Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were each courting major allies yesterday, seeking to prop up their efforts in a war whose fortunes have tilted toward Ukraine in the past few days.
In Uzbekistan’s ancient city of Samarkand, Putin was hoping to break through his international isolation and further cement his ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a geopolitical alliance increasingly seen as potent counterweight to the Western powers.
Putin and Xi were due to discuss Ukraine, the Russian president’s foreign affairs adviser said.
Photo: AFP
In Kyiv, Zelenskiy was shrugging off a traffic collision the previous night that left him with no major injuries, officials said.
On the agenda was a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who once more showed full commitment to Ukraine’s cause.
Von der Leyen said she would address “how to continue getting our economies and people closer while Ukraine progresses towards accession” to the bloc, which is likely still years away in even the best of circumstances.
Photo: EPA
While Russian forces in some areas are increasingly being pushed back toward the border, Russia is still striking from behind the front line. It fired missiles at the dam of a reservoir close to Zelenskiy’s birthplace, Kryvyi Rih, forcing local authorities into emergency works to make sure there was no threat to the population.
Officials blew up two dams to help the river flow, helping levels subside, Kryvyi Rih military administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said yesterday
The missile strikes so close to his roots had no military value, Zelenskiy said.
“Hitting hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians is another reason why Russia will lose,” he said in his nightly address on Wednesday.
Zelenskiy said that almost 400 settlements had been retaken in less than a week of fighting.
“It was an unprecedented movement of our warriors. Ukrainians once again managed to do what many considered impossible,” he said.
Zelenskiy is expected to ask for more Western military material, which has been essential in driving the counteroffensive, and request even harsher sanctions against Moscow as the war drags on in its seventh month.
Despite renewed Ukrainian vigor on the battlefield and the first rumblings of criticism at home, Putin is staying steadfast with his determination to fully subdue Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
“Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that the realization has grown over there [in Russia] by now that this was a mistake to start this war,” Scholz said after a telephone call with Putin earlier this week. “There has been no indication that new attitudes are emerging there now.”
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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