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Monday, January 2, 2023

Iranian General Acknowledges over 300 Dead in Unrest

Monday, 28 November, 2022

An Iranian general on Monday acknowledged that more than 300 people have been killed in the unrest surrounding nationwide protests, giving the first official word on casualties in two months.

That estimate is considerably lower than the toll reported by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a US-based group that has been closely tracking the protests since they erupted after the Sept. 16 death of a young woman being held by the country's morality police.

The activist group says 451 protesters and 60 security forces have been killed since the start of the unrest and that more than 18,000 people have been detained.

The nationwide protests were sparked by the woman's death but rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the theocracy that has governed Iran since its 1979 revolution.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the aerospace division of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, was quoted by a website close to the Guard as saying that more than 300 people have been killed, including “martyrs,” an apparent reference to security forces. He also suggested that many of those killed were ordinary Iranians not involved in the protests.

He did not provide an exact figure or say where his estimate came from.

Hajizadeh reiterated the official claim that the protests have been fomented by Iran's enemies, including Western countries, without providing evidence. The protesters say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression, and deny having any foreign agenda.

The protests have spread across the country and drawn support from artists, athletes and other public figures.

The niece of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently called on people to pressure their governments to cut ties with Tehran over its violent suppression of the demonstrations.

In a video posted online by her France-based brother, Farideh Moradkhani urged “conscientious people of the world” to support Iranian protesters. The video was shared online this week after Moradkhani's reported arrest on Nov. 23, according to the activist group.

Moradkhani is a long-time activist whose late father was an opposition figure married to Khamenei's sister and is the closest member of the supreme leader's family to be arrested. The branch of the family has opposed Khamenei for decades and Moradkhani has been imprisoned on previous occasions for her activism.

“I ask the conscientious people of the world to stand by us and ask their governments not to react with empty words and slogans but with real action and stop any dealings with this regime,” she said in her video statement.

The protests, now in their third month, have faced a brutal crackdown by Iranian security forces using live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas to suppress demonstrations.

Despite the crackdown, demonstrations are ongoing and scattered across cities.

The unrest was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran for violating the country’s strict dress code. It has quickly morphed into one of the most serious challenges to Iran's establishment in more than four decades.

Iran refuses to cooperate with a fact-finding mission that the UN Human Rights Council recently voted to establish.

“Iran will not engage in any cooperation, whatsoever, with the political committee,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.

Source: Asharq al-Awsat.

Link: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4013306/iranian-general-acknowledges-over-300-dead-unrest.

Journalist Suspensions Widen Rift between Twitter and Media

Sunday, 18 December, 2022

Elon Musk's abrupt suspension of several journalists who cover Twitter widens a growing rift between the social media site and media organizations that have used the platform to build their audiences.

Individual reporters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other news agencies saw their accounts go dark Thursday, The Associated Press said.

Musk tweeted late Friday that the company would lift the suspensions following the results of a public poll on the site. The poll showed 58.7% of respondents favored a move to immediately unsuspend accounts over 41.3% who said the suspensions should be lifted in seven days.

The company has not explained why the accounts were taken down. But Musk took to Twitter on Thursday night to accuse journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts, which he described as “basically assassination coordinates.” He provided no evidence for that claim.

Many advertisers abandoned Twitter over content moderation questions after Musk acquired it in October, and he now risks a rupture with media organizations, which are among the most active on the platform.

Most of the accounts were back early Saturday, with some exceptions and at least one new suspension.

Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that her Twitter account was suspended Saturday evening. Her online newsletter published on Substack said she was working on a story involving Musk and had sought comment from him through a Twitter post shortly before her account was suspended.

Business Insider's Linette Lopez was suspended Friday, also with no explanation, she told The Associated Press. Lopez published a series of articles between 2018 and 2021 highlighting what she called dangerous Tesla manufacturing shortcomings.

Shortly before being suspended, she said she had posted court-related documents to Twitter that included a 2018 Musk email address. That address is not current, Lopez said, because “he changes his email every few weeks."

On Tuesday, she posted a 2019 story about Tesla troubles, commenting, “Now, just like then, most of @elonmusk’s wounds are self inflicted.”

The same day, she cited reports that Musk was reneging on severance for laid-off Twitter employees, threatening workers who talk to the media and refusing to make rent payments. Lopez described his actions as “classic Elon-going-for-broke behavior.”

Steve Herman, a national correspondent for Voice of America, told The Associated Press that his suspended Twitter account still hadn't been fully restored as of Saturday afternoon because of his refusal to delete three tweets that the company flagged for purportedly sharing Musk's whereabouts. Although Herman's Twitter timeline is now visible to most users, he said he can't see it himself nor can he post anything new until he removes the tweets that the company contends violate its revised terms of service.

“I am in a new level of purgatory," Herman said. “I do not believe anything I have tweeted violated any reasonable standard of any social media platform."

Alarm over the suspensions extended beyond media circles to the United Nations, which was reconsidering its involvement in Twitter.

The move sets “a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats and even worse," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The reporters' suspensions followed Musk’s decision Wednesday to permanently ban an account that automatically tracked the flights of his private jet using publicly available data. That also led Twitter to change its rules for all users to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent.

Several of the reporters suspended Thursday night had been writing about the new policy and Musk's rationale for imposing it, which involved his allegations about a stalking incident he said affected his family Tuesday night in Los Angeles.

The official Twitter account for Mastodon, a decentralized alternative social network where many Twitter users are fleeing, was also banned. The reason was unclear, though it had tweeted about the jet-tracking account. Twitter also began preventing users from posting links to Mastodon accounts, in some cases flagging them as potential malware.

“This is of course a bald-faced lie,” cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs posted.

Explaining the reporter bans, Musk tweeted, “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else."

He later added: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

"Doxxing" refers to disclosing someone’s identity, address, phone number or other personal details that violate their privacy and could bring harm.

The Washington Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, said technology reporter Drew Harwell “was banished without warning, process or explanation” following the publication of accurate reporting about Musk.

CNN said in a statement that “the impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising.”

“Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter,” the statement added.

Another suspended journalist, Matt Binder of the technology news outlet Mashable, said he was banned Thursday night immediately after sharing a screenshot that O’Sullivan had posted before his own suspension.

The screenshot showed a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department sent earlier Thursday to multiple media outlets, including the AP, about how it was in touch with Musk's representatives about the alleged stalking incident.

Binder said he did not share any location data or any links to the jet-tracking account or other location-tracking accounts.

“I have been highly critical of Musk but never broke any of Twitter’s listed policies,” Binder said in an email.

The suspensions come as Musk makes major changes to content moderation on Twitter. He has tried, through the release of selected company documents dubbed “The Twitter Files,” to claim the platform suppressed right-wing voices under its previous leaders.

He has promised to let free speech reign and has reinstated high-profile accounts that previously broke Twitter's rules against hateful conduct or harmful misinformation. He has also said he would suppress negativity and hate by depriving some accounts of “freedom of reach.”

Opinion columnist Bari Weiss, who tweeted out some of “The Twitter Files,” called for the suspended journalists to be reinstated.

“The old regime at Twitter governed by its own whims and biases and it sure looks like the new regime has the same problem,” she tweeted “I oppose it in both cases.”

If the suspensions lead to the exodus of media organizations that are highly active on Twitter, the platform would be changed at the fundamental level, said Lou Paskalis, longtime marketing and media executive and former Bank of America head of global media.

CBS briefly shut down its activity on Twitter in November due to “uncertainty” about new management, but media organizations have largely remained on the platform.

“We all know news breaks on Twitter ... and to now go after journalists really saws at the main foundational tent pole of Twitter,” Paskalis said. “Driving journalists off Twitter is the biggest self-inflicted wound I can think of.”

The suspensions may be the biggest red flag yet for advertisers, Paskalis said, some of which had already cut their spending on Twitter over uncertainty about the direction Musk is taking the platform.

“It is an overt demonstration of what advertisers fear the most — retribution for an action that Elon doesn’t agree with," he added.

On Thursday night, Twitter's Spaces conference chat went down shortly after Musk abruptly signed out of a session hosted by a journalist during which he had been questioned about the reporters' ousting. Musk later tweeted that Spaces had been taken offline to deal with a “Legacy bug.” Late Friday, Spaces returned.

Advertisers are also monitoring the potential loss of Twitter users. Twitter is projected to lose 32 million users over the next two years, according to a forecast by Insider Intelligence, which cited technical issues and the return of accounts banned for offensive posts.

Meanwhile, some Twitter alternatives are gaining momentum.

Mastodon on Friday had more than 6 million users, nearly double the 3.4 million it had on the day Musk took ownership of Twitter. On many of the thousands of confederated networks in the open-source Mastodon platform, administrators and users solicited donations as disaffected Twitter users strained computing resources. Many of the networks, known as “instances,” are crowd-funded. The platform is designed to be ad-free.

Source: Asharq al-Awsat.

Link: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4050111/journalist-suspensions-widen-rift-between-twitter-and-media.

India's Russian arms explain "shaky" Ukraine stance

New Delhi, March 24 (AFP)

Mar 24, 2022

When 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a recent border clash with China, the military hardware New Delhi sent to bolster its Himalayan frontier was mostly Russian-origin, showing not for the first time its closeness to "longstanding and time-tested friend" Moscow.

Facing an increasingly assertive China closer to home, these ties help explain Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reluctance to criticize Vladimir Putin -- a regular visitor -- over the Ukraine invasion.

India has abstained on UN resolutions censuring Russia and continues to buy Russian oil and other goods, despite pressure from Western countries.

US President Joe Biden this week called India "somewhat shaky" on Russia.

In the Cold War, officially non-aligned India leaned towards the Soviet Union -- in part due to US support for arch-rival Pakistan -- buying its first Russian MiG-21 fighter jets in 1962.

These military ties were cemented by two watershed events: India's humiliating defeat to China in a 1962 border war and the war with Pakistan in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh.

During the latter, the USSR sent ships to the Indian Ocean to deter a direct US intervention to help Pakistan. Shortly before the two had signed the landmark Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation.

And following skirmish with China in 2020, Indian reinforcements to shore up its Himalayan border included Russian tanks and aircraft.

Russia "always remained immune to external pressure and supplied us when we needed it, and have not slipped," Nandan Unnikrishnan of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation told AFP.

"The Ukraine war doesn't change our neighborhood situation, so why should we even consider replacing our long-tested and trusted supplier without any practical replacement?" he said.

- Air, land and sea -

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 70-85 percent of the Indian military's hardware was Russian, and in recent years India has sourced more from elsewhere -- notably France, the US and Israel -- and made more itself.

But according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, not only does Russia remain India's biggest supplier of major arms but New Delhi is also Moscow's largest customer in this field.

From 2017-21, India was the world's largest importer of major arms, and 46 percent of them were Russian. Some 28 percent of Russia's arms exports went to India, and account for the lion's share of the two countries' overall trade.

Almost all of India's estimated 3,500 battle tanks are Russian-made or designed -- built in India on license -- while the bulk of its combat aircraft are Sukhois and MiGs.

India's sole operational aircraft carrier is the refurbished Soviet-era Admiral Gorshkov, four of its 10 destroyers are Russian-origin, as are eight of its 14 non-nuclear-powered submarines.

India also has large Russian orders pending including a $5-billion deal for S-400 air defense systems -- the first deliveries began last year -- four frigates and one nuclear-powered submarine.

"With that kind of a dependency it is very difficult for India to take any other stand on Russia," Manoj Joshi, an author and former member of a government task force for reforms in national security told AFP.

But he said that the dependency doesn't end with buying equipment. For sometimes decades afterwards, it needs upgrades, maintenance, spares and other support from Russia.

India and Russia are also cooperating in defense, for example in making BrahMos cruise missiles, one of which India accidentally fired at Pakistan this month.

Russian kit is also relatively cheap, and Western countries are much more reluctant than Moscow to transfer technology to allow arms to be made in India, experts say.

"The US sells everything with an end-user condition and still won't sell us a certain class of weapons -- unlike Russia," said Joshi.

Source: Space War.

Link: https://www.spacewar.com/afp/220324064621.uv68wrwu.html.

China Covid pivot sparks jitters worldwide

By Laurie Chen, with Matthew Walsh in Tianjin

Beijing (AFP)

Dec 28, 2022

Beijing's sudden pivot away from containing Covid-19 has caused jitters around the world, with the United States saying it may restrict travel from China following its decision to end mandatory quarantine for overseas arrivals.

China late Monday scrapped quarantine for inbound travelers from January 8 onwards, dismantling the last remaining piece of its stringent zero-Covid policy and ending some of the world's harshest border restrictions.

The move was greeted with jubilation by Chinese citizens, who rushed to book international flights, triggering a surge in ticket prices.

Hospitals and crematoriums across China continue to be overwhelmed by an influx of mostly elderly people.

AFP reporters saw dozens of mostly elderly Covid patients lying on gurneys in overflowing hospital emergency wards in Tianjin, 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of the capital Beijing Wednesday.

Medical staff are "pretty much all" expected to continue working despite testing positive for the virus, one doctor said.

Other countries have expressed concerns about the potential for new variants to emerge as China battles the world's biggest surge in infections.

US officials said late Tuesday they were considering Covid entry restrictions on travelers from China, after countries including Japan and India introduced PCR testing on arrival for Chinese passengers.

"There are mounting concerns in the international community on the ongoing Covid-19 surges in China and the lack of transparent data, including viral genomic sequence data, being reported from the PRC," the US officials said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

The United States is "considering taking similar steps" to countries such as Japan and Malaysia, they added.

Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own, said Wednesday that it would also screen travelers from the mainland for the virus.

- 'Predictable and under control' -

China's loosening of measures effectively brought the curtain down on a zero-Covid regime of mass testing, lockdowns and long quarantines that has stalled its economy and triggered large-scale nationwide protests.

"Currently the development of China's epidemic situation is overall predictable and under control," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday.

"Hyping, smearing and political manipulation with ulterior motives can't stand the test of facts," Wang added, calling Western media reporting on China's Covid surge "completely biased".

All passengers arriving in China have had to undergo mandatory centralized quarantine since March 2020. The period of isolation fell from three weeks to one week in June, and to five days last month.

The end of that rule in January will also see Covid-19 downgraded to a Class B infectious disease, allowing authorities to adopt looser controls.

Chinese immigration authorities said Tuesday they will resume issuing passports for tourism purposes from January 8, after years of strict exit controls.

- Tracking cases -

The winter surge comes ahead of major public holidays next month in which hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel to their hometowns to reunite with relatives.

Chinese authorities have said the scale of the outbreak is now "impossible" to track and narrowed the criteria for defining Covid deaths.

China's Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported 5,231 new Covid cases and three deaths nationwide Wednesday -- likely a drastic undercount since people are no longer required to declare infections to authorities.

Authorities are using data from online surveys, hospital visits, demand for fever medicines and emergency calls to "make up for shortcomings in (officially) reported figures", disease control official Yin Wenwu said at a press briefing Tuesday.

With the country facing shortages of basic medicines, Beijing city authorities plan to distribute the oral Covid drug Paxlovid at local hospitals and community clinics. It remains extremely difficult to obtain for ordinary people.

The US-developed treatment was briefly available on e-commerce platform JD.com and delivery platform Meituan in the past few days before both ran out of stock.

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_Covid_pivot_sparks_jitters_worldwide_999.html.

Beijing, Major Chinese Cities Battle First Wave of COVID Surge

Sunday, 18 December, 2022

Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet on Sunday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in COVID-19 cases that has hit urban centers from north to south.

China is currently in the first of an expected three waves of COVID cases this winter, according to the country's chief epidemiologist, Wu Zunyou. Cases could multiply across the country if people follow typical travel patterns of returning to their home areas in a mass transit movement for the Lunar New Year holiday next month, Reuters reported.

China is also yet to officially report any COVID deaths since Dec. 7, when the country abruptly ended most restrictions key to a zero-COVID tolerance policy following unprecedented public protests against the protocol. The strategy had been championed by President Xi Jinping.

As part of the easing of the zero-COVID curbs, mass testing for the virus has ended, casting doubt on whether officially reported case numbers can capture the full scale of the outbreak. China reported some 2,097 new symptomatic COVID infections on Dec. 17.

In Beijing, the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has already hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand.

Social media posts also showed empty subways in the city of Xian in China's northwest, while internet users complained of delays to deliveries.

In Chengdu, streets were deserted but food delivery times were improving, said a resident surnamed Zhang, after services began to adapt to the recent surge in cases.

Getting hold of antigen test kits was still difficult however, she said. Her recent order had been redirected to hospitals, she said, citing the provider.

In Shanghai, authorities said schools should move most classes online from Monday, and in nearby Hangzhou most school grades were encouraged to finish the winter semester early.

In Guangzhou, those already doing online class as well as pre-schoolers should not prepare for a return to school, said the education bureau.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing on Saturday, chief epidemiologist Wu of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the current outbreak would peak this winter and run in three waves for about three months, according to a state media report of his speech.

The first wave would run from mid-December through mid-January, largely in cities, before a second wave would start from late January to mid-February next year, triggered by the movement of people ahead of the week-long New Year holiday.

China will celebrate Lunar New Year starting on Jan. 21. The holiday normally sees hundreds of millions of people travelling home to spend time with family.

A third wave of cases would run from late February to mid-March as people returned to work after the holiday, Wu said.

A US-based research institute said this week that the country could see an explosion of cases and over a million people in China could die of COVID in 2023.

Wu said severe cases in China had declined over the last years, and that vaccination that has already taken place offered a certain degree of protection. He said those in the community that are vulnerable should be protected, while recommending booster vaccines for the general public.

Almost 87% of over 60s have been fully vaccinated, but only 66.4% of people over the age of 80 have completed a full course of vaccination, said official news agency Xinhua.

Source: Asharq al-Awsat.

Link: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4050251/beijing-major-chinese-cities-battle-first-wave-covid-surge.

Minister: Ukraine Aims to Develop Air-to-air Combat Drones

Wednesday, 28 December, 2022

Ukraine has bought some 1,400 drones, mostly for reconnaissance, and plans to develop combat models that can attack the exploding drones Russia has used during its invasion of the country, according to the Ukrainian government minister in charge of technology.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov described Russia’s war in Ukraine as the first major war of the internet age. He credited drones and satellite internet systems like Elon Musk’s Starlink with having transformed the conflict.

Ukraine has purchased drones like the Fly Eye, a small used for intelligence, battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance.

“And the next stage, now that we are more or less equipped with reconnaissance drones, is strike drones,” Federov said. “These are both exploding drones and drones that fly up to three to 10 kilometers and hit targets.”

He predicted “more missions with strike drones” in the future, but would not elaborate. “We are talking there about drones, UAVs, UAVs that we are developing in Ukraine. Well, anyway, it will be the next step in the development of technologies,” he said.

Russian authorities have alleged several Ukrainian drone strikes on its military bases in recent weeks, including one on Monday in which they said Russian forces shot down a drone approaching the Engels airbase located more than 600 kilometers (over 370 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Russia's military said debris killed three service members but no aircraft were damaged. The base houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities have never formally acknowledged carrying out such drone strikes, but they have made cryptic allusions to how Russia might expect retaliation for its war in Ukraine, including within Russian territory.

Ukraine is carrying out research and development on drones that could fight and down other drones, Federov said. Russia has used Iranian-made Shahed drones for its airstrikes in Ukrainian territory in recent weeks, in addition to rocket, cruise missile and artillery attacks.

“I can say already that the situation regarding drones will change drastically in February or March,” he said.

Federov sat for an interview in his bright and modern office. Located inside a staid ministry building, the room contained a vinyl record player, history books stacked on shelves and a treadmill.

The minister highlighted the importance of mobile communications for both civilian and military purposes during the war and said the most challenging places to maintain service have been in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kyiv regions in the center and east of the country.

He said there are times when fewer than half of mobile phone towers are functioning in the capital, Kyiv, because Russian airstrikes have destroyed or damaged the infrastructure that power them.

Ukraine has some 30,000 mobile-phone towers, and the government is now trying to link them to generators so they can keep working when airstrikes damage the power grid.

The only alternative, for now, is satellite systems like Starlink, which Ukrainians may rely on more if blackouts start lasting longer.

“We should understand that in this case, the Starlinks and the towers, connected to the generators, will be the basic internet infrastructure,” Federov said.

Many cities and towns are facing power cuts lasting up to 10 hours. Fedorov said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree that instructs mobile phone companies to ensure they can provide signals without electricity for at least three days.

Meanwhile, with support from its European Union partners, his ministry is working to bring 10,000 more Starlink stations to Ukraine, with internet service made available to the public through hundreds of “Points of Invincibility” that offer warm drinks, heated spaces, electricity and shelter for people displaced by fighting or power outages.

Roughly 24,000 Starlink stations already are in operation in Ukraine. Musk’s company, SpaceX, began providing them during the early days of the war after Fedorov tweeted a request to the billionaire.

“I just stood there on my knees, begging them to start working in Ukraine, and promised that we would make a world record," he recalled.

Federov compared Space X's donation of the satellite terminals to the US-supplied multiple rocket launchers in terms of significance for Ukraine's ability to mount a defense to Russia's invasion.

“Thousands of lives were saved,” he said.

As well as the civilian applications, Starlink has helped front-line reconnaissance drone operators target artillery strikes on Russian assets and positions. Federov said his team is now dedicating 70% of its time to military technologies. The ministry was created only three years ago.

Providing the army with drones is among its main tasks.

“We need to do more than what is expected of us, and progress does not wait,” Federov said, scoffing at Russian skill in the domain of drones. “I don’t believe in their technological potential at all.”

Source: Asharq al-Awsat.

Link: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4067811/minister-ukraine-aims-develop-air-air-combat-drones.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Russia Drones Smash Power Network in Ukraine's Odesa, Leaving 1.5 Million without Power

Sunday, 11 December, 2022

All non-critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian port of Odesa was without power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy facilities, leaving 1.5 million people without power, officials said on Saturday.

"The situation in the Odesa region is very difficult," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

"Unfortunately, the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore electricity... It doesn't take hours, but a few days, unfortunately."

Since October, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure with large waves of missile and drone strikes.

Norway was sending $100 million to help restore Ukraine's energy system, Zelenskiy said.

Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Odesa's regional administration, said electricity for the city's population will be restored "in the coming days," while complete restoration of the networks may take two to three months.

Bratchuk said an earlier Facebook post by the region's administration, advising some people to consider evacuating, was being investigated by Ukraine's security services as "an element of the hybrid war" by Russia.

That post has since been deleted.

"Not a single representative of the authorities in the region made any calls for the evacuation of the inhabitants of Odesa and the region," Bratchuk said.

Odesa had more than 1 million residents before the Feb. 24 invasion that Russia calls a "special military operation" to "denazify" its smaller neighbor.

Kyiv says Russia has launched hundreds of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones at targets in Ukraine, describing the attacks as war crimes due to their devastating effect on civilian life. Moscow says its attacks are militarily legitimate and that it does not target civilians.

Ukraine's prosecutor general's office said two power facilities in Odesa region were hit by Shahed-136 drones.

Ukraine's armed forces said on Facebook that 15 drones had been launched against targets in the southern regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv, and 10 had been shot down.

Tehran denies supplying the drones to Moscow. Kyiv and its Western allies say that is a lie.

Britain's defense ministry said on Saturday that it believed Iran's military support for Russia was likely to increase in the coming months, including possible deliveries of ballistic missiles.

Source: Asharq al-Awsat.

Link: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4036976/russia-drones-smash-power-network-ukraine%E2%80%99s-odesa-leaving-15-million-without.