Russians shift focus from Kyiv — scaling back goals in war?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian forces in Ukraine seem to have shifted their focus from a ground offensive aimed at Kyiv, the capital, to instead prioritizing what Moscow calls liberation of the contested Donbas region in the country's industrial east, officials said Friday, suggesting a new phase of the war. —
It appears too early to know where this will lead. Has President Vladimir Putin scaled back his ambitions in search of a way out of the war? The dug-in defensive positions taken recently by some Russian forces near Kyiv indicate a recognition of the surprisingly stout Ukrainian resistance.
On the other hand, Russian forces might be aiming to continue the war with a narrower focus, not necessarily as an endgame but as a way of regrouping from early failures and using the Donbas as a new starting point, one U.S. analyst said.
Putin's forces are under great strain in many parts of the country, and the United States and other countries are accelerating their transfer of arms and supplies to Ukraine. In recent days, U.S. officials have said they see evidence of Ukrainian defenders going on the offensive in a limited way in some areas. Earlier this week they managed to attack a large Russian ship in port on the Black Sea coast.
Putting a positive face on it all, the deputy chief of the Russian general staff said his forces had largely achieved the “main objectives” of the first phase of what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said Russian forces had “considerably reduced” the combat power of the Ukrainian military, and as a result Russian troops could "focus on the main efforts to achieve the main goal, liberation of Donbas.”
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War Crimes Watch: Russia's onslaught on Ukrainian hospitals
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — For a month now, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked Ukrainian medical facilities, striking at hospitals, ambulances, medics, patients and even newborns — with at least 34 assaults independently documented by The Associated Press.
With every new attack, the public outcry for war crimes prosecutions against Russian President Vladimir Putin, his generals and top Kremlin advisers grows louder.
To convict, prosecutors will need to show that the attacks are not merely accidents or collateral damage. The emerging pattern, tracked day by day by the AP, shows evidence of a consistent and relentless onslaught against the very civilian infrastructure designed to save lives and provide safe haven to Ukraine’s most vulnerable.
AP journalists in Ukraine have seen the deadly results of Russian strikes on civilian targets firsthand: the final moments of children whose tiny bodies were shredded by shrapnel or had limbs blown off; dozens of corpses, including those of children, heaped into mass graves.
“The pattern of attacks will help prosecutors build the case that these are deliberate attacks,” said Ryan Goodman, professor of law at New York University and former special counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense. “Prosecutors will draw inferences from how many medical facilities were targeted, how many times individual facilities were repeatedly struck and in what span of time.”
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How would those accused of Ukraine war crimes be prosecuted?
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Each day searing stories pour out of Ukraine: A maternity hospital bombed in Mariupol. A mother and her children killed as they fled Irpin in a humanitarian corridor. Burning apartment blocks. Mass graves. A child dead of dehydration in a city under siege, denied humanitarian aid.
Such images have contributed to a growing global consensus that Russia should be held accountable for war crimes in Ukraine.
“The world’s strongmen are watching like crocodiles … We have to show tyrants around the world that rule of law is stronger than rule of gun,” said David Crane, a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations.
Even as the conflict rages, a vast apparatus is being built to gather and preserve evidence of potential violations of international laws of war that were written after World War II. Less than a month after Vladimir Putin’s order to drop the first bombs on his neighbor, the United States declared that Russian forces were committing war crimes in Ukraine. But it remains far from clear who will be held accountable and how.
Here’s a look at what war crimes are and what options exist for bringing those responsible to justice.
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Ukraine reports 300 dead in airstrike on Mariupol theater
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week on a Mariupol theater that was being used as a shelter, Ukrainian authorities said Friday in what would make it the war's deadliest known attack on civilians yet.
The bloodshed at the theater fueled allegations Moscow is committing war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire.
Meanwhile, in what could signal an important narrowing of Moscow’s war aims, the U.S. said Russian forces appear to have halted, at least for now, their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv, and are concentrating more on gaining control of the Donbas region in the country's southeast — a shift the Kremlin seemed to confirm.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again appealed to Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but pointedly said Ukraine would not agree to give up any of its territory for the sake of peace.
“The territorial integrity of Ukraine should be guaranteed,” he said in a nightly video address to the nation. “That is, the conditions must be fair, for the Ukrainian people will not accept them otherwise.”
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House Republicans, bullish on midterms, plot return to power
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The House majority seemingly within their grasp, Republican lawmakers huddling at a retreat in Florida this week turned to the architect of the “Republican Revolution” nearly three decades ago — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — for ideas on starting their own political revolt come November.
Needing only a handful of seats to recapture the House, Republicans are exceedingly confident of their chances. With incumbent Democrats retiring in droves, and President Joe Biden's poll numbers slumping amid deep voter pessimism about the economy, many in the party — including their leader Kevin McCarthy — are treating the Republican victory as a fait accompli.
They see Gingrich, the man who swept away four decades of Democratic House rule with the “Contract With America” in 1994, as a model. He spoke to House Republicans Wednesday night as they gathered in Jacksonville, Fla., to prepare for the campaigning ahead. His message was simple: offer a contrast to what he called the failing Democratic agenda and then deliver to the American people.
“He saw the chance in Republicans when no one thought we could win,” McCarthy said on Wednesday. “If we’re successful, in which we win 18 seats, that’s the same number of Republicans after the 1994 election.”
He added, “But it’s different than just recruiting candidates and raising money. It’s what you do with it. You make a commitment to the American public.”
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AP Explains: Why the 14th Amendment has surfaced in midterms
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An 1868 amendment to the U.S. Constitution best known for protecting the due process rights of previously enslaved Americans has resurfaced in certain congressional races this year.
Some attorneys and voters believe a rarely cited section of the 14th Amendment dealing with insurrection can disqualify a handful of U.S. House members from seeking reelection for events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
First-term Republican firebrands Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia are among those targeted. Both are strong supporters of former President Donald Trump who have pushed his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
It's a largely untested argument working its way through election agencies in at least three states, with little success so far. But court cases and appeals could address the extent to which state officials can scrutinize the minimum qualifications for candidates for federal office.
WHAT DOES THE 14TH AMENDMENT SAY?
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AP PHOTOS: Day 30: In Ukraine war, subway cars become home
At first glance, the subway car into which a displaced Ukrainian family has moved looks like an apartment, its long seat covered with a light pink throw, a folding chair nearby converted into a small table on which a coffee cup filled with a beverage has been placed.
And the laughing face of a pigtailed little girl peering out a bus window could almost be that of a young child going on an exciting vacation with her family.
The reality behind such images is much different.
The subway car in the besieged northeastern city of Kharkiv is being used as a bomb shelter and is a poor substitute for the home the family had to flee amid bombardment from Russian forces. The laughing child is luckily young enough that she doesn’t know her trip to Romania is actually a forced flight from danger.
In most of Ukraine, the reality of war was impossible to ignore. In one Associated Press photograph taken on the conflict's 30th day, a man runs with bags of items he has hastily recovered from a shop that has erupted in flames after being attacked by Russian troops in Kharkiv.
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Justices decide for themselves when to step aside from cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — Reports that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas implored Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff to act to overturn the 2020 election results have put a spotlight on how justices decide whether to step aside from a case.
Individual justices make their own unreviewable calls on a court that lacks a code of ethics. And the issue is not always clear, particularly when spouses also have prominent careers.
While the Supreme Court did not step into any election cases brought by Trump and other Republicans, Justice Thomas took part in the consideration of whether to hear those cases. He also was the lone vote to keep House lawmakers investigating the Jan 6. Capitol riot from obtaining contested White House documents.
Thomas did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment made through the court’s spokeswoman. Earlier in the day the court announced he had been discharged from the hospital after a stay of nearly a week while he was treated for an infection.
Thomas' wife, Virginia, whom he married in 1987, is a longtime conservative activist who ardently backed Trump's reelection as president in 2020. In the weeks leading up to the election, Thomas used her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden, Trump's opponent.
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Ice shelf collapses in previously stable East Antarctica
An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.
The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.
The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent, making it worrisome.
“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.
The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. That is negligible. It's more about the where it happened.
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Elite Pete! Saint Peter's tops Purdue, makes 15 seed history
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Doug Edert hopped on the press table and punched his fist in the air toward a delirious section of Saint Peter’s fans — aren’t they all? -- as his teammates thumped their chests, waved eight fingers and turned the mayhem into one perfect Peacock party.
Edert's giant leap toward the roaring crowd might have been his only mistake of the night.
“You jumped on a table?” coach Shaheen Holloway asked later, then paused for some serious side-eye for comedic effect.
C'mon, Coach. Let the Peacocks strut their stuff.
The upsets aren't over yet and the tiny commuter college in Jersey City, New Jersey, is still outperforming all March expectations. Next stop: the Elite Eight, a first-time destination for a No. 15 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
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