Heather Howarth tugged at King Charles III’s ears and tittered with satisfaction. 

The other ladies who gather to knit and natter in her small English village thought the ears should be bigger. But when creating a crocheted likeness of the new king, she was determined not to cause offense. 

“He might not like this one,” she said reaching out to give the king a fond pat. “But he’ll love his Grenadier Guards!” 

Howarth and her friends in the village of Hurst, a stone’s throw from Reading, west of London, have fashioned a woolly coronation procession to rival the pomp and circumstance that will take place when Charles is crowned on May 6 at Westminster Abbey. Sheathing the 29 posts that circle the community pond with their knitted and crocheted creations, the women have recreated the cast of characters set to attend the big event. 

There’s the king, of course, the queen consort and the Archbishop of Canterbury. And lots of Grenadier Guards. They even threw in Paddington Bear — a sort of honorary member of the royal family after he shared tea with the late Queen Elizabeth II in a film celebrating her 70 years on the throne. 

The Hurst Hookers are part of a phenomenon that has taken hold across Britain in recent years, with guerrilla knitters and crochet enthusiasts celebrating holidays and royal occasions by decorating the nation’s iconic red post boxes and other public spaces with their handiwork. There’s no money in it, and the creations are sometimes stolen. But they do it anyway because they have fun brightening their communities, even if no one asked them to. 

“Yarn bombers” around the country have been hard at work for months creating everything from golden coaches to crenelated castles and jewel-encrusted crowns that will add fuzzy bits of color to the coronation festivities. 

But how to explain the Hurst Hookers?

This is a group that got started during the coronavirus pandemic, meeting every couple of weeks at the local cricket club when Britain’s intermittent lockdowns would permit. It’s bring your own gin and tonic, but there’s tea for anyone who wants it. When the 18 women aren’t meeting up for crocheting and community, they keep in touch via WhatsApp. The pings are so incessant at least one member has had to turn off her alerts. 

They began planning and creating their coronation scene in early September, soon after the queen died and Charles became king. By April, it was finally time to install it. 

The “guerrilla” action began just after 5:30 p.m. on a recent Friday as the setting sun bathed the newly cleaned pond in a peaceful light. 

Clad in jackets and sweaters on a chilly spring night, the women arrived with their creations tucked inside huge shopping bags emblazoned with supermarket logos, then swooped down on the posts surrounding the pond. 

There was little stealth, but much determination. 

First they pulled out the crocheted likenesses of Charles, wearing a crown and a cape fashioned from an old Christmas stocking, and Camilla, with a flash of unruly blond hair.  

Then came the archbishop, whose spectacles rest on a bulbous woolen nose. And finally, the red-coated guardsmen. 

Quick as you like, the figures were pulled down over the posts and firmly stapled in place, with the precisely embroidered medals, moustaches, sergeant stripes and other embellishments getting an extra staple or three. 

“King Charles wants our support, doesn’t he?” Howarth said. “How else do I show that I am supporting him?” 

Valerie Thorn, who did the embroidery, carefully researched all the decorations, so that every medal was from a different campaign in which the guards participated. The insignia on Charles’ chest is so precise that from a few feet you mistake it for the real thing. The archbishop’s miter, modeled after the one he wore at his installation, is immediately recognizable. 

So far, the fat sergeant character seems to be the village favorite.

A Daily Mail newspaper columnist described crafters such as these as “unhinged … woolly delinquents.” Rather than taking offense, the ladies of the Hurst Hookers embraced the jibe. 

“I’m going to embroider that on a T-shirt,” said Thorn, 76, with pride. “If I am unhinged, what is wrong with that?”

And when the installation was almost complete, there was the moment to put the icing on the confection. 

Pip Etheridge pulled out a resplendent copy of St. Edward’s Crown — the crown that will be placed on Charles’ head next weekend — and handed it to Janette Vorster because she didn’t want to be in the pictures. 

In a procession all their own, the group trooped to the village store for the piece de resistance, installing the crown atop the post box out front. 

As they chatted around the post box, the group debated whether their handiwork was more about the coronation or about themselves. They giggled, talked about posting the photos on social media and wondered what the neighbors might say. And they just kept laughing. 

“If you swapped that one with the real one,” Etheridge asked, nodding to her crown, “do you think he’d notice?” 
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Pope Francis said Sunday that talks were underway to return colonial-era artifacts in the Vatican Museum that were acquired from Indigenous peoples in Canada and voiced a willingness to return other problematic objects in the Vatican’s collection on a case-by-case basis. 

“The Seventh Commandment comes to mind: If you steal something you have to give it back,” Francis said during an airborne press conference en route home from Hungary. 

Recently, Francis returned to Greece the three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures that had been in the Vatican Museums’ collection for two centuries. The pope said Sunday that the restitution was “the right gesture” and that when such returns were possible, museums should undertake them. 

“In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t, if there are no possibilities — political, real or concrete possibilities. But in the cases where you can restitute, please do it. It’s good for everyone, so you don’t get used to putting your hands in someone else’s pockets.” 

His comments to The Associated Press were his first on a question that has forced many museums in Europe and North America to rethink their ethnographic and anthropological collections. The restitution debate has gathered steam amid a reckoning for the colonial conquests of Africa, the Americas and Asia and demands for restitution of war loot by the countries and communities of origin. 

The Vatican has an extensive collection of artifacts and art made by Indigenous peoples from around the world, much of it sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens. 

The Vatican insists the artifacts, including ceremonial masks, wampum belts and feathered headdresses, were gifts. But Indigenous scholars dispute whether Native peoples at the time could have freely offered their handicrafts given the power differentials at play in colonial periods. 

Francis, the first-ever Latin American pope, knows the history well. Last year, he travelled to Canada to personally apologize to Indigenous peoples for abuses they endured at the hands of Catholic missionaries at residential schools. 

In the run-up to the visit, Indigenous groups visited the Vatican’s Anima Mundi museum, saw some of their ancestors’ handiwork, and expressed interest in having greater access to the collection, and the return of some items. 

“The restitution of the Indigenous things is underway with Canada — at least we agreed to do it,” Francis said, adding that the Holy See’s experience meeting with the Indigenous groups in Canada had been “very fruitful.” 

Indeed, just a few weeks ago in another follow-up to the Canada apology, the Vatican formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery.” This theory, backed by 15th-century “papal bulls,” was used to legitimize the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and forms the basis of some property laws today in the U.S. and Canada. 

Francis recalled that looting was a common feature during colonial-era wars and occupations. “They took these decisions to take the good things from the other,” he said. 

He said going forward, museums “have to make a discernment in each case,” but that where possible, restitution of objects should be made. 

“And if tomorrow the Egyptians come and ask for the obelisk, what will we do?” he said chuckling, referring to the great obelisk that stands at the center of St. Peter’s Square. The Roman Emperor Caligula brought the ancient obelisk to Rome more than 2,000 years ago, and it was moved to the square in the 16th century. 

The Vatican Museums are mentioned in the 2020 book “The Brutish Museums,” which recounts the sacking of the Royal Court of Benin City by British forces in 1897 and the subsequent dispersal in museums and collections around the globe of its famed Benin Bronzes. 

In the appendix, the Vatican is listed as one of the museums, galleries or collections that “may” have objects looted from Benin City, in today’s Nigeria, in 1897. 

The Vatican Museums hasn’t responded to requests for information. The Nigerian Embassy to the Holy See, asked recently about the claim, said its “contact in the Vatican is currently looking into the issue.” 
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Relatives and friends cried next to coffins Sunday as they buried children and others killed in a Russian missile attack on this central Ukrainian city, while fighting claimed more lives elsewhere.

Almost all of the 23 victims of the attack Friday died when two missiles slammed into an apartment building in Uman. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said six children were among the dead.

Mykhayl Shulha, 6, cried and hugged relatives next to the coffin of his 11-year-old sister Sofia Shulha during Sunday’s funeral, while others paid respects to a 17-year-old boy.

As mourners held candles, crossed themselves and sang, the priest at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Quick to Hear” waved a vessel containing incense over the coffins. He said the deaths had hit the entire community hard.

“I live nearby,” said Father Fyodor Botsu. “I personally knew the children, the littlest, from when they were very young, and I personally baptized them in this church. I’m worried with everyone since I have children and I’m a citizen of this country and have been living in this city for 15 years.”

He said he prayed “that the war should end, and peace should come to our homes, city and country.”

At the damaged building in Uman, people brought flowers and photos of the victims.

Russia’s 14-month-long war brought more deaths elsewhere Sunday.

The governor of a Russian region bordering Ukraine said four people were killed in a Ukrainian rocket attack. The rockets hit homes in the village of Suzemka, nine kilometers from the Ukrainian border, said Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz. He said two other residents were injured and that defense systems had knocked down some of the incoming shells.

Bryansk and the neighboring Belgorod region have experienced sporadic cross-border shelling throughout the war. In March, two people were reported killed in what officials said was an incursion by Ukrainian saboteurs in the Bryansk region.

Also Sunday, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said his Kherson region in Ukraine came under Russian artillery fire 27 times in the past 24 hours, killing one civilian.

An expected spring counteroffensive by Ukraine could be concentrated in the Kherson region, a gateway to Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory in the southern Ukrainian mainland. Ukrainian forces drove Russian forces out of the regional capital Kherson last year, a significant defeat for Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy said the counteroffensive wouldn’t wait for the delivery of all promised military equipment.

“I would have really wanted to wait for everything that was promised,” Zelenskyy told Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian journalists. “But it happens that the terms (of weapons deliveries and counteroffensive), unfortunately, do not coincide a little bit. And, I will say frankly, we pay attention to the weather.”

Ukraine is particularly hopeful that it will receive Western fighter jets, but Zelenskyy said his forces wouldn’t delay the counteroffensive for that, so as not to “reassure Russia that we still have a few months to train on the planes, and only then will we start.”

Zelenskyy said he spoke Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron about the weapons supply and was pleased with its “speed and specificity.”

Macron’s office said he reiterated France’s commitment to provide Ukraine “all the aid necessary to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and discussed long-term European military aid.

The head of the Wagner mercenary group that is leading Russia’s battle in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut gave an even more precise timetable for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Ukrainian military will launch the counteroffensive by May 15 because by then strong rains will have stopped and the soil will be dry enough for tanks and artillery to move, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview with a Russian journalist posted Saturday.

In other battlefield developments, Ukraine’s northern command said the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, which border Bryansk and Belgorod, came under fire 11 times Sunday night.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 48-year-old resident of Nikopol was killed, and two were injured, in Russian shelling, according to Gov. Serhii Lysak. He said six multi-story buildings and six private houses were damaged, as well as several other buildings, gas pipelines, and a power line.
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A large high-powered Russian delegation of 36 legal and human rights experts has failed to persuade a United Nations watchdog committee that the government has complied with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Russia was one of six state parties to the convention whose record came under review by the 18-member Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, CERD, during its latest three-week session, which ended Friday.

The committee, which monitors member states’ implementation of the convention, expressed deep concern about “the grave human rights violations committed during the ongoing armed conflict by the Russian Federation’s military forces and private military companies against those protected under the convention, particularly ethnic Ukrainians.”

Committee member Mehrdad Payandeh said that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the committee has received reports of severe human rights violations and abuses including “instances and practices of excessive use of force, killings, extrajudicial and summary executions, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence” attributable to the state party.

The committee also has received information about the forcible transfer and deportation to the Russian Federation of inhabitants, particularly children from territories in Ukraine occupied under the effective control of the Russian Federation.

“We have addressed these concerns,” said Payandeh. “Again, the Russian Federation did not comment on those concerns or provide any more information.

“We raised our concerns in our concluding observations and recommended to the state party to investigate and to end these practices, so far as they are in violation of the convention,” he said.

The Ukrainian government in mid-April reported that more than 19,384 children have been deported to Russia and the fate of many thousands more remains unclear. The U.N. and human rights organizations say many children allegedly have been given for adoption to Russian families.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the war crimes of unlawful transfer and the deportation of children.

Earlier in April, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe opened an investigation into the forcible transfer and deportation of children to the Russian Federation from parts of Ukraine under Russian control.

The U.N. committee said it also has received disturbing reports of incitement to racial hatred and propagation of racist stereotypes against ethnic Ukrainians and of alleged forced mobilization and conscription into the army both within the Federation and on other territories under its effective control. Payandeh noted that these practices “disproportionately affect members of ethnic minorities, including Indigenous peoples.”

CERD’s review of Russia’s record, which began April 12, got off to a shaky start. The Russian delegation refused to discuss and respond to questions posed by the committee on issues related to the armed conflict and the convention rights of residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol.

The Russians argued that it was inappropriate to discuss the issue of Crimea due to a case pending at the International Court of Justice.

“We laid our position that we did not find anything in the ongoing procedures in front of the International Court of Justice [that] would hinder us from assessing the situation,” said Payandeh.

“The refusal of the Russian Federation to address these issues did not hinder us from addressing them in our concluding observations.” But, he added, “It made our work more difficult, and we would have liked to engage in a constructive dialogue.

“The purpose of this exercise with the Russian Federation is to raise our concerns, to hear their observations and then to come to our conclusions,” he said.

The committee accused the Russians of destroying and damaging Crimean Tatar cultural heritage, of imposing restrictions on Crimean Tatar’s political and civic rights, as well as harassing, threatening and instigating the assassinations of human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, and journalists.

Committee members are calling on the Russian Federation to carry out impartial investigations into all reported cases of human rights abuse cited in its final observations. They are also seeking an end to the practice of forced mobilization and conscription of members of Crimean Tatars and Indigenous peoples in Crimea and in the ongoing armed conflict with Ukraine.

Russia has not yet commented on CERD’s report. The committee says it expects the Russian Federation to present a follow-up report within one year on questions raised regarding the armed conflict in Ukraine, on the rights of residents in Crimea and Sevastopol, as well as the situation of stateless persons, and undocumented and irregular migrants.
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On his third and final day of his Hungary trip, Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Sunday in Budapest before tens of thousands of people in the historic Kossuth Lajos Square. Hungarian President Kataline Novak and Prime Minister Viktor Orban were among the attendees.

Throughout his trip in Hungary, Francis has urged Hungarians to remember and take in refugees from Ukraine and also refugees from the Middle East and Africa who are arriving on Europe’s shores in record numbers.

While Europeans have not always been charitable or receptive to the migrants from Africa and the Middle East, they have been more accepting of the Ukrainians who fled their homes after the Russian invasion.

Orban has said that migration threatens to replace Europe’s Christian culture.

At Mass on Sunday, Francis called on the clergy and lay people to become “increasingly open doors … be open and inclusive … help Hungary to grow in fraternity, which is the path of peace.”
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Russia on Saturday promised it would respond harshly to what it said was Poland’s illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw, an act it called a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

Polish state-run news channel TVP Info earlier reported that police showed up outside the Russian embassy school in Warsaw on Saturday morning.

When asked about the incident, a Polish foreign ministry spokesperson told Reuters the building housing the embassy school belonged to the Polish state.

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the Polish authorities had entered the embassy school’s grounds with the aim of seizing it.

“We regard this latest hostile act by the Polish authorities as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and as an encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland,” the ministry said.

“Such an insolent step by Warsaw, which goes beyond the framework of civilized inter-state relations, will not remain without a harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Polish interests in Russia,” it said.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said late on Saturday on the Telegram messaging app that it will give “a legal assessment” of the “seizure,” but it did not provide any further details.

Lukasz Jasina, a Polish foreign ministry spokesperson, told Reuters that it was Russia’s right to protest but that Poland was acting within the law.

“Our opinion, which has been confirmed by the courts, is that this property belongs to the Polish state and was taken by Russia illegally,” he said.

Sergei Andreyev, Moscow’s ambassador to Poland, had earlier told Russian state news agencies that the building housing the embassy school was a diplomatic one which Polish authorities had no right to seize.

The two countries’ fraught relations have soured further over the war in Ukraine with Warsaw positioning itself as one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies, playing a leading role in persuading allies to provide it with heavy weaponry.

In March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland said it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats suspected of working for Moscow’s intelligence services.
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Armenia and Azerbaijan will hold a new round of talks in Washington on Sunday to try to normalize relations, Yerevan said on Saturday, after weeks of rising tensions over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Armed forces from the two Caucasus neighbors have frequently exchanged fire amid disputes over the mountain enclave, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

Azerbaijan set up a new checkpoint last Sunday on the Lachin Corridor, a road to Karabakh that passes through Azeri territory, in a move that Armenia called a gross violation of a 2020 cease-fire.

“From April 30 Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will be in Washington DC on a working visit. The next round of discussions on the agreement on normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is scheduled,” the spokesperson, Ani Badalyan, said on her official Facebook page.

There was no immediate confirmation of the meeting by Azerbaijan.

Later on Saturday, the Armenian defense ministry said one of its soldiers had been injured by shot fired by Azeri forces near the village of Tegh in Armenia’s southern Syunik province, Tass news agency said.

Tegh is the last village on the Lachin Corridor in Armenia before it enters Azeri territory.

Russian peacekeepers were deployed in 2020 to end a war, the second that Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought over the enclave since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite years of attempted mediation between them, Armenia and Azerbaijan have yet to reach a peace agreement that would settle outstanding issues such as the demarcation of borders and return of prisoners.
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

China is the only major government that has friendly relations with Moscow as well as economic leverage as the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas after the United States and its allies cut off most purchases.

Beijing, which sees Moscow as a diplomatic partner in opposing U.S. domination of global affairs, has refused to criticize the invasion and used its status as one of five permanent U.N. Security Council members to deflect diplomatic attacks on Russia.

Zelenskyy earlier said he welcomed a Chinese offer to mediate.

WHY DID CHINA DO THIS?

Xi’s government has pursued a bigger role in global diplomacy as part of a campaign to restore China to what the ruling Communist Party sees as its rightful status as a political and economic leader and to build an international order that favors Beijing’s interests.

That is a sharp reversal after decades of avoiding involvement in other countries’ conflicts and most international affairs while it focused on economic development at home.

In March, Saudi Arabia and Iran issued a surprise announcement, following talks in Beijing, that they would reopen embassies in each other’s capitals following a seven-year break. China has good relations with both as a big oil buyer.

Last week, Foreign Minister Qin Gang told his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts that his country is ready to help facilitate peace talks.

Wednesday’s statement warned against the dangers of nuclear war, suggesting Beijing might also have been motivated by what it sees as the growing danger of a more destructive conflict.

Mediating between Ukraine and Russia would increase China’s presence in Eastern Europe, where Beijing has tried to build ties with other governments. That has prompted complaints by some European officials that China is trying to gain leverage over the European Union.

Political science professor Kimberly Marten of Barnard College at Columbia University in New York doubted China would succeed in a peacemaker role.

“I have a hard time believing that China can act as peacemaker,” she said, adding that Beijing has been “too close to Russia.”

WHAT ARE CHINA’S RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA?

China is the closest thing President Vladimir Putin’s isolated government has to a major ally.

Xi and Putin issued a joint statement ahead of the February 2022 invasion that said their governments had a “no limits friendship.”

Beijing has tried to appear neutral but has repeated Russian justifications for the invasion.

Xi received a warm welcome from Putin during a visit to Moscow in March. The Chinese defense minister visited Russia this month.

China has stepped up purchases of Russian oil and gas for its energy-hungry economy, helping to offset lost revenue resulting from Western sanctions. In exchange, China gets lower prices, though details haven’t been disclosed.

Marten said the Xi-Zelenskyy call was “kind of a slap at Russia, because Russia has been very keen to portray China as its ally.” She said the direct China-Ukraine contact “indicates China is taking at least a step away from Russia.”

WHAT ARE CHINA’S RELATIONS WITH UKRAINE?

China was Ukraine’s biggest trading partner before the invasion, though on a smaller scale than Chinese-Russian trade.

In 2021, Ukraine announced plans for Chinese companies to build trade-related infrastructure.

Zelenskyy’s government was more ambivalent toward Beijing after it was clear Xi wouldn’t try to stop Putin’s war, but the two sides have remained amicable.

“Before the full-scale Russian invasion, China was Ukraine’s number one trading partner. I believe that our conversation today will give a powerful impetus to the return, preservation and development of this dynamic at all levels,” an official Ukrainian readout of the call reported.

Qin, the foreign minister, promised this month China wouldn’t provide arms to either side, a pledge that benefits Ukraine, which has received tanks, rockets and other armaments from the United States and European governments.

The Chinese ambassador to France set off an uproar in Europe when he suggested former Soviet republics — a group that includes Ukraine — might not be sovereign nations. That was in line with Putin’s comments denying Ukrainian sovereignty.

Beijing then reassured former Soviet states it respected their sovereignty and said the ambassador’s comments were a personal opinion, not official policy.

Elizabeth Wishnick, of the U.S.-based think tank CNA and Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, said in an email: “I wonder if Xi’s call was set up quickly to deflect attention” from the uproar over the Chinese ambassador’s remarks.
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The European Commission said Friday that it had reached a deal in principle to allow the transit of Ukrainian grain to resume through five European Union countries that had imposed restrictions.

Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia cited concerns that grain from Ukraine meant to be exported to other countries had ended up in their local markets, which was pushing down prices for local farmers.

European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis tweeted that the EU executive had reached “an agreement in principle” with the five “to address concerns of both farmers in neighboring EU countries and Ukraine.”

He said the deal included “safeguard measures” for four products — wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed. He did not provide further details.

The deal also includes a support package worth 100 million euros ($110.25 million) for local farmers, Dombrovskis said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had spoken Friday to Charles Michel, president of the European Council, to raise concerns about what he called a destructive ban on exports of agricultural products.

“This gives the Kremlin dangerous hope, the hope that in our common European home someone’s wrong decisions can prevail over common interests,” he said in a video address.

The five countries became transit routes for Ukrainian grain that could not be exported through the country’s Black Sea ports because of Russia’s invasion.

Bottlenecks then trapped millions of tons of grains in countries bordering Ukraine, forcing local farmers to compete with an influx of cheap Ukrainian imports that they said distorted prices and demand.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the deal “preserves both Ukraine’s exports capacity so it continues feeding the world, and our farmers’ livelihoods.”
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Scholars and historical institutions from around the world are coming to the defense of a Polish researcher who is under fire from her country’s authorities after contending that Poles could have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust. 

Barbara Engelking said in a TV interview last week that Polish Jews felt disappointed in Poles during World War II, referring to what she described as “widespread blackmailing” of Jews by Poles during the Nazi German occupation. 

Since then, the historian and the independent TV broadcaster have been threatened with consequences by government institutions — turning the matter into a campaign issue ahead of elections scheduled for this fall. 

Poland’s conservative government and pro-government media have described the remarks by Engelking, who is Polish, as an attack on the nation. They accuse her of distorting the historical record and not giving due credit to the Poles who risked — and sometimes lost — their lives to help Jews. 

It is the latest eruption of an emotional debate that has been going on for years in Poland over Polish-Jewish relations, particularly the behavior of Poles toward their Jewish neighbors during the war — when Germans committed brutal crimes against Poles, whom they considered subhuman, and against the Jews, a population they sought to exterminate in its entirety. 

Poles reacted in various ways to the German treatment of the Jews. Some helped the Jews, an act punishable with execution by the occupation forces. Others denounced or blackmailed them, motivated by antisemitic hatred or for personal gain. Many Poles lived in fear and sought to survive the war without getting involved either way. 

Distortion alleged

Even Polish nationalists do not deny that some Poles preyed on their Jewish compatriots, but they say a relatively recent focus in scholarship on that aspect of the war distorts a larger history of heroism by Poles who resisted the Germans. They argue it risks blaming Polish victims for German crimes. 

Engelking spoke on the 80th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. She was being interviewed by private broadcaster TVN about an exhibition she helped create on the fate of civilians in the ghetto, “Around Us a Sea of Fire,” which opened last week. 

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted to the interview with a long social media post describing Engelking’s comments as “scandalous opinions” and part of an “anti-Polish narrative.” 

Morawiecki referred to the more than 7,000 Poles recognized by Israel’s Holocaust institute Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. A Polish institute is trying to document cases that have so far not been recorded. 

“We know that there could be tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of such cases,” Morawiecki said. 

This week Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek threatened the funding of the institution where Engelking works, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences. 

“I will not finance an institute that maintains the kind of people who just insult Poles,” Czarnek said. 

He said that Poles “were the greatest allies of the Jews, and if it had not been for the Poles, many Jews would have died, many more than were killed in the Holocaust.” 

According to Yad Vashem, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland on the eve of the September 1, 1939, German invasion, and only 380,000 survived the war. 

About 3 million other Polish citizens who were not Jewish were also killed during the war. 

Poland’s state broadcasting authority has also opened an investigation into TVN, which is owned by the U.S. company Warner Bros. Discovery. The broadcaster faced government criticism recently for a report claiming that Saint John Paul II had covered up cases of clerical abuse in his native Poland before becoming pope. 

Election connection

Government critics see an attempt to exploit the issue to win votes ahead of the election — as the ruling party risks losing votes to a far-right party, Confederation, which has been surging in popularity. 

Liberal media and commentators warn that media and academic freedoms are being threatened. 

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said on Twitter this week that he called Engelking to show support for “freedom of expression and of academic research, in the face of blatant and menacing attacks.” 

By Friday more than 600 scholars of the Holocaust and related subjects in Poland and abroad had signed a statement expressing opposition to the “political attack” on Engelking. 

They said they regard “such censorious tendencies … as extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” adding: “We object to the idea of making a subject that calls for meticulous and nuanced research — as carried out by Professor Engelking — part of an election campaign.” 

The POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, where the exhibition about civilians in the Warsaw ghetto is being shown, also defended Engelking in a statement Wednesday. 

The museum argued that the feelings of disappointment expressed by Jews during the war are a “fact,” and that “they appear in almost every account of those who survived the Holocaust, as well as those who managed to leave a record of their fate but did not survive.” 

“The essence of scientific research is a dispute, but a brutal personal attack on a scientist and an outstanding authority in her field cannot be called a dispute,” it said. 

Engelking more than a decade ago angered some Poles by seeming to downplay Polish wartime suffering, saying death for Poles then “was simply a biological, natural matter … and for Jews it was a tragedy, it was a dramatic experience, it was metaphysics.”
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BBC Chairman Richard Sharp resigned on Friday after an
independent report found he had breached public appointment rules by not disclosing potential conflict of interest in his role in securing a $1 million loan for the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson.

His exit comes at a time of heightened political scrutiny of the British public broadcaster. A high-profile dispute with highly paid presenter Gary Lineker over neutrality dominated headlines in Britain last month.

Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker who became BBC chairman in 2021, had been under pressure since February when a committee of lawmakers said he had made “significant errors of judgement” in failing to declare his involvement in the loan.

Sharp said he had agreed to stay on until the end of June to give the government time to find a successor to lead the broadcaster, funded by a license fee paid by TV-watching households.

The investigation, initiated by the public appointments watchdog, examine dthe way in which Sharp was selected by the government to chair the corporation in 2021.

Specifically, it looked at whether Sharp fully disclosed details of his role in facilitating a $1 million loan for Johnson before he was named chairman.

The report found that, while he had breached the government’s code for public appointments, that breach did not necessarily invalidate his appointment. Sharp said he believed the breach had been “inadvertent and not material.”

But he also said staying until the end of his four-year term would be a distraction from the broadcaster’s “good work.”

“I have decided that it is right to prioritize the interests of the BBC,” Sharp said in a statement. “I have therefore, this morning, resigned as the BBC chair.”

The opposition Labour Party’s culture spokeswoman, Lucy Powell, said the breach had “caused untold damage to the reputation of the BBC and seriously undermined its independence as a result of the Conservatives sleaze and cronyism.”

The report mentions Johnson’s Downing Street office as having recommended Sharp as “a strong candidate” for the role, which attracted 23 applications.

Sharp has maintained he was not involved in making the loan or in arranging a guarantee or any financing, and that he did no more than seek to introduce Canadian businessman Sam Blyth to a government official in late 2020.

Andrew Heppinstall, who carried out the inquiry, said he was “happy to record” that he had seen no evidence of Sharp having any role in Johnson’s private financial affairs aside from the attempted introduction.
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Reports emerged this week that the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group could be supplying weapons to one of the warring parties in the conflict in Sudan. Salem Solomon has the story with Patsy Widakuswara contributing.
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