УКРОПИ

Russian leader Putin visits Mongolia, defies international warrant for his arrest

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Ukraine intercepts 27 of 35 Russian drones in latest aerial attack  

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‘Queen of Trash’ in dock in Sweden’s biggest toxic waste scandal

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Turkey arrests 15 accused of assaulting US servicemen

Ankara, Turkey/Washington — A nationalist Turkish youth group physically assaulted two U.S. soldiers Monday in western Turkey, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey and the local governor’s office said, adding that 15 assailants had been detained over the incident.

In a statement, the Izmir governor’s office said members of the Turkey Youth Union (TGB), a youth branch of the nationalist opposition Vatan Party, “physically attacked” two U.S. soldiers dressed in civilian clothes in the Konak district.

It added that five U.S. soldiers joined in after seeing the incident, and that police intervened. All 15 attackers had been detained and an investigation was launched into the matter, it said.

A White House spokesperson said Monday, Washington was “troubled” by the assault but added it was “appreciative that Turkish police are taking this matter seriously and holding those responsible accountable.”

The U.S. Embassy to Turkey also confirmed the attack and said the U.S. soldiers were now safe.

“We can confirm reports that U.S. service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in Izmir today, and are now safe,” it said on social media platform X.

Earlier, the TGB posted a video on X showing a group holding down a man on the street and putting a white hood over his head, while shouting slogans.

The group said the man was a soldier on board the USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship. The U.S. Embassy in Ankara had said earlier Monday that the ship was carrying out a port visit to the Aegean coastal town of Izmir this week.

“U.S. soldiers who carry the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot dirty our country. Every time you step foot in these lands, we will meet you the way you deserve,” TGB said.

U.S.-Turkey ties have been strained in recent years by the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurds that Turkey deems extremists, and over Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 defenses that prompted U.S. sanctions and removal from a F-35 jet program.

There has also been divergence over Israel’s war in Gaza, where over 40,000 people have been killed according to Gaza authorities, and over which Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has sharply criticized Washington’s ally.

Earlier this month, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey said U.S.-Turkey relations are now “in a better place than we’ve been in a while” and noted the “useful role” Turkey played in a recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia.
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Russia’s Putin says his young family members speak fluent Mandarin Chinese

Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that young members of his family speak fluent Mandarin, though he told school children they should not forget the importance of English too despite the growing popularity of Chinese. 

Putin has two daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila and they speak Russian, English, German and French. Putin, who divorced his wife in 2014, rarely speaks about his family but has at least three grandchildren, according to Russian media. 

“Some of my family members, the little ones, speak Chinese too – they speak it fluently,” Putin told pupils of Secondary School No. 20 in Kyzyl, Tuva, about 4,500 km (2,800 miles) east of Moscow. 

Amid a growing partnership between China and Russia, Mandarin has been growing in popularity across Russia as a foreign language of choice, a trend Putin said was due to developing contacts across economics, politics and society. 

Putin, who speaks fluent German but has also taken lessons to improve his English, said that pupils should not forget the importance of English. 

“English is a great language, it has given humanity a great deal in terms of combining knowledge and uniting people in the field of culture, and so on,” Putin said. 

Russian, English, Tatar, German and Chechen are the most widely spoken languages in Russia, according to the 2022 census. While Mandarin is spoken far less, it has been growing swiftly in popularity in recent years as a foreign language. 

Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping in May pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world. 

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War II. 

English is the world’s most spoken language with about 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Mandarin Chinese with about 1.1 billion speakers, and then Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu, according to Ethnologue, a language research center.
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New Polish law makes school attendance mandatory for Ukrainian refugees

warsaw — Sava Trypolsky couldn’t wait for school to start. Days before the Ukrainian boy entered first grade Monday, his backpack was packed. Sitting on his bed in his home near Warsaw last week, he pulled out coloring pens, glue sticks and all manner of supplies emblazoned with Spider-Man, Minions and his favorite soccer player, Lionel Messi.

Sava was almost 5 when he fled his home in Cherkasy, Ukraine, with his mother and older sister soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. But the war has dragged on for more than 2½ years, and he is now a 7-year-old starting his educational journey.

For Ukrainian children, the last several years have been a time of severe disruption. First the COVID-19 pandemic brought online learning, and then war uprooted millions.

That disruption was still evident in Ukraine, where it was also the first day of school Monday. An overnight Russian drone and missile attack in Kyiv forced the cancellation of classes for some because of damage from the attack.

Many Ukrainians who fled to neighboring Poland never returned to a classroom at all, continuing their Ukrainian classwork remotely.

But as this new school year began Monday, a new Polish law makes school attendance mandatory for Ukrainian refugees. In cases where the kids don’t attend school, the government will enforce the law by withholding a monthly 800 zloty ($200) bonus that all citizens and refugees receive for each child under 18.

Only those entering the last year of high school are exempt from this new requirement. Poland’s Education Ministry said it was unrealistic for them to master the Polish curriculum in language and culture in time to pass final graduation exams by spring.

Sava can expect an easier time than many. Educators say kids his age learn Polish quickly. He has a best friend, Bart, going to his school, and a soccer group. Medals he earned while playing the sport decorate his room in Jablonna, a small community north of Warsaw.

“I’ll have fun,” he said beaming.

But his 16-year-old sister Marichka hopes to return to Ukraine for university and knows school can be hard for adolescents even without the pressure of being a refugee. She has one year left and opted to continue her home schooling.

“Some people are just mean, you know, and I’ve heard many stories about just being excluded or bullied,” Marichka said. “That happens in every country, it’s not just Poland, it’s just kids who try to grow up in this world.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that it was important to bring Ukrainian youth into the system to avoid the formation of social “pathologies.”

“Since we do not know how many Ukrainian families will want to stay with us for longer, and perhaps forever, we are very keen for these children to be educated like their Polish peers,” Tusk said Friday.

Some Ukrainians have already returned home, and many others plan to. That has led many of them to live in Poland, but to keep kids out of Polish schools and do remote learning with schools back in Ukraine.

Jędrzej Witkowski, CEO of the Polish nonprofit Center for Citizenship Education, said that allowing online learning made sense during the initial crisis, but now Polish authorities can’t even track whether Ukrainian children are continuing with their education or dropping out. There isn’t reliable data or research that can measure the educational loss, he said.

“This would have been the fifth consecutive year of online learning,” Witkowski said. “We’re very happy with the move that the government has made.”

Poland has the second-largest population of Ukrainian war refugees in the West after Germany, and most are women and children. UNHCR estimated the number of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, a nation of 38 million, at slightly over 957,000 in June, the latest figures published on its website.

UNICEF and UNHCR — the United Nations’ children’s and refugee agencies — had expressed concern about the large numbers of children living in Poland but not attending schools in person, estimating the number at around 150,000 — a calculation based on administrative data and the number of Ukrainian kids with Polish identity numbers.

Other countries with large Ukrainian populations, like Germany and Italy, required school attendance from the start, said Francesco Calcagno, chief of education for the UNICEF refugee response office in Warsaw, which is working with the national government, local authorities and nongovernmental organizations to help get kids back into schools.

“Education is not just about academic achievement but also about fostering resilience, stability and hope,” Calcagno said. “Schools provide a crucial sense of structure and safety, which helps children from Ukraine to catch up on learning and supports their psychosocial wellbeing.”
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Britain suspends some arms exports to Israel over risk of breaking law

London — The British government said Monday it is suspending exports of some weapons to Israel because they could be used to break international law.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said there is a “clear risk” some items could be used to “commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

He told lawmakers the decision related to about 30 of 350 export licenses for equipment “that we assess is for use in the current conflict in Gaza,” including parts for military aircraft and drones and items used for ground targeting.

Lammy said it was “not a determination of innocence or guilt” about whether Israel had broken international law, and was not an arms embargo.

Britain is among several of Israel’s longstanding allies whose governments are under growing pressure to halt weapons exports because of the toll of the 11-month-old war in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

British firms sell a relatively small number of weapons and components to Israel. Earlier this year the government said military exports to Israel amounted to 42 million pounds ($53 million) in 2022.

The U.K.’s center-left Labour government, elected in July, has faced pressure from some of its own members and lawmakers to apply more pressure on Israel to stop the violence. In the election the party lost several seats it had had been expected to win to pro-Palestinian independents after leader Keir Starmer initially refused to call for a cease-fire shortly after Israel retaliated for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 people.

In a departure from the stance of its Conservative predecessor, Starmer’s government said in July that the U.K. will not intervene in the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Starmer also restored funding for the United Nations’ Palestine relief agency UNRWA, which had been suspended by his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak’s government in January.

Lammy, who has visited Israel twice in the past two months as part of Western efforts to push for a cease-fire, said he was a “friend of Israel,” but called the violence in Gaza “horrifying.”

“Israel’s actions in Gaza continue to lead to immense loss of civilian life, widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, and immense suffering,” he said.
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Norway’s electric car sales set new world record 

Oslo — Electric car sales in Norway took a 94% share of the market in August — a new world record — statistics showed Monday, as sales in the rest of Europe stagnate.  

Boosted by the Tesla Model Y, which accounted for 18.8% of sales, and to a lesser extent Hyundai’s Kona and Nissan’s Leaf, electric vehicles made up 94.3% of new car registrations, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said.  

Norwegians bought 10,480 new EVs in August, bringing the total to 68,435 since the start of the year.  

Elsewhere in Europe high prices and insufficient infrastructure have hampered sales of EVs, whereas sales of hybrid models, which combine fossil fuel engines with electric batteries, have increased.  

The Scandinavian country, a major oil and gas producer, has set a target to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2025, 10 years ahead of the EU goal.  

The country offers generous tax benefits which make electric models competitively priced.  

“No country in the world comes close to Norway in the electric car race,” OFV director Oyvind Solberg Thorsen said in a statement.  

“If this trend continues, we will soon be on our way to achieving our goal of 100% zero-emission cars by 2025,” he said.  

By comparison, electric cars represented 12.1% of new car sales in the EU in July, behind petrol cars at 33.4%, full hybrids at 32% and diesel cars at 12.6%, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. 
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Poland holds state burial for more than 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II massacres

Warsaw, Poland — Decades after they were killed, Poland held a state burial on Monday of the remains of more than 700 victims of Nazi Germany’s World War II mass executions that were recently uncovered in the so-called Valley of Death in the country’s north.

The observances in the town of Chojnice began with a funeral Mass at the basilica, leading to an interment with military honors at a local cemetery of the victims of the Nazi crimes. The remains were contained in 188 small wooden coffins with ribbons in national white and red colors across them.

Relatives of the victims, an aide to President Andrzej Duda, local authorities and top officials of the state National Remembrance Institute, which carried out and documented the exhumations, took part in the events.

“We want to give back memory, we want to give back dignity to the victims of the crimes in Chojnice,” presiding Bishop Ryszard Kasyna said.

Duda sent a message saying that the deaths weren’t in vain and will always be held in the national memory, because the only reason they were killed by the Nazis was the fact that they were Polish.

The remains of Polish civilians, including 218 asylum patients, were exhumed in 2021-2024 from a number of separate mass graves on the outskirts of Chojnice.

Personal belongings and documents helped identify around 120 of the victims of an execution in early 1945. Among them were teachers, priests, police officers, forestry and postal workers, and landowners.

Historians have established that the Nazis, shortly after invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, executed some of the civilians, in a drive to subdue the nation. The remains of another 500 victims are from the January 1945 execution, when the Germans were fleeing the area. Bullets and shells from handguns used by German forces were found in the graves.

Experts will continue to comb the area for more mass graves of the so-called Pomerania Crime.

Poland lost 6 million citizens, or a sixth of its population, of which 3 million were Jewish, in the war. The country also suffered huge losses to its infrastructure, industry and agriculture.
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Russian aerial attack targets Kyiv

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Three Ukrainian teens begin their final year of high school holding onto hopes for the future

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Paralympic triathlon events postponed for a day because of poor water quality in Seine river

Paris — Paralympic triathlon competitions in Paris scheduled for Sunday were postponed for a day because of concerns about water quality in the Seine River after heavy rainfall, organizers said.

The 11 para triathlon events are now scheduled for Monday, the Paris 2024 organizing committee and World Triathlon said in a joint statement.

Rainstorms hit the French capital Friday and Saturday. Heavy rains cause wastewater and runoff to flow into the river, leading to a rise in bacteria levels including E. Coli.

“It rained a lot Friday and then it also rained Saturday. So the international federation and the organizing committee … out of a principle of precaution decided to delay all of the events for a day,” Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan told reporters.

While organizers awaited new test results, Rabadan said “the trend is actually positive to being able to have the competition tomorrow morning.”

Late Sunday night, organizers confirmed the races would go ahead Monday, saying in a statement that new water testing results and monitoring ”indicate that water quality continues to improve and will be within the World Triathlon thresholds on race day.”

This was the second scheduled change for the para triathlon events. They had initially been scheduled to take place over two days, Sunday and Monday, but were moved to Sunday because of rain forecasts.

The disruption is another hiccup for the city’s efforts to clean up the river for future public swimming, one of Paris’ most ambitious promises ahead of hosting the Olympics and Paralympics this summer. The men’s individual triathlon event during the Paris Olympics was delayed and several test swims were canceled because of high E. coli levels after rainstorms.

Lazreg Benel-Hadj, vice president of the French Swimming Federation, said that while some of the 53 athletes who took part in Olympic swimming competitions in the Seine fell ill afterward, none of those illnesses “was linked to the water in the Seine.”

Rabadan reiterated that athletic events in the river would continue past the Paralympics.

“Yes, for sure, we will continue,” he said. “We’ll continue to have competition in the river. So many reasons for that. First one because athletes are happy with that, and second one because the quality of water will permit it in the future. So we will keep going on that way. And that’s a massive legacy of the games.”
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Germany’s Scholz worried by far-right surge in regional elections

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Pope to embark on most challenging Asia trip, with China watching

Vatican City — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip (to Dubai in November) on doctors’ orders.

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. 

Here is a look at the trip and some of the issues that are likely to come up, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever-present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.

Indonesia

Francis loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Tunnel of Friendship” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, before both partake in an interfaith gathering and sign a joint declaration.

Francis has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority, and has often used his foreign travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God’s name.

Papua New Guinea

Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he delivered to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those who need God’s comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope on the eve of his own election.

Few places are as remote and poverty wracked as Vanimo, a northern coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who are working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.

East Timor

When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population who had suffered under Indonesia’s brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years.

“For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle,” John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass.

East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002, but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left as many as 200,000 people dead — nearly a quarter of the population.

Francis will literally walk in John Paul’s footsteps when he celebrates Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili, the same seaside esplanade as that 1989 liturgy, which some see as a key date in the Timorese independence movement.

Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.

There is no word on whether Francis will refer to Belo, who is still revered in East Timor but has been barred by the Vatican from ever returning.

Singapore

Francis has used several of his foreign trips to send messages to China, be they direct telegrams of greetings when he flies through Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when nearby.

Francis’ visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him yet another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

“It’s a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.

The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop nominations.

Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized Tianjin Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who as far as the Vatican is concerned had taken over as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law now was “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”

But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse which maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.
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