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A fresh wave of cross-border strikes has ratcheted up tensions in the 28-month-old Ukraine conflict, after a Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Crimea left three people dead and seven injured, just one day after Kyiv launched coordinated strikes on energy and military infrastructure in Saint Petersburg, coinciding with the opening of Russia’s flagship international economic forum.

Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea’s occupied administration, confirmed the casualties in a Thursday Telegram post, noting that emergency response teams had been deployed to the site of the strike on non-residential structures in Simferopol, the region’s administrative capital.

The Saint Petersburg strikes, which hit a local oil terminal and the Kronstadt military base, unfolded Wednesday as 20,000 delegates from more than 130 countries gathered for the start of the three-day Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an event long referred to as “Russia’s Davos.” Thick plumes of black smoke from the burning terminal were clearly visible from the forum’s conference venue as opening sessions got underway. For many attendees, the attack did not come as a shock: 32-year-old Moscow-based businesswoman Valeria, who is attending the forum, told Agence France-Presse that residents across Russia have grown accustomed to persistent attack threats after years of war. “We have been living under such attacks for many years now,” she noted.

Ukrainian officials have framed the coordinated strikes as legitimate retaliation for a recent surge in Russian bombardment across Ukrainian territory. Sergiy Sternenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister, said the attack was intentionally timed to disrupt the high-profile economic gathering, noting that “The Petersburg forum is opening with a nice plume of black smoke in the background after Ukrainian strikes.”

In a press conference alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reaffirmed his country’s right to respond proportionally to Russian attacks, warning that Kyiv would continue to ramp up the intensity of its deep strikes into Russian territory. “It’s just a matter of time before we can scale up the intensity of our responses,” Zelenskyy said.

The latest exchange of fire has already caused casualties across multiple frontline and rear areas. On Wednesday, Moscow-appointed officials reported that a drone strike on a passenger bus in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine killed seven people, with two additional fatalities recorded in the border region of Bryansk and Russian-occupied parts of Kharkiv Oblast. Separate statements from Ukrainian local officials confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed in a wave of Russian retaliatory strikes across Ukraine on the same day.

Top Western officials have warned that Ukraine’s growing success in launching long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory has created a tangible risk of the conflict spilling beyond existing borders and escalating into a wider confrontation. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a U.S. Senate appropriations panel Wednesday that the risk of escalation is now “more real than it was two years ago,” as Kyiv’s long-range strike capabilities have improved dramatically. “Ukraine has become increasingly effective at conducting long-range strikes deep into Russia,” Rubio said. “It’s one of the things that reminds us of why it’s important to try to bring this war to an end, if we can, because the risk of escalation is real.”

Speaking earlier to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rubio noted that little progress has been made toward peace negotiations since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. “To this point, neither side has been willing to make concessions, particularly on the Russian side, necessary in order to bring peace about,” he said, adding that the U.S. has invested significant diplomatic time and resources into advancing peace talks over the past year.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas said the recent Ukrainian strikes have sowed chaos within the Kremlin. She told AFP that increased Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure reflect panic on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is facing mounting losses on the battlefield. “It clearly shows also panic on the Russian side — why they are increasing the terrorist attacks that they are doing in Ukraine is because they don’t know what to do with these things,” Kallas said. “Putin is losing money, men, and momentum, and that’s why he’s increasing attacks on civilians.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has already promised a coordinated, systemic Russian response to the strikes on Saint Petersburg, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to deliver his keynote address to the SPIEF forum on Friday, where the conflict and its economic implications are expected to top the agenda.

Decades after they were sent from South Korea to Denmark for international adoption, eight people born in South Korea are taking legal action against the Danish state, demanding officials acknowledge their role in facilitating unlawful adoptions and hiding the truth of the adoptees’ biological origins.

One of the plaintiffs, Sofie Randel, was just three years old when she arrived in Denmark alongside her younger brother in 1977, a time when South Korea was ruled by an authoritarian government. A talkative, energetic young girl, Randel spoke fluent Korean upon her arrival, and her adoptive father recorded her voice on a cassette tape that remained stored and forgotten for more than 40 years. It was only in 2023 that Randel shared the long-forgotten recording with a journalist who had been documenting her search for her biological roots.

Through piecing together the childhood memories Randel shared on the tape and conducting cross-border research in South Korea, the pair uncovered a reality that directly contradicted the story written on Randel’s official Danish adoption paperwork. For decades, Randel believed she and her brother had been abandoned on a public street, left with only their names and ages pinned to their clothing. The truth, however, was far different: their biological mother had voluntarily placed them in a South Korean orphanage only temporarily, while her family worked to overcome severe financial hardship.

Instead of holding the children until their family could reclaim them, the siblings were sent to Denmark for adoption as part of a decades-long, state-sanctioned program that sent tens of thousands of South Korean children to adoptive families across the globe. What is more, Randel and her brother discovered that three of their older biological siblings had spent 45 years searching for them, never giving up hope of a reunion. The siblings finally met for the first time in South Korea in 2023, a moment Randel called life-changing. ‘They were looking for us for 45 years,’ 52-year-old Randel told Agence France-Presse, wiping away tears. ‘We had no idea anyone was even searching for us.’ Randel argues that Danish authorities intentionally perpetuated the false abandoned story to cover up the unlawful origins of her adoption.

Official data from a South Korean government inquiry confirms that between 1955 and 1999, more than 140,000 South Korean children were sent abroad for international adoption. In October 2025, the South Korean government issued its first formal public apology for these state-backed unethical practices, acknowledging that widespread, unjust human rights violations had taken place throughout the program.

Between 1970 and 1989 alone, 7,220 South Korean children were adopted by Danish families. Almost every single one was told they were homeless street orphans, but subsequent investigations have proven this narrative was almost always false. Multiple inquiries have confirmed that the vast majority of children placed in South Korean orphanages during this period were sent for international adoption without the full informed consent of their biological families. A 2024 report from Denmark’s own National Social Appeals Board confirmed that Danish state-run adoption agencies were aware that their South Korean counterparts regularly altered children’s official identities and backgrounds to facilitate adoptions. Danish media reports have also revealed that these Danish agencies paid roughly 54 million kroner, equal to around $8.4 million today, to speed up and facilitate these cross-border adoptions.

Peter Moller, who leads an advocacy organization for South Korean adoptees in Denmark that is not involved in the current lawsuit, says he has been shocked by the contrast between the two countries’ responses to the scandal. ‘As a Dane, I grew up believing that Denmark always stood for what is right, and that South Korea, as a former dictatorship, was the one responsible for the wrongdoing,’ Moller explained. ‘But Korea had the courage to face what it did straight on, while Denmark prefers to sweep everything under the rug.’

Sidse Koch Jorgensen, a 53-year-old physiotherapist and one of the eight plaintiffs, says she is furious at the continued lack of accountability from Danish officials. ‘It is a fundamental human right to know your own identity, and to have the chance to connect with your biological family,’ Jorgensen said. For years, the false information on her adoption papers blocked her from tracking down her family, but her decades-long search, which began with her first trip to South Korea in 2013, finally neared a breakthrough when she got an unexpected email just one month before her trip: her biological father had been found. ‘It was a total shock,’ she recalled. When she met her father during her trip, she learned the real story of her separation from her family: when her father was out of the country, her mother had sent her to a temporary care camp without his knowledge or consent, but rather than holding her there, camp officials sent her directly to Denmark for adoption.

Jorgensen says she wants the Danish government to take ownership for its decades of neglect. ‘Danish authorities were supposed to verify every detail of these adoptions, to investigate any red flags, and they failed completely,’ she said. Each of the eight plaintiffs is seeking 250,000 kroner ($38,800) in personal damages from the Danish state. When contacted by AFP for comment on the lawsuit, Denmark’s Ministry of Social Affairs declined to make any public statement. Denmark halted all new international adoptions in 2024 after widespread evidence of systemic abuse and unethical practices in cross-border adoption programs came to light.