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KYIV — Kyiv announced on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had retaken two villages in the eastern region of Donetsk, the first reported gains of their new offensive.

After months of building expectations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that a counteroffensive against Russian forces was under way, but refused to provide any details.

"Neskuchne of the Donetsk region is under the Ukrainian flag again," said the state border guard service, releasing a video of Ukrainian troops announcing the takeover.

They also shouted Kyiv's traditional battle cries such as "Glory to Ukraine!" and a slogan deriding Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier in the day, Ukraine's ground forces said that soldiers of the 68th separate ranger brigade had liberated the nearby village of Blagodatne.

The ground forces released a video showing soldiers hoisting a Ukrainian flag over a destroyed building.

Military spokesman Valeriy Shershen said in televised remarks that the retaken village was located on the border of the eastern region of Donetsk and the southern region of Zaporizhzhia where Moscow has reported heavy Ukrainian assaults over the past week.

He said Ukraine's forces captured several Russian and pro-Russian troops.

Big Ukrainian military successes in the Zaporizhzhia region could potentially enable its forces to break through the land bridge that connects Russia with the Crimean Peninsula it annexed from Ukraine. This would be a major reversal for Moscow.

Ukraine has largely been silent on the offensive, but Putin on Friday said Kyiv's fightback had already begun but was already failing.

Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said on Saturday that Kyiv's forces had conducted counteroffensive operations in at least four front-line areas.

'Worst since Chernobyl' 

Kyiv reported the first gains of the long-awaited offensive as Ukrainian officials said seven people died and 35 people were still missing due to a devastating flood prosecutors called the "worst environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl."

The Russian-controlled Kakhovka Dam along the front line in the Kherson region was destroyed on Tuesday, forcing thousands to flee and sparking fears of humanitarian and environmental disasters.

Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the dam on the Dnipro River, while Moscow says Kyiv fired upon the structure.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said that 77 towns and villages had been flooded in the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv.

Klymenko said that in the Kherson region, 35 people were missing, including seven children.

As a result of the flood, five people died in the region of Kherson and two people in the region of Mykolaiv, he said.

More than 3,700 people have been evacuated from their homes in the two regions, the minister added.

On Sunday, three people were killed and another ten injured as Russia shelled a rescue boat evacuating civilians from Russian-controlled territory, regional authorities said.

In the city of Kherson, the largest population centre near the dam, the water began to subside and locals began to return to their homes to assess the damage, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Ukrainian rescuers in orange boats continued their efforts to evacuate people from the city’s most affected areas and nearby islands.

An employee at Kherson’s meteorological agency, Lora Musiyan, said the level of water dropped by 1.7 metres from the peak measurements recorded this week.

Oleksiy Gesin visited his grocery store in central Kherson for the first time in six days. Armed with a shovel and wearing rubber boots and a jacket, he cleared up debris in the pouring rain. He said he sustained “significant” losses.

“The water in the store was up to my chest,” he told AFP, adding that food will have to be thrown away.

‘Very complicated’ 

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin and representatives of the International Criminal Court visited the region of Kherson, his office said.

“This is the worst environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl so we are investigating not only a war crime but also an ecocide,” Kostin was quoted as saying in a statement.

“The situation is very complicated,” he added.

He noted that a number of “dangerous” facilities including at least three cemeteries, oil storage terminals and garbage dumps have been flooded.

A total of 450 tonnes of turbine oil have spilled into the waters of the Dnipro and the Black Sea, he said.

More than 170 prosecutors have been investigating the breach of the dam.

“Our colleagues from the International Criminal Court are also with us,” he said.

FRANKFURT, Germany — More than a third of men in Germany find violence against women "acceptable", according to survey results that campaigners described as "shocking" on Sunday.

A total of 33 per cent of men aged 18-35 said they found it "acceptable" if "their hand slipped" occasionally during an argument with their female partner, according to the survey set to be published by the Funke newspaper group on Monday.

Thirty-four percent of respondents admitted that they had been violent towards women in the past.

The results are "shocking", said Karsten Kassner from the Federal Forum Men, an umbrella group that advocates for gender equality.

"It's problematic that a third of the surveyed men trivialise physical violence against women. This urgently needs to change," he told the Funke newspapers.

The nationwide survey, which questioned 1,000 men and 1,000 women aged 18-35, was commissioned by children's aid organisation Plan International Germany and carried out online from March 9-21.

It further found that 52 per cent of men said they believed their role was to be the main provider in a relationship, and that that their partner should mostly run the household.

Just under half of respondents (48 per cent) also expressed a dislike for seeing public displays of homosexuality, saying they felt "disturbed" by it.

“Traditional gender roles are still deeply ingrained in people’s minds,” Alexandra Tschacher, a spokeswoman for Plan International Germany, told the Funke newspaper group.

More than 115,000 women were victims of partner violence in 2021, according to federal police data — or 13 women each hour.

A total of 369 women were killed by their current or former partner in 2021.

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann last year said he would push for legal changes to punish violence against women more severely, saying such acts should not be downplayed as “private tragedies”.

“Gender-based violence must be named as such and punished with the necessary severity,” he said at the time.

GLASGOW — Former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon was on Sunday arrested as part of an investigation into the finances of the political party she led for over eight years, police said.

Her detention marks the third arrest in the probe that has sent shockwaves through Scotland’s politics, long dominated by the Scottish National Party (SNP).

“A 52-year-old woman has today... been arrested as a suspect in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party,” Police Scotland said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Sturgeon said the former SNP leader voluntarily attended an interview with police.

She was in custody and was being questioned by detectives as part of “Operation Branchform”, which was launched in 2021, added police.

The finance probe scandal has plunged the SNP into deep crisis and damaged its dream for an independent Scotland.

Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray reacted to the latest news by saying: “For too long, a culture of secrecy and cover-up has been allowed to fester at the heart of the SNP.”

Meanwhile, Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “It’s fair to say that today’s events will have huge ramifications both for the SNP and the future of Scottish politics.”

Questions over funding 

Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, was arrested in April as part of the probe.

At the time, police raided the Glasgow home shared by the couple, erecting a crime-scene tent in the front garden, and SNP headquarters in Edinburgh.

Murrell has long faced questions over the alleged diversion of £600,000 ($750,000) in SNP donations that were meant to support its drive for Scottish independence.

He also failed to declare a personal loan to the party of more than £100,000.

Party treasurer Colin Beattie was also arrested in April. 

Sturgeon made her final appearance as First Minister in the Scottish Parliament in March.

After more than eight years at the helm, Sturgeon said in February that she lacked the “energy” to carry on and was stepping down.

But the police investigation into Murrell, whom she married in 2010, had been a cloud over her head.

Murrell resigned from his SNP leadership post in March after the party falsely denied to media that it had lost 30,000 members.

The disclosure came as the SNP held a bitter election to replace Sturgeon as party leader and Scotland’s first minister, eventually won by Humza Yousaf.

Yousaf denied that Sturgeon had quit knowing the police investigation was about to come perilously close to home.

“Nicola’s legacy stands on its own,” he said. 

Following Murrell’s arrest, Yousaf said “clearly it’s not great, and I think the sooner we can get to a conclusion in this police investigation, the better.

“I’ve never been an office bearer in the party, I’ve not had a role in the party finances,” he added.

Yousaf also said Beattie’s arrest was “clearly a very serious matter indeed” but added that he had not been suspended from the party as “people are innocent until proven guilty”.

Recent surveys show only around 45 per cent of Scots back their nation leaving the UK — the same minority recorded in a 2014 referendum, which London insists settled the matter for a generation.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that counteroffensive action was underway as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Kyiv and accused Russia over flooding from the breached Kakhovka dam.

"Counteroffensive and defensive actions are taking place in Ukraine: At which stage I will not talk in detail," Zelensky said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with Trudeau.

Zelensky commented after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Kyiv's long-expected counteroffensive was already failing.

Russia has reported thwarting Ukrainian attacks in the east and south that some observers have interpreted as the start of a large-scale counteroffensive.

"It's interesting what Putin said about our counteroffensive. It is important that Russia always feels this: that they do not have long left, in my opinion," Zelensky said.

He added that he was in daily touch with military commanders including armed forces chief Valery Zaluzhny and "everyone is positive now — tell that to Putin!"

Trudeau, 51, and Zelensky, 45, hugged each other and used each other's first names as the Canadian leader made his second unannounced visit to Kyiv since full-scale war broke out in February last year. 

Canada, which hosts a large Ukrainian diaspora, has been one of Kyiv's key allies since the Russian invasion.

It has provided Ukraine with significant military aid, trained more than 36,000 soldiers and adopted sanctions against Moscow.

'Direct consequence' 

Trudeau denounced Russia's role in the destruction of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine on Tuesday.

The flooding from the breached dam has forced thousands to flee their homes and sparked fears of humanitarian and environmental disasters.

Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the dam, while Moscow says Kyiv fired on it.

Pledging 10 million Canadian dollars (US $7.5 million) in new funding for flood relief, Trudeau said the dam's destruction was the "direct consequence" of Russia's invasion.

“There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that the destruction of the dam was a direct consequence of Russia’s decision to invade a peaceful neighbour,” Trudeau said.

He added he was certain that Moscow would be held accountable for its actions in Ukraine.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine has devastated infrastructure, has destroyed families and taken lives and is causing economic, food, energy shortages around the world. Russia is responsible and will be held to account.”

Pilot training  

The Canadian leader said he would provide 500 million Canadian dollars in new funding for military assistance to Ukraine.

He also pledged Canada would be part of the multinational efforts to train Ukraine’s fighter pilots.

Ottawa will also provide 10,000 ammunition rounds and 288 AIM-7 missiles to be repurposed in the United States and used in air defence systems.

Earlier in the day Trudeau placed flowers by a wall of remembrance displaying the faces of soldiers killed in combat while a military orchestra played.

He also visited an open-air exhibition featuring destroyed Russian military vehicles.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Oleksandr Polishchuk handed Trudeau a box that he said held shrapnel from a rocket that fell on the Black Sea port city of Odesa.

He said the gift was intended to remind Trudeau of Ukraine’s suffering from Russian strikes.

Three people were killed early Saturday in a fire sparked by debris from shot-down Russian drones in the Odesa region.

A group of Ukrainian soldiers who had received training in Canada spoke with Trudeau. 

One of them, Colonel Petro Ostapchuk, told reporters the troops received specialised training for snipers, engineers and young commanders. 

“It’s a great privilege to meet the prime minister,” he said.

PARIS — Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use in the European Union fell by 2.8 per cent last year, thanks to reduced use of natural gas following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Eurostat reported on Friday.

The European Union’s statistical agency said in a report that CO2 emissions from the 27 EU nations was almost 2.4 billion tonnes last year.

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use are a major contributor to global warming and account for around 75 per cent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. 

While natural gas use was down, by around 13 per cent, emissions from coal and oil were up slightly “reflecting, among other things, the efforts invested by EU countries to achieve the voluntary gas demand reduction target introduced in August 2022”, as the conflict in Ukraine hit supplies. 

According to Eurostat, the fall in energy-related emissions also varied greatly from country to country. 

The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium saw the biggest falls, with The Netherlands leading the way with a 12.8 per cent reduction.

At the other end of the scale, Bulgaria registered the biggest increase in CO2 emissions of 12 per cent, followed by Portugal and Malta.

The European Union has ambitious plans to become a “climate neutral” economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

THE HAGUE — Russia accused Ukraine at the UN's top court on Thursday of destroying a key dam with artillery strikes, and alleged that Kyiv was led by neo-Nazis — a claim Moscow has used to try to justify its invasion.

Moscow's comments to judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) came as it denied wider allegations by Ukraine that Russia had breached terrorism laws by backing separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

"Ukraine has declared that Russia blew up the large dam at Nova Kakhovka. In fact, it's Ukraine that did it," Russian diplomat Alexander Shulgin told the court in The Hague.

"The Kyiv regime not only launched massive artillery attacks against the dam on the night of June 6, but it also deliberately raised the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir to a critical level" by opening sluice gates at a hydroelectric plant beforehand, he said.

Shulgin, the Russian ambassador to The Netherlands, provided no evidence to the court to support his claims.

Kyiv has accused Russia of blowing up the dam in Russian-held southern Ukraine, causing huge floods.

Ukraine opened its formal arguments at the ICJ on Tuesday in a case that it first filed in 2017. 

It branded Russia a "terrorist state" and said its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine was the precursor for Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Repeating allegations made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to justify last year's invasion, Shulgin said Kyiv had "no moral authority" and was itself oppressing people in eastern Ukraine.

"This regime rose to power on the back of a violent coup in 2014 on the shoulders of nationalists who were the direct descendents of the Nazi collaborators in World War II," Shulgin said.

The Russian envoy said Ukraine's current government had "neo-Nazis" in key posts including in the armed forces, accusing them of "brutal repression" in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.

Putin said one of the goals of his "special military operation" was the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine, and supporters of the invasion have frequently compared Ukraine's treatment of Russian speakers in the country to the actions of Nazi Germany.

The claims have been contested by the Ukrainian government and the country's Jewish community. 

A verdict by the ICJ, which was created after World War II to deal with disputes between UN member states, is not expected for months or even years.

PARIS — France's government will face a no-confidence vote next week after a latest attempt to repeal an unpopular increase in the retirement age prompted left-wing opponents to announce the motion on Thursday.

The pensions overhaul, a flagship measure of President Emmanuel Macron's second and final term, lifted the retirement age to 64 from 62, sparking the country's biggest protests in a generation.

The government has already survived two no-confidence votes over the pensions overhaul, even though Macron's centrist party lost its overall majority in the lower-house national assembly shortly after his reelection last year.

Facing the reform's potential defeat in the assembly, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had invoked in March a controversial constitutional mechanism that passed the law without a vote.

Parliament's speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Wednesday said she would block on constitutional grounds a move by a small independent faction aimed at repealing the reform with new legislation, prompting the latest attempt to oust the government.

Mathilde Panot, a leading figure in the hard-left France Unbowed Party, told reporters that the leftist NUPES alliance submitted a no-confidence vote due to be examined early next week after the “anti-democratic” move.

The LIOT group that tabled the latest challenge to the pensions overhaul withdrew its text on Thursday, after the key article on repealing the retirement age rise was removed.

Panot said “discussions were still ongoing” with LIOT, which had not yet decided whether it would back the initiative.

The no-confidence motion appears to have scant chance of success because the conservative Republicans party is unlikely to back it.

The far-right National Rally Party is also considering tabling a no-confidence motion.

“When a government allows itself to attack the workings of democracy to this extent, it deserves censure,” said its leader Marine Le Pen.

Panot said the NUPES coalition would “never abandon the fight” against the higher retirement age and would continue working towards its common goal of lowering the age to 60.

Thursday’s stormy parliamentary debate on the pension reform was interrupted when news broke of a mass stabbing attack in the Alpine town of Annecy, with MPs holding a minute’s silence in honour of the victims.