标签： Oceania

After more than four years of full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine, a sharp escalation in long-range mutual strikes has pushed civilian casualty numbers to new highs, prompting the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly condemn attacks on population centers on both sides and call for an immediate end to violations of international humanitarian law.

The cycle of violence accelerated this week. On Wednesday, a Russian ballistic missile strike hit a commercial warehouse complex on the outskirts of Kyiv, killing at least 17 people and destroying storage facilities held by multiple retail operators. The attack was widely interpreted as a direct retaliation for repeated Ukrainian strikes on assets linked to Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce giant often called “Russia’s Amazon” that has emerged as a recent target for Ukrainian forces.

Overnight into Thursday, Ukraine launched one of its deepest cross-border drone attacks of the war, striking two key Russian oil refineries located hundreds of kilometers from the front lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that targets were hit in the Yaroslavl region, 700 kilometers from the conflict zone, and Bashkortostan, 1,300 kilometers inland from the front. The governor of Yaroslavl called the assault the “most massive” drone attack on the region since the war began, with Russian defense officials reporting that 92 of more than 600 total Ukrainian drones downed overnight were shot down over the region. A drone also struck a Wildberries logistics center in Russia’s Tver region, extending Ukraine’s recent campaign against the e-commerce firm.

Russian forces responded quickly to the Ukrainian attack with new strikes across Ukrainian territory. Overnight strikes killed two civilians at a train station in Lozova, located in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. In the Black Sea off Ukraine’s Odesa coast, a Russian strike hit a commercial cargo vessel carrying Ukrainian grain, leaving one crew member dead, according to Odesa’s regional governor. Kyiv’s air defense forces were unable to intercept any of the Russian missiles launched in this wave of attacks, intensifying Zelensky’s urgent pleas for additional air defense supplies from Western allies.

Speaking through his spokesperson Farhan Haq on Thursday, Guterres highlighted the alarming pattern of escalating strikes on populated areas that has driven the rising civilian death toll. “Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure are a clear violation of international humanitarian law, and must stop immediately,” Haq told reporters. Zelensky framed Ukraine’s deep strikes into Russian territory as a step toward eventual negotiations, saying in a social media post alongside footage of burning Russian infrastructure that “Russia must choose peace.” But four years into the full-scale conflict, diplomatic talks remain completely stalled, with both sides continuing to ramp up the intensity of long-range attacks.

In a parallel development announced Thursday, Zelensky will make his first visit to Serbia since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion this coming Saturday. Serbia has long been a traditional ally of Moscow and is one of the few European countries that has refused to impose sanctions on Russia over the invasion. A senior Ukrainian official told Agence France-Presse that the visit amounts to a “slap in the face for the Russians,” while Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed the official visit, noting that talks will cover both countries’ EU accession bids, as well as economic and energy cooperation. Vucic emphasized that Serbia’s current policy toward the conflict will remain unchanged “until further notice” despite Zelensky’s upcoming visit.

Separately on Thursday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued an urgent warning over growing safety risks at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility. IAEA Director Rafael Grossi said that the plant has seen a sharp rise in unplanned off-site power outages, a trend that he called “deeply concerning and clearly not sustainable.” Plant personnel continue to report regular military activity and explosions close to the facility site multiple times every day, Grossi added, repeating the agency’s longstanding call for “maximum military restraint” around the plant. Located close to active front lines, the Zaporizhzhia plant has repeatedly lost external power, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators to maintain cooling for its nuclear reactors. The facility most recently lost off-site power briefly on Tuesday, though the cause of the outage remains unconfirmed as of Thursday.

On June 24, a pair of powerful back-to-back earthquakes tore through northern Venezuela, reducing hundreds of structures to rubble and leaving a trail of devastating loss. Months after the disaster struck, one critical question remains unanswered: how many people are still unaccounted for, buried beneath the broken concrete and debris? Official government data confirms that more than 6,000 people have been confirmed dead from the tremors, but authorities have continuously refused to release any formal count of missing persons. With almost no hope of survival for anyone still trapped, families of the missing are trapped in a cruel, desperate limbo, clinging to faint hope while continuing their search for loved ones.

The most recent official government update, published Monday, put the confirmed death toll at 6,125. The report also noted that more than 60,990 injured people have received medical treatment, counted 43,679 households displaced or directly impacted by the quakes, and stated that roughly 346,755 tons of rubble have been cleared from disaster zones. But from the day the tremors struck, no consistent or official number of missing people has been made public.

Across the hardest-hit regions, particularly Venezuela’s coastal La Guaira state and its Caraballeda neighborhood, dozens of civilian volunteers have taken recovery efforts into their own hands, digging through collapsed structures by hand in search of any trace of missing family members. For 50-year-old carpenter Victor Morales, the search is personal: he has already recovered the body of his 13-year-old granddaughter from the rubble, but he refuses to leave until he finds his missing 11-year-old grandson. “We’ve been here since day one, digging holes all the way down to the ground floor,” Morales told AFP through tears. “Until I find him, I’m not going to stop.”

Conflicting estimates from public officials and international observers have only deepened the confusion around the true number of missing. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher estimated that more than 50,000 people were unaccounted for, but a diplomatic source who spoke to AFP called that figure inaccurate. “It’s impossible to know exactly, but around 10,000 or more,” the source said.

The root of this uncertainty extends far beyond government reluctance to release data. Venezuela has not conducted a full national census since 2011, and years of severe economic and political crisis have made it impossible to update the country’s core demographic records. This gap in data aligns with the Venezuelan government’s longstanding pattern of releasing demographic and economic statistics only when it is politically convenient, rather than on a consistent, transparent schedule.

Even official statements from senior Venezuelan leaders are inconsistent. On June 30, National Assembly Chief Jorge Rodriguez — brother of interim president Delcy Rodriguez — claimed that 30,000 people were present in the disaster zone when the quakes hit. He stated that 19,000 had been rescued or fled the area, and the death toll at the time stood at roughly 2,000 — a math that leaves 9,000 people unaccounted for. Just last week, however, La Guaira Governor Jose Alejandro Teran put the number of missing at 1,338, based on local residential registry data.

With no reliable official information coming from government agencies, Venezuelan civilians have launched grassroots initiatives to track missing people on their own. Multiple independent websites have been created to crowdsource reports of unaccounted for victims, but even these efforts have produced wildly varying results, with the gap between the lowest and highest missing person estimates topping 20,000.

One of the most prominent citizen-led platforms, “Venezuela te busca” (Venezuela is Looking for You), initially recorded 44,274 reports of missing people, and says 17,790 people have yet to be located. A second site, “Desaparecidos terremoto Venezuela” (Missing Earthquake Venezuela), lists 44,418 total missing, with 29,518 still uncontactable. A third independent platform, venezuelareports.org, puts the total number of unaccounted for at 41,311. Despite the good intentions behind these grassroots projects, the diplomatic source who spoke to AFP confirmed, “there are no reliable figures.”

Experienced rescue volunteers say it is not unusual for large-scale disasters to leave some people permanently unaccounted for. “In disasters of this magnitude, it always happens that some people are not found and remain missing,” explained Esteban Chala, an Argentine rescue volunteer with years of disaster response experience.

For some families, the weeks-long search ends only after weeks of agonizing waiting. After 40 days of digging and waiting, 50-year-old police officer Fernando Bencomo watched as a specialist recovery team pulled the unrecognizable body of his 21-year-old son, student Fernando Antonio, and his son’s pet dog from the ruins. “He had his whole life ahead of him,” Bencomo told AFP. “From day one, I’ve been here searching. I didn’t want to stop until he could rest in peace.” Even after recovering his own son, Bencomo says he will continue helping other families search: “There are more bodies” to recover.

Bencomo’s find removes one more name from the list of missing, but as recovery efforts drag on, the official confirmed death toll continues to climb, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands of families still waiting for answers that the Venezuelan government has yet to provide.

In a move that has stoked already simmered tensions across Northeast Asia, North Korea test-fired a short-range ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan on Thursday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The launch came just one day after a senior North Korean official issued a sharp rebuke of Japan’s accelerating military buildup in the Pacific region.

South Korea’s top military body confirmed that the missile was launched around 5:00 p.m. local time from the coastal Wonsan region of North Korea, with the projectile heading toward the body of water known as the East Sea in Seoul and the Sea of Japan in Tokyo. Officials from both Seoul and Washington are currently conducting detailed analysis to determine the missile’s exact specifications and capabilities, the JCS added in an official briefing to media outlets.

Japan’s defense ministry first reported the launch via social media platform X, noting that an object suspected to be a ballistic missile had been fired from North Korean territory, before later confirming that no debris or damage had been recorded in Japanese territorial areas. In response to the launch, South Korea has bolstered its surveillance activities and raised its military readiness posture to prepare for potential additional launches, while coordinating real-time intelligence sharing with its key security allies, the United States and Japan.

This latest missile test comes amid a rapidly shifting regional security landscape. In a recent Japanese government security assessment, North Korea — which has repeatedly labeled itself an “irreversible” nuclear power since 2019 — was flagged as one of the fastest growing threats to Japanese national security. This week, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi argued that Tokyo must accelerate military expansion with a urgent sense of crisis to address regional risks.

On Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, released a statement through North Korean state media warning that Pyongyang would adopt new military countermeasures in direct response to Japan’s military transformation. “Japan’s push for remilitarization leaves us no choice but to strengthen our own defense capabilities,” the statement implied.

Later this month, South Korea and the United States are set to hold their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises, a drill long framed by Washington and Seoul as a defensive training exercise to deter North Korean aggression. Pyongyang has consistently condemned these joint drills, labeling them offensive invasion rehearsals that justify its own weapons development programs.

On Thursday, the JCS reaffirmed that the combined South Korea-U.S. defense posture remains fully prepared to deliver an overwhelming response to any form of North Korean provocation.

Analysts have linked Thursday’s launch to a number of ongoing geopolitical shifts, most notably North Korea’s deepening military and economic alignment with Russia. Experts widely believe North Korea has supplied troops and ammunition to support Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, in exchange for Russian financial aid, food supplies, energy resources, and advanced military technology.

Several regional security experts suggest the test could be a pre-demonstration of North Korea’s missile capabilities ahead of a widely anticipated visit by Kim Jong Un to Russia later this year. “Before heading to Moscow, Kim may want to prove that these new missile systems have completed successful testing and meet performance requirements,” said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and senior researcher based in Seoul. “If the visit goes forward, Kim will almost certainly showcase these systems to Russian officials and could even open talks for exports.”

Tokyo has pushed back against criticism of its military expansion, with defense officials declining to directly respond to Kim Yo Jong’s remarks but reiterating that Japan’s increased defense capabilities are a minimal necessary deterrent and “do not pose a threat to any other country.” Even so, Tokyo’s 2025 defense budget saw a 9.7 percent increase to $62.2 billion, equal to 1.4 percent of Japan’s GDP — the highest share of GDP allocated to defense since 1958.

Even China, North Korea’s long-standing key ally, has recently raised alarms over what it describes as Japan’s “new militarism,” adding another layer of complexity to regional tensions. The launch also comes as South Korea’s new political leadership has shifted its approach to Pyongyang: Dovish President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June 2025 after defeating his hawkish predecessor, has repeatedly offered Pyongyang open denuclearization talks without preconditions, but North Korea’s closed leadership has yet to respond to any of the offers.

Notably, the two Koreas have remained technically in a state of war for more than 70 years. The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice agreement rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving the divided peninsula in a perpetual state of Cold War-style tension that continues to shape regional security dynamics today.