Foreign News
Ukraine parliament passes bill for prisoners to join army
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill that would enable some prisoners to fight in the armed forces as the military faces a critical personnel shortage and Russian forces continue to advance on the battlefield.
The move on Wednesday marks a U-turn in Ukraine’s approach on the matter. Kyiv had long opposed the measure and had repeatedly criticised Moscow for mobilising prisoners to fill its ranks.
“The parliament has voted yes,” MP Olena Shuliak, head of Zelenskyy’s party, said in a Facebook post. “The draft law opens the possibility for certain categories of prisoners who expressed a desire to defend their country to join the Defence Forces,” she said.
Mobilisation would be voluntary and open only to certain categories of prisoners.
Among those not eligible to serve include those found guilty of sexual violence, killing two or more people, serious corruption and former high-ranking officials, Shuliak said.
Only prisoners with under three years left to serve on their sentence may apply, she said. Any prisoners who are mobilised would be granted parole rather than a pardon.
The organisation Protection for Prisoners of Ukraine, which had lobbied for a measure allowing prisoners to fight, was disappointed with the adopted text.
“We support the idea behind the law, … but the text that was passed is discriminatory,” the NGO’s head, Oleg Tsvily, said.
“They got rid of leave for [fighting] prisoners, and we don’t know if they’re meant to fight until the war ends – which could mean longer than their sentence,” he explained.
Tsvily said he feared the creation of “special units” for mobilised soldiers would lead to abuse against prisoners.
“It’s like in Russia – redemption by blood. … Anyone willing to fight will be put in one unit and commanded like meat,” he said.
He was referring to reported practices of the Wagner mercenary group of sending waves of convicts into assaults likened to “meat grinders”.
Russia has recruited prisoners to serve on the front lines since the first days of its invasion in February 2022, initially offering presidential pardons for six months of service.
The practice was spearheaded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was filmed touring Russian prisons to recruit foot soldiers for his Wagner Group.
More than two years into the war, Kyiv is grappling with how to recruit enough soldiers to repel an intensification of Russian attacks on the front lines.
It has recently toughened measures against draft dodgers and lowered the age at which men can be drafted from 27 to 25.
(Aljazeera)
Azerbaijan’s transport minister has said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed on 25 December was subjected to “external interference” and damaged inside and out, as it tried to land in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya.
“All the survivors without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” said Rashad Nabiyev.
The plane is thought to have come under fire from Russian air defence systems before being diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where it crashed with the loss of 38 lives.
The Kremlin has refused to comment, but the head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the situation in Grozny was “very complicated” at the time and a closed-skies protocol had been put in place.
“Ukrainian combat drones were launching terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz,” said Dmitry Yadrov, head of Rosaviatsia, in a video statement posted on Russia’s Tass news agency.
“Because of this a ‘Carpet plan’ was introduced in the area of Grozny airport, providing for the immediate departure of all aircraft from the specified area,” he said. “In addition, there was dense fog in the area of Grozny airport.”
Later on Friday White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the US had seen “early indications” that the plane may have been downed by Russian air defence, but declined to comment further.
The Washington Post reported Kirby had said the indications the US had seen went beyond the widely-circulated photos of the damaged plane.
Ukrainian presidential spokesman Andriy Yermak has said Russia must be held responsible.
Azerbajian Airlines said on Friday that a preliminary inquiry had blamed both “physical and technical external interference”, without going into details.
However, aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane’s GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and it was then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile blasts.
The transport minister said investigators would now examine “what kind of weapon, or rather what kind of rocket was used.”
The government in Baku has so far avoided directly accusing Russia, possibly to avoid antagonising President Vladimir Putin.
However, pro-government MP Rasim Musabekov was clear: “The plane was shot down over Russian territory, in the skies above Grozny. Denying this is impossible.”
He told AFP news agency the plane had been damaged and the pilot had asked to make an emergency landing in Grozny. Instead of being directed to nearby airports, he said it was “sent far away” across the Caspian Sea without GPS.
Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov described the moments when the plane was hit by “some kind of external strike” over Chechnya. “The impact of it caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured.”
Veteran Azerbaijani pilot Tahir Agaguliev told Azerbaijani media that shrapnel had damaged the hydraulics that controlled the plane: “The missile itself did not hit the plane; it was shrapnel from the missile that struck. The missile exploded about 10m (30ft) away, before reaching the plane.”
The pilots of the Embraer 190 plane are credited with saving 29 of those on board by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.
The Kremlin has refused to comment on the increasing number of reports that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was hit by Russian air defence.
“An investigation into this aviation incident is underway and until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves entitled to give any assessments,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Azerbaijan is looking for a Russian apology, or at least an acknowledgement, that the plane was hit by its air defences in Grozny, according to figures close to the government in Baku.
Four years ago, Baku apologised and offered compensation when a Russian air force Mi-24 helicopter was shot down at the end of the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Now the Azerbaijani side is also expecting Russia to take those steps,” said political commentator Farhad Mammadov.
Kazakh authorities have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation.
Officials say the Brazilian plane manufacturer Embraer has sent two specialists to the crash site, 3km (1.9 miles) from Aktau airport in Kazakhstan, and three members of Brazil’s aviation agency will arrive on Saturday.
Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan have proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan has instead demanded an international inquiry.
Azerbaijan Airlines and several other airlines have suspended flights to some Russian cities in response to the crash.
In a social media post, the airline said this was “for security reasons”. It had already halted flights to Grozny and Makhachkala in neighbouring Dagestan, but has now added the cities of Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara and Mineralnye Vody.
Israel’s flagship airline, El Al, has meanwhile suspended all flights to Moscow, citing developments in Russian airspace, and UAE-based budget carrier Flydubai has halted flights to Sochi and Mineralnye Vody.
[BBC]
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
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