World
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 505
![Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 505 Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 505](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-07-11T174125Z_851733319_RC2Z02AIOAVA_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-OFFENSIVE-EAST-1689210541.jpg?resize=1920,1440)
As the conflict enters its 505th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Thursday, July 13, 2023.
Fighting
- Moscow launched a wave of drone attacks on Kyiv for a third night, according to Ukraine military officials. The military said 11 of the 15 drones were destroyed. Two people were hurt in a fire caused by the attack.
- Zaporizhia regional governor Yuriy Malashko said 18 people, including six children, were injured in a Russian attack on a residential area in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
- Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said an 81-year-old man was killed and his 82-year-old wife wounded after Russia shelled the southern city of Kherson.
- Ukraine’s military said Russian forces carried out 65 air strikes and fired at least 71 times from heavy weapon rocket systems at Ukrainian troop positions and populated areas along the front lines over the previous 24 hours.
- Andriy Kovaliov, a spokesperson for the armed forces general staff, said Ukrainian forces “had success in some places” amid fierce fighting on the front line south of Bakhmut. He said the Russians were putting up strong resistance, moving units and troops and deploying reserves. He did not say how much ground Ukraine had gained.
NATO Summit and diplomacy
- The Group of Seven (G7) signed a new framework to provide long-term, bilateral security commitments for Ukraine. The measures cover areas including modern advanced military equipment, training, intelligence sharing and cyber defence. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the agreement was “potentially very dangerous“.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed defence packages announced by NATO and the G7 at the security alliance’s annual summit, but said an invitation to join NATO “would have been ideal”. At a joint press conference with Zelenskyy, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said “Ukraine is now closer to NATO than ever before”.
- Zelenskyy met United States President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the summit in Lithuania and said the two had “a very good, powerful meeting” that was “at least twice as long as planned, and as meaningful as it needed to be”.
- Zelenskyy said the NATO-Ukraine Council established by NATO could give his country “institutional clarity” as part of Kyiv’s path towards NATO membership. Writing on Twitter, he said it was “important” that the council “be an instrument of integration, not just partnership”.
- US President Joe Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having a “craven lust for land and power” and promised that the security alliance would not falter in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. Putin, he said, had underestimated NATO. “He thought NATO would break. He thought our unity would shatter at the first testing. He thought democratic leaders would be weak. But he thought wrong,” Biden said at the end of the two-day summit.
- Stoltenberg said the “biggest risk” in the Ukraine war was a victory for Putin, who sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022. “Ukraine has the right to choose its own path,” Stoltenberg said, adding that “it is not for Moscow to decide”.
- Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council, said NATO’s increased assistance for Ukraine brought the threat of a third world war closer, and that Russia would not be deterred from achieving its goals in Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Sweden and Ukraine signed an agreement to cooperate on defence procurement and for the exchange of classified information.
- Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin held a phone call with his CIA counterpart William Burns in late June to discuss “what to do with Ukraine”. There was a possibility the two men might meet in person, TASS said, citing Naryshkin.
- The Kremlin said a visit by Putin to China was on the agenda, adding the date of the trip would be announced when it is finalised. China’s President Xi Jinping travelled to Moscow in March.
- UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sent Putin a letter on Tuesday proposing a way forward to further facilitate Russian food and fertiliser exports and ensure the continued Black Sea shipments of Ukrainian grain. The existing deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, is due to expire on Monday.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy announced Australia would give Ukraine 30 bushmaster armoured vehicles as part of a new defence package.
- Zelenskyy said that Germany would supply additional Patriot launchers and missiles to Ukraine. “This is very important for protecting life in Ukraine from Russian terror!” he said on the Telegram messaging platform.
- The British government said it would provide Ukraine with more than 70 combat and logistical vehicles, thousands of rounds of ammunition for Challenger 2 tanks, and a 50-million-pound ($64.9m) support package for equipment repair.
- UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Kyiv could express more “gratitude” to its allies for their support in the face of Russia’s invasion, given that some are giving up their own stocks to supply Ukraine. Wallace said after he received a list of weapons requests from Kyiv he had told officials: “I am not Amazon”.
- Biden’s nominee to become the US Army’s chief of staff, General Randy George, told a Senate committee that Ukraine would benefit from the US provision of ATACM long-range missiles. George said the Army Tactical Missile System would give Ukraine the ability to attack “attack deeper targets”.
Wagner mutiny fallout
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the Wagner mercenary group, which staged a brief mutiny last month, is completing the handover of its weapons. In a statement accompanied by a video showing tanks, rockets and other heavy weapons, the ministry said Wagner had transferred more than 2,000 pieces of equipment and over 2,500 tonnes of ammunition.
- General Sergei Surovikin, a deputy commander of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, is “currently resting”, according to Andrei Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defence Committee. Surovikin has not been seen in public since the Wagner mutiny, and there have been unconfirmed reports that he had been detained for questioning.
- The UK’s defence ministry said that Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov made his first TV appearance since the mutiny. “Gerasimov was seen being briefed by video link by Russian Aerospace Forces Chief of Staff Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov,” it said.
- The Kremlin’s Peskov dismissed a claim by Ukrainian military intelligence that Wagner soldiers intended to acquire nuclear devices during their failed mutiny as “misinformation”. His comments followed a Reuters news agency report citing Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, saying Wagner fighters reached a nuclear base – known as Voronezh-45 – in an attempt to obtain small Soviet-era nuclear devices.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
World
Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’
![Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’ Asif Kapadia on Taking Aim at the Rich and Powerful in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’: ‘If I Don’t Work Again, at Least I Made This Movie’](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2073_Reel_01_V_009741_STATIC_WIDE_GOLDEN_GATE_BRIDGE_WILDFIRES_RED_SK_4828.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1)
Asif Kapadia sees a future vision of the world where “chairwoman” Ivanka Trump is celebrating her 30th year as leader of a nightmarish fascist police state that was once America, a land mostly reduced to rubble following an unknown “catastrophe” that occurred in 2036.
“It’s kind of a joke, but it’s also not a joke,” says the British filmmaker of mentioning Donald Trump’s daughter in “2073,” his chilling docudrama about the dystopia humanity is potentially hurtling towards and the very real and very contemporary factors concerning politics, the environment, corruption, race and technology that he says are propelling us in that direction.
“Because if you look at American politics, you have certain families that just keep being in power — the number of people that have come from a tiny gene pool is insane,” he says.
While the inclusion of Ivanka may be a little splash of humor, the rest of “2073” — which comes backed by Neon, Double Agent and Film4 and is world premiering in Venice on Tuesday — offers little else to be tickled by. The film is what Kapadia says is his response to the world — and the entertainment industry — having got to a “place where people cannot say anything” that criticizes the status quo or those in power without risking losing their jobs or worse.
And so “2073” says a lot, a whole lot. The film essentially lays the blame for the impending disaster — be it nuclear war, climate change or whatever it might be — at the foot of leaders, demagogues, tech billionaires and the 1% and what they’re doing to the planet and society. Alongside the Trumps, there’s the Murdochs, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Mohammed Bin Salman, Narendra Modi, the Koch brothers, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and many more, spliced alongside news clips and amateur footage from the last couple of decades showing examples of police brutality, rising fascism, the refugee crisis, mass detentions, bombings and wild fires.
Originally the project — which came about during lockdown (Kapadia put out a tweet asking for help and soon gathered a team of researchers from around the world) — was to be a “doc set in the future where everything from the future will be factual and created out of bits of the present.” But he soon decided to use his drama background to mix the two, creating a version of life in 2073 in which Samantha Morton plays a mute survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past and living underground as surveillance drones patrol the surface.
This past is pieced together using “footage from around 60 different countries, which I made to look like one place,” says Kapadia. Some of footage is extremely recent. In the opening scenes revealing this earth-shattering catastrophe, we see clips of recent devastation in Gaza.
“Having been doing this for a while, if you feel like you’re onto something in a horrible way, the world comes into synch with the film,” he says. The war in Gaza, plus the rise of AI and the growing feeling that the next presidential election could be “the end of democracy in the U.S.” all began after he started making the film. “And then a few weeks ago in England we had all these riots.”
“2073” may seem like an unexpected feature from the Oscar-winning documentarian best-known for “Amy,” “Senna” and “Diego Maradona,” but he claims this trilogy of profiles all came about “by accident,” and were each infused with his previous experience in drama and fiction and were each made that way. “’Senna’ is an action movie, ‘Amy’ is a musical, a Bollywood film, and ‘Diego Maradona’ is a gangster film set in Naples,” he says.
But “2073” — an experimental dystopian thriller — still feels like a major key change for the director, a highly provocative and uncomfortable to watch feature with global themes that he hopes will make people realize that “what’s happening over there will get closer and closer and eventually come to you.”
As he notes: “And if you don’t think that’s a problem, then it’s just a movie. But if it is a problem, then you, me, us … we’ve got to do something.”
Kapadia is already among the most outspoken filmmakers on social media when it comes to discussing politics and especially in condemning Israel for the bloodshed in Gaza. While this hasn’t appeared to have hindered his career in the way it has others, he says “2073” — given the topics and the very powerful, very wealthy people it discusses — might.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have made films and in what I do I’ve been successful,” he explains. “So honestly, I went into this going, ‘I’m going to chuck it all in, I’m not going to be afraid to say what I see and if I don’t work again, fine, at least I made this movie.’ ”
World
Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!'
![Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!' Two U.S. soldiers ambushed, assaulted by mob of Turkish nationalists: 'Yankee, go home!'](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/Copy-of-Right-inset-22.png)
A mob of Turkish nationalists attacked U.S. soldiers in western Turkey on Monday, resulting in the arrests of 15 people.
The incident took place in Izmir, which is located on Turkey’s Aegean coast. In a statement, the Izmir governor’s office said the assailants belonged to the Youth Union of Turkey, which is connected to the nationalist Vatan Party.
The governor said that the victims, who were assigned to the USS Wasp, were “physically attacked.” Video posted to social media showed soldiers in civilian clothing yelling for help as they were restrained by a group of anti-American men.
The footage also shows an attacker throwing a plastic bag onto the soldier’s head as the crowd chanted, “Yankee Go Home!”
ISRAEL SHARES DOSSIER SPELLING OUT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST 12 UN EMPLOYEES ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN HAMAS ATTACK
Soldiers assigned to the USS Wasp were attacked by Turkish nationalists, according to officials. (Getty Images/iStock)
Five U.S. soldiers intervened during the incident, and authorities eventually arrested all 15 of the men who attacked the soldiers.
The U.S. Embassy in Turkey confirmed the incident in a statement published to social media on Monday, and said that the soldiers are safe.
“We can confirm reports that U.S. service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in İzmir today, and are now safe,” the embassy said.
UN, HUMAN RIGHTS, MEDIA GROUPS RELY ON HAMAS DEATH TOLL IN ‘SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION’: EXPERT
![USS Wasp](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-2165869998.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Crew members stand aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD-1) docked at Limassol Port, amid rising tensions in the Middle East, in Limassol, Cyprus, Sunday, August 11, 2024. (Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“We thank Turkish authorities for their rapid response and ongoing investigation.”
In a statement obtained by Reuters, the Youth Union of Turkey said the attack was “deserved” and criticized U.S. support of Israel.
![Turkish protesters](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-1236122537.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Members of the Youth Union of Turkey (TGB) gather outside the U.S. Embassy to protest envoys of 10 countries over remarks on the Osman Kavala case in Ankara, Turkey on October 25, 2021. (Evrim Aydin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“U.S. soldiers who carry the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot dirty our country,” the nationalists said. “Every time you step foot in these lands, we will meet you the way you deserve.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
World
Hamas says Gaza captives will return ‘in coffins’ if Israel continues raids
![Hamas says Gaza captives will return ‘in coffins’ if Israel continues raids Hamas says Gaza captives will return ‘in coffins’ if Israel continues raids](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-09-02T102148Z_19022666_RC2AS9AEIBAY_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-HOSTAGES-PROTEST-1725272723.jpg?resize=1920%2C1440)
Group’s armed wing Qassam Brigades issues statement, two days after bodies of six captives are recovered from a Gaza tunnel by Israeli forces.
The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas says captives held in Gaza would return to Israel “in coffins” if Israeli military pressure continues, warning that “new instructions” had been given to its fighters guarding the captives in case Israeli troops approach.
“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s insistence on freeing the captives through military pressure instead of reaching a deal means they will go back to their families in coffins. Their families have to choose between receiving them dead or alive,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement on Monday, two days after the bodies of six captives were recovered by Israel.
“Netanyahu and the army are fully responsible for the death of the captives after they intentionally hindered any prisoners’ exchange deal,” it said.
The statement from the Qassam Brigades came shortly after Netanyahu said the six captives whose bodies were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah area had been “executed” by Hamas.
“I ask for your forgiveness for not bringing them back alive,” Netanyahu said during a televised news conference earlier on Monday as protests over the deaths continued for a second day in Israel.
“We were close, but we didn’t succeed. Hamas will pay a very heavy price for this,” he added.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said the six captives were killed in Israeli air strikes.
Meanwhile, protests in Israel over the deaths of the captives continued with angry demonstrators saying they could have been returned alive if Netanyahu’s government had signed a ceasefire with Hamas.
However, political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera that a nationwide strike in Israel on Monday and rising public anger will not make a real difference to end the war in Gaza and free the captives.
“It seems that for Netanyahu, the alternative – which is his personal, political and personal life – is more important than the lives of the Israeli captives,” Eldar said, adding that despite a large number of protesters, “the Israeli right and radical right” who support the government “have the upper hand”.
“The government and the prime minister are now on the defensive,” Ori Goldberg, an expert on Israeli politics, told Al Jazeera. “This is about momentum now.”
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden also said Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of the captives.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Biden was asked whether he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a deal. Biden said, “No.” He did not elaborate.
Months of stop-start negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to reach an accord on a Gaza ceasefire proposal laid out by Biden in May.
Hamas wants an agreement to end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza while Netanyahu says the war can only end once Hamas is defeated.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and government adviser, told Al Jazeera that it is Netanyahu who “absolutely has no interest in a hostage deal or ceasefire”.
“Those who are shocked and devastated and angered about what happened should not be surprised because this is exactly what the [Israeli] defence minister [Yoav Gallant] and all of us were warning would happen,” Pinkas said.
“His [Netanyahu’s] and only his reluctance to engage in a deal is what made all this happen.”
-
Connecticut1 week ago
Oxford church provides sanctuary during Sunday's damaging storm
-
Politics1 week ago
Why won't Pennsylvania voters have results on Election Night?
-
Politics1 week ago
With 13 days until voting starts, 'election season' kicks off sooner than you think
-
World1 week ago
Solingen stabbing: Three killed in attack at Germany festival
-
Politics1 week ago
2024 showdown: What happens next in the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump face-off
-
World1 week ago
French police officer injured in synagogue arson attack
-
World1 week ago
Portugal coast hit by 5.3 magnitude earthquake
-
Politics1 week ago
Trump sets intense pace with campaign events as questions swirl about Harris' policy positions