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KHERSON, UKRAINE — Their first battle plan was outdated the moment the dam crumbled. So the Ukrainian special forces officers spent six months adapting their fight to secure a crossing to the other side of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.

But it wasn’t enough just to cross the river. They needed backup to hold it. And for that, they needed proof that it could be done. For one of the officers, nicknamed Skif, that meant a Ukrainian flag — and a photo op.

Skif, Ukrainian shorthand for the nomadic Scythian people who founded an empire on what is now Crimea, moves like the camouflaged amphibian that he is: calculating, deliberate, until the time to strike.

He is a Center 73 officer, one of Ukraine’s most elite units of special forces.

Their mission on the more dynamic of the two main fronts in the six-month counteroffensive reflects many of the problems of Ukraine’s broader effort. It’s been one of the few counteroffensive successes for the Ukrainian army.

By late May, the Center 73 men were in place along the river’s edge, some almost within view of the Kakhovka Dam. They were within range of the Russian forces who had controlled the dam and land across the Dnipro since the first days after the February 2022 full-scale invasion. And both sides knew Ukraine’s looming counteroffensive had its sights on control of the river as the key to reclaim the occupied south.

In the operation’s opening days, on June 6, an explosion destroyed the dam, sending a wall of reservoir water downstream and washing out the Ukrainian army positions. An AP investigation found evidence Russia was responsible.

“We were ready to cross. And then the dam blew up,” Skif said.

The water rose 20 meters (66 feet), submerging Skif’s supply lines, the Russian positions and everything else in its path. The race was on: Whose forces could seize the islands when the waters receded, and with them, full control of the Dnipro?

AP joined one of the clandestine units several times over six months along the Dnipro. The frogmen are nocturnal. They transform themselves from nondescript civilians into elite fighters, some in wetsuits and some in boats. In the morning, when their operations end, they’re back to anonymity.

Ukraine created the special services operations in response to Russia’s lightning-fast annexation of Crimea in 2014, a precursor to the widescale invasion of Ukraine eight years later.

“We realized that we were much smaller in terms of number than our enemy,” said Oleksandr Kindratenko, a press officer for Special Operations Forces. “The emphasis was placed on quality. These were supposed to be small groups performing operational or strategic tasks.”

He said they were trained and equipped in part by Europeans, including those from NATO countries, but their own recent battle experience means they are now as much teachers as students.

Skif knew he first had to plan and persuade the generals that if his men could secure a bridgehead, it would be worthwhile to send troops. And that would mean high-risk river missions.

But a lucky thing happened in early autumn. A Russian officer who claimed he’d been opposed to the war since its beginning was sent to the front in Kherson. It was, he later said, every bit as bad as he’d feared.

He contacted Ukrainian intelligence and said he had 11 comrades who felt similarly. The group surrendered together, and Skif ended up taking custody of the Russian officer and his men.

The surrendered Russians told him exactly what he needed to know about their unit on the little island they were now tasked with taking, just outside the village of Krynky.

He was sure he could take the island and more with 20 experienced men. But not without the promise of sufficient backup so Ukrainian regular forces could hold the territory. Fine, his commander said. He’d get the backup — if he returned with footage of his unit in the village hoisting the Ukrainian flag.

And that’s how, in mid-October, a Ukrainian drone carrying the national blue and yellow flag came to fly above Krynky at just the moment Skif and his men made their way to the occupied village across the river. They got their photo op, sent it to the military headquarters and established the bridgehead.

Multiple Ukrainian brigades were sent to hold the position and have been there ever since, including those men from Center 73 still in shape to fight.

But nighttime temperatures are dipping well below freezing, and Ukrainian forces are vastly underequipped compared with the Russians nearby. Holding and advancing in winter is much harder on soldiers’ bodies and their morale.

In recent weeks, Russia has sent waves of glide bombs — essentially enormous munitions retrofitted with gliding apparatus to allow them to be launched from dozens of kilometers away, as well as swarms of grenade-launching drones and Chinese all-terrain vehicles, according to the Institute for the Study of War and the Hudson Institute, two American think tanks analyzing open-source footage from the area.

But Ukrainian forces and Center 73 keep fighting.

“My phone book is a little graveyard,” Skif said one evening, coordinating over the radio with his men on another boat mission. “This is our work. No one knows about it, no one talks about it, and we do it with little reward except to benefit our country.”
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A year of bitter battles in Ukraine has left neither the Russian nor Ukrainian side victorious and the front lines virtually at a stalemate. As war fatigue plagues Ukrainian forces and their Western supporters, observers say they foresee a drawn-out war of attrition. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Ukraine’s southern front lines and the capital, Kyiv. Camera: Yan Boechat.
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MOSCOW — Members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) have signed a fully-fledged free trade agreement with Iran, Russia’s economy ministry and the EEU said Monday.

The agreement will become permanent and replace a similar temporary pact in force since 2019. The previous deal facilitated mutual trade with Iran and increased it to $6.2 billion in 2022 from $2.4 billion in 2019.

The Eurasian Economic Union comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

Both the region and Iran have taken on additional significance for the Kremlin after Western sanctions over Moscow’s conflict in Ukraine limited Russia’s foreign trade routes and forced it to look for markets outside Europe.

The new deal will eliminate customs duties on almost 90% of goods, while the agreement establishes a preferential regime for almost all trade between Russia and Iran.

Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said the deal would allow Russian business to save around 27 billion rubles ($294 million) each year.
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BERLIN — A storm brought heavy rain and strong winds across northern Europe overnight and into Friday, bringing down trees and prompting warnings of flooding on the North Sea coast. A woman in Belgium was fatally injured by a falling Christmas tree, while another tree killed a person in the Netherlands.

The 20-meter (66-foot) Christmas tree collapsed onto three people at a busy market in Oudenaarde in western Belgium late Thursday, killing a 63-year-old woman and injuring two other people. The Christmas market was immediately canceled.

A woman who was struck by a falling tree on Thursday in the eastern Dutch town of Wilp later died of her injuries, her employer said.

Pre-Christmas rail travelers in parts of Germany faced cancelations, delays and diversions. Routes affected included those from Hamburg and Hannover to Frankfurt and Munich.

National railway operator Deutsche Bahn said that falling trees damaged overhead electric wires or blocked tracks largely in northern Germany but also in the central state of Hesse. The situation was improving on Friday afternoon.

In Hamburg, the Elbe River flooded streets around the city’s fish market, with water waist-high in places. Authorities said a storm surge in the port city peaked on Friday morning, reaching 3.3 meters (11 feet) above mean high tide.

Streets around harbors flooded overnight in some Dutch North Sea towns, including Scheveningen, the seaside suburb of The Hague.

The huge Maeslantkering storm barrier that protects Rotterdam from high sea levels automatically closed for the first time because of high water levels — meaning that all six major storm barriers that protect the low-lying Netherlands were closed at the same time. The nation’s water and infrastructure authority said that was also a first. By Friday morning, all six barriers were open again as winds eased.

In the North Sea, the Norwegian cruise ship MS Maud temporarily lost power on Thursday after encountering a rogue wave. Its operator, Hurtigruten Expedition, said in a statement that the 266 guests and 131 crew were uninjured and that the vessel, initially headed for the English port of Tilbury, would be diverted to Bremerhaven, Germany, for disembarkation.

Danish Search and Rescue said the vessel can “maneuver via emergency systems, and it has two civilian support vessels close by.”

On Thursday, high winds grounded flights in parts of the U.K., suspended train services and stopped Scottish ferries. British Airways said air traffic restrictions put in place because of the storm continued to affect flights between Britain and the rest of Europe on Friday.
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In Turkey, the assault of a referee in a major professional soccer match drew international condemnation and the unprecedented suspension of all league games. It also put a focus on the wider specter of violence against professionals in Turkish society, which critics blame on populist politics and a deepening political divide. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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London — Beijing’s hopes for a swift return of foreign investors after it began lifting its harsh COVID-19 restrictions late last year were not answered in 2023.  

A new survey of British businesses released last week is but the latest to confirm that trend. VOA’s Mandarin Service also spoke with British businesspeople who are shifting their investments elsewhere due to uncertainty, global tensions and China’s policies.

Problem is Xi   

One of those people is David Smith, a British businessman who lived in China from 2008 to 2020 and worked with local factories in China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen. He says he used to be optimistic about investing in China, but Beijing’s zero-COVID policy during the pandemic changed that.    

“The draconian clearing policy after the 2020 outbreak led to the shutdown of many factories in Shenzhen, where I was located, and what was once a boom turned into a bust,” Smith told VOA. “I decided to leave China and also move my supply chain to Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam.”   

It wasn’t just COVID, he added; it was also the direction that Chinese President Xi Jinping is taking the country.

“A lot of British businessmen who left China at the same time as me felt that China’s future would be ruined by Xi Jinping who only cares about power and not about the economy, so we are no longer enthusiastic about investing in China,” Smith said.   

Last week’s survey by the British Chamber of Commerce in China reflects the waning enthusiasm. According to the survey of about 300 companies surveyed between October and November, 55% said they planned to reduce or maintain investment levels in China over the next year, a slight improvement over the previous year but still worse than any other year since the survey began in 2018.   

Expat community shrinks  

The survey said British companies operating in China significantly slowed their investment decisions in 2023 due to economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions.  

Thirty-four percent of respondents said they now feel less welcome in China than a year ago, citing rising local protectionism, a lack of policy support for foreign companies and a general lack of equal treatment with Chinese companies.     

Over the past few decades, new British companies have continued to enter the Chinese market. However, according to the survey, only 1% of respondents had established a presence in China over the past 12 months, down by 2% from 2021, when COVID restrictions were in place.    

“For businesses, last year there was uncertainty around operations. Now there’s real uncertainty around revenue,” said Julian Fisher, chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in China, in an interview with Bloomberg TV on December 11.  

While there are no official figures, Fisher said he has heard that the number of British expats in China has dropped to 16,000 from 35,000 before the pandemic, and that many companies have replaced foreign managers at all levels with domestic employees.   

Waiting but not out 

Peter Humphrey, a former journalist who later worked for more than a decade as a fraud investigator for Western firms in China, told VOA that he thinks the main reason for the pause is the downturn in the Chinese economy over the past two years. 

“The British Chamber of Commerce in China has been very pro-Beijing and pro-business for many years, as I recall, and you have to remember that there is a large proportion of businesses in the U.K. that do not want business to be influenced by moral values,” he said.

The figures in the survey “represent a mixed signal,” added Humphrey, who is currently an external researcher at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.   

 

“Economic factors make it inadvisable to make new investments in China right now, and the country is much less attractive than it used to be,” he said. “But British businesses haven’t really realized that it’s not a good idea to do business with China under its leaders.”    

According to the survey, an increasing trend toward local protectionism and self-sufficiency and a lack of policy support for foreign businesses was the biggest factor contributing to foreign businesses feeling less welcome or unwelcome in the market. The next factors were unequal treatment with Chinese companies followed by a lack of channels for communication with the Chinese government.   

The survey also shows that the complexity of cybersecurity and IT regulations adds another layer of uncertainty for U.K. companies operating in China. 

The Chinese government implemented a newly revised counterespionage law on July 1 in the name of strengthening national security. The new version of the law expands the definition of espionage to include any documents, data and materials related to national security interests.

According to the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, this means any “documents, data, materials, or items could be considered relevant to PRC national security due,” which creates potential “legal risks and uncertainty for foreign companies, journalists, academics, and researchers.”

Although difficulties remain, there is evidence that optimism is slowly emerging. Of the businesses surveyed, about 46% expressed an optimistic outlook for 2024, which could signal a change if the economic and geopolitical climate improves. However, most U.K. investment businesses intend to wait and see how the situation develops before raising or lowering investment levels.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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About 500 houses of worship in Ukraine have been destroyed or damaged since the 2022 Russian invasion, according to the American Institute for Religious Freedom. A Ukrainian group called “Temples under Fire” is making expeditions to the front lines to document the damage to the spiritual and historical heritage of Ukraine. Lesia Bakalets met with the project’s participants in Kyiv. (Camera: Evgenii Shynkar)
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PARIS — A French appeals court on Wednesday ordered pharmaceutical firm Servier to pay more than $460 million in damages over a scandal involving a diabetes drug linked to hundreds of deaths.

The health scandal came to light in 2007 when a doctor raised the alert on heart risks linked to Mediator, a drug destined for overweight people with diabetes but that was also widely prescribed to others as an appetite-suppressant.

The drug, which may have caused up to 1,800 deaths, was later banned in France where millions of people took it.

It is also banned in the United States, Spain and Italy.

In the latest court ruling in more than a decade of legal proceedings, the Paris appeals court upheld verdicts of “aggravated fraud” and “involuntary manslaughter and injuries.”

It ordered Servier to pay a $9.8 million fine and pay back more than $455 million to the national social security agency and health insurance companies, much higher damages than in an initial ruling in 2021.

Jean-Philippe Seta, former right-hand man of one of the late founders of the group, was handed a four-year sentence, including one year to be served with an electronic bracelet, and a $98,000 fine.

Charles-Joseph Oudin, one of the lawyers for the more than 7,000 civil parties in the lawsuit, was delighted.

“It’s a huge victory for the victims I represent and that I have been defending since the first complaint in November 2010,” he said.

Wednesday’s verdict is the latest in a long legal battle.

Eight years after the scandal erupted, a French court in 2015 found Servier negligent for the first time for having left “defective” medicine on the market.

Known by its lab name as benfluorex, Mediator was initially licensed to reduce levels of fatty proteins called lipids, with the claim that it helped diabetics control their level of blood sugar.

But it also suppressed appetite, which meant it gained a secondary official use to help obese diabetics lose weight.

In the end, it was widely sold on prescription for even non-diabetics who wanted to slim down.
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tehran, iran — Iran’s foreign ministry summoned on Wednesday Sweden’s charge d’affaires to protest the life sentence handed down to a former Iranian prison official over mass executions in 1988.

On Tuesday, a Swedish appeals court upheld the jail term handed down against Hamid Noury, 62, in July last year “for grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder.”

“It is regrettable that the Swedish court, without considering the standards of a fair trial, decided to issue such a destructive verdict,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement.

He condemned the verdict as “fundamentally unacceptable” and said Iran would “use all legal avenues at its disposal” to secure Noury’s release.

The foreign ministry later on Wednesday summoned Sweden’s envoy to Tehran to voice its “strong protest” against the verdict.

It slammed the Swedish court for citing “false claims” in its verdict.

Noury was arrested at Stockholm airport in November 2019 after Iranian dissidents in Sweden filed police complaints against him.

The case relates to the killing of at least 5,000 prisoners across Iran to avenge attacks carried out by the rebel People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) at the end of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.

Noury had worked as an assistant prosecutor in a prison near Tehran at the time but argued that he was on leave during the period in question.

Sweden tried Noury under its principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows it to try a case regardless of where the alleged offense took place.

There have been concerns that the case could have repercussions for the fate of Swedish prisoners in Iran, including EU diplomat Johan Floderus, who has been held for more than 600 days.

Floderus, 33, has been charged with the capital offense of “corruption on earth.” He was detained at the Tehran airport in April 2022 on his return from a trip abroad while Noury’s original trial was underway.

Another Swedish citizen, dual national Ahmad Reza Jalali, is already on death row in Iran after he was detained in 2016 and sentenced to death on espionage charges.

Swedish media have speculated about the possibility of a prisoner swap between Sweden and Iran. Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom has declined to comment.
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