Zelenskyy says Ukraine’s war with Russia is ‘closer to the end’ as he appeals for more help: “GMA” exclusive
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believes the war with Russia is “closer to an end” than many believe and called on allies to strengthen Ukraine’s army.
“The plan of victory is strengthening of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said during a sit-down interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts. “That’s why we’re asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. It’s very important.”
Watch “Good Morning America” Tuesday at 7 a.m. ET to see more of Robin Roberts’ exclusive interview with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and first lady Olena Zelenska.
“I think that we are closer to the peace than we think,” he continued. “We are closer to the end of the war. We just have to be very strong, very strong.”
Zelenskyy spoke with Roberts as he visited New York Monday for the United Nations General Assembly this week as part of a trip to the U.S. where he has promised to present what he calls his “Victory Plan” to President Joe Biden as well as other key American political leaders.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly appealed to the United States and United Kingdom to drop their restrictions on the long-range missiles they have provided to Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has warned that the use of Western weapons to strike Russian targets would be seen as a serious escalation in the war and a direct challenge by NATO nations.
Zelenskyy’s request comes amid heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine, as well as weeks into Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine said it seized hundreds of square miles and dozens of villages inside the Kursk region in the early days of its surprise offensive.
Zelenskyy told Roberts that Putin is “afraid” of the Kursk operation.
“It’s true. He’s afraid very much,” he said. “Why? Because his people saw that he can’t defend — that he can’t defend all his territory.”
The Ukrainian leader said that only from a “strong position” can Ukraine “push Putin to stop the war.”
Zelenskyy was joined by his wife, first lady Olena Zelenska, for the interview. Later this week, Zelenskyy is expected to travel to Washington to meet with Biden as well as presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Gali Mir-Tibon speaks with ABC News’ chief national correspondent Matt Gutman. ABC News
(TEL AVIV, Israel) — For Israeli husband-and-wife Noam Tibon and Gali Mir-Tibon, Oct. 7, 2023, began like any other day.
They went for an early-morning swim off the Tel Aviv coast on that Saturday morning. They heard sirens but continued to swim — it was safer in the water. When they got back to their car, they checked their phones and saw a text from their son, Amir, that there was a terrorist inside their kibbutz, Nahal Oz, in southern Israel.
“I served 35 years in the military,” Tibon, a retired Israel Defense Forces major general, told ABC News. When he pinged IDF generals about the situation, he said they responded: “We are aware and are on the way.” That phrase “on the way” surprised Noam, because Israel’s vaunted military should already have been there. “Something in my heart told me, ‘Noam, you have to go there.'”
They raced southward, speeding through red lights, Mir-Tibon recounted. She was driving, he was riding in the passenger seat, holding his pistol and frantically making calls.
“We are almost the only vehicle on the road,” the novelist told ABC News. “We get another text message [that] says, there are terrorists in our neighborhood, the new neighborhood of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. So it’s getting worse.”
Along the way, they said they saw a police car blocking the road shooting at a white pickup that Mir-Tibon said they would later learn was a Toyota with Hamas terrorists.
They stopped the car while bullets flew ahead of them debating what to do, Tibon said.
“Suddenly, a young couple jump from the bushes wearing party clothes, which is unusual in this situation,” Tibon said.
They were barefoot and asked for help, Mir-Tibon said.
“They get inside and they are very, very afraid,” she said.
When they asked what happened, Tibon said the couple responded, shaking, “We were in the party. Many terrorists came. They slaughtered everybody.”
The couple had fled the Nova music festival, the site of one of the worst civilian casualty incidents in Israel’s history.
At least 260 people were killed by Hamas militants at the music festival, held in the Negev desert in southern Israel, during the terrorist group’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Overall, militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages — about 100 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israeli officials. It was the deadliest single day for the Jews since the Holocaust.
In the year since, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
As the full scope of the attack that day was still unknown to them, Tibon said they turned around and drove away with the couple.
“You don’t leave anyone behind you, it’s not a hard decision,” Tibon said.
They were able to drop the couple off with police before continuing on toward the kibbutz, Tibon recalled. Along the way, they continued to hear shots being fired and see dead bodies.
“It’s all the way burning cars, bodies, bodies, bodies,” Tibon said.
When they came upon a group of Israeli soldiers, Tibon begged them to take him to his son’s kibbutz.
“The commander hesitates,” he said. “And then one brave guy by the name of Avi … he said, ‘I’m going to help you.'”
Mir-Tibon stayed behind in a shelter while Tibon left with the soldier to find his son and his family. They joined Israeli paratroopers as they got to the gate of Kibbut Nahal Oz, he said.
“We are under very, very heavy fire by the terrorists,” he recalled. “I was fighting for my life.” He said he killed a squad of terrorists, and then tended to three Israeli paratroopers who’d been wounded, two of them severely. He was just yards from the gate of his son’s kibbutz. He turned around and drove the wounded men back to his wife, who then drove back out of the hellscape with the men bleeding out in her car. Eventually, she found a pair of ambulances. The men all survived, the couple recounted.
Tibon returned through the gunfire again towards his son’s kibbutz. Meeting another group of soldiers at the gate. He said he then spent several hours searching homes in the kibbutz — ensuring everyone else was safe — before arriving at his son’s house, about 10 hours after the initial attack. He said he found the door locked, which gave him “hope.”
“From all the houses that I search, if the door was locked, inside there is live people. If the door is open, blood and no people, or blood and bodies,” he said.
Tibon said he banged on the window and yelled for his son, calling out, “It’s Dad!”
He first heard his 3-year-old granddaughter say, “Grandpa here,” he recalled.
Noam’s son Amir, his wife and their children were all rescued.
“This was a very emotional moment,” Tibon said. “I felt I fulfilled my mission. But I have to rescue them and I have to rescue the whole kibbutz, they are not alone.”
Tibon said he helped to evacuate more than 400 people out of the kibbutz.
Mir-Tibon had feared the worst at points while waiting to find out if her family survived.
“There were moments I think, if they’re not alive, I don’t think there is any point to my life,” Mir-Tibon said. “We are the lucky ones.”
(LONDON )– As Jahanzeb Wesa fled toward the Pakistani border in the middle of the night, he wondered if his career defending human rights would help protect him now that he was a refugee himself.
A 28-year-old Afghan journalist and women’s rights advocate, Wesa said he was attacked by a Taliban fighter while covering a women’s rights protest just after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. If he didn’t make it across the border, he said, he knew he would likely be killed.
“We worked for 20 years for a better future for Afghanistan,” he recalled thinking. “Why did we lose everything?”
But arriving in a new country brought no sense of safety.
Following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, some Afghan journalists said they have been in limbo waiting for humanitarian visas while living in exile in Pakistan, where they fled across the shared border when Kabul fell.
The Taliban’s violent suppression of criticism, along with draconian crackdowns on women’s rights, meant journalists who stayed in Afghanistan were at constant risk of being detained, tortured, disappeared or killed.
In Pakistan, unable to legally work and threatened with deportation through government ultimatums and face-to-face interactions, some Afghan journalists applied for visas from countries that promised to help Afghan refugees.
Almost three years later, many said they still have not received a decision.
In the meantime, their prospects in Pakistan are dire, several told ABC News.
Life in Pakistan
Several Afghan journalists living in Pakistan told ABC News that their fear of deportation is omnipresent.
Khatera, a journalist from northern Afghanistan who asked ABC News not to publish her last name for her safety, fled to Pakistan in April 2022 after the Taliban raided her newsroom, destroying radios and TVs.
“After that,” she said, “everything was a nightmare.”
Like many Afghan journalists in Pakistan, Khatera arrived on a tourist visa she had to renew every six months through a private travel agent. Visa renewals were sometimes denied without reason, and officials often asked for bribes, she said.
The Pakistani government did not reply to a request for comment.
Housing, health care and transportation in Pakistan can be prohibitively expensive for Afghans, whose tourist visas don’t allow them to work. Many rely on depleting savings, support from family members, or under-the-table jobs, according to those who spoke to ABC News. Given the economic strain, the biannual visa fee and the corresponding bribes present significant burdens, they said.
But not having proper documentation can bring serious consequences. “Anywhere you’re going, the police are asking about your valid documents,” said Khatera. They sometimes conduct nighttime home check-ins and try to deport those who can’t provide valid papers, she said.
Those disruptions to daily life don’t appear to be unique to journalists. A 2023 Human Rights Watch report declared a “humanitarian crisis” of Pakistani authorities committing widespread abuses, including mass detentions and property seizures, against Afghans in Pakistan. Over a month and a half, the report said, Pakistani authorities deported 20,000 Afghans and coerced over 350,000 more to leave on their own.
Afghan journalists regularly receive death threats from the regime at home over social media, Wesa said. “If I’m deported to Afghanistan,” he said, “the Taliban is waiting for me.”
“No journalist has been condemned to torture, disappearance, or death by the government of Afghanistan,” said a spokesperson for the Taliban-run Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adding that “all citizens of the country are equal in the eyes of the law regardless of their position and profession.”
Some journalists said they also face a widespread mental health crisis. Rahman, an Afghan journalist who asked ABC News to use his middle name due to what he described as ongoing threats from the Taliban, struggles with worsening depression and anxiety. He said he fears for himself and his family, still in Kabul.
“It’s daily mental torture,” he said.
An endless wait
The conditions in Pakistan have spurred many Afghan journalists to apply for humanitarian visas from the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and other European countries. Yet, some have not heard back for about three years.
Wesa applied for an Australian humanitarian visa on Jan. 4, 2022, six months after he arrived in Pakistan. He supplemented his application with support letters from Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International and other nongovernmental organizations stating his life was at risk, he told ABC News.
More than two years after filing his initial application, he has received a confirmation of receipt but no further updates, he said.
A departmental spokesperson from the Australian Department of Home Affairs said they “expect it will take at least 6 years from the date of receipt for processing to commence on [the applications] lodged in 2022, 2023, or 2024.”
“We will wait – there is no other way,” Wesa said in response. “I hope they help us as soon as possible.”
“Day by day, I’m faced with depression and health issues,” he said. “My only hope is that Australia will save my life.”
Rahman, who reported on women’s rights in Afghanistan, is saving up to apply for a family visa from Australia, where his fiancée lives. The process costs over $9,000. He said he believes a humanitarian visa application will not receive a response.
Requests for help from the French embassy and the U.N. have also yielded no results, he said.
“I believe these countries have always been for freedom and for democracy. They can help out,” he said. “I just wonder why it takes such a long time.”
Khatera applied for a visa from the Swiss embassy. It took a year and a half to receive the file number, she said. She was told she needed close relatives in the country, but otherwise, they would likely not be able to help.
“I’m getting depression,” she said. “I’m just trying to fight.”
Every Afghan journalist in exile interviewed by ABC News said they continue to receive threats from the Taliban over social media and fear for their lives every day.
The Taliban denied sending the threats, saying “the government and officials of Afghanistan have not threatened any journalists.”
Broken promises
Afghan journalists waiting in worsening conditions for responses to their visa applications said they feel that Western countries have broken their promises to help Afghan refugees.
The United States expanded a resettlement program for Afghan refugees in 2021 to include journalists and humanitarian workers who had helped the United States. However, as of 2023, The Associated Press reported that only a small portion of applicants had been resettled.
The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The Afghan Pro Bono Initiative, a partnership providing free legal representation to Afghan refugees, published a 2023 report entitled “Two Years of Empty Promises.” The report found that the U.K. resettlement programs for Afghan refugees were fraught with delays, understaffing, administrative hurdles, narrow eligibility and technical issues.
Earlier this year, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs called on Western countries to adopt prima facie refugee status for Afghan women and girls, which would grant refugee status without the need for individual assessments, potentially streamlining the application process and decreasing lengthy wait times.
Despite the dragging wait times and the pervasive hopelessness, many of the 170 Afghan journalists in exile in Pakistan continue to speak out against the Taliban.
Wesa’s X account includes frequent posts about Afghanistan — legal updates, protest videos and women singing to resist what they describe as draconian Taliban policies.
“In any country, I will stand for Afghan women,” he said. “I will risk my life for them.”
(LONDON) — South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that Seoul may respond militarily to any casualties caused by North Korea’s launching of so-called “trash balloons” across the shared border, the state media Yonhap News Agency reported.
“North Korea’s gray zone provocations are continuing and are causing inconvenience and anxiety to the public, so we have summarized the military’s position to date and delivered a message,” Lee Sung-joon, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, as quoted by Yonhap.
“This is an internationally shameful and petty act that creates discomfort and anxiety among our people and is a low-level act intended to incite conflict.”
Though there were “no issues” so far that warranted a military response, Seoul would consider a military response if there were direct casualties caused by the North Korean balloons, Lee added.
“If North Korea’s continued trash balloons are judged to pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens or to have crossed the line, the military will take stern military action,” he continued.
North Korea launched a total of 5,500 trash balloons at South Korea on 22 occasions from May 28 to Sept. 23, Lee said.
Approximately 120 of these were launched on Sunday and Monday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“Some are demanding physical responses from the military, such as shooting them down in the air,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued, according to Yonhap. “However, if unexpected hazardous materials are dispersed due to shooting them down in the air, it could pose a bigger problem to the safety of our citizens.”
Takeoffs and landings at Incheon International Airport — the main airport in the capital Seoul — were suspended twice during the early morning hours of Monday due to North Korean balloons, Yonhap reported.
Several fires have also been reported in metropolitan areas believed caused by “heat timers” attached to the balloons.
Household waste items like paper, vinyl and plastic bottles are among the confirmed contents, the South Korean military said. So far, no hazardous materials were identified. Some trash balloons carried manure.
Seoul estimated that North Korea spent 550 million won — around $411,600 — to produce the balloons to date, Yonhap reported.
South Korean civic groups also send balloons into North Korean territory, often carrying rice, essential medicine and leaflets critical of the regime in Pyongyang. North Korea has repeatedly protested such action and threatened a response.
