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Showing posts with the label Russia

Brittney Griner Fears She Will Serve Entire Sentence in Russia

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 WNBA star Brittney Griner fears she will have to spend her entire nine-year drug possession prison sentence in Russia, her attorney there told the New York Times . “She has not been in as good condition as I could sometimes find her in. She is not yet absolutely convinced that America will be able to take her home,” her Russian attorney, Alexandr D. Boykov told the Times on Wednesday. “She is very worried about what the price of that will be, and she is afraid that she will have to serve the whole sentence here in Russia.” Griner was arrested Feb. 17 at a Russian airport after officials found vaping cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She was charged with smuggling narcotics, People reported. She pleaded guilty to the charges in July and was sentenced Aug. 4 to nine years in a Russian prison, according to the report. President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that while he will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 international summit schedu...

Ukraine's Zelenskiy sees damage in recaptured towns; Russia strikes city water system

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  IZIUM, Ukraine, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said towns and villages recaptured from Russian forces had been devastated, while a major city stepped up efforts on Thursday to repair damage to its water system from missile attacks. Kryvyi Rih, the largest city in central Ukraine with an estimated pre-war population of 650,000, was hit by eight cruise missiles on Wednesday, officials said. The strikes hit the Karachunov reservoir dam, Zelenskiy said in a video address released early on Thursday. The water system had "no military value" and hundreds of thousands of civilians depend on it daily, he said. Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the Krivyi Rih military administration, said in a post on Telegram that 112 homes were flooded but that works to repair the dam on the Inhulets river were under way and that "flooding was receding". Russian forces suffered a stunning reversal this month after Ukrainian troops made a rapid armoured thrust in ...

Russia, Ukraine sign UN-backed grain export deal

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 Russian and Ukrainian officials have signed a deal to allow grain exports from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the agreement would help ease a global food crisis. The neighbouring, warring countries are among the world’s biggest exporters of food, but Russia’s invasion led to a de-facto blockade of the Black Sea, resulting in Ukraine’s exports dropping to a sixth of their pre-war level. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, signed the deal separately on Friday, carefully avoiding sitting at the same table and avoiding shaking hands. The signing ceremony took place at Istanbul’s lavish Dolmabahce Palace in the presence of Erdogan and Guterres. “Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope [and] possibility … and relief in a world that needs it more than ever,” Guterres said, calling on Russia and Ukraine to fully...