Ukraine

12 Jan 2023; MEMO: Ukrainian and Russian human rights envoys met in Turkiye for the first time and asked for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mediation to set up a humanitarian corridor between their countries, Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported yesterday.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights, and Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia's commissioner for human rights, met as part of an international conference on the future of human rights in the 21st century.

13 Jan 2023; MEMO: The Ukrainian ambassador in Ankara rejected claims that Turkiye was arming his country with cluster bombs, calling them unfounded rumours and propaganda, AA reports.

As Russian troops wage a ferocious house-to-house fight for control of strongholds in eastern Ukraine, a parallel battle is unfolding in the top echelons of military power in Moscow, with President Vladimir Putin reshuffling his top generals while rival camps try to win his favor.

Jan 12 (Reuters) - A Russian-installed official in Ukraine's Donetsk region said on Thursday that "pockets of resistance" remained in the Ukrainian town of Soledar, undermining claims that the town had been taken by Russian forces.

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the powerful head of the Wagner private military group whose soldiers are fighting to capture the town, had said on Wednesday that Soledar was under the "complete control" of Russian forces.

KHERSON, Ukraine, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Oksana Minenko, a 44-year-old accountant who lives in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, said she was repeatedly detained and tortured by occupying Russian forces.

Her husband, a Ukrainian soldier, died defending Kherson’s Antonivskyi bridge on the first day of full-scale war, she said. During several interrogations in the spring, Russian forces submerged her hands in boiling water, pulled out her fingernails and beat her in the face with rifle butts so badly she needed plastic surgery, according to Minenko.

A POWER PLANT, Ukraine (AP) — Around some of their precious transformers — the ones that still work, buzzing with electricity — the power plant workers have built protective shields using giant concrete blocks, so they have a better chance of surviving the next Russian missile bombardment.

Blasted out windows in the power plant’s control room are patched up with chipboard and piled-up sandbags, so the operators who man the desks 24/7, keeping watch over gauges, screens, lights and knobs, are less at risk of being killed or injured by murderous shrapnel.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The fate of a devastated salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday as Ukraine said its forces were holding out against a furious Russian onslaught in one of the fiercest and costliest recent ground battles of the nearly 11-month war.

Soledar was under heavy shelling by Russian forces using jets, mortars and rockets. A Ukrainian military officer near Soledar said the Russian assault was unrelenting.

KYIV/NEAR BAKHMUT, Ukraine, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday Russia had probably captured a mining town in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv accused Moscow of sacrificing wave upon wave of mercenaries and soldiers in a horrific and senseless battle over wasteland.

The British Defence Ministry said Russian troops and fighters of Wagner, a mercenary company run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, were probably now in control of the salt mining town of Soledar after four days of advances.

KIEV, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine's foodstuff exports reached 17 million metric tons since August under a deal on the export of grain and fertilizers from Black Sea ports, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Tuesday.

In the past three days, five vessels loaded with 158,500 metric tons of agricultural products departed from Ukraine's ports for Egypt, Sri Lanka and other countries, the agency said, citing the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.

Currently, 98 ships are waiting for inspection in the Bosphorus, with 21 of them already loaded and 77 heading for loading.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding, monthslong battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s wider war.

“Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby Donetsk province city of Soledar.