World

MOSCOW — Moscow said on Thursday it thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to “invade” its south-western border as Russia pounded Kyiv with missiles, killing three including a child.

The Ukrainian capital has faced nearly nightly air raids in May, and an unusual daytime attack on Monday that sent residents running for shelter.

As Kyiv deployed its air defences against a fresh volley of Russian missiles, Moscow said it thwarted an attempt by Ukrainian troops to “invade” its south-western Belgorod region.

“At about 3:00am [00:00 GMT], Ukrainian units comprising up to two motorised infantry companies, reinforced with tanks, attempted to invade,” the Russian defence ministry said.

Moscow used jets and artillery to repel the attacks and prevent Ukrainian troops from crossing over into Russia, it added.

The Belgorod region, which saw an unprecedented two-day armed incursion last week, has come under intensified fire in the past days.

Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 12 people had been wounded in the previous 24 hours in the district of Shebekino, whose residents poured into centres for displaced people in the regional capital, named Belgorod.

Displaced families 

Gladkov said that the city’s main such centre was filling up with hundreds of arrivals, so additional people arriving “are being sent in an organised manner to the remaining centres”.

“There are many families with children, including infants and disabled people. We will try to provide them with as much care as possible,” Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov said.

In the city of Belgorod itself, two people were wounded when a drone crashed near a petrol station, Demidov said.

“The main question now is to provide assistance to people, and support resettlement for those who need it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Putin was being constantly informed of the situation.

Peskov also denounced what he said was silence from the international community over the strikes.

Despite “every opportunity to see the footage describing strikes on residential buildings, social infrastructures... there is not a single word criticising Kyiv”, Peskov said.

Russia has seen unprecedented attacks on its soil, with a drone attack in Moscow last week.

After at least eight drones were used in that attack, the Russian foreign ministry accused the West of “pushing the Ukrainian leadership towards increasingly reckless acts”.

Ukraine, which has seen almost daily attacks on its capital, denied “direct involvement”.

Running for shelter 

Moscow’s latest attack on Kyiv began just before 3:00am local time when missiles were fired from Russia’s Bryansk region.

Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted and destroyed all 10 missiles launched by Russia.

Three people, including a nine-year-old child, were killed in Kyiv’s north-eastern Desnyanskyi district as a result of falling rocket fragments. Another 16 people were wounded.

The husband of one of the victims, Yaroslav Ryabchuk, said the shelter where they routinely hid from Russian strikes was closed on Thursday, and he ran to seek help.

“When I came back there was a lot of blood, children and women were lying there. There were screams and dust,” he told AFP.

“Nothing matters any more,” he said, adding his children have been “left without a mother”.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed the three people were killed when “a fragment of rocket” fell close to a clinic as they ran for cover after an air raid alert.

“A closed shelter in wartime is not just indifference, it is a crime,” said Interior Minister Igor Klymenko, adding that an investigation had been opened.

Moscow claims that it targets military installations in Ukraine only.

In the United States, the Pentagon announced a new $300 million arms package for Ukraine, including air defence systems and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition.

The United States said it did not support any attack inside Russia and was instead providing Kyiv with equipment and training to reclaim its territory.

These aid shipments will bring the total value of US security assistance to Ukraine to $37.6 billion since the start of Russia’s military operation in February 2022, the Defence Department said.

MOSCOW — Russia said it was evacuating hundreds of children from villages due to intensifying shelling in the border region of Belgorod, where the situation was deemed “alarming” by the Kremlin.

Russia has seen stepped-up attacks on its soil over a year into its Ukraine campaign, with an unprecedented incursion last week in the southern region of Belgorod and a drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday.

“We are starting today to evacuate children from the Shebekino and Graivoron districts,” Regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram, referring to the most affected border areas.

The governor said the first 300 children will be taken to Voronezh, a city around 250 kilometres further into Russia.

A correspondent for state-run agency RIA Novosti near Voronezh said buses had arrived with around 150 people on board.

Gladkov said the situation was “worsening” in the village of Shebekino, where he reported more shelling during the day, but without casualties.

He had posted photos of the aftermath of an early morning strike, with blackened burned cars lying in the grass near a playground, and a rocket that had apparently landed on a road.

“Nobody, thank God, died,” Gladkov said, adding that the strike injured four people.

On Tuesday one person was killed and two others were wounded in a Ukrainian strike on a centre for displaced people in the region.

The attacks have come as Kyiv says it is preparing for a major offensive against Moscow’s forces.

‘Alarming’ situation 

“The situation is quite alarming,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about shelling in the region.

“We have not heard a single word of condemnation from the West so far,” Peskov said, adding “measures are being taken”.

Several oil depots have been hit in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, authorities in the southern Krasnodar region said a drone hit the Ilsky oil refinery, in an area already hit twice since the beginning of May.

The Kremlin has accused Ukraine — and its Western backers — of being behind the increasing number of reported attacks.

On Tuesday, the foreign ministry said the West was “pushing the Ukrainian leadership towards increasingly reckless acts” after a drone attack on residential areas in Moscow.

The Russian defence ministry said that eight drones were used in the attack, adding that five of them were downed and three disabled.

At least three buildings were lightly damaged, including two high-rise residential buildings in Moscow’s affluent southwest.

Ukraine, which has seen almost nightly attacks on its capital, denied any “direct involvement”.

The United States said it did not support any attack on Russian territory and said it was “focused on providing Ukraine with the equipment and training they need to retake their own sovereign territory”.

Fatalism in Belgorod 

Last week saw the biggest armed incursion into Russia from Ukraine since the offensive began, with two days of fighting in the Belgorod region.

AFP journalists went to the regional capital city, which is also called Belgorod, over the weekend.

Residents confessed to a certain amount of worry, but a sense of fatalism prevailed.

“What can we do? We just shout ‘Oh! and ‘Ah!’. What will that change?” said retired teacher, 84-year-old Rimma Malieva.

Most people AFP spoke to said they trusted the authorities to fix the weaknesses laid bare by the latest raid.

Evgeny Sheikin, a 41-year-old builder, still said “it should not have happened”.

At least five people were killed and 19 wounded in a night bombardment in Ukraine’s Lugansk region, Russia-installed officials said on Wednesday.

Officials said the strike was carried out using one of the HIMARS multiple launchers delivered to Kyiv by the United States.

The Russian army also said it destroyed a Ukrainian navy warship, the Yuri Olefirenko, in Odesa, a claim AFP could not independently confirm.

Ukrainian naval forces spokesman Oleg Chalyk declined to comment on the claim specifically, but said he “did not recommend paying attention” to Russian sources.

OSLO — NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that he was "completely confident" that Sweden would join the military alliance, days after the re-election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has blocked the country's application.

"I am completely confident that Sweden will become a full member of NATO," Stoltenberg said in Oslo during an informal meeting of NATO's foreign ministers on Wednesday and Thursday.

Turkey and Hungary are the only countries of NATO's 31 member states that have yet to ratify Sweden's membership.

Finland formally became the Alliance's 31st member on April 4.

The two Nordic countries both dropped decades of military non-alignment and applied for membership together in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Erdogan, who was reelected Sunday for another five-year-term, has accused Sweden of being a haven for "terrorists", especially members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"We will be in close contact with Ankara and President Erdogan to help this process move forward as quickly as possible", Stoltenberg told reporters after Tuesday's discussion.

"They have already come an extremely long way since all the member countries, including Turkey, invited them to become full members at the summit last year", he added, referring to a Madrid summit in June.

Since the summit, Erdogan has also accused Sweden of not honouring the terms of a separate deal under which Turkey had agreed to approve the bids.

"I have been of the opinion since last autumn that Sweden should already have been admitted by ratification, and I am still of that opinion, but when 31 countries have to agree, it probably takes a little longer than I would like, so we are working on it", Stoltenberg said.

On Tuesday, Sweden once again drew Turkish ire, as Turkey deplored an “unacceptable” protest by Swedish activists aimed at Ankara.

The pro-Kurdish Rojava Committee of Sweden posted an anti-Erdogan video on social networks on Monday showing a PKK flag being projected onto the Swedish parliament — the latest of several similar stunts by the group which has repeatedly provoked Ankara.

Although Turkey’s foreign minister is not scheduled to be present in Oslo this week, the question of Sweden’s candidacy will probably be raised again at an upcoming summit in Vilnius on July 11 and 12.

LONDON — UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will meet US President Joe Biden in Washington next week for talks, Downing Street announced on Tuesday.

Biden invited Sunak to the White House when the British leader was in San Diego in March for the launch of a nuclear submarine deal with Australia.

Next week's meeting will build on talks the pair have had about closer cooperation on economic challenges such as supply chain security and net zero transition.

"It will also be an opportunity to discuss issues including sustaining our support for Ukraine," Sunak's official spokesman told reporters in London.

Sunak has carried on Boris Johnson’s staunch support for Kyiv since Russia’s invasion last year, announcing the supply of long-range missiles.

Biden followed up by supporting the provision of advanced F-16 fighter jets for Ukraine at the recent G-7 leaders’ summit in Japan.

Overshadowing the talks will be the unresolved issue of a free-trade deal between the two countries, which London sees as a key prize since leaving the EU.

Sunak’s spokesman said that was not on the agenda. The UK has already signed trade agreements with North Carolina, South Carolina and Indiana.

It is also seeking closer trading partnerships with US powerhouses California and Texas, and is in discussions with Utah and Oklahoma.

Before the G-7, Sunak last met Biden when the US leader visited Northern Ireland for the 25th anniversary of the 1998 peace deal.

Biden has criticised the UK for its stance on post-Brexit trading rules in Northern Ireland, warning it could undermine the hard-fought peace.

Sunak, who hosted Biden’s wife Jill at a Downing Street coronation tea-party, is expected to be at July’s NATO leaders summit with the US president.

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused Kyiv of seeking to "frighten" Russians after drones hit Moscow high-rises in the first such attack since the beginning of the Kremlin's assault on Ukraine.

As drones struck in and around Moscow, Russian drones targeted Kyiv for a third straight day while Ukraine gears up for a major offensive against Russian forces.

Officials said no one was seriously injured in Moscow and there was only "minor" damage to residential buildings, but some ordinary people said they never thought the Russian capital could be hit in this way.

"I somehow thought that all of this was somewhere far away, that this would not affect us, and suddenly this has become very close," pensioner Tatyana Kalinina told AFP in southwest Moscow near one of the damaged residential buildings.

Putin said that Moscow's air defence had worked satisfactorily, referring to the attacks as Kyiv's "response" to a Russian strike on Ukraine's army intelligence headquarters.

"The Kyiv regime chose a different path to frighten Russians," Putin said.

The Russian defence ministry said that eight drones were used in the attack, adding that five of them were downed and three disabled.

The foreign ministry blamed the West, saying its "support for the Kyiv regime is pushing the Ukrainian leadership towards increasingly reckless acts, including terrorism."

'Reckless acts' 

The United States said it did not support attacks inside Russia.

"We have been focused on providing Ukraine with the equipment and training they need to retake their own sovereign territory," a State Department spokesperson said.

Two drones crashed into high-rise residential buildings in Moscow's affluent southwest, while a third damaged a residential building in a suburb.

The other drones fell outside Moscow. Some of the debris was found around 15 kilometres from Putin's Novo-Ogaryovo residence.

One video shared on social media showed an explosion followed by a column of smoke rising into the sky.

This month two drones were intercepted over the Kremlin, but Tuesday’s attacks were the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles hit residential areas of Moscow, hundreds of kilometres from the front lines in Ukraine.

The raids are likely to be seen as a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has gone to great lengths to say the protracted conflict in Ukraine does not pose a threat to Russians.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kyiv had “no direct relation” to the attacks.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people had sought medical assistance but “no one has suffered serious injuries”.

The residents of buildings damaged in the strikes were briefly evacuated.

On Profsoyuznaya Street, a residential building with a blown-out window was cordoned off by police but the atmosphere was calm, with children playing outside and people walking their dogs, an AFP correspondent said.

Some of the residents were moved to a nearby school, where they drank tea and watched a Soviet-era movie.

Valentin Yemelyanov, a 50-year-old IT worker, who lives on the same street but closer towards the centre of Moscow, said there was “no fear or panic”.

“The damage is minimal,” he told AFP. He said he was “not surprised” by the drone attack, given the escalation of the conflict. “It is obvious that things are going this way.”

Muscovites told Russian journalists that a drone had also crashed into an apartment on the 14th floor of a high-rise on Leninsky Prospekt but did not explode.

In the Moscow suburbs, Maxim, a 40-year-old customs officer, said loud noises woke him and his wife at 4:00am (01:00 GMT). He said he had a number of security-related questions for the authorities including “why Russia’s borders are still open”.

Political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said it was astonishing to see that Russian authorities were “downplaying the significance of drone attacks on Russian cities”.

Since the start of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, drone attacks have hit targets outside Moscow, including military installations located far from the front.

Ukraine said it had downed 29 out of 31 drones, mainly over Kyiv and the Kyiv region in the latest Russian barrage — the third on the Ukrainian capital in 24 hours.

On Monday, Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Kyiv, sending panicked residents running for shelter in an unusual daytime attack following overnight strikes.

Predictably, many in Ukraine gloated over the drone attacks in Moscow.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Muscovites should feel “what it means to live in the conditions that Kyiv has lived in for the past one and a half years”.

WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic leaders scrambled on Monday to secure congressional support for a bill aimed at avoiding a catastrophic US debt default — with just one week left before the government starts running out of money.

The bill, finalised on Sunday by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after weeks of frantic negotiations, faces opposition from the progressive and hard-right wings of their respective parties.

Ultra-conservative Republicans feel McCarthy should have secured far deeper spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and allowing the government to keep borrowing money.

The left wing of the Democratic Party is equally unhappy that Biden agreed to any spending limits at all.

Delay tactics 

Biden and McCarthy both say they are confident the bill will pass a House vote scheduled for Wednesday and then move swiftly to the Senate, but organised dissent could force some nerve-shredding delays.

The key deadline is June 5 — when, according to Treasury estimates, the government will no longer have the funds required to pay all its debts and bills.

If that scenario morphs into a full-fledged default, the repercussions would be disastrous for the US and wider global economy.

The basic framework of the deal lifts the federal debt ceiling, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years _ enough to get past the next presidential election in 2024.

The timing was critical for Biden, who does not want another debt ceiling showdown hanging over his reelection campaign.

In return, the Republicans secured some limits on federal spending over the same period.

As they finalised the text of the bill on Sunday, Biden and McCarthy both went into hard-sell mode to shore up support in their parties.

Win, win 

Both were backed by vocal spin operations insisting that the agreement clearly represented a victory for their side.

"You want to try to make it look like I made some compromise on the debt ceiling _ I didn't," Biden told reporters.

McCarthy, for his part, touted the agreement as a "historic series of wins".

In reality, the agreement represents a mutual climb down of sorts.

Biden had initially refused to negotiate over spending issues as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, accusing the Republicans of taking the economy hostage.

And the big cuts that Republicans wanted are not there, although non-defense spending will remain effectively flat next year, and only rise nominally in 2025.

The release of the final text on Sunday gives House members the requisite 72-hours to scrutinies the bill in detail before the vote on Wednesday.

McCarthy's wafer-thin majority in the House will require significant Democratic backing to balance out Republican dissent.

Democrats hold the majority in the Senate, but individual senators could try and hold up the bill with amendment votes that would bring the process perilously close to the June 5 deadline.

A number of hard-right House Republicans have already vowed to vote against the bill, with one tweeting a vomit emoji in response to the deal and another calling it "an insult to the American people".

At the same time, a member of the House Progressive Caucus, Ro Khanna, said a large number of Democrats were still "in flux as to where they're going to be on this".

One element likely to rile Democratic environmental hawks was the surprise inclusion in the bill of a measure to accelerate completion of an oil pipeline project that has been stalled by green concerns.

Both the House and Senate are expected to return on Tuesday, after a long holiday weekend, and the White House and Republican leadership have already held a series of conference briefing calls with their members from both chambers to push the final deal.