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Ukraine war: UK Home Office is in crisis mode over visas - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The department is trying to convince an increasingly sceptical nation it has control of the situation. | More than two million people have now fled Ukraine because of the Russian invasion
Home secretaries must know how to deal with flak. It goes with the job.
But when accusations of foot-dragging, complacency, heartlessness and lies come from your own backbenches, you know you have got a serious problem.
One Tory MP has called for Priti Patel to resign over her handling of the Ukrainian refugee emergency.
The Home Office is in crisis mode, trying to convince an increasingly sceptical nation that the department has got a grip of the situation.
"We are doing our best," one insider tells me, before adding: "But we haven't got everything right."
The nightly images of desperate families fleeing a war but turned away by UK government officials confirm the latter point.
This is becoming deeply damaging for the Home Office and the prime minister. Priti Patel is under intense pressure, with suggestions that Downing Street is losing confidence.
The surprise appointment of a minister for refugees operating across two government departments suggests the Home Office is not trusted to sort matters out alone.
Tellingly, the sponsorship scheme launched to bring some Ukrainians to Britain is being run by Michael Gove's communities department.
Home Office staff were overstretched before the latest humanitarian disaster started to unfold - trying to deal with thousands of Afghans coming to Britain to escape the Taliban, migrants arriving by the boatload having crossed the channel, tens of thousands of Hongkongers fleeing the Chinese clampdown, and increasing numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children with nowhere to stay.
For a department trying to convince sceptical voters its attitude to immigration has changed from the days of the "hostile environment" and the Windrush scandal, accusations of inhumanity over the plight of Ukrainian refugees are damaging.
"We are working 24/7 to try to respond in really, really challenging circumstances," an official tells me.
"Some of the criticism has been soul-destroying, but we are not going to give up."
She shows me a box of Pringles. "This is my breakfast," she says, as evidence of how hard everyone is working.
But it was the sight of hapless officials handing out crisps and Kit Kats to desperate refugees in Calais that will stick in the public's mind, a sense that the home secretary was not taking the plight of those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine seriously.
The Home Office says it has been preparing for a possible humanitarian crisis in Ukraine since January, designing detailed policies for how to respond. But officials accept that their plans had to be adapted almost as soon as the first refugees asked for sanctuary in Britain.
"You can create a scheme on paper, and the first family group that applies does not meet the criteria," an insider tells me. "We set up a scheme that we thought was very generous and then a case came onto the helpline and it wasn't suitable."
Critics see a department that is on the back foot, constantly forced into embarrassing U-turns, accused of both inhumanity and incompetence. But inside the department's headquarters in Westminster, they insist they are listening to the feedback and adjusting their policies in response.
Home Secretary Priti Patel visited the Ukrainian embassy in London at the weekend
One senior official gives me an example: "In issuing a visa to a child, the original process required both parents to consent. But we realised that conscription in Ukraine meant fathers were away fighting and could not give consent. So we went to the home secretary and she agreed to change the rules."
The question, though, is why did they not realise the problems earlier? Why was eligibility under the Ukrainian Family Scheme not initially applied to aunts and uncles, cousins and step-children? Why did the rule changes have to be forced out of the Home Office when the emergency reached the UK border?
The answer is that the Home Office's response to desperate people fleeing a war is shaped by a determination to maintain the integrity of the UK border. This is a government and a home secretary elected to get Brexit done, and for many of those who campaigned to leave the EU, taking back control of our borders was the central goal.
That is why Priti Patel's initial response was to say that people escaping the conflict should claim asylum in the first safe country they reached. "It's important to note that the situation in Ukraine is very different from Afghanistan," I was advised by the Home Office, as the Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border.
In those first days of the war, anyone displaced who wished to come to the UK had to satisfy the rules of the government's post-Brexit immigration system. The points-based approach meant refugees would have to demonstrate they earned enough money or had skills that benefited the United Kingdom.
It was a serious miscalculation. As the scale of the humanitarian crisis became clear, the Home Office was forced to move away from its hard-line policy. Time and again the Home Office has found itself having to adjust its policies as the pressure for a more compassionate response has increased.
The central challenge stems from the insistence that any refugee coming to the UK must apply for a visa, complete biometric tests and satisfy ever-changing rules on eligibility.
The prime minister has defended the checks.
"Some sort of control is an important feature of the way we do things," Boris Johnson said. "Uncontrolled immigration is not the way forward".
The government is trying to respond to a humanitarian disaster while still following the Brexit playbook. There are understandable concerns about opening Britain's doors to large numbers of refugees, that undesirable individuals may use the crisis to sneak into the country, posing a threat to national security.
Controlling our borders remains central to the approach, a challenge currently most acute in Calais, where hundreds of Ukrainians are pleading to be let into Britain.
There is no visa application centre in Calais, so refugees are advised to travel to Paris or Brussels to sort out their paperwork before boarding a ferry or driving through the tunnel. The department claims it wants to ensure there is not a "choke point" in the city which might lead to vulnerable refugees being preyed upon by people-trafficking gangs.
Migrants camped around Calais continue to cross the channel in small boats, 2,214 already this year, a phenomenon that infuriates Brexit-supporting MPs who demand the home secretary do more to police the UK's border.
There have been calls from across the House of Commons for the government to waive the visa requirements as countries across the EU have done. Priti Patel, though, remains opposed to such a move, preferring to tweak the existing immigration rules rather than set up a new humanitarian pathway for those displaced by the war in Ukraine.
"We need to be really careful managing this process, organising housing, education, access to public services, registering for benefits," an official explains. "We don't want services or resources not to be available."
The experience of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, welcoming people who had fled the Taliban after the British military withdrawal, may help explain the reluctance to open the UK borders this time.
Finding housing for the thousands who have already arrived has proved hugely problematic, with the department currently paying more than £1m a day to keep Afghans in requisitioned hotels.
Chastened by that experience, perhaps, the home secretary supported the idea of a Ukrainian sponsorship scheme - in which private individuals or companies can apply to bring a refugee into the UK, with the sponsor rather than the state taking responsibility for accommodation and support.
Sponsorship has been used before, notably to help Syrian refugees. But it is not a quick or straightforward response to a humanitarian emergency. The details are still being worked out. It remains unclear who will be eligible. It will be some time before any Ukrainian will arrive by that route.
The 21st Century Home Office must look tough and compassionate in equal measure. It must navigate the complex politics of immigration and balance the demands for freedom and control.
"We are genuinely less worried about the reputational side of this than getting the right messages across," an insider claims.
But the concern is that the Home Office is destined always to be playing catch-up as the human tragedy of the Ukrainian refugee emergency unfolds. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60682454 |
Battle for Mykolaiv: 'We are winning this fight, but not this war' - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | In the southern city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian forces are battling to stop the Russian advance. | Russia has been shelling the city
The boom of artillery, muffled by heavy snowfall, echoes across the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, triggering a series of air raid sirens.
In the faded grandeur of a long-abandoned club for navy officers, 29-year-old Anastasia Aleksieieva is gathering food supplies, medicines and even home-made steel plates, carved out of local cars, for use as body armour.
Mykolaiv is now firmly in the sights of the Russian army - troops invaded from the nearby Crimea peninsula and have had more success in taking territory in this region than Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine.
As the Russians work their way west towards the city people are starting to flee and the hospitals are filling with the injured.
But Anastasia has decided to stay, sending her one-year-old daughter and her mother away to safety.
"I'm a mum of my baby. But I have to help because I know how to do it," the former army captain explains to the BBC.
The attack on a hospital in the besieged south-eastern city of Mariupol on Tuesday made her decide she had no other choice.
"That was the hardest moment for me," she says.
"I'm a mum - but I have to stay," says ex-army captain 29-year-old Anastasia Aleksieieva
Ukrainian forces in the city have, for more than a week now, successfully thwarted a major Russian advance west towards the larger port of Odesa.
In the city centre, Mykolaiv's governor Vitaliy Kim is standing in fatigues, explaining how Ukrainian soldiers, helped by new reinforcements, had pushed Russian troops back between 15 and 20km (nine to 12 miles) towards the east, and had even surrounded some Russian units which were now in negotiations for their surrender.
Some of those troops were reportedly preparing to bring the captured and damaged Russian tanks into the city to show to residents.
But Mr Kim warns this is not a time to celebrate prematurely.
"We are winning this fight, but not this war," he says.
The governor said a relatively weak Russian force had underestimated local resistance and expected to "be greeted with flowers", but Russian reinforcements and planes could quickly turn the tide and enable the Kremlin to capture the whole Black Sea coastline.
"We need a closed sky," he said, referring to the idea of a no-fly zone enforced by Nato. The Western alliance has so far rejected such an idea, as it could bring them into direct conflict with Russian planes that entered the area.
In the local hospital, head doctor Alexander Dimyanov said 250 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians had been injured in the past fortnight, 12 fatally. Three patients, too sick to be moved further west to safety, remained on the trauma ward.
"We're exhausted," said a nurse, who declined to give her name. Dr Dimyanov showed a video of his colleagues in tears, explaining that they were overwhelmed by the workload and by fears that their own families might be hurt.
"They're crying because they don't know if they'll see them again. They don't run away. They work here every day. We have a lot of wounded people, every day. They see the blood," said Dr Dimyanov, who also called on the West to impose a no-fly zone.
Civilians have been fleeing, heading west towards Moldova
Inhabitants of several apartment blocks in a civilian neighbourhood in the east of the city showed us where rockets or shells had hit their buildings in recent days, tearing holes in a stairwell and water pipes, and breaking dozens of windows.
"It's rocket and artillery fire at night. And it's pretty scary here. Very loud, especially at night," said 17-year-old Bogdan Somberakov.
He was waiting for a lift with his luggage and his family on the western edge of Mykolaiv.
As he spoke a long convoy of coaches passed by, carrying children west towards the Moldovan border and safety. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60711659 |
Ukraine war: Protests after Russians 'abduct' Melitopol mayor - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The president accuses the Russians of "moving to a new stage of terror" as Melitopol residents protest. | CCTV image from the video allegedly showing the mayor being marched away
Residents in the Ukrainian city of Melitopol have come out to protest against the alleged abduction of the mayor by Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials have posted video saying it shows Ivan Fedorov being led away blindfolded on Friday.
In a message, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians of "moving to a new stage of terror".
Melitopol, a small city in south-eastern Ukraine, was one of the first to fall to the Russians.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, arguing it felt threatened by a neighbour intent on joining Western-led organisations such as the Nato military alliance.
In his message late on Friday, Mr Zelensky called Mr Fedorov a "mayor who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community".
"This is obviously a sign of weakness of the invaders," he said.
"They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities."
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Mr Fedorov told the BBC days ago that his administration was not going to co-operate with the Russians "in any way".
He said that invading forces had ransacked his offices, exiling his team to another location where they are attempting to continue running their city.
There have been protests in Melitopol every day since the Russian occupation.
On Saturday, hundreds surrounded the administration building demanding the mayor's release. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60719123 |
Roman Abramovich: Premier League disqualifies Chelsea owner as director of club - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | The Premier League disqualifies Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich as a director of the club and sleeve sponsor Hyundai suspend deal with the European champions. | Last updated on .From the section Chelsea
The Premier League has disqualified Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich as a director of the club after the oligarch was sanctioned by the UK government.
Also on Saturday, sleeve sponsor Hyundai became the latest company to suspend its deal with the club.
Abramovich had his British assets - including Chelsea - frozen on Thursday as part of the government's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The move put the Russian's prospective sale of the club on hold.
The Premier League said Abramovich's disqualification would "not impact on the club's ability to train and play".
Removing an owner from a board would usually trigger the sale of the shares, a process that Abramovich had instigated on 2 March after the threat of sanctions was raised in Parliament.
He had instructed American investment firm Raine Group to seek £3bn for the club, but finance experts believe that price could drop given the current uncertainty around Chelsea.
• None Q&A: What do UK government sanctions on Abramovich mean for Chelsea?
• None The Sports Desk: Life after Abramovich - what's next for Chelsea and English football?
Raine Group temporarily halted the sale process on Thursday while answers were sought from the government about the implications of the sanctions.
The government is open to considering an addition to the special licence it granted the club that would allow a sale to go ahead.
A condition for that to happen, however, would be that Abramovich - one of Russia's richest people and believed to be close to the country's president, Vladimir Putin - receives none of the proceeds.
The special licence granted by the government will allow fixtures to be fulfilled, staff to be paid and existing ticket-holders to attend matches.
Chelsea, however, cannot receive money for match tickets which have not already been sold, future gate receipts for FA Cup games or money from merchandise sold via the club shop.
The European champions will also be unable to buy or sell players, or offer new contracts, while the sanctions are in place on Abramovich and he still owns the club.
An amendment to the licence has been granted by the government, allowing Chelsea to spend up to £900,000 on costs for home games, up from the £500,000 set on Thursday.
The allowable away costs of travel, however, remain at £20,000 per game.
The licence update also allows the club to receive prize money from existing competitions including Premier League payments and Champions League money for getting through each round.
A statement from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirming the changes to the licence also welcomed the league's move to disqualify Abramovich as a club director.
"The government has made clear that we need to hold to account those who have enabled the Putin regime," the DCMS statement said.
South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai is the second sponsor to suspend its deal, after Chelsea's main shirt sponsor Three suspended its £40m-a-year deal on Thursday.
Hyundai signed a multi-year partnership with the Blues in 2018
Like Three, Hyundai has asked for its logo to be removed from the team's shirts "as soon as feasibly possible".
"Hyundai has become one of the strongest partners in football over the years and the company supports the sport to be a force for good," the company said.
"Through our partnership with Chelsea, we are proud supporters of the players, the fans and grassroots football. However, in the current circumstances, we have taken the decision to suspend our marketing and communication activities with the club until further notice."
The unravelling of Roman Abramovich's time as Chelsea owner is happening at rapid pace.
It is only 28 days since Abramovich celebrated on the pitch with manager Thomas Tuchel as Chelsea became world club champions.
Now, the club is up for sale and Abramovich is becoming a non-person within the Premier League.
He wasn't involved in the sale of the club even before this latest development but it does underline the need for a deal to be done pretty quickly.
The name of the man who changed Chelsea's fortunes may still be revered by some of the club's supporters but it is clear his association with Vladimir Putin is creating serious issues at Stamford Bridge.
A sale cannot come soon enough.
• None Our coverage of Chelsea is bigger and better than ever before - here's everything you need to know to make sure you never miss a moment
• None Everything Chelsea - go straight to all the best content | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60720343 |
Bournemouth stabbing: Boy, 16, arrested after Subway attack - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The 16-year-old is in custody after being arrested on suspicion of the man's murder on Saturday. | A police cordon remained in place on Old Christchurch Road and Horseshoe Common on Sunday
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was stabbed outside a sandwich shop.
The 21-year-old died in hospital after being seriously injured outside Subway in Old Christchurch Road in Bournemouth at about 04:45 GMT on Saturday.
The man's family is being supported by specially trained officers.
Dorset Police said a section of Old Christchurch Road and Horseshoe Common remained closed on Sunday as investigations continued.
Det Insp Simon Huxter, of the force's Major Crime Investigation Team, said police are still appealing for any witnesses to come forward with information, "no matter how small you think it may be".
Follow BBC South on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to south.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-60727007 |
Brent Renaud: US journalist and filmmaker killed in Ukraine - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine. | Brent Renaud won a Peabody Award for his journalism in 2015
A US journalist working in Ukraine has been shot dead in the town of Irpin, outside Kyiv, police say.
Brent Renaud, 50, was a journalist and filmmaker who was working in the region for Time.
Kyiv's police chief Andriy Nebytov said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital.
It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine.
One of the injured journalists, Juan Arredondo, told an Italian reporter he had been with Renaud when they came under fire.
"We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car", he said in a video published on Twitter.
"Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they start shooting at us. So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting; there's two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud, and he's been shot and left behind... I saw him being shot in the neck."
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Photographs are circulating online showing a press ID for Renaud issued by the New York Times.
In a statement, the newspaper said it was "deeply saddened" to hear of Renaud's death but that he had not been working for the newspaper in Ukraine.
Renaud last worked for the publication in 2015, the Times said, and the press ID he was wearing in Ukraine had been issued years ago.
Time editor-in-chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal and Ian Orefice, the president and chief operating officer of Time and Time Studios, said they were "devastated by the loss".
"As an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Brent tackled the toughest stories around the world often alongside his brother Craig Renaud," the statement said.
Renaud had reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. He won a Peabody Award for his work on a 2014 series on Chicago schools, Last Chance High.
He often worked alongside his brother, Craig, also a filmmaker. It is not known whether Craig also travelled to Ukraine.
Renaud's death comes less than two weeks after Ukrainian journalist Yevhenii Skaum, a camera operator for the Ukrainian television channel LIVE, was killed when a TV transmission tower in Kviv was hit by shelling.
A few days later, a British journalist covering the war in Ukraine was shot and wounded after coming under fire in Kyiv. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60729276 |
Boss accused of defrauding blind workers' pensions - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Blind staff at failed 168-year-old business say they are owed pay, redundancy and furlough money. | Olgun Ibrahim, known as 'Ozzie' - a former worker at Clarity
The Pensions Regulator is investigating whether the owner of one of the UK's oldest social enterprises fraudulently failed to make disabled workers' pension contributions.
The 168-year-old soap maker Clarity was bought from administration in 2020.
Workers say they lost their jobs and are still owed redundancy payments, furlough money and wages.
The owner, Nicholas Marks said he looked forward to "clarifying the position" with the Regulator.
Olgun "Ozzie" Ibrahim caught Covid a week before Christmas 2020. By the time he recovered, he was told not to come back to work. He was put on furlough in January, and received two months furlough money but nothing more - no pension payments, and no notice period or redundancy when he finally lost his job in July.
Registered blind, he had worked for 29 years at Clarity & Co, a social enterprise which had been providing employment opportunities for blind and disabled people since 1854, making toiletries under the Clarity, the Soap Co. and Beco brands.
The business, whose patrons ranged from Queen Victoria to Joanna Lumley, was losing money, and it was put into administration in January 2020.
On the same day the business and its assets were bought by a businessman, Nicholas Marks, who now stands accused of not paying workers' wages and pensions.
Clarity and Co sign at the site of the former factory in North London
Clarity had around 80 workers when it was sold, of whom 65 were blind, disabled, or had a health condition.
It was more than a job, says Mr Ibrahim, it was like a family too.
Since leaving, he and his fellow workers have struggled to find work. “No-one wants to employ disabled, blind people,” he says. “Though we can do the work, no-one wants to take the chance.”
The BBC has also spoken to a number of former Clarity employees who say pension contributions were deducted from their pay packets but were never paid to the pension provider, Scottish Widows.
Among them is former team leader Allan Brooks, who worked at the company for 17 years. Registered blind, he says he didn't receive furlough money or redundancy either.
When he heard he was losing his job, “it was a massive shock,” he says. “I was expecting to see my working days out at the company.”
He is now taking medication for depression, and hasn’t worked since he left. A number of his former colleagues are also suffering from mental health issues, Mr Ibrahim says.
The BBC has learned that The Pensions Regulator has begun an investigation into Nicholas Marks for alleged fraudulent evasion of the duty to pass on pension contributions to a workplace pension scheme, under the 1995 Pensions Act. The Pensions Regulator would not confirm or deny the investigation.
The UK Employment Tribunal website also lists judgements in favour of over 40 individuals who have won claims for unauthorised deduction of wages and other monies owed to workers by Clarity Products (the company's new name under Mr Marks's ownership).
The BBC has spoken to seven of them, who say they have not been paid the money the tribunal awarded.
Clarity Products - renamed Jublee Number 7 Ltd - is now being liquidated. Documents from the insolvency practitioners Quantuma, seen by the BBC, show the company owed more than £435,626 to 84 employees, including Mr Ibrahim and Mr Brooks.
Scottish Widows is owed £37,068 and NEST Pensions £15,494. The company's total debts amounted to more than £1.3m.
Local MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith wrote to the minister responsible, Jesse Norman, in November 2020 to highlight the case but HMRC cannot confirm or deny whether it has begun an investigation. HMRC is owed £231,839 by Jublee Number 7, the insolvency documents show.
In a statement, Mr Marks told the BBC: "I understand that there are some technical questions being asked by the Regulator as to the supply of certain documents. Whilst I was not involved with the detail of these, much if not all of this is attributable to the pandemic which left our offices being unmanned, correspondence going astray and the departure of staff whose responsibility it was to provide this information."
He also said he has personally lost around £500,000 and so "any suggestion that I took money out is both absurd and patently untrue."
He said that "During that chaotic period [following the sale, and during the pandemic] some people weren't paid. I'm sorry that happened but some workers were TUPE'd [transferred] over from offices that no longer existed and didn't have any roles. That's not an excuse but I'm trying to explain how we inherited a complete mess."
"For me, my biggest regret is that I couldn't save the business and the jobs but unforeseeable events conspired to make it an impossible task," the statement continued.
Mr Marks did not comment on whether he would repay any of the workers who are still owed money.
Little is known about Nicholas Marks. Born in 1967, he describes himself as British on Companies House, though he also has links with South Africa.
In 2019, he bought a company in Lancashire called Lunar Caravans out of administration. Workers there have also complained about unpaid furlough money.
Nicholas Marks was banned from acting as a director of a company for a year from 3 August 2020 for infringements at another company, Stafferton Waste, which has since been dissolved.
He was subject to bankruptcy orders in 2007 and 2017, according to official notices published in the London Gazette.
The gates at the former Clarity and Co factory in North London
Following reports on BBC News and elsewhere about the plight of former Clarity workers, Nicholas Marks sued two people for spreading what he claimed was false information about the company.
They were Camilla Marcus-Dew, Clarity’s former Head of Commercial, and Cemal Ezel, a social entrepreneur who made an unsuccessful bid to buy Clarity out of administration in 2020.
The pair - who deny Mr Marks’s allegations - initially had to represent themselves without legal advice. They are now represented on a pro bono basis by two law firms, Quinn Emanuel for Ms Marcus-Dew and Hausfeld for Mr Ezel.
Separately, on 27 January Ms Marcus-Dew was awarded £38,491 by an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal from Clarity, on top of £11,000 awarded earlier for unpaid wages (she has received nothing, she says).
Mr Ezel said that the ongoing litigation had forced him to scale back plans to expand his social enterprise, Change Please, a coffee business which provides opportunities and training for homeless people.
Social Enterprise UK has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support former workers and campaign for policy changes to prevent similar situations occurring in the future.
Nest Pensions, Scottish Widows and Quantuma all declined to comment. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60162686 |
No-one raised security concerns over Lord Lebedev with me, says Michael Gove - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Minister says process to become peer is "rigorous" after questions about businessman's appointment. | Russian-British businessman Lord Lebedev was made a peer by Boris Johnson in July 2020
Michael Gove has said no-one raised security issues with him about Lord Lebedev after reports security services had long-held concerns about him.
The Sunday Times claimed the head of MI6 was worried about the Russian-born businessman, and concerns were raised with Boris Johnson in 2020.
But the PM has denied he intervened to ensure Lord Lebedev's peerage.
Housing Secretary Mr Gove told the BBC the process for appointing peers was "rigorous".
He said he had dinner with Lord Lebedev at Boris Johnson's house before the Brexit referendum, but did not know of any possible security concerns.
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the PM had "serious questions to answer" about the appointment, and has asked the House of Lords Appointment Commission to release the vetting advice they gave to Mr Johnson.
And speaking at his party's spring conference, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called for a full public inquiry into the PM's decision to give Lord Lebedev a peerage.
He told party members: "The cosy relationship between Putin's oligarchs and the Conservative political elite has been the dirty secret of the British establishment for far too long."
Lord Lebedev was given his peerage in July 2020.
He has denied posing a "security risk" to the UK, writing an article in the Evening Standard newspaper - which he owns - saying: "I am not some agent of Russia."
The son of billionaire Russian banker and former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev, who moved to the UK as a child, has condemned President's Putin's actions in his newspaper, writing: "I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters."
And he has warned it is "crucial we do not descend into Russophobia" during the war in Ukraine.
An article in the Sunday Times last week claimed security services withdrew their assessment that giving the honour to Lord Lebedev posed a security risk after the PM got involved.
The newspaper said that in March 2020, the commission that vets peerage appointments advised the prime minister against granting the newspaper owner a seat in the House of Lords, due to security concerns.
But Mr Johnson, who ultimately decides who gets a peerage, is said to have responded to the advice by claiming it was "anti-Russianism".
The PM denied the report, saying it would "obviously be extraordinary" if he had intervened, "but that's not the case".
But in another Sunday Times article, the newspaper claimed the head of MI6 had held concerns about the businessman for as long as a decade.
Boris Johnson - pictured here with Lord Lebedev in 2009 - denied he intervened over security concerns with the peer
Asked on the BBC's Sunday Morning programme about the reports, Levelling Up Secretary Mr Gove said he was "not aware of any of the concerns that had been expressed until they appeared in the newspapers".
He added: "Of course there are questions that are going to be asked, but no one has ever said to me that there are any specific security concerns that they have about Lord Lebedev."
The government minister also pointed to the fact Lord Lebedev was a British citizen, adding: "I think it is important to draw a distinction between Evgeny Lebedev's father, who obviously... worked for the KGB, and Lord Lebedev himself, who is someone who has made his home in this country.
"There is a distinction to be drawn between the actions of parents and the actions of children."
But Labour leader Sir Keir has written to the chair of House of Lords Appointment Commission, Lord Bew, asking for vetting information to be made public, and for him to "commit to a review of the propriety of Lord Lebedev's place in the House of Lords".
Speaking to Sky News' Sophy Ridge, he said: "I think the prime minister has got serious questions to answer. What did he know? And did he override security advice?
"Let's have a process to look into what actually happened, what did the prime minister know and what did he do in response to that. I think that is the least we are entitled to in relation to this appointment." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60727297 |
Scotland and Wales bid to be refugee super sponsors - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The first ministers want Ukrainians to be housed quickly and given help with safeguarding and services. | The first ministers of Scotland and Wales want to get Ukrainians settled and cared for faster
Scotland's first minister and her Welsh counterpart have proposed that both governments become "super sponsors" to Ukranian refugees fleeing the war.
Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford have written to the UK government to confirm their commitment in contributing to its community sponsorship scheme.
But Scotland and Wales have offered to step further to support refugees by acting as super sponsors.
It is hoped this would allow Ukrainians to come to the two countries faster.
The idea would be to get them into temporary accommodation immediately and then work with local partners to provide longer-term places to stay, including with host individuals, and give them access to safeguarding and services.
Households in the UK will be offered £350 a month to open their homes to people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
The UK government's Homes for Ukraine scheme calls on people to offer a spare room or an empty property to a refugee for a period of at least six months.
In a joint letter to Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, Ms Sturgeon and Mr Drakeford have emphasised that the government must provide more clarity on how the scheme will work.
The letter makes clear that no cap will be set by Scotland and Wales on the numbers of refugees they will welcome.
Scotland has made an immediate commitment to support 3,000 refugees in the initial wave, in line with the numbers that were resettled under the Syrian scheme. Wales would take 1,000.
The Scottish government said it would welcome "at least" a proportionate share of the total number who come to the UK.
The letter also says it is essential that all arrivals have access to public funds, including welfare benefits, and are exempted from the Habitual Residence Test for accessing these.
The first ministers also call for urgent clarity on funding arrangements to support local government and they have suggested a "per head" funding arrangement similar to the Syrian and Afghanistan schemes to support resettlement and integration costs.
Finally, the letter calls for all visa requirements for Ukrainian nationals to be waived.
Nicola Sturgeon said: "I want Scotland to play our full part in welcoming Ukrainians seeking sanctuary from war. The UK response so far has been beset with bureaucracy and red tape, when what is needed is humanity and urgent refuge for as many as possible.
"We are still awaiting full details of the proposed community sponsorship scheme. If the UK government is still unwilling to waive visa requirements, it is essential that this scheme works efficiently and effectively and allows people to come to the UK as quickly as possible.
"However, I am very worried that if people have to be matched with an individual sponsor before even being allowed entry to the UK, it will prove slow and cumbersome."
People called for more help for Ukrainian refugees at a rally in Glasgow on Saturday
She said that super sponsorship would allow large numbers to come to the respective nations quickly and that she would be able to welcome Ukrainians to Scotland as soon as possible.
However, refugee support groups fear the main problem is not with hosting Ukrainians, but in visa restrictions stopping them from entering the country in the first place.
Robina Qureshi, director of refugee homelessness charity Positive Action in Housing, said there were skilled and experienced hosting networks up and down the country with thousands of hosts.
"Britain is not planning on taking its fair share of refugees, even though there is public support for taking in Ukrainian refugees," she said.
"The families who host refugees don't do it for money, they are helping because they see a government that is heartless and won't lift visa restrictions.
"The number of houses is not the problem and this is a gimmick - just another distraction from the fact that the UK is still the only country in Europe that hasn't lifted visa restrictions and there are still no safe routes here for Ukrainian war refugees."
A spokesman for the Department for Levelling Up said: "We are always grateful to the devolved govts for their offers of support.
"We will continue to work with the devolved governments in the organisation of this scheme and see how best it can continue to be delivered."
Do you plan to open your home to a Ukrainian refugee? Email: haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
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If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60722616 |
Ukraine: NI households offered £350 per month to host refugees - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, those fleeing war will be able to stay rent-free in the properties. | Ukrainian refugees wait for a train at the railway station in Lviv, western Ukraine
Households in Northern Ireland will be offered £350 a month to open their homes to people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Earlier Housing Secretary Michael Gove said that tens of thousands of people could come to the UK under the scheme.
The Northern Ireland Executive Office said has encouraged expressions of interest in providing accommodation from both individuals and groups.
A website to express an interest in being a sponsor is launching on Monday.
Westminster confirmed that, like in other parts of the UK, people in Northern Ireland who allow Ukrainian refugees to stay in their homes rent-free will be entitled to government payments.
Details of the Homes for Ukraine scheme were announced on Sunday and the project will be overseen by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
BBC News NI asked the department how additional funding would be allocated to support refugees coming to Northern Ireland, including any extra school places and healthcare provision they may need.
It said the department will work with devolved administrations to decide the best funding route for them, and discussions were ongoing.
However, ministers working in Stormont's devolved government - the Northern Ireland Executive - are currently having problems with the allocation of their existing funds.
Paul Givan, from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), resigned in protest over post-Brexit trade rules in early February, which meant the deputy first minister automatically lost her job.
Without both leaders in post, Northern Ireland Executive ministers cannot meet as a team to take any major new decisions.
In England, local authorities will also receive £10,500 in extra funding per refugee for support services - with more for children of school age, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said.
It is not yet known how this money will be allocated in Northern Ireland.
On Sunday night, a spokesperson for the Executive Office said that "while not all the details have yet been announced by Westminster, we are working at pace, making preparations so we stand ready to provide sanctuary to Ukrainian refugees".
"Mindful of the pressure on social housing stock, officials are also engaging with councils and the voluntary and community sector to find creative ways of bringing suitable accommodation into use and identifying all available capacity," added the spokesperson.
"We are in close contact with the Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Communities and Housing and with colleagues in other jurisdictions.
"We will participate fully in this humanitarian effort. Partnership across sectors and wider society will be key to ensuring we can support as many Ukrainian people seeking sanctuary here as possible."
Matthew O'Toole previously worked in Downing Street and the Treasury as a civil servant
On Sunday morning, the SDLP's economy spokesperson called on Northern Ireland's devolved government to "do more" to support Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing the war.
Matthew O'Toole made the call after leaders in Scotland and Wales proposed both their governments become "super sponsors" to take in more refugees.
He said it was "not good enough" for Stormont to take no action because of the current absence of its leaders.
Mr O'Toole was asked if there was more Stormont could do to support Ukrainian refugees in the absence of a first and deputy first minister.
"Yes, there definitely is," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme.
"From my perspective, I've already called on on the Executive Office to do more more to prepare to receive Ukrainian refugees.
"This is the biggest humanitarian crisis on our continent in probably most of our lifetimes, probably since the Second World War."
The Home Office in Westminster has faced criticism in recent days over the numbers of Ukrainian refugees it has allowed into the UK so far and the amount of bureaucracy involved its visa system.
In contrast, EU member states, including the Republic of Ireland, lifted visa restrictions on Ukrainians arriving in the country shortly after Russia invaded.
To date, about 5,500 Ukrainian refugees have now arrived in the Republic of Ireland, the country's taoiseach (prime minister) confirmed to the BBC's Sunday Morning programme. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60728158 |
Ukraine: Ireland's 'priority is humanitarian' as it takes 5,500 refugees - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | 'Ireland has never experienced anything on this scale before', says Taoiseach Micheál Martin. | Five-and-a-half-thousand Ukrainian refugees have now arrived in the Republic of Ireland, the country's taoiseach (prime minister) has said.
Ireland lifted restrictions on Ukrainians arriving in the country shortly after Russia invaded.
This allows them to enter Ireland without checks or visas beforehand, as well as access benefits and healthcare, and the right to work.
More than 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded, in what the UN has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War Two.
The Irish government has previously said it could take up to 100,000 refugees.
Asked about the figure by Sophie Raworth on BBC's Sunday Morning, Mr Martin said Ireland had "never experienced anything on this scale before, but we believe we need to do it".
He added: "Our primary impulse is to assist those fleeing war.
"The Irish people are very seized by a series of atrocities that are going on, what we're witnessing on our screens every evening is really shocking people and there is huge human empathy there to help the women and the children.
There is no sign of any end to the war in Ukraine, now in its 18th day
"There is always a balancing of issues, we keep channels open with our UK counterparts. The Home Secretary and our Minister for Justice Helen McEntee have been in regular contact."
Mr Martin is in London on a two-day trip, where he has discussed the Northern Ireland protocol with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as the international response to Ukraine.
When asked about security concerns Mr Martin said: "The humanitarian response trumps anything as far as we're concerned.
"But our security people will keep on monitoring the situation in terms of what's on.
"We can all see the humanitarian crisis, we do know that that can be exploited by certain bad actors, but our security personnel will keep an eye on that in a more general way.
"The prime minister's only discussion with me was on the basis of praising the Irish humanitarian response and no more than that. We didn't get into the security issues as such."
Ireland's military is neutral, and it is not a Nato member.
Because of this Ireland sends only "non-lethal" aid to Ukraine, like medical supplies, body armour and helmets - not weapons.
Asked about Ireland's military neutrality and Ukraine's international plea for arms, Mr Martin said his country would have to look at its position in the future but added: "One cannot, in the middle of a crisis, change a long-held policy overnight."
Events in Ukraine including the flight of refugees have caused some to question Ireland's military neutrality
He said Ireland was not morally or politically neutral.
"We're not a military power, what Ireland does best is on the humanitarian side and on the peace keeping side."
On Sunday, the government announced a scheme to offer UK households £350 a month to host refugees.
Unlike the EU, the UK has not waived its visa rules.
On 9 March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said about 1,000 Ukrainian refugees had received UK visas.
But some MPs have called for restrictions to be scrapped.
The programme asked the taoiseach whether the talks on the Northern Ireland Protocol - the post-Brexit trade arrangements which led to the recent collapse of Stormont's devolved government - would be "kicked into the long grass" because of the crisis in Ukraine
"I think we should concentrate, obviously, on our response to Ukraine," Mr Martin replied, but he also said he believed it would also be possible to make progress on the protocol talks.
He suggested the war in Ukraine had showed the strength of international cooperation on "big issues", which gave him hope for agreement on the protocol.
"What's interesting - and I welcome this warmly - is the very strong partnership between the UK, the EU, the US on fundamental issues of substance - which is democracy; human rights; the freedom of the individual - and that is something that I think really trumps the issues.
"It really says to us all that we should be able to resolve issues to do with the Northern Ireland Protocol."
Mr Martin said access to the EU Single Market was important to Northern Ireland for inward investment but he added both sides were trying to find solutions.
However, he said he did not believe there would be a break-through before the Stormont election on 5 May.
He said some progress had already been made, and the EU had "put forward a lot of sensible compromises and their mindset is to really resolve this, and I believe the foreign secretary (Liz Truss) is in the same mode of thought." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60727319 |
Watch: Sophie Raworth interviews Nadhim Zahawi and Dr Anthony Fauci - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | On Sunday Morning are Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi and Dr Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical adviser. | This livestream has now ended.
On this week's Sunday Morning, Sophie Raworth is joined by Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth, and Dr Anthony Fauci - the chief medical adviser to the US president. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60637839 |
Mournes: Six-year-old twins complete mountain challenge for friend - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Rory and Finn McCullough climbed NI's highest peaks for their friend who was diagnosed with cancer. | Rory and Finn, accompanied by their parents, completed what is known as the Seven Sevens all before their seventh birthday
Reaching the summit of seven of Northern Ireland's highest peaks is a challenge for even the most experienced hikers - imagine completing that feat at just six years old.
That is exactly what twins Rory and Finn McCullough from Bangor, County Down, have just managed to achieve.
Their efforts were all in aid of their five-year-old friend, Jodi Tomalin, who was diagnosed with cancer.
Jodi was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma after a tumour was discovered in his liver in March last year.
The P1 pupil has undergone several intensive chemotherapy treatments and has been in and out of hospital throughout his young life.
Jodi has since had the tumour removed and is now receiving a low-dosage chemotherapy at home, as well as attending weekly visits to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children with his mum, Lisa.
Rory and Finn, who attend the same primary school as Jodi, told their mum and dad they wanted to do something special for him.
Christine McCullough pictured with Rory and Finn on the seven seven challenge
The boys, accompanied by parents Christine and Richard, set themselves the challenge of completing what is known as the Mourne Mountains Seven Sevens, all before their seventh birthday in July this year.
They successfully reached the summits of Slieve Donard (850m), Slieve Commedagh (767m), Slieve Bearnagh (739m), Slieve Meelmore (687m) Slieve Meelbeg (702m) Slieve Binnian (747m) and Slieve Lamagan (704m).
Rory and Finn completed their final mountain on their list last weekend.
Christine McCullough says she has "two little mountain goats" for children
Christine McCullough told BBC News NI she was initially worried about how the two young boys would cope with such a formidable task.
But after a trial run in the mountains, she soon realised they were more than up to the challenge.
Christine and husband Richard, who are experienced hillwalkers themselves, said even they struggled at times to keep up with the two intrepid mini-mountaineers when they first started.
"We spent most of the time actually telling the boys to slow down when we were up there," Christine said.
"Myself and Richard definitely have two little mountain goats on our hands," she added.
Christine, Rory and Finn McCullough taking a well-earned breather in between some rocks
Christine said her husband was nicknamed "the donkey" throughout the challenge because he was the one left carrying all the supplies.
This was all while the boys meandered their way up the mountains getting high-fives from fellow hikers as they passed-by.
"We were always well prepared, we brought enough food to feed an army and had enough clothes on and spares to keep us all wrapped up warm.
"Both myself and Richard were always very mindful of what the weather forecast would be like before the boys and us went out, and planned everything right down to best routes to take."
It wasn't always smooth sailing for the boys: Rory and Finn's challenge was temporarily halted when Northern Ireland experienced a series of storms within a short space of time.
"After we got to the top of Slieve Lamagan, the sixth mountain on the list, they were all absolutely chomping at the bit to get the final mountain of Slieve Binnian done," Christine said.
"The boys' school, all our friends and family were all behind us but then Storm Dudley, Storm Eunice and Storm Franklin and all the bad weather after meant we had to wait a bit to just tick that final one off."
Christine said it was a great relief for the boys to finally complete their challenge and said she is incredibly proud of what they have achieved.
Finn said that his favourite mountain was Slieve Donard, while Rory, not wanting to copy his brother, found Slieve Lamagan to be his own personal highlight.
Even after the boys finished their last mountain, Christine said when they all got back to the car - understandably quite tired - the boys turned to their parents and asked: 'When are we climbing Ben Nevis?'.
Jodi's mum, Lisa, described Rory and Finn as "little stars" and said their family have been completely blown away by what the boys have done.
Lisa said their family are now planning to celebrate the boys achievement in a couple of weeks time, where they will have a little ceremony for Rory and Finn as a thank you. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60658895 |
Ben Nevis victim was father-to-be Samuel Crawford from Newtownards - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Samuel Crawford, 28, was "one of the brightest lights in our congregation" says his family minister. | Samuel Crawford spoke about his Christian faith when he addressed his church in December 2020
A man who died on the UK's highest mountain last Tuesday was Samuel Crawford from Newtownards, County Down.
The 28-year-old was climbing Ben Nevis in Scotland on 8 March when he suffered fatal injuries.
Mr Crawford was married just 18 months ago and his wife is expecting their first child, their minister said.
The Reverend Garth Wilson, from Sandown Free Presbyterian Church in east Belfast, expressed "heartfelt sympathies" to the Crawford family.
In a tribute on the church's Facebook page, the minister said: "He was one of the brightest lights in our congregation in Sandown and we will miss him terribly."
He described Mr Crawford as a "fantastic husband" and said he "would have been the best father".
Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Wilson said Mr Crawford had a "very, very strong Christian faith" and the congregation was taking comfort in that.
Just over a year ago, Mr Crawford spoke at the church about how his faith had helped him through serious illness.
Samuel Crawford was with friends on Ben Nevis when he was fatally injured on Tuesday
Strangford MP Jim Shannon said he had known the Crawford family for years and was "incredibly sorry to hear of his passing".
"He was very committed to his family... he was from a family of great faith, which will be all the more necessary now," the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician said.
Mr Shannon also expressed his sympathy to his "many friends who are missing him" and added: "He is very much in our prayers."
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the UK
Mr Crawford was among 24 people who got into difficulty on Ben Nevis on 8 March.
The other climbers were helped to safety by the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, search and rescue helicopters and a group of soldiers who were climbing the mountain at the time. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60719333 |
Six Nations 2022: Ireland see off brave 14-man England - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | Ireland keep their hopes of a Six Nations title alive as they finally see off a valiant, spirited England. | Last updated on .From the section Rugby Union
Ireland kept their hopes of a Six Nations title alive as they finally saw off a valiant, spirited England who played 78 minutes with 14 men after Charlie Ewels' red card.
Ewels was dismissed with just 82 seconds on the clock after clashing heads with James Ryan in an attempted tackle.
Ireland, the pre-match favourites, seemed set for a procession. Instead they were dragged into a desperate, captivating dogfight by the depleted hosts.
James Lowe and Hugo Keenan scored first-half tries, but Marcus Smith's boot kept England in touch with three penalties for a 15-9 scoreline at the break.
Smith potted another two to bring England level after the hour. It seemed an extraordinary heist may be on as Twickenham roared like it rarely has before.
Ireland though finally made their advantage and strength in depth pay as they came on strong late on with Jack Conan and Finlay Bealham crossing to squash the resistance.
The defeat ends England's hopes of winning the Six Nations, but they could have a say in the trophy's destination. Denying France in Paris next weekend would open the door for Ireland, who take on Scotland in the final round.
• None Rugby Union Daily: England see red & Ireland eye up the title
• None Six Nations permutations - how France and Ireland can win the title
The pre-match pyrotechnics were still floating on the Twickenham air when the momentum swung decisively in Ireland's favour.
Second row Ewels' tackle on Ryan was more clumsy than callous, but, whether he was trying to strip the ball or hold his man up in the tackle, his body height was high and risky.
The clash of heads was nasty, the mitigation non-existent. To the consternation of the crowd, French referee Mathieu Raynal brandished red after just 82 seconds - the earliest dismissal in the Championship's 139-year history.
Ewels trudged to the touchline, Johnny Sexton slotted the penalty, and jeers rolled down from all sides.
After the disbelief, came the defiance.
England raged against perceived injustice, throwing caution to the wind and their bodies into the fray.
Harry Randall tapped and went, Maro Itoje swarmed over the line-out and breakdown, Ellis Genge milked opposing prop Tadhg Furlong for a string of penalties as wing Jack Nowell filled in at flanker at the scrum.
Coach Eddie Jones had cast England as the underdog in the build-up and, with their odds dramatically lengthened, his team and their crowd seemed to relish their status.
Shortly after Ewels' departure, wing Lowe trotted in following good work from hooker Dan Sheehan and flanker Josh van der Flier to put Ireland into an 8-0 lead.
But the visitors could not make the cold logic of their superior numbers count.
Referee Raynal ruled out a Caelan Doris score with a highly debatable knock-on call, while the penalty count was 9-4 in favour of England at the break.
Keenan's short-range surge on 37 minutes ensured Ireland reached half-time with a 15-9 lead, but captain Sexton was in animated discussion with Raynal all the way down the tunnel.
Sexton's concern was justified. England refused to submit. Ireland continued to fumble their advantage.
Tadhg Beirne forced a pass and knocked on when another phase would surely have unpicked the England defence.
England revelled in the error. They whooped and hollered as they sent the Ireland front row, badly missing the injured Andrew Porter, into reverse once again. Hooker Jamie George exhorted more volume from the crowd and slowly the apparently impossible became tantalising feasible.
Smith slotted penalties in the 53rd and 61st minutes to finally bring parity on the scoreboard. Doubt gnawed at Ireland, England grew shirt sizes.
But the final quarter was always going to be the hardest. Ireland unloaded a bench that contained four British and Irish Lions, fatigue ambushed England and the home fans' dream withered.
Itoje escaped more severe punishment for a cynical piece of breakdown skulduggery inside his own five metre, while Doris butchered a glorious chance to put Conor Murray in under the posts.
But the dam finally burst as Conan crashed over in the wake of Andrew Conway's break and Bealham picked and burrowed through some flagging white shirts in the final four minutes.
The two teams took a lap of appreciation after the final whistle, accepting applause for a thrilling spectacle that few saw coming after Ewels' early dismissal.
The result is only England's third loss in their past 26 Six Nations games at home and Ireland's second win at Twickenham since 2010.
Replacements: Ford for Steward (79), Daly for Marchant (69), Youngs for Randall (52), Marler for Genge (67), Blamire for George (79), Stuart for Sinckler (38), Dombrandt for Curry (14), Launchbury for Dombrandt (67).
Replacements: Henshaw for Aki (66), Carbery for Sexton (79), Murray for Gibson-Park (67), Kilcoyne for Healy (53), Herring for Sheehan (53), Bealham for Furlong (73), Henderson for Ryan (2), Conan for O'Mahony (61).
• None What power does the platform hold over us?
• None Dive into a raw and unfiltered motorsport with promise of high-speed crashes | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/60722384 |
St Patrick's Day parade returns to London after Covid hiatus - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | An estimated 50,000 people watched the parade as it returned to central London after a two-year gap. | The St Patrick's Day parade has returned to the streets of London after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.
An estimated 50,000 people attended the annual parade, showcasing Irish culture, in the city centre.
Irish premier Micheal Martin joined in the event, wearing the colours of Ukraine and walking alongside its flag.
The Taoiseach, who is on a two-day visit to the UK, met up with Irish community leaders and NHS workers who worked in the pandemic.
Mr Martin said he was also meeting with Ukrainian first responders to "illustrate our solidarity in terms of the plight of the people in Ukraine".
Irish premier Micheal Martin wore the colours of the Ukrainian flag
The Taoiseach said he wanted to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people
This year key workers from across London were grand marshals at the event in recognition of their work during the pandemic.
The parade made its way from Green Park to Trafalgar Square, where a festival is taking place.
The annual London Mayor's annual St Patrick's celebration is in its 19th year
About 50,000 joined in the parade and the festival, despite the weather
The festival in Trafalgar Square featured Irish music and dancing | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60728242 |
Oxford Russian Orthodox church ransacked in burglary - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | St Nicholas the Wonderworker Church in Oxford was broken into early on Saturday, its rector says. | The incident caused a "great deal of damage" at St Nicholas the Wonderworker
A Russian Orthodox church was ransacked and several valuable items were stolen after it was broken into.
St Nicholas the Wonderworker in Oxford was burgled in the early hours of Saturday, causing a "great deal of damage", Archpriest Stephen Platt said.
Collection boxes for Ukrainian refugees and the church's safe were forced open and relics and crosses were stolen.
Thames Valley Police are investigating and Sunday's service was able to go ahead as normal.
Drawers were left opened after the burglary on Saturday
Writing on Facebook, Father Stephen said: "Fortunately, although the holy table was interfered with, the antimension and the tabernacle containing the Holy Gifts were left undisturbed.
"The church safe and money boxes were forced open with violence, and the proceeds of a collection to support refugees from Ukraine was stolen. The church bookstall was burgled and stock taken."
The church, in Ferry Road, is a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church within the South East Deanery Deanery of the Diocese of Sourozh.
A Thames Valley Police spokesperson said investigations are ongoing and that no one has been arrested.
Police are investigating the burglary at the church
Follow BBC South on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to south.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-60727472 |
Liverpool schools: The parents tackling admission policies - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Hundreds of Liverpool parents could appeal after their children failed to get into their chosen schools. | High-performing schools in south Liverpool are oversubscribed, the council says
"It's like the children are fighting with the system, where the system's telling our children that they are second-class citizens."
Ismail Saleh is among hundreds of parents in Liverpool who could appeal against their children's allocated secondary-school places because they failed to get any of their five choices.
He says his daughter is "angry and depressed" about potentially facing a two-hour round bus trip to a school outside her home in south Liverpool, which has the most popular schools in terms of preferences.
"My fear is racial discrimination - would she get home safe, would she get to school safe?"
Many other local youngsters also face long school journeys from this September because nearby Christian faith schools have been oversubscribed.
Ismail Saleh plans to appeal against his daughter's allocated place
Aurelie Maigrat is concerned that her son's admission in a school outside their area "with no one that he knows" could have a "massive impact" on him.
"Will he suffer discrimination as one of the few Muslim kids attending the school?" she said.
Dr Amina Elmi, from the Granby Somali Women's Group, has been lobbying for a change in schools admissions, saying: "This is an issue that has been ongoing for decades - it's never been addressed.
"If an admission policy stops people from a certain community - from a certain race or faith - from getting into the schools in their locale, then it's up to Liverpool City Council to tackle and change that."
However the authority says they do not have the power to amend admissions policies for certain schools, including academies and faith-based schools, but they will work to find out if Muslim youngsters are missing out more than others.
Aurelie Maigrat is concerned over whether her son will adjust to an unfamiliar setting
A recent council report reveals that the proportion of Liverpool children allocated their first preference fell this year, with 10% given places at a school that was not among their choices.
This meant that 519 students were offered places as a result of not being granted any of their preferences - compared to 435 in 2021 and 385 in 2020.
Councillor Tom Logan, cabinet member for schools, said the demand for places in south Liverpool was particularly intense.
"We've got really good, desirable, well-respected schools but lots of people find it difficult to get places at them.
"A number of schools have admissions criteria that limit the number of places which are open to everyone and then they offer them on a random basis, so it doesn't matter where you live."
Cllr Tom Logan says Liverpool needs more schools in the coming years
He said there was also "a cluster of schools with a religious element to their admissions policies so if you're not Catholic or from the Church of England or you don't want a faith-based education, you'll find it difficult to get a place as well".
"The appeals process would normally be used for anomalies" he said, "but this year we are expecting hundreds of parents to appeal."
In a report circulated to councillors, Cllr Logan said the council had "no silver bullet to fix the issue in secondary schools".
He has facilitated some advice sessions for parents who want to appeal although, given the demand for places, it is uncertain how many will succeed.
Dr Amina Elmi says there have been problems with school admissions for "decades"
The green light has been given for one new free school but Councillor Logan said Liverpool was in "such dire need" of more pupil places that more schools were required.
He added that about 400 places in Year 7 were needed across the city "over the next couple of years" as the local authority plans its schools' strategy and works with the government to see where places could be needed.
Jonathan Jones, director of education and skills at the council, added that some of the city's schools had a historic "reputation" that deter parents, despite good results.
But he said the council itself could not build a school to solve the admissions policy and that a free school or academy would have to be established by external trusts instead.
Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-60712289 |
Chelsea 1-0 Newcastle United: Kai Havertz's late goal gives hosts three points - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | Chelsea snatch a dramatic late winner to beat Newcastle in the first game at Stamford Bridge since Blues' Russian owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government. | Last updated on .From the section Premier League
Kai Havertz has scored in three consecutive Premier League appearances for the first time, and in all competitions he has had a hand in six goals in his last five games (five goals, one assist) Chelsea snatched a dramatic winner against Newcastle in the first game at Stamford Bridge since Blues' Russian owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government. The game looked to be heading towards a goalless draw before Kai Havertz expertly controlled a ball forward and fired into the net in the 88th minute. It was a tough goal to concede for Newcastle who had wanted Havertz to be sent off in the first half for catching Dan Burn in the face with an elbow when jumping, but the German only received a booking. Before the goal, both sides had struggled to create clear-cut chances, with Chelsea taking 75 minutes to produce an effort on target. Newcastle's Miguel Almiron had earlier forced a fine save from home goalkeeper Edouard Mendy with a well-struck 25-yard volley and Burn headed just wide. Just as had happened in Chelsea's 3-1 away win over Norwich on Thursday, a small section of fans chanted Abramovich's name, for a brief period in the second half. Abramovich has been sanctioned as a part of the government's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, meaning his assets, including Chelsea Football Club, have been frozen.
• None Prospective owner Candy wants fan on club board if Chelsea takeover successful
• None Chelsea v Newcastle as it happened, plus reaction and analysis A good end to a tough week for Chelsea and Tuchel Chelsea stay third, but are now only seven points behind second-placed Liverpool and 10 adrift of leaders Manchester City. Meanwhile, Newcastle, beaten for the first time in nine Premier League matches, are 14th, 10 points clear of the relegation zone. The relief and delight shown from Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel, both at the goal and again at the final whistle, showed what this meant to him by screaming at the fans and punching the air. And it was easy to see why he was so emotional with the club's very existence potentially under threat. Abramovich has been the Chelsea owner for nearly 19 years, a period in which they have won 21 trophies, including the Premier League on five occasions and the Champions League twice. But the current sanctions against him have stopped him selling Chelsea, and mean the club are unable to buy or sell players, cannot sell any more tickets for games, have had their credit cards suspended and have had to close the club shop. The government said it would issue a special licence that allowed fixtures to be fulfilled, staff to be paid and existing ticket holders to attend matches, although the club's wage bill stands at £28m a month. It seemed fitting that Newcastle, another side with hugely controversial owners following their takeover in October by the Saudi Arabian-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF), were Chelsea's opponents on a day when events off the field were talked about as much as those on it. Newcastle's takeover and the potential huge investment into the club was celebrated by their fans a few months ago, although Amnesty International said "it represented a clear attempt by the Saudi authorities to sportswash their appalling human rights record with the glamour of top-flight football". Despite the late defeat, this was another sign of the progress Newcastle are making on the pitch. There was plenty for Newcastle boss Eddie Howe to be positive about given his side were only a few minutes away from securing a point away at the current European and world champions. Arriving at a club without a league win and with only six points from 12 matches, he began with five defeats in his first eight games in all competitions, including a humiliating home loss to third-tier Cambridge United in the FA Cup third round. But, after spending £80m in the January transfer window, the Magpies had been on a run of eight games unbeaten, including six victories, before this narrow loss. The visitors had defended superbly up until Jorginho's excellent ball over the defence found Havertz, who showed his class to control it and then score the winner to delight the packed crowd at Stamford Bridge. Howe said he thought Havertz could have been sent off but was also disappointed his side did not get a second-half penalty when Trevoh Chalobah had a hold of Jacob Murphy's shirt. Newcastle wanted Chelsea's Kai Havertz to be sent off for elbowing Dan Burn, but Havertz only received a yellow card after a check by the video assistant referee
• None Attempt saved. Kai Havertz (Chelsea) right footed shot from the right side of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal. Assisted by N'Golo Kanté.
• None Dwight Gayle (Newcastle United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Goal! Chelsea 1, Newcastle United 0. Kai Havertz (Chelsea) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Jorginho with a through ball.
• None Offside, Chelsea. Mateo Kovacic tries a through ball, but Romelu Lukaku is caught offside.
• None Mateo Kovacic (Chelsea) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Attempt saved. Fabian Schär (Newcastle United) header from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Matt Targett with a cross. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page
• None Our coverage of your Premier League club is bigger and better than ever before - here's everything you need to know to make sure you never miss a moment | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60635693 |
Bafta Film Awards: Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog wins top prize - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a toxic cowboy, Power of the Dog won best film and best director. | Campion didn't attend the Baftas as she was at the Directors Guild Awards and the Critics Choice Awards in Los Angeles over the weekend
Netflix's moody Western The Power of the Dog won the top prize at the Bafta Film Awards, picking up best film and best director for Jane Campion.
Its star Benedict Cumberbatch wore a badge to show his support for Ukrainians as he accepted the best director prize on behalf of Campion.
He also said he hopes to offer a place to stay for a Ukrainian refugee.
Cumberbatch was beaten to the best actor award by Will Smith. Joanna Scanlan was named best actress.
Scanlan, who was previously best known for British TV comedies like The Thick Of It and Getting On, triumphed for her performance in the independent film After Love. She played a 60-year-old Muslim convert who suffers an identity crisis following the sudden death of her husband.
"Come on!" she said on stage in disbelief. "Some stories have surprise endings don't they?"
She beat a field including Lady Gaga, fellow musician-turned-actress Alana Haim, and Emilia Jones, the daughter of Welsh TV presenter Aled.
Joanna Scanlan said backstage that she was "disbelieving to be perfectly honest"
Jones starred in Coda, a film about the daughter of deaf parents, and her co-star Troy Kotsur made history as the first ever deaf Bafta film winner.
Delivering his best supporting actor acceptance speech via an interpreter, he said: "I think it's all great you're recognising my work from all the way across the sea, it's truly amazing."
Another US performer, Ariana DeBose, won best supporting actress for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg's new version of the musical West Side Story.
"This means so much to me, I'm somebody who sings, dances, acts," she said. "I speak dance better than I speak English."
Best actress nominee Lady Gaga was on the red carpet
Sir Kenneth Branagh's Belfast was named outstanding British film, while sci-fi saga Dune won five awards in total - best score for Hans Zimmer plus best cinematography, production design, sound and special visual effects.
James Bond's latest outing No Time To Die won two prizes including the EE Rising Star award for Lashana Lynch.
Lashana Lynch (centre) with Lady Gaga (left) and last year's Rising Star winner Bukky Bakray
"I would like to thank the women of this country who taught me what it is to be in this industry as a dark-skinned woman," she told the ceremony. "I thank you for laying the foundation for people like me."
The ceremony was held at the Royal Albert Hall and was hosted by Australian comic actress Rebel Wilson, who largely kept the atmosphere light but did refer to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on a couple of occasions.
After the In Memoriam section, paying tribute to film industry figures who have died over the past 12 months, she said: "Our thoughts are also at this time with the people afflicted by the conflict in Ukraine."
And in a segment about sign language, she raised her middle finger, saying it was "the gesture for Putin".
Australian actress Rebel Wilson hosted the ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall
The war was a topic of conversation on the red carpet earlier, when Cumberbatch said he was aware badges like his "could be dismissed as tokenism".
"This [ceremony] is a celebration of an industry that's about imagery, and images speaking as loud as if not louder sometimes than words. So it's a small gesture," he told BBC News.
"But away from this, what we all have to do is continue to put pressure on our politicians as far as the refugee crisis goes, continue to put pressure on the Putin regime, continue to help in any which way we can - whether that's through donations or housing refugees, all of which I'm looking to do and have done."
Fellow best actor nominee Stephen Graham, who was wearing a blue and yellow bow, said it was "vital" to acknowledge the war at the event.
"I want to show my support and solidarity for what people are going through," he said.
Bafta chairman Krishnendu Majumdar told the audience before the ceremony: "We are hugely grateful to the journalists and film-makers covering Ukraine, many of whom are Bafta members, who are bravely reporting and documenting the conflict and humanitarian crisis."
Black Widow and Little Women star Florence Pugh was also among the presenters
Dame Shirley Bassey then opened the event with a performance of her classic James Bond theme Diamonds Are Forever.
Big names returned to the Royal Albert Hall after a subdued affair last year, when many nominees appeared via Zoom amid tight Covid-19 restrictions.
No Bafta Fellowship or other lifetime achievement award was presented on Sunday, after last year's recipient Noel Clarke was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment following his win.
Clarke said he was "deeply sorry" for some of his actions but "vehemently" denied sexual misconduct. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60675263 |
Denis Donaldson: PSNI 'failed to properly evaluate' threat - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Denis Donaldson was shot dead in 2006 after he was exposed as a Security Service spy. | Denis Donaldson was shot dead in April 2006 months after he was exposed as a Security Service spy
Police failed to properly evaluate the threat informer Denis Donaldson was under before he was shot dead in County Donegal, a report has found.
However, Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson said she could not conclude the former Sinn Féin official's murder in 2006 could have been prevented.
His family said the police had been negligent in a duty of care to him "for reasons that remain unexplained".
Mr Donaldson's murder was claimed by the dissident republican Real IRA.
The 55 year old, who once held a key administrative role for Sinn Féin at Stormont, admitted in December 2005 that he had been working for MI5 and the police for 20 years.
He then moved to a family cottage in Glenties, where he was murdered in April 2006.
Mr Donaldson was shot dead at a cottage in Glenties, County Donegal
Two weeks before his killing, the Sunday World newspaper published a story on him that included a photograph of him standing outside the property.
The Police Ombudsman found no evidence police had leaked information on his whereabouts.
Shortly after the story appeared, the PSNI received information indicating Mr Donaldson's life "may be at increased risk".
This information was shared with An Garda Síochána (Irish police).
But Mrs Anderson found no evidence of a PSNI risk assessment having been carried out following the Sunday World article.
"It is likely that this important measure to assess the threat to Mr Donaldson's life was not undertaken," her report stated.
"I am of the view the family's concerns about the steps taken by PSNI in management of this threat are legitimate and justified."
In a BBC News NI interview, Ms Anderson added: "I believe it was a corporate failing, but I cannot say if they carried out the risk assessment Denis's murder would have been preventable.
Ombudsman Marie Anderson said Donaldson family concerns over the PSNI's management of the threat were "legitimate and justified"
"There is certainly an indication others in County Donegal knew of his whereabouts."
It read: "For reasons that remain unexplained and unaccounted for, the PSNI abandoned its routine practice of risk assessments.
"This course of action was taken at precisely the moment when the risk to Denis's life was at its greatest.
"The key question has always been: 'Did the PSNI do enough to protect Denis's life?' The ombudsman's answer today was no, they did not."
The PSNI said it recognised "the pain and suffering" of the Donaldson family.
Ass Ch Con Mark McEwan added: "We note the findings of the investigation and will now take some time to review her comprehensive report.
"We have reviewed our operational policies and service procedure regarding the management of threats to life and will continue to do so on a regular basis."
The ombudsman's report also found that the PSNI had provided "a high-level of co-operation and assistance" to the the Garda's murder inquiry.
During the course of its investigation, the ombudsman's office questioned one officer under caution and he denied sharing information about Mr Donaldson's whereabouts.
As he has subsequently retired, the issue of disciplinary proceedings could not be considered by the ombudsman.
A DUP assembly member who sits on the Policing Board, Trevor Clarke, said: "The ombudsman has been oddly critical of the PSNI for not carrying out a full risk assessment after the Sunday World had identified where Mr Donaldson was living.
"This is despite the PSNI advising the Garda of the potential increased risk and the victim living outside of their jurisdiction.
"Now that this investigation is complete, our sights must be firmly fixed on identifying those responsible for this brutal murder as well as those in the republican movement who have something to hide.''
By the time the Troubles erupted in 1969, Denis Donaldson was in the IRA.
In the 1970s he was jailed for explosives offences and during his time in the Maze prison became close friends with Bobby Sands.
His double-life began in the next decade.
He was recruited as an agent in the 1980s, at a time when he was becoming more prominent in Sinn Féin.
He was its candidate in the 1983 Westminster election in his native east Belfast.
Later, he travelled widely as a representative of Sinn Féin to the likes of the Middle East and United States.
After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, he assumed a key backroom role for the party based at Parliament Buildings in Stormont.
In what was dubbed Stormont-gate, Mr Donaldson was one of three men arrested in 2002 over an alleged IRA intelligence gathering operation.
Three years later, charges were dropped on the grounds that prosecutions were not in the public interest.
Within a matter of days, Mr Donaldson admitted having been an informer.
He said he had been paid to work for MI5 and the police "after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life".
Four months later, he was murdered in Donegal. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60698692 |
William Hurt: Oscar-winning actor and Marvel star dies at 71 - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | His roles ranged from acclaimed 1980s dramas to playing General Thaddeus Ross in five Marvel films. | William Hurt at the premiere of Marvel's Captain America: Civil War in 2016
William Hurt, the Oscar-winning US actor whose roles ranged from acclaimed 1980s dramas to Marvel films, has died at the age of 71, US media say.
Hurt won the best actor Oscar in 1986 for playing a prisoner in a Brazilian jail in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
He was nominated two more times in the next two years, for Children of a Lesser God and Broadcast News.
In recent years, he has been known as General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in five Marvel blockbusters.
Hurt made his Hollywood breakthrough at the start of the 1980s in films including Body Heat alongside Kathleen Turner
Hollywood website Deadline quoted a statement from Hurt's son Will as saying: "It is with great sadness that the Hurt family mourns the passing of William Hurt, beloved father and Oscar winning actor, on March 13, 2022, one week before his 72nd birthday.
"He died peacefully, among family, of natural causes. The family requests privacy at this time."
Variety said the news was confirmed by Hurt's friend Gerry Byrne.
He received his third Oscar nomination in three years for Broadcast News in 1988
Fellow Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo wrote on Twitter: "Wow, another Major loss to the acting community. Great actor. Great mind. RIP."
Matthew Modine described him as "a consummate professional" who was "continually searching for greater truth and human understanding".
Antonio Banderas said "a great actor has left us", while other tributes came from Russell Crowe, M Night Shyamalan Rebecca Front.
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Hurt began acting on stage in the 1970s before making his big-screen breakthrough as an obsessed scientist in Altered States, which earned him a best newcomer nomination at the Golden Globes in 1981.
That year, he also starred as a womanising lawyer in erotic thriller Body Heat, before being cast in The Big Chill and Gorky Park.
Winning an Oscar for playing a gay man who shares a cell with a political prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman was "very isolating",he later told the Los Angeles Times.
"The instant they gave it to me, I thought, God, what do I do now? How am I going to walk into a room and have any other actor trust me?"
That did not stop him getting two more consecutive nominations, though, before roles in The Accidental Tourist, Lost in Space, Contagion and AI. Then came a fourth Oscar nomination for David Cronenberg's A History of Violence in 2006.
He also received Emmy nominations for playing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in 2011's Too Big to Fail, and for legal TV drama Damages.
He returned to the theatre in productions including Henry V, A Midsummer Night Dream and Hurlyburly, the latter of which saw him recognised with a nomination at Broadway's Tony Awards.
Hurt had been diagnosed with prostate cancer
He was regarded as a compelling but complex and often confrontational presence, however. Fame was "a challenge" and "not a happy condition for me", he admitted.
"It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing," he told The Telegraph in 2013. "And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances."
He drank heavily for a spell and in a high-profile palimony trial in 1989, former partner Sandra Jennings described his drunken rages.
Another former girlfriend, Children of a Lesser God co-star Marlee Matlin, later accused him of physical and emotional abuse. He apologised "for any pain I caused".
The actor revealed in 2018 that he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60731686 |
Russia faces brain drain as thousands flee abroad - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Many Russians who can afford it have fled to nearby countries since Russia invaded Ukraine. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Yevgeny says it is his responsibility as a Russian to help Ukrainians
Outside Georgia's parliament, Yevgeny Lyamin heaves boxes of clothes and food parcels on to a waiting truck bound for Ukraine.
He is one of more than 25,000 Russians to have arrived in Georgia since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russians have been struggling to find affordable accommodation in all the major cities. Many can be seen wandering around the capital, Tbilisi, with their suitcases and often even their pets.
A blue-and-yellow ribbon is attached to the lapel of Yevgeny's trench-coat - the colours of the Ukrainian flag. It was these ribbons that got him arrested at an anti-war protest in Russia, a day after it launched its war on Ukraine.
"I understood the best way to act against Putin's regime would be my emigration from Russia," says the 23-year old politics graduate. "It's my responsibility to do anything I can to help the Ukrainians."
The exodus does not stop at Georgia. The EU, US, UK and Canada have closed their airspace to Russian flights, so they are heading for countries where flights are still permitted and where visas are not required, such as Turkey, Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Many have fled to Armenia.
According to one estimate by a Russian economist, as many as 200,000 Russians have left their country since the start of the war.
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Belarusians are on the move too, fleeing repression and the Western sanctions imposed on authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko's government for collaborating with Russia's Vladimir Putin.
That has prompted prices to surge on last-minute flights and rental accommodation in the main host cities, such as Istanbul and Armenia's capital, Yerevan.
"A one-way flight to Istanbul cost me and my husband more than our combined monthly income," said Anya, who did not want to give her surname.
For her the moment of decision came with a new "state betrayal" law that has come into force in Russia. Anyone expressing support for Ukraine could face jail sentences of up to 20 years and Anya believed she could be a target.
"Fear of closed borders, political repression and forced military service is in our DNA. I remember my grandmother telling me stories about the state of fear they lived in during Stalin's time, and now we are experiencing it," she said.
An estimated 25,000 Russians have left for Georgia
Many of the new emigres are tech industry professionals who can work remotely. A video games developer I met at a cafe in Tbilisi told me that he and most people he knew disagreed with Russian policy and they knew now that any protest would be violently suppressed.
"The only way we can protest is to leave the country, take our skills and money with us. Almost everyone in our circle has made a similar decision," said Igor (not his real name). He plans to leave the Georgian capital, because he does not feel welcome here.
There have been numerous reports of Airbnb hosts refusing to let their properties to Russian and Belarusian citizens.
"I do not accept Russian and Belarus people" one host told a Belarusian couple, who shared their exchange with the BBC. "You do not have time for vacations - revolt against your corrupt governments."
"They think we are running away from Russia because Apple Pay no longer works there," Igor complained. "We are not running for comfort, we've lost everything there, we are basically refugees. Putin's geopolitics has destroyed our lives."
At Tbilisi's public service hall, new arrivals are registering businesses or applying for residency.
Kristina and Nikita, who are both IT specialists from the Belarusian capital Minsk, have registered as sole entrepreneurs. That will allow them to open Georgian bank accounts.
"We don't support our governments, which is obvious because we ran away. We want to be safe here," said Kristina. "But we are being bullied just because of our nationality, I need to hide my country of origin, I don't feel comfortable when people ask me where I am from."
Since the start of the war Tbilisi has seen some of the largest rallies in support of Ukraine. A recent survey found that 87% of Georgians view the war in Ukraine as their own war with Russia.
But many Georgians are uneasy about this dramatic influx of Russians, as it is less than 14 years since Russia's leader invaded Georgia.
Some 30,000 Georgians listened to Ukraine's President Zelensky during a mass protest
Some fear President Putin might claim Russian citizens abroad need protection, because that was his excuse to justify sending troops into the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia in 2008. To date, 20% of Georgian territory remains under Russian occupation.
However, tech entrepreneur Lev Kalashnikov thinks Georgia will benefit from what he asserts is the biggest brain drain in Russia's modern history. He opened a group for expats on the Telegram messaging app while standing in a queue.
"There were 50 people in front of me and 50 people behind me. They became my first subscribers and now we have nearly 4,000 members."
Members discuss where to find accommodation, how to open bank accounts, and whether or not it is safe to speak Russian in public.
Yevgeny Lyamin is already learning Georgian, practising Georgia's unique alphabet in an exercise book.
"I am against Putin, I am against war. I still can't withdraw money from my Russian bank account, but that's nothing like the problems that Ukrainians face." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60697763 |
Sarah Everard: Protesters demand 'radical change' to Met Police - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Protesters demand change a year since clashes with police at an unauthorised vigil for Sarah Everard. | Protesters blocked traffic outside of the Met Police headquarters New Scotland Yard
Protesters demanding "radical change" to the Metropolitan Police have marched through central London.
Activists held traffic outside New Scotland Yard before marching to Charing Cross Police Station.
They carried banners reading "police are perpetrators", set off bright blue smoke flares and said they activated 1,000 rape alarms.
The protest marks a year since an unofficial gathering to pay respects to Sarah Everard saw clashes with police.
It also comes a day after judges ruled police breached the rights of the organisers of a planned vigil for Sarah Everard.
The Met has previously said it is trying to rebuild trust with the public after several misconduct cases involving its officers.
About 300 demonstrators from various groups chanted "racist police, sexist police" while walking towards Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross Police Station.
Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested at a vigil for Sarah Everard in the days following her murder last year, said "radical change from the whole of the policing system" was needed.
Gina Cane of Sisters Uncut, a feminist activist group who organised the protest, said: "We reject the authority of the police, a racist misogynist institution built on coercion and control."
Demonstrators were also protesting against the the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill
Protesters set off blue smoke flares as they walked through central London
Protesters also said they opposed the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill which, if passed, would give police greater powers to control protests.
Ms Everard was kidnapped in south London on 3 March 2021 as she was walking home from a friend's house. Her attacker was sentenced to a whole-life term after pleading guilty to murder.
A spontaneous vigil in Clapham Common, south London, led to the Met being heavily criticised for its actions - although it went on to be cleared by the police watchdog.
A previously organised vigil was cancelled after organisers were told it would be illegal to stage it under lockdown conditions.
Met officers were accused of oppressing women on Clapham Common in March last year
In February, an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report discovered misogyny, discrimination, bullying and sexual harassment within the ranks of the force.
Addressing the IOPC report, the Met said in a statement it acknowledged the damage in trust their behaviour had caused.
It added it would take "urgent action" to improve.
Baroness Louise Casey is carrying out an independent review of culture and standards within the Met. It will examine the force's vetting, recruitment and training procedures.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick resigned from the role after London's mayor said he had no confidence in her leadership | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60720907 |
Ukraine invasion: Javid says Russia will pay for war crimes as UK sends aid - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The UK says it is sending more medical aid to Ukraine after 25 attacks on health centres. | A maternity and children's hospital in the southern city of Mariupol was one of the health facilities attacked by Russian forces
The UK has sent six more plane-loads of medical aid and equipment to Ukraine, as Health Secretary Sajid Javid accused Russia of war crimes in attacking medical facilities.
Mr Javid said there had been more than 25 attacks on health centres and hospitals since the invasion began.
"This is a war crime and Russia will pay for the crimes it's carrying out," he said.
Russia has claimed, without evidence, that hospital bombings were faked.
One attack on a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol on Thursday which killed three people, including a child, was condemned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as "depraved".
An intelligence briefing from the Ministry of Defence says several cities remain encircled by Russian forces and continue to suffer heavy shelling.
Most Russian ground forces are now 15 miles (25km) from the centre of Kyiv, the MoD said, while part of a large armoured column appears to be dispersing to try and surround the city.
Speaking on a visit to Birmingham Children's Hospital, Mr Javid said that "Russia needs to stop its aggression".
"This is a war started by Russia, completely unprovoked, completely unjustified," he said.
He said the World Health Organization had counted more than 25 health facilities which had been targeted or hit by Russian forces, describing it as "completely unacceptable".
Under the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements which attempt to regulate wars, civilians cannot be deliberately attacked, and neither can the infrastructure they depend on to survive.
The UK is among 39 countries which on 3 March referred Russia to the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes war crimes, following the bombardment of civilian areas in several cities.
Mr Javid said more medical aid, on top of the six plane-loads already sent, will go out in the coming days.
The Department for Health and Social Care said the shipments held 650,000 items, including wound-care packs, needles, syringes, intravenous lines, patient monitors, infusion pumps and protective equipment.
More than £400m of UK aid has been promised to Ukraine, including humanitarian aid and economic support.
The UK was also among the first to send weapons and other military aid, starting in January.
Anti-tank weapons supplied by the UK and other western nations have been used to destroy Russian tanks, such as this one near Kharkiv
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said this week that the UK had delivered 3,615 light anti-tank missiles and promised to continue to deliver more.
He said the UK would also start delivering a "small consignment" of Javelin anti-tank missiles, which can target tanks up to 1.5 miles (2.5km) away, and is considering donating Starstreak portable anti-aircraft missiles.
Aid to Ukraine's military has also included body armour, helmets, boots, ear defenders, ration packs, rangefinders and communications equipment, the defence secretary said.
But the UK has faced criticism over its response to the displacement of over 2.5 million Ukrainians, with only 1,000 refugees given visas via the Ukraine Family Scheme as of Friday. No updated figures were available on Saturday.
A new visa scheme allowing individuals and organisations to sponsor Ukrainians to come to the UK if they do not have family connections is expected to be announced on Monday.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer said the country needed "a simple, safe, quick and efficient route to sanctuary" rather than the current approach, which is "too narrow, too slow, with too many hurdles in place".
Asked if he would be prepared to host a Ukrainian refugee in his home in north London, Sir Keir said the British public have shown "incredible support towards the Ukrainian people, whether that's giving money, whether it's giving things that they can provide or whether it's providing sanctuary - and like many, many other people, I'd be more than happy to play my part in that".
French President Emmanuel Macron said the UK's moves towards making its system more generous were "going in the right direction" and "maybe at some point they will totally match" the European Union approach of allowing refugees from the war a three-year residency without a visa.
Mr Macron said a letter from his interior minister accusing the UK of a "lack of humanity" had been "useful" and France would assess over the next few days whether enough was being done. He said France had offered to host visa application centres in Lille or other cities. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60719152 |
Brexit: Micheál Martin and Boris Johnson discuss NI Protocol - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Micheál Martin says EU-UK cooperation on Ukraine suggests it should be possible to resolve protocol. | Micheál Martin and Boris Johnson sat together at the Ireland-England Six Nations match
The international co-operation shown in response to Ukraine suggests it should be possible to resolve a matter like the Northern Ireland Protocol, the taoiseach (Irish PM) has said.
Micheál Martin was speaking a day after meeting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London, during which they discussed both the Ukraine war and the protocol.
They met before attending the England-Ireland rugby match on Saturday.
Mr Martin has a series of engagements in London ahead of St Patrick's Day.
Speaking a day after his meeting with Mr Johnson, the taoiseach told the BBC's Sunday Morning programme that some progress has already been made in the post-Brexit trade dispute between the EU and the UK.
However, he said he did not believe there would be a breakthrough before the Northern Ireland Assembly election on 5 May.
Asked if the protocol talks had now been "kicked into the long grass" because of the crisis in Ukraine, Mr Martin said: "I think we should concentrate, obviously, on our response to Ukraine."
However, he added he also believed the crisis showed it should also be possible to make further progress on problems like the post-Brexit trade dispute.
"What's interesting - and I welcome this warmly - is the very strong partnership between between the UK, the EU, the US on fundamental issues of substance - which is democracy; human rights; the freedom of the individual - and that is something that I think really trumps the issues.
"It really says to us all that we should be able to resolve issues to do with the Northern Ireland Protocol."
During Saturday's meeting, Mr Martin and Mr Johnson also discussed ways of working together to ensure the return of the Northern Ireland Executive following May's assembly election.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has said it would be difficult for his party to form a government if issues around the protocol are not addressed.
The mechanism to ensure free trade across the Irish border post-Brexit has been criticised by some unionists for its knock-on impact to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
In February, the DUP's Paul Givan resigned as first minister as part of the party's protest against the protocol, causing the collapse of the executive.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin wore a scarf with the colours of the Ukrainian flag as he led Sunday's St Patrick's Day parade in London
The taoiseach welcomed the ongoing engagement between the UK and the European Union on the protocol issue.
Mr Martin said access to the EU single market was important to Northern Ireland for inward investment but he added both sides were trying to find solutions.
He argued that the EU had "put forward a lot of sensible compromises and their mindset is to really resolve this, and I believe the foreign secretary (Liz Truss) is in the same mode of thought".
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During his trip to London, the taoiseach led the city's parade to mark St Patrick's Day on Sunday, which paid tribute to the role played by Irish people in London during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Martin also wore a scarf with the colours of the Ukrainian flag during the march. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60723231 |
England in West Indies: Spirited tourists have to settle for draw in first Test - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | England have to settle for a draw in the first Test against West Indies despite a spirited performance on the final day in Antigua. | Last updated on .From the section Cricket
England had to settle for a draw in the first Test against West Indies despite a spirited performance on the final day in Antigua.
A bold declaration from captain Joe Root, who reached his 24th Test hundred in the morning session, gave England the chance to push for an unlikely victory.
His side took four wickets for eight runs either side of tea to boost their hopes, spinner Jack Leach claiming 3-57 on a lifeless pitch.
But West Indies, who did not attempt to chase their target of 286 in 71 overs, were steadied by a stubborn, unbroken stand of 80 between first-innings centurion Nkrumah Bonner and all-rounder Jason Holder, which lasted 35.5 overs.
Crucially England did not review an lbw appeal against Holder with 22 overs left. Had they done so he would have been dismissed by Leach.
Instead he ended 37 not out and Bonner unbeaten on 38, the players shaking hands with the score 147-4.
England's cause was hurt by the absence of fast bowler Mark Wood, who sat out the innings with an elbow injury and is now a doubt for the second Test, which begins on Wednesday in Barbados.
Earlier, despite the loss of five wickets, England added 132 to their second-innings total before declaring 20 minutes before lunch on 349-6.
Root turned his 84 not out overnight into 109, while Dan Lawrence scored 37 from 36 balls in an enterprising cameo as England sought quick runs.
The Test, the first of three in this series, may have ended in a draw but England's improved performance on the final two days offers some momentum as they look to move on from their humiliating 4-0 Ashes defeat.
With the bowlers at their disposal, England did all that could realistically have been expected of them in their quest for victory on the final day.
Root declared earlier than expected and slow left-armer Leach in particular bowled well, but the tourists were thwarted by a docile pitch.
After West Indies slowly reached 59-0, Ben Stokes removed Brathwaite, getting him lbw with a ball that scuttled low, but there was little mischief in the pitch thereafter.
Wood's extra pace was missed and, without it, seamers Chris Woakes and Craig Overton were ineffective.
Opener John Campbell was caught at mid-on trying to whack Leach over the top and Jermaine Blackwood was out lbw slogging across the line - two wretched strokes that helped England's cause.
However, once Bonner and Holder played themselves in, they were able to defend with relative ease, even with fielders surrounding the bat.
England would have had a glimmer had they reviewed the lbw decision against Holder but Root, wary after earlier burning two reviews on optimistic lbw shouts, was unmoved. The technology suggested Leach's delivery would have hit leg stump.
Root held on until there were only five balls left before accepting the cause was lost.
England were aggressive from the outset and opener Zak Crawley, who resumed on 117, was bowled trying to strike a Holder yorker for 121.
That ended a stand of 201 between Crawley and Root, but the England captain continued to complete one of his most straightforward Test centuries.
A chanceless knock helped him overtake Alastair Cook in the list of most Test tons as England captain, and will silence any debate around his return to number three in the batting order.
Perhaps most impressive was Lawrence's brief innings which gave England impetus. Having been recalled to the side for this Test, the 24-year-old cracked the ball over the off side from the outset and hit one extravagant six.
This series has been billed as a new era for England after a run of one win in 14 Tests.
Lawrence's innings, plus the performances of Leach, Crawley and first-innings centurion Jonny Bairstow are positives.
There is still much concern about Woakes' potency overseas and Overton's wicket-taking threat at this level, while Stokes, who has been nursing a side injury since the fourth Ashes Test in January, bowled 41 overs in the match.
England must hope that does not come back to hurt them.
England captain Joe Root: "I'm really proud of the team today and throughout the week.
"We found ourselves in a tricky position on day one, and to get ourselves back in the game through that fantastic innings from Jonny [Bairstow] was very pleasing. Throughout the game we got better and better.
"And today, chasing those last wickets, I can't fault any of the efforts of anyone."
Player of the match Nkrumah Bonner: "We are happy with the draw, but wanted a win.
"I think we showed real character the way we bowled this morning especially.
"We have a lot of positives to take from this game."
BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew: "England tried all they could to squeeze a result out. Root's declaration took a lot of people by surprise, but it was always difficult without Wood.
"Leach's three wickets will perk him up after the Ashes, the fact that three batsmen scored centuries is also a boost to a team desperate to move into more positive territory.
"There was more of a spring in the step of the fielders - and signs of the collective responsibility Root is trying to establish."
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As it happened: Abuse survivors apology delivered at Stormont - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Ministers delivered the long-awaited apology, which was a key recommendation of a 2017 report. | That's the end of our coverage after a day that's been long-awaited for the survivors of historical institutional abuse.
You can continue to follow this story online on the BBC News NI website.
BBC Radio Ulster will have the latest on Evening Extra from 4pm, as will BBC Newsline on BBC One NI at 6:30pm.
Thanks for following along with our coverage. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-northern-ireland-60665887 |
Naomi Osaka: Former world number one in tears after heckling during Indian Wells defeat - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | Former world number one Naomi Osaka is brought to tears by a heckler during her 6-0 6-4 defeat by Veronika Kudermetova at Indian Wells. | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Former world number one Naomi Osaka was brought to tears by a heckler during her 6-0 6-4 defeat by Veronika Kudermetova at Indian Wells.
The four-time Grand Slam winner was taunted in the first set by someone in the crowd yelling "Naomi, you suck".
Osaka was playing her third event since taking a break in September.
Speaking on court after the match, an emotional Osaka said it reminded her of Venus and Serena Williams being heckled at the same tournament in 2001.
While holding back tears, Japan's Osaka said: "I've been heckled before and it didn't really bother me.
"But being heckled here. I've watched video of Venus and Serena get heckled here and if you've never watched it, you should watch it. And I don't know why, but it went into my head and got replayed a lot."
The Williams sisters boycotted Indian Wells for 14 years over the events of 2001.
Venus had pulled out of a semi-final match against her sister with a knee injury, and when she and her father Richard took their seats to watch Serena in the final against Kim Clijsters the next day the crowd jeered. Serena was also subjected to boos throughout the match.
Serena went on to win the title and embraced Venus and her father courtside, with Richard later saying he was the target of racial abuse.
In an interview in 2021, Serena said she was still traumatised by the incident two decades later.
Osaka's second-round exit at Indian Wells is the earliest she has been knocked out of a tournament since returning from an indefinite break that began last year after her US Open title defence ended in the third round.
That break was her second of the year, after she withdrew from the French Open amid controversy over her wish not to speak to the media after matches, and revealed she has struggled with her mental health since first becoming a Grand Slam champion in 2018.
The 24-year-old also missed Wimbledon before returning to the sport later in the summer at the Tokyo Olympics, where she lit the flame at the opening ceremony.
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Body of missing hillwalker found in Glen Coe - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Neil Gillingham, from Kilmarnock, went missing on a walk with his dog last Sunday on Stob Coire Sgreamhach. | Mountain rescue teams and a helicopter had been searching for Neil Gillingham and his dog
Police have confirmed that a body recovered on Stob Coire Sgreamhach in Glen Coe is that of missing hillwalker Neil Gillingham.
The 43-year-old and his springer spaniel had been missing since Sunday 6 March.
The pair were last seen at about 13:30 near Stob Coire Nam Beith, a summit on the mountain Bidean Nam Bian.
Mr Gillingham had planned to walk to both locations with his dog before descending to the Lost Valley.
Searches covered Glencoe, Lochaber and Oban and involved RAF and police mountain rescue teams and a coastguard helicopter.
On Saturday, Police Scotland confirmed the hillwalker's family had been made aware of the find and were being supported by officers.
The death is not being treated as suspicious and, as with all sudden deaths, a report will be sent to the procurator fiscal.
Sgt Keith Almond said: "Our thoughts are with Neil's family at what is a very difficult time for them.
"Officers would like to pass on their thanks to the mountain rescue teams, HM Coastguard helicopter crews and members of the public who assisted with the searches.
"We would also like to thank all those who shared and responded to our appeal."
Police also confirmed that the dog was found safe and well on Monday.
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War in Ukraine: What happened on day 18 of Russia's invasion - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | A military base near the Polish border is attacked, and the UK announces a scheme to house refugees. | On day 18 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a military training base in the western city of Yavoriv was struck by a barrage of cruise missiles.
At least 35 people were killed and 134 injured in the deadly attack at the facility, near a major crossing point into Nato member Poland.
Video of the aftermath of the attack posted online and verified by the BBC showed a huge crater at the site and smoke billowing from a fire at a nearby building.
Witnesses told the BBC how "the night sky turned red", sparking fears that the conflict would soon spread to the up-to-now peaceful regions in the west.
Fighting continued in areas outside the capital Kyiv, and a US journalist was shot dead in the town of Irpin.
Brent Renaud, 50, was a journalist and filmmaker who had previously worked for the New York Times, though he was not on assignment for the publication in Ukraine.
Kyiv's police chief Andriy Nebytov said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital.
It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine.
Brent Renaud won a Peabody Award for his journalism in 2015
Inside the capital, the BBC's Jeremy Bowen spoke with teenagers who had volunteered at a centre in Kyiv to fight for Ukraine.
Most of them were in their late teens, not long out of school. They told our correspondent that after three days' basic training they would head for the front line - or very close to it. Some of them were wearing knee pads that looked too small. A few had sleeping bags. One had a yoga mat.
"I feel a bit scared, as no-one wants to die, even if it's for your country. So, death is not an option for us", 18-year-old Dmytro told him.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Maksym Lutsyk,19 (left) and Dmytro Kisilenko, 18 are at war with three days training.
In the UK, the housing secretary announced the details of a scheme designed to accommodate Ukrainian refugees.
Under the Homes for Ukraine plan, people will be able to nominate a named individual or a family to stay with them rent-free, or in another property, for at least six months. A website to express an interest in being a sponsor will launch on Monday. Ukrainians on the scheme will be given leave to remain for three years, with the right to work and access public services. Sponsors would get a "thank you" payment of £350 a month.
Critics of the plan say it falls short of what is needed.
On the red carpet, the actor Benedict Cumberbatch hinted that he hoped to take in a refugee.
"What we all have to do is continue to put pressure on our politicians as far as the refugee crisis goes, continue to put pressure on the Putin regime, continue to help in any which way we can - whether that's through donations or housing refugees, all of which I'm looking to do - and have done", he said.
According to one estimate by a Russian economist, as many as 200,000 Russians have left their country since the start of the war.
The EU, US, UK and Canada have closed their airspace to Russian flights, so they are heading for countries where flights are still permitted and where visas are not required, such as Turkey, Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Many have fled to Armenia.
The BBC's Rayhan Demytrie spoke to Russians who have arrived in neighbouring Georgia. Many can be seen wandering around the capital Tblisi, with their suitcases and often their pets.
"I understood the best way to act against Putin's regime would be my emigration from Russia," Yevgeny, a 23-year old politics graduate told her. "It's my responsibility to do anything I can to help the Ukrainians."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Yevgeny says it is his responsibility as a Russian to help Ukrainians | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60730367 |
Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | As Russian forces continue their slow advance, Kyiv's residents fear the worst for their city. | When the Russian offensive started, as sirens sounded in Kyiv for the first time, some people here feared that the city might fall by the afternoon.
Reports were coming in of a long convoy of armour and heavy weapons pushing down from the north-west. Military analysts had a high opinion of the Russian army. It had, they said, been professionalised, with invaluable experience of perfecting weapons and seasoning men in the war in Syria. The tactical errors I had seen the Russians commit when they tried to crush a rebellion in the republic of Chechnya in 1995 were, I was told, ancient history.
The consensus about the Ukrainian armed forces on the first day of the war was that they were much stronger than they had been in 2014, when they could not stop Russia seizing Crimea and establishing two breakaway enclaves in eastern Ukraine. But Russia had the numbers and the firepower. The Ukrainians, it was said, would rediscover the truth of an aphorism attributed to Stalin: "quantity has a quality of its own."
The first two weeks of the war proved that those predictions were wrong. The Russians blundered; the Ukrainians resisted. Around Kyiv the Russian advance stalled. In the south, it was a different story. They worked steadily towards opening a land corridor between Crimea and Moscow's enclaves in eastern Ukraine.
But it has been clear from the outset that control of Kyiv is crucial to winning arguments in politics as well as on the battlefield. While President Volodymyr Zelensky's government holds the city, he can claim not to be defeated, and President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin cannot claim victory.
The last couple of days have been bright and sunny, after more than a week of thick cloud. That means satellites have a clear view of movements on the ground. One conclusion is that the 40-mile Russian convoy north-west of Kyiv is slowly dispersing and reorganising. The latest word from the US Department of Defense is that the rear elements are catching up, but the vehicles closest to Kyiv are not moving.
The fighting around Kyiv has been concentrated in the north-west and has been going on since the first morning, when Russian airborne troops landed at a cargo airport near Hostomel and Irpin, small commuter towns that evacuees say are now badly damaged. They looked to be trying to secure a staging area for a push into Kyiv. But Ukrainian troops stopped them.
In the last few days, I have seen more defenders moving forward to continue the fight around Irpin and the Hostomel airport and heard steady artillery fire from the Ukrainian side from gunlines concealed in belts of thick woodland.
The heavily contested north-west is just a 20-minute drive from the centre of Kyiv, which has barely been touched, although sirens sound regular alerts.
In the week or so that I have been here the Ukrainians have improved their physical defences, which in places barely existed. Checkpoints that were just a few concrete blocks have become barricades. Across the city men have been filling and positioning sandbags. Kyiv's metalworkers have been busy. At strategic junctions, and on the dual carriageways that run out of Kyiv steel anti-tank obstacles stand ready.
Kyiv is a grand city of broad, sweeping avenues, bisected by narrower streets often paved with lumpy cobblestones. Many of the buildings have extensive basements and cellars. Street fighting here, if it happened, could grind on for months.
The city sprawls along both banks of the Dnieper, one of Europe's great rivers. Docks and marinas leading off the river are still frozen. Crossing the water under fire would be a formidable military undertaking. The bank on the west side of the river, near the government buildings and the great cathedrals, is steep and heavily wooded. Defenders would have many advantages.
But crossing the Dnieper might not be on Russia's agenda until it is able to control both banks. One theory is that the stalled offensive from the west and north-west is not just because of Ukrainian resistance and what appears to be the Russian army's own badly handled logistics. A column coming from the east has been moving slowly, and the generals might be waiting for it to catch up.
The Russians attempted to move a regiment of tanks into Kyiv's eastern approaches on Thursday. They were mauled badly as they rumbled slowly down a highway in broad daylight. Drone pictures showed that the tanks were bunched together making easy targets for Ukrainian artillery or drones. It was another tactical blunder for Moscow.
It is not clear whether Russia plans to encircle Kyiv or attempt to force a surrender by thrusting into the centre with armour supported by infantry. The choices are not great for them. Direct attacks have so far been stopped. Encircling a big city might take too many men.
One possibility is that President Putin expected the rapid collapse of a government that he has dismissed with contempt as a Nazi collaboration with the west and did not think his soldiers would need to do either.
It is certain that Putin and his generals are reassessing, regrouping and will not accept defeat. Putin's mission has been to restore Russia to what he believes is its rightful place as a world power. In a country the size of Ukraine - only Russia itself is bigger in Europe - victory in Kyiv is the most direct way for him to declare mission accomplished.
Without a doubt the Russian armed forces have been operating at half power and half speed. That is partly due to their own mistakes, and partly because the Ukrainians are proving to be formidable, nimble opponents. The stalled attacks around Kyiv have turned into a respite for the city's defenders, allowing them time to dig to improve defences that were rudimentary, and presumably to receive some of the increasingly sophisticated weapons that NATO is bringing into Ukraine.
A question that nags uncomfortably at the minds of many in Kyiv is whether President Putin will conclude that the time has come to turn the deadliest conventional weapons in Russia's arsenal against the city's defenders. So far that has not happened. If it does, many more people will die and terrible damage will be done.
Some people here do not believe President Putin will hammer Kyiv in the way that cities in eastern and southern Ukraine have been attacked. They argue Putin will hesitate to destroy an ancient city which has been at the centre of Russian culture, religion and history. Some of the same people also believed Russia would not invade.
Others fear that if Russian infantry and armour are held up, Putin and his generals will default to the tactics they are using in Mariupol in the south, surrounding the city and attempting to break the will of its defenders with artillery and air strikes. It is a method that worked well for the Russians in Syria, and in the 1990s when Grozny, the capital of the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, was flattened.
The next few weeks will be critical for the future of Kyiv, and for the wider war over the future of Ukraine. If Russia cannot reactivate its attack on the capital, its defenders will grow in confidence and the strength and the morale of Russian forces, including conscripts, will take more blows.
If the Putin regime can find a way to end resistance here, the president will be closer to achieving his war aim of ending Ukraine's independence. Forcing the country back into Russia's orbit, in the face of what would most likely be a Nato-backed insurgency, would be an altogether more difficult job. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60714515 |
War in Ukraine: How Russia is recruiting mercenaries - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Social media channels and private messaging groups are being used to recruit, the BBC has learned. | Wagner member in the Donbas region in 2014/15
Social media channels and private messaging groups are being used in Russia to recruit a new brigade of mercenaries to fight in Ukraine alongside the army, the BBC has learned.
The BBC has spoken to a serving mercenary and a former fighter with close links to one of Russia's leading mercenary organisations, who have shared details of the recruitment campaign.
The serving mercenary said many veterans of the secretive Wagner organisation were contacted on a private Telegram group a few weeks before the start of the war. They were invited to a "picnic in Ukraine", with references to tasting "Salo", a pork fat traditionally eaten in Ukraine.
The message appeals to "those with criminal records, debts, banned from mercenary groups or without an external passport" to apply. The message also included that "those from the Russian-occupied areas of Luhansk and Donetsk republics and Crimea - cordially invited".
The Wagner group is one of the most secretive organisations in Russia. Officially, it doesn't exist - serving as a mercenary is against Russian and international law. But up to 10,000 operatives are believed to have taken at least one contract with Wagner over the past seven years.
The serving mercenary who spoke to the BBC said new recruits are being placed in units under the command of officers from the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit of the ministry of defence.
He stressed that the recruitment policy had changed, and fewer restrictions were applied. "They are recruiting anyone and everyone," he said, unhappy with what he described as the lower professionalism of the new fighters.
He said the new units being recruited are no longer referred to as Wagner, but new names - such as The Hawks - were being used.
In 2021, the BBC gained access to an electronic tablet left behind by a Wagner fighter in Libya
This seems to be part of a recent tendency to steer away from the Wagner group's reputation, as "the brand is tainted", says Candace Rondeaux, professor of Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European studies at Arizona State University.
Wagner has faced repeated accusations of human rights abuses and war crimes in its operations in Syria and Libya.
The mercenary sources who spoke to the BBC, said the recruits are trained at the Wagner base in Mol'kino in southern Russia, next to a Russian army base.
As well as the private messaging groups, there has also been a public campaign in Russia to recruit mercenaries.
On the Russian social media platform VK, a page that describes itself as a specialist in security activities, posted an advert during the first week of the invasion calling for "security guards" from other former Soviet Union countries to apply for "the near abroad". Military experts have said this is a reference to Ukraine.
Previously, a criminal record was a block for those wanting to join the mercenaries. Also restrictions were placed on anyone born outside Russia because of doubts around loyalty.
Translated advert for mercenaries on the VK social media site
There is a "high demand on fighters" and to make a difference on the ground "they're going to need thousands of mercenaries", says Jason Blazakis, senior research fellow at the Soufan Centre, a US-based security think tank.
On Friday, the Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said that 16,000 fighters from the Middle East had volunteered to fight with the Russian army. The Russian president Vladimir Putin gave orders allowing fighters from the Middle East to be deployed in the war.
It has been reported that up to 400 fighters from the Wagner group have been in Ukraine.
The Wagner group was first identified in 2014, when it was backing pro-Russian separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The serving Wagner fighter explained that in the first days of the invasion of Ukraine he was sent to the country's second city, Kharkiv, where he said his unit successfully completed a mission without revealing what it was.
"We were then paid $2,100 (£1,600) for a month's work and returned home to Russia," he told the BBC.
Blazakis describes using mercenaries as a "sign of desperation" to keep the Russian public's support. Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has stirred several protests in Russia. Thousands have been arrested. Blazakis added that using mercenaries allows the Kremlin to "keep the death toll down because mercenaries are used like cannon fodder".
Moscow has always denied any links with mercenary groups.
The BBC asked the Russian ministry of defence whether the base in Mol'kino was being used to recruit additional forces for what the Russian authorities call "a special military operation in Ukraine''. No response was received. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60711211 |
War in Ukraine: Uni to uniform - Ukraine's new teenage army recruits - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Young volunteers swap their studies for assault rifles as they prepare to defend Kyiv from Russian forces. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Maksym Lutsyk,19 (left) and Dmytro Kisilenko, 18 are at war with three days training.
Just over a week ago I met a group of young men who had volunteered at a centre in Kyiv to fight for Ukraine.
Most of them were in their late teens, not long out of school. They told me that after three days' basic training they would head for the front line - or very close to it.
Maksym Lutsyk, a 19-year-old biology student, told me he wasn't fazed about trying to become a soldier after less than a week of instruction. He'd manage, after five years in the Scouts, not just learning backwoods skills, but also some weapons training. He was 10 when Ukraine's long war with separatists sponsored by Moscow started in 2014.
Maksym had gone to join up with his friend Dmytro Kisilenko, 18, who was studying economics at the same university.
The recruits were like any bunch of young lads who had decided they were no longer boys, laughing too loudly when someone told jokes to hide their nerves, or trying a bit of bravado.
Some of them were wearing knee pads that looked too small, as if they had come with skateboards on their 12th birthdays. A few had sleeping bags. One had a yoga mat. When they waited outside for the bus that was going to be taking them to the training base, they looked like friends on the way to a festival - apart from the guns. Each had been given custody of a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Maksym (far left) and Dmytro (centre, with green jacket and white trainers) before their training
I'm in touch with Dmytro and Maksym and the other volunteers. This weekend I went to see them at their posts on the eastern edge of the city, where they have been issued with uniforms, body armour, proper infantry kneepads and helmets.
A bitter wind blew through the checkpoint which the volunteers were trying to turn into a real obstacle with sandbags and steel tank traps. They made the best of their very basic training.
Dmytro told me: "I got used to my gun. I learned how to shoot and how to act in the battle, also many other things that will be very crucial in the fight with the Russians." He laughed, as if he found it hard to imagine what he was contemplating.
Maksym looked more urgent, more serious, less like a laid-back student.
"I feel much more confident than I was before, because we get enough knowledge in tactics, in martial arts, in tactical medicine and in how to do something on the battlefield." Only half joking, he wanted to see the Ukrainian flag flying from the Kremlin.
The question on everyone's mind here is whether the battle is coming for Kyiv.
"It's definitely possible" said Dmytro. "We just have to stop them here, because if they get to Kyiv this war might be over."
Barricades have been set up on roads in Kyiv using concrete blocks and "tank traps" from the city's museum
They are from the same town near the Russian border, which is being shelled. Their families are still there. I asked the boys what their parents thought of what they were doing. Maksym joked that his mother had told him to stay in a shelter and volunteer to cook the food. He had spared them the details of his deployment because he didn't want to worry them.
Dmytro's parents knew what he was doing. He had started by volunteering to make Molotov cocktails and after a few days rang his dad to tell him he had decided to join the territorial defence force. His father told him not to try too hard to be a hero.
My parents, Dmytro said, are proud of what I'm doing. He looked delighted. I asked him if he felt scared of what is ahead.
"Not much, but it is human nature to feel scared, and of course deeply in my soul I feel a bit scared, as no one wants to die, even if it's for your country. So, death is not an option for us."
Dmytro and Maksym talked about their dreams for the future, fun with friends, finishing their studies, careers and eventually families. Their parents must be praying that their sons' plans, energy and even their lives are not smashed by the brutal realities of war, like so many in all the other generations of young men who have joined up to fight in Europe's wars.
Foreign journalists have no access to the young Russian men only a few miles away on the other side of the front line. Many are believed to be conscripts, who were not told properly what was being planned for them. Wars are mostly fought by young men.
I have no doubt that many young Russians in the war have hopes as high as Dmytro and Maksym. One difference might be less motivation to fight, though without the chance to report their side properly, it is hard to say with certainty.
The two young Ukrainian students-turned-soldiers went back to work on the checkpoint. The professional army is a couple of miles ahead, directly facing the Russians.
But if the Russians come, like all the volunteers, Maksym and Dmytro will be firing out of the trenches they helped dig into the surrounding ground, where boxes of Molotov cocktails are waiting - old bottles filled with petrol and pieces of grated polystyrene and stuffed with a rag to ignite what they hope might even disable a tank.
If that doesn't work, the Nato military alliance is pouring in thousands of much more sophisticated anti-tank weapons.
Everyone here in Kyiv is waiting for what is likely to be the key battle of the war, soldiers, civilians in and out of uniform, along with Maksym and Dmytro and the other volunteers who are getting ready to fight with them. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60724560 |
Abuse survivors hear Stormont public apology - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Hundreds of children were abused at Church and state-run institutions over seven decades. | A campaigner for survivors, Margaret McGuckin, pictured with some others who went to Stormont to hear the apology
Survivors of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland have been told that the state believes them - and is sorry.
Ministers from the five main Stormont parties made statements of apology in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
It follows a 2017 inquiry which examined the abuse of hundreds of children at Church and state-run institutions over seven decades.
The move was welcomed by some; others said it was too little, too late.
Six institution representatives also spoke in the assembly chamber - four representing Catholic orders, one from the charity Barnardo's and one from a Church of Ireland missionary organisation.
Some survivors, about 80 of whom were present in the assembly chamber, left while those speeches were being made.
The first minister to speak was the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) Michelle McIlveen, who said there was no "excuse or defence" for what happened.
"We are sorry that the state did not protect you," the education minister added.
The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry examined the period from 1922 to 1995 and found there had been widespread and systemic abuse at institutions.
Its late chairman, Sir Anthony Hart, had recommended compensation, an apology and a permanent memorial to be erected at Stormont.
Alliance Party leader and Justice Minister Naomi Long said it was "fitting and proper" that the apology was made in the assembly.
"This is where our laws are made, where we - ministers and those responsible for governing - are held to account. We are united in our acceptance of responsibility," she explained.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Victims of historical institutional abuse in NI have been told that the state believes them
A minute's silence was held in the chamber, followed by a brief applause, before the statements began.
Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon, from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), told the chamber that the inquiry "shone a light on a dark, harsh and bleak period of our past".
She also said the "guilt and shame" of what happened to survivors has never been their burden to bear, but belonged to "those who should have protected you".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Some of the children were sent to Rubane House in Kircubbin, County Down, run by the De La Salle brothers
Health Minister and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MLA Robin Swann said victims and survivors had shown "courage" and had "taught us much in government".
"Systemic abuse should never have happened - we are truly sorry that it did happen and we commit fully to ensuring that it will never happen again," he said.
Five long years after this apology was first recommended, today saw five Stormont ministers finally delivering it.
Addressing directly those men and women whose childhoods where stolen, in places where they were meant to be protected.
From early this morning, the Great Hall at Stormont was filled with emotion as survivors arrived in different groups to take their places.
Some of the tireless campaigners smiled as they reflected on reaching this step of their journey.
But others felt while the politicians hit the mark, the institutions had offered a cold, half-hearted apology.
For a time, making this moment happen seemed out of reach, but now 11 March will always belong to these survivors.
Finance Minister Conor Murphy, from Sinn Féin, recognised it had taken "too long" for the apology to be made.
"We acknowledge that the delay in progressing this recommendation from the Hart report has further added to the stress that you experienced. For this, we are sorry," he said.
Fiona Ryan, commissioner for victims of institutional childhood abuse, also spoke during the proceedings and paid tribute to the "courage of all survivors".
"The fact that the inquiry happened is due to the victims and survivors themselves who fought to be seen and heard by an officialdom that was largely blind and deaf to the abuse they had suffered, to their anger and to their ongoing pain," she outlined.
Commissioner Fiona Ryan paid tribute to the courage shown by survivors
Addressing members at the start of proceedings, Speaker Alex Maskey said he was mindful that many victims of abuse had died before they could hear an apology.
While Stormont's power-sharing institutions were suspended in 2019, Westminster passed legislation to allow the establishment of a redress board for payments.
But the delivery of an apology required ministers in the Stormont Executive - Northern Ireland's devolved government - to be in place.
It was initially due to be offered by the first and deputy first ministers in March, but was in doubt after the executive collapsed again last month.
Sir Anthony Hart recommended a compensation scheme, an apology and a permanent memorial to be erected at Stormont
The DUP's withdrawal of Paul Givan as first minister meant Michelle O'Neill could not remain as deputy first minister.
Following the ministers' statements, representatives from six of the institutions highlighted in the HIA Inquiry made statements.
Br Francis Manning from De La Salle Brothers said his organisation's "actions and sometimes inaction caused pain and hurt and for our part we wish to say we are sorry and offer our sincere apology".
From the Sisters of Nazareth, Sr Cornelia Walsh offered a "heartfelt apology" and acknowledged there was "systemic physical abuse and that bullying was prevalent".
Sr Uainin Clarke, representing Sisters of St Louis, apologised for the "harshness and a lack of love and understanding" experienced by children and teenagers in their care.
Michele Janes from Barnardo's said children had experienced a climate of fear in its care
Sr Cait O'Leary, from Good Shepherd Sisters, accepted that "mistakes were made" in the care provided to girls and young women and they did not receive "appropriate, long-term, child-centred care".
The director of Barnardo's in Northern Ireland, Michele Janes, said the charity acknowledged organisational failings which had created "a climate of fear and insecurity" when children should have felt "nurtured and safe".
Rev Mark Jones, from Irish Church Missions, said the organisation apologised for failing to "detect and prevent" sexual abuse endured by children in the care of Manor House Home in Lisburn.
After these remarks, Margaret McGuckin from Savia said she felt "broken" after a long campaign.
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Ms McGuckin said while she believed the ministers were sincere in their apologies, she welcomed the statements by the organisations "with a pinch of salt".
"More damage was caused throughout this campaign than perhaps was in those institutions," she told reporters.
Jon McCourt from the Londonderry-based group, Survivors North-West, said the politicians' words were "touching".
However, he said the church representatives spoke "without emotion".
"If what happened today was the best that the church could offer by way of an apology they failed miserably," he said.
Mr McCourt said he does not believe the church had "atoned" for its actions and called for religious organisations to make a "significant contribution" to the survivors' redress scheme.
Marie-Therese Rogers-Maloney, who suffered abuse at Nazareth House in Belfast, said she did not like the apology she received but it would represent "the end of the road" for her journey.
She told BBC News NI's Evening Extra she "hated" the institution "for its cruelty, for its lack of compassion; they had no empathy for any child".
In a separate statement, Archbishop Eamon Martin, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, apologised "to all those who suffered from their horrific experience in Church-run institutions, and to their loved ones".
Many were "blinded" in the church to the "shocking neglect, sins and crime being perpetrated in their midst", he continued.
The lack of a first and deputy first minister in place to deliver a statement meant the apology was "stolen", according to Gerry McCann, from the Rosetta Trust.
Gerry McCann said the apology was stolen without a first and deputy first minister in place
"Today was very tough in many ways for survivors, but to come to parliament and expect an apology from the first and deputy first minister and that didn't happen - that in itself is an indictment of our politics," he said.
"I can't help but feel the opportunity was there for the political parties to reinstate the first minister, even for two hours."
Earlier this week, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis welcomed the apology to victims and survivors of historical and institutional abuse.
He said: "It was only right they are now receiving an apology for the abhorrent abuse they suffered." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60676276 |
Ukraine war: Zelensky visits wounded Ukrainian soldiers - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Ukraine's president gives medals to injured troops and the hospital workers caring for them. | Mr Zelensky chatted to the injured troops, posed for selfies with them and awarded them and hospital workers with medals. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60731908 |
Rod Stewart fixes potholes near his Harlow home - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The singer shovels gravel on the road and claims his Ferrari cannot get through the potholes. | Sir Rod Stewart said his Ferrari could not get through the potholes
Sir Rod Stewart has filmed himself fixing potholes on a road near his home and complaining about the state of it.
Videos on the 77-year-old singer's Instagram account showed him shovelling gravel in Harlow, Essex, claiming "no-one can be bothered to do it".
In one, he said: "People are bashing their cars up. The other day, there was an ambulance with a burst tyre. My Ferrari can't go through here at all."
An Essex County Council cabinet member promised to investigate the situation.
In the post, Sir Rod is seen dressed in a tracksuit and high-vis vest while singing and shovelling.
He said: "This is the state of the road near where I live in Harlow and it's been like this for ages.
"So me and the boys thought we would come and do it ourselves."
The 77-year-old is seen singing and shovelling gravel near Harlow in Essex
The post was captioned: "Working for a living, filling holes is good for the soul!"
His daughters Kimberly and Ruby commented with heart and clapping emojis, while one fan urged him not to hurt himself as he had tickets for his concert in June.
Lee Scott, Cabinet Member for highways maintenance at Essex County Council said: "This was brought to my attention this morning, and I have asked for an officer report as quickly as possible.
"I will endeavour to rectify it."
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60722727 |
Rod Stewart: Video prompts pothole DIY repair warning - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | A council urges people not to attempt road repairs themselves after the singer was filmed doing it. | He wears it well: Sir Rod Stewart was pictured in a high-vis vest, shovelling gravel
A council has urged people not to try to repair potholes themselves after Sir Rod Stewart was filmed doing it.
Instagram videos showed the singer, 77, shovelling gravel near his home near Harlow, Essex, claiming drivers were "bashing their cars up" on the road.
His post was liked more than 75,000 times in a day and prompted comments praising his actions.
An Essex County Council cabinet member warned anyone attempting to repair a road could become liable for accidents.
Lee Scott, who is responsible for highways maintenance at the authority, said: "You can't take matters into your own hands.
"People must always report potholes to the council and we will fix anything that's dangerous."
The rural road near Harlow in Essex has many potholes
In the Instagram post, Sir Rod claimed the road had been in need of repair "for ages" but that "no-one can be bothered to do it".
Dressed in a tracksuit and high-vis vest, he explained why he and "the boys" decided to fix it themselves.
"People are bashing their cars up. The other day, there was an ambulance with a burst tyre. My Ferrari can't go through here at all," he said.
Mr Scott promised he would "endeavour to rectify it" and asked for an officer report as quickly as possible.
He said: "All road repairs have to be done to a professional level or the person doing it could become liable for any problems or accidents".
He added he would be happy to arrange a meeting with the singer to discuss the issue.
The BBC has approached Sir Rod for comment.
The 77-year-old is seen singing and shovelling gravel near Harlow in Essex
Dominic Zarian from the area spent about £130 on car repairs after being unable to avoid "a massive crack" in the road, which he says he reported to the council four weeks ago.
He said: "That road is dark, when it's wet it can be treacherous. Someone's going to get hurt."
Essex County Council's pothole webpage said all reports were inspected but "the timescale for the repair depends on the risk assessment and which type of road the pothole is on".
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60727187 |
Ukraine war: 'Sky turned red' as missiles hit Lviv military base - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | "It doesn't matter where you live" - fear after a deadly attack on military base close to Polish border. | Witnesses to a deadly Russian attack on a Ukrainian military base have told how "the sky turned red" as missiles struck the site near the Polish border.
At least 35 people died in the strike on the Yavoriv training base, near a major crossing point into Poland used by refugees from the conflict.
Russia fired around 30 cruise missiles at the base, outside the city of Lviv, early Sunday, the local governor said.
Hours after the attack, ambulances were still rushing to the scene.
Roads leading to the facility were blocked with checkpoints and authorities were conducting search-and-rescue operations.
Russian jets fired around 30 cruise missiles at the site, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, authorities in Lviv said. Most, though, were intercepted by the air defence system.
Video of the aftermath of the attack posted online and verified by the BBC showed a huge crater at the site and thick smoke billowing from a massive fire at a small building nearby.
Dukhnych Vitalii, a 19-year-old student who lives in a nearby apartment complex, said "the night sky turned red" as the attack happened. "We can't hear the air raid sirens in this area. We woke up when we heard the sound of the first explosion. We went to the bunker," he said. "It looked scary."
His 25-year-old cousin was training at the facility, Mr Vitalii said, and his family were still trying to contact him.
Another resident, Nadin Berezovska, said she could see the fire from her parents' flat, where she had been living after fleeing the country's capital, Kyiv. "It was very scary. We're in shock," Ms Berezovska, a 39-year-old photographer, said.
"Now we realise that it doesn't matter where you live," she said. "We aren't safe. How can Poland be safe?"
The base has previously been used for military training of Ukrainian troops, often with instructors from the US and other Nato countries. It was not immediately clear whether foreign instructors were at the centre when it was hit.
The attack is significant because the base, one of Ukraine's largest military facilities, is located just 25km (15 miles) from Poland, a Nato member. The border with Poland is a vital route for refugees, but also for weapons being sent by countries in the military alliance - which have included anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.
It is also the first major attack in western Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion of the country, on 24 February. The region has become a hub for millions of people escaping the war in other areas, and around 2.6 million have left Ukraine so far.
"We're very scared," Yurii Vitiv, a 50-year-old driver, said. "Until this morning we had hoped that the war would stop on eastern Ukraine."
Hours earlier, Sergei Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, said Moscow had warned the US that "pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn't just a dangerous move, it's an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets".
Despite sending weapons, Nato has, so far, ruled out a request by Ukraine's government to establish a no-fly zone over the country, saying this would trigger a wider conflict with Russia.
But Andriy Sadovyy, the mayor of Lviv, said such a measure was necessary to prevent Russia from carrying our aerial strikes.
"Europeans, understand this situation: it's easy to talk and drink coffee and say they're deeply concerned... but every hour the skies are not closed, the Russians are killing civilians and children," he told the BBC in an interview.
"We need closed sky. We need decision today. We need bullet-proof vests today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow Russian missiles [will] end up in the European Union."
Ms Berezovska, the photographer, agreed. "In Ukraine, there's no place to hide," she said. "We ask Nato to close the sky."
Are you or your family in Lviv? Please share your experience if it is safe to do so by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60728208 |
Saudi Arabia executes 81 men in one day - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The range of charges on which the men were convicted included terrorism and holding "deviant beliefs". | Previous executions have triggered protests like this one in New York three years ago
Saudi Arabia says it executed 81 men on Saturday - more than during the whole of last year.
The group - including seven Yemenis and one Syrian national - were convicted of "multiple heinous crimes", including terrorism, state news agency SPA said.
Some were charged with belonging to the Islamic State group (IS), al-Qaeda or the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Rights organisations say many do not receive fair trials in Saudi Arabia, an allegation the government rejects.
According to SPA, the latest group had been tried by 13 judges and gone through a three-stage judicial process.
They were accused of plotting attacks on vital economic targets, killing or targeting members of the security forces, kidnapping, torture, rape and smuggling weapons into the country.
Saudi Arabia has one of the highest execution rates in the world - fifth in a list compiled by Amnesty International, the other four being China, Iran, Egypt and Iraq. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-60722057 |
Ukraine war: Pictures of war intensifying in third week - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Images from Russia's invasion of Ukraine show a conflict turning deadlier nearly three weeks on. | It's already week three of the Russian invasion - and the scenes below are becoming all too familiar across Ukraine.
Cities across the country often wake up to the haunting call of air raid sirens and skies filled with traces of rockets, missiles and artillery strikes, like this one from Baryshivka, east of the capital, Kyiv.
Russia may have been slow to advance inside Ukrainian territory, but the shelling has been intense.
The Russians say they are hitting military targets - the scene below is from a storage facility in Kalynivka, in the centre of the country.
Ukrainians, however, say the occupying force has been aiming for civilian targets indiscriminately.
One of the worst-hit cities has been Kharkiv in the east.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville says entering the centre of the city is almost like entering another world. Few neighbourhoods have escaped some kind of damage.
The relentless Russian shelling has meant that most of the 1.5 million population has fled.
Early in the mornings, queues can still be seen at pharmacies, banks, supermarkets and petrol stations, as those who stayed behind stock up on supplies, our correspondent says.
A huge logistical and humanitarian effort is going on behind the scenes to keep Kharkiv running - these volunteers below are preparing food for the defenders, and others who may need it.
And the toll is mounting by the day. Even though official figures are patchy, thousands are believed to have lost their lives or sustained serious injuries, many losing limbs in the shelling.
The situation is said to be dire in the port city of Mariupol, which has been surrounded by Russian troops for nearly two weeks.
Authorities say nearly 1,600 have died as a result of Russian shelling alone - and they are unable to collect the bodies amid unrelenting Russian firepower to force it to surrender.
Not far from Mariupol, another battle is being waged to conquer the city of Mykolaiv. Cluster bombs have been used, but the locals are resisting.
However, Mykolaiv's governor Vitaly Kim is loath to celebrate prematurely, telling the BBC's Andrew Harding, "We are winning this fight, but not this war."
Dnipro was hit for the first time on Friday - a day when Russia expanded its strikes from east, where the city lies, to the west.
The capital city is bracing for the worst. Ukrainian forces have been holding the Russians back for days on the outskirts.
And in Kyiv city itself, volunteers have been preparing - digging trenches and building barricades. The city is turning into a fortress, says our correspondent there Jeremy Bowen.
Others are trying to contribute to the effort. Field kitchens have sprung up in various neighbourhoods.
However, for many Ukrainians - women and children only, as men have to stay behind to fight - the scramble to flee has become the norm. More than 2.5 million people have now left the country.
The shock is all too real. Here in Moldova, Smadar the Clown tries to lighten the mood with this mock interview with a young Ukrainian girl at a refugee centre in the country's capital, Chisinau.
Culture is randomly a victim of the war, too, as seen in too many conflicts this century alone. The picturesque western city of Lviv has been left untouched, so far.
But it is preparing - the checkpoints on main roads and the soldiers on the streets can be seen by all - but some preparations are taking place behind closed doors, says the BBC's Joel Gunter.
In Lviv's galleries, museums and churches, a huge operation is under way to safeguard the city's cultural heritage, he says. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60720169 |
Ukraine war: Evacuations 'extremely difficult' amid shelling - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | New attempts are under way to get civilians out of bombed Ukrainian cities as Russia's attack intensifies. | Desperate new attempts to evacuate civilians from towns and villages around Kyiv are under way
Fresh attempts to evacuate civilians from cities under siege in Ukraine are being complicated by constant Russian shelling, Ukrainian officials say.
Humanitarian corridors are being set up from Mariupol, Sumy and towns and villages outside the capital Kyiv.
But Ukraine officials accused Russian forces of firing on a convoy of women and children from Peremoha village, near Kyiv, killing seven.
And the evacuations come as fighting continues around Kyiv and other cities.
"A column of civilians, exclusively women and children, was fired on by the occupiers," a statement by Ukraine's military intelligence service said. "The result of this barbaric act was seven killed, one of whom was a child."
The BBC's Abdujalil Abdurasulov in Irpin, one of the towns outside the capital being evacuated, earlier reported that it was not possible to say that the humanitarian ceasefire was holding because of explosions and artillery fire, including from the Ukrainian side, could still be heard.
Regional officials also said that fighting in the area was continuing and that there was a constant threat of air attacks.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Abdujalil Abdurasulov is in Irpin, where people are forced to flee via a makeshift river crossing
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk later said that about 13,000 Ukrainians had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors on Saturday but that no one had managed to leave Mariupol.
The situation in Mariupol is particularly desperate after two weeks of bombardment, the UN has said, with little access to food, water and power.
"Medicines for life-threatening illnesses are quickly running out, hospitals are only partially functioning, and the food and water are in short supply," the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Deputy Mayor Serhiy Orlov told the BBC a convoy had left Zaporizhzhya for the city carrying aid and that it included buses for the evacuations.
Previously, he said, convoys were "not let through, they were bombed, the road was mined, there was shelling in the town".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 1,300 of his country's troops had died since the start of the Russian invasion.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, arguing that it felt threatened by a neighbour intent on joining Western-led organisations such as the Nato military alliance. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60721323 |
Under threat of Russian bombs, Lviv hides away its priceless heritage - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The picturesque western city of Lviv is racing to protect is cultural and religious artefacts. | Empty plinths and cabinets now line the large rooms of the National Museum of Lviv
In one room of the National Museum of Lviv, an enormous scaffold is bare. In another, brackets hang loosely from the walls. Plinths sit empty along the corridors and wooden pallets and cardboard boxes are strewn on the floors. The staff used whatever they could to pack away the museum's priceless artefacts in a hurry.
As Russian shelling has devastated other parts of Ukraine, the picturesque western city of Lviv has been left untouched, so far. But it is bracing for war. Some preparations you can see in the open - the checkpoints on main roads and the soldiers on the streets - but some are taking place behind closed doors.
In Lviv's galleries, museums and churches, a huge operation is under way to safeguard the city's cultural heritage. Thousands of artworks and artefacts have been carefully removed and taken to secret underground locations, or down to basement storage rooms.
The climate-controlled cabinets in Lviv's national museum now sit empty, their treasures hidden underground
Ihor Kozhan, the director of the National Museum of Lviv - the largest art museum in Ukraine - took the BBC on a tour of its now empty rooms, which looked as though they had been looted. Climate-controlled display cases, usually home to artworks, icons and manuscripts dating as far back as the 14th Century, were bare.
Nearly every one of the 1,500 artefacts on display has now been removed from the museum. The other 97% of the collection - 180,000 pieces in total - was already in storage in some form.
"Everything, everything is gone," Kozhan said.
"It is sad for me to be in these empty rooms," said Ihor Kozhan, the director of the museum
Despite overseeing the operation, Kozhan was amazed by the speed with which the 17th-century Bohorodchany Iconostasis - a grouping of religions paintings measuring 10m by 8m and one of the museum's most valuable pieces - had been dismantled by his team. It had taken six months to hang, piece by piece, he said, and less than six days to pull down from its scaffold and store away.
Constructed and painted over seven years beginning in 1698, the iconostasis represents the high watermark of the work of the icon painter Yov Kondzelevych. It has been in Lviv since 1924, then a Polish city, brought there by an archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
It was dismantled and hidden from the Nazis in 1939, forbidden from display during the Soviet era, painstakingly restored in 2006, and now dismantled once more.
Ihor Kozhan describing the Bohorodchany Iconostasis, one of the museums largest and most valuable pieces
There was no plan in place for the evacuation of the museum's artefacts before the invasion began two weeks ago, Kozhan said - not even after Russia began months ago to mass troops along Ukraine's borders.
"There was no plan because no one could imagine this would happen," he said. "We had no plan at all - not before the war, not even in December. You must understand, we did not believe it could come to this."
Territorial defence soldiers gathered outside a Lviv church where the statutes have been wrapped in protective fabric
Around Lviv, cultural and religious officials are running complex operations to wrap up statues, seal off stained glass windows and spirit away sacred artefacts.
In the city's main square, fountains with sculptures of Greek gods and goddesses have been wrapped in flame-retardant fabric and covered with scaffolds to protect them from falling masonry.
"At first it was a bit chaotic but it has become more organised," said Liliya Onischenko, the head of Lviv's city council heritage protection office.
"We are photographing everything before we take it away and we are photographing all the pieces in their hidden places," she said
Greek gods and goddesses on fountains in Lviv's town square have been wrapped and scaffolded
Onischenko said the priority was protecting the stained glass windows in the city's historical old town, a Unesco world heritage site whose architecture was built over centuries by different nationalities - Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, Armenians - as the region changed hands.
At the Armenian cathedral, a prized 15th-Century wooden sculpture of Christ on the cross was removed for the first time since World War Two and taken to a secret, safe place.
Other artefacts besides the sculpture have been removed, the deacon, Armen Hakopian said, but he would not elaborate. "What needed to be taken out was taken out," he said, with a smile.
The windows along the side of the 850-year-old Armenian cathedral are plain, because the original stained glass was blown out in the 1940s by German bombing. But above, stained glass remains in the cupola and the high parts of the church.
A stained glass window in the 14th-Century Armenian cathedral in Lviv, among those not destroyed during World War Two
The institutions of Lviv have had the benefit of time to prepare. And they may yet escape the violence. But there are grave fears for the cultural, religious and architectural treasures in the parts of Ukraine under attack.
There has already been significant damage. The stained glass windows and nave of the assumption cathedral in Kharkiv were damaged by Russian shelling. Russian troops have reportedly destroyed a 19th-century wooden church in the village of Viazivka in Zhytomyr. And a museum in Ivankiv, north of Kyiv, was razed, destroying 25 works by the Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko.
The stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals in Lviv's historic old town have been covered
Scaffolders in Lviv's historic old town preparing to cover more of the city's stained glass windows
Ihor Kozhan, the national museum director, said he feared that destroying Ukraine's cultural fabric was part of Russia's goal, and he feared greatly for Lviv.
"If the same damage is done here as in Kharkiv, Mariupol, it would be a terrible tragedy," he said.
"This is a place of historical memory. The museums here hold the history of the nation. They give us an understanding of who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
"Russia wants to destroy that."
A statue, too heavy to move underground, lies on the floor of the museum's atrium
The job of emptying the national museum was virtually complete by Wednesday - only a few cardboard boxes of manuscripts were left, near the doors, alongside a sculpture lying on the floor - one of several too heavy to move that will be protected in other ways.
The artefacts that have been moved underground are on a clock - too long there without adequate climate control and they would begin to degrade, Kozhan said.
And they would not probably not survive a direct hit, he said, with a long sigh, because the bunkers are not designed to withstand powerful bombs.
A picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary sits on an otherwise empty shelf in the National Museum of Lviv
"I hope we can bring them up soon," he said. "It is difficult for me to be here in these empty rooms and hallways. We could have walked the whole day here together looking at our history and our art."
Asked to estimate the total value of the museum's works, Kozhan declined.
"Of course there is no number," he said.
"If these things are destroyed they cannot be remade."
Correction 8 April 2022: This article has been amended after we mistakenly stated Lviv was part of Ukraine in 1924. It was in fact a Polish city at that time. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60707531 |
Roman Abramovich: Rabbi investigated over Portuguese citizenship - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Daniel Litvak helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain Portuguese citizenship. | A rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required.
Daniel Litvak was detained on Thursday as part of an investigation into how citizenship had been granted.
The naturalisation process of several Jewish people is being investigated.
On Friday, Mr Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Abramovich, 55, is the owner of Chelsea FC and he is one of seven oligarchs to be hit with fresh sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans.
The Premier League has disqualified him as a director of the club.
Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition.
Applicants for Portuguese citizenship via this route are assessed by experts at one of Portugal's Jewish communities in either Lisbon or Porto. Mr Litvak is the rabbi for the community in Porto (northern Portugal) and was responsible for assessing Mr Abramovich's application.
Mr Litvak was detained by authorities as he was preparing to travel to Israel. He was asked to hand over his passport and will have to periodically present himself to authorities.
Portugal's Judicial Police and public prosecutor said on Friday that there were suspicions of money laundering, corruption, fraud and falsification of documents in the process of of granting citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews.
Porto's Jewish community has denied any wrongdoing and said it was the target of a smear campaign. They added that Mr Litvak oversaw the department that grants certification of an individual's Sephardic Jewish heritage and the criteria used for granting someone Portuguese nationality had "been accepted by successive governments".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60724509 |
Indian evacuee: The kindness of Ukrainians saved my life - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | From an airstrike bunker to his mum's relieved hugs, Vishnu tells how he and his dog fled Ukraine to India. | Vishnu, pictured with his dog Leo, was studying medicine at university in Ukraine before Russia invaded
Smiling down the camera from his parents' home in southern India, with his dog Leo on his lap, it's hard to believe that only a few days have passed since Vishnu thought he was going to die as he sheltered from Russian shelling in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia.
Even though Vinnytsia is in western Ukraine, a long way from the Russian border, it has still faced attacks. Last week nine people died in a missile strike that destroyed the airport on the outskirts of the city, officials say.
Polla Vishnu Vardhan Rao, 21, is one of the tens of thousands of Indian students in Ukraine to have escaped the country since Russia invaded.
He says the kindness of Ukrainians is the main reason he is still alive.
Two weeks ago Vishnu had been enjoying life as a fourth-year medical student.
His days were spent attending classes at the university and in the city's hospitals, studying in the library, and swimming in the river with Leo.
"Ukraine is the most beautiful, peaceful country. In Vinnytsia there are so many peaceful places," Vishnu says.
But on 24 February, the day Russia's invasion began, he woke up to "blasting sounds, firing sounds".
He and his two flatmates, also Indian students, had no idea what was happening.
"We were very panicked," he says.
"I see outside the window some Ukrainians running with bags - I don't know where they are going."
He'd never heard the sound of air-raid sirens and didn't understand the accompanying announcements blared out in Ukrainian.
Luckily, Vishnu's Ukrainian neighbours could translate the warnings into English and explain that war had broken out.
"They [said] some planes and tanks came and are fighting Ukraine - so don't go out, please stay inside," he says.
Over the course of the next two days, Vinnytsia's sirens sounded every few hours, forcing Vishnu and his friends into the dark bunker beneath their apartment, which was full of rubble.
He couldn't sleep, so spent hours on the phone, trying to work out a plan to escape the city.
"I thought: 'Maybe I will die in this situation,'" he says.
This was the scene after a missile hit a building at the airport on the outskirts of Vinnytsia
One of Vishnu's friends managed to find a Ukrainian minibus driver willing to take them to the Romanian border 250km (155 miles) away.
The driver, whose normal job involved taking people on day trips out of Vinnytsia, was not yet ready to leave the country himself because his wife was ill. So he agreed to make the risky trip, for which the group paid him a total of 12,000 Ukrainian hryvnia (£300).
Vishnu says he owes this driver his life.
"I can't express - it's because of him, only, we got saved. I say to him thank you, from the bottom of my heart."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Indian students on the trauma of escaping Ukraine's war
Vishnu was worried pets might not be allowed on the border, so he left Leo with his Ukrainian teacher and boarded the minibus.
As the bus rolled through the roads of south-west Ukraine, Vishnu and his friends started to relax. There was one moment of tension when planes whizzed overhead - Ukrainian or Russian, Vishnu doesn't know - but for the most part they felt like they were moving to safety.
But the worst part of Vishnu's journey was yet to come.
Vishnu was among 20 Indian students taken to the Romanian border by a minibus driver from Vinnytsia
When the bus driver dropped Vishnu and his friends off, they joined a throng of hundreds of people trying to pass through a gate at the border.
Vishnu says only Ukrainians were being allowed through - and each time he got close to the crossing, guards would "drag" him to the back again.
After a whole day standing in an ever-growing crowd, Vishnu began to worry that he would never get through the border.
Pop-up cafes serving refugees had run out of food and drink, and Vishnu had finished the bananas and buns he'd brought with him as snacks.
Vishnu says the worst part of his journey was waiting to cross the border into Romania
Eventually he resorted to pleading with the guards to let him and his friends through.
"We [were] asking: 'Please let us pass, we [have been] standing for two days, we are getting pains, we don't have food, water.
So Vishnu passed through the border with a few of his friends - but 13 of his original group of 20 were left behind.
The Indian embassy in Romania helped Vishnu (left) fly home after 30 hours on the border
Speaking of how he felt in that moment, Vishnu said: "Personally, I'm happy. But so many friends aren't. I'm selfish, at this point. We have to be selfish because it's our own life. We can't risk our life for our friends - so we moved on."
Everyone in Vishnu's group of 20 has since made it home to India.
But he remains worried about other friends in Kyiv - also Indian students - who are stuck in their bunkers as Russian forces continue to bombard the capital city with attacks.
Vishnu is now safe at his parents' home in southern India, but hopes one day to return to Ukraine
With the help of the Indian embassy in Romania, Vishnu was taken by bus from the border to Bucharest airport. His worried mum and dad smothered him with hugs and kisses when he landed at Rajiv Gandhi Airport in Hyderabad.
A few days after he arrived to parents' house in Suryapet, Telangana, Vishnu was also reunited with his beloved Leo.
His teacher in Ukraine had fled with her family to Moldova but took Leo on the bus all the way to Bucharest, from where the dog was flown to India.
Vishnu says he and Leo couldn't have got home without the kindness of the people of Vinnytsia.
"I'm lucky, so many guys helped me - my neighbours, the bus driver, my teacher. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-60650018 |
War in Ukraine: Russian forces accused of abducting second mayor - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | The news comes as Ukraine says Russia is trying to create "pseudo-republics" to break up the country. | Ukraine's foreign minister said Yevhen Matveyev was abducted by "Russian war criminals"
Ukraine's government has accused the Russian military of abducting another mayor in an area that it has captured.
Yevhen Matveyev was seized in the southern town of Dniprorudne, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, accusing Russia of "terror" tactics.
Earlier, Russia installed a new mayor in Melitopol, after allegedly abducting the city's previous incumbent.
Ukraine's president also accused Russia of trying to create "pseudo-republics" to break his country apart.
In her first public appearance, Melitopol's newly installed mayor Galina Danilchenko urged residents not to take part in "extremist actions" and declared her main task was construction of "basic mechanisms under the new reality".
Hundreds of people took part in a protest outside the city hall on Saturday to demand the release of previous incumbent Ivan Fedorov, who had refused to co-operate with Russian troops since they took the city on the third day of the invasion.
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Mr Fedorov was last seen on Friday evening being dragged away from the city's crisis centre by several armed men with a bag over his head.
Ukrainian officials shared a video of the incident and said the armed men were Russian soldiers.
"We are not co-operating with the Russians in any way," Mr Fedorov had told the BBC earlier in the week. "They have not tried to help us, they cannot help us, and we do not want their help."
Russian authorities have not commented on his disappearance, but the prosecutor's office of the Russian-backed breakaway eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk has reportedly accused him of "terrorist activities".
CCTV image from the video allegedly showing the mayor being marched away
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded Mr Fedorov's immediate release and asked the leaders of Israel, Germany and France to put pressure on Russia to free him.
In his latest video address on Saturday night, Mr Zelensky said Russia was to create "pseudo-republics" in Ukraine.
He praised those refusing to collaborate in the Russian-controlled Kherson region.
The council there had earlier adopted a resolution reaffirming that it "has been, is and will be an inalienable part of the united state of Ukraine" in response to what it said was a Russian plan to stage a referendum on the creation of a "people's republic".
Mr Zelensky also warned "certain figures" of dire personal consequences of any collaboration - an apparent reference to Ms Danilchenko. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60725962 |
Ukraine: Ambassador to UK calls for more support and says his country will fight - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Vadym Prystaiko tells a Downing Street rally his country will fight and will bring Putin down. | The Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko addressed the crowd
The Ukrainian ambassador to the UK has called for Britain to do more to help his country.
Vadym Prystaiko, addressing a Downing Street rally, called for more support, weapons and humanitarian assistance as Russia continues its invasion.
Hundreds gathered at the rally with chants of "stop Putin" being heard and calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
The UK has rejected a no-fly zone over fears it would start a Europe-wide war with a nuclear-armed power.
"We need support, we need weapons, we need humanitarian assistance," Mr Prystaiko said.
He added: "We will fight. We will bring [Putin] down."
Demonstrators shouted "stand with Ukraine" and "shelter our sky", and held banners with "stop Putin" written in mock blood.
Some in the crowd called for a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine, while others wanted the UK to take in more refugees.
Some protesters were calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine
Campaign group London Euromaidan, set up by Ukrainians living in London, organised the protest. They want the UK to expel Russian companies and oligarchs that support Putin's regime from London.
It comes as Ukrainian cities face heavy shelling from Russian forces, including at a military training base near Poland.
Katya, a Ukrainian attending the protest, told the BBC more help was needed for Ukrainian refugees, including those who do not have family ties in the UK.
She said: "A lot of people just lost their homes, just help them to live in these difficult times...
"Already more than two million people have left Ukraine. Countries such as Poland take a lot of refugees and it has become a humanitarian catastrophe.
"I think the UK should allow more people to come and stay here."
Katya, originally from Ukraine, said more help was need for refugees
The protest follows criticism of the government - including from its own MPs - over the speed and scale of its response.
The government has offered households in the UK £350 a month to open their homes to tens of thousands of people that could come fleeing war in Ukraine.
A separate Ukraine protest also took place outside the BBC's headquarters, near Oxford Circus, and was heading to Parliament Square.
On Saturday hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside Downing Street. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60729468 |
Michael Conlan 'all good' after Leigh Wood retains WBA 'Regular' title with brutal knockout - BBC Sport | 2022-03-13 | Leigh Wood produces a brutal last-round knockout of Michael Conlan to retain his WBA 'Regular' featherweight title amid worrying scenes. | Last updated on .From the section Boxing
Leigh Wood produced a brutal last-round knockout of Michael Conlan to retain his WBA 'Regular' featherweight title amid worrying scenes in Nottingham.
The powerful punch sent Conlan through the ropes and on to the floor and he was later carried from the arena on a stretcher and taken to hospital.
Conlan posted a video on Instagram on Sunday morning saying "I'm all good".
England's Wood had himself been knocked down in the first round and was losing before the late knockout.
Wood, who stopped his celebrations as his opponent received immediate medical treatment, told broadcaster Dazn immediately after the fight: "I just hope Michael is all right; I can't celebrate until I know he is.
"He is so tough and it was a bad knockout so I just want to see he is all right."
And Belfast fighter Conlan gave an update on his condition from hospital hours later, saying his CT scans were clear.
"Congrats to Leigh Wood, congrats to his team, that was the best shot of the night he got me with at the end," he said. "But it is what it is, I'll be back."
On Twitter, he followed up with: "Definitely want a rematch."
Conlan's words on Sunday morning will come as a huge relief for all concerned.
Wood was in tears at the post-fight news conference and admitted: "I'm in an emotional state and there have been some tears.
"I heard he is up and talking but I would like to see him."
Promoter Eddie Hearn called Wood's win "one of the greatest comebacks" but added "we're all praying for Michael".
"It looked a masterclass from Michael and coming into the 12th I could not see a way Leigh could turn the fight around," Hearn said.
"Michael was two ahead going into the last round - Leigh had to knock him out in the 12th and he did.
"I would love to celebrate but all our thoughts are with Michael."
Wood, 33, won the 'regular' version of the WBA title with a points win over China's Xu Can in July at Matchroom's Fight Camp, staged in Hearn's garden in Brentwood, Essex, because of Covid-19 restrictions.
Wood was set to fight at his hometown venue on the undercard of Carl Froch's IBF super-middleweight world title fight against Lucian Bute 10 years ago, but his bout did not go ahead.
However, Wood, who was in the crowd that day cheering on his fellow Nottingham boxer as he beat Bute with a fifth-round knockout, called the opportunity to fight in front of a crowd of just under 10,000 people at the same venue, the Motorpoint Arena, "a fairy tale".
His hopes nearly ended inside the opening three minutes when he was caught late in the first round by a brilliantly timed and brutally powerful overhand left.
Previously unbeaten, Conlan was fighting for a world title in his 17th professional fight after a glittering amateur career that earned him an Olympic bronze medal and gold medals in both the World and European Amateur Championships and was close to winning the fight in the second.
But Wood showed great character and desire, despite suffering a cut over his eye in the fourth round, as both men repeatedly traded blows in a hugely entertaining clash, which was described as the "best fight I've ever seen" by two-weight former world champion Carl Frampton.
Wood gradually started to work his way back into the fight, aided by some great shots to Conlan's body, before the away fighter was judged to have been knocked down in the 11th, despite arguments from his corner, who told referee Steve Gray their fighter had slipped.
But, after one minute 25 seconds of the final round, the fight ended in dramatic circumstances. Wood caught Conlan with a glancing blow to the head. Conlan dropped his arms, looking exhausted, and Wood landed the knockout blow.
The WBA 'super' featherweight belt is vacant, Mexican Emanuel Navarrette, is the WBO champion, and Mark Magsayo of the Philippines holds the WBC crown after ending the long reign of American Gary Russell Jr with a majority points decision win in January.
But Wood will be very keen to watch the fight for the IBF title as Spanish title holder Kiko Martinez takes on England's Josh Warrington in Warrington's home city of Leeds on 26 March.
If Warrington beats Martinez for the second time in his career, that could set up an all-English world title fight at a stadium, with Leeds United's Elland Road and Nottingham Forest's City Ground potential venues.
Hearn said: "If Leigh Wood fights in Nottingham again it will be at the City Ground - that has been his dream for a long time."
Caoimhin Agyarko extended his professional record to 11 wins from 11 contests.
He was never in trouble against Mexican Juan Carlos Rubio, who showed great courage to reach the final bell.
Two judges gave Agyarko every round (100-90), and the third judge called it 98-92, as the Belfast fighter kept hold of his WBA international middleweight title.
Former women's super-featherweight world champion Terri Harper got back to winning ways after stepping up to lightweight with a big points win over Argentina's Yamila Belen Abellaneda.
Harper, 25, said she was "embarrassed" by her loss to Alycia Baumgardner in November, which saw her relinquish the title she had held since July 2019.
Harper started well against Belen Abellaneda but sustained a bad-looking cut over her left eye in the third round.
Belen Abellaneda kept coming forward but took a lot of punishment with Harper having success with lefts to the head and body and some powerful uppercuts on her way to a deserved win.
Irish lightweight Gary Cully maintained his unbeaten record with his 14th professional win as he knocked out Miguel Vasquez in five rounds after earlier putting him down in the third. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/60724637 |
'We are not co-operating': Life in occupied Ukraine - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Ukrainian cities are now occupied by Russian troops, and residents are not making them feel welcome. | The scene in Melitopol. "We have not stopped protesting," one resident said
In the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol on Monday, the mayor Ivan Federov sat down at his desk to send out his daily Facebook update.
He told his followers that the Russian forces occupying the city had now taken control of the city's communications network, so they needed to be wary of what they heard on TV and the radio.
How many people would see his warning, he didn't know. Melitopol's internet connection had also all but disappeared, making it nearly impossible to reach people inside by WhatsApp or Telegram call, or stay connected for more than a few minutes.
The ordinary phone lines were no longer an option, Federov told the BBC, when the Telegram app finally connected. "We cannot use," he said. "Too easy for the Russians to listen in."
When the invading forces took control of Melitopol a week ago they ransacked the mayor's offices, Federov said, exiling his team to another location where they are attempting to continue running their city.
"We are not co-operating with the Russians in any way," Federov said emphatically. "They have not tried to help us, they cannot help us, and we do not want their help."
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has claimed he is liberating historically Russian lands and speakers from a Nazi regime. But in Melitopol and a string of other mainly-Russian speaking southern and eastern cities, his forces have found themselves treated as occupiers.
Russian military vehicles are seen on the street in Kherson, south-eastern Ukraine
"There are protests in Melitopol every day," said Yuliya Kovaliova, 33, who before the invasion helped run her family business of electronics stores.
"At some point the Russian army started shooting at us and one man got shot but we have not stopped protesting," Kovaliova said. "We are not afraid to protest because we are together. We are afraid to walk alone at night, but we are not afraid to protest."
About 5,000 people gathered in Melitopol's central square on Tuesday, Federov reckoned, despite the shooting last week, which wounded a man in the leg. Videos have surfaced showing protests in occupied and part-occupied cities and towns across the region - Kherson, Berdyansk, Starobilsk, Novopskov. The BBC reached residents and local mayors to try to understand the situation inside.
"I don't know how to count the number of people protesting, I thought it was 2,000 at least," said Yunona, a 29-year-old IT worker in the southern city of Kherson. "One of our friends was beaten and taken by the Russian soldiers and people got so angry they chased the occupiers down the street and took him back."
The Russian troops in Kherson looked young and uncertain, said Olha, a 63-year-old English teacher. "We go to the protests every day and they are close to us but they look afraid," she said. "We are all just waiting for the Ukrainian army to kick them out."
Berdyansk in the south-east has also seen protestors take to the streets
Reports of serious violence against Ukrainian protesters have been limited, for the most part Russian forces seem to be tensely watching. But some local mayors were facing a dilemma - how much to encourage their citizens to take to the streets.
"Our people need to protest but they also need to save their lives," said Federov, the Melitopol mayor. "I have asked them - please do not go near the Russian soldiers, go around them."
Vadym Gaev, the mayor of Novopskov, a town near Donbas, told the BBC there had been daily protests but they had stopped three days ago when Russian soldiers shot three protestors - non-fatally - and beat another. Gaev said the Russian troops told an intermediary they had authorisation to shoot protesters, so there should be no more protests.
Novopskov appeared to be an example of a strange and uneasy scenario playing out in some parts of Ukraine, where local Ukrainian officials were continuing to function in some form but Russian military forces were in control. In the occupied city of Starobilsk, nearby, mayor Yana Litvinova was also working remotely, she said.
"A new 'administration' has been appointed. The only thing we know is that it is going around government buildings and asking people to co-operate, and they are refusing."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. President Zelensky: We will not give up, and we will not lose
Gaev and his team left town when Russia seized Novopskov, in order to keep his administration running - a move he said had divided residents, some of whom accused him of a betrayal while others said they were grateful he was still able to work.
Two residents of Kherson told the BBC they thought the mayor there had betrayed the city by co-operating with Russian forces - an accusation circulating in Telegram chat groups. Two others said he was simply doing what he could to ensure the city kept running.
The mayor of Kherson, Igor Kolykhayev, told the BBC: "If I had betrayed the city would I still be here? I am in the office every day, working with my team to keep things running."
The priority was to restart food production and get people back to work, Kolykhayev said.
"We are running out of food and there is no aid coming in, it's just not happening," he said. "So we are telling everyone in the city: make any food you can make, manufacture anything you can manufacture."
Most residents who spoke to the BBC from the occupied cities said food was fast running out.
"Shops are almost empty. You can buy the things that are left but very few things are left," said Yuliya Kovaliova, the electronics shop owner from Melitopol. "Pharmacies are empty and my mother can't buy her heart medicine."
Kovaliova said that two Russian trucks with humanitarian markings came into the city centre last week and attempted to hand out food, but they also brought a film crew. Nearly everyone refused, she said.
"Later we saw on it on TV. Russia has taken over the TV towers here so we only have one Russian channel being shown now and it was showing people taking the food and saying how thankful they are to the Russian humanitarian convoy."
Maxim, a 22-year-old piano teacher in the city, also described the supposed humanitarian convoy. "They were filming and people said actors arrived to take the food," he said. Yunona, the IT worker in Kherson, said she saw the same thing there, and Ukrainian media reported on the phenomenon in Berdyansk.
Ivan Federov, the mayor of Melitopol, said he had heard about these 'humanitarian convoys' too. But there were "no real Russian trucks and no real Russian food," he said.
"They could open humanitarian corridors at any time to allow food and medicine in, but they do not want to. We know, we have tried."
On Tuesday afternoon, as usual, Federov put out his daily Facebook update, appealing to anyone in the city who could afford it to pay their utility bills and congratulating Ukraine's women on International Women's Day. "I'm sure the war will end soon and we will celebrate all our holidays in a peaceful, Ukrainian Melitopol," he said.
Are you in Ukraine? Is your family? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60670173 |
Why I want to share my home with a Ukrainian refugee - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | John Rutherford has already hosted two refugees, and is open to offering a room to a Ukrainian. | John Rutherford and his wife have previously hosted refugees from Ethiopia and Iran
People in the UK are being asked to offer a spare room to Ukrainian refugees. But what is it like sharing your home with someone who has fled war or persecution?
For the third time in a year, John Rutherford and his wife Sue are considering opening up their south London house to a refugee.
"We have a big house, my kids have left home," says John. "It's not a great hardship for us to make some space for a refugee."
In 2021, they hosted one person from Ethiopia and one from Iran, each for a couple of weeks while they awaited longer-term accommodation during the asylum application process.
And now, he is ready to open his five-bedroom house again.
He says: "It was the sheer numbers involved that made me want to help. The fact that this is only down the road... means there is even more obligation for us to be hospitable.
"There could be four or five million people looking for places to stay, so the UK has to do its bit and the British people have to do their bit."
He says the system for Ukrainian refugees will involve a bigger commitment than his Ethiopian and Iranian guests - the government are asking for people to offer a place to stay for at least six months.
But John says hosting refugees can be very rewarding.
"I really enjoy meeting people and talking to people from different cultures," he says. "I just found the experience absolutely fascinating, talking about their country, their experiences, their culture."
He says his refugee guests wanted to be useful. The Ethiopian made a meal for his hosts to introduce them to his country's cuisine, while the Iranian repeatedly offered to use his professional skills to repair things around the house.
But he advises anyone considering being a host to be "patient and understanding" - and to learn as much about their guest as they can, in order to offer them the right kind of environment.
"A lot of refugees will be severely stressed, maybe they even have PTSD," John says.
"Chances are, refugees have had terrible experiences, and you have to know when to give them some space and some peace and quiet, or when they might want companionship."
Efrem, from Ethiopia, shared his country's cuisine with John and Sue when he stayed with them
He suggests finding out about their interests; whether they want to attend a church or other religious services; whether they have hobbies; or whether they prefer peace and relaxation or keeping busy.
But with the Homes for Ukraine scheme requiring people in the UK to identify a named refugee they can host, John questions how many people who might want to help - but don't have a personal connection with a Ukrainian - could be matched with someone.
On previous occasions John hosted refugees, it was arranged by the charity Refugees At Home, which visited him to check on the accommodation being offered and asked about any house rules.
He then received information about the refugee they hoped to place with him - with details such as their age, country of origin, and whether they spoke English.
John says he is concerned about the lack of a similar system for Ukrainians, with the government suggesting people in the UK could make contact with refugees via social media. "I am concerned about what support mechanism there will be," he says.
Since the Ukraine scheme was announced, John has contacted Refugees at Home, and urges anyone considering opening their doors to see it as an opportunity.
"It might be challenging," he says, "but it can also be very enriching." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60727293 |
Unions warn of job losses if rail firms close ticket offices - BBC News | 2022-03-13 | Train operators are talking to unions about how to address job changes in a bid to modernise the railways | Fewer people are commuting to work even after work-from-home guidance was lifted
Jobs on the railways "will need to change to become more passenger-centric", according to the group that represents train operators.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) was responding to reports that hundreds of rail ticket offices could potentially close as part of a plan to modernise the railways.
RDG said it is talking to unions about how to address job changes.
One union said it will ballot staff if compulsory redundancies are used.
A spokesperson for the RDG, which represents the rail industry, said: "The pandemic has been an unprecedented financial shock to the railway.
"While no decisions have been taken over ticket offices, with the acceleration of changing travel patterns and more passengers migrating to digital technology, many jobs will need to change to become more passenger-centric.
"Train companies are working with unions on how to address those changes, while making sure the industry takes no more than its fair share from the taxpayer," they added.
The bosses of rail operators are in talks with the government about the closures, which may result in redundancies if staff cannot be moved into other roles, the Sunday Times reported.
During the pandemic, train passenger numbers collapsed and so did revenues.
Passengers numbers are still recovering, with big changes such as hybrid working affecting commuter levels and season ticket sales.
To ensure the railways kept running during the pandemic, the government stepped in to finance the industry.
Recently, rail minister Wendy Morton told the BBC that taxpayers had supported the railways with more than £14bn of funding, and that taxpayers had to get a good return on what they had invested.
As part of plans to modernise the railways, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps committed to modernising ticketing with more digitisation, as part of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail.
Train tickets purchased online can be collected at self-service kiosks in train stations
Manuel Cortes, TSSA general secretary, said: "Grant Shapps needs to realise that this daft plan is likely to result in the threat of compulsory redundancies, and if that happens we will be issuing ballots for industrial action.
"Closing ticket offices will not only be opposed by the unions but the public at large.
"Shapps must stand up to the faceless accountants in the Treasury because a properly run and fully functioning railway is vital in building an economic recovery from Covid.
"The government should share their plans in detail with us and commuters now if they are so sure that closing ticket offices and taking £2bn a year out of our railways is the best way forward.
Railway ticket offices are run by train operating companies in different stations, and not by Network Rail. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60729901 |
Scans reveal how Covid may change the brain - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Even after a mild infection, the overall size of the brain had shrunk, researchers found. | Catching Covid may cause changes to the brain, a study suggests.
Scientists found significant differences in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans before and after infection.
Even after a mild infection, the overall size of the brain had shrunk slightly, with less grey matter in the parts related to smell and memory.
The researchers do not know whether the changes are permanent but stressed the brain could heal.
The study is published in the journal Nature.
Lead author Prof Gwenaelle Douaud, from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, at the University of Oxford, said: "We were looking at essentially mild infection, so to see that we could really see some differences in their brain and how much their brain had changed compared with those who had not been infected was quite a surprise."
The UK Biobank project has followed the health of 500,000 people for about 15 years and has a database of scans recorded before the pandemic so provided a unique opportunity to study the long-term health impacts of the virus.
But the researchers do not know whether the changes are reversible or truly matter for health and wellbeing.
"We need to bear in mind that the brain is really plastic - by that we mean it can heal itself - so there is a really good chance that, over time, the harmful effects of infection will ease," Prof Douaud said.
The most significant loss of grey matter was in the olfactory areas - but it is unclear whether the virus directly attacks this region or cells simply die off through lack of use after people with Covid lose their sense of smell.
It is also unclear whether all variants of the virus cause this damage.
The scans were performed when the original virus and alpha variant were prevalent and loss of smell and taste a primary symptom.
But the number of people infected with the more recent Omicron variant reporting this symptom has fallen dramatically.
'Your mind is what is being exercised'
Paula Totaro lost her sense of smell when she caught Covid, in March 2020.
"When it was gone, it was like living in a bubble or a vacuum - I found it really isolating," she told BBC News.
But after contacting the charity AbScent, which supports people who have lost their ability to smell and taste, she began smell training.
"What smell training does - particularly if you do it twice a day, regularly, religiously - is it forces you to take the smell, allow it to go back into your nose and then to think about what it is that you're smelling," she said.
"And that connection between what's in the external world and what goes into your brain and your mind is what is being exercised."
Ms Totaro has now recovered most of her sense of smell - although she still has trouble identifying what different smells are.
"It's a mix of joy that the sense has come back but still a little bit of anxiety that I'm not quite there yet," she said.
UK Biobank chief scientist Prof Naomi Allen said: "It opens up all sorts of questions that other researchers can follow up about the effect of coronavirus infection on cognitive function, on brain fog and on other areas of the brain - and to really focus research on how best to mitigate that."
Prof David Werring, from the University College London Institute of Neurology, said other health-related behaviour could have contributed to the changes seen.
"The changes in cognitive function were also subtle and of unclear relevance to day-to-day function," he said.
"And these changes are not necessarily seen in every infected individual and may not be relevant for more recent strains." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60591487 |
Ukraine war: PM calls for 'step-by-step' move from Russian fuel - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Meanwhile, the German chancellor says there is no alternative to Russian supplies at the moment. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Boris Johnson says no European country had done more than the UK to settle vulnerable people since 2015
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for a "step-by-step" move away from dependence on Russian oil and gas as a result of the Ukraine war.
After talks with the Canadian and Dutch PMs, Mr Johnson said nations have to work together to secure alternatives.
Canada's PM Justin Trudeau said Europe did not want to repeat its mistake of being too dependent on Russia.
But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned forcing a boycott now would have "enormous consequences".
And in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz cautioned against banning Russian oil and gas.
In a statement, he said Europe had "deliberately exempted" Russian energy from sanctions because its supply cannot be secured "any other way" at the moment.
Meanwhile, Russia warned that oil prices could surge to $300 a barrel and it might close the main gas pipeline to Germany if the West halted oil imports over the invasion of Ukraine.
"Foregoing Russian oil will have catastrophic consequences for the world market," said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.
Mr Johnson's call came at a Downing Street news conference after he, Mr Trudeau, and Mr Rutte discussed new sanctions against Russia and aid for Ukraine.
Asked about claims that the US was in active discussions with European nations about banning imports of Russian oil, Mr Johnson said Western allies are "moving very, very fast" - and things which weeks ago would not have been considered are "now very much on the table".
He said he would set out a new energy supply strategy in the coming days, saying the UK was looking at using more of its own fossil fuels.
But he said the UK was not abandoning its commitment to cut carbon emissions.
The UK gets less than 5% of its gas from Russia - but for EU countries the figure is about 40%.
Mr Rutte told the news conference the change would have to be "diligent and not overnight", combined with a faster uptake of renewable energy.
An immediate change would "basically undermine supply chains the world over, particularly in Europe," he said, adding: "It would also have an impact on Ukraine itself."
Mr Johnson also announced a further £175m of UK support for Ukraine and Mr Trudeau said Canada would sanction 10 more Russian oligarchs and officials.
Later the prime minister joined a call with Mr Scholz, US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, where they said they were determined to continue raising the cost on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Johnson said previously unthinkable options for Western leaders were now "very much on the table"
Western nations are facing calls to do more as Russia continues its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
The UK has also been criticised after it emerged that only about 50 refugees have been granted visas to enter the country as of Sunday.
During a visit to an RAF station with his fellow leaders, Mr Johnson said the UK was "processing thousands" and would be "very generous" to refugees, but would not let people in without any checks.
The government has so far announced two main schemes for people fleeing Ukraine to come to the UK - one which allows family members of people settled in the UK to join them and the other which allows organisations to sponsor a Ukrainian's entry.
Home Office sources have said they are in the early stages of exploring a scheme to provide humanitarian access to people fleeing the conflict.
But a senior government source told the BBC the focus was still on the two schemes for Ukrainian refugees that have already been announced, and the need for further action was being kept under review.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Home Office was in a "complete mess" and the government must establish a "simple route to sanctuary", while Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the UK was "not doing anywhere near enough" to help refugees.
More than 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began, according to the UN refugee agency.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says the Home Office is in a "complete mess" over how Ukrainians can get to the UK
Meanwhile, MPs are expected to vote later on the Economic Crime Bill, which aims to make it easier to sanction individuals.
In recent days, the government has announced asset freezes and travel bans on a number of oligarchs - but has faced accusations of being too slow to sanction those with links to President Putin.
The bill will set up a new register that will mean foreign owners of UK property must declare and verify their identities with Companies House.
MPs are expected to vote through all stages of the bill in a single sitting.
Labour said it would support the legislation, but wanted the proposed timeframe for property owners to register to be cut from six months to 28 days. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60642926 |
Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensky to address UK MPs in Commons - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The Ukrainian president will speak via video link to British politicians on Tuesday. | The Ukrainian president - pictured here with Boris Johnson in February - will make a statement to the Commons by video link
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address British politicians via video link later, as his country battles the Russian invasion.
Mr Zelensky's speech will be broadcast to MPs in the Commons at 17:00 GMT using TV screens being installed in the chamber.
Members of the House of Lords are also expected to watch from the public gallery.
MPs will be able to follow a live translation over special headphones.
After Mr Zelensky's speech, Boris Johnson and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will respond.
Meanwhile, the prime minister is hosting meetings in London with the leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The series of meetings will be to discuss the UK's support for security in central Europe.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: "Every parliamentarian wants to hear directly from the president, who will be speaking to us live from Ukraine, so this is an important opportunity for the House.
"Thanks again to our incredible staff for working at pace to make this historic address possible."
His counterpart in the House of Lords, Lord McFall of Alcluith, said: "Today we are not members of the House of Lords or Commons, we are parliamentarians, united in solidarity with Ukraine."
Mr Zelensky, a former comedian and actor, has been the figurehead of Ukraine's struggle since Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded the country last month.
Last week, he received a standing ovation when he spoke, via videolink, to the European Parliament.
Boris Johnson pledged support for European countries as he opened the meetings on Tuesday
Mr Zelensky has also spoken frequently to Prime Minister Boris Johnson since the conflict started.
On Monday, the president promised to punish anyone who commits atrocities against the Ukrainian people.
"There will be no quiet place on Earth for you, except for the grave," the president said.
On Monday evening, Mr Johnson spoke with US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with the four leaders agreeing to maintain pressure on Russia to isolate Mr Putin diplomatically and economically.
"The prime minister stressed that our goal must be ensuring Putin's failure in this act of aggression against Ukraine," said a No 10 spokeswoman.
At Prime Minister's Questions last week, MPs stood to applaud Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's ambassador to the UK, who watched parliamentary proceedings from the Commons gallery.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60655003 |
Aldgate fire: Large blaze at high-rise London tower block - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Large flames and smoke were seen billowing out of the 17th floor of the high-rise building. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
About 60 people were evacuated from a tower block in east London after a large fire broke out.
More than 125 firefighters tackled the blaze at the high-rise block of flats and offices on Whitechapel High Street, in Aldgate East, on Monday afternoon.
Large flames could be seen fanning out of the 17th floor of the building and footage showed burning debris had fallen to the ground.
London Fire Brigade (LFB) said a woman had to be given "fire survival advice" until firefighters got to her as she was trapped on the 17th floor.
Station commander Chris Jenner, who was at the scene, said: "Fire crews used a fire escape hood to help lead the woman to safety via the internal staircase."
A fire escape hood offers up to 15 minutes protection from four of the main fire gases (carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen chloride and acrolein). They do not provide oxygen but temporarily filter toxic smoke to make breathing easier, LFB said.
The fire was on the 17th floor of the block of flats and offices
London Ambulance Service said two patients were taken to hospital while two others were checked over at the scene.
The blaze also affected balconies on the 18th and 19th floors.
It was put out by about 19:00 GMT, LFB confirmed.
Lynn Ling, 25, lives on the 20th floor of the tower block with her husband Yuri.
Ms Ling said: "I did not hear an alarm. I think there was a fire alarm on the ground floor but I could not hear it clearly on the 20th.
"I went out of my door but I found there was smoke in the corridor so I went downstairs. I forgot to take my coat. It was very scary."
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The fire service said the cause of the blaze was not yet known.
Mr Jennar said: "We mobilised a 64 metre turntable ladder to the scene. This is the tallest firefighting ladder in Europe and allowed us to get water on to the fire from outside the building.
"The professionalism, hard work and quick actions of control officers and firefighters limited the damage to the block and prevented serious injuries."
The building is a 22-storey mixed use development of commercial office space and 207 residential apartments, according to property developer Hondo Enterprises, which sold the building in 2018.
It is located over Aldgate East Tube Station between the City - the financial heart of London - and neighbourhoods Aldgate and Spitalfields.
More than 125 firefighters were sent to the blaze
Smoke could be seen for miles around
The building is close to Aldgate East Tube station
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The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60652664 |
Ukraine: With placards and tears, Poles are greeting refugees like family - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | A Polish couple, messaged from Taiwan, have come to meet a Ukrainian refugee - welcome to Przemysl. | A soldier serves soup to a Ukrainian woman in the building of the main railway station of Przemysl which has been turned into a temporary reception centre for refugees
Refugees from across Ukraine are being welcomed as they arrive in the Polish border town of Przemysl, but there are concerns about how the relief effort can be maintained if the war goes on.
"We have had 180,000 refugees in 10 days. If it carries on like this, we'll have had half a million people coming through by the end of the month."
In the packed train station at Przemysl, eight miles from the Ukrainian border, mayor Wojciech Bakun is both proud of what his town - population 60,000 - is doing for Ukraine but also apprehensive about what could lie ahead. He is an imposing figure, dressed in fatigues as he strides through the elegant 19th Century station where waiting rooms and offices are now stacked with food supplies, bottled water, nappies and donations of clothes, and where Ukrainians are sitting on chairs or on the floor, surrounded by luggage, pushchairs and pets.
Wojciech Bakun (L) is the mayor of Przemysl which has seen 180,000 arrivals in 10 days
The relief effort here is dependent on volunteers, who are currently in their hundreds. Can that be sustained? "Probably not," says the mayor. "They are ready for a week or two, maybe a month, not for a long period of time. So we are thinking about the longer term and talking to international organisations about how to manage this if it goes on for longer."
In the main ticket hall people who have travelled long distances are holding up bits of paper and cardboard with scribbled signs: "Hostel for eight in Gdansk"; "Can take a family - Warsaw"; "40 places available on bus to Germany". Przemysl is an obvious focal point because it's on the main line across the border, with trains coming in from Lviv, in the west of Ukraine. They are listed on the arrivals board but there's no certainty any more about the timetable.
Signs offering help hang up around the station
Many refugees have travelled to Przemysl with their pets
Next to the platform where the Ukraine trains come in, I asked a Polish couple, Pawel and Magda, who they were waiting for. "A woman with three cats," they said. It turned out that they had seen a Facebook post from a Ukrainian woman living in Taiwan, desperate to find someone to meet her 75-year old mother Lyudmila and give her a bed for a night or so before she could travel on.
Pawel and Magda had been waiting for five hours already. Did they know what train Lyudmila would be on? No, and her phone had run out of battery. How would they recognise her? Pawel took out a piece of paper from inside his coat with her name on it but said they'd be looking out for someone with three cats.
It's been striking for me to see how emotional many Poles are about the situation in Ukraine. There were tears in Pawel's eyes as he spoke about why he and Madga were prepared to stand in the station for so many hours, ready to take not only Lyudmila but others who might arrive with her. He is not the only one to have reacted that way: several people I met here broke down when I asked why they were moved to open their homes or help in other ways.
There are long links of history that straddle today's border between the two countries and familial and linguistic links too, but Poles also feel strongly because they can imagine how it feels to be up against the Russians. It is only just over 30 years since the collapse of communism here and there are longer memories too of Soviet occupation. And not everyone has confidence that being under the Nato umbrella, as Poland is, is sufficient protection from Vladimir Putin.
Even for Ukrainians who arrive here with a plan about where they ultimately want to get to, there is a palpable sense of shock about their changed circumstances. One woman in her 30s, who was with her 10-year old son Igor, said she wanted to get to Spain but that right now she was in a panic. It was getting dark. "We will find somewhere to sleep and then in the morning we will think about what to do."
Ilona, standing nearby, was part of a bigger group - her mother, aunts, cousins and their children. No-one had suitcases, just backpacks and carrier bags in which I could see food and toys. "We wanted to be able to move easily," she said. She is only 22, a final-year medical student who doesn't know when or how she will complete her training to be a doctor, and with her father left behind in Kyiv.
"The people of Przemysl are warm-hearted," the mayor told me, and that is without a doubt true of attitudes to Ukrainians. But last week the local police said there had been an attack on three African refugees by four perpetrators, and another incident of verbal abuse. The mayor blamed a campaign of disinformation, with messages circulating suggesting local women were not safe and that people shouldn't leave their homes. The authorities are now appealing for everyone to stay calm and making it clear that there has been no increase in violent incidents.
A special room has been set up in the railway station only for refugee mothers and children from Ukraine
If Poles are emotional, many Ukrainians are too - there is relief at making it to safety but also deep appreciation at what they find here - the offers of transport, accommodation, the donations, the support. In the large, high-ceilinged, gilded room that was the station's cafe someone has set up a toy kitchen and a Wendy house in one corner. Two mothers who have just arrived with three young children settle down gratefully next to it, relieved to have something to keep the little girls and the toddler boy occupied. But as soon as they are, and the women have a moment to themselves, I can see how drawn their faces are and how much is on their minds.
Olha is Ukrainian but lives in Germany - she's here to pick up her mother and offer a ride to anyone who needs it
There is however one bright smile among those at the station. It's Olha's - she is Ukrainian and has been living in Germany for years, travelling here from Heidelberg to pick up her mother. With the Ukrainian flag draped around her shoulders, she is holding up a sign offering rides to other arrivals too. "I want to tell you that from my family only my mother is prepared to leave Ukraine," she says. "Everyone else is staying to defend the country. And this is the end of Putin." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60641217 |
War in Ukraine: 'It's hell, it's really hell' - Families flee bombs in Irpin - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Silent and weeping, a stream of civilians with backpacks try to outpace the Russian shells. | Residents of Irpin are fleeing the Russian assault on their city, which is half an hour's drive from Kyiv
They came on foot, in an endless stream - trying to outpace the Russian shells laying waste to their hometown. There were families with children in strollers clutching stuffed toys, young mothers with babes in arms, and the elderly moving as fast as their years would allow. Most were silent. Some were weeping. At the edge of Irpin there was urgency, panic, and anguish. It felt like we were witnessing the death of a city.
"Everything is bombed," said Valentina, as she rushed past us, fleeing her home and her life with just a single bag over her shoulder. "There are no lights," she said, "there's been no electricity, no gas, and no internet for two to three days. People are sitting in the basements and kids are sick there."
Russian forces are already inside the city.
"Part of Irpin was captured by Russian invaders but part of the city is fighting and not surrendering," said the mayor, Oleksandr Markushyn, in a video he posted on social media.
Those trying to flee are still being targeted, as the mayor himself saw yesterday. "The Russian invaders fired on our local civilians," he said. "A family died. This shell, this mine hit, and in front of my eyes two children and two adults died."
It seems clear that the Russian strategy is to terrorise the residents of Irpin into submission and empty the city - a tactic Moscow has used elsewhere from Grozny to Aleppo. The residents who remain have endured days and nights of relentless bombardment. We could hear the assault during an earlier visit on Saturday. The soundtrack was the same today, except maybe louder. And this time we could also hear grad rocket fire, and occasional gunshots.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Jeremy Bowen was on the frontline in Irpin, as residents came under Russian fire while trying to flee.
"Tell everyone to close the skies, urgently, we need it," said Andrei as he dashed past - with his pet poodle - pleading for a no-fly zone. "Close the skies - please. It's hell, it's really hell. The Russian soldiers are bombing civilian houses. The Russians are not fighting the army. They are fighting anyone."
He knew it was time to go when the Russians arrived on his street. "We saw the armoured vehicles near our house. They passed by. Then the tank stopped and blew up a house near me. So, I think we are lucky, we are all really lucky that we are here."
Andrei says Russian tanks blew up a house close to his
The 36-year-old is - or was - an events manager. 'I make the people laugh, with shows, concerts. But I think I have no work now in Ukraine," he said. Then he joined the crowds heading for minibuses that are screeching to and from the edge of the city, ferrying people, and pets, to the railway station in Kyiv - a lifeline for those trying to escape to western Ukraine.
Getting out of Irpin means picking your way over a mass of rubble, and jagged boulders and metal bars that now litter the bed of the Irpin river. This is the remains of a bridge blown up by Ukrainian forces to block - or at least slow - Russian armour reaching the capital. Planks of wood are balanced precariously on the wreckage. One elderly man almost tumbled from a plank into the water. Then he summoned his courage and shuffled forward. Nearby a woman lay flat on the ground on the riverbank - conscious but immobile. We were told she had fallen. No one knew how to try to move her.
Ukrainian forces blew up the bridge themselves, hoping to slow the Russian advance
As we filmed a gunshot rang out. A Ukrainian soldier took a screaming young boy by the hand and ran with him to cover. Two others grabbed a buggy. Another helped a woman on a crutch, who was breathless with exertion.
A blackened building was still smouldering, neatly framed by the golden onion domes of the church directly behind (which appeared to be intact). This was an image of Ukraine, past and present, of war and peace.
The golden domes of a church rise just behind a damaged building
The country's future is painful to imagine, but it's already being sketched out in cities under bombardment from Kharkiv to Mariupol, where cold, frightened civilians cower in basements, or try to run for their lives.
And what we witnessed in Irpin could be a chronicle of the capital foretold. Kyiv lies straight down the road, about half an hour's drive away - a distance of 26km or 16 miles. That's why Irpin matters so much to both sides.
There's no doubting the fighting spirit here, and the determination to resist. But military experts say a broken bridge won't be enough to stop the Russians, and there is no doubt that they have Kyiv in their sights. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60651801 |
Protests across Russia see thousands detained - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | People have been held in 53 cities, from St Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the east. | Riot police at a demonstration in Moscow on Sunday
More than 4,300 people were detained at anti-war protests across Russia on Sunday, rights groups and Russian authorities say.
Some 1,700 people were detained in Moscow alone, Ria news agency reports, citing the interior ministry.
The OVD-Info rights group says detentions took place in 53 cities.
Although protests have become increasingly restricted in recent years, numerous rallies have taken place across Russia since the invasion.
In the last 11 days, more than 10,000 people have been detained at protests, OVD-Info says.
"The screws are being fully tightened - essentially we are witnessing military censorship," Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info's spokeswoman, told Reuters news agency from Tbilisi in Georgia.
"We are seeing rather big protests today - even in Siberian cities, where we only rarely saw such numbers of arrests."
A policeman by a bus of detained protesters in St Petersburg
A woman being led away in Moscow
Earlier this week, government critic Alexei Navalny - who is in jail on fraud charges - called for daily demonstrations against the invasion, saying Russia should not be a "nation of frightened cowards".
However, a number of new laws have made it harder to protest in Russia in recent years, rights groups say.
"Although Russian legislation avoids explicitly using terms like 'permit' or 'ban'... it effectively requires organisers to seek authorisation for their assemblies," Amnesty International says.
According to Russian human rights group OVD-Info - which was set up in 2011 - more than 2,500 people were detained across Russia on Sunday.
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It publishes the names and locations of those arrested, as well as total figures.
"Each police department may have more detainees than published lists," it says. "We publish only the names of those people about whom we know for certain and whose names we can publish."
Protesters in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in front of a Lenin statue
Thousands of people protested against the invasion in Brussels on Sunday
Protests did not just take place in Russia on Sunday, but around the world. In Kazakhstan - an ally of Moscow - a peace rally was permitted in Almaty, attended by around 2,000 people.
Anti-war protesters also took to the streets in cities like Brussels, in Belgium, and London.
In Ukraine itself, Russian troops occupying the southern city of Nova-Kakhovka opened fire to try to disperse demonstrators.
A video from the city, in the Kherson region, shows protesters calling for the Russians to "go home" amid the sound of gunfire and stun grenades. The demonstrators appear to hold their ground.
One report said five people had been injured.
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Energy prices: NI oil prices up 35% since Russia invades Ukraine - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | In the week after the invasion, the average price for 900 litres of oil went up by more than £200. | Northern Ireland's oil prices have shot up more than 35% in the week after Russia invaded Ukraine - so what does it mean for the UK's most oil-dependent nation?
More than two-thirds of homes in Northern Ireland rely on oil for heating - the highest percentage in Western Europe - compared to just 4% in England and Wales.
In the seven days after the invasion, the average price for 900 litres of home heating oil went up more than £200, from £555.72 on 24 February, to £758.11 on 3 March, figures from the Northern Ireland Consumer Council show.
Meanwhile the number of households in fuel poverty in Northern Ireland is predicted to have doubled, from 22% to more than 40%, according to National Energy Action (NEA).
It has also prompted a run on home heating oil, with some companies limiting their sales, or selling beyond their stock levels, so they will likely be selling at a loss if prices continue to rise.
Pat Austin, NEA's Northern Ireland director, said the charity was seeing more people who had completely run out of fuel.
Two weeks ago they topped up oil for a man in Belfast whose tank had been empty since last August, she said.
The man, aged in his thirties, had been rationing his electricity by using his kettle to bathe - turning on the immersion heater for a shower just once a fortnight.
The number of households in fuel poverty in Northern Ireland is predicted to have doubled
As of Friday, a spot check of oil prices in Northern Ireland by the Consumer Council puts the average for 900 litres at £758.11.
That's a 44% rise since 3 February, when the average price was £527.97.
"These figures have to be putting fuel poverty in the region of 40% easy; it is a perfect storm," Ms Austin said.
"We're looking at emergency interventions. We're dealing with people who are out of electricity overnight, we are now having to send people on to food banks."
Tensions between Russia and the West were already driving power prices up and that's accelerated since Russia invaded Ukraine last week, pushing them to 10-year highs.
Russia is one of the world's largest energy producers.
Major oil and gas companies, including BP and Shell, have also announced plans to exit Russian operations.
And price rises are expected to continue in the near-term.
Oil prices have been climbing, like gas and electricity, but because oil is unregulated in Northern Ireland, cost increases are passed on directly to the buyer, Peter McClenaghan, director of infrastructure and sustainability at the Consumer Council, said.
"Russia supplies about 12% of global oil supplies so that's really worrying for Northern Ireland consumers because Northern Ireland consumers pay straight away what the world market is saying.
"Whereas with gas there's a time period before they can pass on increases, in oil that doesn't happen so those spikes in prices have been seen in Northern Ireland straight away, so it's a really significant, negative change for Northern Ireland consumers and one that's happened just virtually overnight."
Russian gas flows through pipelines across eastern and central Europe
In 2016, when fuel poverty was last measured in Northern Ireland, it was at 22%, but estimates from the Housing Executive for in 2017 and 2018 put it as low as 17% and 18%.
But in 2009, fuel poverty levels were double that at 44% - and that's where NEA expects it to be in Northern Ireland now.
Donna Lennon gets her oil via a social enterprise buying group, which reduces costs for its members by buying in bulk, and allows smaller purchases so customers avoid the higher costs of ordering low volumes directly from the supplier.
Without it, the single mother of two, who lives in Newcastle, County Down, said she would be in fuel poverty.
Northern Ireland also has several oil buying clubs, which work on a similar principle.
Donna Lennon says she relies on the saving she gets buying in bulk via Fuel Round
She said the discount she gets is the difference between running oil and heating the whole house, and using only her fireplace.
"Especially when you have a young family and your oil is on a lot, I would have to choose between that and wood, and just light a fire and sit in the sitting room.
"It could be the difference between heating the bedrooms and sitting in the living room for the fire."
James McGovern, from the buying group Fuel Round in County Down, said households were reducing the size of their orders as costs increased.
"Overall demand has noticeably risen since the Ukraine crisis, but the per-order volume is markedly down, as households grapple with increased costs."
This week some Northern Ireland oil companies cut the volume of each sale.
Others sold beyond their stock levels, meaning they could lose money on orders when prices rise beyond what quoted for.
Damian Fusco, from Bangor Fuels, said: "The general public is under the impression that we have large stocks of oil - stock generally lasts days not weeks.
"Most heating oil retailers would have a volume of stock on their premises which they replenish daily - that volume is sold.
"I'm taking orders for more than week away which I haven't got the stock for, so it may by the time I get to that call I may have ended up having to pay more than that for the oil."
Northern Ireland imports all its oil via a handful of multinational suppliers.
That means local firms have no power to increase their orders to match demand.
On Tuesday, none of Omagh firm MAC Fuels' three suppliers would deliver oil, its company director Yvonne Wilson said.
They limited their sales to 400 litres this week.
"One customer has told me that she is working just to eat and heat, while another said its a case of keeping the house warm while his children get ready for school and bed. When the children aren't at home he just wears a coat rather than waste any oil -this is the reality of how families and the elderly are struggling at the minute." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60571922 |
Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak investigated for wearing pro-war symbol on podium next to Ukrainian - BBC Sport | 2022-03-07 | Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak is being investigated after wearing a national war symbol on his leotard as he stood next to a Ukrainian rival on the podium in Qatar on Saturday. | Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak is being investigated after wearing a national war symbol on his leotard as he stood next to a Ukrainian rival on the podium in Qatar on Saturday. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) said it had opened disciplinary proceedings against Kuliak for his "shocking behaviour" at the Apparatus World Cup in Doha. Kuliak earned bronze in the parallel bars final and displayed a letter 'Z' taped to his chest as he stood next to gold medal winner Illia Kovtun of Ukraine. The letter Z has become symbolic with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has been seen painted on the side of tanks and military vehicles, as well as being worn by pro-war politicians in Russia. This weekend was the final opportunity for Russian and Belarusian gymnasts to compete after their countries were sanctioned by the FIG as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From Monday, Russian and Belarusian athletes, officials and judges will not be allowed to take part in FIG competitions or FIG-sanctioned competitions.
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The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/gymnastics/60641891 |
Covid: Fourth jab for Scotland's vulnerable, and testing wind down fears in Wales - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Five things you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this Monday morning. | Here are five things you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this Monday morning.
Covid boosters are being offered to vulnerable people in Scotland. The fourth jab will be given to older care home residents, over 75s and people over the age of 12 with suppressed immune systems. The rollout follows the latest guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
The Covid testing system will be wound down in Wales over several months as the nation plans to scrap its remaining rules at the end of March. But there are concerns about this process, with ministers saying they are "reluctant" for it to happen. That's according to Wales' health minister Eluned Morgan who said one concern was whether the system would be "ready to spring back" if there was a new wave of Covid. Welsh Secretary Simon Hart said testing was now "more targeted".
A school has created a wellbeing suite, which employs dedicated staff to help pupils as the country emerges from the pandemic. Head teacher Claire Huddart, from Horizon Community College, in South Yorkshire, says the mental health of her students is the "worst it has been", and she's spent more than £500,000 from her school budget on support. Take a look.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A Barnsley school headteacher says her pupils' mental health is "the worst it's been"
Before the pandemic, the Muslim funeral ritual of washing and shrouding a person who has died before burial was carried out by older volunteers. But many of those are still shielding so are unable to perform the religious obligation called Ghusl. A scheme's been set up to teach younger volunteers how to carry it out. Read more here.
What happened to the sounds of city life when the pandemic hit and restrictions were imposed? Our absence meant the hustle and bustle was gone and replaced by different, more natural, sounds. Have a listen to what a PhD student found in Belfast city centre.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. During Covid lockdown, sounds of human activity were replaced by natural sounds, such as birdsong
Here's what we know about the long-term safety of vaccines.
You can find more information, advice and guides on our coronavirus page.
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Zeebrugge disaster: Memorial service for 193 victims marks 35 years - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | People gather at a church in Kent to mark the 1987 ferry disaster which claimed 193 lives. | The Herald of Free Enterprise was bound for the Port of Dover on 6 March 1987 when it capsized
Bereaved families and survivors of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster gathered to mark its 35th anniversary.
The Herald of Free Enterprise was bound for the Port of Dover on 6 March 1987 when it capsized at Zeebrugge harbour in Belgium, killing 193 people.
A remembrance service was held at St Mary's Church in Dover, and the names of all the passengers and crew who lost their lives were read out.
Beverly Willows said it still upsets her mother too much to talk about the loss of her sister
Ms Willows, from Mansfield, said: "It doesn't get easier. There's not a day goes by when you don't think about it.
"I daren't talk to my mother about it. I never mention my sister, because of the upset.
"Sometimes you get angry because it could have been avoided. But you can't change it now."
The ship overturned too quickly for lifeboats or life jackets to be used
The roll-on roll-off ferry operated between Dover and Zeebrugge.
That afternoon it set off without the bow doors being closed and became unstable. Vehicles rolled from port to starboard and back and the ship capsized within 90 seconds.
There was not enough time to send an SOS signal, lower the lifeboats or deploy life jackets.
Sailors' Society chaplains comforted and supported families and survivors affected that night. Every year since, the charity has organised the memorial service near the port.
Last year the service was carried out remotely via an online video, due to the pandemic, but this year families were able to gather again.
Kim Spooner said those who lost loved ones in the disaster had become like a family
Kim Spooner was eight when she lost her aunt and uncle in the disaster, after the pair made a trip using an offer in a national newspaper.
Ms Spooner, who travelled from Manchester for the service, said: " Over the years we've all become like a family, with our collective grief and experience.
"It's nice to come together every year and remember those who died, honour those who were injured and survived and thank those who helped on the night and the rescue workers who did such a fantastic job."
Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-60640660 |
Iowa tornadoes: Seven people killed, including two children - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Seven people are dead after tornadoes packing winds of up to 138 mph (222kph) tore through Iowa. | At least seven people are dead after three tornadoes tore through central Iowa, including two children and a family of four. The most powerful tornado generated wind gusts of up to 138 mph (222kph) and left over 50 houses damaged and destroyed. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60655723 |
Dizzee Rascal: Grime artist guilty of assaulting former partner - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The grime artist was found guilty of assaulting his former partner in London last year. | The chart-topping rapper had denied assault by beating
Grime artist Dizzee Rascal has been found guilty of assaulting his former partner.
The rapper, whose real name is Dylan Kwabena Mills, attacked Cassandra Jones at a property in Streatham, south London, in June 2021.
The 37-year-old, of Sevenoaks, Kent, "barged" his way into the house, put his forehead against Ms Jones' and "pushed her to the ground".
The couple had two children before they split up in February 2021.
At Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday, the musician - whose chart-topping singles have included Bonkers and Dance Wiv Me - had denied assault by beating.
The court heard Mills "barged" his way into the property on 8 June, with his son under his arms before "screaming and shouting" and banging his own head on the fridge three times.
He then approached Ms Jones, "put his forehead against hers and pushed her around the room" and then "pushed her to the ground", the court heard.
He had accused her of causing injuries to his arm.
The grime artist was made an MBE for services to music in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2020
The court heard how Ms Jones began filming him but he took her phone from her and then took the phone from her mother, Dawn Kirk, who was there.
The shouting became so loud it alerted two neighbours and police were called.
When they arrived, Mills said "I'm the aggressor", but later gave a prepared statement in a police interview, denying the allegations and claimed he had been assaulted by Ms Jones, the court heard.
Delivering her verdict, District Judge Polly Gledhill said Mills had lost his temper in an argument over child contact and finances.
She added he was "abusive and aggressive" and "assaulted her as outlined by the Crown".
Following the verdict, Mills took a camera from a Press Association photographer outside the court and threw it into a road, smashing it.
A Press Association photographer said Mills smashed his camera outside court
Photographer, James Manning, said: "He came out of the court, I was taking his picture, just standing still on the corner.
"He then pushed my camera into my face, which then caused it to fall to the floor, at which point he then picked it up and then threw it across the road. It smashed into a lot of pieces.
"He was angry, he came straight out of the door, didn't say anything, didn't say anything until the point at which he pushed my camera.
"I think he said something like 'get away' or 'get out of my face' or something along those lines."
Det Con Hannah Barton said she wanted to "praise the woman who Mills assaulted - she has shown immense strength throughout this investigation".
"No woman should be subjected to violence of any form and I would urge anyone who finds themselves in this position to trust police - we will investigate and you will be provided with the support you need to help you through," she added.
Mills released his debut album, Boy In Da Corner, in 2003, and is due to release his seventh album later this year.
In 2020, he was made an MBE for services to music in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
He will be sentenced at Croydon Magistrates' Court on 8 April.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60653545 |
Don't go to Ukraine, military boss tells Britons - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The head of the UK's armed forces also rejects Ukraine's call for a no-fly zone, saying it will not help. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: We have a direct line to Moscow, says UK chief of defence staff Adm Sir Tony Radakin
Britons should not head to Ukraine to fight and should instead help however they can from the UK, the head of the armed forces has said.
Speaking to the BBC, Adm Sir Tony Radakin rejected Ukraine's call for a no-fly zone saying it would not help tactically and might escalate fighting.
He urged the West to have confidence that they were doing the "right thing".
The invasion was not going well, Russia was becoming less powerful and it cannot continue, he said.
On Britons wanting to join the fight, Adm Radakin said that the "sound of gunfire" was not "something you want to rush to", and urged people to support Ukraine in sensible ways from the UK.
Asked whether Foreign Secretary Liz Truss had been right to say she would support any Briton who wanted to fight, he said: "We can all understand that sentiment, and that sentiment needs to be channelled into support for Ukraine."
Senior UK military officers are genuinely worried that some British troops - regulars or reservists - might try to join the battle in Ukraine and, in doing so, risk handing Russia a propaganda victory.
Last week the Chief of Defence People, Lt Gen James Swift, sent out a message to the chain of command stressing that UK military personnel were "not authorised" to travel there.
He said that if there was any suspicion that troops were trying to make their way to Ukraine then it should be reported immediately to the Service Police.
The message warned that if serving British military personnel went to fight in Ukraine then they were putting not only their lives in danger but they also risked giving "the mistaken perception" to Russia that Britain had sent in troops to engage in hostilities.
Adm Sir Tony Radakin has now underlined that message, saying it would be "unlawful and unhelpful".
At present the MoD does not believe there are any examples of full-time British military personnel going absent to fight in Ukraine. But it's harder for them to keep tabs on reservists who often also have another career.
In his interview with the BBC's Sunday Morning show, the defence chief painted a picture of Russian forces suffering from heavy losses and low morale, with kit failings and a massive military convoy stalled outside the capital, Kyiv.
The Kremlin has lost more troops in a week than the UK did in 20 years in Afghanistan, he said, and some "lead elements of Russian forces" have been decimated.
He described stories of soldiers whose morale had been so knocked they had abandoned the convoy destined for Kyiv to camp in the forest.
Ukrainian servicemen near Kyiv - a huge convoy of Russian troops has stopped its advance outside the capital
On Saturday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a fiery speech saying the West's reluctance to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine had given Russia "a green light" to continue bombarding towns and villages.
But Adm Radakin insisted such an intervention would not help.
"The advice that we, as senior military professionals are giving our politicians, is to avoid doing things that are tactically ineffective and definitely to avoid doing things that tactically might lead to miscalculation or escalation."
He said most of the shelling and destruction was coming from artillery, not Russian aircraft, and to police a no-fly zone could mean taking out Russian defence systems and shooting down Russian aircraft - leading to an escalation, he added.
Speaking later on the same programme, UK deputy prime minister Dominic Raab said he understood Ukraine's cri de coeur but insisted the West had been clear all along that it would not engage in direct military confrontation.
That would give succour to Russian President Vladimir Putin's argument that he was in conflict with the West, he said.
Mr Putin said on Saturday that any such move to implement a no-fly zone would be seen "as participation in an armed conflict by that country".
The West has to maintain calmness and responsibility and not react rashly to the latest "bizarre or ridiculous comment" from Mr Putin, he said.
"We are prepared, we are professional armed forces, we will approach this conflict with that level of professionalism and responsibility that you would expect.
"We will also be incredibly confident in our ability to face down President Putin," he added.
He gave an insight into relations with his counterpart, Gen Valery Gerasimov, head of Russian armed forces, explaining the Ministry of Defence has a direct line to Moscow's operational headquarters.
It is tested every day, he said, and he has used the line to tell Gen Gerasimov they need to speak. "I'm waiting for him to come back to me," he added.
Adm Radakin was also asked whether the West would know beforehand whether Mr Putin would use nuclear weapons.
He said he did not want to go into detail but there had been a "remarkable" level of intelligence in the months leading up to the invasion.
"There are some more discreet elements in terms of warning signs if this was going to start to chart a path towards nuclear escalation," he said. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60637185 |
Blue and yellow flowers as Queen meets Trudeau - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The Queen returns to in-person meetings with what appears to be a subtle show of support for Ukraine. | The Queen posed in front of blue and yellow flowers, the national colours of Ukraine, as she held her first in-person meeting at Windsor Castle since falling ill with Covid.
On whether this was a symbolic show of support, a Royal source indicated it was unlikely to be accidental.
The 95-year-old monarch was pictured smiling warmly at the Canadian PM as he held her right hand in both of his.
Justin Trudeau was visiting for talks with the UK PM about the Ukraine war.
The monarch, who is also Queen of Canada, tested positive for Covid-19 on 20 February and has carried out only "light duties" since then, cancelling several events.
She carried out her first virtual engagements on 1 March before Monday's face-to-face meeting.
During the audience at Windsor Castle's Oak Room, Mr Trudeau was also pictured laughing as the Queen gestured towards herself.
The Queen was not seen with the walking stick which she has been using recently.
Asked later at a Downing Street news conference about his meeting with the monarch, Mr Trudeau said: "She was as insightful and perspicacious as ever, very interested in what is going on, asked me all sorts of questions about Canada.
"We had a really useful - for me anyway - conversation about global events, as we always do."
As well as this gesture of support for Ukraine at the meeting, the Queen previously made a donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal to help people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
She has two high-profile events scheduled in the coming weeks: the Commonwealth Service on 14 March and the Duke of Edinburgh's memorial service on 29 March, both at Westminster Abbey.
Last month, she reached her Platinum Jubilee after 70 years on the throne. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60650285 |
Ukraine: Angry Zelensky vows to punish Russian atrocities - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The Ukrainian president says the country will not forgive or forget those who murder its civilians. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Video shows people running to escape Russian shelling in Irpin, just outside of the capital Kyiv
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said everyone who commits atrocities against Ukraine's civilians will be punished.
He said Ukrainians would not forgive or forget, and accused invading Russian troops of deliberate murder.
"There will be no quiet place on Earth for you. Except for the grave," the president said.
Ukrainian officials say Russia is striking civilian targets around the country, including hospitals, nurseries, and schools.
But Russia denies targeting civilians, saying it is carrying out a "special military operation" against Ukrainian "nationalists" and "neo-Nazis".
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told the BBC that, after "strong resistance" from the Ukrainian army, there was an "enormous operation" by Russia against civilians.
On Sunday alone, a family of four were killed when Russian forces fired shells at people fleeing the conflict in the town of Irpin, north-west of Kyiv.
And in the port city of Mariupol, promised evacuations were cancelled on both Saturday and Sunday amid fresh attacks.
The city council there said Russian shelling had made safe movement impossible. Russia has blamed Ukrainian forces.
The city is now in its sixth day with no running water, no power, and no sanitation. Food and water are fast running out.
Moscow announced it would open new evacuation corridors at 09:00 local time (07:00 GMT) in Mariupol and other cities. However, the routes published by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency show some of the corridors end in Russia and Belarus.
The corridor from Kyiv will lead to Russian ally Belarus, and civilians from Kharkiv will only have a corridor leading to Russia.
Corridors from the cities of Mariupol and Sumy will lead both to other Ukrainian cities and to Russia, the AFP news agency reports.
Ms Stefanishyna spoke to the BBC from a sandbagged room on Sunday morning
In a video address to mark the Orthodox Church's Forgiveness Sunday, Mr Zelensky said that instead of forgiveness there would be a day of judgment.
"We will not forgive, we will not forget, we will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war on our land," he said.
He said Russia had announced shelling of defence targets which were built in cities in Soviet times.
"Thousands of people work there. Hundreds of thousands live nearby. This is murder. Premeditated murder," he said.
He also condemned Western governments for failing to speak out against the plan.
The World Health Organization said health facilities were being attacked, with its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying they had caused "multiple deaths and injuries".
The British government has accused Russia of targeting populated areas "in multiple locations", noting in an intelligence update that it had "previously used similar tactics in Chechnya in 1999 and Syria in 2016".
On Sunday, UN monitors said 364 civilian deaths had been confirmed in Ukraine since the invasion began on 24 February, but the real figure was likely to be "considerably higher".
The UNHCR said more than 1.5 million people had fled Ukraine since Russia invaded.
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna - who was speaking to BBC TV's Sunday Morning programme - accused Russia of "military tactics right in the cities of Ukraine", adding they were carrying out a "terroristic plan", with attacks coming from the air and also by land.
"Shelled hospitals, the shelled houses for kindergartens and schools, and the ordinary households," she said. "This is how the reality looks."
She said Ukraine was seeing "another wave of implementation of this terroristic plan of [the] Russian Federation".
Ms Stefanishyna claimed Russia was suffering "enormous losses" of soldiers and equipment, but this "does not deter Russia".
"It only encourages further aggression," she said.
Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure - such as schools and hospitals - is against the Geneva Conventions, which are treaties agreed by all countries that are supposed to regulate war.
As well as the WHO, other non-government organisations have also reported attacks on civilian targets.
Amnesty International says it has verified various attacks - including cluster munitions hitting a kindergarten and nursery, and a ballistic missile hitting a hospital.
Are you personally affected by the issues raised in this story? If it is safe to do so email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
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If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60638042 |
Ukraine: 'We try to tell them the truth' - parenting in wartime - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | In Ukraine, families are having to adapt to being at war. But what do you tell the children? | A little girl clutches a doll at a checkpoint on the Ukraine-Slovakia border
In Ukraine, families are having to adapt to a terrifying new reality. How do you tell young children that you're at war?
Ten days ago Anton Eine, a science fiction writer in Ukraine, had been due to launch his latest book - but then the Russians invaded. Now, he says, none of that matters any more. He is hunkering down in Kyiv with his wife and their three-year-old son.
They live in a 24-storey apartment block with an underground car park, where people are sleeping on the concrete floor. It's bitterly cold, and Anton is worried about what might happen if the building collapses, so he and his family feel safer in a square concrete well between the lifts. That has become their sanctuary during the constant air raid sirens. They bring toys and their son's tablet and make sure he sits in the corner, which is the safest place.
Anton says their son is worried, and asks lots of questions. "Yesterday, my wife went downstairs and when she returned, he was asking, 'Mum, did they shoot you?' and she said 'No baby', and he said, 'Will they shoot me? I don't want them to go bang-bang'."
Anton says some parents have sewn badges with their child's blood group on to their clothes and are teaching them their home address and parents' names, in case they are separated. And while they hide in shelters or try to board trains to safety, many parents are also talking to each other about how the war is affecting their children, and how best to protect them from trauma.
"Some parents tell the kids it's a game," says Anton. "We are trying to tell our son the truth, but in a softer way, adapted to the mind of a three-year-old kid.
"We tell him that bad soldiers attacked us and the good soldiers, the ones with the Ukrainian flag, are the ones who protect us, and you don't need to worry here in this sanctuary."
His own son's drawings don't appear to show any signs of trauma, but some of Anton's friends have older children, and the pictures they draw clearly show they've been affected by the situation.
A friend of Anton's shared her four-year-old son's drawing after spending the night in a bomb shelter - it shows people fleeing a big red devil
The parents and staff from his son's nursery stay in touch via the social media app Telegram, where they share advice about how to talk to the children about what's going on. This even included a tutorial on how to explain to the kids why it was OK for adults to swear now, while it was not OK in normal life. "Because people are swearing right now," says Anton.
They have become more relaxed about other little things, too. "Because of this situation, he has to watch much more cartoons than normal, and is eating much more sweets than normal. We need something to occupy him - he has to not pay too much attention to what's going on.
"The psychologists advise us to be gentler with kids in these times, and to love them much more than usual," says Anton.
When it comes to safety, though, they have to be quite strict. Their three-year-old quickly learned that when there's a siren, the family have to run and hide. "As soon as we hear sirens or get a notification we shout, 'To the shelter!' and whatever he's doing he leaves it and runs. He understands that the situation is extraordinary. It even surprises us how well children understand the necessity to behave properly."
Evacuees and a child, sitting on top of a suitcase, wait for a train to Romania from Lviv
As the Russian shelling gets worse and the convoys close in, many Ukrainian parents have decided to flee their homes with their young children in tow.
Hanna, a scientist, left Kyiv and travelled to Poland with her two sons, who are eight and six years old. For days, they had been at home listening to explosions, the windows trembling, and she somehow had to tell them what was going on. She found it hard to strike a balance between reality and how much a child's mind can take.
"This was a challenge for me as a mother because I have to choose between how to explain the truth, but at the same time not to scare them too much," she says. "So I was just telling them that we are under attack, and at the moment we are safe, but when we feel we have to move, they have to listen."
Her parenting style had to change, too - there was no room for discussion. "Normally I ask them to do something, but this is a time to get orders."
A child on a swing outside a residential building in Kyiv damaged by a missile
After a few days of shelling, Hanna felt she no longer wanted her children to hear the bombs and decided to leave Ukraine. "It was a very, super hard decision," she says.
Her children had to make a hard decision too - they could only take one of their toys. Her eldest chose Toothless, a toy dragon from the How to Train your Dragon series, and her youngest chose a Transformer toy car that turns into a robot. It was a huge decision for them, says Hanna - perhaps as momentous as it was for her to leave her country. "I think that we were in the same emotional decision-taking position."
It took them 52 hours to reach safety in Poland. Hanna's ex-husband came with them for the first part of the car journey but then had to turn back, to fight. Hanna says travelling in a war zone with two kids was exhausting and she can understand why many of her friends are choosing to stay nearer home.
Now they are safe, but the boys ask lots of questions, about their grandparents and especially their father, who has stayed behind. "Heart-breaking questions, because they ask me every day if he is alive, or if he still has his hands and legs. They are afraid that he can get super hurt."
Hanna tells them to try and live in the present. "All we have is just now. At the moment we are safe," she says.
How much to tell their children is something all parents are having to weigh up. Oksana fled her home town of Lviv, in the west, and is now also in Poland. Her six-year-old daughter is autistic and hates loud noises, so she found the air raid sirens very scary. She could tell her mother was nervous too, so Oksana told her the truth about what was happening.
"I was explaining that it's a war and we need to be safe, and that a lot of people are dead now because of all this," says Oksana. "I think it is important that when children are old enough to understand they are not misled, because they can sense the atmosphere is bad."
Iryna's son is just two, and she has decided not to tell him too much. After spending three nights in a bomb shelter they left Irpin, a small city near Kyiv, and went to western Ukraine.
She told her son they were going to stay with friends, because he's too young to understand that they're in danger. "I didn't tell him that it's a war. I'm not sure I have to when he's so young, because I think it makes this situation only worse."
As for Anton and his family, the Russian troops are closing in and they may have to evacuate soon. He's not sure where to. "No-one knows which place is the safest - so it's gambling," he says.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: A mother in Kyiv speaks to the BBC about the decision to tell her children why dad joined the war | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60632147 |
Ukraine war 'catastrophic for global food' - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | One of the world's biggest fertiliser firms says the conflict could deliver a shock to food supplies. | The war in Ukraine will deliver a shock to the global supply and cost of food, the boss of one of the world's biggest fertiliser companies has said.
Yara International, which operates in more than 60 countries, buys considerable amounts of essential raw materials from Russia.
Fertiliser prices were already high due to soaring wholesale gas prices.
Yara's boss, Svein Tore Holsether, has warned the situation could get even tougher.
"Things are changing by the hour," he told the BBC.
"We were already in a difficult situation before the war... and now it's additional disruption to the supply chains and we're getting close to the most important part of this season for the Northern hemisphere, where a lot of fertiliser needs to move on and that will quite likely be impacted."
Russia and Ukraine are some of the biggest producers in agriculture and food globally.
Russia also produces enormous amounts of nutrients, like potash and phosphate - key ingredients in fertilisers, which enable plants and crops to grow.
"Half the world's population gets food as a result of fertilisers... and if that's removed from the field for some crops, [the yield] will drop by 50%," Mr Holsether said.
"For me, it's not whether we are moving into a global food crisis - it's how large the crisis will be."
Svein Tore Holsether said fertiliser prices were already high due to soaring gas prices
His company has already been affected by the conflict after a missile hit Yara's office in Kyiv. The 11 staff were unharmed.
The Norwegian-based company isn't directly affected by sanctions against Russia, but is having to deal with the fall-out. Trying to secure deliveries has become more difficult due to disruption in the shipping industry.
Just hours after Mr Holsether spoke to the BBC, the Russian government urged its producers to halt fertiliser exports.
He pointed out that about a quarter of the key nutrients used in European food production come from Russia.
"At the same time we're doing whatever we can do at the moment to also find additional sources. But with such short timelines it's limited," he said before the news emerged.
Analysts have also warned that the move would mean higher costs for farmers and lower crop yields. That could feed through into even higher costs for food.
Nutrients aren't the only factor to consider, either.
Huge amounts of natural gas are needed to produce ammonia, the key ingredient in nitrogen fertiliser. Yara International relies on vast quantities of Russian gas for its European plants.
Last year, it was forced to temporarily suspend production of about 40% of its capacity in Europe because of the spike in the price of wholesale gas. Other producers also cut supplies.
Combined with higher shipping rates, sanctions on Belarus (another major potash supplier) and extreme weather - this prompted a big jump in fertiliser prices last year, adding to a surge in food prices.
The company says it's making day-to-day evaluations on how to maintain supply and that it is too early to say if more shutdowns may be on the cards.
It acknowledges it has a "very strong obligation" to keep production running at what it describes as a critical point.
But Yara's boss says the world must, in the long-term, reduce its dependency on Russia for global food production.
"On the one hand, we're trying to keep fertiliser flowing to the farmers to keep up the agricultural yields.
"At the same time... there has to be a strong reaction. We condemn the Russian military invasion of Ukraine so this is a dilemma and one that frankly is very difficult."
Climate change and growing populations had already been adding to the challenges the global food production system faces - all before the pandemic started.
The Yara International chief executive describes the war as "a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe", highlighting just how vulnerable to shocks the global food supply chain now is.
It will increase food insecurity in poorer countries, he adds.
"We have to keep in mind that in the last two years, there's been an increase of 100 million more people that go to bed hungry... so for this to come on top of it is really worrying." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60623941 |
Twitter is part of our war effort - Ukraine minister - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Ukraine's youngest cabinet minister, 31-year-old Mykhailo Fedorov, is leading a cyber-battle against Russia. | Fedorov's mission to create a "state in a smartphone" has been put on hold
As Ukraine's military and citizens battle Russia's advancing troops, the country has opened a new front in the fighting - using tech expertise to rally Silicon Valley's support and undermine the enemy. Digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov is leading the charge, but some of his tactics are proving divisive.
From his underground shelter in a secret location in Kyiv, Ukraine's youngest cabinet minister is waging a digital war on Russia.
Using his preferred weapon - social media - Mykhailo Fedorov has been urging chief executives of big businesses to cut ties with Moscow. He's also taken the unprecedented move of setting up a volunteer "IT Army of Ukraine" to launch cyber-attacks against "the enemy".
At only 31, Fedorov has shaped his government role around his lifestyle - he lives through and on his mobile phone.
Before the war, his main goal was to create a "state in a smartphone", where 100% of government services would be offered online. Now that project is on hold, with every muscle strained on the digital war effort.
He has piled pressure on multinational companies to boycott Russia.
Apple, Google, Meta, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Sony, Oracle... no tech giant has missed out on an official government letter.
Fedorov then posts his letters on social media so the world can see, plus some of the replies.
It's impossible to say whether this has influenced the companies' actions, but most have changed their policy towards Russia in subsequent days - either stopping products being sold there, like Apple, or halting operations.
Saturday's announcement from PayPal that it was suspending services in Russia appeared on Fedorov's Twitter feed before it was reported in the media. So too did news that Samsung and Nvidia are stopping all business with Russia, something he publicly called for on his social feeds.
One tweet from Fedorov to Elon Musk soon after the invasion began brought quick results. Within 48 hours the billionaire tech mogul had adjusted his constellation of Starlink satellites and sent a lorry-load of internet-ready terminals to Ukraine.
The service is a potential lifeline for the government if internet and telecommunication networks are damaged or destroyed, though Musk has since warned that the satellite dishes could become a target for Russian missiles and should be used with care.
Fedorov has more than half a million followers in total across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram and uses them all to get his message across.
"Each platform is very important to us now and we are using every opportunity to attract large companies to this horror happening now in Ukraine. We are trying to bring the truth to the Russians and make them protest against the war," he told the BBC via email.
He speaks mostly in Ukrainian online, but since the crisis unfolded he's switched to English on Twitter, where he is having the most impact.
"Twitter has become an efficient tool that we are using to counter Russian military aggression. It's our smart and peaceful tool to destroy Russian economy," he says.
Technology researcher and author Stephanie Hare says she is not surprised Fedorov is having success.
"[He] is 31 years old. He gets it," she says.
Using persuasion and propaganda is a time-honoured tactic of warfare. But since social media companies entered the equation in the 2000s "they have changed the calculus due to the speed and breadth with which people can disseminate their messages".
Fedorov's spokeswoman told me his young team was constantly coming up with new ideas, which the ministry then tries to implement at speed. Last week, Kyiv announced it would issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to fund its military. But some others have been controversial.
Fedorov is urging crypto-currency exchanges to freeze the accounts of all Russian citizens, for example - an idea that many, including the CEO of the Binance exchange, says would "fly in the face" of the reason crypto exists.
The Anonymous hacker collective has declared "cyber-war" on President Vladimir Putin
And the ministry's launch of an "IT Army of Ukraine", including thousands of volunteer hackers from around the world - its Telegram group now has 270,000 members - has caused some unease.
"Tech is the best solution against tanks," Fedorov told the BBC. "The IT Army is directed against the digital and online resources of Russian and Belarusian business corporations, banks, and state web portals. We have shut down the operation of the web portal of the Russian public services, the exchange, websites of Tass, Kommersant, Fontanka, and other top media in Russia."
So far the hacking seems to be mostly low-level cyber vandalism but Fedorov's team is also explicitly calling for attacks on railway and power grid networks which, if successful and disruptive enough, could cause harm to civilians. It makes some in the cyber-security world anxious.
"It's really important to be careful in this realm," says Suzanne Spalding from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "If we get into destructive attacks on critical infrastructure being carried out by citizens I think we begin to run into the kinds of fog-of-war, misattribution, potential cascading impacts that weren't anticipated. We might see retaliation from one side for something a citizen has done and things can escalate fast."
On Friday Ukraine's deputy chairman of the State Service of Special Communications, which works closely with Fedorov's department, defended the decision to rally hackers against Russia.
He said he welcomed illegal cyber-attacks on Russia from all groups, including the Anonymous hacking collective, because "the world order changed on 24 February" when the invasion started.
Hacking is also being carried out against Ukraine by people sympathetic to Russia, but currently Russia seems to be coming off worse. Its crack military hackers appear, so far, to have not played a major role, for reasons that are unclear. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60608222 |
Mariupol: Fires, no water, and bodies in the street - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Maxim, a 27-year-old city resident, tells the BBC what happened after the first ceasefire collapsed. | A building on fire after a strike near the centre of Mariupol
A ceasefire, and a chance for civilians to leave, was announced on Saturday morning in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, where an estimated 200,000 people are trapped under heavy bombardment by Russian forces.
The city arranged 50 buses, and many people travelled to the city centre to get them. But after less than two hours, Russia's army began shelling residential areas again, trapping civilians who had begun their escape.
The city is now in its fifth day with no running water, no power, no sanitation, and food and water are fast running out.
Maxim, a 27-year-old IT developer who is caring for his grandparents in their sixth-floor apartment, spoke to the BBC on Saturday night to describe a day that began with hope and ended in despair.
We tried to escape today, during the planned time of no shooting. We heard we could get out.
As fast as I could, I packed four bags for me and my grandparents with warm clothes and food, and all of our remaining water, and I packed them into my car.
My grandparents are in their eighties, they cannot help. I carried everything down six flights of stairs to my car. There is no lift now.
Right when I was ready to drive, the shelling started again. I heard explosions near to us. I carried everything back upstairs as fast as I could to the apartment. From there, I could see smoke rising from the city and smoke rising from the highway to Zaporizhzhia where people were supposed to escape.
So I am still in my grandparents' apartment and the shelling and bombing has continued all day. But now instead of three of us here, there are nearly 20.
Many people came into the city centre because they heard there was a ceasefire and buses to take them out, and to flee the shelling there. Then they could not get back to their shelters when it started again.
So we have taken many people into the apartment. They are from the left side of the city, they say it is destroyed. All the houses are burning and no-one can put out the fires. There are many dead bodies lying in the streets and no-one can carry them.
I know three of the people from before, from my neighbourhood, but the rest I do not know. The oldest is a woman in her late 70s, the youngest is a small child. We also have two cats, a parrot and a dog.
We have tried to make space for the women and children to sleep on the floor. We don't have any extra mattresses but we have put some spare carpet and clothes on the floor for them to lie on.
We have run out of bottled water. We are down to the water that I filled in the bath before the taps went off. The gas is the only thing still working - we can use it to boil the bath water to drink.
Today the police opened the stores and told people to take everything, because the people here have no food and drink. Our neighbours managed to take some candy, some fish and some fizzy drinks.
The ceasefire was a lie. One side never planned to stop firing. If they say there is a ceasefire tomorrow [Sunday] we will have to try to go, but we don't know if it will be real. Maybe now we are better to hide.
You can keep calling me as long as I have some battery left in my phone, but I don't know how long that will be. After today I am without hope. From now on we do what we have to each day only to survive and for our neighbours to survive.
After that I don't know what comes next. We are very tired and we do not see a way out.
Are you in the Mariupol area? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60637338 |
Shane Warne: Family accept offer of state funeral for Australia legend - BBC Sport | 2022-03-07 | Shane Warne's family accept the offer of a state funeral for the Australia legend, says Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. | Last updated on .From the section Cricket
Shane Warne's family have accepted the offer of a state funeral, says Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.
Legendary Australia spinner Warne died of a suspected heart attack in Thailand on Friday, aged 52.
Flowers, beer and photographs have been left at Warne's statue at the Melbourne Cricket Ground as fans paid tribute.
"It will be an opportunity for Victorians to pay tribute to his contribution to his sport, to our state and the country," Andrews said.
State funerals are held to honour people of national significance.
Warne took 708 wickets - the second most of all time - in 145 Tests across a stellar 15-year international career that ended in 2007.
"I've spoken with the Warne family again today and they have accepted my offer of a state funeral to remember Shane," Andrews said.
"Details will be finalised in the coming days."
• None Melbourne stand to be named after Warne
• None Warne obituary: A fascinating life on and off the field
Warne was found unresponsive by friends in his villa on the Thai island of Koh Samui.
His manager James Erskine said Warne's family are in "complete shock".
"I spoke to them yesterday and Jackson (Warne's son) said, 'We expect him to walk in the door. This is like a bad dream,'" Erskine told Australia's Nine Network.
"Keith, Shane's father, is a pretty strong individual but, like everybody, he's just shattered. They can't believe what's happened."
Tributes have been paid to Warne from across sport, with a stand at the MCG set to be named after him.
His body was taken to the Thai city of Surat Thani on Sunday for an autopsy.
Thai police are not treating the death as suspicious.
"His friends said that he had had chest pain since he was in Australia," said Yutthana Srisombat, superintendent of police in Bo Phut.
"Based on the evidence, we don't see other possible cause of death." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/60637190 |
Manchester Arena bombing: Saffie Roussos's parents on hearing the truth - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The parents of the Manchester Arena bombing's youngest victim speak about their life since she died. | Last month, the inquiry into the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena heard its final scheduled evidence. The BBC's Judith Moritz has followed the family of Saffie-Rose Roussos - the youngest of the 22 victims - as they have uncovered details of their daughter's death while learning to live with their grief.
Saffie Roussos' bedroom looks just how you would expect an eight-year-old's room to look. Her name plate is on the door. Her vibrant My Little Pony dressing gown hangs on a peg. Her tiny pink Converse boots sit on a chair. And at the centre of it, her white bed is festooned with scatter cushions, fairy lights and pom poms.
Her artwork adorns the walls. A painting which reads, "I love mummy so much" and a drawing of the whole family, with "me, Saffie", written in felt tip.
But Saffie has never visited this room. And although the bed is beautifully made up, she'll never sleep in it. Saffie's childhood stopped abruptly when she was murdered in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.
Before she was killed, Saffie lived with her parents Lisa and Andrew, and brother Xander, in their flat above the family fish and chip shop in Leyland, Lancashire. But when the bomb went off, their lives were changed in a fraction of a second.
After the explosion they never returned home. They never opened up the chippy again. Lisa went through months of hospital treatment, and when it was over the family went on holiday to Dorset. And they decided to stay there for good.
"We just basically escaped. I suppose a bit like running away," says Andrew Roussos.
Saffie's things were packed up, and for a long time her parents found it too painful to go through them. Their move south gave them space, and put distance between them and the intensity of Manchester. There, the civic "bee" emblem had taken on a new dimension, spread across the city on posters, walls and tattoos. Lisa found it both supportive and stifling.
She says: "In the north, where it happened, they still talk about it now. They still think about the families and everybody, and that's beautiful and I wanted that. But at the same time, with us moving here, you can pick and choose when to look at it, when to face it. It's quiet, you've got the sea, the countryside. I think it was the best decision."
Lisa admits she had been torn. She initially did not want to move as she felt she was moving away from Saffie, wanting to be where she had lived.
It was a while before she realised that it would be possible to relocate, and still feel close to her little girl. "Saffie will always be with us," she says simply.
Lisa and Andrew started house-hunting. They needed a two-bedroom house, for themselves and Xander, but they decided to search for a three-bed. Saffie would have her own room again as her parents decided it was time to unpack her belongings, and create a new room for her.
Lisa explains they did not want to put her things away into cupboards or the loft, wanting instead to move forward with Saffie.
"We've changed the knobs on her wardrobe. Even though we wanted to keep her furniture, I've updated it a little bit because I know she would like new things.
The Roussos family is an intensely private unit. They take comfort in each other, and have largely eschewed public attention. But they have always wanted the world to know how special Saffie was to them. That is what led them to invite me to their home as part of the process of making our film about Saffie for Panorama.
I first met Andrew just weeks after the bombing, when Lisa was still in hospital and the family was reeling from the attack. He told me then that Saffie had always wanted to be famous for singing and dancing like her idol Ariana Grande.
He could never have imagined that her name would be connected with the singer's for the most tragic reasons. He said he was determined to reclaim the joy that had surrounded his daughter during her short life. That meant telling as wide an audience as possible about the wonder of his little girl and the happiness she brought.
We filmed an interview and I told Andrew to keep in touch. I also asked him if Lisa was likely to want to say anything publicly when the time was right. There was significant media interest in their story, and I wondered if she would be as keen to speak about Saffie as her husband.
A few weeks later, Andrew suggested that I visit the couple at Wythenshawe hospital in Manchester. Lisa had been so badly hurt in the attack that she was initially only given a 20% chance of survival. By the summer of 2017, they were living as a family in hospital accommodation while her treatment continued.
When I met Lisa, it was clear that the time was not right for her to do an interview. She was having to cope with her own rehabilitation while coming to terms with the news that her youngest child had not survived the atrocity. I had been invited to meet her as a journalist, but I am also a mum, and my heart went out to her on a personal level. I had been to the arena with my own children a few weeks before the bombing, I knew that it could have been me in Lisa's shoes. I struggled to find the right words to express my sympathy.
It took another two years before Lisa decided that she wanted to talk publicly about what she was going through, and another two before she reached the point of inviting me to see her daughter's room in Dorset. She said she wanted to show me something special.
Manchester Arena Bombing: Saffie's Story is on BBC One Monday 7 March at 20:00 or watch later on BBC iPlayer
There, we sat on Saffie's bed - she felt it was finally time to look through her daughter's baby box of keepsakes, something that she had found too painful after the attack, worried about the emotions it would unleash.
In fact, Lisa beams as she shows me the scan pictures, talking about the pregnancy and how Saffie would not stop moving, a real livewire as she had been throughout her life. Each treasure - her first lock of hair, her newborn ID bracelet - unlocks a memory and she basks in them.
She picks out a pair of miniature flip flops. "I bought them in Kefalonia. I remember pushing her in her pram with them on and they kept falling off."
The tears come, but they are mixed with laughter as Lisa remembers the happy moments. She and Andrew have spoken to me several times about the pattern grief has taken for them. They describe it as a constant never-ending presence that has evolved into something they are learning to live with.
At the same time, they have also reached the stage of wanting to find out more about what happened to Saffie. For a long time, they did not want to know a great level of detail. But as the public inquiry into the attack started in September 2020, their legal team prepared them for hard times ahead.
Finding out exactly what happened is hard to take… it's torture on top of torture
The couple had always believed that their daughter died within seconds of the bomb exploding, and that she had not suffered. But at the inquiry they learned that Saffie had lived for an hour, and that she had died as a result of blood loss from leg injuries. Her legs were never given tourniquets or splinted. Two sets of experts at the public inquiry are in dispute over whether she might have survived if she had received better emergency care.
Andrew says: "It was our biggest fear. Our minds were set to, 'right, a bomb detonated, she lost her life, and it went quickly'. So that's what we chose to carry on life with. Finding out exactly what happened is hard to take… It's torture on top of torture."
The couple have been represented at the public inquiry by Pete Weatherby QC, who explains: "Saffie was able to talk, able to drink water. In the ambulance something like 40 minutes after detonation she asked the ambulance staff if she was going to die. Therefore, the issue of whether there were further interventions that might have made a difference to Saffie became apparent."
The Roussos family solicitor, Nicola Brook, had to tell the couple Saffie had lived for a while, with an unknown degree of possibility about whether she could have survived. She then had to ask whether they wanted to explore that further.
"That is, without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest conversation I've ever had to have," she says.
Lisa and Andrew agreed they were ready to look into the intricacies of Saffie's case. But they have had very different approaches to the Manchester Arena Inquiry, which has been running for 18 months.
Andrew has followed nearly every day of the hearings by remote video link. Lisa has found them too distressing to listen to, and relies on Andrew to outline the main issues for her.
But when it came to giving evidence, both were determined to go into the witness box in person, and so they steeled themselves to make the trip from Dorset back up to Manchester. I joined them again that morning, as they packed their car for the trip, which Lisa confessed she had been dreading.
She said it had been causing her sleepless nights and she would not do it if she didn't have to. "I know it's going to be emotionally draining. But I just thought, 'Lisa, you've got to do it. You've got to do it for Saffie. She hasn't got that voice, so we have to give it to her.'"
At court, the couple told the inquiry about their experiences on the night of the attack. How Lisa lay on the floor of the arena foyer unable to move. And how Andrew spent all night searching for her and Saffie. He and Xander travelled to three hospitals, and only discovered that Saffie had died the following afternoon.
Andrew Roussos with his son outside the Manchester Arena following the bomb attack
The public inquiry has given him an opportunity to dig deep into what happened. He says, "What drives me, I suppose, is knowing the information. So I'm there representing us as a family and Saffie as our daughter. Even though the legal team are there to do that, I want to know. I want to scrutinise everybody to the point of getting to the truth."
Grieving for a child can destroy a marriage. But Lisa and Andrew each say they could not have managed without the other. Their characters complement each other. Andrew is passionate and talkative. Lisa is a calming presence.
The experience of speaking in court was draining for them both. Afterwards they were clearly exhausted, but relieved. Lisa said she was glad she had taken part as it was her one chance to say what she needed to say. "The build-up to it was awful but I do feel better now that I've done it," she says.
But the couple are clear that the inquiry has to make a real difference.
Andrew says he is angry lessons still need to be learned: "My argument is why didn't you learn from 7/7? Why didn't you learn from 9/11? Why didn't you learn from the Paris attacks in 2016? This wasn't the first terrorist attack."
He adds: "I just hope the whole process of this inquiry does what it set out to do. What it's meant to do. We're never going to stop this… but at least at the next attack we'll be more prepared."
Their time at court was not the only intense moment of the family's trip to Manchester.
Saffie used to love playing with her mobile phone. She had taken endless selfies with it. Naturally, she took it with her on the night of the Ariana Grande concert. But it shattered in the blast and when it was returned to her parents, it seemed beyond repair.
Lisa and Andrew told me they had tried everything to make it work again. They badly wanted to look at the photos on it, to have a last glimpse of Saffie's world. I asked them if they would trust me to take the phone away for forensic work.
In truth, I was not sure if I would be able to get any results, so I was thrilled when I was able to tell them that despite such extensive damage, I was able to have the phone reconstructed - and there were photos to look at.
The pictures were Saffie's last selfies. She took them in the car with Lisa on their way to the concert. The little girl is wearing her Ariana Grande T-shirt, and beaming, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life.
Tearfully, Lisa remembered them being taken. She said, "Me and Saffie were in the back of the car on the way to the arena. It's just so so sad… I wish I'd taken more pictures of me and her. You take them for granted because you don't think of the worst, ever. Why would you? But afterwards you realise how precious and important they are."
Although it is upsetting to see the selfies, Lisa and Andrew say they will always treasure them. They are determined that Saffie will always be a part of their lives. I ask Lisa about the concept of "closure" which is sometimes spoken about.
She says, "Who wants closure? It's the opposite. You can't have closure. You don't want closure. You want to take that memory with you forever. We want to take her with us forever. I want to talk about her. I want to remember her. I want everyone to remember her." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60579079 |
Ukraine crisis: The West fights back against Putin the disruptor - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Several US presidents have failed to get the measure of him but now Europe has joined the fray things may change. | Successive US presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin but now that Brussels and Berlin have joined the fray with such resolve, it's a different story, writes Nick Bryant.
It is often tempting to look upon Vladimir Putin as the millennium bug in a human and deadly form.
The Russian president rose to power on 31 December 1999, as the world held its breath that computers would go into meltdown when the clock struck midnight, unable to process the change from 1999 to 2000.
In the 20 years since, Putin has been trying to engineer a different kind of global system malfunction, the destruction of the liberal international order. The former KGB spymaster wanted to turn back the clock: to revive Russia's tsarist greatness and to restore the might and menace of the Soviet Union prior to its break-up in 1991.
This Russian revanchist has become the most disruptive international leader of the 21st Century, the mastermind behind so much misery from Chechnya to Crimea, from Syria to the cathedral city of Salisbury. He has sought - successfully at times - to redraw the map of Europe.
He has tried - successfully at times - to immobilise the United Nations. He has been determined - successfully at times - to weaken America, and hasten its division and decline.
Putin came to power at a moment of western hubris. The United States was the sole superpower in a unipolar world. Francis Fukuyama's End of History thesis, proclaiming the triumph of liberal democracy, was widely accepted.
Some economists even peddled the theory that recessions would be no more, partly because of the productivity gains of the new digital economy. It was also thought that globalisation, and the interdependence it wrought, would stop major economic powers fighting wars. The same utopianism attached itself to the internet, which was seen overwhelmingly as a force for global good.
An honour guard greets Air Force One on the Moscow tarmac in 2002
In the early days especially, the same misplaced optimism and wishful thinking coloured the west's approach to Putin - a figure, it is now obvious, who was trying to buck history and thwart democratisation, however many lives were lost in the process.
Successive US presidents have played into his hands. Bill Clinton, the occupant of the White House when Putin came to power, handed this ultra-nationalist a popular grievance by pushing for the expansion of Nato right up to Russia's borders. As George F Kennan, the famed architect of America's Cold War strategy of containment, warned at the time: "Expanding Nato would be the most fateful error of America policy in the entire post-Cold War era."
George W Bush completely misjudged his Russian counterpart. "I looked the man in the eye," Bush famously said after their first meeting in Slovenia in 2001. "I found him very straightforward and trustworthy… I was able to get a sense of his soul." Bush mistakenly thought he could mount a charm offensive with Putin, and gently cajole him further down the democratic path.
But even though Bush visited Russia more than any other country - including, as a personal favour, two trips in 2002 to Putin's home city, St Petersburg - the Russian leader was already displaying dangerously despotic tendencies.
In 2008, Bush's final year as president, Putin invaded Georgia - what he called a "peace enforcement operation". The Kremlin argued then - and has continued to argue ever since - that it was hypocritical for Washington to complain about this violation of international law after Bush had invaded Iraq.
Barack Obama sought to reframe US-Russian relations. His first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, even handed her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov a mock reset button (which was mistakenly labelled with the Russian word for "overloaded"). But Putin knew that America, after its long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, no longer wanted to police the world.
When Obama refused in 2013 to enforce his red-line warning against Bashar al-Assad when the Syrian dictator used chemical weapons against his own people, Putin saw a green light. By helping Assad carry out his murderous war, he extended Moscow's sphere of influence in the Middle East when the United States wanted to extract itself from the region. The following year, he annexed Crimea, and established a foothold in eastern Ukraine.
Despite being told by Obama to "cut it out," Putin even sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in the hope that Hillary Clinton, a long-time nemesis, would be defeated and that Donald Trump, a long-time fan boy, would win.
The New York property tycoon made no secret of his admiration for Putin, a sycophantic approach that seems to have further emboldened the Russian president. Much to Moscow's delight, Trump publicly criticised Nato, weakened the US post-war alliance system and became such a polarising figure that he left America more politically divided than at any time since the Civil War.
Arguably, then, you have to reach back 30 years to find a US leader whose approach to the Kremlin has stood the test of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, George Herbert Walker Bush resisted the temptation to rejoice in America's Cold War victory - much to the astonishment of the White House press pack, he refused to travel to Berlin for a victory lap - knowing that it would bolster hardliners in the Politburo and military seeking to oust Mikhail Gorbachev.
That magnanimity in victory helped when it came to bringing about the reunification of Germany, which was arguably Bush's greatest foreign policy success.
Putin is obviously a more formidable adversary, harder to deal with than even Leonid Brezhnev or Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But since the turn of the century no US president has truly had his measure.
Bill Clinton pushed for the expansion of Nato which some said was a mistake
Joe Biden, like George Herbert Walker Bush, is a Cold War warrior, who has dedicated his presidency to defending democracy at home and abroad. Seeking to re-establish America's traditional post-war role as the leader of the free world, he has sought to mobilise the international community, offered military aid to Ukraine and adopted the toughest sanction regime ever targeted against Putin.
As Russian forces amassed at the border, he also shared US intelligence showing that Putin had decided to invade, in ways that sought to disrupt the Kremlin's usual misinformation campaigns and false flag operations.
His State of the Union address became a rallying cry. "Freedom will always triumph over tyranny," he said. And while Biden does not speak with the clarity or force of a Kennedy or a Reagan, it was nonetheless a significant speech.
What's been striking since the Russian invasion started, however, has been the assertion of forceful presidential leadership from elsewhere. Volodymyr Zelensky has been lauded and lionised, as he has continued this extraordinary personal journey from comedian to Churchillian colossus.
In Brussels, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been another commanding presence. This former German politician has been a driving force behind the decision, for the first time in EU history, to finance and purchase weapons for a nation under attack, a commitment that includes not just ammunition but fighter jets as well.
Her compatriot, the new Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, has also shown more resolve in dealing with Putin than his predecessor Angela Merkel. At warp speed, he has overturned decades of post-Cold War German foreign policy, an approach so often predicated on caution and timidity towards the Russian leader.
Berlin has sent anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine (ending the policy of not sending weapons to active war zones), halted the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, withdrawn its opposition to blocking Russia from the SWIFT international payments system, and even committed to spending 2% of its GDP on defence spending.
The biggest assault on a European state since World War Two has stiffened European resolve. But so, too, it seems has the relative weakness of America. Mindful of the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan and possibility of a Trump 2.0 presidency, European leaders seem to have realised that they can no longer lean so heavily on Washington to defend democracy in this hour of maximum peril. Leadership of the free world has, in this crisis, become a common endeavour.
Even since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been calling upon European nations to do more to police its own neighbourhood, something they failed to do when the break-up of the former Yugoslavia sparked the Bosnian war. Historians may well conclude that it took a combination of Putin's aggressiveness, America's fragility, Ukraine's heroic resolve and the fear that Europe's post-war stability is truly on the line to finally make that happen.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: What Americans think of Biden's Ukraine response
It would be naive to be swept away by the romanticism of Zelensky's speeches or to succumb to the dopamine high of watching the seizure of Russian-owned super-yachts unfold on social media. Putin is intensifying the war. But the last week has sent a message to Moscow - and to Beijing as well - that the post-war international order still continues to function, despite the deployment of the Russian war machine to bring about its collapse. Just as history never ended, nor has liberal democracy.
As Joe Biden put it in his State of the Union, during a passage in which rhetoric served also as sober analysis: Putin "thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met a wall of resistance he never imagined".
Nick Bryant is the author of When America Stopped Being Great: a history of the present. He is the former New York correspondent for the BBC and now lives in Sydney. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60597186 |
Ukraine war: Boris Johnson defends refugee response after visa criticism - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Boris Johnson says the UK will be "very generous" - but is facing calls to help more people fleeing. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Boris Johnson says the UK "has always been very generous" to those fleeing war
Boris Johnson has promised to be "very generous" towards Ukrainian refugees, amid criticism over the number who have been granted visas.
The Home Office says 300 visas have been issued since Russia invaded Ukraine - up from 50 on Sunday.
The figure comes amid confusion over whether access will be widened beyond the current schemes.
Labour says the situation regarding refugees is a "mess" and that clearer rules are urgently needed.
The two UK schemes announced so far require Ukrainians either to have family in the UK, or have a designated UK sponsor for their application. Only the family scheme is in operation so far.
Home Secretary Priti Patel told the Sun she was examining "legal options" to grant humanitarian access to people "without ties to the UK".
But the prime minister did not confirm whether a third route would be set up when questioned on Monday, saying only that the UK would have a "very generous and open approach" to refugees.
However, Boris Johnson said the UK would not "abandon controls altogether" on those wanting to come to the country, adding it was "sensible" to "have some basic ability to check who is coming in and who isn't".
More than 1.7 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded, according to the United Nations.
Most are in neighbouring countries, with the Polish border agency saying on Monday that more than one million people have now crossed into Poland.
Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly said Ukrainian refugees preferred to stay in the region - and the UK was providing humanitarian support to those in neighbouring countries.
The UK has steadily increased its visa offer to refugees.
This includes widening the range of family members that allow Ukrainians with relatives in the UK to apply for visas and creating a the second route allowing UK-based organisations to sponsor applications - with details to be set out this week.
But the government has faced criticism that its offer of help is less generous than the EU's.
The UK had been warning about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine for many weeks.
The likelihood of a refugee crisis was known.
And yet there is a sense of Whitehall scrambling to refit its new immigration and asylum policy to the reality of refugees fleeing war in Europe.
In contrast to the EU's policy, Ukrainians wanting to come to the UK need a visa - obtained either through existing family links or a sponsor.
But Home Secretary Priti Patel told the Sun newspaper she was considering a new route for refugees to come to the UK.
Cue a day of confusion as ministers insisted that wasn't the case.
The problem could be the ambiguity of Ms Patel's words.
Or it reveals confusion within Whitehall about what should be done as the exodus from Ukraine continues and public concern grows.
The Home Office said 8,900 applications had been submitted for visas via the Ukraine Family Scheme, with 300 issued so far.
It added that it had "surged" staff in nearby countries to process cases as quickly as possible.
But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the government should be offering a "simple route to sanctuary" for people in danger.
"The Home Office is in a complete mess about this. They keep changing the rules," he said.
"The government now talking about a third route is something that we've been talking about now for days."
The government is also facing pressure over the situation in Calais, where there now are more than 500 Ukrainians hoping to get to the UK. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60645711 |
Shane Warne: Australian cricket legend died from natural causes - police - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Thai police say there's no sign of foul play in the cricketer's death while on holiday on Koh Samui. | Shane Warne's body is being transported from Thailand back to Australia
Australian cricket legend Shane Warne's death in Thailand on Friday was from natural causes, police have confirmed.
A senior Thai police official said the post mortem exam showed no signs of foul play in the 52-year-old's death.
Warne, who is considered to be one of the greatest cricketers of all time, died of a suspected heart attack on Koh Samui island, where he was holidaying.
The Australian government is bringing his body back to Australia where he will be given a state funeral.
Warne was a larger-than-life figure whose fame transcended sport and he inspired generations of fans.
There have been tributes like this one in Melbourne left for Warne on Koh Samui too
He was found unresponsive at the Thai villa where he was staying with friends. Attempts to revive him in hospital were unsuccessful.
The post mortem exam showed Warne died of a "congenital disease", Songyot Chayaninporamet, deputy director of Samui Hospital, told a news conference, Reuters news agency reported.
"There is no Covid-19 infection and no sign of assault or murder."
Thailand's deputy police spokesman Krissana Pattanacharoen said in a statement: "Investigators received an autopsy report today in which a forensic doctor concludes the death was due to natural causes."
He said the player's family had been informed and accepted the findings. Warne is survived by his three children with former wife Simone Callahan.
Shane Warne was found unconscious in his room at this luxury villa on Koh Samui
The death of one of Australia's favourite sons has shocked the country, and brought a flood of tributes from cricket fans and others around the world.
Warne's family have made their first comments following his sudden death, with his parents, children, ex-wife and brother saying how much they missed him.
"To find words to adequately express our sadness is an impossible task for us, and looking to a future without Shane is inconceivable," parents Keith and Brigitte said in a statement.
"I wish I could've hugged you tighter in what I didn't know were my final moments with you," his daughter Summer said.
Police say Warne's body will be flown to Australia on Tuesday.
Security concerns were raised when a German woman carrying flowers managed to climb into the back of the ambulance taking the cricketer's body off Koh Samui. Thai police questioned her and later described her as a "fan who wanted to pay her respects and sincerity" to Warne.
Warne's mastery of leg-spin - a style of bowling that declined during the 1970s and 1980s when fast bowlers dominated - revolutionised cricket.
He took 708 Test wickets, the second most of all time, in 145 matches across a stellar 15-year international career.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Shane Warne bowls Mike Gatting with the 'ball of the century' in 1993 Ashes
In 2000, he was named one of the five Wisden cricketers of the century, alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Jack Hobbs and Sir Viv Richards.
He retired from international cricket in 2007, going on to a career as a commentator, pundit and coach. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-60645939 |
McDonald's and Coca-Cola boycott calls grow over Russia - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Food and drink giants have been criticised on social media for failing to speak out on Ukraine's invasion. | Pressure is growing on Western food and drink giants to pull out of Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine.
McDonald's and Coca-Cola have been criticised on social media for failing to speak out about the attacks and continuing to operate in the country.
Well-known firms including Netflix and Levi's have already suspended sales or stopped providing services in Russia.
McDonald's and Coca-Cola have not responded to the BBC's request for comment.
#BoycottMcDonalds and #BoycottCocaCola were trending on Twitter on Monday and over the weekend respectively.
Dragon's Den investor Deborah Meaden also spoke out on social media against the fizzy drinks company, urging people to stop drinking its products.
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The criticism comes amid calls for other well-known Western firms such as KFC, Pepsi, Starbucks and Burger King to close their outlets and stop sales in Russia.
However, most firms have stayed silent on the issue with Pepsi, Starbucks and Burger King also declining to respond to the BBC's requests for comment.
Fast food chain KFC did not respond initially but its owner Yum Brands, which also owns Pizza Hut, has since announced that it has suspended future investments in Russia.
Yum Brands is the world's second-biggest restaurant chain, and there are about 1,000 KFC outlets and 50 Pizza Hut restaurants in Russia. The company was not pulling out entirely, but Yum said that it would "redirect all profits from operations in Russia to humanitarian efforts". It is also donating $1m (£762,000) to the Red Cross.
Many of the firms the BBC has contacted have a large number of stores in the country.
In recently-published information on its website, McDonald's said that it has 847 stores in Russia. The company also owns the majority of these outlets, whereas across the rest of the world most are typically operated by franchisees.
Both McDonald's and Pepsi, who have had a presence in Russia for decades, have also been singled out by the boss of New York state's pension fund.
The oldest Russian McDonald's branch, off Pushkin Square in central Moscow, opened in 1990.
Thomas DiNapoli, comptroller of the New York state common retirement fund, wrote letters to the companies, according to Reuters reports, urging them to review their businesses in Russia because they face "significant and growing legal, compliance, operational, human rights and personnel, and reputational risks".
Often, franchise owners will be able to take the decision as to whether or not to shut chains down, depending on terms of agreements they might have with big food chains like KFC or Starbucks.
In a recent statement, Kevin Johnson, the boss of Starbucks, described attacks on Ukraine as "unprovoked" and "unjust".
But most of its sites in Russia remain open, according to its website. Most of these franchises are run by the Kuwait-based Alshaya Group.
Kathleen Brooks, director at Minerva Analysis, said McDonald's and Coca-Cola were "very complicated businesses", which would not make it easy to make a decision to leave Russia quickly.
She told the BBC's Today programme that Coca-Cola had an "incredibly complicated structure" with bottling plants in Russia.
"I don't think it's as simple as saying can you just pull out of Russia," she said. "These are complicated businesses and there's a lot to consider, but right now the reputation risk could really hit their share prices so they may have no choice going forward."
But Dr Ian Peters, director of the Institute for Business Ethics, told BBC News: "This is not a time to sit on the fence.
"The world is likely to judge companies by what they do in such circumstances, and ethical judgement will be as important as complying with any government-led regulations and sanctions."
He said that most firms would have what they refer to as an "ethical compass" they use to make big decisions.
"We would advise firms in such circumstances always to look at the bigger picture and seek to do the right thing, putting the wider interest above short-term profit," he added.
He cited important ethical dilemmas that might come up for companies when considering to suspend operations in Russia too: What duty of care do these companies hold to employees on the ground? Is it fair to deprive Russian citizens of basic goods?
Professor of business ethics at Henley Business School, Kleio Akrivou, suggested that these types of decisions might be more difficult to reach for food companies than, say, consulting firms.
"When it comes to sanctions which deprive the Russian population of its basic goods and dignity, firms may need to approach the situation more thoughtfully, with an appeal to practical reason."
She said now is the time for fast food giants to balance how real people are affected by such moves, alongside any reputational risk.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The BBC's Jeremy Bowen was on the frontline in Irpin, as residents came under Russian fire while trying to flee | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60649214 |
Chaos and tears as thousands try to catch a train out of Ukraine - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | At the central train station in Lviv, many thousands arrive after fleeing bombed out cities further east. | Women and children queue at Lviv station for a train to Poland. Hundred of thousands are passing through the station every day
When Svitlana Maksymenko's train pulled into the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, about halfway through her 800-mile journey from home to safety, people pushed onto every part of the carriage, she said, grasping for their own escape route west. Some abandoned their luggage. Some begged to get on.
"They were on their knees on the platform," Maksymenko said. "There was no room. There were people standing in every space, in every gangway, there were five people on every bed."
Maksymenko's journey began in Kharkiv, an eastern city that has been heavily shelled by Russian forces, and stopped, for now, in Lviv, a picturesque western city about 50 miles from the Polish border with a grand central station that has become a waypoint for hundreds of thousands of refugees.
In almost every corner of the station concourse over the weekend, in the waiting rooms, the underpasses and all along the platforms, there were people taking shelter, sleeping, anxiously waiting, rushing for trains. There were tense moments as volunteer stewards tried to hold back the crowds of people massed at entry gates, fearful of missing their chance to escape. Women with children wept with the stress, clutching their passports and family birth certificates in one hand and their children in the other. Outside the station, there were tearful goodbyes as fighting-age men, banned from leaving Ukraine, stopped and let their families go, unsure if they would ever see them again.
There were tense moments as stewards attempted to hold back crowds anxious to make the trains
By the time she reached Lviv, Maksymenko had been on the train with her parents-in-law and three-year-old daughter for 26 hours. Some reported longer journeys. Maksymenko was a drop in a river of people that began flowing into Lviv when Russia invaded and swelled over the past few days as Russian forces escalated their campaign of bombing against Ukrainian civilians.
"We estimate 30,000 people arrived on Thursday, 100,000 people on Friday and at least a 100,000 more on Saturday," said Viktoria Khrystenko, a Lviv city council official helping to manage the influx of refugees.
"We are doing our best to cope but we have never seen anything like this," she said. "We are expecting more people. It might be millions. It's a disaster. These people have nothing, just one bag because they had only three minutes to run and save their lives."
Lviv station was heaving with people on Friday night, thinning only slightly as trains departed for Poland before filling again with new arrivals from the bombed-out cities in the north, east, and south of Ukraine.
Outside, Kolya, 46, was standing with tears streaming down his face, watching his wife and two teenage daughters walk away from him.
"I hope they will make it safely to Europe, I want so badly to be with them," he said. "This is as far as I can go."
Ukraine has banned men aged 16-60 from leaving the country, unless they have a disability or three children under 18. They are stopped in document checks at the station or at border crossing points further west. Kolya had stood for 10 hours on the train from Kyiv to ensure his family reached Lviv safely, he said, and now he would make the same journey back to join his 19-year-old son and his brothers in the fight against Russia.
"I will go back to Kyiv and defend my city. It is my home," he said. "How, I don't know - I have asked them for a gun, but how will I protect my city from missiles with a gun?"
Poland's government began sending buses over the weekend to bring Ukraine's refugees over the border to safety.
Kolya's wife and children would press on to Poland, whose government has sent trains and buses to bring people from Ukraine into its country, sparing tens of thousands of refugees traumatic journeys to the border and long waits to cross by foot.
By Sunday, more than 1.5 million Ukrainians had crossed into Poland, according to the UN. Hundreds of thousands more were on the move inside Ukraine.
Amid the chaos in the station at Lviv, volunteers and fellow travellers helped the very young and the very old, carrying pushchairs and suitcases up and down the stairs to the platforms, marshalling children to rooms upstairs where they could get a hot meal, and helping the elderly wherever they could.
"Physically it was very hard for me of course, people were pushing very hard," said Dusia Kostiuk, 91, who boarded a train in Kharkiv at 9pm on Friday, arrived in Lviv at midnight on Saturday, and spent the next 15 hours in a queue at the station to move on Poland.
"Our house was still there when we left but shelling was happening all around and we were told that terrible shelling is happening there now," Kostiuk said.
"We didn't take anything with us, I took two dresses and that's it.
"I was born and raised in Kharkiv. I didn't really travel before, I don't like to travel. I never thought I would leave my home like this."
Dusia Kostiuk, 91, spent 27 hours on a train from the heavily bombed city of Kharkiv to Lviv.
Many of those arriving in Lviv, like Kostiuk, stay in the station until they can board a train to Poland - some bedding down for a night or longer in any free corner. The air inside the grand waiting rooms and gangways was thick with the heat and odour of a mass of people who have been on the move for many days.
Those who cannot move straight on to Poland head out into the city looking for temporary shelter. At a small theatre in Lviv's historic old town, 20 beds had been arranged for those who needed to spend up to three nights in the city before they can leave.
Olha Adamenko, 32, arrived there on Sunday evening with her husband and sick two-year-old daughter. They had driven over four days from Kyiv, stopping in shelters along the way. But the shelter in the theatre was already at capacity and it was not clear whether there was going to be a bed there for her that night, the staff said.
It was a problem many would face that night, according to Khyrstenko, the city official, who said all of the roughly 20,000 temporary beds in the city were already taken.
At the theatre, Adam Yemchenko, a volunteer, was preparing to turn people away. "Most people arrive later than this but people getting to us tonight won't get a bed, we will have to send them somewhere else," he said.
"Some will carry straight on to the border but they face an eight hour wait there in the cold."
Refugees rest in a shelter in a small theatre in Lviv. By early evening on Sunday the shelter was full and turning people away.
This was the choice facing Adamenko, as she sat down inside the small theatre foyer looking tired and stressed. She stopped to breastfeed her daughter, who was restless and tearful. Her husband would soon have to leave them here in Lviv and travel back to Kyiv to join the territorial defence forces.
She asked the volunteers at the shelter how to reach the Polish border by bus and which were the best border crossings.
"Maybe we will go tonight," she said. But she was worried, there were long queues at the crossing points and it was the depth of winter.
"I heard people are queuing outside there during the day but at night locals take them into their homes, but I don't know if it is true," she said. "I am worried about the baby, she is sick and tired."
Adamenko was also starting to worry more about her husband. She thought their local defence battalion on the outskirts of Kyiv would be relatively safe, but heavy fighting surrounded it over the weekend in the districts of Bucha and Irpin.
"Maybe that means the Russians will go through our neighbourhood next," she said.
A young boy leaves Ukraine on a bus bound for Poland. Thousands of children have spent hours away from home.
As night fell, Adamenko and her husband left the theatre and walked into Lviv with directions to another shelter, where if she could find a bed they would part - one on to safety abroad, one back to danger at home.
Later on Sunday night, at the station, many thousands more people were still arriving and departing. They formed queues that were as orderly as possible under the circumstances and continued to help each other. Volunteers bustled through the crowds with trays made from cardboard boxes, handing out tea and snacks in plastic cups.
At the same time, Viktoria Khrystenko, the city council official, was driving her own three children to the Polish border. They had left on Sunday morning and by early Monday morning they had been in the car nearly 24 hours through the bitterly cold night.
Eventually they crossed in to Poland and Khrystenko left her children with relatives and began the long return journey to Lviv. As she drove, she wept.
"I'm sorry, I'm emotional because I didn't sleep at all," she said. "I had a task to take my kids to a safe place across the border and I have done that, so now I need to go back to Lviv and continue to help."
Khrystenko was born here in Lviv. She had never been more proud of its people, she said. They were "ready to give away their last package of buckwheat or can of food" to help others. "We have only one Ukraine and we need to save it," she said.
She hung up and drove on, headed for her three-room apartment in the city, where there were 17 women and children from all over Ukraine resting after long journeys to Lviv. She had taken home as many people from the station as she could, she said.
Outside Lviv station fire barrels were lit during the night to keep the crowds warm
Orysia Khimiak and Svitlana Libet contributed to this report. Photographs by Joel Gunter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60645126 |
Shell defends 'difficult' decision to buy Russian crude oil - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The oil giant confirmed it made a purchase of Russian crude oil on Friday but said it had "no alternative". | Shell has defended its decision to purchase Russian crude oil despite the invasion and bombardment of Ukraine.
The oil giant said in a statement that the decision to purchase the fuel at a discounted price was "difficult".
It confirmed that it had bought a cargo of Russian crude oil on Friday but it had "no alternative".
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hit out at the energy company, asking on Twitter: "Doesn't Russian oil smell Ukrainian blood for you?"
So far Canada has announced a ban on Russian oil imports but other Western countries have not imposed sanctions on Russian oil imports, fearing it will drive up already record high energy prices around the world.
But on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was now in "active discussions" with European partners about banning them while also maintaining a "steady global supply".
Russia is the world's second top producer of crude oil after Saudi Arabia, and supplies about a third of Europe's needs.
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Commenting on its move, Shell said it was forced to buy oil from Russia in order to maintain timely supplies of fuel to Europe.
The firm said it remains "appalled by the war in Ukraine" and has stopped most activities involving Russian oil, but it added the situation with supplies is "highly complex".
Russian oil currently makes up about 8% of Shell's working supplies. One of the firm's refineries, which produces diesel and petrol and other products, is also among the biggest in Europe.
"To be clear, without an uninterrupted supply of crude oil to refineries, the energy industry cannot assure continued provision of essential products to people across Europe over the weeks ahead," a spokesperson said.
"Cargoes from alternative sources would not have arrived in time to avoid disruptions to market supply.
"We didn't take this decision lightly and we understand the strength of feeling around it."
The firm also said that it will try to choose alternatives to Russian oil "wherever possible", and that profits from Russian oil will go to a dedicated fund aimed at helping people in Ukraine.
It comes shortly after the company announced that it would end all of its joint ventures with the Russian energy company Gazprom following the invasion.
That will involve the company selling its 27.5% stake in a major liquefied natural gas plant and a 50% stake in two oilfield projects in Siberia.
It will also end its involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. The 1,200km pipeline under the Baltic Sea had already been put on hold by German ministers.
In a statement issued on Monday, Shell said that it expected the move, which will also apply to any "related entities" to Gazprom, would be worth about $3bn (£2.2bn). The associated costs will be marked on its balance sheet later this year.
Shell followed on from the likes of BP, which had already announced that it would offload its stake in the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft - a potential hit of $25bn.
BP said earlier this week it was too soon to say how or to whom its stake in Rosneft would be sold.
Norwegian oil and gas producer Equinor has also announced its exit from Russia, saying the conflict made its current position "untenable".
Correction 22nd April 2022: This article originally reported that Western countries have not imposed sanctions on Russian oil imports and has been amended to make clear that Canada had announced a ban. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60638255 |
Ukraine war: UK grants 50 Ukrainian refugee visas so far - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The home secretary says she is "surging capacity" as about 1% of 5,500 applications are granted. | Most refugees are crossing the border into Poland, like this girl who travelled from Lviv
Fifty Ukrainians have been granted visas under a scheme for refugees with family links to the UK, the Home Office has announced.
It is about 1% of the 5,535 people who have applied since the programme launched 48 hours earlier.
Europe minister James Cleverly said he did not know the exact figures but said numbers would increase "very quickly".
The Ukrainian ambassador praised the UK effort but urged for the "maximum" number of people to be admitted.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was "doing everything possible" to speed up efforts to issue the travel permits.
The UK has steadily increased its visa offer to refugees from the Ukraine war, extending it to parents, grandparents and siblings as well as "immediate family" and extending the visas to three years.
But it has faced criticism that its scheme is less generous than the European Union's, while France accused the UK of a "lack of humanity", saying that 150 refugees were turned back at Calais for lacking a visa.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said 200,000 Ukrainians would be eligible to travel to the UK as he extended the offer of visas to a wider range of family members.
As of 10:00 GMT on Sunday, the Home Office said 11,750 had begun applications online, while 5,535 had completed them.
It added that 2,368 had booked a visa appointment to submit their application and biometric information, while "around 50" visas had been granted.
Mr Cleverly told BBC Breakfast the final figure would be "significantly" more than the 50 figure being quoted and said while a process was needed the government would make it "as quick, easy and as fast as possible".
"We are looking to create something very, very large-scale very, very quickly" he said. "Initially it will be slower than we would like but that will pick up."
Asked if it was acceptable that about 1% of applications had been granted in the first 48 hours of the scheme, Ms Patel said it was "the first scheme in the world that's up and running in this short period of time".
"This is an incredible scheme and we are doing everything possible, surging capacity across every single application centre across the EU," she said, adding that staff were being flown into Ukraine's border countries to speed up applications.
Ukraine's immediate neighbours have taken in the majority of the 1.5 million people estimated to have fled the war, with more than one million arriving in Poland.
Mr Celverly said that while "all of us would want to throw our arms open and be generous" there needed to be a process but there was no upper limit on how many Ukrainians could come to the UK via government schemes.
"We want to play our part but of course most Ukrainian refugees are in the countries bordering Ukraine and that's where they want to stay and we are providing humanitarian support for them there as well," he said.
France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote to Ms Patel on Saturday, saying that 400 Ukrainian refugees had arrived at Calais to cross the Channel, but 150 were sent back and told to obtain UK visas at embassies in Paris or Brussels.
Mr Darmanin said the response to people in distress was "completely unsuitable" and showed a "lack of humanity", calling for the UK to put consular staff at Calais to help Ukrainian refugees cross.
But Ms Patel said it was "wrong to say we are turning people back" and said the Home Office already had people working in Calais to support Ukrainian families.
The Sun reported that Ms Patel was "investigating legal options" to create a humanitarian route, which would mean anyone without ties to the UK fleeing the conflict would have the right to come to the UK.
However, the BBC understands this referred to the already announced route where refugees can be sponsored by individuals, communities or organisation and Mr Cleverly confirmed that there had been no change to the government's policy over the weekend.
Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's ambassador to the UK, said that the visa process could be simplified, adding that any issues could be resolved later but right now the "maximum" number needed to be admitted.
He said any "bureaucratic nonsense" should be cleared away, although he said it was necessary to continue security checks.
But he said the UK was at the "forefront of the effort" to support Ukraine.
On Monday the Disasters Emergency Committee announced its Ukraine appeal had raised more than £100m in four days. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60640460 |
Ukraine conflict: Petrol at fresh record as oil and gas prices soar - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Investors fear a global economic shock, with rising fuel bills causing more pain for households. | Petrol prices have hit another record high as oil and gas costs soar amid fears of a global economic shock from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Oil jumped to $139 a barrel at one point, the highest level for almost 14 years, while wholesale gas prices for next-day delivery more than doubled.
It came as the US hinted at a ban on buying Russian energy, as it looked to other countries to increase supplies.
However, European leaders rejected that idea on Monday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Europe had "deliberately exempted" Russian energy from sanctions because its supply cannot be secured "any other way" at the moment.
And Netherlands prime minister Mark Rutte said: "The painful reality is we are still very much dependent on Russian gas and Russian oil and if you now force European companies to quit doing business with Russia that would have enormous ramifications around Europe including Ukraine but also around the world.
"We have to reduce our dependency. That will take time," he added.
UK petrol prices have hit an average of 155p a litre, the AA motoring group said.
The market turmoil is fuelling concerns that the price of many everyday items from food to petrol and heating, already rising at their fastest rate for 30 years, could be pushed higher.
Analysts have already warned that UK energy bills could reach as high as £3,000 a year due to the surge in oil and gas prices.
Russia is the world's second top producer of crude oil after Saudi Arabia, and supplies about a third of Europe's needs. The price of Brent crude rose by more than a fifth last week amid fears of a reduction in Russian supplies.
After peaking at $139.13 a barrel early on Monday, the price of Brent crude - an international benchmark - fell back to around $125.
The latest rise in UK petrol prices has pushed the cost to more than £7 a gallon, the AA said. Filling up a car with a 55-litre tank now costs nearly £17 more than a year ago, rising from £68.60 to £85.59.
The boss of fuel delivery firm Portland Fuel, James Spencer, told the BBC he thought fuel prices could reach £1.70-£1.75 a litre. "Even if we can get extra [oil] supplies on to the market, nothing will happen quickly."
He said that, to a certain extent, individual car drivers have options to cut their use by driving less, but added that businesses that have no alternatives were really starting to feel the squeeze.
The crisis continues to affect share markets. The main stock exchanges in France and Germany sank more than 4% in early trading before paring their losses, closing 1.3% and 2% lower respectively.
In London, the FTSE 100 dropped more than 2%, but then recovered to close 0.4% lower. Last week, the FTSE had its worse week since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
In the US, markets ended lower with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 down 2.4% and 3% respectively. The Dow is now in a "correction", having fallen 10% since its last record closing level on 4 January.
The price of gold, a haven in troubled times for investors looking for security, hit $2,000 an ounce for the first time in almost 18 months.
These are massive movements in the price of commodities - the raw materials that eventually feed, warm and transport us.
The extra movements this morning arose out of talk of an embargo on Russian oil. That is very significant, because Russia is the second biggest world exporter. Anyone passing a petrol station would have seen the impact. If there was an actual embargo, the price of an average tank could head close to £100, and indeed is already there at the most expensive service stations in the UK.
But we don't need to be physically reliant on actual Russian supplies for it to feed through into the prices our suppliers pay and then pass on to us. The price for gas in international markets was already at incredible highs last week. It further increased by a third to frankly frightening levels, 10- to 15-times normal, above £6 per therm.
If in the first half of this year these prices average £3.20, then typical dual fuel bills in October could rise to £3,000 a year or £250 a month.
On Sunday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration and its allies were discussing a ban on Russian oil supplies.
The comments came as pressure grows on the White House and other Western nations to take tougher action against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
A Russian oil embargo would be a major escalation in the response to the invasion of Ukraine and would potentially have a major impact on the global economy.
However, some European countries are reluctant given their dependence on Russian energy supplies.
"While the US might just push through a ban on Russian oil imports, Europe can ill-afford to do the same. More worryingly, [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin, with his back to the wall, could turn off gas supplies to Europe, cutting off the continent's energy lifeline," said Vandana Hari at oil markets analysis firm Vanda Insights.
Mr Johnson said Europe could not simply shut down the use of oil and gas overnight, but that countries should move together quickly to look beyond Russia for its oil and gas supplies.
On Sunday, energy giant Shell defended its decision to purchase Russian crude oil despite the invasion of Ukraine.
The company said it was forced to buy oil from Russia in order to maintain timely supplies of fuel to Europe.
"To be clear, without an uninterrupted supply of crude oil to refineries, the energy industry cannot assure continued provision of essential products to people across Europe over the weeks ahead," a spokesperson added.
A possible ban on buying Russian oil has intensified pressure to find alternative supplies.
The US is this week expected to press Saudi Arabia to increase crude production, and there is fresh impetus for a deal over Iran's nuclear ambitions that would lift sanctions on its oil exports.
However, progress on a deal has been hampered after Russia sought a US guarantee that the sanctions it faces over the Ukraine conflict will not affect its trade with Tehran.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Video shows people running to escape Russian shelling in Irpin, just outside of the capital Kyiv | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60642786 |
Ukraine war: Why has 'Z' become a Russian pro-war symbol? - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | In Russia, the 'Z' is fast becoming seen as a staunchly pro-war symbol - what does it mean? | Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak is facing disciplinary proceedings by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) for displaying the letter "Z" on the podium next to a Ukrainian rival in Qatar. But what does the symbol mean?
In Russia, the "Z" is fast becoming seen as a staunchly pro-war symbol of President Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It has been sported by politicians, seen on the sides of cars, vans and advertising hoardings - as well as daubed on bus shelters. It has even been used by Serbs at pro-Russian demonstration in Belgrade. Photographs have been widely shared on social media.
It has become a social media conversation, says Aglaya Snetkova, a lecturer in international politics at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at UCL. "In many ways, this shows the extent to which Russia is, or has been, very much part of the global world."
While zed in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet is written differently - and looks like a 3 - most Russians recognise Latin letters. Emily Ferris - Russia and Eurasia research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) - says the "Z" is a powerful and easily recognisable symbol.
"Often with propaganda the simplest things catch on the quickest," she says. "It looks rather intimidating and quite stark. From an aesthetic perspective, it's a very powerful symbol."
It has taken less than a fortnight for the "Z" to spread among those supportive of President Putin's invasion.
In the central Russian city of Kazan, about 60 children and staff at a hospice were photographed outside in the snow forming a giant "Z" in front of their building.
Several theories have circulated as to what the "Z" symbol actually means. It first caught attention on social media after Russian tanks with "Zs" on the side were spotted en route to Ukraine.
Initially, it was thought that the "Z" was in fact a number "2" - representing the 22 February (22/02/2022). That was the day Russia ratified an agreement on "friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance" with the self-proclaimed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine - Donetsk and Luhansk.
But it is now believed the symbol is simply a way for Russia's military to identify its own forces.
Last week, viewers to a news programme on Russia's state-controlled Channel One were told that a "Z" was a common marking on Russian military equipment. The Orthodox Christian pro-Putin website Tsargrad told readers the simple marking could "avoid friendly fire" and couldn't be "mixed up with anything else".
Russian special forces veteran Sergey Kuvykin told the Russian magazine website, Life, that different symbols signified different military units. "Symbols like these are used - a 'Z' in a square, a 'Z' in a circle, a 'Z' with a star or simply 'Z' on its own." He said the markings helped make sure that troops, who might not be in contact with other comrades, were where they should be.
Russian warplanes fly too quickly to see the daubed white markings, says US Air Force Lt Col Tyson Wetzel - a senior Air Force fellow with The Atlantic Council think tank. But, in an interview with the Task and Purpose website, he agrees the "Zs" are a "de-confliction measure to help prevent fratricide" - friendly fire from Russian attack helicopters or artillery.
The spread of "Z" in Russia has not only been because of social media spontaneity - cautions Aglaya Snetkov from UCL.
"It has also been pushed by the regime."
One Russian politician, Maria Butina, shared a video of how to write the "Z" insignia on a business jacket - she explains - "so you can go into work and show it to everyone without shouting about it."
But Ms Snetkov says the symbol shouldn't be seen as fascist. "There are lots of memes transforming the 'Z' into a swastika, but that's done by people who want to push back against the regime."
And there are other symbols appearing, too.
The letter "V" for instance - also not in the Cyrillic alphabet - appears in posts on the official Instagram account of the Russian department of defence, alongside images of "Zs".
There are written captions. "Za PatsanoV" reads one, meaning "for the lads" - while another says "Sila V pravde", which translates into English as "strength in truth".
One theory is that the two Latin letters might stand for "vostok", meaning east, and "zapad", meaning west. But on social media, it has also been suggested that the Ukrainian military believes the "Z" refers to Russia's "Eastern Forces" - and the "V" to the "Naval infantry". | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60644832 |
Bird flu restrictions put in place to prevent spread on Jersey - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The rules are put in place after a dead goose at Jersey Zoo tested positive for Avian Influenza. | Keepers are being asked to prevent birds mixing with wild birds
Restrictions and biosecurity measures have been introduced to stop the spread of bird flu on Jersey.
Keepers are being asked to prevent their birds having contact with wild birds, the island's chief veterinary officer, Alistair Breed, said.
A dead red-breasted goose from Jersey Zoo became the third bird this year to test positive for Avian Influenza on the island.
The Government of Jersey said more details would be released on Monday.
The rules come into effect immediately for birds less than 3km (1.9 miles) from Jersey Zoo, but for owners further away they have until 11 March to comply.
Mr Breed said he expected the restrictions to stay in place for "at least one month" but this was dependent on how the situation developed on the island.
In February, two dead wild buzzards tested positive for bird flu in Jersey.
The UK Health Security Agency said that Avian Influenza was primarily a disease of birds and the risk to public health from bird flu was low.
However, the public are advised not to handle unwell or dead wild birds, the government said.
Follow BBC Jersey on Twitter and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-60640861 |
Ed Sheeran denies Shape of You copyright claim at High Court trial - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | The pop singer is accused by two songwriters of copying parts of his 2017 hit Shape Of You. | Ed Sheeran gave evidence at the High Court on Monday
Ed Sheeran has told the High Court he does not "borrow" ideas from unknown songwriters without credit.
The singer-songwriter has been accused by two other songwriters of copying parts of his 2017 hit Shape Of You.
Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue's barrister suggested Sheeran treated lesser-known songwriters differently from famous ones.
Sheeran denied this, telling the court he had cleared parts of songs with "lots" of unknown artists.
Shape of You was number one for 14 weeks in the UK in 2017, becoming the best-selling song of the year around the world.
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Chokri and O'Donoghue claim the song's "Oh I" hook is "strikingly similar" to part of their track Oh Why, which was released by Chokri under the name Sami Switch in 2015.
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On Friday, their barrister Andrew Sutcliffe QC claimed Sheeran "borrows ideas and throws them into his songs, sometimes he will acknowledge it but sometimes he won't".
But Sheeran denied the claim that he is a "magpie" who lifts other people's work without acknowledgment, pointing out that he has often shared credit with lesser-known artists, including Shivers and Visiting Hours, and a song that sampled an "unknown composer's" work from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
"All those examples are not famous artists that we've cleared songs with and that's what I have to say on that," he told the court.
Sami Chokri performs under the name Sami Switch
Sheeran created Shape of You with co-writers Steve Mac - real name Steven McCutcheon - and Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid, both of whom were also in court.
After its release, Sheeran added the team behind TLC's 1999 single No Scrubs to the song's writing credits after some commentators pointed out similarities.
On Monday, Mr Sutcliffe told the star: "The evidence is overwhelming that at the time of writing Shape of You, your songwriting process involved collecting ideas."
Sheeran replied: "You say it's overwhelming, I don't agree with that."
In written evidence, the singer said the contested element of Shape of You was "very short", and the relevant parts of both songs were "entirely commonplace".
He said: "Even so, if I had heard Oh Why at the time and had referenced it, I would have taken steps to clear it."
He added: "I have always tried to be completely fair in crediting anyone who makes any contribution to any song I write.
"I do refer to other works on occasion when I write, as do many songwriters. If there is a reference to another work, I notify my team so that steps can be taken to obtain clearance.
"I have been as scrupulous as I possibly can and have even given credits to people who I believe may have been no more than a mere influence for a songwriting element. This is because I want to treat other songwriters fairly."
Dressed in a sharp black suit, Ed Sheeran is firm, determined and just a little bit irritated on the stand as lawyers for Chokri and O'Donoghue deconstruct his songwriting process, looking for hints that he might take inspiration from outside sources.
Sheeran testifies that he mostly works in collaboration with other writers, and that it's often hard to identify who has written each individual part of a song once it's finished.
Referencing his Shape of You co-writer Johnny McDaid, he says: "My and Johnny's writing partnership is very much like a game of tennis. He'll say something and I'll say something back. We're quite quick when we go back and forth."
Asked repeatedly whether he is responsible for the chorus to his 2015 song Photograph, Sheeran replies tersely: "I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't know. We wrote the song together." It's a phrase he returns to several times throughout the morning's questioning.
Photograph is relevant because it was the subject of a separate copyright claim from Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard, who wrote Matt Cardle's 2011 single Amazing. The duo were eventually given a share of the song's royalties and a £4m lump sum in an out-of-court settlement.
Sheeran says he settled the claim because it was a "nuisance" and "more trouble than it was worth". Asked why he would pay out such a "substantial" sum instead of taking the case to court, he says he did so on the advice of his lawyers.
Mr Sutcliffe said Sheeran had known about Chokri before Shape Of You was written because the grime artist had tweeted Sheeran directly, and the singer had given a shout out to Sami Switch on stage in 2011. But Sheeran replied: "This isn't stuff that's true."
Chokri had also appeared on YouTube channel SBTV at around the same time as Sheeran, who described its founder Jamal Edwards as his "best friend".
But he said the music entrepreneur, who died last month, didn't share songs like Oh Why with him. Instead, the pair would "talk about football, talk about his mum, talk about theatre", he said.
Sheeran was also asked about his role as a talent-spotter for his own label Gingerbread Man Records. He denied being aware of Oh Why, saying he had just signed Jamie Lawson to the label and "wasn't looking for anyone else" to work with.
The musician told the court he quit social media in 2015, adding that for "the whole of 2016" he was "off" social media and was using a "flip phone from Tesco".
In May 2018, Sheeran and his co-writers issued proceedings asking the High Court to declare they had not infringed Chokri and O'Donoghue's copyright.
The pair then issued a counter claim for copyright infringement. The trial is expected to continue for about three weeks. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-60648263 |
The young Ukrainians battling pro-Russian trolls - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Conspiracy theories and trolls are adding to the chaos of war. | Katrin on holiday in happier times. She found her social media awash with fake posts after the invasion began
What's it like being a young Ukrainian experiencing war while wading through chaos and misinformation on social media?
24-year-old Katrin awoke in Kyiv last Thursday to the sound of an explosion - and soon enough found her social media feed awash with distressing posts.
"The first thing we had to do was to pack and go to the basement," she tells me, now safe in her small hometown outside of Lviv where she escaped with her boyfriend, neighbours and their dogs.
"But right after we went down, I started scrolling Instagram. And it was all on my Instagram stories and my posts."
She wasn't just seeing scary, factual posts from friends, but false information - including comments on TikTok from accounts that claimed the war "wasn't real" or that it was a "hoax".
"After I blocked this one account, another sprung up with a profile picture of a different girl, writing to me in Russian," Katrin says.
The trolls have been prolific - and they have been interacting with young women across Ukraine.
Alina, 18, found herself in a total panic after seeing posts in Russian suggesting that her neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhya in south-east Ukraine was about to be shelled and destroyed. But the rumours were false.
Screengrabs of messages in Russia falsely claiming that an attack was imminent on Alina's town
Alina spoke to me from her bedroom, exhausted after nights of air raids and sheltering. She says that rumours moved rapidly on chat app Telegram, spread by people apparently setting out to cause panic.
"Russians specifically find our chats and write that something is exploding. Someone writes that there is a sign of a bomb in the area - then others refute the information," she says.
Another video she saw on Telegram suggested there had been an explosion at the airport in her hometown. It turned out to be a different explosion, in the nearby city of Mariupol.
A video shared with false claims that there was an explosion in Alina's hometown
Old footage from other conflicts, including the massive blast in Beirut in 2020, has also been shared widely - including on TikTok, where clips have racked up millions of views.
Marta is 20 years old and was stuck in the UK where she was visiting friends when the war broke out. She says she's seen videos from Syria and Iraq.
"But they posted them as 'Ukraine'," she says.
She says videos on TikTok's For You Page - the main gateway into the video-sharing app - have left her terrified and angry, as she desperately worries for friends and family back home.
All three women have found themselves battling accounts posting comments in support of Russia.
The videos posted by one of the pro-Russian accounts Jess promoting false claims about the war in Ukraine.
"Some of them started to post videos, they started to call Ukraine 'liars'," Marta says.
Some were blaming Ukraine for the violence, writing "glory to Russia" - and others falsely suggested that the war was somehow staged.
"Every time I decided to take a look at those accounts, they were a profile with zero followers, zero likes, zero following, with a profile picture of a Russian flag or something," Marta says.
Many of the TikTok accounts that the women shared with me appear to have lifted photos from other accounts online. Like Marta says, they have few or no followers, and they don't use their real names - or use generic usernames.
One I looked at used the name "Jess" and had just one follower. The only videos on the account are ones first shared just days ago, indicating that the account was created very recently.
Almost all of the videos the account did share featured debunked and false claims: that a woman who was injured during a Russian attack was an actor, that news coverage is filled with footage of old conflicts, and even that the war somehow isn't happening.
One account Katrin ended up arguing with on TikTok again had few followers - its profile image appears to be copied from the Pinterest page of a Korean woman.
None of the accounts have responded to my attempts to get in touch - so it's hard to tell who is running them. Russia has created inauthentic accounts before to push messages and sow division. But it's also possible that the accounts are run by real people who believe false claims.
Misinformation is a problem social media companies have been grappling with for some time. Now their policies are coming under fresh scrutiny.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, along with Twitter and Google, have all announced commitments to tackle false information and propaganda around the war in Ukraine.
But it's apps like Telegram and TikTok - used a lot by young Ukrainians - is where much of this disinformation continues to proliferate.
TikTok told the BBC it has "increased resources to respond to emerging trends and remove violative content, including harmful misinformation and promotion of violence." Telegram did not respond to our request for comment.
It's clear that what's happening online is causing even more panic and pain in the real world.
"We are scared by those who create this fake information," Alina tells me, ready to head yet again down to the basement as the air raid siren rings out. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-60596133 |
Ukraine: Irish student makes fresh escape attempt - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | A 19-year-old Irish woman living in Sumy is trying to leave the country amid Russian attacks. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Racheal Diyaolu has been taking cover in her university's bunker since the Russian invasion
An Irish medical student is attempting to leave Ukraine after sheltering for days from airstrikes and shelling in the eastern town of Sumy.
Racheal Diyaolu, who is 19 and from Carlow, was among hundreds of international students in the city close to Ukraine's border with Russia.
Sumy has been under attack by Russia since its invasion started last month.
Racheal told BBC News NI she had been mentally "blocking out" the dangers she faced.
It is understood she left Sumy on Monday after she was picked up by two Scottish men attempting a rescue who her family had been in contact with.
Her sister, Christiana, said she had passed safely through a number of checkpoints and was staying overnight at a "safe stopover location" before a curfew begins.
"The relief just knowing that they're safe and sheltered," she told BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra programme.
"We're hoping for the best now."
A previous rescue effort failed on Sunday when a minivan used by the men was targeted by "warning shots" from Russian forces as they tried to enter Sumy, Racheal said.
However, they managed to reach an agreed pick-up location on Monday morning.
On Monday night, Racheal said that the group planned to head for Moldova on Tuesday.
"Hopefully we'll be able to get to the border and find our way through, and get home soon," she said in a video, posted on Twitter.
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Earlier, she had told RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme they hoped to travel in the direction of Poland, a journey which could take up to 20 hours.
She was not sure if they could make use of humanitarian corridors.
"I have left behind lots of friends who are still stuck there and still looking for ways to get out, and most of my belongings as well," she explained.
"I'm fine, just trying to stay in high spirits and keep positive that we'll make it to Poland."
Christiana said the Scottish men had their phones seized during the attack on Sunday before being told to turn back.
"Luckily they were able to find an alternative route into Sumy and stayed there overnight and then continued their mission this morning," she added.
Racheal has been studying in Ukraine since November
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs told BBC News NI it was aware of 52 Irish citizens remaining in Ukraine.
On Sunday, UN monitors said 364 civilian deaths had been confirmed in Ukraine since the invasion began on 24 February, but the real figure was likely to be "considerably higher".
Ms Diyaolu arrived in the country from the Republic of Ireland for her studies last November.
Since the invasion started, she has been taking cover in her university's bunker when air raid sirens have sounded.
"Someone will come and knock on your door on all the floors to let them know that it's time to go down and take cover, bring your essentials and your documents," she told BBC News NI before her latest attempt to leave Sumy.
The Ukrainian deputy prime minister has said Russia is striking civilian targets in Ukraine, including hospitals, nurseries, and schools.
At the beginning of the invasion, Russian tanks and troops poured into Ukraine at points along its borders including northern regions such as Sumy.
Ms Diyaolu said it had been "an out-of-body experience" to know there is such danger outside.
"I've had to train my mind to block out the fact that this is incoming danger," she told BBC News NI.
"It does happen so frequently at this point that you kind of don't have time to be afraid any more."
Russian forces have been heavily shelling towns outside the capital of Kyiv
The student said things had become quite difficult in Sumy, "especially for people who are trying to get out".
"It's been quite hard going, we've had a lot of air strike threats, we've had quite a few bombs being dropped," she said.
The medical student said she had tried to "hold on to hope" that she would be able to get home.
"It's especially hard on my mother, she's just worried to death all day every day, trying to get in contact with me," she said.
"The best thing I can do is stay calm when I am talking to her, letting her know that I'm OK.
"I know that I'm in a scary situation and in a dangerous area, but letting her know that I'm OK, mentally and physically, and that my mind is with them at home and my mind is focused on staying safe and trying to find ways to get out."
Ms Diyaolu's family have been calling for more help from the Irish government to bring the 19-year-old home.
Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not comment on specific cases, but confirmed it was in contact with Irish citizens in Ukraine.
It has advised people to "shelter in a secure place" or, if it is safe to do so, to "consider leaving Ukraine, depending on their location and prevailing circumstances". | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60638895 |
Corrie Mckeague would binge-drink after friend's death - inquest - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | An inquest is being held after Corrie Mckeague vanished after a night out in Suffolk. | Corrie Mckeague went missing after a night out in September 2016
An airman who vanished following a night out developed a "significant binge-drinking problem" after a friend died on a railway line when he was a teenager, an inquest heard.
Corrie Mckeague, from Dunfermline, was 23 when he vanished in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on 24 September 2016.
Police believe he died after climbing into a waste bin after a night out.
The inquest, due to last four weeks, is being held at Suffolk Coroner's Court in Ipswich.
The last confirmed sighting of Mr Mckeague was at 03:25 BST, when CCTV cameras recorded him walking into an area in central Bury St Edmunds known as the "horseshoe", behind Greggs and Superdrug, where industrial waste bins were stored.
A £2m police investigation was carried out into his disappearance, including a trawl of a landfill site at Milton, near Cambridge. His body has never been found.
Mr Mckeague was last seen on CCTV after leaving a nightclub
In a statement read out at the inquest, Martin Mckeague described his son as a "happy child".
However, Mr Mckeague said there were "major events" that shaped his life including the separation of his parents when he was 10 years old and the discovery of his friend's body on a railway line when he was 15.
A landfill site at Milton, near Cambridge, was extensively searched as part of the investigation
He said the death of his son's friend "was a terrible shock for a 15-year-old boy to suffer, and one I don't think he ever truly got over".
Martin Mckeague continued: "I don't believe Corrie was ever suicidal.
"This has been a heart-breaking tragedy."
Nicola Urquhart, second from right, pictured with her two other sons Darroch, left, and Makeyan, is at the inquest in Ipswich
Mr Mckeague's mother Nicola Urquhart agreed the friend's death had a "huge impact" on her son.
In a statement read to the inquest, she said Corrie, who had started to train as a hairdresser and then as a PE teacher before joining the RAF, had been prescribed antidepressants in the past.
But, she said, he was "back to his usual happy self" by 2015.
Ms Urquhart said her son "regularly lost his phone or wallet on nights out" but "was never aggressive with or without alcohol".
"There was nothing to suggest Corrie had any problems or concerns around the time of his disappearance," she said.
Ms Urquhart said added: "Despite what's in the press, as far as I'm aware Corrie had never slept in a bin nor had he ever climbed into a bin to sleep."
Posters were distributed in the search of Mr Mckeague when he went missing
Suffolk's senior coroner Nigel Parsley said Mr Mckeague, who had served in the RAF for three years, drank a "significant amount of alcohol during the evening" of 23 September.
He said Mr Mckeague was asked to leave Flex nightclub and "was seen on a number of occasions on CCTV".
Mr Parsley said police investigations and searches failed to locate him and there had been no contact with family and no financial transactions that could be linked to him.
He said over the coming weeks, jurors would hear evidence about Mr Mckeague's movements, his contact with any witnesses and "hypotheses and possible scenarios relating to Corrie's disappearance".
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-60647946 |
Ukraine invasion: Volunteers 'working on autopilot' - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Within hours of Russia’s invasion, all over Ukraine, volunteers offered their services. | Within hours of Russia’s invasion, all over Ukraine, volunteers began to mobilise.
In the west of the country, BBC Ukraine's Zhanna Bezpiatchuk visits one community centre where locals have been working around the clock, to move up to 100 tonnes of food and medicine out to the frontline, everyday. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60641870 |
One dead after trawler which sailed from Peterhead capsizes off Norway - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Three crew were flown to hospital after being found on the keel of the boat which sailed from Peterhead. | The Njord had sailed from Peterhead
A man has died and seven crew members have been rescued after a fishing trawler capsized off Norway.
The Njord, which left Peterhead on Saturday afternoon, got into difficulty in the North Sea, about 100 nautical miles west of Stavanger.
Rescuers found the crew on the keel of the capsized boat on Sunday afternoon.
The Norwegian Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre (JRCC) said three who had ingested diesel were airlifted to hospital in Bergen and one later died.
Five others were picked up by an offshore vessel, the Olympic Challenger.
The JRCC said there was no radio contact with the stricken 24m (79ft) vessel, which was previously called Courageous when it worked out of Lerwick in Shetland.
A spokesman said they were automatically alerted by the trawler's emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB), which activated when it started taking on water.
Ståle Jamtli from the JRCC told BBC Scotland the helicopter rescue was scrambled from a nearby offshore platform.
"They were there I guess after 20-something minutes," he said. "When they arrived at the wreck, they saw some people sitting on the keel of the vessel - the vessel had capsized and two people I think were in the water.
"Five of them were picked up by a nearby vessel that came to aid. The three people that were hoisted into the helicopter, they were brought to hospital in Bergen. They all had swallowed some diesel oil. The five other guys were then picked up by another helicopter and sent ashore, but they were in fairly good shape."
He added: "When you consider the circumstances, I guess they were lucky because they got a really fast recovery or help because there was an offshore helicopter that close by.
"It probably went very fast, the capsizing, because they didn't have any rescue gear or life rescue suits on them either, so they were just in normal working clothes. They would be cold. So they were lucky that they were rescued that fast."
The Olympic Challenger's captain Sven Tore Ask received the distress message. They were five nautical miles away when they set off towards the fishing boat.
They sent out a small boat and rescued five of the crew who were in the water, before giving them warm clothes, food and drink, before the rescue helicopter arrived and transported them ashore.
Shipowner Stig Remøy said: "The crew has done a great job, where the quick action taken has clearly saved lives."
The UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said it received a distress alert from the EPIRB at 13:49 on Sunday in the Norwegian search and rescue region.
The Norwegian Coastguard was contacted and confirmed it had also received the alert and a helicopter had been sent.
It is believed the boat, built in 1992, sailed from Peterhead on Saturday afternoon and is registered in North Shields.
No details about the dead man or the crew members have been released.
An FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) spokesperson said: "We are supporting the family of a British man following his death in Norway. We are also supporting a British man who is hospitalised in Bergen. We remain in contact with the Norwegian authorities." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60645898 |
Ukraine war: Investigate claim PM intervened to help Evgeny Lebedev get peerage, says Starmer - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | Sir Keir expresses concern over reports PM helped Evgeny Lebedev join the Lords amid security fears. | Sir Keir Starmer has called for a senior parliamentary committee to investigate claims Boris Johnson pushed for a Russian-born businessman to get a peerage, despite security concerns.
The Sunday Times reports the security services withdrew an assessment that giving Evgeny Lebedev an honour posed a security risk after the PM intervened.
The Labour leader said he was "very concerned" about the case.
However, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab insisted there was no "impropriety".
Speaking to the BBC's Sunday Morning programme, Mr Raab said: "There is a very strict and stringent process when anyone is granted a peerage".
He added that the rules around the honours process were "applied very rigorously in this case."
"This was done properly and correctly and we have procedures and systems in place to make sure it is."
Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Independent and the London Evening Standard newspapers, was given a peerage in July 2020.
The son of Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire Russian banker and former KGB officer, he came to London at the age of eight when his father began working in the Soviet embassy.
He holds both Russian and British citizenship.
Earlier this week Lord Lebedev published a letter to Vladimir Putin in which he urged the Russian president to "bring this terrible conflict in Ukraine to an end".
"As a Russian citizen I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters."
Boris Johnson with his sister Rachel and Lord Lebedev at an Evening Standard party in 2012
The Sunday Times says that in March 2020 the commission that vets peerage appointments advised the prime minister against granting the newspaper owner a seat in the House of Lords - also known as a peerage - due to security concerns.
Mr Johnson is said to have responded to the advice by claiming it was "anti-Russianism".
Responding to the Sunday Times, Lord Lebedev said the allegations were incorrect.
Asked about the story, Sir Keir said he was "very concerned" and that the "appropriate thing" was to refer the reports to the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.
He said the cross-party group of MPs and peers would be able to look at confidential material and "come to a view about what actually happened."
The Intelligence and Security Committee said it produced a report in July 2020 which said several members of the Russian elite with close links to Vladimir Putin were involved in UK charitable or political organisations, which put them in a position to help the Russian state influence UK public opinion or policy.
The committee said its report also highlighted the number of members of the House of Lords with business interests linked to Russia and contained an unpublished annexe covering these issues in more depth, but which it cannot discuss for national security reasons.
A government spokesperson said: "All individuals nominated for a peerage are done so in recognition of their contribution to society and all peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission."
The role of the commission is to advise the prime minister on whether it has any concerns about the propriety of a nominee to the House of Lords, Parliament's second chamber.
When someone is nominated, the commission carries out checks with other government departments and agencies.
It can then say whether it supports a nomination, however the commission has no right of veto.
Ultimately, it is up to the prime minister to decide whether to award a peerage. The appointments are then formalised by the Queen. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60638289 |
Ukrainians on way to UK hit paperwork dead-end in Calais - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | "No visa for at least another week," said Misha, simply. "No-one can help us in Calais." | The Raminishvili family are stuck in Calais
Misha Raminishvili was close to despair, his daughter in tears, as the news came through. His wife Maria had a vacant look in her eyes that spoke of a nightmare journey still without a final destination.
"No visa for at least another week," he said, simply. "No-one can help us in Calais."
I met Misha, with his Ukrainian wife Maria and two children, at a hostel in the French port which is accommodating 137 Ukrainian refugees.
Misha has a house in Hornchurch, east London, but lives between there and Kyiv.
He and his son, Misha Jr, have UK passports. But his wife Maria, and daughter Gabrielle, do not - and therefore need visas to enter the UK, which require biometric checks.
Misha has been stuck in Calais for five days, unable to get his family across the Channel, in what would be the last leg of a journey that began on 24 February.
At the start of that journey, Maria walked 45 miles to Ukraine's border with Romania before Misha reached her.
"I feel left out," Misha told me in Calais. "Who else is going to help me if not my own government?"
Misha Raminishvili and his son can enter the UK, but his wife and daughter can not
More than 500 Ukrainian refugees are currently in Calais, hoping to get to the UK.
Among them are families with small children and babies, as well as elderly women who have fled the war and crossed a continent.
Many tell of having attempted to reach Britain, only to have been turned back by Border Force officials because they didn't have the right paperwork.
Despite Home Secretary Priti Patel saying she had "surged a Home Office team" to help people on the ground in Calais - and denying that anyone had been turned back at the border - there is frustration and despair among those trying to navigate the bureaucracy.
A Home Office presence at a local administrative building disappeared this morning, a sign at the hostel advising people to go to Brussels or Paris to apply for a visa.
Desperate refugees returned from the building to say they didn't know what to do - or where to go.
Eventually, Misha spoke to a Border Force official who advised him to head across town to the old port building.
He has a car and was able to drive there. But when he arrived, the Home Office representation amounted to three men at a table in a deserted departure hall with bags of ready salted crisps and chocolate bars.
When Misha asked them how he could get home to England with his family, he was told he could have an appointment in Paris on 15 March.
"Another week stuck here," Misha lamented. "I have never claimed a benefit in my life and the first time I ask my government for their help, this is how they treat me. I am gutted."
The Home Office had promised refugees arriving in Calais there would be support available to help them complete the final leg of their long journeys.
However, a Home Office statement today announced: "There is no visa application centre in Calais and people should not travel there.
"Anyone wishing to make an application under the Ukraine Family Scheme should apply online and then to travel to their nearest visa application centre.
"The only visa application centre in France is in Paris."
A charity worker from Care4Calais has become the focal point for many of the refugees in the hostel, but she too is frustrated by the lack of information and support from the UK authorities.
The prime minister has said the UK government will be "very, very generous" in its approach to helping Ukrainian refugees come to the UK, but in Calais people fleeing the war and looking for sanctuary in Britain spoke of a different attitude from those at the border. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60652914 |
Baby killed in suspected dog attack at Ostler's Plantation - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | A man and woman are arrested on suspicion of a dangerous dogs offence after a three-month-old dies. | Ambulance crews summoned police to Ostler's Plantation, in Lincolnshire, on Sunday night
A three-month-old girl has been killed in a suspected dog attack at a beauty spot.
Paramedics were called to Ostler's Plantation, near Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, at 23:13 GMT on Sunday.
They called police to the scene, who arrested a 40-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man on suspicion of being in charge of a dog which was out of control. Both remain in custody.
Officers have not released information about how the baby died.
Ch Supt Andy Cox said Lincolnshire Police was doing "everything we can" to establish the circumstances.
"This is an exceptionally sad incident, and one that we know will impact the local community, or indeed anyone hearing about it," he said.
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-60649825 |
TikTok limits services as Netflix pulls out of Russia - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | TikTok suspends live streaming and new content from its platform, while Russians can no longer access Netflix. | Video-sharing site TikTok and streaming giant Netflix have limited and cut their services respectively in Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
TikTok said it had suspended live streaming and new content from its platform as it assesses tough new laws to crack down on "fake news" about Russia's armed forces.
Netflix said it was pulling out in protest at the invasion.
Visa, Mastercard and PwC also joined the list of western firms cutting ties.
TikTok, which has around 36 million users in Russia, said its move was about ensuring the safety of its staff and users.
Since Friday, anyone who writes news deemed false about the military could face up to 15 years in jail.
Among other things, the Kremlin objects to the conflict being called a war, instead calling it a "special military operation".
The BBC and other news outlets have already stopped reporting in Russia, saying they can no longer be independent.
In a series of Tweets, TikTok said: "In light of Russia's new 'fake news' law, we have no choice but to suspend live-streaming and new content to our video service while we review the safety implications of this law.
"Our in-app messaging service will not be affected."
It added: "We will continue to evaluate the evolving circumstances in Russia to determine when we might fully resume our services with safety as our top priority."
Chinese-owned TikTok, which has one billion users worldwide, has been criticised for not speaking out against Russia invading Ukraine, unlike its peers Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter.
But in a longer statement on its website on Sunday, it described the war in Ukraine as "devastating", adding that it had "brought pain to our community and our people".
TikTok says it "doesn't break down user numbers by country" but we know that Russia is one of the company's top territories.
It's thought that around 36m people use the app and TikTok's new rules reduce them to spectators of other people's content.
TikTok says it's making the move to protect its users from breaking Russia's new "fake news" laws.
But it will no doubt help the company too.
Moderating social networks during times of crisis is hard enough, but having to vet content under the new draconian laws in Russia puts all platforms in a tough position.
I wouldn't be surprised if other apps took similar measures to protect themselves.
Russia has many high-profile creators who make their living from TikTok so we can expect even more people to be motivated to protest against the "fake news" laws.
The Kremlin may also lose out in the information war too with less pro-Russia content on people's timelines.
Last week, Netflix temporarily stopped all future projects and acquisitions in Russia as it assessed the impact of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
But on Sunday, a spokesperson said: "Given the circumstances on the ground, we have decided to suspend our service in Russia."
The firm launched in Russia in 2016 and only has 1 million subscribers there - a fraction of the 220 million it has worldwide.
But according to Variety magazine, the streaming platform had four Russian originals in the works.
That includes the crime thriller series Zato, which was shooting and has since been put on hold.
A host of companies have suspended their operations in Russia since it attacked its neighbour, including Apple, Jaguar Land Rover, H&M and Burberry. Many other firms are reviewing their positions, while some are looking to offload stakes in Russian ventures.
On Sunday, two of the Big Four accounting firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) said they would no longer have a member firm in Russia because of the invasion.
Visa, Mastercard and American Express also suspended operations in Russia, although the country's banks played down the impact on consumers. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60641988 |
BBC Ukrainian editor: 'My mother called to say she'd managed to buy bread' - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | In the second week of war, the BBC's Ukrainian editor says empty shelves are an increasing reality. | We are now well into the second week of this war, and I've noticed that I don't cry any more.
I start the day reading the overnight news, counting new blasts all around Ukraine. A couple of days ago, I woke up to reports of major rocket strikes in Kyiv, near where my dad lives. It took me 10 minutes to pluck up the courage to call him, to ask if he and his partner were all right. They were, and I experienced a wave of relief.
When I see horrible pictures of destruction in Kyiv, and Russian tanks in towns and villages just outside, I think of these once-quiet places, where our friends have their dachas, or country cottages. We used to visit them with our kids, we had barbecues, and sipped wine in cosy armchairs. Some of those towns have now been destroyed by heavy fighting and artillery.
At the start of the war, one thing that did bring tears to my eyes was a message on an app for events in Kyiv. It was a list of things that would not happen that day - concerts and exhibitions, events that now seem like something from a previous life. These apps now provide different kinds of information - notifications about air raids, lists of supermarkets with food and pharmacies with medicine.
My mother is more worried about how to get food for her dog and cats than for herself, but she called me the other day just to happily announce that she had managed to buy two loaves of bread! This is in a city where food used to be available in great abundance.
That is more shocking for me than pictures of burned-out Russian tanks. Food shortages and empty shelves are our reality now. People share information on where you can buy and what. Some shops have shortages, but at the same time there is always enough for those who are in need. Restaurants prepare free food for soldiers, people who lost their homes or anyone who needs it.
People in Kyiv wait in line to go food shopping
My 10-year-old son is not going to school, even online. Some teachers have stayed in Kyiv, others have left. His classmates have fled to the countryside or abroad. They chat on Zoom, playing games and pretending to be hackers who fight for Ukraine. One of the chats they have set up on a messaging app is called "war matters".
Every day, Ukrainians face the decision of whether to stay or to leave.
During the first week of war, almost a million packed their bags and left Ukraine to become refugees. That number is rising fast. But many others have decided to stay, at least for now. Famous singers, artists and sportsmen have enrolled in the army. Millions of Ukrainians have become volunteers, trying to help those in greatest need.
It feels like Ukrainians have become one big family where every member is trying to help, in any way they can. Those who can fight, fight. Those who can cook, cook. Those who can deliver, deliver. I heard a heart-breaking story from Kherson, the first city seized by Russian forces, where an elderly man without legs and fingers became a volunteer.
Now every town and village has checkpoints, made of sandbags, cement blocks and cut trees. Armed men - young professionals who fled Kyiv, local farmers or pensioners - check the documents of anyone entering.
The village where I am staying has two checkpoints, manned by local men who take turns to operate them 24 hours a day. They have hunting rifles, and some carry knives or axes. They are ready to protect their small communities with everything they have.
This sense of unity has never been so strong among Ukrainians. The country is full of activity like a beehive, producing hope for victory.
Are you personally affected by the issues raised in this story? If it is safe to do so email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60633888 |
NHS dental practices 'may struggle to remain financially viable' - BBC News | 2022-03-07 | An "ambitious oral health strategy" is needed in Northern Ireland, the British Dental Association says. | Health service-committed practices are "overstretched and underfunded", the BDA says
Northern Ireland dental practices that provide NHS services may "struggle to remain financially viable", the British Dental Association (BDA) has said.
The body has warned they are becoming "increasingly reliant" on private work to maintain health service dentistry within their practices.
The BDA has launched its manifesto ahead of the assembly elections in May.
It said that fees provided for NHS care have fallen by "as much as a quarter in real terms" in the last 10 years.
The chair of the BDA's Northern Ireland Council, Roz McMullan, said an "ambitious oral health strategy" is needed.
"Northern Ireland's dentists are working to a financial model that no longer adds up," she said.
The Department of Health said the uplift in fee levels each year is informed by the recommendations from the UK wide Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration (DDRB) and that its recommendations have been implemented in full since 2016/17.
On Monday evening, the BDA said it was "gutted" at the outcome of talks with the Department of Health and the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB).
It described new funding arrangements announced for general dental services as "totally inadequate".
The body hoped for a bigger increase in fees to help practices facing financial pressures but said a proposed 25% enhancement to dental fees left NHS dentists "worried for the future".
Earlier, Ms McMullan said dentists were "overstretched and underfunded"
"Health service-committed practices are struggling to remain financially viable," she added.
"Colleagues feel they are being pushed out of NHS dentistry - at the very time we face a huge Covid backlog.
"We all need to know this service has a future, because otherwise the UK's deepest oral health inequalities will only widen."
Ms McMullan said the association was calling on politicians to ensure that NHS dentistry is a priority in the next mandate.
In an interview with BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster on Monday, she warned that there was "a real possibility" that access to NHS dentistry for all is at risk.
Ms McMullan said the fees paid to dentists for NHS work had gone down by 40% in real terms since 2009.
"It got to the point where the more NHS work a practice did, the less was the income," she said.
But Ms McMullan said dentists wanted to remain positive.
Dental disease often affects those less advantaged in society, she said.
"We are passionate that they can retain access to a preventative-based dental treatment.
"We have to look at a new way of delivering dentistry that all people can access at the time they need it for NHS dentistry."
In a statement, the department said dentists were "not sheltered from fluctuations in operating costs and given the current rate of inflation those costs have increased".
"It is expected that this will be taken into account in the next publication of the DDRB report due in June 2022, the recommendations of which will be given full consideration," it continued.
"In December 2021 the minister established the General Dental Services Contract Reform group to develop of options for a new contract for General Dental Services.
"One of the primary objectives of any new contract is that, when considered in isolation to private care, it is financially viable and attractive to providers."
The British Dental Association has also called for investment in increased places at the School of Dentistry at Queen's University.
Last year, the number of allocated undergraduate places in Northern Ireland remained fixed at 60, according to figures from the Office for Students.
There was a 10% increase in the number of allocated undergraduate places in England in the same period. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-60626035 |
Calls for P&O Ferries boss Peter Hebblethwaite to resign grow - BBC News | 2022-03-25 | Boris Johnson backs Grant Shapps' call for Peter Hebblethwaite to quit after not consulting on sackings. | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps: "It's breathtakingly arrogant what they have done"
The prime minister has backed calls for the boss of P&O Ferries to resign over the no-notice sackings of 800 staff.
Boris Johnson supported Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in urging Peter Hebblethwaite to step down after his "brazen" law breaking, No 10 said.
He admitted to MPs that he broke the law by not consulting workers but said he would do the same again if he had to.
A government spokesperson said it has asked for a review of P&O's actions.
P&O Ferries replaced staff with agency workers paid less than the minimum wage.
Mr Hebblethwaite prompted further anger when he told the transport committee P&O "did choose not to consult" on the move and "did not believe there was any other way to do this".
P&O's owner DP World had warned Mr Shapps that Irish Ferries was a new "low-cost competitor" that would pose a challenge to the business, minutes from a meeting in November revealed.
Mr Shapps had replied to DP World boss DP Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem: "I'm aware of the issues relating to P&O. I recognise you will need to make commercial decisions, but please do keep us informed."
But the transport secretary told BBC Breakfast the first he knew of the P&O sackings was when he was "stood at the despatch box" in the Commons last Thursday delivering a statement on another issue.
He added that even if he had known in advance, "it wouldn't have made any difference", because P&O Ferries had already hired agency staff, security, and recorded the video "behind everybody's backs".
The BBC has seen a letter Mr Hebblethwaite sent to P&O colleagues on Friday telling them "this type of dismissal could not and would not happen again".
He called it a "unique situation" and said no criminal offence had been committed.
He wrote that there had been "a failure to comply with the obligation to consult".
P&O Ferries had made redundancies due to pandemic pressures before the mass sackings, but had previously consulted unions.
Friday's talks between union officials and P&O ended after 20 minutes without any agreement, the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said.
General secretary Mick Lynch said: "P&O were not prepared to listen to any scenario or develop any idea that would provide a means to create a solution to the current disastrous situation."
It has called for the immediate disqualification of Mr Hebblethwaite as a director. It also wants the government to reinstate sacked workers in their jobs.
The Institute of Directors has said Mr Hebblethwaite could face court proceedings under the Company Directors Disqualification Act (1986).
Dr Roger Barker, director of policy and governance, said this was due to Mr Hebblethwaite's suggestion that P&O knowingly broke the law by not consulting staff.
"[Mr Hebblethwaite] leaves himself and the rest of the board vulnerable to court proceedings for unfit conduct and the potential for disqualification as a director, not just of P&O but any UK company."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. ‘P&O Ferries weren’t just jobs they were our homes’
Labour's shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, also called on the government to disqualify Mr Hebblethwaite as a company director.
She told BBC News: "The government can do more than just wait for the chief executive to go. The government should be investigating action against him to disqualify him as a company director now and in the future as well."
Mr Shapps told BBC Breakfast the government would bring in measures next week to force P&O Ferries into a U-turn to re-employ staff on at least minimum wage.
These changes would also affect the operator Irish Ferries, who he said have used "the same model".
Asked about the action government could take against P&O, Mr Shapps admitted it "can't directly" revoke P&O's licence but said "we do have some mechanisms".
"There are a whole load of other things happening including letters going out to the ports from which they sail, then, as I mentioned, different types of legislation will be forthcoming, so we are going to make sure P&O have to U-turn on this."
However, Beth Hale, partner at employment law firm CM Murray, questioned the government's capacity to force through a change.
"It's not clear what mechanisms the government is proposing to rely on to force a U-turn in this matter. The dismissals of the employees have already taken effect - and some may already have signed up to settlement agreements and accepted termination payments.
"There is no mechanism in the law as it currently stands which would allow the government or unions to force an employer to re-engage employees in those circumstances," she said, adding that pressure could be applied in different ways such as the Insolvency Service disqualifying individual P&O Ferries directors.
A government spokesperson said that it has asked the Insolvency Service to review P&O Ferries' actions.
"This will include any scope to take legal action against the company's directors. We will not hesitate to take further action if we find evidence of wrongdoing," they added.
P&O Ferries has said its 800 redundant staff will be offered £36.5m in total - with around 40 getting more than £100,000 each.
The company said some employees are set to get 91 weeks' pay and the chance of new employment, and no employee would receive less than £15,000.
Mr Shapps also told Radio 4's Today programme: "What they've done is try to pay off, or attempt to pay off, their staff with higher redundancy payments...and therefore buy their silence and we cannot have a situation where laws are being creatively used and abused in this case."
He said: "The idea that you come to parliament and you admit that you deliberately set out to break the laws in order to sack your staff and bring in below minimum wage people and that you'll buy off the staff to do that is quite simply unacceptable.
"They've exploited loopholes, they've been completely disgraceful and I'm clear that is no way to behave and not the right individual to have at the top of a British business." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60872294 |
Covid in Scotland: New record as one in 11 Scots had virus last week - BBC News | 2022-03-25 | Official estimates suggest 473,800 people in Scotland had the virus in the week ending 20 March. | A record number of people in Scotland had Covid last week, according to official estimates - with one in 11 returning a positive result.
The latest weekly sampling by the Office for National Statistics suggest 473,800 people in Scotland had the virus in the week ending 20 March.
It came in the same week Covid patients in hospitals reached a record high.
And NHS Lanarkshire warned its three acute hospitals - Hairmyres, Wishaw and Monklands - were beyond full.
Medics said they were regularly running with capacity over 100% and they urged people to attend its accident and emergency departments only if their condition was urgent or life-threatening.
The surge in case numbers has been attributed to a more infectious Omicron sub-variant, BA.2.
The one in 11 rate was the UK's highest, with England and Wales reporting one in 16 and one in 17 in Northern Ireland.
The number of cases in Scotland has risen from 376,300 last week - when one in 14 had the virus - to 473,800 people in this week's data.
Meanwhile, there were 2,326 hospital patients with the virus on Friday - the fifth day in a row that Covid patient numbers hit a record high.
Staff at hospitals in NHS Lanarkshire are facing capacity issues
There were 10,100 new cases reported, with 41 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive.
Official figures also showed there 28 people in intensive care with recently-confirmed Covid-19 in the past 24 hours.
A total of 4,341,965 people have received their first dose of a vaccine, 4,089,894 have had their second dose, and 3,446,630 have received a third dose or booster.
Despite the sharp rise in patients in hospital with Covid, fewer of them are requiring intensive care treatment than in the past.
This is partly because Omicron is believed to be milder than previous strains such as Delta, most people have been vaccinated and doctors have better treatments for the disease.
However, people with Covid still need to be kept separate from other patients to limit the spread of infection - something that puts pressure on ward capacity. It is also leading to increased staff absences.
NHS Lanarkshire said the number of Covid patients was putting pressure on services at University Hospital Wishaw, University Hospital Hairmyres in East Kilbride and at University Hospital Monklands in Airdrie.
Dr Jane Burns, executive medical director, said many were patients waiting several hours to be seen in emergency departments, and urged people to consider whether A&E is the best place for them to seek healthcare.
"Our three acute hospital sites are beyond full with capacity regularly over 100%," she added.
"This has been the case for a number of weeks and the situation is not easing. In fact, this week hospitals across Scotland including Lanarkshire have seen a record number of Covid patients.
"Unfortunately, this is resulting in many patients in our emergency departments waiting well in excess of our target of four hours for a condition that could have been treated by another healthcare service. It is also putting pressure on how quickly we can admit patients who require emergency care.
"The rising Covid number is also having a severe knock-on effect to our staff. We have high staff absences due to Covid and self-isolation which is resulting in challenges across all our health services and our staff are struggling to cope."
Covid patients in hospital have reached the highest level since the start of the pandemic
She urged people to think of alternatives to the emergency department if their condition is not critical or life-threatening.
Other services include minor injuries units, their local GP or pharmacy or a call to NHS 24 on 111, day or night.
She added: "If someone does have to come to one of our emergency departments, they need to be prepared to face long waits to be seen, in some instances several hours."
It comes after NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde this week urged people not to attend accident and emergency departments unless their condition is "urgent or life-threatening" amid significant pressures.
Having visited a number of hospitals recently, the national clinical director Prof Jason Leitch told BBC Radio Scotland's Drivetime programme that the NHS was under the most pressure he had ever seen.
He said people should "do what we can as a population" to reduce the pressure on the NHS - but urged them to use emergency services if needed.
He added: "We don't want people not to come if they need it - what Glasgow and Lanarkshire are asking is just use it wisely.
"Use NHS24, your GP, your dentist, your optician - don't just use A&E as your one stop shop. But if you have an emergency, 999 is available to you and you should use it if you need it."
Latest official figures this week showed that the number of people waiting more than four, eight and 12 hours at Scotland's emergency departments has hit its highest recorded level.
Commenting on the figures, the Scottish government said: "Unfortunately, the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 has now reached the highest level since the start of the pandemic and this rise in recent weeks has inevitably had an impact on services like A&E."
• None Covid pressure on hospitals 'as serious as it gets' | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-60874053 |
England in West Indies: Joshua da Silva nudges hosts into ascendency on day two - BBC Sport | 2022-03-25 | West Indies edge into the ascendency in the third Test against England by opening a slim first-innings lead in Grenada. | Last updated on .From the section Cricket
West Indies edged into the ascendency in the third Test against England by opening a slim first-innings lead in Grenada.
Lower-order resistance saw West Indies end on 232-8, leading by 28, despite being 128-7 at one stage.
Similar to day one when a last-wicket stand of 90 rescued England, wicketkeeper Joshua da Silva frustrated the bowlers late in the day with 54 not out, putting on 49 for the eighth wicket with Alzarri Joseph and 55 unbeaten with number 10 Kemar Roach.
England made a disappointing start with the new ball but took 6-45 in an impressive recovery either side of lunch.
After West Indies reached 50-0, Ben Stokes had Kraigg Brathwaite lbw with a ball that kept low while Chris Woakes took 3-48 - his best figures in an overseas Test since December 2017.
That put the tourists on course for a lead of their own but as batting became easier in the final session, wicket-taking again looked difficult.
However, on a pitch showing signs of uneven bounce against the harder ball, both sides will still believe they can win what is likely to be a low-scoring game.
A victory for either team would see them take the series with the score currently 0-0 after two drawn Tests.
Any advantage West Indies gain from further building their first-innings lead is countered by the fact they will almost certainly have to bat last on a pitch on which it will be tough to chase.
But the work by Da Silva late on - he even survived six overs against the new ball with Roach and now has the highest score of the Test - nudged the day into the hosts' favour.
Overall, it had an uncanny resemblance to the one previous. Like Jack Leach and Saqib Mahmood did 24 hours earlier, Da Silva capitalised on a surface which seems to die once the ball goes soft.
England must cling to the difficulty West Indies' top order had earlier in the day.
Their seamers, once they finally found their line, utilised uneven bounce rather than the lavish seam movement which resulted in the tourists' batting collapse on day one.
West Indies also helped with some poor shots - Jason Holder was caught top-edging his third ball to deep square leg and Kyle Mayers chipped Ben Stokes tamely to extra cover for 28.
The pitch and both sides' batting shortcomings mean a series which has largely been drab may end with an exciting finale.
England's bowling effort swung from below-par to encouraging before ultimately ending with nagging disappointment.
Their inability to remove the lower order, albeit on a slow pitch, again laid bare the lack of cutting edge of this attack.
Given England had only made 204 with the bat, the start was also particularly underwhelming. Early wickets were needed but instead new-ball pair Chris Woakes and Overton bowled too many deliveries that could be left alone.
Not for the first time, Stokes was the bowler to create an opening - although Brathwaite could do little with his delivery.
From there England turned to the ploy of bowling a heavy, mid-pitch length and they improved significantly.
Overton does not have express pace but he twice hit opener John Campbell on the helmet before having him caught down the leg side.
West Indies' top order found the short balls difficult to play given the uneven bounce, Nkrumah Bonner also gloving a Woakes short ball behind for four when trying to duck.
However, when England stuck with the short-ball plan late on, tiredness in the bowlers' legs and life leaving the pitch allowed Da Silva to lap the ball into the leg side with relative ease.
Saqib Mahmood was arguably England's best bowler in his second Test but his only reward in a probing 18 overs was the wicket of Shamarh Brooks, lbw at the start of the West Indies collapse.
Woakes' performance was almost England's as a whole in a microcosm.
He was particularly culpable in the opening overs when 12 of his first 18 balls were left alone. The new-ball spell with Overton was one of the most innocuous from an England attack in recent memory.
However, a three-wicket spell after lunch put England on top in the game. The wickets of Bonner and Holder were followed by Jermaine Blackwood being trapped lbw by a ball that nipped back in what felt like an important spell for Woakes' Test career.
His struggles overseas have been much talked about - he had 33 wickets at 54.42 before this Test - but his figures are now his best overseas since the 2017-18 Ashes in Australia.
But the shine was taken from Woakes' day by England's inability to take the final two wickets.
The 33-year-old was wayward in three overs with the second new ball when England needed him to wrap up the tail.
England all-rounder Chris Woakes: "We'd have liked to have bowled a little bit better this morning. In the first hour we'd have liked to have got the ball a little bit fuller. But when the wicket has shown there are little bits in it, we've bowled well and to get them eight down I think is a decent effort."
West Indies wicketkeeper Joshua da Silva: "It is pretty flat right now so we are just trying to get as much as we can. There is the odd one that stays low. It is definitely a new-ball wicket. The old ball is a lot easier to play."
• None Who were the real Peaky Blinders? Explore the origins of this mass gang movement
• None The rise of the American far right: | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/60877712 |
UK Covid infections climb by a million in a week - BBC News | 2022-03-25 | About 4.3 million people - or one in every 16 - are thought to have the virus, compared to 3.3 million the week before. | Covid cases have climbed by a million in a week in the UK, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals.
Swab tests suggest about one in every 16 people is infected, as the contagious Omicron variant BA.2 continues to spread.
That's just under 4.3 million people, up from 3.3 million the week before.
The figures for the week ending 19 March, are thought to give the most accurate reflection of what's happening with the virus in the community.
Rates were up in England and Wales, and Scotland reached a new high.
Infections have started decreasing in Northern Ireland, however.
The rates across the nations were:
A high number of infections means the UK can expect Covid hospitalisations to rise too, although vaccines are still helping to stop many severe cases, say experts.
According to the latest figures, there were 17,440 patients in hospital with the virus on 24 March. About half will have been admitted for something else, rather than Covid, but tested positive.
Just over 300 of them needed an intensive care bed with a ventilator to help them breathe.
England's chief medical officer Prof Sir Chris Whitty said earlier this week that while the virus was causing pressure in the NHS, the high rates of transmission were fortunately not translating into lots of intensive care cases and deaths.
Staff absences at NHS hospitals in England due to Covid have risen by 31% on the week to 13 March.
About of 23,127 staff at hospital trusts in England - 2% of the total workforce - were absent, either because they were sick with the virus or were self-isolating.
People aged 75 and over and those who are immunosuppressed can book a spring booster jab to top up their protection against Covid.
Meanwhile, from 1 April in England, most people wanting to take a lateral flow test to check if they have Covid will have to buy one.
It is part of the government's 'living with Covid' plan.
• None New record as one in 11 Scots had Covid last week
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60872687 |
War in Ukraine: What Ukraine is getting right - BBC News | 2022-03-25 | The BBC's Frank Gardner looks at four themes that have defined Ukraine's reaction to Russia's invasion. | One month into this invasion and so far, Ukraine has defied the odds. Outnumbered on almost every metric - in tanks, in troops, in aircraft - Ukraine's forces, reinforced by citizen volunteers, have in many places fought the Russian army to a standstill.
They have lost territory, especially in the south around Crimea, which was already occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014. But Moscow's original aim of quickly seizing the capital Kyiv and other major cities, forcing the government to resign, has manifestly failed.
The tide could still turn against Ukraine. Its forces are running dangerously low on the vital western-supplied anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles needed to fend off the advancing Russians.
Many of Ukraine's most battle-hardened regular forces in the east of the country are at risk of being surrounded, cut off and annihilated. And with a quarter of the nation's population having fled their homes, those that stay put risk seeing their cities turned into a dystopian wasteland by relentless Russian artillery and rocket fire.
Yet despite these factors, Ukraine's forces are outperforming Russia's in this war, on several levels. This week the Pentagon spokesman John Kirby praised them as defending parts of their country "very smartly, very nimbly, very creatively". So what exactly have been the secrets of their success?
Ukrainians' willingness to do what they can to defend their nation has freed up professional soldiers to go to the front line
There is a wealth of difference between the morale of the two armies. Ukrainians are fighting for the very survival of their country as a sovereign nation, appalled at President Putin's eve-of-war speech in which he said Ukraine was basically just an artificial Russian creation.
Ukrainians have rallied behind their government and their president. This has resulted in citizens with no prior military experience readily taking up arms to defend their towns and cities despite the overwhelming Russian firepower facing them.
"This is how people fight for their very existence," says Brigadier Tom Foulkes, who spent 35 years as a British Army officer in Germany during the Cold War. "This is how they defend their homeland and their families. Their courage is both shocking and splendid."
In practice this has freed up Ukrainian soldiers to go and fight on the front line, knowing their cities have defence in depth.
By contrast, many of the Russian soldiers sent to fight in Ukraine are conscripts just out of school, bewildered and confused at finding themselves in a war zone when they thought they were just going on an exercise.
Most had little or no battle preparation for the ferocity of the fighting they have encountered. There have been reports of desertions, food shortages and looting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his senior colleagues have shown clear leadership
Early expectations of a devastating Russian cyber attack, knocking out Ukraine's communications, did not materialise. Instead, Ukraine has somehow managed to maintain effective co-ordination over several battlefronts, even where it has lost ground.
Its government has stayed put in Kyiv and remained highly visible, with even the deputy prime minister dressed in a utilitarian khaki T-shirt as she addresses the nation against a backdrop of government insignia.
The Russian army, by contrast, does not appear to have any kind of unified leadership, with little co-ordination between its separate battlefronts.
This is likely to have had a negative effect on Russian military morale. It has been suggested the reported deaths of at least five Russian generals is partly a result of their having to get close to the fighting to dislodge their troops from getting bogged down.
At the level of Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), ie the corporals and the sergeants, Russian military doctrine allows for almost no initiative, with these junior ranks always waiting for orders from above.
Prof Michael Clarke, a military expert at King's College London, says Russian NCOs are beset with corruption and inefficiency and are deeply unpopular with those they command.
Ukraine has had access to tools of modern warfare such as the Javelin missile
Ukraine's forces are heavily outnumbered and yet they have made much better use of the ground and their weapons than the invading Russians.
Whereas the Russians have tended to concentrate their forces in slow, heavy armoured columns, often with vehicles bunched up close together, the Ukrainians have successfully conducted finely-tuned hit-and-run raids, sneaking up and firing off an anti-tank missile, then vanishing before the Russians can return fire.
Prior to the invasion, Nato trainers from the US, UK and Canada spent long periods in Ukraine, bringing its forces up to speed in defensive warfare and instructing them on how to make best use of state-of-the-art missile systems such as the Javelin or the Swedish-designed NLAW anti-tank weapon or the latest version of the Stinger anti-aircraft missile.
"The Ukrainians have been much cleverer than the Russians", says Prof Clarke, "because they've fought something much closer to a combined arms operation which the Russians haven't". By this he means they have made full use of all the military tools at their disposal, such as drones, artillery, infantry, tanks and electronic warfare.
When combined together, the sum of all these different aspects of warfare can create an exponential effect greater than the sum of its parts.
Another military strategist, Justin Crump, who runs the intelligence consultancy Sibylline, says Ukrainians have been particularly adept at seeking out the vulnerable points in Russian formations and hitting them hard. "Ukraine has made use of highly effective tactics", he says, including targeting Russian weak points such as supply convoys, using Nato-supplied weapon systems to good effect against precision targets and improvising where required.
While it is hard to get an accurate picture of casualty figures, even the more conservative estimates made by the Pentagon put Russian combat deaths at more than 7,000. That is nearly half as many men as the Soviets lost in 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan and we are only a month into this war.
Brig Tom Foulkes also has an explanation as to why so many Russian generals are getting killed on the front line: "This sounds to me like a deliberate and highly successful sniper campaign which could degrade the Russian command structures."
President Zelensky has spoken via video to a series of international meetings and foreign parliaments
And then there is the information war. Ukraine is winning this hands-down in most of the world - although not in Russia where the Kremlin still controls access to most of the media.
"Ukraine has mobilised the information sphere to tremendous domestic and international advantage", says Justin Crump. "This has come from the top down, aided by (President) Zelensky's formidable media savvy."
It's a view echoed by Dr Ruth Deyermond, senior lecturer in post-Soviet security at Kings College London. "Clearly the Ukrainian government has been very successful in controlling the narrative about the war, certainly for the wider world," she says. "What the conflict has done for Ukraine's international reputation is absolutely remarkable."
But right now, one month into this desperate life-and-death struggle on Europe's eastern borders, that may still not be enough to salvage Ukraine.
The numerical might of the Russian army, for all its shortcomings, is not in Ukraine's favour. If somehow the supply of defensive weapons systems from the West dries up then there could only be so much longer this beleaguered nation can hold out. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60867202 |