LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been denied permission to appeal at the Supreme Court against a decision to extradite him to the United States, the court said on Monday.
While Assange’s extradition must still be approved by the government, Monday’s decision deals a serious blow to Assange’s effort to fight his deportation in the courts.
U.S. authorities want Australian-born Assange, 50, to face trial on 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks’ release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which they said had put lives in danger.
In December, the High Court in London overturned a lower court’s ruling that he should not be extradited because his mental health problems meant he would be at risk of suicide, and on Monday the Supreme Court itself said it would not hear a challenge to that ruling.
“The application has been refused by the Supreme Court and the reason given is that application did not raise an arguable point of law,” a Supreme Court spokesperson said.
The extradition decision will now need to be ratified by interior minister Priti Patel, after which Assange can try to challenge the decision by judicial review. A judicial review involves a judge examining the legitimacy of a public body’s decision.
The High Court had accepted a package of assurances given by the United States, including that Assange would not be held in a so-called “ADX” maximum security prison in Colorado and that he could be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted. Assange’s lawyers said the decision to extradite Assange based on those pledges was “highly disturbing.” read more
“We regret that the opportunity has not been taken to consider the troubling circumstances in which Requesting States can provide caveated guarantees after the conclusion of a full evidential hearing,” Assange’s lawyers said in a statement on Monday.
LONDON — Squatters have occupied a London mansion thought to belong to one of the Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the British government.
The property in Belgrave Square — one of London’s most exclusive neighborhoods, located just moments from Buckingham Palace — is said to be owned by billionaire energy mogul Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned by authorities last week over his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Protesters took occupation of the luxury property early Monday, draping it with Ukrainian flags and a sign saying “this property has been liberated.”
According to the BBC, the group claimed to “do the job” of authorities, who have come under criticism for their apparent delay in clamping down on members of Putin’s inner circle.
Police in riot gear reportedly entered the property midday Monday after reports that the squatters were on the property. It is not clear how the protesters gained access to the building.
In a statement seen by Sky News, the Metropolitan police said they had completed a search of the property and were “satisfied” no protestors were inside. They added that they “continue to engage” with those on the balcony.
Ownership details of the multimillion-pound, historic property at Five Belgrave Square are murky. However, High Court documents named Deripaska as the beneficial owner over a decade ago, according to Sky.
Public records show the mansion was originally purchased and is currently held by Ravellot Limited, an offshore company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, the BBC has reported.
At the request of the National Crime Agency, five bank accounts belonging to Graham Bonham-Carter, the named contact for Ravellot Limited, are now subject to asset freezing orders over his alleged links to Deripaska.
“We can confirm that the NCA has secured two Account Freezing Orders in respect of five bank accounts held by Mr Graham Bonham-Carter,” the NCA said in a statement shared with CNBC.
“The orders were obtained on the basis that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the money in the accounts was derived from the laundering of funds of an individual subject to sanctions in the United States, namely Oleg Deripaska.”
The British government on Thursday put Deripaska, founder of metals and hydropower company EN+ and six other businesses, on a growing list of Putin allies sanctioned by authorities. The sanctions state that his assets will be seized and travel restricted.
The tycoon, whose wealth derives from the privatization of Russian state assets, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018.
The protesters reportedly called for the seven-bedroom mansion, which houses a Turkish bath and home cinema, to be made available to Ukrainian refugees.
It comes after U.K. Housing Minister Michael Gove on Sunday touted a similar idea, telling the BBC that he was exploring the possibility of housing migrants in properties seized by the government.
“I want to explore an option which would allow us to use the homes and properties of sanctioned individuals for as long as they are sanctioned for humanitarian and other purposes,” he told the BBC.
The shootings underscored the vulnerability of people sleeping in public places, who are subject to unprovoked attacks, and recalled other serial attacks against homeless people in New York City, including a 2019 spree that left four homeless men dead in Chinatown and the February 2021 stabbings of four homeless people in and around the subway, two of whom died.
The first three shootings were in Washington, all in the Northeast section. The Metropolitan Police Department said that one man was shot on March 3 on the 1100 block of New York Avenue and another on Tuesday on the 1700 block of H street.N either of them were shot fatally, and both happened in the middle of the night.
On Wednesday, police officers and firefighters responding to a tent fire on New York Avenue a few blocks from the site of the first shooting found a man inside the tent who had been fatally shot and stabbed, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
The gunman struck again in Manhattan before dawn on Saturday. At about 4:30 a.m., the police, responding to a call, went to the corner of King and Varick Streets near the Holland Tunnel and found a 38-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his right forearm. The man had been sleeping when he was shot, Deputy Chief Hank Sautner of the New York Police Department said at a news conference on Saturday evening.
The victim screamed, “What are you doing?” and the assailant fled, Chief Sautner said. The victim was in stable condition at a nearby hospital, the police said.
About 15 blocks away around 6 a.m., the same person fatally shot a man who was asleep in a sleeping bag outside 148 Lafayette Street in SoHo, according to the police, who based their conclusion on a review of video footage.
The battered city’s street cleaners and road repair teams were collecting bodies in the streets, he said, as municipal services had collapsed. “Some people were killed during those collections. We’ve had no electricity, or heating, sanitation, water, food for 11 days,” he said.
Washington, DC (CNN)Russia has asked China for military support, including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to conversations CNN had with two US officials.
MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — A pregnant woman and her baby have died after Russia bombed the maternity hospital where she was meant to give birth, The Associated Press has learned. Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the horror of an attack on humanity’s most innocent.
In video and photos shot Wednesday by AP journalists after the attack on the hospital, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol, her blanched face mirroring her shock at what had just happened. It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia’s now 19-day-old war on Ukraine.
The woman was rushed to another hospital, yet closer to the frontline, where doctors labored to keep her alive. Realizing she was losing her baby, medics said, she cried out to them, “Kill me now!”
Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman’s pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via cesarean section, but it showed “no signs of life,” the surgeon said.
Then, they focused on the mother.
“More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said Saturday.
“Both died.”
In the chaos after Wednesday’s airstrike, medics didn’t have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father came to take away her body. At least someone came to retrieve her, they said — so she didn’t end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol’s growing number of dead.
Accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London called the images “fake news.”
Associated Press journalists, who have been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early in the war, documented the attack and saw the victims and damage firsthand. They shot video and photos of several bloodstained, pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, medics shouting, children crying.
The AP team then tracked down the victims on Friday and Saturday in the hospital where they had been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.
In a city that’s been without food supplies, water, power or heat for more than a week, electricity from emergency generators is reserved for operating rooms.
As survivors described their ordeal, explosions outside shook the walls. The shelling and shooting in the area is sporadic but relentless. Emotions are running high, even as doctors and nurses concentrate on their work.
Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya gave birth to a girl the day after the airstrike, and wrapped her arm around newborn Veronika as she recounted Wednesday’s bombing. After photos and video showed her navigating down debris-strewn stairs and clutching a blanket around her pregnant frame, Russian officials claimed she was an actor in a staged attack.
“It happened on March 9 in Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We were laying in wards when glasses, frames, windows and walls flew apart,” Vishegirskaya, still wearing the same polka dot pajamas as when she fled, told The AP.
“We don’t know how it happened. We were in our wards and some had time to cover themselves, some didn’t.”
Her ordeal was one among many in Mariupol, which has become a symbol of resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to crush democratic Ukraine and redraw the world map in his favor. The failure to subordinate Mariupol has pushed Russian forces to broaden their offensive elsewhere in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Azov Sea port city of 430,000, key to creating a land bridge from Russia to Russian-annexed Crimea, is slowly starving.
In the makeshift new maternity ward, each approaching childbirth brings new tension.
“All birthing mothers have lived through so much,” said nurse Olga Vereshagina.
One of the distraught mothers lost some of her toes in the bombing. Medics performed a C-section on her Friday, carefully pulling out her daughter and rubbing the newborn vigorously to stimulate signs of life.
After a few breathless seconds, the baby cries.
Cheers of joy resonate through the room. Newborn Alana cries, her mother cries, and medical workers wipe the tears from their eyes.
Kyiv — A Russian airstrike on a residential building in Ukraine‘s capital city killed at least one person and wounded several others on Monday. Russia insists it doesn’t target civilians, but its forces have intensified their attacks on urban areas since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Another round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials was underway on Monday. Both sides reported “substantial progress” after several previous rounds, and there was even hope for some possible agreement within a matter of days. It wasn’t clear what the delegations might actually agree to, but previous rounds have enabled “humanitarian corridors” for civilians to evacuate some of the hardest-hit cities.
In the meantime, CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports the war continues escalating by the hour.
Even as the apartment building in Kyiv was hit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted again on Monday that Russian artillery was only taking aim at military targets.
A woman reacts as she stands outside destroyed apartment buildings following shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2022.
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty
Peskov repeated a claim issued earlier Monday by a mayor in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which is held by Russian-backed separatists, that Ukrainian forces had fired a rocket at the city of Donetsk, “which killed and wounded civilians.”
Donetsk’s pro-Russian mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said earlier that a Ukrainian missile had been shot down near Donetsk’s city hall, creating a shower of debris that he said killed 17 people left 28 more injured.
“Of course, this is an attack on the civilian population,” Peskov said. Russia has been accused of carrying out missile and airstrikes on residential buildings, hospitals and even schools for weeks, with the United Nations confirming about 600 civilians and acknowledging the true toll is likely much higher.
Kyiv came under fire Monday on the heels of a massive round of Russian airstrikes that hit a Ukrainian military base right on Poland’s doorstep, drawing the U.S. and its NATO allies closer than ever to the violence of this war. At least 35 people were killed in the Sunday strikes on the base, which has been used by American and NATO forces to train Ukrainian troops.
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The message from Moscow could not have been clearer. The strikes on the base — just 12 miles from the border with Poland, where the U.S. has deployed troops to bolster NATO’s defenses — came a day after Russia warned that weapons and “mercenaries” flowing into Ukraine from Western nations would be considered “legitimate targets.” Ukrainian officials said Russian warplanes fired about 30 missiles, 22 of which were intercepted by Ukraine’s air defenses.
The smile on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s face as he visited wounded troops in a hospital on Sunday, trying to boost spirits, was gone by the time he delivered a stark new warning overnight:
“I repeat again: If you do not close our skies, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on the territory of NATO and on the homes of citizens of NATO countries,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader has warned for months that Putin’s intentions may go well beyond Ukraine’s borders.
The Red Cross said time was running out for hundreds of thousands of residents in the besieged city of Mariupol, meanwhile. Regional officials have reported at least 2,500 people killed in that city alone since in came under attack. Food, water and electricity supplies are all running out.
Over the weekend, soldiers carried away the dead and wounded in the town of Irpin, just northwest of Kyiv, where residential neighborhoods have come under heavy bombardment for days.
Many of those who’ve managed to escape the shelling and sniper fire in Irpin and nearby Bucha come to the neighboring village of Bilohorodka — some of them hitching rides in the back of cargo trucks as they don’t have vehicles of their own. Upon arrival, they’re handed warm drinks, water and something to eat. They’re safe, for now, and looked after by neighbors who’ve chosen to stay behind to help, knowing full well they’re right in the path of Russia’s merciless advance toward the capital.
“I’m begging to be heard,” said Eliana, a local helping those who have fled to her village. “Close our skies so our kids can sleep calmly — so the whole country can live.”
Ukrainian women volunteer to help feed evacuees from the nearby towns of Irpin and Bucha arriving to their village of Bilohorodka, just outside Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, amid Russia’s ongoing invasion and bombardment of Ukraine, March 14, 2022.
CBS News
Alyona, another woman who was volunteering to help the evacuees, told D’Agata that while adults can at least understand what’s happening to their country and try to help, children are scared.
“We try to explain that we have the greatest army, and they will protect us and defend us,” she told CBS News. “And they believe us.”
“We are frightened, very much,” she admitted. But leaving, for her, was never an option, “because we are Ukrainians. We can’t do anything else. We can’t go when, like, our people are dying here. We can’t go away, we need to help them, it’s our responsibility.”
“I’m a real Ukraine and I love so much my homeland and my people,” agreed Natalia, another volunteer. “We didn’t flee away. We are Kyivites… We are staying here, to the last person!”
As they helped prepare food for the evacuees from Irpin, Oxana, another villager, repeated the plea made by her neighbor Eliana — one that is also made often by Ukrainian government officials:
“I’m asking your help. Stop this madhouse, give us no-fly zone, close the sky so we can handle the rest,” she told D’Agata, adding that regardless of any foreign assistance, she and her neighbors would stand firm. “We are so powerful. Not one of us will lower his head for Russians, nor in front of anyone. We don’t surrender. On our land, staying until last minute.”
D’Agata asked the volunteers if they would stay in their town, no matter what. They all replied “yes,” without hesitation.
The United Nations says 2.7 million people have now fled Ukraine into neighboring nations, but that doesn’t include the millions of people who have left their homes behind to seek refuge in other parts of their own country.
As D’Agata reports, with Russian missiles now falling close to Ukraine’s western border, they’re running out of safe places to hide.
March 14 (Reuters) – Facebook owner Meta Platforms (FB.O) said on Sunday that it is further narrowing its content moderation policy for Ukraine to prohibit calls for the death of a head of state, according to an internal company post seen by Reuters.
The move came after Reuters reported last week that Meta was temporarily allowing some posts on Facebook and Instagram calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. read more
After the Reuters report, Meta said on Friday that a temporary change in its content policy, only applicable for Ukraine, was needed to let users voice opposition to Russia’s attack. On the same day, Russia opened a criminal case against the social media firm. read more
“We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general,” Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg wrote in a post on the company’s internal platform on Sunday that was seen by Reuters.
“We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state…So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms,” Clegg said.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment, outside regular business hours.
“These are difficult decisions. Circumstances in Ukraine are fast moving. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our guidance under constant review because the context is always evolving,” Clegg said.
There would be no change to policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people are concerned, he said.
“Meta stands against Russophobia. We have no tolerance for calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, or any kind of discrimination, harassment, or violence towards Russians on our platform,” he added.
Clegg wrote that Meta plans to refer the way in which it adapted the guidance it provides to content moderators to the independent oversight board, which was set up to help the platform answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression.
Russia’s communications regulator has imposed restrictions on Meta’s Instagram, effective Monday. Meta had previously restricted access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik on its platforms across the European Union.
Between the two cities, there have been five shootings and two homicides.
Surveillance video from Howard Street in New York City’s Chinatown shows the gunman police in both cities are trying to find.
He is seen kicking one of his victims and looking around before opening fire on Saturday around 6 a.m.
The victim lay there all day before someone discovered him dead around 5 p.m. in the bitter cold. Another homeless man was shot Saturday at King and Varick streets, but survived.
Meantime, the death of a 43-year-old homeless man in Tribeca Sunday night does not appear connected to the shootings.
There was no indication of criminality, and an extensive video canvass did not turn up any evidence that the man was the victim of a crime.
Detectives will wait for the autopsy before making a final determination.
Regarding the shootings targeting homeless men, NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a joint statement, saying
“Our communities in DC and New York City are heartbroken and disturbed by these heinous crimes in which an individual has been targeting some of our most vulnerable residents. The two of us spoke about how our teams can coordinate and help one another, and we are calling on everyone in our cities to look at the images of the suspect and report any information, however small, that may be useful. The work to get this individual off our streets before he hurts or murders another individual is urgent. The rise in gun violence has shaken all of us and it is particularly horrible to know that someone is out there deliberately doing harm to an already vulnerable population. As our law enforcement agencies work quickly with federal partners to locate the suspect, we are also calling on unsheltered residents to seek shelter. Again, it is heartbreaking and tragic to know that in addition to all the dangers that unsheltered residents face, we now have a cold-blooded killer on the loose, but we are certain that we will get the suspect off the street and into police custody.”
“It is heartbreaking and tragic to know that in addition to all the dangers that unsheltered residents face, we now have a cold-blooded killer on the loose, but we are certain that we will get the suspect off the street and into police custody.” The NYPD issued new patrol guidance Sunday following the NYC incidents.
Officers in an internal memo were instructed to “proactively engage with apparently homeless individuals,” conduct wellness checks and offer shelter services.
Police are asking anyone who has seen the suspect in the surveillance video to contact them immediately.
Call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). You can also submit tips by visiting the CrimeStoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or by messaging on Twitter @NYPDTips.
A three-year-old boy accidentally shot his mother dead as the family sat in their car in a parking lot at a supermarket in a suburb of Chicago, police said.
The woman was shot on Saturday in Dolton and pronounced dead at hospital, police said.
The family were sitting in their car outside a Food for Less store when the boy somehow found the gun and fired it, striking his mother, police said.
“This could have been prevented,” Dolton trustee Andrew Holmes said on Sunday as he visited the supermarket to hand out gun locks and speak to shoppers about the importance of gun safety.
“All it takes is a second: unlock it, thread it through the barrel, bring it back around, put it in and lock it back,” Holmes told WLS-TV. “If you leave it, secure it.”
Authorities said the boy’s father was in custody after indicating that he owned the gun. On Monday, no charges had been filed.
Some of the buildings on Snake Island appear damaged from Russian military strikes, and a Russian Naval ship is seen anchored off the island in the first clear satellite image of the Ukrainian island in the middle of the Black Sea.
The image, taken on Sunday by Maxar Technologies, is the first clear look of the island since it was bombed at the beginning of the Russian invasion.
In the image, some of the red-roofed buildings in the island’s center are shown to have been significantly damaged by the Russian shelling of the island. The ship seen offshore was identified by Maxar as a Ropucha-class landing ship. Although parts of it are snow-covered, there are impact craters dotting parts of the island.
Snake Island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, sits about 30 miles (48 kilometers) off the Ukrainian mainland’s southern tip in the northwestern Black Sea. It’s about 185 miles west of Crimea, the Ukrainian territory that Russia annexed in 2014.
The defiant soldiers who were stationed on the island quickly became lauded as heroes at the start of the Russian invasion into Ukraine.
Initial reports from the Ukrainian government claimed they responded to a warning from a Russian naval ship to lay down their weapons or they would be bombed. Their reported reply was, “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.” The Ukrainian Navy had feared the soldiers on the island were dead, but now believe they are “alive and well” but are prisoners of war.
CNN’s Sebastian Shukla and Lianne Kolirin contributed to this report.
A Russian airstrike killed 35 people at a Ukrainian military training center about 10 miles from the Polish border early Sunday, one day after Moscow warned the West that it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.
Eight missiles hit the facility at Yavoriv, a base where until last month the U.S. National Guard trained Ukrainian troops. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would react if a Russian strike were to hit member-state Poland. Such a strike would bring “the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Mr. Sullivan said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Brent Renaud, an award-winning US film-maker whose work has appeared in the New York Times and other outlets, has been killed reportedly by Russian forces in the flashpoint town of Irpin, outside Kyiv. A US photographer, Juan Arredondo, was wounded.
Renaud, 51, was hit in the neck and died after coming under Russian fire while working on Sunday, according to local police officials, however, that could not be independently verified.
Jane Ferguson, a reporter for PBS Newshour who was nearby when Renaud was killed, tweeted: “Just left roadside spot near Irpin where body of American journalist Brent Renaud lay under a blanket. Ukrainian medics could do nothing to help him by that stage. Outraged Ukrainian police officer: ‘Tell America, tell the world, what they did to a journalist.’”
Just left roadside spot near Irpin where body of American journalist Brent Renaud lay under a blanket. Ukranian medics could do nothing to help him by that stage. Outraged Ukranian police officer: “Tell America, tell the world, what they did to a journalist.”
Clifford Levy, a deputy managing editor of the New York Times, issued a statement on Twitter clarifying that Renaud was not on assignment for the paper, contrary to earlier reports.
“[The New York Times] is deeply saddened to learn of the death of an American journalist in Ukraine, Brent Renaud. Brent was a talented photographer and film-maker, but he was not on assignment for the New York Times in Ukraine. Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge he had been issued for an assignment many years ago.”
Levy added: “Brent’s death is a terrible loss. Brave journalists like Brent take tremendous risks to bear witness and to tell the world about the devastation and suffering caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The Kyiv region police chief, Andrei Nebitov, said in a statement: “The occupiers are cynically killing even journalists of international media who are trying to show the truth about the atrocities of Russian troops in Ukraine.”
Arredondo, 45, a World Press Photo winner and adjunct professor at Columbia University, said he and Renaud had gone to Irpin to film refugees escaping the town, and they were fired on by forces near a checkpoint. Filmed describing what had occurred while he was receiving hospital treatment, he suggested they had driven into an ambush.
‘We crossed the checkpoint and they started shooting,’ says journalist wounded in Irpin – video
“We crossed the first bridge in Irpin. We were going to film all the refugees leaving. We got into a car … Someone offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint and they started shooting at us,” Arredondo said. “So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting … and there was two of us. My friend is Brent Renaud and he’s been shot and left behind.”
When the interviewer asked how Renaud was, Arredondo replied: “I don’t know. I saw he’d been shot in the neck. And we got split.”
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CNN: “If in fact an American journalist was killed, it is a shocking and horrifying event. It is one more example of the brutality of Vladimir Putin and his forces as they’ve targeted schools and mosques and hospitals and journalists.
“And it is why we are working so hard to impose severe consequences on him, and to try to help the Ukrainians with every form of military assistance we can muster, to be able to push back against the onslaught of these Russian forces.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky said food and medical supplies for the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped behind Russian lines, was set to arrive Sunday afternoon. Russian forces continued to bombard Ukrainian cities, making “limited but notable” gains in a drawn-out campaign to capture the capital, Kyiv, a senior NATO official said.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iran claimed responsibility Sunday for a missile barrage that struck near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in northern Iraq, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard earlier this week.
No injuries were reported in Sunday’s attack on the city of Irbil, which marked a significant escalation between the U.S. and Iran. Hostility between the longtime foes has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.
The attack drew harsh condemnation from the Iraqi government, which called it a “violation of international law and norms” and demanded an explanation from the Iranian leadership.
The United States said the missile strike emanated from Iran and strongly condemned it.
“The strikes were an outrageous violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. No U.S. facilities were damaged or personnel injured, and we have no indications the attack was directed at the United States,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said on its website that it attacked what it described as an Israeli spy center in Irbil. It did not elaborate, but in a statement said Israel had been on the offensive, citing the recent strike that killed two members of the Revolutionary Guard. The semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying Iran fired 10 Fateh missiles, including several Fateh-110 missiles, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (186 miles).
The source claimed the attack resulted in multiple casualties. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the allegations or the Iranian missile barrage.
An Iraqi official in Baghdad initially said several missiles had hit the U.S. consulate in Irbil, which is new and unoccupied, adding that it had been the intended target of the attack. Later, Lawk Ghafari, the head of Kurdistan’s foreign media office, said none of the missiles had struck the U.S. facility but that residential areas around the compound had been hit.
Following a Cabinet meeting, the Iraqi government in Baghdad reiterated its refusal to allow Iraq to be used to settle scores between other countries and said it has requested an explanation from the Iranian leadership.
Satellite broadcast channel Kurdistan24, which is located near the U.S. consulate, went on air from their studio shortly after the attack, showing shattered glass and debris on their studio floor.
The attack came several days after Iran said it would retaliate for an Israeli strike near Damascus, Syria, that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard. On Sunday, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Iraqi media acknowledging the attacks in Irbil, without saying where they originated.
The missile barrage coincided with regional tensions. Negotiations in Vienna over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal hit a “pause” over Russian demands about sanctions targeting Moscow for its war on Ukraine. Meanwhile, Iran suspended its secret Baghdad-brokered talks aimed at defusing yearslong tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia, after Saudi Arabia carried out its largest known mass execution in its modern history with over three dozens Shiites killed.
Iraqi security officials said there were no casualties from the Irbil attack, which they said occurred after midnight and caused material damage in the area. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
One of the Iraqi officials said the ballistic missiles were fired from Iran, without elaborating. He said the Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles likely were fired in retaliation for the two Revolutionary Guards killed in Syria.
U.S. forces stationed at Irbil’s airport compound have come under fire from rocket and drone attacks in the past, with U.S. officials blaming Iran-backed groups.
The top U.S. commander for the Middle East has repeatedly warned about the increasing threats of attacks from Iran and Iranian-backed militias on troops and allies in Iraq and Syria.
In an interview with The Associated Press in December, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said that while U.S. forces in Iraq have shifted to a non-combat role, Iran and its proxies still want all American troops to leave the country. As a result, he said, that may trigger more attacks.’
The Biden administration decided last July to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by Dec. 31, and U.S. forces gradually moved to an advisory role last year. The troops will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State.
The U.S. presence in Iraq has long been a flash point for Tehran, but tensions spiked after a January 2020 U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad airport killed a top Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at al-Asad airbase, where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the blasts.
More recently, Iranian proxies are believed responsible for an assassination attempt late last year on Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
And officials have said they believe Iran was behind the October drone attack at the military outpost in southern Syria where American troops are based. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured in the attack.
Al-Kadhimi tweeted: “The aggression which targeted the dear city of Irbil and spread fear amongst its inhabitants is an attack on the security of our people.”
Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-controlled region, condemned the attack. In a Facebook post, he said Irbil “will not bow to the cowards who carried out the terrorist attack.”
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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Calvin Woodward and Matthew Lee in Washington, Zeina Karam in Beirut, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show U.S. officials did not say the U.S. consulate had been been damaged.
In the USA, though, residents who identify with their Russian heritage and those who identify with their Ukrainian heritage express strikingly similar views about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a pair of exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls finds. The two groups are united in their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war raging on his orders.
The invasion is opposed by nearly everyone in both groups: 87% of Russian Americans and 94% of Ukrainian Americans. Those of Russian descent have a more positive view of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (72%) than they do of Putin (6%). By 9-1, they say Putin should be removed from office.
“Somebody just needs to extract him,” says Dina Sarkisova, 44, who owns a spa in San Diego and participated in the survey. Half-Russian and half-Azeri, she came to the USA as a refugee in 1990, fleeing conflict in Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed. “There’s no reasoning with him.”
“It’s a travesty; it’s a nightmare,” says Jacob Plotkin, 68, a Ukrainian American from Boca Raton, Florida, who works in real estate and agreed to a follow-up interview after being polled. “A big guy picking on a little kid. It’s wrong.”
The outrage of Ukrainian Americans is no surprise as they watch their homeland hammered by a Russian onslaught of tanks and missiles. But there is also strong support among Russian Americans for sending military hardware to be used against Russians on the battlefield (55%) and for imposing very strict economic sanctions (59%) that will hurt those who live in Russia, including members of their families.
Many of the Russians immigrated to the USA to flee the Soviet Union and the communist system Putin has defended. The poll findings underscore his isolation not only among global leaders but also among those with roots in his nation.
“Since the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine Feb. 24, some Russian restaurants and businesses throughout the United States have been boycotted or vandalized by Americans angry with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center. “Yet in their frustration with the war, Americans’ anger may be misdirected at other Americans who share those very frustrations.”
USA TODAY and Suffolk University surveyed 500 U.S. residents who identify with their Russian heritage and 500 residents who identify with their Ukrainian heritage. Some are American citizens and some are not. The polls, taken by landline and cellphone March 5-10, have margins of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Far away and close to home
The war is not a distant debate for many of those called in the poll. Nearly half of those of Ukrainian descent (48%) report having relatives fighting in Ukraine. So do one in five (19%) of those of Russian descent.
Olga Rudenko, 49, an artist who emigrated from Ukraine in 2002 and lives in Harlem, has loaded on her phone the Ukrainian air alerts that warn of approaching attacks there.
“So I know when my mom needs to go to the shelter and what’s going on,” she says, “because I need to check in the morning if she’s alive, if she was not bombed.” Her mother doesn’t have a smartphone, so Rudenko checks on her through an aunt who lives in another Ukrainian town.
She begins to cry as she talks about her family, then stops herself. “I don’t have any right to cry,” she says. “I’m not the one who’s bombed.”
There are differences between Russian Americans and Ukrainian Americans on some issues, including whether an expanding NATO represents a threat to Russian security, an argument that Putin made to defend the invasion. Those who identify with their Ukrainian heritage say by nearly 3-1 (63%-22%) that NATO does not pose a threat. Those who identify with their Russian heritage are more closely divided: 38% say it does; 48% say it doesn’t.
“This is a serious problem from the perspective of Russians because obviously you don’t want your capital, not to mention some of your other major population centers, in close missile range to NATO,” says Artem Joukov, 31, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas who emigrated from Russia as a child.
He doesn’t see stakes for the United States that warrant imposing sanctions and deploying additional troops to Eastern Europe. “It is possible in foreign policy to not take a position,” he says.
Victor Shevchuk, 53, an engineer from Richardson, Texas, who is Ukrainian American, says that as a sovereign nation, Ukraine should be able to make its own decisions on whether to join NATO.
“It’s a very complex and tricky situation, being especially that Russia has nuclear power and that Vladimir Putin seems to be a bit unhinged,” he says. “I’d like to see us help Ukraine as much as possible without triggering WWIII.”
In the face of Ukrainian resistance, Putin has moved to “more and more extreme measures,” he says.
The invasion of Ukraine has soured the views of many Russian Americans toward Putin. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say their view of him is worse than before the attacks in February. Among the respondents who have talked with family members in the region in recent weeks, 7 in 10 say those relatives had a generally unfavorable view of Putin.
Ninety percent of the Ukrainian Americans and 70% of the Russian Americans say Putin should be charged with war crimes.
Is the US doing enough?
Many of those surveyed want the United States to do more.
Half of Russian Americans say the United States is not doing enough in the conflict; 7 of 10 Ukrainian Americans agree. Just 13% of Russian Americans and 2% of Ukrainian Americans say the United States is doing too much.
President Joe Biden gets mediocre approval ratings for his handling of the conflict: 40% approve-43% disapprove among those of Russian descent; 35% approve-49% disapprove among those of Ukrainian descent.
“We need a leader, not a tip-toer,” says Tara Shvetzov, who lives in Beeville in South Texas. Her father immigrated from Russia. A veteran of the U.S. Army who served in the Iraq War, she says the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year may have opened the door for the invasion of Ukraine. “It gives the bullies that opportunity to say ‘They show weakness, and we take advantage of that weakness,’” she says.
Most of those surveyed, 67% of the Russian Americans and 57% of the Ukrainian Americans, predict the crisis in Ukraine is the start of a new Cold War between the United States and Russia. Or worse: Two-thirds of each group are “very” or “somewhat” worried that direct military confrontationbetween the two nations could be sparked.
Yevgeniya Valchuk, 39, who moved to the USA 15 years ago and lives in San Francisco, calls the Russian invasion inevitable.
“Everybody in Ukraine knew it would happen,” she says, “based on the history that Ukraine has and how the Russians behave and how the Russian president behaved within the last 30 years.” She notes Putin’s aggressive actions in Syria and elsewhere.
“He took everything what he wanted, and right now the only one that is standing is Ukraine,” she says.
Those on the battlefield standing against him include her younger brother and sister.
Here are your FOX Business Flash top headlines for March 11.
Italian police have seized a superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko, the prime minister’s office said on Saturday, a few days after the businessman was placed on an EU sanctions list following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 143-metre (470-foot) Sailing Yacht A, which has a price tag of 530 million euros ($578 million), has been sequestered at the northern port of Trieste, the government said.
Designed by Philippe Starck and built by Nobiskrug in Germany, the vessel is the world’s biggest sailing yacht, the government said.
Melnichenko owned major fertiliser producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK. The companies said in statements on Thursday that he had resigned as a member of the board in both companies and withdrawn as their beneficiary, effective Wednesday.
The luxury yacht ” Sailing Yacht A ” with her unique form, which was built for Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, sails past Italian Isola del Giglio island on July 10, 2018, near the “Scole” rocks where the Costa Concordia cruise ship crashed l ((Photo by VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images) / Getty Images)
A spokesperson for Melnichenko, Alex Andreev, said the businessman had “no relation to the tragic events in Ukraine. He has no political affiliations”.
“There is no justification whatsoever for placing him on the EU sanctions list,” Andreev said. “We will be disputing these baseless and unjustified sanctions, and believe that the rule of law and common sense will prevail.
Since last week Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth more than 700 million euros ($763.63 million) from high-profile Russians who have been placed on the EU sanctions list, Economy Minister Daniele Franco said on Saturday.
This photograph taken on March 10, 2022, shows a sailing yacht A owned by Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko in Trieste, Italy. – The sailing yacht A is the largest private sail-assisted motor yacht in the world. (Photo by Jure Makovec / AFP) (Photo ( (Photo by JURE MAKOVEC/AFP via Getty Images) / Getty Images)
“So far we have hit what was visible, now we have to hit the rest such as shareholdings. We are doing a great job to bring out what is shielded by trusts and front names,” Giuseppe Zafarana, head of the Italian tax police, told journalists in Bergamo on Saturday.
The police operations were part of a coordinated drive by Western states to penalise wealthy Russians they say are linked to President Vladimir Putin.
Separately, a superyacht reported to be owned by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich arrived in Montenegro’s territorial waters on Saturday morning, according to a Reuters photographer.
A Finance Police officer boards the superyacht from Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko which has been sequestered at the northern port of Trieste, Italy, March 12, 2022, in this screen grab taken from video, Finance Police/Handout via R (Finance Police/Handout via REUTERS / Reuters Photos)
The Solaris is one of a string of yachts owned by Chelsea Football Club owner Abramovich, according to reports in luxury goods publications SuperYachtFan, SuperYacht Times and Forbes.
The 140-metre (460-foot) vessel is moored off the luxury resort Porto Montenegro in the town of Tivat. The boat left Barcelona on Tuesday.
Britain imposed sanctions on Abramovich on Thursday, freezing his assets and citing what it called his close relationship with Putin. Abramovich has denied having such ties.
($1 = 0.9167 euros)
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi in Bergamo and Stevo Vasiljevic in TivatWriting by Giselda VagnoniEditing by Frances Kerry)
Around Ukraine on Saturday, residents sought shelter from fighting, looked out onto the aftermath of battles or fled in search of safer ground. Smoke rose over the capital, Kyiv, after a night of heavy Russian bombardment. Some of the last remaining civilians in two nearby towns, Irpin and Bucha, fled toward the city.
In the west, men mourned their fellow soldiers during a funeral in the town of Lutsk. In Odessa, in Ukraine’s south, a statue of the city’s first governor, the Duke of Richelieu, was sheathed in sandbags in anticipation of further Russian attacks.
As Ukrainian forces waged intense battles for Kyiv, Kharkiv and other major cities, people waited to see what might come of an escalating war, faltering diplomatic efforts and Western sanctions against Russia.
Photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations are throughout Ukraine, following the fighting and the flow of refugees across Europe as Ukrainians cope with the uncertainty and fear of Russia’s military invasion.
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