Ukraine trying to push deeper into Russia, as advance appears slowed by Russian reinforcements
Ukrainian tank crew take a break while operating a Soviet-made T-72 tank in the Sumy region, near the border with Russia, on August 12, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian forces are still seeking to advance deeper into Russia’s Kursk region, but appear to be coming up against increased Russian resistance more than a week since Ukraine launched its unprecedented incursion across the border.
Russia’s Defense Ministry and pro-Kremlin military bloggers reported Tuesday that Ukrainian forces again launched multiple attempts overnight to break through Russian defensive lines roughly 20 km, or about 12 miles, inside the Kursk region, seeking to further expand a bridgehead captured there in the first days of the Ukrainian offensive operation.
Those reports claimed the Ukrainian attacks were largely rebuffed, but that Russian positions remained under pressure. More Russian forces continue to also arrive to counterattack Ukraine’s surprise attack, which is the first foreign incursion into Russia since World War II.
On the border of Ukraine’s Sumy region, foreign journalists, including The New York Times, reported seeing columns of Ukrainian troops and armored vehicles continuing to cross over into Russia, passing unhindered through the border crossing.
Ukrainian troops are trying to expand their area of control from the border town of Sudzha in multiple directions. They have been attempting for several days to capture the village of Korenevo, which is about 40 km northwesterly, which would allow them to move toward a key highway, but so far have been unable to dislodge Russian units, according to Russian military bloggers.
Ukraine’s top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday that Ukraine controlled roughly 1,000 square km, or about 386 square miles, of Russian territory in Kursk.
Ukrainian forces have not moved significantly forward in the past several days, suggesting that advancing has become more difficult as Russia recovers from the initial surprise and rushes more reinforcements to the region. Russia has been using aircraft and drones to target Ukrainian units.
An increased number of videos appearing to show destroyed Ukrainian vehicles have been appearing on pro-Russian social media accounts, including some associated with Russia’s military.
Russian analysts have also warned Ukraine could attempt to launch new incursions at other points along the border.
Catherine, Princess of Wales attends day fourteen of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 14, 2024 in London. — Karwai Tang/WireImage via Getty Images, FILE
(ABERDEENSHIRE, Scotland) — Kate Middleton was seen in a rare appearance Sunday as she attended service with the royal family amid her treatment for cancer.
The Princess of Wales was joined by her husband, Prince William, as the couple arrived at Crathie Kirk church on the Balmoral Estate on Sunday in photos obtained by the Daily Mail.
During the outing, Kate, 42, donned a light brown trench coat paired with earrings and a feather hat. Meanwhile, William was seen sporting a navy blue suit.
The photos show the couple apparently in high spirits, smiling and chatting while sitting in their vehicle.
Other royal family members who were also seen arriving for the Sunday service included King Charles III and wife Queen Camilla as well as Prince Edward and his wife, Sophie.
Kensington Palace hasn’t commented on the photos.
Kate was most recently seen in public last month when she stepped out to attend the men’s final at Wimbledon. She was seen sporting a purple Safiyaa dress and received a standing ovation from the crowd.
Prior to that, Kate made a public appearance in June at Trooping the Colour, where she wore a white Jenny Packham dress with black trim and a black bow.
At the time, Kate joined William and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, as well as other royal family members at the annual event.
Her appearance at Trooping the Colour also came after she shared a first update on her health since announcing her cancer diagnosis in March. She said at the time she was “making good progress” as she undergoes chemotherapy but was not “out of the woods yet.”
“I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days,” Kate said in a written message shared by Kensington Palace on June 14. “On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.”
Kate also said at the time her treatment would continue “for a few more months.”
“On the days I feel well enough, it is a joy to engage with school life, spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — Conservationists in Latin America, home to some of the most important ecosystems in the world, are persisting in their environmental work despite political challenges that can sometimes stand in the way and the dangers they face, multiple experts told ABC News.
Central and South American countries are facing some of the most significant environmental challenges in recent history. Drought is widespread throughout the region — especially in Uruguay, northern Argentina and southern Brazil, according to a 2023 report by the Global Drought Observatory.
In Mexico, water pollution adversely impacts indigenous groups, according to a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. In Brazil, deforestation, in the form of illegal logging as well as land clearing for agriculture, is widespread, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Fire activity in Brazil and Bolivia has reached levels not seen in over a decade as a prolonged drought parched landscapes in both countries, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado tropical savanna and the Pantanal wetlands are currently experiencing record-breaking wildfires as a result of these conditions, according to officials in that country.
The lives of conservationists working in Latin America are often in danger as they work to alleviate these crises, Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, a communications professor at Ottawa University who has studied mining in southern Venezuela, told ABC News.
In 2023, nearly 200 land and environmental conservationists were killed worldwide, according to a report by Global Witness, an international NGO that fights against natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption and human rights abuses. The vast majority of the deaths — about 85% — occurred in Latin American countries, mostly in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, the report found.
Many conservationists will avoid working in high-conflict areas due to the danger, Mauricio Bianco, vice president of Conservation International Brazil, an environmental nonprofit, told ABC News.
In Venezuela, speaking out against Nicolás Maduro, who has served as president since 2013, can bring severe consequences, Nahon-Serfaty claimed.
Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old Indigenous Uwottuja man who had spoken out against illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon, was fatally shot in 2022. While unsolved, the murder was seen as an attempt to silence those who demonstrate against Maduro’s agenda, Nahon-Serfaty said.
Maduro’s administration did not comment on Arana’s death at the time, but the United Nations warned about the violent groups that control gold mines in the country.
The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela recommended that the allegations made by Indigenous peoples of the State of Amazonas regarding violent attacks against their leaders “should be seriously investigated.”
Environmental threats, meanwhile, not only affect the natural ecosystem. They also impact the watersheds and food systems and, therefore, the economy as well — making it difficult for residents in the region to thrive, Rachael Garrett, a professor of conservation and development at the University of Cambridge, told ABC News.
“It’s a huge public health toll on people living in these areas. It’s devastating for biodiversity,” Garrett said. “So there is not really any part of life that it won’t impact.”
Researchers and conservationists are able to make the biggest difference before the loss occurs — before the drought sets in, the forests and the Indigenous peoples within are lost and the wildfires spark, Garrett said. The race against time motivates them, because the consequences can be irreversible in a short amount of time, she added.
“We can make a difference very quickly,” Garrett said. “We have to persist, because the consequences of not doing so are so catastrophic.”
Conservation groups have to focus on strengthening and protecting delicate ecosystems as well as Indigenous groups who are facing extinction — before the tipping point occurs, Bianco said.
These groups must also prioritize the restoration of forests and the management of agricultural land in a sustainable way, he said.
While government involvement is necessary for policy change, conservation groups in Latin America have learned to lean on Indigenous and local communities as well as grassroots organizations to accomplish their work at the project level, according to Bianco.
Even with government protections and policy in place, a sense of “lawlessness” makes it nearly impossible for them to be enforced, Garrett said. It has been difficult to track progress in these regions due to a lack of transparency, as governments in places like Brazil and Venezuela often do not release any or accurate information on the state of the environment, according to Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty.
Environmental crime is the third-largest area of criminal activity in the world, according to the FBI. Illegal activity associated with timber and wildlife trafficking, fishing, waste trade, pollution and animal cruelty generate up to $280 billion per year worldwide.
Earlier this week, Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva said current punishments for environmental crimes such as arson are inadequate during an appearance on Bom Dia Ministro, a publish service program. Lula’s administration has advocated for harsher punishment for environmental crimes.
Some governments in Latin America have displayed a disdain for protecting the environment in recent years, multiple experts told ABC News.
Multiple times during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022, key government officials were caught on tape talking about the ways in which they planned to deceive the public, Garrett said. In 2020, Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was recorded during a cabinet meeting advising fellow lawmakers to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a distraction from regulations protecting the Amazon rainforest from deforestation, according to Reuters.
“We need to make an effort while we are in this calm moment in terms of press coverage, because they are only talking about COVID, and push through and change all the rules and simplify norms,” Salles was heard saying in the recording of the ministers’ meeting, released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
In a statement issued by Brazil’s Environment Ministry, Salles said, “I have always defended de-bureaucratization and simplifying norms, in all areas, with good sense and all within the law.”
“It’s part of this whole general new set of rules that politicians play by these days where they feel like there are no consequences for doing the wrong thing,” Garrett said in regard to the Bosolnaro administration’s pro-deforestation agenda.
Salles resigned in 2021 amid a probe into illegal logging in the country. It is unclear whether Salles has or will face legal consequences in the probe.
In Venezuela, initiatives to mine for gold, diamonds and other minerals in the southern part of the country, made first by former President Hugo Chávez and reinforced by Maduro, wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan side of the Amazonian jungle, said Nahon-Serfaty. To the north, oil spills into the Caribbean Sea are common due to the lack of regulations, he added, with a spill from the refinery in El Palito reported last month.
When corruption is embedded into a political system, it plays an invisible role in almost every decision those in power make, Garrett and Nahon-Serfaty said, especially when institutionalized through campaign financing systems and the individual agendas of the policymakers.
It can be near-impossible to pinpoint the root of the issue in these types of regimes, Garrett said.
“Corruption is one of this very insidious problems that is extremely difficult to deal with because you can’t study it,” Garrett said. “It’s hidden, and it can be institutionalized.”
It will be important for governments and authorities in Latin America to enforce environmental policies going forward, Bianco said.
The global spotlight will be on Brazil going into next year as it gears up to host COP30, the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Brazil was one of the countries with the weakest decarbonization pledges, going into COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. The country has since ramped up its pledges under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency in the years since, with new climate targets aiming to cut emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030.
In Mexico, the use of environmental technologies to improve water and waste infrastructure is expected to grow in the coming years to ease the strain of drought. The country is also implementing federal regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
Those doing the work to achieve even more ambitious climate and environment goals must continue, despite the difficulties, Garrett said.
The Amazon creates an entire ecosystem of rainfall that much of southern Brazil and surrounding countries rely on, Garrett said. As deforestation creates a feedback loop of decreased rainfall and increased drought, the water system is threatened and the risk of severe wildfires heightens, driving indigenous communities out and placing food and water security at risk for all who rely on it.
“I can’t think of any better way to spend my own life than trying to help prevent these irreversible harms that will take away from the world of opportunities that future generations have to experience a healthy climate and biodiversity,” Garrett said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. (OHAD ZWIGENBERG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Officials in Israel’s defense establishment are now strenuously contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel maintain control of the narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and warning that Netanyahu’s reluctance to sign a cease-fire deal with Hamas is pushing Israel into a potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Israeli military and senior defense officials who spoke with ABC News.
A war with Hezbollah in Lebanon “is easy to start, but very hard to end,” one such official said, on condition of anonymity. “We are losing the war, we are losing deterrence, we are losing the hostages.”
ABC News, along with other journalists and accompanied by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel, was given access to the Philadelphi Corridor Friday — a narrow strip of territory roughly a half-mile wide that runs along the entirety of the southern Gaza border with Egypt. What were once blocks of apartments there are now piles of rubble amid a wasteland of dunes. Military officials told ABC News their work in the corridor was mostly done.
IDF and other Israeli military officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have called a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas the key to reaching a solution to Israel’s current regional strife. Israel and Hezbollah, which has been launching frequent rocket attacks against northern Israel from Lebanon, have each agreed to the broad parameters of a deal to decrease hostilities, but Hezbollah has said its participation is contingent on Israel reaching a cease-fire deal with Hamas in Gaza — which Hamas says must include all Israeli forces leaving Gaza.
However, many Israeli officials, including several who spoke with ABC News in recent days, believe that Netanyahu is purposely trying to torpedo negotiations to free the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas by insisting that the Philadelphi Corridor remain under Israel’s control, though they did not speak to possible reasons for Netanyahu’s insistence.
“If Philadelphi was so important, why did we wait eight months [into the war] to take it?” one senior Israeli official told ABC News.
Those officials now say that Israel is “stuck” in Gaza, able to kill Hamas militants and yet unable to advance one of the Israel-Hamas war’s primary aims, which Israeli Defense Minister Gallant recently told a small group of reporters was the “moral and ethical commitment” to bring Israel’s remaining hostages home. One official said that given the current circumstances, the best Israel can hope for is the repatriation of perhaps 20-30 hostages out of the 100 or so believed to remain in Gaza.
U.S. Envoy Amos Hochstein has been shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem attempting to broker a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah that would see the latter retreat about 10 kilometers north of their current position in Lebanon, replaced by Lebanese Army forces and personnel from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in exchange for small Israeli concessions along the Israeli-Lebanese border. This is the same deal Israeli officials have said has been on the table since January.
Adding urgency to the current situation are general concerns about whether Israel possesses sufficient munitions and missile and rocket/missile interceptors to defend itself in any confrontation with Hezbollah. One senior Israeli official told ABC News that Israel’s hawks, clamoring for war with Hezbollah, are unaware of how difficult it is for Israel to procure Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits, necessary to convert so-called “dumb” bombs into precision guided weapons that use GPS coordinates to strike a target.
Israeli officials are also concerned that Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and missiles could cause widespread damage across Israel. Those officials also warn of the potential for destruction on the Lebanese side. For example, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Israel’s air force crippled Lebanon’s electrical grid and flattened large swaths of south Beirut.
Israel is also contending with how to respond to a recent attack from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, after Israel says it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi surface-to-surface missile fired at Israel on Sunday.
The Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the missile attack, claiming in a statement that it was aimed at an “important military target” in the Tel Aviv region. The Houthis claimed the missile flew some 1,267 miles in less than 12 minutes and that Israeli anti-missile defenses “failed to intercept” the weapon. The IDF initially confirmed to ABC News that its defenses failed to intercept the missile but changed its conclusions upon further investigation.
The Israeli officials who spoke with ABC News said that Israel is vowing retaliation, and is investigating how the Houthis managed to twice penetrate Israel’s air defenses in two months.
“The Houthis are here to stay,” said one official, adding that the assessment is that they will likely keep attacking, regardless of a Hamas ceasefire.
