Ukraine said Sunday it had opened a criminal investigation after a Russian missile strike killed multiple soldiers during what media reports said was an “award ceremony” near the frontline this week.

At least 20 soldiers were reported to have been killed in the attack, which local media said took place on Friday as a brigade gathered to receive awards in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region.

“This is a tragedy that could have been avoided,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an evening address Sunday.

“A criminal investigation has been registered into the tragedy,” he added.

AFP was not able to immediately verify the circumstances of the strike or the number of people killed.

The Ukrainian army confirmed on Saturday that a number of soldiers from its 128th Mountain Assault Brigade had been killed in a missile strike the day before but did not provide casualty figures.

“(Russia) fired an Iskander-M missile at the personnel of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, killing the soldiers and causing injuries of varying severity to local residents,” the army said.

One Ukrainian soldier said on social media that 22 people from the brigade had been killed, criticizing commanders for having held the ceremony.

“Everyone is writing that ‘Heroes died.’ Although it is more appropriate to write ‘Heroes became victims,’ ” soldier Ivan Savytskyy said.

“They became victims of military rudimentary traditionalism in its worst form,” he said.

Russia said in a defense ministry briefing Saturday that it had inflicted a “fire defeat” on a Ukrainian assault unit in Zaporizhzhia and that up to 30 people had been killed.

Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia region, where the assault brigade is based, will observe a three-day mourning period starting Monday, local governor Victor Mykyta said.

“Our heroes are alive as long as the memory of them and their deeds lives on,” he said Sunday.
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Nearly 32,000 migrants have reached Spain’s Canary Islands on fragile boats from West Africa this year, passing a previous record posted in 2006, regional authorities said Sunday. 

So far this year, 31,933 people have reached the islands, compared with the 2006 small boats crisis when 31,678 people made it to the Canary Islands, regional authorities told Reuters. 

Since Friday, 739 people have been rescued in the Atlantic Ocean off El Hierro, the smallest and most westerly island in the archipelago, the Spanish coast guard said. 

Two people were found dead in four boats and two other people died later in a hospital, said the Spanish Civil Guard on Saturday, which also took part in the rescue in which women and children were among those saved. 

Fernando Clavijo, the Canary Islands regional chief, said the figures showed the scale of the humanitarian crisis faced by the islands and called for more help from the Spanish government and the European Union. 

“The 2006 data have been surpassed but the response of the state and EU is not the same. Migration management on the southern border must be a priority on the Spanish and European agenda,” he posted on the X social media site Saturday. 

The number of arrivals has recently jumped as milder weather and calmer seas since September have made it more feasible to attempt the still-perilous crossing from Africa. 

The archipelago lies around 100 km off Africa’s west coast. Its seven islands have become the main destination for migrants from Senegal and other African countries trying to reach Spain, fleeing conflict or seeking a better life. 

The Spanish government said it would create additional emergency accommodation for some 3,000 migrants in military barracks, hotels and hostels.
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Turkish police used tear gas and water cannon as hundreds of people at a pro-Palestinian rally Sunday tried to storm an air base that houses U.S. troops, hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due in Ankara for talks on Gaza.

Turkey, which has stepped up its criticism of Israel as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened, supports a two-state solution while hosting members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Since the Israel-Hamas war started, protests have erupted across the country.

Earlier this week, the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist Turkish aid agency, organized a convoy to travel to the Incirlik air base in the Adana province in southern Turkey to protest Israeli attacks on Gaza and U.S. support for Israel.

Incirlik, which has been used to support the international coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, also houses U.S. troops. IHH’s protest called for Incirlik to be closed.

Footage from the protests showed police firing tear gas and using water cannons to disperse crowds waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanting slogans. Protesters toppled barricades and clashed with police in riot gear.

Protesters were also seen hurling plastic chairs, rocks, and other items at police, who fired smoke bombs at crowds. Scuffles broke out between the crowds and security forces.

IHH President Bulent Yildirim addressed the crowds in Adana and urged them to refrain from attacking police.

“Friends, it is wrong to throw rocks or do similar things because both the police and soldiers would want to go to Gaza and fight and they will go when the time comes,” he said.

“Our rage is huge. We cannot hold it in. But Turkey is doing what it can,” he added. IHH ended its rally earlier than planned due to the clashes with police.

The rally comes hours before Blinken is expected to arrive in Ankara Monday for talks on Gaza with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, and after repeated criticism by Ankara toward the West over support for Israel.
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Pope Francis made an urgent plea for a halt to the conflict in Gaza on Sunday, calling for humanitarian aid and help for those injured in order to ease the “very grave” situation. 

“I keep thinking about the grave situation in Palestine and Israel where many people have lost their life. I pray you to stop in the name of god, cease the fire,” he said, speaking to crowds in St Peter’s Square after his weekly Angelus prayer. 

“I hope that all will be done to avoid the conflict from widening, that the injured will be rescued and aid will arrive to the population of Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is very grave,” he said. 

The pontiff renewed his calls for a ceasefire and for the release of hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack, focusing on the children, who he said “must return to their families.” 

“Let’s think about the children, all the children involved in this war, like in Ukraine and in other conflicts, their future is being killed,” he added. 

Francis, 86, has already called for the creation of humanitarian corridors and has said a two-state solution was needed to put an end to the Israel-Hamas war. 

A Gaza health official said on Sunday more than 9,770 Palestinians have been killed in the war, which began when Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 others hostage. 

The pope said that his prayers we also addressed to the Nepal earthquake victims, Afghan refugees and the victims in Italy’s floods. 
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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday visited Kyiv, where she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The European Union is expected to make an announcement this week about Ukraine’s progress in fulfilling the necessary steps to begin EU membership negotiations, set for December.

“I must say you have made excellent progress. This is impressive to see,” von der Leyen said after meeting with Zelenskyy. “We should never forget you are fighting an existential war and at the same time you are deeply reforming your country,” she said.

Zelenskyy said in his daily address Saturday, “Ukraine has passed an enormous path – from a point where many didn’t believe in the possibility of our alignment with the European Union during a full-scale war to achieving the status of a candidate country at record speed and fulfilling the necessary prerequisites for opening negotiations.”

Ukraine applied to become a member of the EU days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year.

During a press conference with von der Leyen, Zelenskyy denied that the war had reached a stalemate and said Ukraine needs more help from its allies to strengthen its air defenses as it enters the 21st month of war.
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The protest movement that erupted in Iran last year has transformed the country both outside and inside prison, a French-Iranian academic, who returned to Paris last month after being held in the country since 2019, told AFP.  

Fariba Adelkhah was finally allowed to leave Iran in October after a four-and-a-half-year ordeal that began with her sudden arrest in 2019 and saw her spend years in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. 

But there she was also able to witness the courage of her fellow women inmates, who included this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, amid the “Woman. Life. Freedom.” protests.   

Female political prisoners have often sung together in a show of defiance, Adelkhah, who was released from prison in February but remained unable to leave Iran for months, told AFP in an interview in Paris. 

That movement “has changed Iranian society and also its prisons,” said Adelkhah. 

The movement — calling for the end of Iran’s imposition of a headscarf on all women and clerical rule — was sparked by the death in Iranian custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in September 2022 after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s dress rules for women.  

Iranian security forces have cracked down on protests in the country, killing hundreds, according to rights groups, and have executed seven men in cases connected to the protests. 

Adelkhah said that in Evin the resistance movement brought together people from all walks of life — including rights activists, environmentalists, political opponents, and representatives of religious minorities. 

“We became united by this cause,” said the 64-year-old researcher in Iranian Shiite religion and politics.  

She herself was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran’s airport, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal. Neatly-dressed security agents “very respectfully” asked her to follow them, she said.  

Several hours later she was questioned for the first time, her head “facing the wall.” 

Psychological humiliation 

Adelkhah would be subjected to many other interrogations in the future, but she was never hit, Adelkhah said. 

“This happens very often to men, but I never heard women mention it when I was detained,” she said. 

“But the absence of physical violence does not prevent constant psychological humiliation,” she quickly added. 

Others, including rights activist Mohammadi, have spoken of the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons. 

The researcher was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. A five-year term was handed down for “colluding with foreigners” and one for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” she said. 

Marchal, a French sociologist specializing in sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested with Adelkhah. He was released in March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris. 

“I still don’t understand what I was accused of,” sighed Adelkhah, smiling. 

While in jail Adelkhah, along with another prisoner, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, staged a hunger strike that lasted 50 days.  

They were among some two dozen Western passport holders held in Iran in what activists and some governments have termed a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking. 

Some have now been released, including all the American detainees, but around a dozen Europeans are still believed to be held, including four French nationals. 

Space of combat 

The “Woman. Life. Freedom.” protest movement has seen women prisoners defy prison authorities in Evin. 

In the jail, located in the hills of northern Tehran, female prisoners are bareheaded when they are among themselves, but required to cover themselves if a man enters or if they have to go to the hospital.  

After the start of the protests, “nearly no one wore the veil” when a man entered, said Adelkhah. 

On Wednesday, Iranian prison authorities blocked the jailed rights activist Mohammadi’s hospital transfer for urgently needed care over her refusal to wear the compulsory hijab, according to her family. 

Adelkhah praised the 51-year-old journalist and activist, seen as one of the women spearheading the uprising who has been repeatedly jailed and has been imprisoned again since 2021. 

She said Mohammadi has turned prison into “a space of combat, of protest par excellence,” adding that she was “more heard” in jail than when she outside. 

The researcher was still in Iran when Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in early October. She said she saw “smiles” in the streets. 

While the government quashed the daily protests with its repression, the slogan “Woman. Life. Freedom.” has become part of Iranian culture, she argued.  

“The Islamic Republic is forced to give ground over many things,” said Adelkhah. 

Today, like-minded Iranian women greet each other when they go out without their headscarves. Before it was “unthinkable,” said the researcher.  

Now they tell each other: “‘You are so beautiful!'” 
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Officials in Western Europe said Storm Ciaran killed at least 14 people over three days as it swept from the North Atlantic across Britain and northwestern France and into the North Sea, bringing with it record-breaking wind, heavy rain, high seas, hail and possibly a tornado.

The storm, named Ciaran by Britain’s meteorological agency, known as the Met Office, brought record-breaking wind to France, with 193-kph (120-mph) wind gusts reported in Brittany. The nation’s energy minister reported 1.2 million households lost power.

Officials in Italy’s Tuscany region declared a state of emergency with trees down and streets flooded. Nearly 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain was reported on the northwestern coast.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Tuscany Governor Eugenio Giani said six people had died in the storm, including an 85-year-old man who drowned on the ground floor of his house near Prato, north of Florence.

Media reports said falling trees, uprooted by strong winds, killed several people in France, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany.

Britain’s Met Office reported the storm brought hailstones the size of tennis balls on the island of Jersey, where it also may have generated a tornado, rare for the region. The office said the storm set a record for the lowest barometric pressure recorded in the month of November. Meteorologists say, typically, that the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.

The storm receded in northern France and along the Atlantic coast Friday, with the main parts of Ciaran spinning over the North Sea.  But heavy rains continued in some regions.

Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, Corsica faced unusually fierce winds Friday – up to 140 kph (87 mph) – and regions in the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe, were under flood warnings.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Record-breaking winds in France and across much of western Europe left at least seven people dead and injured others as Storm Ciarán swept through the continent Thursday. The storm devastated homes, causing travel mayhem and cut power to a vast number of people.

Winds of more than 190 kph slammed the northern tip of France’s Atlantic coast, uprooting trees and blowing out windows. Huge waves slammed into French ports and shorelines, as wind flattened street signs and ripped off roofing. Felled trees blocked roads around western France.

A truck driver was killed when his vehicle was hit by a tree in northern France’s inland Aisne region, Transport Minister Clement Beaune said. Meanwhile, a 70-year-old man in the port city of Le Havre, Normandy, died in a fall from his balcony. Local media outlet FranceBleu quoted a prosecutor as saying it appeared the man was closing his shutters against the wind when he fell. At least 16 people were injured in France, seven of them emergency workers.

About 1.2 million French households lost power, electrical utility Enedis said in a statement. That includes about half of the homes in Brittany, the Atlantic peninsula hardest hit by Ciarán. Enedis said it would deploy 3,000 workers to restore power when conditions allowed.

The wind reached up to around 160 kph on the Normandy coast and up to around 150 kph inland. Fishing crews put their livelihoods on hold and stayed ashore. Local authorities closed forests, parks and beachfronts in some regions.

Local trains were canceled across a swath of western France, and all roads in the Finistère region of Brittany were closed Thursday morning. Beaune, the transport minister, urged people to avoid driving and exercise caution when traveling across areas with weather warnings.

”We see how roads can be fatal in these circumstances,” he told broadcaster France-Info.

Much of Spain was battered by heavy rains and gale-force winds, city parks were closed, and several trains and flights were canceled. Emergency services in Madrid said a woman died after a tree fell on her. Three other people were slightly injured in the incident on a city center street.

Two people were killed by falling tree branches in central Ghent, Belgium, including a 5-year-old child. A 3-year-old was slightly injured in the same incident, said the Ghent prosecutor’s office in a statement. Another branch hit three German tourists in the central Ghent Citadel Park, killing a 64-year-old woman. Her daughter was seriously injured but the father was unhurt.

Belgian media reported a man was seriously injured when a wall collapsed due to the storm in the port city of Antwerp.

A storm warning was issued for the North Sea coast in Germany, and a warning of high winds for part of the Baltic Sea coast. Authorities said a 46-year-old woman was fatally injured by a falling tree in the Harz mountains in northern Germany. Weather alerts were also issued for much of Slovenia as the storm advanced, and the Adriatic port of Koper was closed to traffic.

Thousands were also without power in the United Kingdom. Sharp gusts blew roofs off buildings and toppled trees. Some had to evacuate their homes as Ciarán pummeled the south of England.

Hundreds of schools closed in the southern coastal communities of Cornwall and Devon, as downed trees and flooding hindered morning commutes.

Rail companies urged commuters to work from home if possible because of the potential for falling trees and debris on the tracks. P&O Ferries said tourist traffic was being sent away from the Port of Dover, which has suspended sailings. A major road in town was partly closed for public safety.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency urged people to keep away from the coast.

“Stay out of dangerous situations,” the agency tweeted. “A selfie in stormy conditions isn’t worth risking your life for.”

Simon Partridge, senior meteorologist at U.K. government weather agency the Met Office, said the worst for England appeared to be over by midmorning. The storm is “starting to lose the energy it had when it first arrived,” he said.

Britain’s Environment Agency urged people to prepare for inland flooding, as some river levels remain high and the ground is saturated. By just after midday, there were 82 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 197 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible, in place across England.

“Flooding of low-lying coastal roads is also possible and people must avoid driving through flood water, as just 30 centimeters of flowing water is enough to move your car,” said the agency’s flood duty manager, Ben Lukey.

The Met Office said the mean sea level pressure reading for England and Wales in November is the lowest ever, breaking a record from 1916.

On the Channel Islands, winds were between 144 kph and 160 kph for a full three hours. They smashed windows, damaged cars and tore roofs from buildings. Flights from airports on the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were canceled.

“The hailstones were quite a bit heavier and bigger than a golf ball and we’ve had three windows damaged by them — in my daughter’s bedroom, a landing and a bathroom,” said Suzie Phillips, a homeowner in Jersey.

Jersey Police tweeted that 35 people were relocated after their homes were damaged and three others were hospitalized. They said trees were down across the island.

Dutch media reported that several people had been hit by falling trees in the Netherlands. One person was killed in the southern town of Venray.
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North Korea has likely supplied several types of missiles to Russia to support its war in Ukraine, along with its widely reported shipments of ammunition and shells, South Korea’s military said Thursday. 

In a background briefing for local journalists, South Korea’s military said North Korea was suspected of sending an unspecified number of short-range ballistic missiles, anti-tank missiles and portable anti-air missiles to Russia, in addition to rifles, rocket launchers, mortars and shells. 

The contents of the briefing were shared with The Associated Press. 

North Korea has been pushing to expand cooperation with Russia and China in the face of protracted security tensions with the United States and pandemic-caused domestic hardships. In an apparent sign of its economic troubles, the country is moving to close some of its overseas diplomatic missions. 

Last week, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan strongly condemned North Korea’s alleged supplying of munitions and military equipment to Russia, saying such weapons shipments sharply increased the human toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Any weapons trade with North Korea would be a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that Russia, a permanent council member, previously endorsed. 

Both Russia and North Korea dismissed the weapons shipment accusations as baseless. 

In a private briefing with lawmakers Wednesday, the National Intelligence Service — South Korea’s main spy agency — said that more than a million North Korean artillery shells have been sent to Russia since August via ships and transport planes. The NIS said the deliveries roughly amounted to two months’ worth of shells for the Russians, according to lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum, who attended the NIS briefing. 

The NIS assessed that North Korea has been operating its munitions factories at full capacity to meet Russian munition demands and has also been mobilizing residents to increase production. 

The NIS said North Korea, for its part, is likely receiving Russian technological assistance over its plan to launch its first military spy satellite into space. North Korea’s two recent attempts to launch a spy satellite ended in failure for technical issues. The North failed to follow through with its vow to make a third launch attempt in October, without giving any reason. 

South Korea’s military said North Korea also seeks to receive nuclear-related technologies, fighter jets or related aircraft equipment, and assistance on the establishment of anti-air defense networks from Russia. 

North Korea is currently focusing on enlarging its nuclear arsenal while refusing to return to talks with the U.S. and South Korea. The country’s economy is reeling from major setbacks caused by draconian curbs imposed during the coronavirus pandemic and stringent U.S.-led sanctions.
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North Korea has decided to close diplomatic missions in at least four locations across the globe, a significant diplomatic shift that some observers say may indicate severe economic challenges.

According to a series of media reports that began emerging last week, North Korea will shutter its embassies in Uganda, Angola and Spain, as well as its consulate in Hong Kong.

North Korean state media have not publicly explained the reasons behind the closures. However, a North Korean ambassador was quoted in The Independent, a Ugandan newspaper, as saying Pyongyang is reducing its number of embassies in Africa to “increase the efficiency” of its “external institutions.”

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, which handles relations with the North, attributed the closures to strengthened international sanctions against North Korea, which have disrupted the cash-earning operations of its overseas missions.

“This is one aspect that shows North Korea’s difficult economic situation, where it is now difficult to even maintain minimal diplomatic relations with traditionally friendly countries,” a South Korean official told local media outlets.

Before the closures, North Korea had diplomatic missions in 53 places, according to South Korea’s unification ministry.

Many North Korean embassies have been involved in the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and luxury goods, as well as other illicit commercial activity meant to earn cash for their economically isolated government, according to media reports.

Sanctions pressure

North Korea is barred from a wide range of global trade activities under U.N. Security Council resolutions first put into place over its nuclear weapons program in 2006.

As sanctions pressure increased, North Korea expanded its economic ties in Africa, by sending construction workers there and exporting massive, communist-style statues that are erected in public squares.

In recent years, some African countries, including Angola, have taken steps to sever contracts with North Korean construction companies, and requested that North Korean workers leave, in order to comply with U.N. sanctions.

It not clear, however, how those developments may have factored into North Korea’s decision to close its embassies in Uganda and Angola.

In reality, multilateral sanctions pressure on North Korea has remained flat for several years, even as it rapidly expands its nuclear arsenal.

That’s because Russia and China, North Korea’s primary international backers, have refused to support more sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.

Severe economic woes?

Some observers say the embassy closures may instead point to even broader problems with North Korea’s economy.

Thae Yong-ho, a former senior North Korean diplomat who now serves as a South Korean lawmaker, said the closures “prove that North Korea is struggling economically.”

In a Facebook post, Thae said North Korea’s difficulties can be seen as a second version of the “Arduous March,” the famine in the 1990s that may have killed millions.

“North Korea claims their harvest this year was good, but North Korean defectors who fled recently have complained of hunger,” Thae added.

There are no signs of mass starvation in North Korea – but even if there were, the outside world would not necessarily know. Virtually all foreigners, such as aid workers and diplomats, left North Korea during the COVID-19 lockdown and have not returned.

Amid the isolation, North Korea has grown closer to China and Russia. Most notably, North Korea has sent many artillery shipments to Russia for use in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, according to U.S. and South Korean officials.

More profitable ventures?

Those steps are apparently not enough for North Korea to overcome its financial woes, said Mason Richey, associate professor at South Korea’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

“Unless it’s just streamlining, a North Korean version of corporate restructuring – getting rid of non-core lines of business to be able to focus attention where it is most profitable,” he said.

One possibility, according to Richey, is that North Korea has found cyber attacks, such as theft of cryptocurrency, to be a much more efficient means of acquiring cash.

Over the past five years, North Korean hackers have stolen more than $2 billion in cryptocurrencies, according to an August report by TRM Labs, which studies crypto-related financial crime.

“If sanctions make generating money from embassies difficult, and the arms trade in Africa perhaps tougher, and they don’t need that so much anymore because of crypto theft … then why keep open useless embassies that are a drain on North Korean funds?” Richey said.

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill on Thursday to throw out the Kremlin’s ban on nuclear testing.

Moscow’s move to renege on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, also called the CTBT, would “mirror” the White House’s position on nuclear testing, Putin said.

The United States is a signatory to the CTBT but has never ratified it. Seven other countries including China, Iran, Israel, Egypt, North Korea, India and Pakistan also never ratified the treaty.

In October, both houses of the Russian parliament passed the bill opting out of the CTBT. Putin’s signing it into law was expected.

Putin has sent a clear message to the West, and some analysts think that restarting nuclear tests after a more than two-decade ban could be a political maneuver to scare off NATO countries from helping Ukraine’s counteroffensive. 

But Putin is still undecided about whether Russia should go forward with nuclear testing, though various experts, he said, have argued to do so.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said last month that the Kremlin would respect the ban unless the United States stages any new nuclear tests.  

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
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Israel’s ambassador to Moscow gave new details Wednesday of the weekend riot at an airport in southern Russia when a flight from Tel Aviv landed there, saying some of the passengers had to hide in the terminal before being flown by helicopter to safety.

Ambassador Alexander Ben Zvi blamed Sunday night’s unrest on extremist elements resulting from “indoctrination” in the mostly Muslim republic of Dagestan. But he said that overall, there is no antisemitism “on an organized level” in Russia. He added, though, that authorities should take the incident seriously so such actions don’t spread.

“Of course, there has always been, is and will be antisemitism on the everyday level. The important thing is that it doesn’t develop into what we saw in Makhachkala,” Ben Zvi told The Associated Press in an online interview from Moscow. “If all this is under control, I think there will be no problems.”

The angry mob stormed the airport in Makhachkala, the capital city of Dagestan, when the flight from Israel landed there. Hundreds of men, some carrying banners with antisemitic slogans, roamed the building and rushed onto the tarmac looking for Israeli passengers. It took the authorities several hours to disperse the mob, which threw stones at police.

At least 20 people, both police and civilians, were injured and more than 80 were detained. Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a probe on the charges of organizing mass unrest.

Authorities in Dagestan said 17 people were convicted of petty hooliganism and of participating in an unauthorized mass event, neither of which is a criminal charge, sentencing 15 of them to short stints in jail, with the other two ordered to undertake correctional labor.

It remains unclear whether dozens of others detained Sunday night would face any charges and whether any of them would be implicated in the criminal probe.

Ben Zvi said more than 30 people on the flight were Israeli citizens, and none were hurt.

When the passengers got off the plane and passed through passport control, “they apparently ran into some kind of unrest,” he said.

“In the end, most of them ended up in a VIP room, and they hid there and spent some time there” until they could be flown by helicopter to a closed facility, he added.

After spending the night there, the passengers were flown — again by helicopter — to Mineralnye Vody, a city in the neighboring Stavropol region, and from there they traveled onward, he said.

Although no passengers were hurt, “I must say, that both the regional and the federal authorities should take this very seriously, because it could have led to victims. And that really would have influenced the entire situation in Russia,” he added.

President Vladimir Putin blamed the unrest on “agents of Western special services” in Ukraine, saying without offering evidence that they provoked the rampage in Dagestan to weaken Russia.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called Putin’s allegation “classic Russian rhetoric,” adding that “the West had nothing to do with this.” Kirby criticized Putin for not doing more to condemn the violence, which he described as “a chilling demonstration of hate.”

Ben Zvi said he had no information about the unrest being orchestrated from abroad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had said Israel “expects the Russian law enforcement authorities to protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they may be and to act resolutely against the rioters and against the wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.”

In the AP interview, Ben Zvi said his country’s relations with Russia relations are normal amid the Israel-Hamas war, even though there are disagreements over some of the Kremlin’s policies in the Middle East.

“There are highs, there are lows. Not always we’re happy with Russia’s position, not always they’re happy with our position. We express it to each other,” he said, citing the recent visit of a Hamas delegation to Moscow as an example of something that Israel “really didn’t like.”
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