During Tuesday’s operations, the DEC said it had seized 221.2kg of cannabis hidden in a lorry in Lusaka’s Lilayi area.

The search was extended to Muharram’s residence in Lilayi, where officers discovered an additional 1,159.6kg of “high-grade” cannabis, bringing the total seizure to 1,380.8kg, the agency added.

A Zambian national who was also arrested is believed to be an accomplice in the organised drug-trafficking scheme.

The DEC said their operations also saw the arrests of:

• A Zambian national for trafficking 55 boxes of Benylin containing codeine in Lusaka
• Two other Zambians for trafficking cannabis concealed in their vehicle
• Two Burundian nationals in the southern district of Chirundu for trafficking cannabis in separate vehicles: some was hidden inside a spare lorry tyre, some in gas compressors and additional cannabis was mixed with sugar, salt and paint and concealed in tins and buckets of paint.

“All suspects have since been detained in lawful custody and will appear in court soon,” DEC said in a statement.

The agency said it was committed to ensuring that Zambia was neither used as a corridor nor a destination for drug trafficking.

[BBC]

Ukrainians are facing unimaginable choices now as the US tries to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, but Russia pushes on with its invasion.

That includes massive aerial attacks against Ukraine’s energy system, against all rules of war.

Meanwhile, the most pressure for compromise is on Kyiv.

At some point, the US-led talks will hone in on the most sensitive issue of all: the status of land in the eastern Donbas region that so many men have died defending.

Ukraine still controls around a fifth of the area, including Slovyansk. But the town is close to the current frontline where Russian forces have been trying to push forward for months.

Kyiv proposes freezing the fighting there, ceding nothing more. But Moscow wants to be handed control over the rest of the region and the US is thought to agree.

That is far from Vladimir Putin’s original plan to take over all Ukraine – to “denazify” and “demilitarise” as he snarled at the time. But it would allow him to claim a victory for Russia of sorts.

“There are drones in the streets, hitting minibuses, and glide bombs fall in the city centre, leaving craters,” Natalia says, describing life in Slovyansk now, where her husband had been buried.

“A few months ago, the attacks were weekly. Now it’s every couple of days.”

North of Natalia’s hometown, up around the city of Kharkiv, there are more signs that the danger zone is spreading.

Workmen hammer stakes into the frozen ground to fit nets which they’ll then stretch over the road in a canopy as protection against Russian drones.

Not far away, in an unmarked spot, we visited a workshop for Ukraine’s own UAVs.

The soldiers of the Typhoon unit work in a basement filled with heaps of kit and cables, reached via a handmade wooden staircase. The men are responsible for repairing drones damaged at the frontline and for innovation: Ukraine needs every chance against an enemy with more men and more resources.

The music playing as the team work is chirpy French pop, but the soldiers’ mood is mixed.

“We try not to discuss it here,” 29-year old Roman replies, when I ask about giving up territory in return for peace. “People quarrel and we don’t need that right now. We need to unite, and fight the Russians.”

Roman lost “a lot of guys”, he says, during his two years in the infantry, fighting in the Donbas.

No surprise that it’s far harder to recruit these days. Last month the country’s defence minister revealed that a staggering 200,000 soldiers were absent without leave.

But like many Ukrainians, Roman is sure that gifting the Donbas to Putin would not make Ukraine secure.

“The Russians will only come back for more,” he says.

Hunched over a laptop in the back room, another soldier admits that “victory” in this war looks very different these days.

“I would say our victory is in preserving our statehood,” Maksym argues, choosing his words carefully. “Even if we have three square kilometres of land, but we keep our constitution and our institutions, then this is still Ukraine.”

He thinks the soldiers should fight on, regardless.

“Russia is 10 times our size. But still we can’t surrender.”

Back in Kyiv, Natalia clings to the arm of a friend, as grave diggers shovel fresh earth onto her husband’s coffin then slot a wooden cross into place on top.

A photograph of Vitaly shows him smiling, posing beside a yellow sunflower.

Natalia is relieved to have her husband close again where she and their daughter, Vitalina, can visit his grave safely.

“She watches videos of him, looks at photos and she loves him very much even though they never met,” Natalia smiles.

She also hopes to tell her husband soon that she’s pregnant using the sperm the couple had frozen specially at a clinic, just a few days before Vitaliy was killed.

Many soldiers now do the same before heading for the front.

It’s a brutal fact, but Natalia says none of Vitaliy’s soldier friends made it to his reburial, because so many of them, too, are now dead.

Ukraine has paid an immense price already for four years of all-out war.

Ceding land to Russia that it already controls is one thing: an option now quietly accepted by many.

But Natalia can’t bear the thought of Russia taking more territory, including the town where she and Vitaly lived and were in love.

She has “no doubt” her husband would have wanted the army to fight on, not concede now.

“Russia may pause for a year, then there will be another breakthrough and they’ll be in Kharkiv,” Natalia says.

“I just don’t believe Russia will stop.”

[BBC]