(NEW YORK) — Ukraine on Thursday began its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, officials told ABC News.
Well-trained Ukrainian troops had been gathering at strategic locations near the front lines in recent days, Western officials said last week.
Two Ukrainian officials, including a source close to President Volodymry Zelenskyy confirmed to ABC News that an active phase of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway.
Story developing…
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(LONDON) — An increasing number of family and friends of Belarusian political prisoners say they are unable to contact their loved ones.
There are hundreds of political prisoners in Belarus, many of whom were arrested in the aftermath of the disputed 2020 presidential election, when protests and dissent were violently suppressed.
Tatsiana Komich hasn’t heard from her sister, Maria Kalesnikava since February. Kalesnikava has been in prison since September 2020 after she refused to be forcibly deported from Belarus by tearing her passport to shreds.
She was a key figure in the 2020 election against President Alexander Lukashenko and remained an active protest leader even after most prominent activists had fled the country. She is serving an 11-year sentence, charged with extremism and trying to seize power.
“There are no letters, no calls, which previously were allowed also and no visits as well,” Khomich, who lives outside Belarus, said.
Their father sought answers from authorities but he was told that no restrictions on communication had been put in place. Kalesnikava simply did not want to communicate with them.
But Khomich says she knows that isn’t true.
“It’s definitely been done on purpose to isolate her, to cut off any communication with the outside world,” she said.
Kalesnikava’s is not a unique case. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’ de facto opposition leader in exile, ran against Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential elections after her husband, Siarhei — who had intended to run — was imprisoned on trumped up charges.
She has posted to her social media accounts that she hasn’t heard from her husband in nearly three months.
Belarusian human rights organization, Viasna, says there are 1,513 recorded political prisoners in Belarus.
Dziyana Pinchuk, a human rights activist who works for Viasna, says Lukashenko has long hoped silence would stop people from asking questions about political prisoners.
“The regime supposedly erases these people from our lives, as if they are dead. But more than 1,500 political prisoners are alive and held in prisons only because they yearned for a democratic Belarus and opposed the war in Ukraine,” she told ABC News.
She added that while several high profile prisoners are bringing the issue to the mainstream, there are probably many more instances of contact being cut off between prisoners and family members “because Belarusian society is in a state of extreme fear, so relatives are afraid to tell human rights activists and journalists such facts under the threat of persecution.”
Khomich echoed this, saying relatives inside Belarus walk a fine line and that “people in Belarus cannot have any public protests or publicly actually express their opinion. It’s a very complicated situation because you need to find the balance so that these relatives who are in Belarus, they are not imprisoned.”
Pinchuk added that Viasna continues to help families file complaints. They also work with the United Nations and other international organizations to both raise awareness for Belarusian political prisoners, and try to improve conditions amidst the increasing repressions.
But, despite their endeavors, answers about this latest crackdown on already limited freedoms continue to remain elusive.
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(PARIS) — Eight people, including children, were injured in a stabbing in a town in the French Alps on Thursday morning, local authorities said.
The attack took place at about 9:45 a.m. local time, in Annecy’s city center, a spokesperson for the local prefecture told ABC News.
A suspect was arrested immediately and is currently in police custody, the spokesperson said.
“Several people including children have been injured by an individual armed with a knife in a square in Annecy,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Twitter.
The local prefecture said it had not yet released the health status or ages of the victims.
Annecy sits close to the French border and is about 20 miles south of Geneva, Switzerland. Tourists flock to the historic Medieval city center to stroll alongside canals, according to the local tourist office.
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(NEW YORK) — The FBI agents who will be escorting Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, back to the United States have arrived in Peru, sources told ABC News.
Upon arrival in the U.S., van der Sloot will face a federal trial on extortion and wire fraud charges stemming from an accusation that he tried to profit from his connection to the Holloway case.
Van der Sloot has been serving a 28-year sentence at the Challapalca prison in Peru for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old college student Stephany Flores. The Dutch citizen was transferred to another prison in Lima over the weekend to await his extradition to the U.S., scheduled for Thursday.
The flight carrying the FBI agents arrived in Lima around 4 p.m. local time Wednesday, sources said. Sixteen people were on the flight — including eight federal agents and eight crew members, the sources said.
Following a medical check and other extradition processes, van der Sloot and the FBI agents are expected to depart for the U.S. between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. local time. The Peruvian government told ABC News they will provide footage “showing his transfer.”
Van der Sloot lost his extradition appeal earlier this week, according to the Peruvian Supreme Court. He had filed “a habeas corpus application against the citizen extradition process,” according to a court document, and on Monday he refused to sign the laissez-passer that would allow him to be extradited, his lawyer told ABC News.
Van der Sloot was indicted by an Alabama federal grand jury in 2010 for allegedly trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Holloway’s family after her disappearance.
Holloway, 18, went missing in May 2005 while on a high school graduation trip in Aruba. She was last seen driving off with a group of young men, including van der Sloot, then 17.
Van der Sloot was detained as a suspect in the teen’s disappearance and then later released without charge due to a lack of evidence.
An Alabama judge later declared Holloway dead, though her body was never found. No charges have been filed in the case.
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(ROME) — Pope Francis’ night “passed well” after he underwent intestinal surgery on Wednesday, Vatican officials said Thursday morning.
The Holy See Press Office had said Wednesday evening local time that the surgery was over and that “it took place without complications and lasted three hours.” The pontiff is expected to spend several days in the hospital recovering.
After his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, the pope went to Gemelli hospital in Rome and underwent “a Laparotomy and abdominal wall plastic surgery with prosthesis under general anaesthesia,” Matteo Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said in a statement in Italian.
The surgery was arranged within the last few days, the Vatican said. He’s expected to stay in the hospital for several days to make a full recovery.
The 86-year-old pontiff spent three days in the hospital in March after he complained he was having difficulty breathing.
The pontiff’s March hospital stay had gone well “with normal medical progress,” as he recovered from bronchitis, Vatican officials said at the time.
Francis also had intestinal surgery two years ago for diverticular stenosis. That three-hour operation included an hemicolectomy, which is the removal of part of the colon.
Francis often uses a wheelchair or walker during public events, including when he presided over the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, his retired predecessor, in January.
Vatican officials said on Thursday they planned to release additional information on Wednesday’s procedure.
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(KHERSON, Ukraine) — The collapse of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam has left behind vast quantities of beached fish, contributing to fears of an environmental disaster along the country’s Dnipro River.
Video verified by ABC News showed large quantities of beached fish lying on the depleted shoreline of the Dnipro River.
In a video posted to Telegram by Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, a man’s voice can be heard stating that the date is June 7 and that his location is “Mar’yans’ke, Dnipropetrovsk region.” ABC News geolocated the video to Mar’yans’ke, which lies on the Kakhovka reservoir around 65 miles upstream from the dam.
The dam and hydro-electric power plant in Russia-occupied southern Ukraine breached early Tuesday, prompting mass evacuations and fears of widespread ecological devastation with Ukraine accusing Russia of committing an act of “ecocide.”
Russia has denied responsibility for the collapse, instead blaming Ukraine.
The area of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region beneath the dam continues to reel from extreme flooding, but upstream of the dam, water levels have sharply receded in the Kakhovka reservoir feeding the river.
Roman Novitskyi, who studies fish at Ukraine’s Dnipro State Agrarian and Economic University, told ABC News he was “not surprised” by the videos.
“Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of development we expected,” Novitskyi told ABC News. “The Kakhovka reservoir is shallow, so as soon as the water recedes, large areas are immediately drained.”
“In the video,” Novitskyi said. “I see a lot of crucians, gobies, carps— valuable species of fish.”
“This shows damage is being done to the fishery,” he added.
Novitskyi said the Kakhovka reservoir contains some 10-15,000 tons of fish, while the smaller Dnipro reservoir to the north contains at least 4,000 tons of fish.
Contamination fears
Yevhen Korzhov, a hydrologist from Ukraine’s Kherson State Agrarian and Economic University, told ABC News that the summer temperatures worsen the health risks from the dam breach, with living matter breaking down faster and in turn further contaminating water supplies.
“In the coming months, we will observe the deterioration of the quality of drinking water and the infection of fish, birds and aquatic animals,” Korzhov said.
Korzhov said that early calculations suggested some 3,600 square kilometers of water in southern Ukraine were at risk of contamination.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday informed residents to expect “a plague of fish,” warning residents against collecting fish owing to the risk of botulism and intestinal infection.
And in a post on the messaging app Telegram, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that hundreds of thousands of people who normally rely on the Kakhovka reservoir have been left without access to clean drinking water.
Claims of ‘ecocide’
Kateryna Polianska, an ecologist from the Ukrainian Environment People Law NGO told ABC News that the dam collapse will bring widespread habitat disruption to important national parks such as the UNESCO- protected Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, and even on the wider region including Romania, Georgia, Turkey and Bulgaria.
“This will change the population of birds and fishes in the region. It will destroy their breeding systems,” Polianska said.
“It is a huge catastrophe for the ecosystem. It is so very hard. It’s our nature, it’s our Ukraine,” she added.
Ukraine’s country’s public prosecutor told Reuters on Tuesday that it is investigating a possible case of “ecocide” in connection with the collapse of the dam.
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(ROME) — Pope Francis had intestinal surgery on Wednesday and will spend several days in the hospital recovering, Vatican officials said.
The Holy See Press Office announced Wednesday evening local time that the surgery was over and that “it took place without complications and lasted three hours.”
After his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, the pontiff went to Gemelli hospital in Rome and underwent “a Laparotomy and abdominal wall plastic surgery with prosthesis under general anaesthesia,” Matteo Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said in a statement in Italian.
The surgery was arranged within the last few days, the Vatican said. He’s expected to stay in the hospital for several days to make a full recovery.
The 86-year-old pontiff spent three days in the hospital in March after he complained he was having difficulty breathing.
The pontiff’s March hospital stay had gone well “with normal medical progress,” as he recovered from bronchitis, Vatican officials said at the time.
Francis also had intestinal surgery two years ago for diverticular stenosis. That three-hour operation included an hemicolectomy, which is the removal of part of the colon.
Francis often uses a wheelchair or walker during public events, including when he presided over the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, his retired predecessor, in January.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(NEW YORK) — The detentions of U.S. citizens, like reporter Evan Gershkovich, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan by Russia, has kept tensions between the U.S. and Russia high as the war in Ukraine rages on.
Wall Street Journal national security reporter Brett Forrest has taken a look at another case, the 2015 disappearance and murder of Billy Reilly, an FBI informant in his new book, “Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI Secret Wars.”
Forrest spoke about the case and his book with ABC News Live Monday. The FBI didn’t immediately comment on the book and Forrest’s reporting.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So your book dives into the post 9/11 world and the FBI’s Confidential Human Source program. Explain what that program is and how Billy Reilly got pulled into it, and the world of global intelligence.
BRETT FORREST: Well, the FBI, since its foundation, has used cooperators and informants as a fundamental part of its work. But after 9/11, when Congress and the administration mandated that the FBI do more to be proactive in its prevention of terrorist conspiracy, the bureau really stepped up its game with such people and reconfigured their approach with them.
They created something called the Confidential Human Source program, which ultimately they used to gather not just evidence to be used in courtrooms, but intelligence to be used outside of DOJ.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And your book is based on an article that you wrote back in 2019 called “The FBI Lost Our Son,” where you followed Billy’s tracks up until the point where he was found without revealing what happened to him. Can you explain how he went missing?
FORREST: Billy Reilly was a young man growing up outside Detroit, and he came of age after 9/11 and was fascinated by global conflict and world religions and foreign languages. And that brought him to the attention of the FBI, as internet traffic did ultimately after the war in Ukraine broke out in 2014.
A year after that, Billy traveled to Russia. His parents weren’t sure why he went and he disappeared there.
ABC NEWS LIVE: How do you hope or perhaps expect people to react at home when hearing his full story?
FORREST: Well, I think fundamentally the lesson we have here is that the FBI and other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies continue to demand our scrutiny, and they need oversight.
In the case of Billy Reilly, the FBI has not been forthcoming with the family, nor with myself and others who are trying to get answers, including folks on Capitol Hill. And his story, the ending, at least, and the FBI’s involvement in it remains a mystery.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Your colleague, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, is still being held. From your research, what can families like his hope for when it comes to dealing with Russia?
FORREST: Well, not every American who goes missing or is detained in Russia gets the same treatment from the U.S. government. Evan, despite the negative experience that he’s undergoing, at least has the support of the U.S. government who has designated him as wrongfully detained.
There are other people, other Americans in Russian prisons who have been there for years under questionable circumstances, who have been forgotten. Nonetheless, all these people face a terrible fate of not really being able to affect their circumstances.
ABC NEWS LIVE: You’ve also been on the ground in Ukraine covering the many brutal battles of the Ukraine-Russia war more than a year into this conflict. What’s your biggest takeaway from your time in the field there?
FORREST: Well, I have had quite a number of years in both countries, so for me, it’s been a terrible personal experience as well. And we all just want to figure out how this could possibly end. And that remains a big question mark because both sides have told themselves that they’re winning, at least to some degree. And that makes it very difficult for them to come to the negotiating table.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Would you go to Russia at this point for work or personal reasons or otherwise?
FORREST: I think that’s probably not a good idea, especially given what’s been happening with Evan. This is something I think many of us were afraid of as a possibility once the war began and the worst forces in Russia came to the fore.
The genie is out of the bottle in Russia. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea for folks to go over there and work there at least Americans.
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(ROME) — Pope Francis will undergo an intestinal surgery on Wednesday and spend several days in the hospital recovering, Vatican officials said.
After his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, the pontiff went to Gemelli hospital in Rome, “where in the early afternoon he will undergo a Laparotomy and abdominal wall plastic surgery with prosthesis under general anaesthesia,” Matteo Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said in a statement in Italian.
The surgery was arranged within the last few days, the Vatican said. He’s expected to stay in the hospital for several days to make a full recovery.
The 86-year-old pontiff spent three days in the hospital in March after he complained he was having difficulty breathing.
The pontiff’s hospital stay had gone well “with normal medical progress,” as he recovered from bronchitis, Vatican officials said at the time.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Tuesday directed the Biden administration to take action after a conservative group sued to reveal government records about Prince Harry’s immigration to the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols urged the government to decide how it will respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, that aims to obtain documents related to the duke of Sussex’s visa and legal status in the U.S.
Harry, who married Meghan Markle in 2018, moved to California in 2020 after stepping back from the British royal family.
Visa applications are not typically disclosed publicly due to privacy concerns.
But the Heritage Foundation filed a lawsuit last week to get Harry’s immigration documents, calling for the Department of Homeland Security to expedite its FOIA process because of media coverage of the prince’s admitted drug use when he was younger.
The Heritage Foundation has said in court filings that the drug use “surfaced the question” about whether Harry received favorable treatment in being granted entry to the U.S. and whether Harry disclosed his past in his visa application, as required.
The question of whether immigration authorities must release the documents has not been taken up by the federal court. Judge Nichols said Tuesday that he was “frustrated” he was instead forced to consider a “highly technical and procedural” freedom of information question instead of getting straight to the merits of the case.
DHS now must decide whether it can release any of the requested documents, expedite the FOIA process or deny The Heritage Foundation request. If the foundation is denied, they could seek to have the judge release the paperwork in the public interest — a claim the government has played down.
Federal lawyers argued on Tuesday that the U.K. tabloids noted by the Heritage Foundation as significant examples of public interest were not “mainstream media” to most Americans.
Multiple sub-agencies of DHS, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, have already denied the foundation’s request, according to a Justice Department attorney.
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