分类： world

Iran closes Hormuz Strait again over US blockade with ships mid-transit

The volatile standoff over one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints shifted dramatically Saturday, as Iran’s military command announced it had reclosed the Strait of Hormuz just hours after initially reopening it, with more than a dozen commercial vessels mid-transit through the strategic waterway. This rapid reversal casts fresh uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent optimistic claims that a final peace deal to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is “very close.”

Tehran first declared the 21-mile strait, which normally carries roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade, open for transit on Friday, after a ceasefire agreement was reached to pause Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The announcement triggered immediate relief in global commodity markets, sending oil prices tumbling. But the reprieve was short-lived: President Trump insisted that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a comprehensive peace deal is finalized, a move that prompted Tehran to renew its threat to shutter the waterway.

By late Saturday morning, Iranian state television, citing a statement from the country’s central military command, confirmed the strait had returned to its restricted status, with full strict management and control held by Iranian armed forces. The decision was explicitly framed as a direct response to the continued American blockade. At the time of the announcement, maritime tracking data showed multiple commercial vessels rushing through the narrow passage, hugging Iranian territorial waters as instructed by Tehran. Several of the ships identified themselves as Indian or Chinese, a move widely interpreted as a public signal of their neutrality in the conflict.

As of 10:30 GMT Saturday, at least eight oil and gas tankers had successfully completed transit through the strait, but an equal number of vessels that had begun departing the Persian Gulf had already turned back to safer ports.

The current two-week ceasefire in the U.S.-Israeli war, which was launched by the American-Israeli alliance on February 28, is set to expire in just four days. Despite the growing tensions over the strait, Trump has remained outwardly confident that a final agreement can be finalized quickly. He took to social media Friday to declare the day “GREAT AND BRILLIANT,” and repeatedly praised Pakistan, the lead mediator in the talks, for its diplomatic work.

Pakistan’s top military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, wrapped up a three-day diplomatic visit to Tehran Saturday focused on advancing peace negotiations, where he held meetings with Iran’s highest-ranking leadership. While Munir conducted talks in Iran, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to shore up regional support for the peace process. Egypt, another key diplomatic player in the negotiations, also expressed cautious optimism Saturday: Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo and Islamabad expected to secure a final agreement “in the coming days.”

Pakistan has emerged as the primary mediator throughout the conflict, hosting a marathon round of direct peace talks last weekend that was attended by U.S. Vice President JD Vance. A second round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in the Pakistani capital next week, with envoys from all sides aiming to end the conflict that began with a massive surprise attack by U.S. and Israeli forces. That pre-emptive strike, launched even as diplomatic talks were ongoing, killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior Iranian government and military officials. The war quickly spread across the Middle East: Iran retaliated by targeting U.S. military and commercial interests across the Gulf, while Hezbollah entered the conflict by launching rocket attacks on northern Israel, dragging Lebanon into full-scale hostilities.

In a sign that the broader ceasefire framework remains largely intact, Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority announced Saturday that the country’s airspace has been reopened, allowing international commercial flights to transit through eastern Iranian airspace once again.

Even with ongoing diplomatic progress, two major sticking points remain unresolved in the talks: the future of Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium, and the long-term status of the Strait of Hormuz. Both issues remain up in the air, despite conflicting claims from the two sides.

Speaking to AFP by phone Friday, Trump claimed “we’re very close to having a deal,” and insisted there were “no sticking points at all” left in negotiations with Tehran. Later that same day, during a campaign event in Arizona, the president claimed Iran had already agreed to hand over its roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity — a level just short of what is required to build a nuclear weapon. “We’re going to get it by going in with Iran, with lots of excavators,” he told attendees.

But Iran flatly contradicted Trump’s claims just hours before the president’s Arizona remarks. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told state television that the country’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran says was buried deep underground by U.S. bombing during the 12-day June 2025 war, will remain in Iran. “Iran’s enriched uranium is not going to be transferred anywhere,” Baqaei said, adding that “Transfer of Iran’s enriched uranium to the U.S. has never been raised in negotiations.”

For ordinary Iranians, the conflict continues to disrupt daily life: internet monitor Netblocks confirmed Saturday that the nationwide internet blackout imposed at the start of the war has now entered its 50th day, leaving most Iranians cut off from the global digital network.

18 4 月, 2026
Pope wraps up Cameroon visit with Mass as he looks ahead to Angola

As the third stop of his ambitious four-nation tour of Africa gets underway, Pope Leo XIV has wrapped up his visit to Cameroon, leaving behind a wave of joyful devotion and a clear call for collective action to lift marginalized communities across the continent. On Saturday, the pontiff celebrated an open-air Mass at Yaounde’s international airport, drawing tens of thousands of worshippers — including 93-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest sitting head of state. Accounts from the scene describe a vibrant, crowded gathering, where even worshippers with limited mobility were carried to the service in wheelbarrows by loving family members, a testament to the deep impact of the pontiff’s visit on the majority-Christian nation.

Cameroon, a former French colony where Catholics make up roughly one-third of the population, is just the second stop on Leo’s African journey. Throughout his time in the country, the pope centered his message on two core themes: encouraging disillusioned young people to hold onto hope for the future, and calling out wealthy and powerful elites for exploiting the continent’s land and people for private gain. In his final homily in Yaounde, delivered in French, Leo framed respect for human dignity as the non-negotiable foundation of a functional society.

“For this reason, every community has the obligation to create and sustain structures of solidarity and mutual aid in which, when faced with crises — be they social, political, medical or economic — everyone can give and receive assistance according to their own capacity and needs,” he told the gathered crowd. He doubled down on earlier criticisms of systemic graft, denouncing the “chains of corruption” that block inclusive development across the continent, and condemning the “handful of tyrants” who fuel conflict and exploitation that leaves millions of Africans trapped in poverty.

After closing the Cameroon leg of his tour, the pontiff departed Saturday for Luanda, the capital of southwestern Angola, where his visit will confront the nation’s layered, often painful history on multiple fronts. Angola won its independence from Portugal in 1975, but almost immediately descended into a 27-year civil war that only ended in 2002. Fought as a Cold War proxy conflict — with the U.S. and apartheid South Africa backing one faction, and the Soviet Union and Cuba supporting the other — the war claimed an estimated 500,000 lives and left deep physical and social scars that persist today.

Today, Angola is one of Africa’s most resource-rich nations: it ranks as the continent’s fourth-largest oil producer, among the top 20 global oil producers, the world’s third-biggest diamond exporter, and holds substantial reserves of gold and other in-demand critical minerals. Yet despite this abundant natural wealth, 2023 World Bank data shows more than 30% of Angola’s 38 million people survive on less than $2.15 per day. Much of this inequality is tied to decades of systemic corruption: former long-time president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the nation for 38 years until 2017, was accused of siphoning an estimated $24 billion in public funds — most from oil revenues — to his family and inner circle, while ordinary Angolans faced widespread poverty. Current President Joao Lourenco, who took power after dos Santos stepped down, has made anti-corruption campaigns and recovery of stolen public funds a central policy pledge, but critics argue his actions have largely targeted political opponents to consolidate power, leaving deep-rooted systemic graft unaddressed.

For many ordinary Angolans, the pope’s visit carries expectations of messages that speak directly to the nation’s ongoing struggles. “I would like to hear a message of peace, a message of reconciliation,” Luanda resident Sergio Jose told reporters. “I would also like to hear good political messages and I would also like to hear that the pope would also talk about the upcoming elections in Angola.”

Observers expect the pontiff to echo the themes of anti-corruption and equitable development he laid out in Cameroon during his time in Angola. The most anticipated event of his visit will be a trip Sunday to Muxima, a coastal town south of Luanda that is home to one of Angola’s most important Catholic shrines, the Church of Our Lady of Muxima. Built by Portuguese colonizers in the late 16th century as part of a fortress complex, the site was a central hub of the transatlantic slave trade, a tangible reminder of how the spread of Catholicism was intertwined with the colonization and exploitation of the African continent. As a former Portuguese colony, Angola was the epicenter of the transatlantic slave trade: more than 5 million enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic from Angolan ports, more than from any other region on the continent.

The visit to Muxima carries unique personal meaning for Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pope in history. Genealogical research has confirmed the pontiff has both Black and white ancestors, including people who were held as enslaved people and people who owned enslaved people. He will pray the Rosary at the shrine, which has been a popular pilgrimage site since reports of an apparition of the Virgin Mary there in 1833.

This report includes contributions from Imray, reporting from Cape Town, South Africa. The Associated Press’ religion coverage receives support through a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains sole responsibility for all content.

18 4 月, 2026
DR Congo accepts first set of deportees from the US

In a major milestone for the Donald Trump administration’s hard-line campaign against unauthorized mass migration, the first group of 15 South American migrants expelled from the United States has touched down in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, marking the start of a controversial third-country deportation agreement between the two nations.

The plane carrying the deportees landed at Kinshasa’s N’djili International Airport in the early hours of Friday. While the Congolese government released only limited details about the group in its official statement, an anonymous airport source speaking to the BBC confirmed most of the 15 are Colombian and Peruvian citizens — making them third-country nationals, meaning they hold no citizenship in either the United States or DR Congo.

Kinshasa has moved quickly to clarify the terms of the arrangement, emphasizing that the migrants’ stay in the central African nation is strictly temporary. The Congolese government also explicitly stated Washington is covering all costs related to the migrants’ reception, support, and care during their stay, and that the deal does not represent a permanent relocation scheme or an outsourcing of U.S. migration policy. When the agreement first came to light earlier this month, Congolese officials framed the decision to accept the deportees as aligned with the country’s commitments to human dignity, migrant rights protection, and international solidarity. Migrants are being admitted under short-stay permits that comply with DR Congo’s existing foreign entry and residence laws, the government added.

This deportation operation is part of a broader, long-running push by the Trump administration to expand third-country deportations as a core tool of its immigration crackdown. Prior to this arrangement with DR Congo, the U.S. has already sent expelled migrants to other African nations including Ghana, South Sudan, and Eswatini. Since Trump took office in January 2025, dozens of migrants have been relocated to third countries under this policy. A minority report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has raised new questions about the cost of the program, estimating that the Trump administration has likely spent more than $40 million (£30 million) on third-country deportations as of January 2026. The report notes the full total expenditure remains unknown, but confirms the U.S. has disbursed more than $32 million in direct funding to five partner countries: Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini, and Palau.

When approached for comment, the U.S. State Department declined to discuss diplomatic communications with foreign governments, but reaffirmed the administration’s unwavering commitment to ending illegal mass migration and strengthening U.S. border security.

Beyond the migration deal, the U.S. maintains multiple overlapping policy priorities with DR Congo. Washington is currently negotiating a critical minerals agreement with Kinshasa that would grant American companies greater access to DR Congo’s extensive reserves of strategically important metals, including cobalt, tantalum, lithium, and copper — all key inputs for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technology. The Trump administration also previously brokered a landmark peace deal between DR Congo and neighboring Rwanda to resolve years of conflict in eastern DR Congo, though full implementation of the agreement has remained an ongoing challenge.

Most recently, following a new round of peace talks in Switzerland mediated by the U.S. and Qatar, both the Congolese government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group have announced key confidence-building steps ahead of a permanent ceasefire. The two sides committed to allowing unimpeded access for humanitarian aid, protecting civilian populations and critical infrastructure, and launching formal monitoring of a permanent ceasefire. Negotiating delegates from both sides expressed cautious encouragement over the progress made toward ending the years-long conflict. Rwanda has consistently denied international evidence of its support for M23, claiming any military presence near the border is a defensive measure to counter threats from armed groups based in DR Congo.

This report includes additional contributions from journalist Richard Kagoe.

18 4 月, 2026
Iran says it has closed Strait of Hormuz again over US blockade

CAIRO – Tensions around the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz have exploded into a fresh escalation just days after a tentative de-escalation, as Iran rolled back its decision to reopen the waterway and opened fire on passing commercial vessels Saturday. The sudden reversal comes in direct response to the United States’ refusal to lift its sweeping naval blockade of Iranian ports, a move that has thrown fragile ceasefire talks into jeopardy and reignited fears of a widening regional conflict that could upend global energy markets.

18 4 月, 2026
Water crisis grips South Sudan refugees

As conflict continues to drive thousands of Sudanese civilians across the border into South Sudan, a rapidly escalating water crisis has pushed already vulnerable displaced populations to the brink of survival in the remote Upper Nile State settlement of Chemedi Payam.

Long before the first light of day touches the arid landscape of Chemedi Payam, women and children clutching empty plastic buckets gather in long lines, waiting for water deliveries that may never materialize. For many of these displaced people, the daily fight for clean water consumes every waking hour, pushing other basic needs like meals to the background. “We wake up at 3:00 am local time and come here to look for water,” explained Amna Ibrahim, one of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled cross-border conflict to seek safety in South Sudan. “We haven’t even had breakfast because we came early to fetch water.”

Today, Chemedi is home to roughly 58,000 people, the vast majority of whom are Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees fleeing neighboring violence. What makes this crisis particularly stark is that the settlement sits in close proximity to the Nile, one of the continent’s largest and most reliable water sources. Aid workers and local administrators emphasize that the shortage does not stem from a lack of available water, but from a catastrophic gap in critical infrastructure needed to safely extract, purify and distribute water to the scattered communities that make up the settlement.

Most functional boreholes in the area are out of service, water storage capacity is drastically limited, and no large-scale water treatment systems exist to serve the growing population. Seasonal water collection points dry up entirely during extended dry seasons, leaving residents with two bad options: rely on sporadic water trucking deliveries, or turn to unsafe, unregulated water sources. For most households, consistent access to clean water depends entirely on aid-funded tanker operations, but humanitarian groups warn these life-sustaining services are being choked off by crippling funding shortfalls. “If the tanker doesn’t come, we don’t know what we will do,” said Zainab Yasin, another Sudanese refugee living in the settlement.

Local authorities note that the sudden, rapid influx of thousands of people fleeing Sudan’s ongoing violence has completely overwhelmed the region’s already overstretched water infrastructure, which was inadequate to serve local populations even before the refugee crisis began. Beyond the immediate threat of dehydration and hunger, the lack of reliable clean water is undermining life-saving critical services, particularly for malnourished children and new and expecting mothers.

At a primary healthcare clinic supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its implementing partners, medical teams treat dozens of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition every day, alongside hundreds of pregnant and breastfeeding women. “Water is a major gap in Chemedi. Without it, our nutrition services cannot function properly,” said Jansuk Alex Sworo, a nutrition specialist working in the settlement. Sworo explained that the ongoing funding crisis for water services has left both the clinic and surrounding communities in a constant state of crisis. Currently, aid groups haul water 80 kilometers from the town of Renk to Chemedi, but this stopgap measure is financially unsustainable under current funding levels.

With no other options available, large numbers of residents have been forced to turn to unsafe water sources, including untreated water from shallow unregulated wells and seasonal holding ponds that dry up within weeks of the dry season starting. This puts the entire population at high risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid.

The impact of the crisis extends far beyond health outcomes, tearing apart access to education for refugee children. At the local primary school, 650 children are enrolled, most of them refugees, but classes are routinely cut short as early as 11 a.m. because of the lack of water for students and staff. “We have an issue with water here, and that is why we release learners at 11:00 am,” said head teacher Awadia Paulo Adowk. Some families have pulled their children out of school entirely, as every able family member is needed to join the daily search for water. “Sometimes we get water, and after two days, we don’t have anything to drink,” said Rasham Mohamed Sheikh Al-Din, a mother of eight whose children no longer attend classes regularly.

Local government leaders and international aid workers are now urgently calling for expanded global financial and logistical support to address the growing unmet water needs of Chemedi’s vulnerable population, warning that without immediate intervention the crisis could quickly turn deadly.

18 4 月, 2026
Strait of Hormuz ‘open to commercial vessels’

A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah entered into force on Friday, April 17, 2026, spurring tentative de-escalation efforts across the Middle East that have already cleared the way for the full reopening of the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz to global commercial shipping. The breakthrough, brokered through behind-the-scenes diplomacy between the United States and Iran with Pakistan serving as a neutral mediator, has offered a glimmer of hope to thousands of displaced Lebanese residents, though deep divisions and unresolved core issues leave the truce highly vulnerable to collapse.

Within hours of the ceasefire taking hold, both Washington and Tehran confirmed that the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s global oil supplies transit daily — is now fully accessible for commercial vessel passage. In a post on Truth Social, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the reopening, emphasizing that the American military’s unilateral naval blockade on Iranian cargo will remain in place until a final bilateral agreement between the two nations is fully finalized. “The Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business and full passage, but the naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100 percent complete,” Trump wrote in all caps.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi mirrored the announcement just minutes before Trump’s post, sharing on X that the waterway’s opening aligned with the new Lebanon ceasefire and would remain in effect for the full duration of the truce. Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi later reinforced the link between the two developments, noting that the ceasefire would not have been possible without Iranian diplomatic pressure on Lebanon’s behalf, and that Tehran views the truce as equivalent to the decision to reopen the strait.

On the ground in Lebanon, celebratory gunfire rang out across Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s traditional stronghold, as displaced families packed their belongings and began the journey back to their war-ravaged homes in southern Lebanon. For many returnees, the joy of the ceasefire was tempered by the scale of destruction left by weeks of fighting. “There’s destruction and it’s unlivable. We’re taking our things and leaving again,” Fadel Badreddine, who returned to survey his home with his wife and young son, told Reuters. “May God grant us relief and end this whole thing permanently.”

Despite the initial calm, the ceasefire remains extraordinarily fragile. The Israeli military confirmed it had struck more than 380 Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon in the lead-up to the truce, and remains on high alert to resume offensive operations at a moment’s notice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, stating that the full disarmament of Hezbollah is a non-negotiable precondition for any long-term “historic peace agreement” between Israel and the Lebanese state. Al-Moussawi responded that Hezbollah will uphold its end of the truce so long as Israel halts all offensive attacks.

Multiple regional and global stakeholders have welcomed the ceasefire, including Saudi Arabia and Oman, two key Gulf states with deep interests in regional stability. Riyadh has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Lebanese territorial integrity and national sovereignty, while Muscat has called on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions that would violate the truce terms. Iran’s foreign ministry framed the ceasefire as a first step toward a broader regional de-escalation pact reached with the U.S. via Pakistani mediation.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which erupted on March 2, has already claimed more than 2,000 lives to date, displacing hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border. Political analysts warn that a path to lasting peace remains elusive. Abed Abou Shhadeh, a Jaffa-based Israeli political commentator, noted that Israel has failed to achieve its core goal of disarming Hezbollah, and lacks a clear political roadmap for a lasting settlement with Lebanon. “History over the past 40 years has proven this is not something Israel can achieve,” Abou Shhadeh said. “The military recently acknowledged that fully disarming Hezbollah would require occupying all of Lebanon — a mission it lacks the troop strength to carry out.”

For his part, Trump has announced that he held “excellent conversations” with both Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, and has extended an invitation to both leaders to travel to the White House for high-stakes talks aimed at cementing a long-term deal. The U.S. president also added that if a final U.S.-Iran agreement is finalized in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, he would be willing to travel there to attend the signing ceremony.

Regional policy experts say Trump’s push for a rapid deal stems from a desire to avoid deeper U.S. entanglement in the Middle East ahead of potential broader fallout for global energy markets. “Trump is seeking an exit ramp from the Iran war before it brings greater repercussions for the US and the global energy market,” said Abas Aslani, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, speaking to Al Jazeera. “But it wouldn’t secure any strategic outcome for the US. There are some gaps that need to be bridged, but those differences remain.”

In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly stated that the conflict with Iran will end soon, but independent analysts say there is little concrete evidence to support that claim. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a sharp warning on Thursday, threatening that if Iran rejects a final deal, the U.S. military will launch targeted strikes against Iran’s critical infrastructure, including its national power grid and energy sector. Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, argued that the current U.S. administration is not positioned to negotiate a comprehensive, lasting settlement. “Trump has a political incentive to claim peace on his terms is imminent. That does not make it a reality,” Ramsay told Xinhua.

18 4 月, 2026
Haiti crisis worsens as nearly 6m face acute food insecurity

PORT-AU-PRINCE – A grim new UN-backed assessment published Thursday has laid bare the accelerating collapse of food security in Haiti, confirming that nearly 6 million Haitians will grapple with life-threatening acute hunger in the coming months. The findings underscore how persistent gang violence, mass internal displacement, and crippling economic instability have pushed the small Caribbean nation into one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophes.

Per the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the international body that tracks global food insecurity, 5.8 million Haitians – accounting for more than half of the country’s total population – are currently classified as facing acute food insecurity. Of this vulnerable group, over 1.8 million have already reached the emergency hunger phase, requiring immediate life-sustaining food assistance to avoid widespread malnutrition and mortality.

The IPC report attributes the deepening crisis to three interconnected drivers: rapidly deteriorating public security across the country, cascading economic shocks, and repeated breakdowns of local food markets and agricultural activities. Armed gang factions have expanded their territorial control across large swathes of Haiti in recent months, disrupting supply routes, forcing farming communities to abandon their lands, and displacing more than 1.4 million people internally. This mass displacement has stretched already limited local food supplies thin, pushing low-income and vulnerable households into extreme levels of hunger.

While the latest IPC projection marks a small downward revision from an earlier forecast of 5.91 million acutely food-insecure people, humanitarian agencies caution that any minor progress remains extremely fragile. Analysts attribute the slight improvement to a combination of targeted international food assistance, easing national inflation rates, and better-than-expected harvests in a handful of Haiti’s agricultural regions. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed that consistent, sustained food aid interventions have lifted roughly 200,000 Haitians out of emergency-level hunger since last year.

Still, aid leaders warn that these fragile gains are at immediate risk of reversal without a significant expansion of international support. In particular, the recent spike in global fuel prices triggered by ongoing tensions around the Iran conflict has driven sharp increases in transportation and agricultural production costs across Haiti, placing additional strain on humanitarian operations and household budgets.

“Fighting hunger is essential to restoring stability in Haiti. We cannot build peace if families cannot feed their children,” Wanja Kaaria, WFP’s Country Director for Haiti, said in an official statement, emphasizing the urgent need for scaled-up global backing to prevent the crisis from spiraling further out of control.

17 4 月, 2026
Russia has looted thousands of Ukrainian cultural objects in the war. Finding them is a challenge

When Russian troops withdrew from Kherson in late 2022 after Ukraine reclaimed the strategic southern Ukrainian city, Alina Dotsenko, director of the Kherson Art Museum, returned to her workplace to a devastating scene: nearly all of the institution’s collections had been stripped and carted away.

“ I stepped inside to find every storage unit gutted, every shelf bare. My legs couldn’t hold me, and I just slid down the wall, crying like a child,” Dotsenko recalled in an interview with the Associated Press.

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kherson Art Museum housed more than 14,000 artworks spanning global creative traditions from North American pieces to Japanese art. Multiple sources, including Dotsenko and citizen footage captured after the liberation, confirm that retreating Russian forces loaded the majority of the collection onto military trucks and transported it to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. To date, the whereabouts of nearly 10,000 missing artifacts remain unknown.

Today, this act of cultural plunder is back in the international spotlight as Russia pushes to rejoin global cultural circles, just months ahead of the 2024 Venice Biennale — one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art events. For the first time since 2022, event organizers have cleared Russian representatives to participate, a move Ukraine has sharply condemned. Kyiv argues the biennale “must not become a platform to whitewash the war crimes Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”

Unlike most cases of cultural looting across Ukraine, the Kherson Art Museum theft is uniquely well-documented, thanks to pre-war preparation by Dotsenko herself. Years before the invasion, the director launched a full-scale project to photograph every item in the museum’s collection, building a comprehensive digital archive. When Russian forces occupied Kherson, Dotsenko hid the archive’s hard drives in secret, and retrieved them intact after liberation.

This detailed record has turned the Kherson case into a top priority for Ukrainian prosecutors and Interpol, who are using the catalog to trace missing works and build legal cases against those responsible for the looting. Unfortunately, this level of documentation is extremely rare across the country.

Across Ukraine’s occupied and war-torn regions, most pre-war cultural collections lack complete, accessible digital records. Russian occupying forces have deliberately seized or destroyed original inventory logs and collection documentation, making it nearly impossible to meet the strict evidentiary requirements for international legal claims to recover lost artifacts.

The experience of the Donetsk Regional Art Museum reflects this widespread challenge. Halyna Chumak, the museum’s former director, fled Russian-controlled Donetsk in 2014, shortly after Moscow first seized parts of eastern Ukraine. She was only able to smuggle out a fraction of the museum’s collection catalogs, documenting just over 1,000 of the institution’s 15,000 total works. Over the course of a year, Chumak carried the fragile documents through multiple armed checkpoints, leaving most behind to avoid attracting suspicion from pro-Russian search teams.

A decade later, a team led by Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleksandr Velychko is working to digitize these surviving catalogs, a painstaking process that took more than three months to process just 400 works. Once complete, the digitized database will be turned over to Ukrainian authorities to serve as partial legal evidence for future ownership claims.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Office currently has 23 open criminal cases focused on cultural heritage crimes, covering 174 separate incidents of looting, destruction, and damage to cultural sites. Anna Sosonska, deputy head of the office’s war crimes unit, explained that the Kherson case stands out from the rest almost entirely because of Dotsenko’s surviving archive.

“Russian forces almost always take inventory books and all original collection documentation from museums they occupy,” Sosonska explained in an interview. Without these records, prosecutors must rely on open-source intelligence, tracing looted artifacts through social media posts, auction house listings, and other online traces — a slow, labor-intensive process that can rarely reconstruct entire stolen collections. Still, Sosonska emphasized that cultural heritage crimes fall under international humanitarian law and carry no statute of limitations, meaning investigations will continue long after active fighting ends.

The full scale of Ukraine’s cultural losses remains impossible to calculate accurately. As of March 2024, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry confirms Russia has destroyed or damaged more than 1,700 designated cultural heritage sites and 2,503 cultural infrastructure facilities, including high-profile targets like the Mariupol Drama Theatre. More than 2.1 million museum objects are still held in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, and more than 35,000 items have been confirmed looted from territories Kyiv has retaken since 2022.

Moscow has moved to formalize its control over stolen cultural property. In 2023, the Russian government amended national legislation to add 77 Ukrainian museums from occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions to Russia’s official national cultural catalog. Critics call this move a deliberate attempt to cement illegal ownership and block the eventual return of looted works to Ukraine.

Tetiana Berezhna, appointed Ukraine’s Culture Minister in October 2023, has made widespread digitization of all Ukrainian cultural collections a core priority for her ministry. “If we had fully digitalized all collections before the invasion, we would know exactly how many objects were stolen and exactly what they look like,” she noted.

There are small signs of progress on accountability for these crimes. In March 2024, a Polish court approved the extradition of Russian national Oleksandr Butiahin to Ukraine, where he faces charges for conducting illegal archaeological excavations in occupied Crimea and smuggling ancient artifacts out of the site that Ukraine recognizes as its sovereign cultural heritage. Butiahin was arrested in Poland in 2023 at Ukraine’s request, and the ruling is still subject to appeal. If extradited and convicted, this would mark the first time a Russian national faces prosecution in Ukraine for crimes against Ukrainian cultural heritage in occupied territory.

For Dotsenko, who has dedicated 50 years of her life to the Kherson Art Museum, the fight to recover the collection is deeply personal. She recently spoke to the AP at a Kyiv exhibition featuring high-quality reproductions of the stolen paintings, many of which have not been seen by the public since 2022. “While these works remain in captivity, all of us hold out hope that this will be resolved in favor of the Kherson Art Museum,” she said. “I did not spend 50 years of my life building this collection for nothing.”

The Russian Culture Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press on the allegations of looted Ukrainian art. In past statements, Russian-installed officials in occupied Ukrainian territories have described the removal of cultural artifacts as “protective measures” to save works from damage during fighting. Kirill Stremousov, the former Russian-installed deputy administrator of occupied Kherson who died shortly before the city’s liberation, claimed looted statues would “definitely return” to Kherson once active fighting ended.

17 4 月, 2026
Even the dead must make way as construction transforms Afghanistan’s capital

In a dusty residential and commercial neighborhood of central Kabul, what remains of Syed Murtaza Sadar’s life and livelihood stands as a stark testament to the human cost of Afghanistan’s push for infrastructure renewal. Where a two-story building once housed his family’s barbershop and public bath on the ground floor, and their home above, only scattered piles of broken brick and crumbled mortar remain. Sadar, a 25-year-old head of an extended family, says he was forced to tear down most of the structure with his own hands after municipal authorities ordered the property seized for road widening.

“This was our house, and now I am destroying it with my own hands,” Sadar explained pausing mid-work, his hands dusted with mortar. “It will be very difficult for us.”

The land expropriation that displaced Sadar’s family is part of a broad infrastructure initiative that the ruling Taliban administration has revived, originally drafted decades ago under the former U.S.-backed Afghan government. The plan aims to untangle Kabul’s crippling traffic congestion by expanding narrow, pothole-riddled streets, adding new flyovers, and constructing modern underpasses across the capital. When the plan was first proposed, it never moved past the drafting stage: bureaucratic gridlock, systemic corruption, and widespread violence during the Taliban insurgency derailed all construction work. Within months of the Taliban seizing control of Kabul in August 2021, following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops, the new municipal government prioritized reviving the stalled projects.

According to city officials, the progress has been substantial over the past four and a half years. Naimatullah Barakzai, Kabul municipality’s cultural affairs representative, announced at a recent press briefing that construction crews have completed roughly 280 miles of new roads across the capital, while expropriating more than 11,000 private properties to make way for the expanded network. For 2025 alone, the city has greenlit 233 new projects, with an allocation of more than 1.9 billion afghanis, equal to roughly $29 million in funding. Mohammad Qasim Afghan, the municipality’s head of planning, confirmed the budget allocation, noting that all road construction costs are covered entirely by local municipal funds. Barakzai added that Kabul’s municipal government has raised more than 28 billion afghanis (approximately $434 million) over the past four and a half years to fund the initiative, and property owners receive three months’ advance notice plus compensation at rates set by the city. More than 1.2 billion afghanis ($18.6 million) has been paid out to displaced property owners over the past year alone, per city data.

For affected residents, however, the compensation and long-term infrastructure benefits often do little to ease immediate hardship. After the initial round of demolition cleared the front of his street, Sadar says authorities ordered remaining property owners to tear down the rest of their structures themselves, leaving residents with little room to push back against the orders. His former business employed 25 local workers and supported five extended families, each with three to four children. Today, Sadar and his family live in rented accommodation, drawing down their limited savings while waiting for compensation to be fully processed. “If the government gives us money, God willing, I will be able to go back to work and buy or build a new house for myself,” he said. Even amid his displacement, Sadar acknowledges the urgent need for the project: the existing single-lane road running past his former neighborhood is so chronically congested that any trip across the city requires more than an hour of sitting in gridlock.

For a country grappling with widespread poverty and mass unemployment, the construction push has delivered one clear benefit: thousands of much-needed jobs for local workers. At the massive Baraki intersection construction site, project manager and civil engineer Obaidullah Elham says crews work around the clock, seven days a week, to complete a Turkish-designed $23 million flyover and underpass complex that will replace one of Kabul’s most congested junctions. The project employs 500 skilled and unskilled local workers, injecting much-needed income into a local economy reeling from international aid cuts and systemic economic collapse. Work on the 1,540-foot underpass began in July of last year and is already 80% complete, Elham said, standing beside a working excavator moving earth at the site. Construction on the flyover, only the second to be built in Kabul, started earlier this year.

The scope of the project has required clearing space even for longstanding community landmarks, including a 200-year-old graveyard in Kabul’s Qala-e-Khater neighborhood. The new planned road will cut directly through the historic burial ground, requiring the exhumation and relocation of hundreds of graves to a new section of the cemetery. Today, large rectangular empty holes mark where remains once rested, a quiet reminder of the project’s far-reaching impact.

Abdul Wadood Alokozay, a 21-year-old resident of the neighborhood, says his grandfather’s remains were among those moved. Alokozay’s extended family lost three properties in the area: a girls’ religious madrassa, and two multi-generational family homes, all of which were expropriated and leveled. “At first our family all were sad for this, that we lost our house,” Alokozay said. “It was even harder to tear it down ourselves, after we lived there for more than 20 years.” The family received roughly $13,000 in compensation for the three structures, with additional compensation promised for the land, and has since built a new three-story home on other family land overlooking the former property.

Shah Faisal Alokozay, a 30-year-old community representative and Abdul Wadood’s cousin, says plans for the connecting road have sat on city drawing boards for decades. “It’s a very important road, connecting east and north Kabul,” he explained. “So it is very important for the community.”

For Kabul’s new leadership, the infrastructure push represents both a practical solution to chronic urban congestion and a visible demonstration of the Taliban administration’s ability to deliver long-stalled public projects that the previous government could not complete. For displaced residents like Sadar, it is a complicated trade-off: short-term hardship and displacement in exchange for the promise of a more connected, less congested capital for future generations.

17 4 月, 2026
Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’ and Iran will ‘never close’ it again, Trump announces

In a major development that calms one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, Iran and the United States announced Friday that the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway through which roughly one-quarter of all global oil shipments pass — will resume full commercial passage for all vessels during an ongoing ceasefire period, just days after heightened military tensions between the two nations and an Israel-US strike on Iranian targets.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed the move in a post on X, noting that the decision aligns with the broader ceasefire agreement reached for neighboring Lebanon. “The passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran,” Araghchi wrote.

US President Donald Trump hailed the announcement as a landmark win for the global community in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, calling it “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!”

Trump clarified that while all commercial traffic is permitted to transit the strait, the unilateral US naval blockade targeting Iranian oil exports, implemented earlier this week, will remain in effect until all terms of the bilateral agreement between Washington and Tehran are fully finalized. “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE,” he wrote, adding that most core terms have already been negotiated and the finalization process is expected to move rapidly.

The US president also claimed Iran had committed to a permanent, future commitment that the strait will never be closed to international shipping, and that Iran has cleared or is in the process of removing all naval mines from the waterway with US support.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres joined in welcoming the reopening, framing the decision as “a step in the right direction” for de-escalating broader regional tensions.

However, a key caveat has emerged from the Iranian side, an anonymous Iranian official told Reuters: the reopening of the strait remains conditional on the United States upholding all existing ceasefire commitments. This stands in direct tension with Trump’s repeated public insistence that the Hormuz agreement is completely disconnected from the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire he brokered just one day prior.

Iran had previously demanded that any regional ceasefire deal must include protections for its allied militant group Hezbollah, which has been engaged in cross-border hostilities with Israel for months. Rejecting any linkage between the two deals in his Truth Social posts, Trump wrote, “This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”

The US leader also outlined terms of the nuclear component of the agreement, stating that the US will take possession of all enriched uranium dust created by recent US B-2 Bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, adding that “No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form.” He further confirmed that the US will address the Hezbollah situation separately, and that Israel has been prohibited by Washington from conducting further bombing operations in Lebanon, saying “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA Enough is enough!!!”

The Iranian official pushed back on Trump’s characterization of nuclear progress, telling Reuters that no final agreement has been reached on the details of outstanding nuclear issues, and that substantive negotiations are still required to lock in any agreements on that front.

In his series of Friday social media posts, Trump also thanked several regional and neighboring powers for their mediation and support: he singled out Pakistan for leading mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran, and expressed gratitude to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for their assistance throughout the negotiations. Notably absent from his list of thanks were Washington’s traditional European allies, whom Trump publicly criticized as unhelpful.

“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger! President DJT,” he wrote.

Trump’s rebuke came as an international summit focused on Strait of Hormuz maritime security was already underway in Paris, France. Speaking at the summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that roughly 40 countries have agreed to speed up military planning operations to secure permanent freedom of navigation through the strait once a full, permanent end to hostilities is reached.

The current two-week ceasefire is scheduled to expire next week, though Trump has indicated he is open to extending the truce to allow for further negotiations. Starmer added that full details of the proposed international military security mission will be released publicly next week.

17 4 月, 2026