Ukraine's president to ask G7 leaders for more arms after deadly Russian strikes
CBC
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will ask the leaders of the G7 to urgently supply Ukraine with air defence weapons on Tuesday, after Russia rained down cruise missiles on cities across the country.
New missile strikes killed at least one person in the southeastern town of Zaporizhzhia and left part of the western city of Lviv without power, officials said, after Ukraine woke up to the wailing of air raid sirens for a second day.
Other parts of the country remained blacked out after the cruise missile attacks on Monday, which officials said killed 19 people in the biggest air raids since the start of the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, under domestic pressure to ramp up the conflict as his forces have lost ground since the start of September, said he ordered the strikes as revenge for an explosion that damaged Russia's bridge to annexed Crimea.
Kyiv and its allies condemned Monday's attacks, which mainly hit civil infrastructure such as power stations. Missiles also landed in parks, tourist sites and busy rush-hour streets.
The United Nations human rights office says Russian missile strikes across Ukraine on Monday were "particularly shocking" and could amount to war crimes.
"Damage to key power stations and lines ahead of the upcoming winter raises further concerns for the protection of civilians and in particular the impact on vulnerable populations," spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
"We have to stress that intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects — that is, objects which are not military objectives — amount to a war crime," she added.
U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders will convene virtually later on Tuesday to discuss what more they can do to support Ukraine and to listen to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has called air defence systems his "No. 1 priority," something Biden has already promised to provide.
G7 leaders may also warn Belarus, a close Russian ally, against closer involvement in the war after Minsk said on Monday it was deploying its soldiers with Russian forces near Ukraine in response to what it said was a clear threat to Belarus from Kyiv and its backers in the West.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told France Inter radio on Tuesday that G7 heads of state would probably warn Belarus, which is already used by Russia as a logistics base and as a platform from which to fire missiles, not to get more involved.
"Russia has crossed another line with a tactic that doesn't involve fighting on the battlefield but carrying out indiscriminate bombings and since yesterday deliberately hitting civilian targets on all Ukrainian territory," said Colonna.
"That is a violation of the rules of war and international law," she went on, saying that France had agreed to ramp up weapons supplies to Kyiv after Monday's attack.
Announcement from Canada's defence minister on Tuesday in Europe:
The U.S. attack on Venezuela has shifted the ground for guerrilla groups operating across the country's borderlands with Colombia, raising fears of possible betrayal by Venezuelan regime officials, while opening the door to a wider conflict should U.S. boots ever hit the ground, local security experts say.
Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark on Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
Russia didn’t just use a hypersonic missile to target a site in western Ukraine near the border with Poland, in the European Union, but high ranking officials then went on to boast about the power of the nuclear-capable weapon, in what some saw as a clear warning to the West.
The official White House narrative of how a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in her vehicle in Minneapolis is bumping hard up against what can be seen in videos of the incident.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials claimed was an act of self-defence but that the city's mayor described as "reckless" and unnecessary.
When Marco Rubio took the lectern at Mar-a-Lago shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the country had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it was the culmination of a decade of effort from the secretary of state and a clear sign that he had emerged as a leading voice within the Trump administration.
The catchphrase going into Tuesday's coalition of the willing meeting on Ukraine in Paris appears to be: expect the unexpected.
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty on terrorism and drug-trafficking charges during his first appearance in a New York court on Monday.
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland on Sunday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland, after he reiterated his wish to do so in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.
Venezuela's toppled leader, Nicolás Maduro, was in a New York detention centre on Sunday awaiting drug charges after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the United States would take control of the oil-producing nation.
The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.
The United Arab Emirates said early Saturday it had withdrawn all its troops from Yemen after escalating tensions in the war-torn country that pitted the UAE against fellow Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia.
Investigators on Friday set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies of a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 40 people at a New Year's Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.