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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country’s capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off the streets in one town out of fear that Russian forces might have booby-trapped them before leaving.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his nightly video address hours earlier that departing Russian troops were creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and “even the bodies of those killed.” His claims could not be independently verified.

Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, watched Saturday as Ukrainian soldiers backed by a column of tanks and other armored vehicles used cables to drag bodies off of a street from a distance, fearing they might have been rigged to explode. Locals said the dead — the AP counted at least six — were civilians who were killed by departing Russian soldiers without provocation.

“Those people were just walking and they shot them without any reason. Bang,” said a Bucha resident who declined to give his name citing safety reasons. “In the next neighborhood, Stekolka, it was even worse. They would shoot without asking any question.”

Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine.

The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than 4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon. Zelenskyy said he expects departed towns to endure missile strikes and rocket strikes from afar and for the battle in the east to be intense.

“It’s still not possible to return to normal life, as it used to be, even at the territories that we are taking back after the fighting,” the president said.

Moscow’s focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs. The port city on the Sea of Azoz is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years. Military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to capture the region after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.

The International Committee of the Red Cross planned to try Saturday to get into Mariupol to evacuate residents after canceling the operation Friday when it did not receive assurances the route was safe. City authorities said the Russians blocked access to the city. There was no word as of late Saturday whether the Red Cross managed to reach Mariupol.

An adviser to Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview with Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to allow 45 buses to drive to Mariupol to evacuate residents “in coming days.”

The Mariupol city council said earlier Saturday that 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk, a city 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol, to pick up people who managed to get there on their own. About 2,000 made it out of Mariupol on Friday, some on buses and some in their own vehicles, city officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said 765 Mariupol residents on Saturday used private vehicles to reach Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has served as the destination for other planned evacuations.

Among those escaping the city was Tamila Mazurenko, who said she fled Mariupol on Monday, made it to Berdyansk that night then took a bus to Zaporizhzhia. Mazurenko said she waited for a bus until Friday, spending one night sleeping in a field.

“I have only one question: Why?” she said of her city’s ordeal. “We only lived as normal people. And our normal life was destroyed. And we lost everything. I don’t have any job, I can’t find my son.”

Mariupol, which has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than a month, has suffered some of the war’s worst attacks, including on a maternity hospital and a theater that was sheltering civilians. Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a prewar population of 430,000, and they are facing dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.

The city’s capture would give Moscow an unbroken land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. But its resistance has also has taken on symbolic significance during Russia’s invasion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think-tank Penta.

“Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table,” Fesenko said.

About 500 refugees from eastern Ukraine, including 99 children and 12 people with disabilities, arrived in the Russian city of Kazan by train overnight. Asked if he saw a chance to return home, Mariupol resident Artur Kirillov answered, “That’s unlikely, there is no city anymore.”

In towns and cities surrounding Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere in the wake of the Russian redeployment. Destroyed armored vehicles from both armies are left in streets and fields along with scattered military gear.

Ukrainian troops were stationed at the entrance to Antonov Airport in suburb of Hostomel, demonstrating control of the runway that Russia tried to storm in the first days of the war.

Inside the compound, the Mriya, one of the biggest planes ever built, lay wrecked underneath a hangar pock-marked with holes from the February Russian attack.

“The Russians couldn’t make one like it so they destroyed it,“ said Oleksandr Merkushev, mayor of the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.

Irpin has seen some of the fiercest battles of the war, and Merkushev said the Russian troops “left behind them many bodies, many destroyed buildings and they mined many places.”

A prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last month in a combat zone near the capital was found dead Friday in the Huta Mezhyhirska village north of Kyiv, the country’s prosecutor general’s office announced. Maks Levin, 40, worked as a photojournalist and videographer for many Ukrainian and international publications.

The prosecutor general’s office attributed his death to two gunshots allegedly fired by the Russian military, and it said an investigation was underway.

Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired late Friday at the Odesa region on the Black Sea, regional leader Maksim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian military said the Iskander missiles did not hit the critical infrastructure they targeted in Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port and the headquarters of its navy.

Ukraine’s state nuclear agency reported a series of blasts Saturday that injured four people in Enerhodar, a city in southeastern Ukraine that has been under Russian control since early March along with the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman said on Telegram that the four were badly burned when Russian troops fired light and noise grenades and mortars at a pro-Ukraine demonstration.

The head of Ukraine’s delegation in talks with Russia said Moscow’s negotiators informally agreed to most of a draft proposal discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation has been provided. However, Davyd Arakhamia said on Ukrainian TV that he hopes that draft is developed enough so that the two countries’ presidents can meet to discuss it.

On Friday, the Kremlin accused Ukraine of launching a helicopter attack on a fuel depot on Russian soil.

Ukraine denied responsibility for the fiery blast at the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the Ukraine border. If Moscow’s claim is confirmed, it would be the war’s first known attack in which Ukrainian aircraft penetrated Russian airspace.

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Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Andrea Rosa in Irpin, Ukraine, and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Source Article from https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-kyiv-business-ap-top-news-341f00b44549d1baa45486be43ac9368

TAIPEI, Aug 2 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan late on Tuesday on a trip she said shows an unwavering American commitment to the Chinese-claimed self-ruled island, but China condemned the highest-level U.S. visit in 25 years as a threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Pelosi and the rest of her delegation disembarked from a U.S. Air Force transport plane at Songshan Airport in downtown Taipei after the nighttime landing on a flight from Malaysia to begin a visit that risks pushing U.S.-Chinese relations to a new low. They were greeted by Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, and Sandra Oudkirk, the top U.S. representative in Taiwan.

Her arrival prompted a furious response from China at a time when international tensions already are elevated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has never renounced using force to bring it under its control. The United States warned China against using the visit as a pretext for military action against Taiwan.

“Our congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement shortly after landing. “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.” read more

Pelosi, second in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency, is a long-time China critic.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen will meet with Pelosi on Wednesday morning and then have lunch together, the presidential office said. Pelosi, travelling with six other American lawmakers, became the most-senior U.S. political leader to visit Taiwan since 1997. read more

China’s foreign ministry said it lodged a strong protest with the United States, saying Pelosi’s visit seriously damages peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, “has a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Chinese warplanes buzzed the line dividing the Taiwan Strait before her arrival. The Chinese military has been put on high alert and will launch “targeted military operations” in response to Pelosi’s visit, the defence ministry said.

The Chinese military announced joint air and sea drills near Taiwan starting on Tuesday night and test launches of conventional missiles in the sea east of Taiwan, with Chinese state news agency Xinhua describing live-fire drills and other exercises around Taiwan from Thursday to Sunday. read more

Pelosi is on an Asia tour that includes announced visits to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. Her Taiwan visit was unannounced but widely anticipated.

In a Washington Post opinion piece released after landing, Pelosi explained her visit, praising Taiwan’s commitment to democratic government while criticizing China as having dramatically increased tensions with Taiwan in recent years.

“We cannot stand by as the CCP proceeds to threaten Taiwan – and democracy itself,” Pelosi said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Pelosi also cited China’s “brutal crackdown” on political dissent in Hong Kong and its treatment of Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities, which the United States has deemed genocide.

As Pelosi’s motorcade approached her hotel, escorted by police cars with flashing red and blue lights, scores of supporters cheered and ran toward the black vehicles with their arms outstretched and phone cameras on. The motorcade drove straight into the hotel’s parking lot.

On Tuesday night, Taiwan’s tallest building, Taipei 101, lit up with messages including: “Welcome to Taiwan”, “Speaker Pelosi” and “Taiwan (heart) USA”.

WHITE HOUSE REACTS

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said after Pelosi’s arrival that the United States “is not going to be intimidated” by China’s threats or bellicose rhetoric and that there is no reason her visit should precipitate a crisis or conflict.

“We will continue to support Taiwan, defend a free and open Indo-Pacific and seek to maintain communication with Beijing,” Kirby told a later White House briefing, adding that the United States “will not engage in sabre-rattling.”

Kirby said China might engage in “economic coercion” toward Taiwan, adding that the impact on American-Chinese relations will depend on Beijing’s actions in the coming days and weeks.

Pelosi, 82, is a close ally of U.S. President Joe Biden, both being members of the Democratic Party, and has helped guide his legislative agenda through Congress.

Four sources said Pelosi is also scheduled on Wednesday to meet activists outspoken about China’s human rights record.

The United States has no official diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by American law to provide it with the means to defend itself. China views visits by U.S. officials to Taiwan as sending an encouraging signal to the pro-independence camp on the island. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only the Taiwanese people can decide the island’s future.

Several Chinese warplanes flew close to the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday morning before leaving later in the day, a source told Reuters. Several Chinese warships also sailed near the unofficial dividing line since Monday and remained there, the source said.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said 21 Chinese aircraft entered its air defence identification zone on Tuesday, and that China was attempting to threaten key ports and cities with drills around the island. Taiwan’s armed forces have “reinforced” their alertness level, it added.

Taylor Fravel, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology expert on China’s military, said China’s planned exercises appear as though they may be greater in scope than during a Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995 and 1996.

“Taiwan will face military exercises and missile tests from its north, south, east and west. This is unprecedented,” Fravel said.

Four U.S. warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, were positioned in waters east of Taiwan on what the U.S. Navy called routine deployments.

Russia, locked in confrontation with the West over its Ukraine invasion, condemned Pelosi’s visit. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the United States “a state provocateur.”

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pelosi-expected-arrive-taiwan-tuesday-sources-say-2022-08-02/

Drivers have been stuck on a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in the Stafford County, Virginia, area for nearly 24 hours after multiple trucks crashed amid a major snowstorm that left snow and ice packed onto the road. Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents Virginia in the U.S. Senate, is among the people trapped on the highway. 

Many drivers are out of gas. Some don’t have food or water. Some say they have kids, pets and family members with medical needs in the car.

Gov. Ralph Northam told News4 that Virginia State Police, the Virginia Department of Transportation and other state officials and crews are working nonstop to help people stranded in the gridlock. 

“This has been a difficult night for a lot of folks. I’m very sorry that people have been stranded. We’re doing everything we can to get to these individuals, whether it be [giving them] water or a place to be warm,” Northam said Tuesday morning. 

The governor resisted calls from social media users, including TV personality and author Meghan McCain, to deploy the National Guard. 

“They’re available, and they do a wonderful job. We have the resources we need right now, we just need to be able to get them where they need to be,” Northam said. 

Del. Todd Gilbert, who will soon become speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, is among those calling for Northam to mobilize the National Guard to rescue drivers. 

“Local first responders are doing everything they can, but with so many people stranded, the Commonwealth needs to bring all of its resources to bear,” Gilbert said in a statement. “It’s not enough for the men, women, and the heavy vehicles of the Virginia National Guard to be ‘available.’ They need to be activated to bring aid to those who need it and to help get the Interstate open again.”

VDOT says a plan is underway to guide trapped vehicles to interchanges and alternate routes. Prince William County firefighters were seen handing out blankets and water bottles Tuesday morning as the traffic nightmare continued.

VDOT said in an update midday Tuesday that efforts to clear the highway are complicated by a number of vehicles that are out of gas, broken down or stuck in snow. 

Kaine told News4 on Tuesday morning that he’s spent more than 21 hours in his car. He left Richmond at 1 p.m. Monday to try to negotiate a voting rights deal in the Senate but still has not arrived. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he repeated. 

“This has been a miserable experience, but at some point I kind of made the switch to a miserable travel experience to a survival project,” he told our news partners, WTOP. 

Kaine cited “nice camaraderie” among the scores of travelers who are stuck, with people sharing food and drinks. 

Driver Anne Gould said traffic stopped on Monday afternoon while she was on her annual trek to Florida. By Tuesday at about 6:20 a.m., Gould said she had only moved ahead in the gridlock by a few car lengths.

“There’s cars and trucks as far as I can see behind me, and in front of me, and it’s looked like this for 12 hours,” she said Tuesday morning.

As of midday Tuesday, southbound traffic was at a standstill and northbound traffic had begun to creep forward.

The Virginia Department of Transportation confirmed both directions of I-95 were shut down between Ruther Glen, in Caroline County, and Exit 152 in Dumfries, Prince William County. That’s a stretch of more than 40 miles through the Fredericksburg area, which recorded 14.1 inches of snow Monday.

“We are working to get traffic moving again as best we can using every available interchange between Prince William & Caroline counties,” VDOT Fredericksburg said. “There are interchanges at the following mm: Exit 104, 110 Caroline, 118, 126 Spotsy, 130 FXBG 133, 136, 140, 143, 148 Stafford, 150 & 152 PW.”

Virginia State Police said the lengthy closure was implemented so crews could safely reach stranded motorists. The agency said it has responded to hundreds of crashes since the early Monday, but there have been few injuries and no deaths.

“This is unprecedented, and we continue to steadily move stopped trucks to make progress toward restoring lanes,” VDOT Fredericksburg District Engineer Marcie Parker said in a statement.

“In addition to clearing the trucks, we are treating for snow and several inches of ice that has accumulated around them to ensure that when the lanes reopen, motorists can safely proceed to their destination,” Parker said.

All southbound lanes of I-95 were shut down at mile marker 136 near Centreport Parkway after a crash involving six tractor-trailers at noon Monday. No one was hurt, but that collision contributed to major backups.

Towing crews, plows and Virginia State Police were helping with the effort, Hannon said. Crews were also trying to move trucks blocking roads.

Hannon said to call 911 if you know someone out there who needs urgent medical attention.

For everyone else, she said she knows this is a dire situation, and they’re working to get people home.

Nisa Semesta, who was stuck on the southbound side for more than 12 hours with two cats in her car, said drivers couldn’t even get off the interstate for supplies. Side roads were also impassable.

“We’re really worried about our access to food, water and sanitation at the moment,” said. “I know some people are starting to get worried about gas.”

Truck driver Emily Clementson suggested people ask truck drivers if they have extra supplies, such as snacks or water bottles. She said many truck drivers prepare in case they get stranded.

Clementson said the conditions changed as soon as she and a co-driver got into Virginia.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Clementson said.

Hundreds of drivers got stuck or in crashes throughout the region Monday as snow accumulated until about 3 p.m.

Stay with NBC Washington for more details on this developing story.

Source Article from https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/never-seen-anything-like-it-drivers-stranded-for-15-hours-on-i-95-in-virginia/2926464/