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Palestinians crowd into ever-shrinking areas in Gaza as Israel’s war against Hamas enters 3rd month

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Desperate Palestinians fleeing Israel’s expanding ground offensive crowded into an ever-shrinking area of the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war entered its third month on Friday. The United Nations warned that its aid operation is “in tatters” because no place in the besieged enclave is safe.

The Israeli Army said that over the past day, its forces had struck about 450 targets in the tiny, densely populated Gaza Strip, signalling the continued intensity of a campaign that has already led to widespread civilian casualties and mass displacements.

Israel also dropped leaflets over parts of Gaza with a biblical warning to Hamas leaders that it would take “a life for a life, an eye for an eye.” A day after troops rounded up hundreds of Palestinians for questioning about suspected ties to Hamas, an Israeli government spokesman suggested that practice would continue.

The first images of such roundups emerged on Thursday from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, showing dozens of men kneeling or sitting in the streets, stripped down to their underwear, their hands bound behind their backs and some with their heads bowed.

Israel has vowed to crush the military capabilities of Hamas, which rules Gaza, and remove it from power following the group’s October 7 attack that sparked the war.

Israel’s air and ground campaign initially focused on the northern half of Gaza, leading hundreds of thousands of residents to flee south. Intense battles continued in parts of the north in recent days.

“Airstrikes and random artillery shelling have continued intensely since last night until this morning,” said Hassan Al Najjar, a journalist speaking by phone from northern Gaza.

UN monitors said Israeli troops reportedly detained men and boys from the age of 15 in a school-turned-shelter in the town of Beit Lahiya, in the north.

Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, said on Friday that authorities were questioning the detainees — who he said were picked up in Hamas strongholds — to determine whether they were members of the militant group.

Those detained were “military-aged men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago,” Levy said, indicating there would be more such sweeps going forward as troops move from north to south.

In central Gaza, leaflets were dropped on the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Maghazi with a message for Hamas officials.

“To Hamas leaders: A life for a life, an eye for an eye and whoever started is to blame. If you punish, then punish with the like of that wherewith you were afflicted,” the leaflet read, using verses from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, that are similar to a warning in the Old Testament.

There has also been a dramatic surge in deadly military raids and an increase on restrictions on Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war.

Israeli forces stormed into a refugee camp in the West Bank on Friday to arrest suspected Palestinian militants, unleashing fighting with local gunmen in which six Palestinians were killed, health officials said. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on the operation.

Earlier this week, U.N Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe,” and Arab and predominantly Muslim nations have called for a vote Friday on a Council resolution to demand an immediate cease-fire.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, appears likely to block any U.N. effort to halt the fighting, which was triggered by the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel. Still, U.S. concern over the devastation is growing. U.S. officials told Israel ahead of the expansion of its ground offensive to southern Gaza several days ago that it must limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north.

Over the past week, Israeli forces expanded their ground offensive into southern Gaza, with a focus on Khan Younis, the territory’s second largest city.

On Friday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israel’s air force attacked a home facing the society’s office in Khan Younis. It did not give details about casualties.

Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, reported a strike in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, saying it killed and wounded a number of people but gave no exact numbers.

The military says it makes every effort to spare civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields as the militants fight in dense residential areas.

With the entire Gaza Strip under military assault, tens of thousands of people displaced by the fighting have packed into the border city of Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, and Muwasi, a nearby patch of barren coastline that Israel has declared a safe zone.

With shelters significantly beyond capacity, many people pitched tents along the side of the road leading from Rafah to Muwasi.

“We do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore,” the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, warned Thursday. The pace of Israel’s military assault “has made no place safe for civilians in southern Gaza, which had been a cornerstone of the humanitarian plan to protect civilians and thus to provide aid to them. But without places of safety, that plan is in tatters.”

Israel has designated Muwasi on the territory’s Mediterranean coast as a safe zone. But the U.N. and relief agencies have called that a poorly planned solution.

Israel’s campaign has killed more than 17,100 people in Gaza — 70% of them women and children — and wounded more than 46,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and took more than 240 hostages. More than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after more than 100 were freed, most during a cease-fire last month.

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Israel informs Arab states it wants buffer zone in post-war Gaza: Sources

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Israel has informed several Arab states that it wants to carve out a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border to prevent future attacks as part of proposals for the enclave after war ends, Egyptian and regional sources said.

According to three regional sources, Israel related its plans to its neighbours Egypt and Jordan, along with the United Arab Emirates, which normalised ties with Israel in 2020.

They also said that Saudi Arabia, which does not have ties with Israel and which halted a U.S.-mediated normalisation process after the Gaza war flared on Oct. 7, had been informed. The sources did not say how the information reached Riyadh, which officially does not have direct communication channels with Israel. Non-Arab Turkey was also told, the sources said.

The initiative does not indicate an imminent end to Israel’s offensive – which resumed on Friday after a seven-day truce – but it shows Israel is reaching out beyond established Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar, as it seeks to shape a post-war Gaza.

No Arab states have shown any willingness to police or administer Gaza in future and most have roundly condemned Israel’s offensive that has killed more than 15,000 people and levelled swathes of Gaza’s urban areas. Hamas killed 1,200 people in its Oct. 7 raid and took more than 200 hostages.

“Israel wants this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to the south to prevent any Hamas or other militants from infiltrating or attacking Israel,” said a senior regional security official, one of the three regional sources who asked not to be identified by nationality.

The Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jordanian officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

A UAE official did not respond directly when asked if Abu Dhabi had been told about the buffer zone, but said: “The UAE will support any future post-war arrangements agreed upon by all the concerned parties” to achieve stability and a Palestinian state.

Asked about plans for a buffer zone, Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters: “The plan is more detailed than that. It’s based on a three-tier process for the day after Hamas.”

Outlining the Israeli government’s position, he said the three tiers involved destroying Hamas, demilitarising Gaza and de-radicalising the enclave.

“A buffer zone may be part of the demilitarisation process,” he said. He declined to offer details when asked whether those plans had been raised with international partners, including Arab states.

Arab states have dismissed as impossible Israel’s goal of wiping out Hamas, saying it was more than simply a militant force that could be defeated.

Squeezing Palestinians

Israel has suggested in the past it was considering a buffer zone inside Gaza, but the sources said it was now presenting them to Arab states as part of its future security plans for Gaza. Israeli troops withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

A U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said Israel had “floated” the buffer zone idea without saying to whom. But the official also repeated Washington’s opposition to any plan that reduced the size of Palestinian territory.

Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states have voiced fears that Israel wants to squeeze Palestinians out of Gaza, repeating the dispossession of land Palestinians suffered when Israel was created in 1948. The Israeli government denies any such aim.

A senior Israeli security source said the buffer zone idea was “being examined”, adding: “It is not clear at the moment how deep this will be and whether it could be 1 km or 2 km or hundreds of metres (inside Gaza).”

Any encroachment into Gaza, which is about 40 km (25 miles) long and between about 5 km (3 miles) and 12 km (7.5 miles) wide, would cram its 2.3 million people into an even smaller area.

In Washington, an Israeli official said the Israeli defense establishment was talking about “some kind of security buffer on the Gaza side of the border so that Hamas cannot gather military capabilities close to the border and surprise Israel again.”

“It is a security measure, not a political one,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “We do not intend to remain on the Gaza side of the border.”

Till now, Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel, and Qatar, which does not have formal ties but keeps communication channels open, have been at the centre of mediation talks with Israel that have focused on exchanging hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Shifting focus

Two Egyptian security sources said Israel had raised the idea in mediation talks with Egypt and Qatar of disarming northern Gaza and setting up a buffer zone in north Gaza with international supervision.

The sources said several Arab states opposed this. While Arab states might not oppose a security barrier between the two sides, there was disagreement over where it was located, they added.

The Egyptian sources said Israel had said in a meeting in Cairo in November that the Hamas leaders should be tried internationally in return for a full ceasefire. Mediators said the issue should be postponed until after the war to avoid derailing talks about hostage releases, the sources said.

A source in the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to address the reports, adding: “Netanyahu’s War Cabinet has defined the war missions: destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back home, and we will continue until we complete our missions.”

One of the Egyptian sources said Israel, in its discussions with Egypt and Qatar, had shifted from a focus on retaliation earlier in the crisis towards showing a greater willingness to “rethink its demands as mediation continued.”

The regional sources compared the Gaza buffer zone plan to the “security zone” Israel once had in south Lebanon. Israel evacuated that zone, which was about 15 km (10 miles) deep, in 2000 after years of fighting and attacks by Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

They also said Israel’s plan for post-war Gaza included deporting leaders of Hamas, an action that would also mirror the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in the 1980s when it drove out the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had launched attacks from Lebanon into Israel.

“Israel is ready to pay a costly price to expel and evict Hamas completely from Gaza to other countries in the region similar to what it did in Lebanon, but it’s not the same. Getting rid of Hamas is difficult and not certain,” said another of the regional officials familiar with the discussions.

A senior Israeli official said Israel did not consider Hamas to be like the PLO nor believe that it would act like the PLO.

Mohammad Dahlan, Gaza’s former security chief from the Palestinian Fatah faction which was ejected from the enclave when Hamas took control in 2007, said Israel’s buffer zone plan was unrealistic and would not protect Israeli forces.

“The buffer zone could make (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s forces a target also in the zone,” he said.

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More than 1,000 pay tribute to Maine’s mass shooting victims on day of prayer, reflection on tragedy

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More than 1,000 people gathered Sunday evening for a vigil to remember those killed and injured in Maine’s worst mass shooting, some putting their heads in their hands as the 18 names of those who died were read. Others quietly wept.

The vigil at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston came two days after the body of suspected gunman Robert Card was found. The 40-year-old’s body was discovered in a trailer at a recycling center in Lisbon Falls. Card died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound though it was unclear when, authorities said. Card was also suspected of injuring 13 people in the shooting rampage Wednesday night in Lewiston.

The Rev Todd Little from the First United Pentecostal Church of Lewiston spoke at the vigil of a diverse community that shares something new in common after the tragedy — “shared brokenness, worry, fear and loss.”

He also vowed that the community is bigger than the tragedy and will emerge not just “Lewiston Strong” but “Lewiston Stronger.’

“We will not be defined by the tragedies that happened. Fear, anxiety and trepidation will not dictate our present or our future,” he said.

Earlier in the day, several church services were shaped by the shooting and subsequent lockdown that lasted several days. A the morning mass for Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, several women wore black veils in the cavernous sanctuary, where a church official said they are raising funds to help shooting victims and others hurt by “the horrible events in our small town.”

“We can see the rays of light in darkness,“ the Rev. Daniel Greenleaf told those present. He said that it is for times like this that they have “practiced” their faith for.

“We cannot fix this, but then again human beings are not machines to be fixed,” Greenleaf added.

At Lisbon Falls Baptist Church, arriving church members warmly greeted each other. But the atmosphere turned somber when the Rev. Brian Ganong brought up the tragedy. He prayed for those fighting for their lives, those who lost family and friends, first responders and medical workers, and others — including the Card family, who he said had ties to some members of the church.

“It did happen. We may never know the reason why,” he said, encouraging the congregation to seek solace through a higher being.

Authorities recovered a multitude of weapons during their search for Card and believe he had legally purchased his guns, including those recovered in his car and near his body, said Jim Ferguson, the special agent in charge of the Boston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He declined to provide specific details about the guns, their make and model, nor exactly how many were found.

Investigators are still searching for a motive for the massacre, but have increasingly been focused on Card’s mental health history. State Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck said Card had been hearing voices and had paranoia.

Card believed “people were talking about him and there may even have been some voices at play,” Sauschuck said.

Family members of Card told federal investigators that he had recently discussed hearing voices and became more focused on the bowling alley and bar, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss details of the investigation.

Street life began returning to Lewiston in the city of 37,000. Police missed two clear opportunities to end the lockdown sooner, after failing to find Card’s body in searches of the recycling center Thursday night and early Friday.

For many residents, Sunday was a day to reflect, mourn and, for some, to take the first tentative steps toward normalcy. Some went hunting on the opening day of firearm season for deer, and one family handed out buckets of flowers in downtown. Others gathered at a makeshift memorial to the victims down the street from the bar targeted by Card.

But there were still reminders of the shooting.

Over at Schemengees Bar & Grille, one of the shooting sites, workers in white hazmat suits could be seen methodically cleaning up a staircase. Yellow tape surrounded the site and a small memorial had emerged near the bar, featuring colorful balloons, flowers and a poster that read: “Be Strong Lewiston.”

Parishioners from a Westbrook, Maine, church also came to the site to pay their respects to those killed or injured. With some holding signs honoring the victims, they stood and sang church hymns in front of a memorial featuring flowers, several white crosses and carved pumpkins.

“What happened three or four days ago is very, very painful. When we heard that, we decided to come up from here, sing and share this moment,” said Remy Kazengu, a deacon at the New Apostolic Church in Portland, Maine, some of whose parishioners live in Lewiston and knew some of the shooting victims.

Leroy Walker, an Auburn city councilor and father of one of the victims, was greeting people at a trick-or-treat event on Sunday hosted by an organization he leads.

He smiled broadly when the children hugged him, and accepted hugs from community members. But he became emotional when he spoke of his son, Joseph, who normally would’ve joined him at the event.

“It’s been a tough few days, trust me. The heart doesn’t stop bleeding,” he said. “I miss him every minute. I miss him more every day.”

The deadliest shootings in Maine history stunned a state of 1.3 million people that has relatively little violent crime and had only 29 killings in all of 2022.

Three of the injured remained in critical condition at Central Maine Medical Center, and a fourth was stable, hospital officials said. Another patient was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, and the rest were discharged.

A stay-at-home order in place during the massive search was lifted Friday afternoon, hours before authorities announced they had found Card’s body at the Maine Recycling Corp.

The Lewiston shootings were the 36th mass killing in the United States this year, according to a database maintained by AP and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. The database includes every mass killing since 2006 from all weapons in which four or more people, excluding the offender, were killed within a 24-hour time frame.

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NATO chief says no timetable set for Ukraine’s membership; Zelenskyy calls that ‘absurd’

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NATO leaders said July 11 that they would allow Ukraine to join the alliance “when allies agree and conditions are met,” hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the organization’s failure to set a timetable for his country as “absurd.”

“We reaffirmed Ukraine will become a member of NATO and agreed to remove the requirement for a membership action plan,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, referring to a key step in joining the alliance.

“This will change Ukraine’s membership path from a two-step path to a one-step path,” he said.

Although many NATO members have funneled arms and ammunition to Zelenskyy’s forces, there is no consensus among the 31 allies for admitting Ukraine into NATO’s ranks. Instead, alliance leaders decided to remove obstacles on Ukraine’s membership path so that it can join more quickly once the war with Russia is over.

Zelenskyy pushed back sharply against the decision.

“It’s unprecedented and absurd when a time frame is set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” Zelenskyy tweeted as he headed to the annual NATO summit in Vilnius. “While at the same time, vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine. It seems there is no readiness to invite Ukraine to NATO or to make it a member of the Alliance.”

NATO membership would afford Ukraine protection against a giant neighbor that annexed its Crimean Peninsula almost a decade ago and more recently seized vast swaths of land in the east and south. Joining NATO would also oblige Kyiv to reform its security institutions, improve governance and curb corruption — work that would also ease the country’s path into the European Union.

Asked about Zelenskyy’s concerns, Stoltenberg said the most important thing now is to ensure that his country wins the war, because “unless Ukraine prevails there is no membership to be discussed at all.”

The broadside from Zelenskyy could renew tensions at the summit shortly after it saw a burst of goodwill following an agreement by Turkey to advance Sweden’s bid to join NATO. Allies hope to resolve the seesawing negotiations and create a clear plan for the alliance and its support for Ukraine.

“We value our allies,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter, adding that “Ukraine also deserves respect.” He also said: “Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”

Zelenskyy is expected to meet Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders.

There have been sharp divisions within the alliance over Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, which was promised back in 2008 even though few steps were taken toward that goal.

In addition, the Baltic states — including Lithuania, which is hosting the summit — have pushed for a strong show of support and a clear pathway toward membership for Ukraine.

However, the United States and Germany urged caution. Biden said last week that Ukraine was not ready to join. Members of NATO, he told CNN, need to “meet all the qualifications, from democratization to a whole range of other issues,” a nod toward longstanding concerns about governance and corruption in Kyiv.

In addition, some fear that bringing Ukraine into NATO would serve more as a provocation to Russia than as a deterrence against aggression.

Concretely, NATO leaders decided to launch a series of multiyear programs to bring Ukraine’s Soviet-era military equipment and doctrines up to modern standards so the country can operate fully with the alliance.

On Wednesday, the leaders and Zelenskyy are set to launch a new, upgraded forum for their cooperation: a NATO-Ukraine Council, where all parties can convene crisis talks if their security is threateed.

To fast-track its future membership, the leaders agreed to do away with a membership action plan for Ukraine, a program often seen as mandatory for aspiring nations to undertake.

Known in NATO parlance as a MAP, the action plan involves a tailor-made package of advice, assistance and practical support for countries preparing to join NATO. Bosnia, for example, is currently taking part in one.

Pressed by reporters to say what kind of conditions are being placed on Ukraine joining, Stoltenberg said: “We want modern defense and security institutions.

He also said Kyiv’s hopes might hinge on strengthening its governance standards and fighting corruption.

The dispute over Ukraine stands in contrast to a hard-fought agreement to advance Sweden’s membership. The deal was reached after days of intensive meetings, and it’s poised to expand the alliance’s strength in Northern Europe.

“Rumors of the death of NATO’s unity were greatly exaggerated,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters triumphantly on Tuesday.

According to a joint statement issued when the deal was announced, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will ask Turkey’s parliament to approve Sweden joining NATO.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, another holdout, is expected to take a similar step. Hungary’s foreign minister said Tuesday that his country’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership was now just a “technical matter.” Erdogan has not yet commented publicly.

The outcome is a victory as well for Biden, who has touted NATO’s expansion as an example of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has backfired on Moscow.

Finland has already become the 31st member of the alliance, and Sweden is on deck to become the 32nd. Both Nordic countries were historically nonaligned until the war increased fears of Russian aggression.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that NATO’s expansion is “one of the reasons that led to the current situation.”

“It looks like the Europeans don’t understand their mistake,” Peskov said. He warned against putting Ukraine on a fast track for NATO membership.

“Potentially it’s very dangerous for the European security. It carries very big risks,” Peskov said.

Erdogan met with Biden on Tuesday evening but remained mum on the deal to advance Sweden’s membership in NATO.

Although Biden made a reference to “the agreement you reached yesterday,” Erdogan said nothing about it. It was a conspicuous omission from Erdogan, who has not commented on the issue publicly during the summit.

However, Erdogan appeared eager to develop his relationship with Biden. He said previous meetings were “mere warm-ups, but now we are initiating a new process.”

The Turkish president has been seeking advanced American fighter jets and a path toward membership in the European Union. The White House has expressed support for both, but publicly insisted that the issues were not related to Sweden’s membership in NATO.

The Biden administration has backed Turkey’s desire to buy 40 new F-16s as well as modernization kits from the U.S.

Biden is on a five-day trip to Europe, with the NATO summit as its centerpiece.

The president spent Monday in the United Kingdom, meeting at Windsor Castle with King Charles III and in London with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

He met Tuesday with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, emphasizing his commitment to transatlantic cooperation, before he joined the NATO gathering.

“Nothing happens here that doesn’t affect us,” Biden told Nauseda. The White House said Nauseda presented Biden with the Order of Vytautas the Great, the highest award a Lithuanian president can bestow. Biden is the first U.S. president to receive it.

After the summit ends Wednesday, Biden will travel to Helsinki. On Thursday, he will celebrate Finland’s recent entry into NATO and meet with Nordic leaders.

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How many Russians died in Ukraine? Data points out what Moscow hides

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Two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, working with a data scientist from Germany’s Tübingen University, used Russian government data to shed light on one of Moscow’s closest-held secrets — the true human cost of its invasion of Ukraine.

To do so, they relied on a statistical concept popularised during the COVID-19 pandemic called ‘excess mortality’. Drawing on inheritance records and official mortality data, they estimated how many more men under age 50 died between February 2022 and May 2023 than normal.

Nearly 50,000 Russian men have died in the war in Ukraine, according to the first independent statistical analysis of Russia’s war dead.

Repressed reports

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv gives timely data on military losses, and each is at pains to amplify the other side’s casualties. Russia has publicly acknowledged the deaths of just over 6,000 soldiers. Reports about military losses have been repressed in Russian media, activists and independent journalists say. Documenting the dead has become an act of defiance, and those who do so face harassment and potential criminal charges.

Despite such challenges, Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian Service, working with a network of volunteers, have used social media postings and photographs of cemeteries across Russia to build a database of confirmed war deaths. As of July 7, they had identified 27,423 dead Russian soldiers.

“These are only soldiers who we know by name, and their deaths in each case are verified by multiple sources,” said Dmitry Treshchanin, an editor at Mediazona who helped oversee the investigation. “The estimate we did with Meduza allows us to see the ‘hidden’ deaths, deaths the Russian government is so obsessively and unsuccessfully trying to hide.”

To come up with a more comprehensive tally, journalists from Mediazona and Meduza obtained records of inheritance cases filed with the Russian authorities. Their data from the National Probate Registry contained information about more than 11 million people who died between 2014 and May 2023.

Excess cases

According to their analysis, 25,000 more inheritance cases were opened in 2022 for males aged 15 to 49 than expected. By May 27, 2023, the number of excess cases had shot up to 47,000.

That surge is roughly in line with a May assessment by the White House that more than 20,000 Russians had been killed in Ukraine since December, though lower than U.S. and U.K. intelligence assessments of overall Russian deaths.

In February, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said approximately 40,000 to 60,000 Russians had likely been killed in the war.

A leaked assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency put the number of Russians killed in action in the first year of the war at 35,000 to 43,000.

“Their figures might be accurate, or they might not be,” Mr. Treshchanin said. “Even if they have sources in the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), its own data could be incomplete. It’s extremely difficult to pull together all of the casualties from the army, Rosgvardia, Akhmat battalion, various private military companies, of which Wagner is the largest, but not the only one. Casualties among inmates, first recruited by Wagner and now by the MoD, are also a very hazy subject, with a lot of potential for manipulation. Statistics could actually give better results.”

Medical care ‘crisis’

Many Russian fatalities, as well as amputations, could have been prevented with better front-line first aid, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence assessment published on Monday.

Russia has suffered an average of around 400 casualties a day for 17 months, creating a “crisis” in combat medical care that is likely undermining medical services for civilians in border regions near Ukraine, the Ministry said. Independently, Dmitry Kobak, a data scientist from Germany’s Tübingen University who has published work on excess COVID-19 deaths in Russia, obtained mortality data broken down by age and sex for 2022 from Rosstat, Russia’s official statistics agency.

He found that 24,000 more men under age 50 died in 2022 than expected, a figure that aligns with the analysis of inheritance data.

The COVID-19 pandemic made it harder to figure out how many men would have died in Russia since February 2022 if there hadn’t been a war. Both analyses corrected for the lingering effects of COVID on mortality by indexing male death rates against female deaths.

Sergei Scherbov, a scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, cautioned that “differences in the number of deaths between males and females can vary significantly due to randomness alone.”

“I am not saying that there couldn’t be an excess number of male deaths, but rather that statistically speaking, this difference in deaths could be a mere outcome of chance,” he said.

Missing soldiers

Russians who are missing but not officially recognised as dead, as well as citizens of Ukraine fighting in units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, are not included in these counts.

Mr. Kobak acknowledged that some uncertainties remain, especially for deaths of older men. Moreover, it’s hard to know how many missing Russian soldiers are actually dead. But he said that neither factor is likely to have a huge impact.

“That uncertainty is in the thousands,” he said. “The results are plausible overall.”

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meduza is an independent Russian media outlet that has been operating in exile for eight years, with headquarters in Riga, Latvia. In April 2021, Russian authorities designated Meduza a “foreign agent,” making it harder to generate advertising income, and in January 2023, the Kremlin banned Meduza as an illegal “undesirable organization.”

Moscow has also labeled independent outlet Mediazona as a “foreign agent” and blocked its website after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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NATO unity will be tested at upcoming summit. Ukraine’s possible entry may be the biggest challenge

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As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues with no end in sight, NATO’s much-celebrated unity faces fresh strains when leaders gather for their annual summit this week in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The world’s biggest security alliance is struggling to reach an agreement on admitting Sweden as its 32nd member. Military spending by member nations lags behind long-standing goals. An inability to compromise over who should serve as NATO’s next leader forced an extension of the current secretary-general’s term for an extra year.

Perhaps the most difficult questions are over how Ukraine should be eased into NATO. Some maintain admitting Ukraine would fulfill a promise made years ago and be a necessary step to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. Others fear it would be seen as a provocation that could spiral into an even wider conflict.

“I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO,” President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview airing Sunday. He said joining NATO requires countries to “meet all the qualifications, from democratization to a whole range of other issues.”

He said the United States should provide long-term security assistance to Ukraine — “the capacity to defend themselves” — as it does with Israel.

Bickering among friends is not uncommon, and the current catalogue of disputes pales in comparison with past fears that Donald Trump would turn his back on the alliance during his presidency. But the current challenges come at a moment when Biden and his counterparts are heavily invested in demonstrating harmony among members.

“Any fissure, any lack of solidarity provides an opportunity for those who would oppose the alliance,” said Douglas Lute, U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is eager to exploit divisions as he struggles to gain ground in Ukraine and faces political challenges at home, including the aftermath of a brief revolt by the Wagner mercenary group.

“You don’t want to present any openings,” Lute said. “You don’t want to present any gaps or seams.”

By some measures, the war in Ukraine has reinvigorated NATO, which was created at the beginning of the Cold War as a bulwark against Moscow. NATO members have poured military hardware into Ukraine to help with its counteroffensive, and Finland ended a history of nonalignment to become NATO’s 31st member.

“I think it’s appropriate to look at all the success,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told The Associated Press. “So I think the invasion has strengthened NATO — exactly the opposite of what Putin anticipated.”

He noted Germany’s shift toward a more robust defense policy as well as increase in military spending in other countries.

The latest test of NATO solidarity came Friday with what Biden said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine. More than two-thirds of alliance members have banned the weapon because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties. The U.S., Russia and Ukraine are not among the more than 120 countries that have not signed a convention outlawing the use of the bombs.

As for Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO, the alliance said in 2008 that Kyiv eventually would become a member. Since then, little action has been taken toward that goal. Putin occupied parts of Ukraine in 2014 and then tried to capture the capital in 2022 with his invasion.

“A gray zone is a green light for Putin,” said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland who is now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called for a unified signal from NATO on Ukraine and for his country to join the alliance.

“It would be an important message to say that NATO is not afraid of Russia,” Zelenskyy said through a translator in an ABC interview, when asked whether he would come to Vilnius. “Ukraine should get clear security guarantees while it is not in NATO. And that is a very important point. Only under these conditions our meeting would be meaningful. Otherwise, it’s just another politics.”

The U.S. and Germany insist that the focus should be on supplying weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, rather than taking the more provocative step of extending a formal invitation to join NATO. Countries on NATO’s Eastern flank — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — want firmer assurances on future membership.

NATO could decide to elevate its relationship with Ukraine, creating what would be known as the NATO-Ukraine Council and giving Kyiv a seat at the table for consultations.

Also in the spotlight in Vilnius will be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the main obstacle to Sweden’s attempts to join NATO alongside neighbor Finland.

Erdogan accuses Sweden of being too lenient on anti-Islamic demonstrations and militant Kurdish groups that have waged a long insurgency in Turkey.

Sweden recently changed its anti-terrorism legislation and lifted an arms embargo on Turkey. But a man burned a Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm last week, and Erdogan signaled that this would pose another hurdle. He equated “those who permitted the crime” to those who perpetrated it.

Turkey and the U.S. are also at an impasse over the sale of F-16 fighter jets. Erdogan wants the upgraded planes, but Biden says Sweden’s NATO membership has to be dealt with first. McConnell said in the AP interview that he supports the sale of the fighter jets to Turkey “provided that the membership of Sweden is settled.”

It’s not the first time that Erdogan has sought to use a NATO summit for Turkish gain. In 2009, he held up the nomination of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as secretary-general but agreed to the move after securing some senior posts for Turkish officials at the alliance.

Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who leads the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there’s growing frustration among allies toward Erdogan, building on concerns about his ties to Putin, democratic backsliding and sanctions evasion.

“They’ve tried playing nice,” Bergmann said. “The question is whether it’s time to get much more confrontational.”

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, is also delaying his country’s approval of Sweden’s membership. In response, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is blocking a $735 million U.S. arms sale to Hungary.

“We don’t want members who aren’t interested in doing everything possible to strengthen the alliance rather than the pursuit of their own or individual interests,” Risch said. “I’m just sick and tired of it.”

But he rejected the idea that these disagreements are a sign of weakness within NATO.

“These are kinds of things that always arise in an alliance,” he said. “The fact that we’ve been able to deal with them and will continue to deal with them proves that this is the most successful and strongest military alliance in the history of the world.”

At least one potentially difficult issue is off the summit agenda. Rather than seek consensus on a new NATO leader, members agreed to extend the tenure of Jens Stoltenberg, who’s held the job since 2014, for a year. It’s his fourth extension.

Most members wanted a woman to be the next secretary-general, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had been considered a favorite. But Poland insisted on a candidate from the Baltic states because there had already been two Nordic secretaries general in a row. (Stoltenberg was a Norwegian prime minister and Rasmussen was a Danish prime minister.)

Others are skeptical of accepting a nominee from the Baltics, whose leaders tend to be more provocative in their approach to Russia, including supporting Ukraine’s desire to rapidly join NATO.

More disagreements loom over NATO’s updated plans for countering any invasion that Russia might launch on allied territory.

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Blinken kicks off meetings in Beijing on high-stakes mission to cool soaring US-China tensions

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on June 18 kicked off two days of high-stakes diplomatic talks in Beijing aimed at trying to cool exploding U. S.-China tensions that have set many around the world on edge.

Mr. Blinken opened his program by meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang for an extended discussion to be followed by a working dinner. He’ll have additional talks with Qin, as well as China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and possibly President Xi Jinping, on June 19.

Neither Mr. Blinken nor Qin made any substantive comments to reporters as they began the meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.

Despite Mr. Blinken’s presence in the Chinese capital, prospects for any significant breakthroughs are slim, as already strained ties have grown increasingly fraught in recent years. Animosity and recriminations have steadily escalated over a series of disagreements that have implications for global security and stability.

Mr. Blinken is the highest-level American official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office and the first secretary of state to make the trip in five years.

Mr. Biden and Xi agreed to Mr. Blinken’s trip early at a meeting last year in Bali. It came within a day of happening in February but was delayed by the diplomatic and political tumult brought on by the discovery of what the U.S. says was a Chinese spy balloon flying across the United States that was shot down.

The list of disagreements and potential conflict points is long, ranging from trade with Taiwan, human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Mr. Blinken will also be pressing the Chinese to release detained American citizens and to take steps to curb the production and export of fentanyl precursors that are fueling the opioid crisis in the United States.

U.S. officials have said Blinken will raise each of these points, though neither side has shown any inclination to back down on their entrenched positions.

Shortly before leaving, Blinken emphasized the importance of the U.S. and China establishing and maintaining better lines of communication. The U.S. wants to make sure “that the competition we have with China doesn’t veer into conflict” due to avoidable misunderstandings, he told reporters.

Mr. Biden and Xi had made commitments to improve communications “precisely so that we can make sure we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid possible misunderstandings and miscommunications,” Blinken said Friday.

Xi offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions, saying in a meeting with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Friday that the United States and China can cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”

“I believe that the foundation of Sino-U.S. relations lies in the people,” Xi said to Gates. “Under the current world situation, we can carry out various activities that benefit our two countries, the people of our countries, and the entire human race.”

Mr. Biden told White House reporters Saturday he was “hoping that over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have, but also how … to get along.”

Chances for such a meeting could come at a Group of 20 leaders’ gathering in September in New Delhi and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in San Francisco that the United States is hosting.

Since the cancellation of Mr. Blinken’s trip in February, there have been some high-level engagements. CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May, while China’s commerce minister traveled to the U.S. And Mr. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Wang in Vienna in May.

But those have been punctuated by bursts of angry rhetoric from both sides over the Taiwan Strait, their broader intentions in the Indo-Pacific, China’s refusal to condemn Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.

And, earlier this month, China’s defense minister rebuffed a request from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore, a sign of continuing discontent.

Mr. Austin said Friday he was confident that he and his Chinese counterpart would meet “at some point in time, but we’re not there yet.”

Underscoring the difficulties, China rejected a report by a U.S. security firm, that blamed Chinese-linked hackers for attacks on hundreds of public agencies, schools and other targets around the world, as “far-fetched and unprofessional”

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson repeated accusations that Washington carries out hacking attacks and complained the cybersecurity industry rarely reports on them.

That followed a similar retort earlier in the week when China said Qin had in a phone call with Blinken urged the United States to respect “China’s core concerns” such as the issue of Taiwan’s self-rule, “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop harming China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.”

Meanwhile, the national security advisers of the United States, Japan and the Philippines held their first joint talks Friday and agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation, in part to counter China’s growing influence and ambitions.

This coincides with the Biden administration inking an agreement with Australia and Britain to provide the first with nuclear-powered submarines, with China moving rapidly to expand its diplomatic presence, especially in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific island nations, where it has opened or has plans to open at least five new embassies over the next year.

The agreement is part of an 18-month-old nuclear partnership given the acronym AUKUS — for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Speaking ahead of Blinken’s arrival, two U.S. officials downplayed hopes for major progress and stressed that the trip was intended to restore a sense of calm and normalcy to high-level contacts.

“We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible,” said Daniel Kritenbrink, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia and the Pacific.

Kurt Campbell, the top Asia expert at the National Security Council, said “intense competition requires intense diplomacy if we’re going to manage tensions. That is the only way to clear up misperceptions, to signal, to communicate, and to work together where and when our interests align.”

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