for the Center for European Policy Analysis that assistance to Ukraine already represents 5.6% of total U.S. defense spending. But, he wrote,

“Russia is a primary adversary of the U.S., a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger.”

The U.S. National Defense Strategy defines Russia as “an acute threat.”

No-go for any territorial concessions

Kramer said he worries that talk about the need for Ukraine to make concessions will be “deeply demoralizing to the incredibly brave Ukrainian forces fighting for their freedom.” He pointed out that most Ukrainians oppose any territorial concessions in exchange for a cease-fire.

According to the poll done by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in September, 87% of Ukrainians were not ready to support any territorial concessions for the sake of ending the war with Russia as soon as possible.

Bugayova added that an early cease-fire would leave those Ukrainians still living in the occupied territories subject “to continued Russian atrocities.”

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack pointed out that that nongovernmental organizations, the media and war crimes investigators have already collected extensive evidence of such atrocities.

“Everywhere Russia’s forces have been deployed, we’re seeing a whole range of different war crimes,” she told VOA Ukrainian.

“This includes everything from bombardments of the civilian infrastructure to interpersonal violence where there are individuals who seem to have been killed execution style, or their bodies show signs of torture.”

She added that there have been “credible reports of women and girls and even men and boys being subjected to sexual violence when they’re in the custody of Russia’s forces.”

Taylor said he believes Kyiv should consider talking to Moscow, but only after Russian troops have left Ukrainian territory. The ambassador said the territory itself should not be the subject of negotiations.

“The topics should include the total withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine; the return of prisoners of war and other Ukrainians, including Ukrainian children, held in or forced into Russia; reparations for war damage; accountability for war crimes and atrocities; and security guarantees for Ukraine,” Taylor said in a written response to VOA.

Kramer agrees but said he can find few topics for discussion with the current government in Moscow.

“It is hard to see what there is to negotiate with a regime in Moscow guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide,” he said in a written response.

Will Pomeranz, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, sees little likelihood of a diplomatic solution anytime soon.

“President Zelenskyy has outlined an ambitious peace plan that is unlikely to be accepted — or even considered — by the Russian Federation. Ukraine’s recent military successes make it even less likely that Zelenskyy would compromise on any of his demands,” he said to VOA.

He believes the Russians are also unlikely to admit to and compensate for the pain they inflicted on Ukraine.

“Indeed, there can be no peace until Russia confronts its human rights violations in Ukraine and pays considerable reparations for the damage that it has inflicted. Such a concession remains far off,” Pomerantz said in a written response.

At the same time, as Biden administration officials say repeatedly, the war could end at any moment if Putin decides to end it.

“Russia invaded Ukraine. If Russia chose to stop fighting in Ukraine and left, it would be the end of the war. If Ukraine chose to stop fighting and give up, it would be the end of Ukraine,” Sullivan said.

Oleksii Kovalenko, VOA Ukrainian, contributed to this report. Some information came from The Washington Post, CEPA, Kommersant.Ru, Ukrinform and Interfax.Ru.
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