World

ROME — Italian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to back Prime Minister Mario Draghi's policy on Ukraine on Wednesday, the day after the largest partner in his coalition government imploded over the issue.

Draghi has taken a firm line on Russia's invasion, sending weapons to Kyiv, backing sanctions on Moscow despite Italy's reliance on Russian gas and supporting Ukraine's hopes of joining the European Union.

But there have been rumblings of unease within his coalition government, which burst into the open on Tuesday with a split in parliament's biggest party, the Five Star Movement.

Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio announced he was leaving the party, accusing it of showing "ambiguity" over Ukraine at a time when Western unity was crucial.

An estimated 60 lawmakers are following him into the grouping, dubbed "Together for the Future" — just over a quarter of the Five Star's parliamentary members.

The move risks upsetting the fragile balance of power in Draghi's coalition government, a year before general elections are due and at a difficult time for Italians battling skyrocketing inflation.

But a vote Wednesday suggests parliament still backs the premier, with the lower Chamber of Deputies agreeing by 410 to 29 a resolution supporting the Ukraine policy, albeit with more input from lawmakers.

The senate similarly approved it on Tuesday.

"Unity is essential in these moments because the decisions that must be taken are very difficult," Draghi said before Wednesday's result, which came one day before an EU summit in Brussels begins.

In an uncharacteristically combative address to deputies, the former head of the European Central Bank accused those who disagreed with his policy of effectively calling on Kyiv to surrender.

"There is a fundamental difference between two points of view. One is mine — Ukraine must defend itself, and sanctions and the sending of weapons serve this goal," Draghi said to applause.

"The other point of view is different. Ukraine must not defend itself, we shouldn't do sanctions, we shouldn't send armaments, Russia is too strong, why should we take her on, let Ukraine submit."

UNITED NATIONS, United States — An estimated 2,000 homes have been destroyed by the deadly earthquake in Afghanistan, and a lack of machinery is hampering a rush to find survivors, a UN envoy said on  Wednesday.

The earthquake struck a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight killing at least 1,000 people and injuring hundreds more, with the toll expected to rise.

"We believe that nearly 2,000 homes are destroyed," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov told reporters.

Briefing journalists at the UN's headquarters in New York via video-link from Kabul, Alakbarov said the number of people displaced would be much higher.

"The average size of an Afghan family is at least seven, eight people," he added, noting that sometimes several families live in one house.

The 5.9-magnitude quake struck hardest in the rugged east, where people already lead difficult lives in a country in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

Alakbarov said Afghanistan's "de-facto authorities" had deployed more than 50 ambulances and four or five helicopters to badly hit Paktika province, as well as providing unspecified cash assistance to families of the deceased.

But he suggested a lack of diggers was impacting relief efforts.

"As the UN, our teams do not have specific equipment to take people from under the rubble. This has to rely mostly on the efforts of the de facto authorities, which also have certain limitations in that respect," he said.

Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan's emergency response teams were stretched to deal with the natural disasters that frequently struck the country. But with only a handful of airworthy planes and helicopters left since the hardline Islamists returned to power, any immediate response to the latest catastrophe is further limited.

KYIV — "Massive" Russian bombardment of Ukraine's battleground eastern Lugansk region and key city Severodonetsk has been "hell" for soldiers there, Kyiv said, while insisting that defenders would hold "as long as necessary".

Moscow's troops have been pummelling eastern Ukraine for weeks and are slowly advancing, despite fierce resistance from the outgunned Ukrainian military.

With President Vladimir Putin's forces tightening their grip on the strategically important city of Severodonetsk in the Donbas, its twin city of Lysychansk is now coming under heavier bombardment.

"The Russian army is... just destroying everything" in Lysychansk, Sergiy Gaiday, governor of the Lugansk region, which includes both cities, wrote on Telegram.

"It's just hell out there," after four months of shelling in Severodonetsk, across the Donets River, he wrote later.

"Our boys are holding their positions and will continue to hold on as long as necessary," he added.

Pro-Russian separatists claimed they were close to surrounding both Lysychansk and Severodonetsk.

"Over the past several days enormous work has been accomplished," Andrei Marochko, an officer in the separatist army of Lugansk, told Russian state TV.

'Outrageous lack of care' 

Russian forces have been occupying villages in the area. Taking control of the two cities would give Moscow control of the whole of Lugansk, allowing them to press further into the Donbas.

After being pushed back from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine following their February invasion, Moscow is seeking to seize a vast eastern swathe of the country.

In a briefing Wednesday, the Russian defence ministry claimed responsibility for a missile strike it said killed a number of Ukrainian troops in southern Mykolaiv.

City Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych told Ukrainian television that the strike hit two firms and a school as well as starting a blaze that authorities could not put out.

In the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, women were training to use Kalashnikov assault rifles in urban combat as Russian forces edged nearer.

"Of course, when you can do something, it's not so scary to take a machine gun in your hands," said Ulyana Kiyashko, 29, after moving through an improvised combat zone in a basement.

In his daily address Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian army of “brutal and cynical” shelling in the eastern Kharkiv region, where the governor said 15 had been killed on Tuesday.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had gathered accounts of an “outrageous lack of care to distinguish and protect civilians”.

Most patients it had evacuated by train blamed Russian or Russian-backed forces for a spectrum of gruesome injuries, it added.

‘Simply destroys’ 

On the Russian side, officials said on Wednesday two drones had hit an oil refinery in the Ukraine-bordering Rostov region, causing an explosion and a fire but no casualties.

Away from the battlefield, Moscow summoned Brussels’ ambassador in a dispute with EU member Lithuania over the country’s restrictions on rail traffic to the Russian outpost of Kaliningrad.

The territory is around 1,600 kilometres from Moscow, bordering Lithuania and Poland.

By blocking goods arriving from Russia, Lithuania says it is simply adhering to European Union-wide sanctions on Moscow.

The United States made clear its commitment to Lithuania as an ally in NATO, which considers an attack against one member an attack on all.

And Germany urged Russia not to “violate international law” by retaliating against Lithuania.

Also on Wednesday, a Turkish cargo ship left the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol on Ukraine’s Sea of Azov coast.

Although Moscow and Ankara have negotiated for weeks over getting millions of tonnes of desperately needed grain out of the warzone to worse-off countries in Africa and the Middle East, it was not immediately clear whether the Azov Concord was carrying wheat.

Turkey’s defence ministry said four-way talks would be held “in the coming weeks” between Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the UN, with media reporting the meeting could happen next week.

‘Marshall Plan’ 

With US-Russia tensions soaring, the State Department on Tuesday confirmed a second American, 52-year-old Stephen Zabielski, was killed fighting for Ukraine.

A White House spokesman, John Kirby, voiced alarm at Russian statements that it would not apply the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of prisoners to two other Americans captured last week, calling suggestions of a death sentence “appalling”.

Reporters Without Borders said in an investigation published on Wednesday that a Ukrainian photojournalist, Maks Levin, had been killed and possibly tortured by Russian troops after his capture on March 13.

In Brussels, ministers unanimously agreed on Tuesday to grant Ukraine and neighbour Moldova candidate status for membership in the European Union.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament in Berlin on Wednesday that Ukraine “needs a Marshall Plan for its reconstruction”, a reference to the post-World War II aid from Washington that helped a devastated Europe get back on its feet.

Scholz added that Ukraine and Russia were “still far from negotiations... because Putin still believes in the possibility of a dictated peace”, urging Kyiv’s Western allies to keep up their military and financial support.

Moscow meanwhile complained that its delegates to an Organsation for Security and Cooperation in Europe assembly in Britain next month had been refused UK visas.

The Kremlin was Wednesday turning to other members of the so-called “BRICS” grouping that also includes Brazil, India, China and South Africa.]

Russia is “actively redirecting its trade flows and external economic contacts towards reliable international partners, above all the BRICS countries”, Putin told a business forum by video link ahead of a virtual leaders’ summit on Thursday.

QUITO — An Indigenous protester died on Tuesday in clashes with law enforcement during a ninth day of demonstrations against the Ecuadorian government that the military has described as a “grave threat”.

An estimated 10,000 Indigenous people, many of whom traveled to Quito on foot or on the backs of trucks, took to the streets of the capital wielding sticks, fireworks and shields made from road signs, angry at fuel prices and President Guillermo Lasso’s conservative government.

The biggest clashes were concentrated in the north of the capital Quito, a city of more than two million, where officers, including some on motorcycles and horseback, attempted to disperse the crowds using anti-riot vehicles equipped with tear gas and water cannons.

The city’s cultural centre, a building surrounded by mirrors that has been a traditional meeting point for Indigenous people, was taken over by law enforcement on Sunday as they tried to control the crowds.

“Today’s objective is to retake the Casa de la Cultura,” protester Wilson Mazabanda told AFP before police used pepper spray to break up the group.

Several hours south of Quito, in the Amazon town of Puyo, a member of the Quichua Indigenous group was killed while participating in a roadblock when he was “hit in the face, apparently with a tear gas bomb” during a confrontation with law enforcement, lawyer Lina Maria Espinosa of the Alliance for Human Rights organisation told AFP.

Police, however, said “it was presumed that the person died as a result of handling an explosive device.”

His death followed that of a young man who earlier this week fell into a ravine in a town on the outskirts of Quito where protests were taking place. The prosecutor’s office has opened a homicide investigation into the incident, which police have declared an accident.

Amid the violence, President Lasso agreed to participate “for the good of the country” in a “frank and respectful dialogue process” with the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), which called the protests.

Its leader, Leonidas Iza, however, conditioned any talks on a repeal of the state of emergency that had been called in six of Ecuador’s 24 provinces, allowing the military to mobilise.

In a statement broadcast on social media, the Indigenous leader said the government’s response to the protests “has only managed to exacerbate the spirit of the population and generate serious escalations of conflict”.

The Alliance for Human Rights reported that at least 90 people have been injured and 87 detained since the start of the protests on June 13.

The police, for their part, have reported 101 uniformed personnel including soldiers injured, another 27 held by protesters and 80 protesters arrested.

Earlier in the day, Defence Minister Luis Lara said Ecuador’s democracy “faces a grave threat from... people who are preventing the free movement of the majority of Ecuadorans” with widespread blockades.

Flanked by the heads of the army, navy and air force, Lara warned the military “will not allow attempts to break the constitutional order or any action against democracy and the laws of the republic”.

Quito Mayor Santiago Guarderas said on Twitter the demonstrations “continue to escalate” and that the capital’s markets were running out of supplies.

‘Tired of this government’ 

Conaie — credited with helping topple three presidents between 1997 and 2005 — called for the demonstrations as Ecuadorans increasingly struggle to make ends meet.

Indigenous people comprise more than a million of Ecuador’s 17.7 million inhabitants and wield much political clout, but are disproportionately affected by rising inflation, unemployment and poverty exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are already tired of this government,” Mazabanda, a university student, said of ex-banker Lasso’s one-year-old term.

Tito Zamora, a small-scale farmer, added that costs have risen sharply, “but not the price we get for our products”.

Fuel prices have risen steeply since 2020, almost doubling for diesel from $1 to $1.90 per gallon and rising from $1.75 to $2.55 for gasoline.

Conaie is demanding a price cut to $1.5 a gallon for diesel and $2.1 for gasoline.

It also wants jobs and food price controls.

The movement has been joined by students, workers and other Ecuadorans feeling the economic pinch.

Ecuador is losing about $50 million a day as a result of the protests, without counting oil production — the country’s main export product.

The CEO of state-owned Petroecuador, Italo Cedeno, said on Tuesday output had dropped by about 100,000 barrels a day during the protests, in part because demonstrators have targeted both oil wells and power plants.

In 2019, Conaie-led protests left 11 people dead and more than 1,000 injured but forced then-president Lenin Moreno to abandon plans to eliminate fuel subsidies.

KYIV — Moscow on Tuesday warned Lithuania of "serious" consequences over its restriction of rail traffic to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, as Kremlin forces made gains in Ukraine's strategic Donbas region.

The row over Lithuania, the arrival of sophisticated German weaponry in Ukraine's arsenal, and an imminent decision on Kyiv's candidacy to join the EU threaten to further ratchet up tensions between the West and Moscow.

Kremlin troops were meanwhile gaining ground in the Donbas, causing "catastrophic destruction" in Lysychansk, an industrial city at the forefront of recent clashes, the region's governor said. Ukraine confirmed Russia had taken the frontline village of Toshkivka.

Governor Sergiy Gaiday said "every town and village" in Ukrainian hands in the Lugansk region was "under almost non-stop fire".

Since being repelled from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine following its invasion in February, Moscow has been focusing its offensive on the Donbas region.

In the eastern city of Sloviansk, which could become a flashpoint as Russian troops advance from the north, local people were preparing to withstand attacks and the authorities said the community would defend itself.

"We believe they'll beat the Russian scum," resident Valentina, 63, said of local Ukrainian forces.

'Serious' consequences 

Russia's war of words with EU member Lithuania escalated on Tuesday, with Moscow vowing "serious" consequences over Vilnius' restrictions on rail traffic to the exclave of Kaliningrad that borders Lithuania and Poland.

Lithuania says it is simply adhering to EU-wide sanctions on Moscow but Russia countered, accusing Brussels of "escalation".

Moscow summoned the EU's ambassador to Russia. Its foreign ministry said Lithuania's actions "violate the relevant legal and political obligations of the European Union".

"Russia will certainly respond to such hostile actions," security council chief Nikolai Patrushev said at a regional security meeting in Kaliningrad.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov tweeted that powerful German-made Panzerhaubitze 2000 howizter artillery pieces had reached his country’s forces.

Russia said on Tuesday it had repelled a Ukrainian attempt to re-take the symbolic Snake Island, a small territory in the Black Sea captured by Russian forces on the first day of the invasion.

‘Significant losses’ 

In addition to Toshkivka, Ukraine said it had lost control of the eastern village of Metyolkine, a settlement adjacent to Severodonetsk, which has been a focus of fighting for weeks and is now largely under Russian control.

A chemical plant in Severodonetsk where hundreds of civilians are said to be sheltering was being shelled constantly, Ukraine warned.

But Defence Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told Ukrainian television that Russian forces had suffered “significant losses in the area of Severodonetsk”.

Ukraine on Tuesday said it struck a Black Sea oil drilling platform off the Crimea Peninsula because Russia was using it as a military installation.

The rig had Russian garrisons and equipment for air defence, radar warfare and reconnaissance, Sergiy Bratchuk of Odessa’s regional military administration told an online briefing.

Crimea’s Moscow-backed leader Sergey Aksyonov had said three people were injured and seven more were missing after the first reported strike against offshore energy infrastructure in the Russian-annexed peninsula since the war began.

Russian shelling killed 15 people including an eight-year-old in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday, its governor said.

On the maritime front, Russia’s navy is blockading ports, which Ukraine says is preventing millions of tonnes of grain from being shipped to world markets, contributing to soaring food prices.

Prior to the war, Ukraine was a major exporter of wheat, corn and sunflower oil.

With European officials due to gather this week at a summit expected to approve Ukraine’s candidacy to join the EU, Brussels foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called the Russians’ port blockade “a real war crime”.

Moscow denies responsibility for the disruption to deliveries and, following Borrell’s comments, blamed the West’s “destructive” position for surging grain prices.

Turkish media reported that Russian, Ukrainian and UN officials would meet in Istanbul next week to try to unblock Black Sea grain exports.

$100 million medal 

In New York, Dmitry Muratov, the Russian editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, auctioned off his Nobel Peace Prize gold medal for $103.5 million to benefit children displaced by the war.

It was sold to an unidentified phone bidder.

Muratov won the prize in 2021 alongside journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines.

With US-Russia tensions soaring, the US State Department on Tuesday confirmed a second American, 52-year-old Stephen Zabielski, was killed fighting for Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier told NBC News that two Americans captured in Ukraine while fighting with Kyiv’s military were “endangering” Russian soldiers and should be “held accountable for those crimes”.

KYIV — Moscow's blockade of Ukrainian grain exports and a rail transit row sparked fresh tensions between Russia and the European Union on Monday, as Kyiv warned that Russian troops were intensifying their battle for control of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of holding Africa "hostage" by blocking wheat deliveries, which has spurred food shortages and fears of famines in vulnerable areas.

Nearly four months after Russia launched its bloody invasion, Zelensky said Ukraine was headed into a "fateful" week with EU leaders set to discuss Kyiv's bid to become a candidate for bloc membership on Thursday and Friday.

Zelensky warned to expect heavier fighting in the days to come in strategic areas in eastern Ukraine already under relentless Russian bombardment.

Ukraine said Russian troops appeared to be making small gains, including capturing a village near the industrial city of Severodonetsk, a focus of recent fighting.

The fallout from the war continued to reverberate beyond Ukraine's borders, with Russia threatening EU member Lithuania over its "openly hostile" restrictions on the rail transit of goods to Moscow's exclave of Kaliningrad.

The Kremlin called the situation "more than serious" and Russia's foreign ministry said if the cargo transit between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia "is not restored in full, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests".

Lithuania said the ban was in line with European sanctions over Moscow's aggression, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow had no right to threaten the Baltic nation.

The West’s deteriorating relationship with Moscow was highlighted in harsh comments from the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell who called Russia’s blockade of vitally needed grain exports from Ukraine “a real war crime”.

“One cannot imagine that millions of tonnes of wheat remain blocked in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering hunger,” Borrell said as EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg.

Moscow denies responsibility for the disruption in deliveries, and blames Western sanctions for the logistical upheaval that has pushed up cereal prices and fanned fears of famines in vulnerable regions.

Zelensky said Ukraine was engaged in “complex multilevel negotiations” to end Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports.

“But there is no progress yet... That is why the global food crisis will continue as long as this colonial war continues,” he said in a video address to the African Union.

Germany said it will host a meeting on Friday on the crisis, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken among those attending.

Oil site strike 

On the ground, Ukraine’s presidency said the intensity of shelling in the Donetsk area of the eastern Donbas region was “growing along the entire frontline”, leaving at least one person dead over the last 24 hours and injuring seven others, including a child.

Ukraine announced it had lost control of the village of Metyolkine, adjacent to Severodonetsk.

In Severodonetsk, “Russians control most of the residential areas”, the head of the city administration Oleksandr Stryuk told Ukrainian television on  Monday.

A chemical plant in Severodonetsk where hundreds of civilians are said to be sheltering was being shelled “constantly”, Ukraine said.

Kyiv also reported heavier Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region in the northeast.

The Russians for their part said Ukrainian forces had attacked oil drilling platforms in the Black Sea, off the coast of the Crimea Peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.

“This morning the enemy attacked the drilling platforms of Chernomorneftegaz,” Crimea leader Sergey Aksyonov said on Telegram, referring to the Crimea-based oil and gas company.

According to him, five people had been saved, three of them injured, while an air and sea search continued for others.

It was the first reported strike against offshore energy infrastructure in Crimea since Russia launched its invasion.

NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg on Sunday warned that the war could grind on “for years” and urged Western countries to be ready to offer long-term military, political and economic aid.

Energy crisis 

The Ukraine war is fuelling not only a global food crisis but an energy crisis too.

Hit by punishing sanctions, Moscow has turned up the pressure on European economies by sharply reducing gas supplies, which has in turn sent energy prices soaring.

Germany has announced emergency measures including increased use of coal to offset a drop in the supply of Russian gas in recent days, but Berlin insisted on Monday it still aimed to close its coal power plants by 2030.

China’s imports of oil from Russia meanwhile jumped by 55 per cent year on year in May, customs data showed Monday, helping to make up for losses from Western sanctions as Beijing refuses to publicly condemn Moscow’s war.

Natalia Khalaimova, 54, a resident in Lysychansk, across the river from Severodonetsk, said she wanted Russia and Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war.

“Every war in any country ends — but the sooner, the better,” she told AFP. “So many civilians are killed. Most of them were not involved in the war at all.”

SYDNEY — Australia’s prime minister said on Monday he will engage “diplomatically” over the US prosecution of Julian Assange, but he is standing by earlier remarks questioning the purpose of further legal action.

As domestic pressure mounted on him to intervene in the WikiLeaks founder’s case, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he is sticking to comments he made while in opposition last year that “enough is enough”.

“I do not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange,” Albanese said at the time.

But the Australian leader took a swipe at “people who think that if you put things in capital letters on Twitter and put an exclamation mark, then that somehow makes it more important”.

Instead, he said: “I intend to lead a government that engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners.”

Assange’s wife Stella Assange told ABC radio on Monday that she understood the Albanese government was raising her husband’s case with US President Joe Biden’s administration.

“That is extremely welcome news,” she said, adding that she had not been able to see Assange since a British court last week cleared the path for his extradition to the United States.

“When I heard the news I just wanted to give him a hug,” she said.

Assange’s long-running legal saga began in 2010 after WikiLeaks published more than 500,000 classified US documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He has been held on remand at a top-security jail in southeast London since 2019 for jumping bail in a previous case accusing him of sexual assault in Sweden.

That case was dropped but he was not released on grounds he was a flight risk in the US extradition case.

As Assange’s potential US extradition looms, several high profile Australians, including former foreign minister Bob Carr, have called on Albanese to demand the US drop the prosecution.

“If Albanese asks, my guess is America will agree,” Carr wrote on Monday in an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Carr argued Assange’s prosecution stood in sharp contrast to the US pardoning former military intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, who had leaked the secret files to WikiLeaks.

“Our new prime minister can say: ‘We’re not fans of the guy either, Mr President, but it’s gone on long enough. We’re good allies. Let this one drop’.”

While campaigning for May elections that swept his Labor Party to power, Albanese said that Assange had “paid a big price for the publication of that information already”.

Carr was serving as foreign minister in 2012 when Assange, who was facing sexual assault allegations, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

For much of the past decade, Australia’s previous conservative government did not publicly advocate for Assange’s release.