Ukraine updates: Russia altering Crimean identity — Amnesty

Lindsey Graham, a Republican lawmaker in the US Senate, said he was confident that an aid package that has been stuck in the House of Representatives would soon be approved, after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

But he called for the aid to be given in the form of a low-interest waivable loan, rather than a grant.

"If you want aid to Ukraine, you better start talking to the American taxpayer. You better start talking to them about what's going on. Thirty-four trillion [US dollars] in debt," Graham told a news conference after talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"Can we provide a loan that's waivable with no interest? Yes. Can Ukraine absorb that? Yes. I think President Zelenskyy would welcome the weapons in any fashion we could get the weapons to him."

Donald Trump, whose allies have been blocking the aid package from going forward, has previously spoken of the idea of loans for Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on his electoral victory while repeating his offer to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

"President Erdogan expressed his belief that the positive evolution of relations between Turkey and Russia were continuing and stated that Turkey was ready to play a facilitator role to return to the negotiating table with Ukraine," the Turkish presidency said in a statement on Monday.

Ankara has offered to act as mediator before. Turkey, Russia and Ukraine are the three biggest countries on the Black Sea and Erdogan has been careful not to alienate either Putin or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The number of people reportedly killed in the Russian border village of Nikolskoye in the Belgorod region following Ukrainian shelling has risen to four.

Local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who had earlier said that two people had been killed in the incident, reported the new death toll and said that the victims were a couple, an elderly woman and a 17-year-old boy.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has backed Chancellor Olaf Scholz's rejection of the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and his fundamental opposition to the deployment of ground troops there. 

"I think Olaf Scholz is doing what I would expect from a German chancellor at the moment," the former leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), which is also Scholz's party, said. 

Schröder, who was chancellor from 1998 to 2005, also called for a Franco-German initiative to negotiate a solution to the conflict in Ukraine. 

Asked if he would like to see a "peace chancellor," Schröder replied in the affirmative, adding, "If someone as German chancellor is committed to peace, if someone is called a 'peace chancellor,' is that a negative thing?" 

Schröder is known to be a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since leaving office, ex-Chancellor has held well-paid positions in Russian state-owned energy companies. 

He was chairman of the supervisory board of Russian energy giant Rosneft for almost five years, resigning from his position in May 2022 without giving a reason. That same month, he also rejected a nomination to the board of Russian energy company Gazprom.

After Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Schröder was increasingly criticized for his ties to Russia and lost some of his state privileges, but the SPD decided not to penalize him.

Germany and Poland agreed to work together to increase the production of ammunition for Ukraine, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said at a joint press conference with his Polish counterpart Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz in Helenow near Warsaw on Monday. 

Supporting the Ukrainian army in its war against the Russian invasion forces is not just a matter of supplying ammunition "that can be found somewhere," Pistorius said. 

Rather, production in Germany, Poland and other countries should also be ramped up, he stressed, adding that Berlin and Warsaw wanted to work on this together with industry in both countries.

Pistorius underlined the importance of German-Polish cooperation in security and defense policy as well as in supporting Ukraine. This "solidarity" was particularly important in the face of Russia's daily attempts to "divide and drive apart the West," he said.

In recent months, Ukrainian forces have run low on ammunition, hampering their ability to engage Russian forces.

European Union foreign ministers agreed to increase its support to Ukrainian armed forces by €5 billion (around $5.45 billion) under the European Pace Facility (EPF) for military assistance to Ukraine in 2024. 

For this purpose, they have set up a special Ukraine Assistance Fund (UAF) within EPF, the European Council said in a statement. 

The newly established fund will allow the EU to further support the evolving needs of the Ukrainian military through the provision of both lethal and non-lethal military equipment and training, the statement said.

According to the European Council, the UAF will complement the bilateral efforts of EU member states and focus on increased joint procurement from the European and Norwegian defense industries.

"With the fund, we will continue to support Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s war of aggression with whatever it takes and for as long as we need to,"  EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.

North Korea has shipped some 7,000 containers of weapons to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine since the transfers began around last July, South Korea's Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said.

Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Shin said the South Korean military believes the North, after initially relying on ships, is increasingly using its rail networks to send arms supplies to Russia through its land border.

In exchange for sending possibly several million artillery shells and other supplies, North Korea has received more than 9,000 Russian containers likely filled with aid, Shin said.

US and South Korean officials have accused North Korea of supplying Russia in recent months with artillery shells, missiles and other equipment to fuel its war against Ukraine. They said such arms transfers accelerated after a rare summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.

The US government and South Korean officials have said Pyongyang is seeking a range of military assistance in return, such as satellite technology and upgrades to its Soviet-era military equipment.

Since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, sanctions have impacted the peninsula's economy and democratic rights have been lost. In Kyiv, DW's Max Zander spoke to exiled Crimean Tartars for whom the liberation of their homeland remains imperative. Watch the full DW report below.

The Kremlin said on Monday that a buffer zone was the only way to protect Russian territory from Ukrainian attacks.

"Against the backdrop of [Ukrainian] drone attacks and the shelling of our territory: public facilities, residential buildings, measures must be taken to secure these territories," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

He added that a buffer zone was necessary "so that any means that the enemy uses to strike us are out of range."

Russian President Vladimir Putin was first float the idea following his election victory.

"I do not exclude that, bearing in mind the tragic events taking place today, that we will be forced at some point, when we deem it appropriate, to create a certain 'sanitary zone' in the territories today under the Kyiv regime," Putin said.

Two people were killed near Russia's border city of Belgorod on Monday due to Ukrainian shelling, Russian authorities said, bringing the total number of those killed in the region since last week to 13.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that four more were injured in the attack in the village of Nikolskoye, which air defenses repelled.

"A 17-year-old and a man died of their wounds on the spot before the ambulance arrived. Our rescuers pulled a little girl from under the rubble of the same house," he said.

Attacks on Russian territory intensified last week, ahead of the weekend elections which saw President Vladimir Putin's rule extended into the 2030s.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed hopes for an approval of a €5 billion (around $5.45 billion) military aid package for Ukraine at a Monday European summit.

"It has been discussed for weeks, I hope that today the ministers will definitely approve that in order to increase our military support to Ukraine," Borrell said ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

EU members had agreed last week to provide Ukraine with €5 billion for military aid, as part of a revamp of an EU-run assistance fund. The package would help Kyiv as it battles Russia's invasion.

Russia launched several missiles on the Ukrainian border regions, where attacks have intensified in recent days, Ukrainian officials said.

The Ukrainian air force said five missiles were launched on the northeastern Kharkiv border region, with two more missiles targeting the Sumy border region nearby.

"The amount of shelling and the use of tactical aviation and multiple launch rocket systems has increased significantly compared to last week," the governor of Sumy region, Volodymyr Artiukh, said on television news on Monday.

Russian attacks on the Sumy region have escalated in recent weeks. The region was partially occupied earlier in the war.

Sumy regional authorities said they have evacuated 285 residents, including 26 children, from border areas over the last week.

Moscow also launched 22 drones over Ukrainian territory overnight, Ukraine's air force said on Monday, adding that the air defense systems destroyed 17 of them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed readiness for talks on a French proposal for a Ukraine cease-fire during the Olympic games.

However, Putin stressed the talks would need to take Russia's interests on the frontline into account.

French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Sunday that Paris would request a cease-fire during the Olympic games, which France hosts this year between July 26 and August 11.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that a full-scale conflict with the NATO military alliance cannot be ruled out.

Speaking during a press conference in Moscow after the presidential elections, Putin warned that such a conflict would put the world one step away from a Third World War.

"I think hardly anyone is interested in this," he told reporters.

Putin claimed that soldiers from NATO member states were already deployed in Ukraine, adding that French and English have been heard on the battlefield.

"There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they are dying there and in large numbers," Putin said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said last month that the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future could not be ruled out. Many Western countries distanced themselves from these statements, but others, especially in eastern Europe, expressed support.

UK-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International lambasted Moscow's policies in the Crimean Peninsula on Monday, which marks the 10-year anniversary of the Russian annexation of the peninsula.

In a 19-page report, Amnesty said Russia has been seeking to suppress the Ukrainian identity in Crimea, as well as the identity of other minorities, including the Crimean Tatars.

"In 10 years of occupation, Russia has done everything in its power to delegitimize Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea," Amnesty said, describing policies Moscow has used "to alter the ethnic makeup" of the peninsula.

It warned that Russia's policies in Crimea were akin to a "blueprint" it used in other Ukrainian areas it currently occupies. Russia illegally annexed four more Ukrainian regionsin the east in 2022, following its full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Amnesty said the past decade has seen Moscow enforce multiple restrictions over Ukrainians and Crimean Tatar identities in Crimea. These were in areas including education, religion, media and the judicial system.

"Changes to the curriculum and the almost total eradication of Ukrainian language tuition are designed to ensure that younger generations will lack the knowledge and awareness to challenge the Russian narrative surrounding Crimea's history," the report said.

It also noted how residents of the peninsula have been obliged to accept Russian passports or "face the deprivation of their human rights, denial of access to essential services and even risk being deported."

rmt/fb (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)