Eight years after pro-democracy protesters were killed in Kyiv, Ukraine faces greater Russian threat
CBSN
Kyiv – Ukrainians on Sunday remembered and honored the lives of dozens of people who were gunned down by the government during the country's 2014 popular uprising — called the Maidan revolution — that forced Russian-backed then-President Viktor Yanukovych out of power eight years ago. But on a day that many spent laying flowers at the memorials of those who died fighting against Russian influence over Ukraine, a new threat of a Russian invasion loomed large.
"It's a big stress that we are facing, but we have been at war with Russia for the last eight years," 23-year-old Iuliia, who gathered with other demonstrators at Maidan Square, told CBS News. "For me, it was a good sacrifice and a sign that people were willing to fight for their freedom, their country, and their right to live the way they want… it was really meaningful back then and it's still meaningful today," she said.
"I think that the Ukrainian people has made its decision, and I don't think that Russia is in a position to overturn it," 34-year-old Artem, who participated in the Maidan protests, told CBS News. He was wrapped in a Ukrainian flag.
Collville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France — The word "hero" is overused. But if not for the courage of the few remaining D-Day survivors and their friends who fell as they launched the fight to oust Adolf Hitler's Nazi German forces from France 80 years ago, there would have been no celebrations this week in Normandy.
France's domestic intelligence agency has detained a 26-year-old Russian-Ukrainian man on suspicion of planning a violent act after he injured himself in an explosion, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The news came hours before world leaders gathered in the nation to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
A British-Mexican man who says he was targeted for being gay and arrested on false drug charges in Qatar has been given a suspended six-month jail sentence, a fine amounting to about $2,700, and a deportation order by a court in the Arab nation, which is a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East, according to his family and Mexican officials.
An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The hospital treating victims said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike, according to Agence France-Presse. But a U.N. official tells the Reuters news agency the death toll is between 35 and 45, though it still can't confirm any numbers.
Jerusalem — Thousands of Israeli nationalists marched Wednesday through east Jerusalem as authorities deployed police with tensions sky-high nearly eight months into the Gaza war. That war appeared to be intensifying in Gaza and the far-right nationalists staged their annual march – long deemed a provocation by Palestinians – in Jerusalem.
The world has now marked one full year of back-to-back monthly heat records, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. It said last month was the hottest May in recorded history — the 12th consecutive month in which the monthly high temperature record was broken.