A second civilian cargo ship, carrying steel products to Africa, safely reached Romanian waters after leaving the Ukrainian port city of Odesa through a temporary Black Sea corridor, Ukraine said Sunday.

Earlier in August, Kyiv announced it had created a new maritime corridor. Russia last month left a Black Sea grain deal, which allowed for safe navigation of civilian grain shipments from Ukrainian ports.

In leaving the agreement, Moscow warned that any vessels leaving Ukrainian ports would be considered military targets. 

“The second vessel has reached Romanian waters after successfully navigating through our temporary Black Sea corridor,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

He said the ship — a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier called Primus — was carrying steel destined for the African market.

“I thank everyone who made this possible, our port workers, our warriors and everyone who defends freedom,” he said.

Also, Ukrainian authorities are investigating what caused a collision between two warplanes while on a training mission, killing three Ukrainian pilots, in the west of the country.

According to the air force’s Telegram page, two L-39 training military aircraft collided Friday during a combat mission over Ukraine’s western Zhytomyr region. 

President Zelenskyy in his nightly address Saturday, paid tribute to the pilots, including Andriy Pilshchykov, a well-known pilot with the call name “Juice,” who advocated for Ukraine receiving F-16 fighter jets. Zelenskyy said he was a “Ukrainian officer, one of those who helped our country a lot.”

The other two pilots were Viacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin.

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said the inquiry will determine whether the planes were in good condition and whether all rules were followed prior to the flight. Specialists also will examine the black boxes that record data about the planes’ movements and pilot reactions.

“It is too early to discuss details. Certainly, all circumstances will be clarified,” Zelenskyy said.  

Ukraine counteroffensive

Ukrainian forces have made tactically significant gains in western Zaporizhzhia region, advancing through some of the most challenging layers of Russian fortifications, the Institute for the Study of War reported in its daily briefing Saturday.

There are signs that Ukrainian troops have broken through Russian defenses along the southern front and may soon be able to advance more quickly, the Reuters news agency reported.

Russian sources claimed the Ukrainians were attacking toward the rear defensive lines near Verbove, northeast of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian forces now seem to be within striking distance of the next fortifications, which may be weaker than the previous set of Russian defenses but still pose a significant challenge, the ISW reports.

Russia’s defensive lines are the most layered and formidable in Zaporizhzhia region, as the occupying force anticipated and prepared to thwart expected Ukrainian advances toward Melitopol and Berdiansk.

After reportedly taking multiple casualties and losing numerous tanks and vehicles while attacking through dense Russian minefields over the past two months, Ukrainian forces liberated part of the village of Robotyne and the area around it, an important advance toward Melitopol, northeast of Crimea.

Ukraine said Sunday it downed four Russian cruise missiles overnight over northern and central parts of the country.

The governor of the Kyiv region, Ruslan Kravchenko, said two people were wounded and 10 buildings damaged by falling missile debris in one unspecified area of the region.

“Thanks to the professional work of the air defense forces, there were no strikes on critical or residential infrastructure,” he said in a statement.

All of Ukraine was under air raid alerts for about three hours early Sunday before they were cleared at around 6 a.m. local time.

Russian forces shelled a cafe in Podoly — a suburb of the strategically significant northeastern city of Kupiansk — killing two civilians and injuring a third one on Saturday.

The attacks are raising fears that the Russians are pushing to reclaim front-line cities in the northeast region. Ukrainian forces say that fighting there has become more intense, but the Russians haven’t broken through.

British defense officials said Saturday that Russia’s probable objective in the region will be to advance west to the Oskil River and establish a buffer zone around Luhansk region.

U.K. military intelligence reports assess that Russia is attempting to reverse the gradual gains of the Ukrainian counteroffensive near Bakhmut and the Zaporizhzhia region.

The Ukrainian regional administration of Zaporizhzhia reported Saturday that Russia shelled Mala Tokmachka on Friday — one of the villages near which Kyiv’s troops were said to be gaining ground. One resident was killed and another injured in the attack.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Spain’s soccer federation will meet urgently on Monday as its president, Luis Rubiales, faces a FIFA suspension and a storm of criticism over allegations he gave a player an unwanted kiss on the lips following Spain’s victory in the Women’s World Cup.

Rubiales has steadfastly refused to resign over the incident with player Jenni Hermoso last Sunday in Sydney, saying the kiss was consensual. Players and a string of coaches on the women’s squad are demanding he go, and the government also wants him out.

The Royal Football Federation (RFEF) has called regional federations to an “extraordinary and urgent” meeting on Monday “to evaluate the situation in which the federation finds itself” following Rubiales’ suspension, an RFEF spokesperson said on Sunday.

FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales on Thursday and announced on Saturday that Rubiales was suspended for three months from national and international soccer pending an investigation.

Rubiales, 46, said he would use the FIFA probe to show his innocence.

Hermoso, who has said she did not consent to the kiss and felt “vulnerable and the victim of an aggression,” has been warmly supported not just by players but by many in wider society.

She appeared among spectators at the Women’s Cup final between Atletico Madrid and Milan on Saturday evening, applauded by the crowd. Players at the match held a banner reading: “With you Jennifer Hermoso.”

The uproar over the kiss has come in a country where tens of thousands of women have taken part in street marches in recent years protesting against sexual abuse and violence.

Feminist groups have called a demonstration on Monday in Madrid entitled “With You Jenni” in support of the player.

Similar demonstrations were staged by feminist groups in Madrid, Santander and Logrono on Saturday calling for Rubiales’ resignation.

All 23 of Spain’s cup-winning squad including Hermoso, as well as dozens of other squad members, said on Friday they would not play internationals while Rubiales remained head of the federation.

On Saturday, 11 members of the national women’s team’s coaching staff offered their resignations to the RFEF in a statement supporting Hermoso and condemning Rubiales.

The Spanish government cannot fire Rubiales but has strongly denounced his actions and said on Friday it was seeking to get him suspended using a legal procedure before a sports tribunal.

Victor Francos, head of the state-run National Sports Council, has called the incident a MeToo moment for Spain. However, he said on Saturday that the scandal would not damage Spain’s bid to stage the 2030 World Cup along with Portugal and Morocco.
…

When Giorgia Meloni was running to become Italy’s first far-right head of government of the post-war era, she steeped her winning campaign in the sharply ideological rhetoric of national sovereignty, “traditional families” and fear of migrants.

Since taking office in September, Premier Meloni has toned down the bombast reflected in the slogans she shouted last year at a rally in Spain for a far-right ally — ” Yes to natural families! No to LGBT lobbies!” But her government and her party’s lawmakers are still pursuing multiple far-right policies, including refusing to allow the names of some same-sex parents’ to be on their children’s birth records, broadening restrictions on surrogate pregnancies and even seeking to ban foreign words from government documents.

Her administration’s fervor now finds expression in policies promoted by ministries and in legislation pushed by lawmakers from her Brothers of Italy party, the political group with neo-fascist roots that she co-founded a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Meloni has largely stayed above the ideological fray, as she did earlier this month during a bitter flap over the role of neo-fascist militants in Italy’s deadliest-ever terror attack — the 1980 bombing of Bologna’s train station.

The names of the 85 dead are enshrined on a plaque in the station that calls them victims of “fascist terrorism.” In a commemorative speech, Italian President Sergio Mattarella noted that the attack’s “neo-fascist matrix” has been established by trial convictions.

But to the anger of Italy’s left, Meloni’s anniversary statement omitted any mention of the neo-fascist origins behind the bombing. Opposition leaders pointed out that while she was still a lawmaker, Meloni pushed for efforts to determine the masterminds of the attack, seemingly raising questions about the judicial verdicts.

Then a few days after the anniversary, the communications director for the Rome area’s right-wing governor, who won election with Meloni’s support, cast more doubt on whether the bombing was the work of convicted neo-fascist terrorists.

Lazio Gov. Francesco Rocca told reporters that Meloni “wasn’t happy” about the revisionist comments by his communications aide, who has a record of showing sympathy for far-right extremists. But the premier herself avoided making any public comment, and the aide kept his job.

During the campaign, Meloni kept her distance from Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship, declaring that ” the Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now.”

But she proudly defends a potent party symbol — a flame in the red, white and green colors of the Italian flag. The flame has its roots in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, which was founded by Mussolini nostalgists right after World War II. Brothers of Italy embedded the symbol into its own emblem.

Amid the bombing anniversary furor, a front-page cartoon in the Corriere della Sera newspaper depicted an alarmed-looking Meloni as the tricolor flame threatened to scorch her.

In real life, the premier appears politically unscathed by ideological squabbles. Opinion surveys indicate that Brothers of Italy is the most popular party among eligible voters, with polls showing it has close to 30% support. That’s 4 percentage points higher than what the group got in the 2022 election.

Staying above the fray is part of Meloni’s strategy and style, said Columbia University political theory professor Nadia Urbinati.

In contrast to her right-wing coalition partner, League party leader Matteo Salvini, who daily churns out photos of himself on social media, Meloni “is not everywhere. She doesn’t want to have this kind of populist aura,” Urbinati said in a telephone interview. “But she wants to shape the state according to her ideology.”

Urbinati noted that one of the first moves by Meloni’s government was a crackdown on rave parties and similar gatherings, “based on what they define as anarchy.”

Building on Meloni’s campaign pledge to defend what she called traditional families, the premier’s administration moved to limit recognition of parental rights to only the biological parent in families with same-sex parents.

Local offices of the Interior Ministry ordered city halls to stop automatically recording both parents when same-sex couples have children. That left non-biological parents unable to carry out everyday family tasks such as picking up children from school or dealing with pediatricians without written permission from their partners.

Last month, Parliament’s lower chamber also approved widening restrictions on surrogate pregnancy. The bill essentially reintroduced legislation that Meloni, in the previous legislature, had unsuccessfully proposed while an opposition lawmaker.

Under the bill now working its way through Parliament, it would be a crime for any Italian — in same-sex or heterosexual relationships — to use surrogate maternity abroad. For years, it has been a crime only in Italy, and so far never prosecuted.

Raising Italy’s birthrate, one of the world’s lowest, is a key Meloni political plan. Her minister of agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, who is also her brother-in-law, inflamed political debate last spring when he warned in a speech against “ethnic substitution” by migrants.

“Italians are having fewer children — and the reasoning goes — let’s substitute them with someone else,” Lollobrigida said, dismissing any idea that immigrants would be a way to boost the population.

The government plans to spend millions of euros in European Union money to build more day care centers to ease burdens on working parents, but that goal has fallen behind schedule.

Also awaiting action in Parliament is proposed legislation to ban the use of foreign words in government documents and forbid state universities from offering English-only courses. If the bill in “defense of identity” passes, violators would risk fines as high as 100,000 euros.

It is an idea reminiscent of Mussolini, whose first moves in power included purging Italian language of foreign words, even on restaurant menus, and establishing stiff fines for violations.

Critics of the proposed ban quickly pointed out that passage would erase part of a title held by a Brothers of Italy senator. Sen. Adolfo Urso, who serves in Meloni’s Cabinet, is minister of enterprises and made in Italy. The last three words of the official title are in English.
…

Despite the killings of four of her colleagues for their reporting, Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko never considered that she had been poisoned when she fell ill on a train to Berlin.

“When you work as an investigative reporter in Russia you are always careful,” she told Reuters. “You have lots of protocols you’re following all the time. But when I found myself in Europe, I totally forgot all these security measures.”

German prosecutors are investigating whether Kostyuchenko, who is now living in hiding, was the victim of an attempted murder when she became ill last October.

Her symptoms started with disorientation and stomach pain on a train from Munich to Berlin and persisted for several weeks. By the time she realized she may have been poisoned, it was too late to identify any toxins.

“I had to take off my rings because my fingers looked like sausages,” she said, describing the swelling that was among her symptoms. Months later, she is still exhausted and only able to work three hours a day.

Enemies of Russian President Vladimir Putin living abroad have been poisoned in the past, including former secret agents Sergei Skripal, who survived, and Sergei Litvinenko, who did not. A former Chechen rebel died in Berlin in what a German court said was a Russian state assassination.

The Kremlin denies involvement with these killings.

“That fitted Putin’s narrative, that we can’t forgive traitors,” Kostyuchenko said. “But I was never working with secret services. … Somehow I was thinking that in Europe, I’m safe.”

At a time when European Union capitals are seen as potential havens by Russian activists and reporters who consider themselves at risk at home, the possibility that they might be targeted abroad amounts to a chilling step change.

“When I found myself in Europe, I totally forgot about security measures, like when I discussed my trip to Munich I used Facebook Messenger,” said Kostyuchenko, a foreign correspondent who exposed alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Kostyuchenko said that in her 17 years at Novaya Gazeta, four of her newspaper colleagues were killed and their deaths unprosecuted.

When doctors told her she had likely been poisoned her initial reaction was to laugh.

She was one of three Russian independent woman journalists who were apparently poisoned while abroad in a similar period. All three suffered similar symptoms.

“We can confirm that an investigation into the attempted murder of Elena Kostyuchenko is pending,” a spokesperson for Berlin prosecutors said Friday. 
…

Russia’s military cooperation with Iran will not succumb to geopolitical pressure, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday, following reports that Washington has asked Teheran to stop selling drones to Moscow.

“There are no changes, and cooperation with Iran will continue,” Ryabkov said, according to a report Saturday from Russian state news agency RIA. “We are independent states and do not succumb to the dictates of the United States and its satellites.”

The U.S. is pressing Iran to stop selling the armed drones, which Russia is using in the war in Ukraine, the Financial Times reported earlier this month, citing an Iranian official and another person familiar with the talks.

Russia began using the Iranian-made Shahed drones to attack deep inside Ukraine last year. The so-called kamikaze unmanned drones do not need a runway to launch and explode on impact.

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but said in the past they were sent before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has denied its forces used Iranian drones in Ukraine.

A White House official said in June that Iran had transferred several hundred drones to Russia since August 2022.
…

Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
…

Norway is rebuilding a dilapidated reindeer fence along its border with Russia in the Artic to stop the animals from wandering into the neighboring country — costly strolls for which Oslo has to compensate Moscow over loss of grassland.

Norwegian officials said Thursday that so far this year, 42 reindeer have crossed into Russia seeking better pastures and grazing land.

The reindeer barrier along the Norway-Russia border spans 150 kilometers (93 miles) and dates back to 1954. The Norwegian Agriculture Agency said a stretch of about 7 kilometers (4 miles) between the Norwegian towns of Hamborgvatnet and Storskog would be replaced.

The construction, with a price tag of 3.7 million kroner ($348,000), is to be completed by Oct. 1, the agency said.

The work is a challenge, however, as the workers have to stay on the Norwegian side of the border “at all times” during construction, “which makes the work extra demanding,” said Magnar Evertsen of the agency. If a worker crossed into Russian territory, without a Russian visa, that would amount to illegal entry. 

The reindeer crossings bring on a lot of additional bureaucracy. Russia has sent two compensation claims, the agency said.

One claims is for nearly 50,000 kroner ($4,700) per reindeer that crossed into Russia to graze in the sprawling Pasvik Zapovednik natural reserve in the Russian Murmansk region. The other claim is asking for a lump sum of nearly 47 million kroner ($4.4 million) in total for the days the animals grazed in the park, which consists mostly of lakes, rivers, forests and marshland.

The agency said that of the 42 animals that entered Russia this year, 40 have been brought back to Norway and the remaining two are expected to come back soon.

The returned animals have since been slaughtered out of fear that they may wander back to Russia, Evertsen said. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority may demand the carcasses be destroyed for safety reasons, the government body said in a statement.

The reindeer are herded by the Indigenous Sami people in central and Arctic Norway. Formerly known as the Lapps, the Sami are believed to have originated in Central Asia and settled with their reindeer herds in Arctic Europe around 9,000 years ago.

They traditionally live in Lapland, which stretches from northern parts of Norway through Sweden and Finland to Russia. Across the Arctic region, the majority live on the Norwegian side of the border. 
…

The United States on Friday accused China and Russia of blocking a unified U.N. Security Council response to North Korea’s missile launches, including Thursday’s attempt by Pyongyang to put a spy satellite in space. 

During an emergency Security Council meeting, 13 of the 15 members — all but Moscow and Beijing — condemned Pyongyang’s second spy satellite test in three months, which used ballistic missile technology. 

“This should be an issue that unifies us. … But since the beginning of 2022, this council has failed to live up to its commitments because of China’s and Russia’s obstructionism,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield.  

“The DPRK’s nuclear threat is growing, and Russia and China are not living up to their responsibility to maintain international peace and security,” she added, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.  

Thomas-Greenfield also denounced the presence last month of Russian and Chinese officials at a North Korean military parade that showed off new drones and nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

“They are celebrating — celebrating — violations of Security Council resolutions and continuing to block council action,” Thomas-Greenfield said of Moscow and Beijing. 

In May 2022, China and Russia vetoed a resolution imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang, and no resolution or declaration by the Security Council on North Korea has been adopted since. 

The last unified Security Council action on North Korea took place in 2017. 

Chinese and Russian representatives said Washington was to blame for North Korea’s aggressive stance, pointing to ongoing U.S. military drills with South Korea. 

North Korea has long maintained its nuclear program is pursued in self-defense and said the same applies to its satellite program. 

“Our launch of the reconnaissance satellite is an exercise of the legitimate right to self-defense to deter ever-increasing hostile military acts of the United States,” said North Korean Ambassador Kim Song, adding that his country has never recognized U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea anyway. 

Thomas-Greenfield rejected that position. 

“We all know the truth: The DPRK puts its paranoia and selfish interests over the dire needs of the North Korean people,” she said. 

“The DPRK’s war machine is fueled by repression and cruelty,” Thomas-Greenfield added. “It’s shameful, and it’s a grave threat to global peace.” 
…

The Kremlin labeled as “an absolute lie” on Friday the Western conjecture that Russian President Vladimir Putin masterminded Yevgeny Prigozhin’s reported death.  

The chief of the mercenary Wagner Group reportedly was on the jet that crashed Wednesday evening just outside of Moscow.  

Prigozhin’s name was on the passenger manifest, and he reportedly was among the 10 people aboard who died in the crash. Putin cited “preliminary information” saying that Prigozhin and his top associates in the Wagner mercenary group all had been killed. 

Earlier on Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov scolded U.S. President Joe Biden for suggesting that the Russian president had orchestrated Prigozhin’s death.  

“It is not for the U.S. president, in my opinion, to talk about certain tragic events of this nature,” Ryabkov said Friday. 

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Biden said he was not surprised by Prigozhin’s reported death. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he said. 

Asked by The Associated Press whether the Kremlin has received an official confirmation of Prigozhin’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referenced Putin’s remarks from a day earlier.  

“He said that right now, all the necessary forensic analyses, including genetic testing, will be carried out. Once some kind of official conclusions are ready to be released, they will be released,” Peskov said. 

According to a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, the plane was downed by an intentional explosion. One of the U.S. and Western officials who described the assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.” 

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, did not offer any details about what caused the explosion. It is believed to be in retaliation for the mutiny in June that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s 23-year rule. 

Ukrainian, Turkish leaders confer

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks Friday in Kyiv with Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan regarding the Black Sea grain deal and other related topics.  

“Many important issues were discussed. [Ukraine’s] Peace Formula. Preparations for the Global Peace Summit. Risks posed by the Russian blockade of the Black Sea grain corridor,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. 

Turkey is trying to persuade Russia to return to the negotiating table regarding the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative that was guaranteeing the safety of cargo vessels passing through the Black Sea corridor.  

Russia has threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets after pulling out of a U.N.-backed safe passage deal. 

According to U.S. officials, since Russia’s exit from the grain deal, Ukraine, a major grain exporter, has resorted to overland and Danube River routes as effective ways to transport its grain.  

“I think we see there are viable routes through Ukraine’s territorial waters and overland, and we are aiming … over the next couple of months to return to exporting at kind of prewar averages from Ukraine,” James O’Brien, head of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told Reuters in an interview. 

Ukraine has begun exporting through a “humanitarian corridor” along the sea’s western coastline near Romania and Bulgaria.  

A Hong Kong-flagged container ship stuck in Odesa port since the invasion was the first vessel to travel that route last week without being fired upon by Russia. 

US will train Ukrainians on F-16s 

Russia has updated to 73 the number of Ukrainian drones it says it has downed over the past 24 hours.   

Earlier, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 42 drones were destroyed over Crimea – nine shot down by air defense forces and 33 by electronic warfare.  Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014.    

There were no immediate reports of fatalities.   

The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday it will train Ukrainians to fly and maintain F-16 fighter jets.   

The Defense Department said in a statement the training will be held at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona, and will be facilitated by the Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing.     

The U.S. training is “in support of the international effort to develop and strengthen Ukraine’s long-term defenses,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder said.   

The training will begin in October, after the Ukrainians complete an English-language course set to begin in September.   

Meanwhile, Norway is donating F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said Thursday on a visit to Kyiv.   

The exact number of the donated jets was not immediately clear, but Gahr Stoere said it likely would be less than than 10.   

Norway is the third European country, after the Netherlands and Denmark, to announce donations of fighter jets to Ukraine for use in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.    

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.   
…

The attacks range from the exotic — poisoned by drinking polonium-laced tea or touching a deadly nerve agent — to the more mundane of getting shot at close range. Some take a fatal plunge from an open window.

Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.

None, however, has been known to perish in an air accident. But on Wednesday, a private plane carrying a mercenary chief who staged a brief rebellion in Russia plummeted into a field from tens of thousands of feet after breaking apart.

Assassination attempts against foes of President Vladimir Putin have been common during his nearly quarter century in power. Those close to the victims and the few survivors have blamed Russian authorities, but the Kremlin has routinely denied involvement — as it did on Friday by saying it was “a complete lie” it had anything to do with the jet crash.

There also have been reports of prominent Russian executives dying under mysterious circumstances, including falling from windows, although whether they were deliberate killings or suicides is sometimes difficult to determine.

Some prominent cases of documented killings or attempted killings:

Political opponents

In August 2020, opposition leader Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane landed in the city of Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized in a coma. Two days later, he was airlifted to Berlin, where he recovered.

His allies almost immediately said he was poisoned, but Russian officials denied it. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden confirmed Navalny was poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent known as Novichok, which he reported had been applied to his underwear. Navalny returned to Russia and was convicted this month of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison, his third conviction with a prison sentence in two years on charges he says are politically motivated.

In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a founder of the protest group Pussy Riot, fell severely ill and also was flown to Berlin, where doctors said poisoning was “highly plausible.” He eventually recovered. Earlier that year, Verzilov embarrassed the Kremlin by running onto the field during soccer’s World Cup final in Moscow with three other activists to protest police brutality. His allies said he could have been targeted because of his activism.

Prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza survived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017. He nearly died from kidney failure in the first instance and suspects poisoning, but no cause was determined. He was hospitalized with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma. His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned. Kara-Murza survived, and his lawyer says police have refused to investigate. This year, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The highest-profile killing of a political opponent in recent years was that of Boris Nemtsov. Once deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, Nemtsov was a popular politician and harsh critic of Putin. On a cold February night in 2015, he was gunned down by assailants on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin as he walked with his girlfriend. His death shocked the country. Five men from the Russian region of Chechnya were convicted, with the gunman receiving up to 20 years, but Nemtsov’s allies said their involvement was an attempt to shift blame from the government.

Former intelligence operatives

In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, felt violently ill in London after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210, dying three weeks later. He had been investigating the shooting death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as well as the Russian intelligence service’s alleged links to organized crime. Before dying, Litvinenko told journalists the FSB was still operating a poisons laboratory dating from the Soviet era.

A British inquiry found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably with Putin’s approval, but the Kremlin denied any involvement.

Another former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018. He and his adult daughter Yulia fell ill in the city of Salisbury and spent weeks in critical condition. They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill.

Authorities said they both were poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok. Britain blamed Russian intelligence, but Moscow denied any role. Putin called Skripal, a double agent for Britain during his espionage career, a “scumbag” of no interest to the Kremlin because he was tried in Russia and exchanged in a spy swap in 2010.

Journalists

Numerous journalists critical of authorities in Russia have been killed or suffered mysterious deaths, which their colleagues in some cases blamed on someone in the political hierarchy. In other cases, the reported reluctance by authorities to investigate raised suspicions.

Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose death Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006 — Putin’s birthday. She had won international acclaim for her reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya. The gunman, from Chechnya, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Four other Chechens were given shorter prison terms for their involvement in the murder.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, another Novaya Gazeta reporter, died of a sudden and violent illness in 2003. Shchekochikhin was investigating corrupt business deals and the possible role of Russian security services in the 1999 apartment house bombings blamed on Chechen insurgents. His colleagues insisted that he was poisoned and accused the authorities of deliberately hindering the investigation.

Yevgeny Prigozhin and his lieutenants

Wednesday’s plane crash that is presumed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin and top lieutenants of his Wagner Group private military company came two months to the day after he launched an armed rebellion that Putin labeled “a stab in the back” and “treason.” While not critical of Putin, Prigozhin slammed the Russian military leadership and questioned the motives for going to war in Ukraine.

On Thursday, a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment found that the crash that killed all 10 people aboard was intentionally caused by an explosion, according to U.S. and Western officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. One said the explosion fell in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, rejected allegations the Kremlin was behind the crash. “Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie,” he told reporters Friday.

In his first public comments on the crash, Putin appeared to hint there was no bad blood between him and Prigozhin. But former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said: “Putin has demonstrated that if you fail to obey him without question, he will dispose of you without mercy, like an enemy, even if you are formally a patriot.”
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The president of the Spanish football federation faces an emergency meeting of its general assembly on Friday amid media reports that he will hand in his resignation following an uproar for kissing a Women’s World Cup champion.

Luis Rubiales is expected to stand before representatives of Spain’s regional federations, clubs, players, coaches and referees in Madrid at noon local time, and local media say he is stepping down.

The federation has refused to comment on repeated requests from The Associated Press for confirmation of Rubiales’ decision to go that was reported late Thursday.

Rubiales, 46, is under immense pressure to leave his post since he grabbed player Jenni Hermoso and kissed her on the lips without her consent during the awards ceremony following Spain’s 1-0 victory over England on Sunday in Sydney.

FIFA, football’s global governing body and organizer of the Women’s World Cup, opened a disciplinary case against him on Thursday. Its disciplinary committee was tasked with weighing whether Rubiales violated its code relating to “the basic rules of decent conduct” and “behaving in a way that brings the sport of football and/or FIFA into disrepute.”

That move by FIFA came after Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that Rubiales’ attempt to apologize, which came after he initially insulted his critics, was unconvincing and that “he must continue taking further steps” to be held accountable.

Spain’s Higher Council of Sports, the nation’s governing sports body, pledged it would act quickly to consider various formal complaints filed against Rubiales to see if he had broken Spain’s sports law or the federation’s own code of conduct that sanction sexist acts. If so, Rubiales would face being declared unfit to hold his office by Spain’s Administrative Court for Sports.

As if the forced kiss was not enough, Rubiales had shortly before grabbed his crotch in a lewd victory gesture from the section of dignitaries with Spain’s Queen Letizia and the 16-year-old Princess Infanta Sofía nearby.

The combination of the gesture and the unsolicited kiss has made Rubiales a national embarrassment after his conduct was broadcast to a global audience, marring the enormous accomplishment of the women who played for Spain.

Hermoso, a 33-year-old forward and key contributor to Spain’s title, said on a social media stream “I did not like it, but what could I do?” about the kiss during a locker-room celebration immediately after the incident.

The first attempt to respond to the scandal was a statement it released in the name of Hermoso in which she downplayed the incident. Later, a local media report by sports website Relevo.com said that the federation had coerced her into making the statement. The federation has denied this to The AP.

On Wednesday, Hermoso issued a statement through her players’ union saying it would speak on her behalf. The union said it would do all it could to ensure that the kiss does “not go unpunished.”

Rubiales has received no public support from any major sports figure and united political parties from both the left and right are calling for him to resign.
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On Thursday, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency confirmed the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian mercenary organization known as the Wagner Group. Prigozhin was on the passenger manifest of the plane that crashed northwest of Moscow on Wednesday. Anna Rice has the story. Contributor: Lilily Anisimova.
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