标签： Europe

Amid escalating tensions over sanctions enforcement on Russian maritime trade, Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a sharp warning of reciprocal retaliation against Western powers that have seized Moscow-linked commercial ships, labeling the detentions as outright state-sponsored piracy. Speaking Wednesday during an inspection tour of a Russian warship participating in large-scale Pacific Ocean naval exercises, Putin slammed the Western seizures as a clear violation of long-standing international maritime law, emphasizing that Moscow would not leave the actions unchallenged.

“This is nothing less than piracy and open robbery,” Putin told naval personnel on site. “When these illegal acts are carried out against our vessels, we will be forced to respond in kind.” The Russian leader further clarified that retaliatory measures would not be limited to the specific maritime regions where Russian ships have been detained, stressing that Moscow reserves the right to act “in any area where we deem it necessary and appropriate” — including the Pacific Ocean, where Russia’s large naval exercise is currently underway.

Shortly after Putin’s remarks, Admiral Viktor Liina, commander of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, formally reported to the president that the Russian navy is fully prepared to begin inspections of commercial vessels operated by so-called “unfriendly nations” that have imposed sanctions on Russia. Liina pointed out that many commercial ships owned by British, French and other European shipping companies avoid direct sanctions by operating under third-party flags, making up what he called a European “shadow fleet” similar to the one Russia uses to evade oil and trade sanctions.

“We have sufficient naval and maritime resources to carry out inspections and detain vessels from unfriendly nations and their shadow fleets,” Liina stated. “We are ready to begin executing this mission immediately.”

Background to the current escalation dates back to February 2022, when Western powers imposed sweeping economic and trade sanctions on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To bypass these restrictions, Russia has built a large “shadow fleet” of hundreds of oil tankers and cargo vessels that operate under third-party flags to avoid detection and seizure. In recent months, France, the United Kingdom and other European nations have moved to detain multiple tankers linked to Russia’s shadow fleet that were suspected of violating sanctions on Russian oil exports. The European Union has also added hundreds of these shadow fleet vessels to its sanctions blacklist. In response, Russia has already begun deploying military warships to escort its commercial cargo vessels operating in international waters.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president from 2008 to 2012 and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, expanded on Putin’s warning in remarks that underscored the scope of potential Russian action. Medvedev noted that European shipping firms already use the same “flags of convenience” loophole that Russia relies on for its shadow fleet, creating a legal opening for symmetrical retaliation.

“Applying a symmetrical and completely fair approach means Russia has the right to stop and search any merchant vessel belonging to hostile states, whether in our territorial waters or neutral international waters, as long as there are reasonable grounds to suspect it is carrying cargo for an enemy’s benefit,” Medvedev said. “This rule applies to any type of cargo. There are a great many such vessels operating globally, and our military has the capability to dramatically expand these operations far beyond the boundaries of the Black Sea basin.”

The latest exchange of threats has raised international concerns about growing risks to civilian commercial shipping in global waterways, particularly as the conflict in Ukraine continues to spill over into maritime domains that carry a large share of global trade.

In a sweeping nighttime assault that marks a significant escalation in maritime attacks in the Black Sea theater, Ukraine carried out a coordinated large-scale strike using anti-ship missiles and domestically developed drones against Novorossiysk, Russia’s last remaining major Black Sea naval stronghold, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Wednesday.

This operation is the latest in a years-long campaign of drone strikes targeting Russian maritime assets in the Black Sea, a strategy Kyiv has built up since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The locally produced air and sea drones developed by Ukraine over the course of the conflict have already reshaped power dynamics in the Black Sea, repeatedly striking Russian warships, commercial oil tankers and other vessels, and successfully restricting the operational freedom of Russia’s once unchallenged Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian officials frame this maritime campaign as one of their country’s most notable military achievements of the entire war.

According to Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region where Novorossiysk is located, hundreds of Ukrainian drones targeted multiple sites across the region overnight, including Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik and the Temryuk district. The attack left three people dead — including an 8-year-old child — wounded 24 more, damaged dozens of residential structures, and sent downed drone debris crashing onto the grounds of four industrial facilities. Zelenskyy stated that the strike damaged Russian air defense systems, piers and other critical port infrastructure at the Novorossiysk base, while Russian business daily Vedomosti reported that two out of the city’s three grain terminals suffered damage, forcing one to suspend operations. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defense systems intercepted and downed more than 500 Ukrainian drones during the assault.

Beyond its military role as a naval stronghold, Novorossiysk is a pivotal energy hub, hosting the Grushovaya oil terminal, one of southern Russia’s largest international export points for petroleum products. As of Wednesday, no reports have emerged confirming damage to the terminal, which also serves as the export endpoint for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium that carries crude oil from major Kazakh oil fields. In February 2024, U.S. officials publicly voiced disapproval of prior Ukrainian strikes on Novorossiysk, noting the attacks threatened the energy interests of American oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil, which hold major stakes in those Kazakh fields.

Simultaneously to the Novorossiysk attack, Russia launched its own massive wave of overnight strikes across Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia deployed 138 long-range drones alongside an unspecified number of missiles, causing damage at 16 locations across the country. In southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, the assault killed two people and wounded two more, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin confirmed, while a shopping mall was destroyed in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia. On the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Russian-installed Sevastopol city head Mikhail Razvozhayev stated that air defenses downed 115 Ukrainian drones overnight, damaging 10 apartment buildings and 25 private homes.

Beyond the immediate military clashes, the strike comes amid heightened tensions over reported Russian plans for a new mass mobilization. Citing intelligence from Ukrainian agencies, Zelenskyy claimed Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to mobilize hundreds of thousands of additional Russian troops by the end of 2024. Zelenskyy added that recent intelligence also shows Russia is ramping up production of ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones — two weapons systems that have proven particularly difficult for Ukrainian air defenses to intercept. Ukrainian officials argue Putin remains determined to press forward with the invasion, despite the Russian military’s slow, high-cost battlefield gains and ongoing American diplomatic efforts to broker a negotiated end to the conflict.

Russian officials have dismissed the mobilization claims as disinformation. Neither Putin nor any senior Russian official has publicly hinted at a planned large-scale new call-up of troops, with some Kremlin-aligned figures accusing Kyiv of spreading rumors to sow unrest among the Russian public. “It is the enemy deliberately spreading rumors about mobilization in order to destabilize the situation inside Russia,” pro-Kremlin lawmaker Andrei Gurulyov told pro-Kremlin outlet Tsargrad Monday. Russia’s 2022 partial mobilization of 300,000 troops was deeply unpopular with the Russian public, and since that time Moscow has relied on high bounties to recruit volunteer soldiers. The original 2022 mobilization decree remains technically open-ended, however, leaving authorities the legal option to resume conscription if they choose.

The strike also coincides with a sharp escalation in tensions over Western enforcement of oil sanctions against Russia. As European military vessels increasingly board and detain sanctioned Russian oil tankers at sea — a move that has cut into Russian export revenue and piled additional economic pressure on Moscow — Putin threatened retaliation Wednesday for what he labeled “piracy.” Speaking during a visit to a Russian warship participating in Pacific naval exercises, Putin argued that Western powers are violating international maritime law by seizing vessels belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers used to evade international price caps and sanctions. “It’s nothing but piracy and robbery,” Putin said. “If this is done, we will be forced to respond in kind.”

In response to Russia’s expanding military production and planned mobilization, Ukraine is working to scale up its own domestic weapons manufacturing through bilateral and multilateral agreements with its international partner nations.

A once-in-a-century celestial event is bringing unprecedented excitement — and significant public safety challenges — to parts of Western Europe this week, as Spain prepares to welcome hundreds of thousands of eclipse chasers while grappling with an ongoing extreme heat and wildfire crisis.

The rare total solar eclipse, the first to cross mainland Spain in more than 100 years, will cast a shadow of darkness across a wide stretch of northern and central Spain on Wednesday, with these regions set to offer some of the best viewing positions for the spectacle across mainland Europe. When the sun, moon, and Earth fully align around sunset, portions of the Iberian Peninsula, along with small parts of Greenland and Iceland, will be plunged into temporary darkness, with the period of complete totality — when the moon fully obscures the sun — lasting less than two and a half minutes across most viewing spots. The maximum duration of totality will occur off the west coast of Iceland, before the eclipse finishes its trajectory over the Mediterranean Sea.

Spanish officials estimate the event will draw at least 500,000 additional visitors to the country’s rural, sparsely populated interior, a region widely known as “Empty Spain.” This influx comes against a grim backdrop: just weeks ago, the most destructive wildfire in modern Spanish history burned through 500 square kilometers of central Spain, forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate. Multiple smaller blazes still burn across other parts of the country, and a late-July wildfire in Ávila, west of Madrid, has already underscored how quickly a single spark can escalate into a disaster amid current conditions.

To balance public enthusiasm for the eclipse with wildfire prevention, Spanish authorities have rolled out an extensive public safety and preparedness campaign. The country’s Interior Ministry confirmed that 350 designated official viewing sites have been established across high-visibility regions, while 123 other popular potential viewing spots have had access restricted or limited entirely due to elevated fire risk or barriers that would slow emergency evacuation if a blaze broke out. More than 33,500 law enforcement officers will be deployed across viewing zones and access points to enforce safety rules and manage crowds.

Speaking on the need for strict preventive action, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska noted: “High temperatures, the accumulated dryness of vegetation, and the intense pressure on natural areas due to projected travel necessitate extreme preventive measures.” Spain’s national weather agency AEMET has forecast temperatures climbing above 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) across a swathe running from the northwest to the southeast of the country, covering most of the prime eclipse viewing areas, leaving vegetation tinder-dry and highly flammable. Officials have issued urgent warnings to visitors: no open flames, no littering, and no parking vehicles on areas covered by dry vegetation, as even a small spark from a car exhaust can ignite a major wildfire.

Amid the safety preparations, excitement over the rare event has sparked a nationwide rush for essential viewing equipment. Specialized eclipse glasses, fitted with unique filters that block harmful solar radiation to prevent permanent eye damage, are flying off shelves across the country. Telmo Fernández Castro, director of the Madrid Planetarium, emphasized that proper eye protection is non-negotiable even when only a small portion of the sun remains visible, stating “To look at the sun, you must always use proper protection, and the most suitable protection is eclipse glasses.” For months, retailers including supermarkets, department stores, museums, and planetariums have sold or distributed the glasses, and most pharmacies have already sold out of their stock ahead of Wednesday’s event. By Tuesday evening, eager shoppers who had missed out were queuing for blocks outside a downtown Madrid photo shop that announced it still had supplies, with one happy customer emerging to tell waiting crowds the store still had “boxes and boxes of them.”

The eclipse frenzy is not limited to Spain. In Iceland, which is hosting its first total solar eclipse since 1954 and the first visible from its capital Reykjavík since 1433, tourism and accommodation prices have hit unprecedented levels. Average room rates in Reykjavík for Wednesday night now exceed $1,000, roughly double typical 2025 peak season prices, according to data from Lighthouse Intelligence. Authorities expect up to 20,000 extra international visitors to descend on the country of just under 400,000 people, adding to crowds during an already busy summer travel period. For hoteliers along the path of totality, demand has been extraordinary: the 70-room Hotel Keflavík in Reykjanesbaer municipality, which offers viewing of roughly one minute 45 seconds of totality (weather permitting), was fully booked more than a year in advance. Hotel owner and manager Steinþór Jónsson said the eclipse surge is the biggest event the property has seen since it opened in 1986, the year of the historic Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavík summit. “When I opened the hotel, we had Reagan and Gorbachev meeting. It was very hectic here. Besides Reagan and Gorbachev, the eclipse is the biggest,” Jónsson said with a smile. In Spain’s prime viewing zones including the northern cities of A Coruña, Bilbao, and Santiago de Compostela, hotel demand has also soared ahead of the event.

Nearly three decades after the brutal 1998–99 Kosovo war left thousands dead and more than a thousand unaccounted for, new excavations of recently uncovered mass graves in northern Kosovo have rekindled fragile hope for families still searching for answers about their missing loved ones. Among those waiting is Erblin Ademi, who was just 9 years old when his father, prominent local surgeon Adem Ademi, vanished alongside 22 other Kosovo intellectuals in April 1999, mere months before the war concluded.

Ademi has watched from the sidelines as forensic teams worked the dig site near the adjacent villages of Upper and Lower Kalluder, located in Zubin Potok municipality. The site, where initial surveys turned up human remains, launched full excavation operations in late July. Kosovo authorities suspect the newly discovered graves hold the remains of the missing group, who were allegedly captured by Serb troops while attempting to flee Kosovo to avoid roundups. For the Ademi family, this new search carries special weight: the site sits just a short distance from where Adem Ademi was last seen, ending decades of fruitless searches that have left the family mired in persistent uncertainty and grief.

For Ademi, the start of each new search brings a uniquely devastating blend of emotion. “Always, when we hear about the beginning of the excavations, there is a mixed feeling, a feeling of hope and a feeling of pain,” Ademi explained. “No matter how many years pass, the feeling of pain will always exist … but at the same time there has always been hope, a feeling that finally the truth will be revealed.” Clutching a decades-old photograph of his father holding him as a young child, Ademi stressed that all families of the missing deserve the basic right to lay their loved ones to rest properly. “Every human being has the right to have a grave where they can be visited, where they can be honored, where they can be remembered,” he said. “We are very hopeful that this will be the end, no matter how long the whole process will take, we will wait until we can honor them as they deserve.”

The 1998–99 Kosovo war erupted when ethnic Albanian rebels launched an uprising against Serbian rule, ending after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign pushed Serbian forces out of the territory. Around 13,000 people were killed in the conflict, and an estimated 1,600 more remain missing to this day, their bodies hidden in unmarked graves scattered across the region. According to the Humanitarian Law Center, a local human rights group, the missing population includes roughly 1,200 ethnic Albanians, 400 ethnic Serbs, and dozens of Roma people.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Belgrade has never recognized, and cross-border tensions over the legacy of the war remain high. In May 2023, the two sides reached a European Union-brokered agreement that included a commitment to collaborate on resolving the fate of the missing, but progress has stalled, with both sides blaming one another for the lack of cooperation. “It is obvious that authorities are not willing to cooperate,” said Bekim Blakaj of the Humanitarian Law Center. The EU has made normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia a core requirement for both countries to advance their bids to join the bloc.

In a sign of progress in the domestic investigation, Kosovo police announced the arrest of two ethnic Serbs on suspicion of war crimes connected to the newly discovered mass graves just days before excavations got underway. The two men remain in police custody as investigations continue. This is not the first time that individuals linked to war crimes in Kosovo have faced justice: multiple high-ranking Serbian political and military officials have already been convicted of war crimes stemming from the Kosovo conflict by a United Nations tribunal based in The Hague, Netherlands.

On Monday, the United Nations Human Rights Office delivered a damning new briefing to the UN Security Council, detailing widespread unlawful detention, systematic torture, and deadly abuse of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war held by Russian authorities since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The informal meeting, convened by Latvia and the United Kingdom, was organized to center the long-unaddressed plight of people captured amid the ongoing conflict, which has seen a sharp escalation of offensive operations from both sides in recent months.

Claudia Fuentes Julio, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, told the assembled council that UN investigators estimate more than 16,000 civilians captured by Russian forces remain illegally deprived of liberty, with many held incommunicado in violation of international legal standards for detention. The UN has not been granted access to any detention facilities operating on Russian-controlled territory to independently verify conditions, meaning the agency’s current count cannot break down figures to reflect how many of the detained are children or adults.

Julio’s briefing drew on first-hand testimony gathered from 910 released Ukrainian prisoners of war and 403 released civilian detainees interviewed by UN human rights staff after they regained freedom. The data revealed staggering rates of abuse: more than 95% of released prisoners of war and 85% of released civilian detainees reported repeated torture and cruel, inhumane treatment during their captivity, including incidents of sexual violence. Survivors also described severe inadequate conditions, including deliberate food deprivation and almost no access to life-saving medical care.

Beyond ongoing abuse, the UN has documented confirmed deaths in custody: 129 Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed immediately after capture, while an additional 48 died in detention due to torture, denied medical care, and other deadly inhumane conditions, Julio confirmed.

The meeting also heard harrowing, personal accounts from two survivors of Russian detention. Khuan Leyva Garsiya, a Ukrainian soldier born in Mariupol who was among the hundreds of fighters who held out against the Russian siege at the Azovstal steel plant before surrendering in May 2022, spent 1,183 days as a prisoner of war. When he was released, he weighed just 120 pounds, and displayed a photo of his emaciated frame to the council to illustrate the conditions he endured. Garsiya explained he faced harsher abuse than other prisoners because Russian captors suspected he was a foreign mercenary due to his Cuban father and an American spy because he completed college in the United States. He described systemic methods of psychological torture designed to force false confessions, including prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures, repeated beatings, electrocution, and sexual abuse. “Two of my friends were beaten to death in detention centers in the Donetsk region,” Garsiya told the council. “Two of my friends died because of the conditions they were put in in Russian prisons and were returned in plastic bags to the homeland.”

Leniie Umerova, a Crimean Tatar human rights activist, also shared her experience of nearly two years as a self-described political prisoner under Russian occupation. Her detention began in 2022 when she attempted to cross from Georgia into Russian-occupied Crimea to visit her terminally ill father. She was immediately detained on what she called fabricated charges, and though a court ordered her release three months into her detention, she was abducted from prison gates immediately after gaining her initial freedom. Over six months, she was transferred to seven separate detention facilities, a practice she described as a “carousel of repression” designed to disorient detainees and cut off any contact with the outside world. Umerova emphasized that her experience was not an isolated incident, but part of a coordinated state system of unlawful detention, political repression, and abuse targeting Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories. She noted that at least 84 women have faced politically motivated criminal prosecution in Russian prisons, with dozens still remain in custody today.

In a rare development, the UN briefing also acknowledged reports of abuse by Ukrainian forces. Julio told the council that UN investigators have interviewed 816 Russian service members and 57 third-country national prisoners of war captured by Ukraine, finding that roughly half reported experiencing torture or ill-treatment during initial capture and interrogation. However, Julio clarified that once detainees are transferred to formal Ukrainian detention facilities, conditions generally meet international humanitarian law standards and have improved significantly since 2022.

Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador Maria Zabolotskaya pushed back against the briefing, claiming Russian armed forces fully comply with international humanitarian law governing detention and prisoner treatment. She repeated Russian claims that Russian prisoners held by Ukraine face routine torture and abuse, and dismissed the entire Security Council meeting as a NATO-backed “disinformation campaign against Russia.” The meeting’s true goal, she claimed, “is to derail efforts towards a peace settlement and to justify strikes on the territory of Russia and against civilians.”

Ukraine’s Deputy UN Ambassador Volodymyr Pavlichenko responded by noting that Russian representatives refused to engage on discussions surrounding the repatriation of all detainees — including Russian prisoners of war held by Ukraine and Ukrainian civilians and soldiers held by Russia, as well as the thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly abducted by Russia since the invasion began.