分类： world

KYIV, Ukraine — In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Maryna Homeniuk joined the millions of Ukrainians forced to flee the violence to seek safety abroad. Like many displaced Ukrainians, she prioritized continuing her education, completing her university degree in the Czech Republic and adding Vietnamese to her already extensive roster of spoken languages before making the choice to return to her home country in 2023. It was after her return that she met Yurii Orlov, the man who would become her beloved partner.

That shared future the couple planned was cut devastatingly short last Thursday, when they became two of the 24 civilian lives lost in a massive wave of Russian airstrikes across Ukraine — a barrage Ukrainian military officials have called the largest single air attack of the entire war. A Russian cruise missile directly struck the apartment building where Homeniuk and Orlov lived, reducing their home to rubble.

On Saturday, friends and family gathered at Homeniuk’s funeral to lay the 24-year-old English teacher to rest. They had hoped to honor Orlov alongside her, but recovery work meant his remains were not prepared for burial in time for the joint service.

Friends remembered Homeniuk as a deeply compassionate young woman with a life full of unfulfilled dreams. “She was a very caring person. I feel very sorry, because she had so many dreams. She worked with children and wanted to have children herself someday, when times were safer,” her close friend Olesia Yukhnovych told the Associated Press in an interview.

By all accounts, Homeniuk was a gifted linguist: friends confirm she spoke approximately 10 languages, including fluent Mandarin Chinese and Korean. A sensitive, warm-hearted person, she often took in stray and abandoned animals, and nurtured a deep love of travel, saving for months to fund adventures to new countries around the world.

“This is a young person. This is a girl who had absolutely the whole future ahead of her,” said Anastasiia Petrushyna, who worked alongside Homeniuk and counted her as a close friend. “This future will no longer exist — our youth basically can’t have it. You never know what trouble awaits you.”

Orlov, 30 at the time of his death, was a committed athlete: he played hockey for multiple teams across Kyiv before going on to captain the Kyiv Floorball Club. Though the pair came from different interests — he centered his life around sports, while Homeniuk’s passion was art — everyone close to them could see the deep love they shared.

A beloved weekly tradition bonded the couple: Homeniuk never missed a Sunday game that Orlov played. He taught her the rules and skills of floorball, a variant of hockey played on indoor surfaces, and in return, she helped him improve his English language skills.

For Yukhnovych, the contrast between what was supposed to be and the grim reality of the day cuts unbearably deep. “It’s a shame. I should have been helping prepare for the wedding and I ended up helping prepare for the funeral,” she said. “It’s horrible.”

The couple’s deaths come amid a brutal, unrelenting series of Russian attacks on Kyiv that have stretched through the winter. They had often talked with friends about their desire to move out of their Darnytsia neighborhood, located on Kyiv’s left bank, where power outages from Russian strikes persisted far longer than in other parts of the capital. But like many Ukrainians, they could not afford the cost of relocating to a safer area.

In the chaotic hours after Thursday’s airstrike, Yukhnovych sent a text message to Homeniuk to check in, a precaution many Ukrainians take after attacks to confirm loved ones are safe. “You never think something could happen to someone close to you, and you just message them as a precaution,” she said. “I never thought this would be one of those times when the message would remain unread.”

On Sunday, regional Russian authorities confirmed that one of the largest drone offensives Ukraine has launched against Russian territory since the start of the full-scale invasion left at least four people dead and 12 others injured, marking a significant escalation in cross-border long-range attacks.

Casualty reports from local officials confirm three of the fatalities occurred in areas just outside Moscow: a woman died when a drone crashed directly into her residential home in Khimki, a commuter city located just northwest of the Russian capital, while two men were killed in Pogorelki, a small village roughly six miles north of Moscow’s city center. A fourth fatality was recorded in the Belgorod region, which shares a border with eastern Ukraine, after a drone struck a civilian transport truck. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin added that 12 people were wounded in overnight strikes near the city’s main oil refinery, though the facility’s core operational infrastructure was left unharmed. Debris from downed drones also landed on the grounds of Sheremetyevo International Airport, Russia’s busiest air transit hub, but officials confirmed no damage to airport infrastructure and no disruptions to ongoing flight operations. Regional governor Andrei Vorobyev additionally reported that unspecified civilian infrastructure and multiple apartment buildings suffered damage across the Moscow region in the attacks.

Russian defense officials released preliminary figures showing that air defense systems intercepted or jammed more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones across Russian territory over the 24-hour period preceding Sunday midday. Of those, 81 drones were intercepted while headed toward Moscow alone – a scale of attack that ranks among the largest targeting the capital since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

In a public statement confirming the operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy framed the strikes as a fully justified response to constant Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas. He noted that the drones used in the attack traveled more than 310 miles from Ukrainian launch points, successfully penetrating the layered Russian air defense systems concentrated around Moscow. “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” Zelenskyy said. “This time, Ukrainian long-distance sanctions have reached the Moscow region, and we are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war.”

Nigel Gould Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the large-scale attack aligns with retaliatory threats Zelenskyy issued after a recent wave of intense Russian strikes on Kyiv that followed the May 9 Russian Victory Day parade. The attack, he explained, demonstrates Ukraine’s growing ability to carry out large-scale strikes deep within Russian territory, bringing the reality of the war directly to the Russian capital in a move that is deeply destabilizing for the Kremlin.

“It brings home the fact Ukraine has the capacity to strike at very significant scale at or around the Russian capital,” Gould Davies told the Associated Press. He added that the attack will compound growing public anxiety across Russia that has built steadily over the past three to four months, fueled by battlefield setbacks, worsening domestic economic conditions, and the Kremlin’s increasing crackdown on online dissent. While these mounting pressures will erode public comfort with the ongoing conflict, Gould Davies noted he does not expect them to force Russia to pursue the compromises required for meaningful peace negotiations in the near term.

In addition to targeting political and population centers, Ukraine has increasingly used long-range drone strikes to hit Russian oil infrastructure deep inside the country. These strikes, which have generated smoke plumes visible from orbit and even left toxic fallout in Black Sea tourist destinations, are intended to cut into Moscow’s oil export revenue – the single largest source of funding for its invasion of Ukraine. While the overall economic impact of these attacks remains uncertain, as higher global oil prices driven by tensions around Iran and the easing of some U.S. sanctions have boosted Russian government revenues, the strikes have succeeded in bringing the consequences of the war to ordinary Russians living hundreds of miles from the front lines.

The Ukrainian drone attack came on the heels of a massive overnight Russian drone offensive targeting Ukrainian territory, which also left casualties. Ukrainian air force officials reported that Russia launched 287 drones at Ukraine overnight, 279 of which were successfully intercepted or jammed. Eight people were wounded in Russian strikes across the central Dnipropetrovsk region, including three in the regional capital Dnipro, four in Kryvyi Rih – Zelenskyy’s hometown – and one in Synelkove. Multiple residential buildings were damaged in the strikes, Ukraine’s state emergency service confirmed.

A new wave of cross-border drone strikes has killed three civilians and left multiple others injured in the Moscow region early Sunday, according to senior Russian regional officials, in what marks the latest escalation in aerial attacks between Russia and Ukraine amid the ongoing full-scale invasion.

Andrei Vorobiev, governor of the Moscow region, announced via Telegram that Russian air defense units had been working to repel a large-scale unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack targeting the area surrounding Russia’s capital starting from 3 a.m. local time. Among the casualties, a woman lost her life in Khimki, a city located just north of Moscow, where one person was initially trapped under collapsed building rubble. Two more civilians – another woman and a man – were killed in the village of Pogorelki. Vorobiev added that four additional people, three men and one woman, were wounded across the region, and multiple residential properties sustained structural damage. A private residence also caught fire in Subbotino, a village southwest of Moscow, he confirmed.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that 12 people were injured when multiple drones struck the entrance gate of a major oil refinery within city limits. Three nearby residential buildings were also damaged in the strike. Russia’s busiest international airport, Sheremetyevo, which serves the Moscow area, later announced that drone wreckage was found on its grounds, but no injuries were reported. Airport authorities stated that operations remained unaffected: “The situation in the passenger terminals is calm. Sheremetyevo Airport is providing stable passenger and aircraft services.”

The Russian military claimed it intercepted a total of 55 Ukrainian drones, the highest number of intercepted UAVs in a single attack on the Moscow region in recent months.

Parallel to the strikes on Russian territory, Russia carried out its own overnight barrage of drone attacks and artillery shelling across Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. Oleksandr Hanzha, the region’s top administrative official, said more than 30 separate strikes targeted four districts, leaving eight people injured and dozens of residential structures damaged or destroyed. Three of the injured were in the regional capital Dnipro, where multiple blazes broke out across the city following the attacks.

The overnight strikes came just days after a massive Russian drone and missile assault on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv killed 24 people, and one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly pledged to retaliate for that deadly attack. “This week Ukraine has already destroyed high-value Russian military equipment, including aircraft, a helicopter and a cargo ship,” Zelenskyy said Saturday. “Our long-range sanctions also hit Russian oil facilities and ships. Most of the operations are still ongoing.”

Ukrainian officials have not yet issued any public comment on Sunday’s strikes against the Moscow region. In recent months, Ukrainian military forces have stepped up their drone campaign targeting key energy and industrial infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly stated that these strikes are against legitimate military-related targets, as the facilities help Russia sustain its full-scale invasion that began in 2022.

In another separate incident Saturday evening, one woman was wounded in a Russian drone attack in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, local officials confirmed. In an updated statement Sunday, Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Russia launched 287 drones against Ukrainian territory starting late Saturday. Air defense units intercepted or shot down 279 of those unmanned aircraft, but direct hits were recorded at seven different locations across the country, the statement added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Russian forces currently occupy roughly 18% of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides and displaced millions more since the invasion began.

PARIS – France’s national anti-terrorism prosecution agency, the PNAT, announced Saturday that an investigating judge will review a legal complaint brought by two international human rights organizations that implicates Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The procedural shift follows a May 11 ruling from the Paris Court of Appeal, which confirmed the complaint is admissible and transferred the case to an investigating judge within the court’s specialized crimes against humanity unit. The complaint was originally lodged in 2022 by Switzerland-based legal advocacy group Trial International and press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders. The two groups hold the Saudi crown prince complicit in torture and enforced disappearance linked to Khashoggi’s brutal killing, which unfolded inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. After Khashoggi was murdered, his body was dismembered and has never been recovered.

In its official statement, the PNAT confirmed that the Court of Appeal ruled the complaint could move forward because investigators cannot yet dismiss the potential classification of the killing as a crime against humanity, which encompasses the underlying offenses of torture and enforced disappearance under French law. The prosecution noted it has acknowledged the court’s ruling, while adding that the decision does not alter its earlier interpretation of French criminal procedure rules regarding the two rights groups’ standing to file the complaint as civil parties.

The original complaint was submitted in 2022, coinciding with an official visit by Prince Mohammed to France. In the years immediately following Khashoggi’s assassination, the crown prince faced widespread diplomatic isolation across Western nations, but in recent years he has gradually been welcomed back into mainstream global diplomacy by Western leaders and high-level dignitaries.

It is important to note that the launch of a formal judicial inquiry does not equate to formal charges against Prince Mohammed, nor does it represent a finding of guilt by French judicial authorities. What it does establish is a formal process for an investigating judge to thoroughly review the evidence and allegations laid out in the complaint to determine whether further legal proceedings are warranted.

Prince Mohammed has repeatedly denied issuing any order to kill Khashoggi, though he has accepted accountability for the killing as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, acknowledging the incident occurred on his watch. U.S. intelligence agencies have previously reached a conclusive assessment that the crown prince directly approved the operation that resulted in Khashoggi’s death.

Following the assassination, Saudi authorities conducted a closed-door domestic trial of the case and announced that they had penalized the individuals found responsible for the killing. However, human rights organizations around the world have widely criticized the Saudi proceedings as non-transparent and inadequate, failing to hold all complicit parties accountable.