A massive missile and drone attack destroyed one of Ukraine's largest power plants and damaged others, officials said on Thursday, part of a renewed Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure. The Trypilska plant, which was the biggest energy supplier for the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was struck numerous times, destroying the transformer, turbines and generators and leaving the plant ablaze. As the first drone approached, workers hid in a shelter, saving their lives, said Andrii Hota, director of the state company that runs the plant, Centrenergo. They watched the plant burn, surrounded by dense smoke and engulfed in flames. It's terrifying, said Hota. Hours later, rescuers were still dismantling the rubble. The plant supplied electricity to 3 million customers but none lost power because the grid was able to compensate since demands are low at this time of year. Still, the consequences of the strikes could be felt in the coming months, as air conditioning use ramp
Nearly 12,000 houses have been flooded in a Russian region bordering Kazakhstan as water levels in the Ural River keep rising and threatening more deluge, authorities said on Thursday. The floods sparked evacuations of thousands in the Orenburg region, located some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles), southeast of the capital of Moscow after a dam on the river burst last week under the pressure of surging waters. Local authorities have declared a state of emergency in the region. In a televised videoconference with President Vladimir Putin, Orenburg governor Denis Pasler reported that a total of 11,972 houses are flooded, as well as 16 state medical facilities. Additionally, 3,600 houses home to some 20,000 people are in danger of imminent flooding as water levels continue to rise. The situation is most dire in the city of Orenburg, the administrative capital of the region, Pasler said, where the water level in the Ural River reached a historical peak of 10.87 metres (about 36 feet). A
India ranked number 10 in cybercrime, with frauds involving people to make advance fee payment being the most common type, according to a new research that surveyed cybercrime experts around the world. An international team of researchers has compiled the 'World Cybercrime Index' that ranks roughly 100 countries and identifies key hotspots according to various categories of cybercrime, including ransomware, credit card theft and scams. Russia topped the list, and was followed by Ukraine, China, the US, Nigeria and Romania. North Korea was at the seventh position, while the UK and Brazil were at the eighth and ninth positions, respectively, according to the research published in the journal PLoS ONE. Through the survey, the researchers asked the experts to consider major types of crime in the virtual world and nominate countries that they thought contributed significantly to each of them. The major categories that the researchers identified were - technical products and services suc
The survey stated that as many as 97 countries were named as being hubs for a particular category
The Kremlin said Putin was being updated regularly on the situation but had no current plans to visit the area while emergency services tried to deal with rising waters
In an official post on X, Ignazio Cassis said, "Switzerland will host a High-Level Conference on Peace in Ukraine"
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will head to Capitol Hill on Thursday for an address to US lawmakers meant to underscore the importance of keeping a strong partnership between the two countries at a time of tension in the Asia-Pacific and scepticism in Congress about US involvement abroad. Kishida was in Washington this week visiting President Joe Biden as the White House completed hosting each leader of the Quad an informal partnership between the US Japan, Australia and India that is seen as important to countering China's growing military strength in the region. Kishida is expected to talk about the future of the relationship between Japan and the US. He will be addressing many Republicans who have pushed for the US to take a less active role in global affairs as they follow the America First" ethos of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The Republican-controlled House has sat for months on a USD 95 billion package that would send wartime fundin
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According to sources' calculations, it could bring in additional 10%, or between 300,000 metric tons and 350,000 tons a month, of gasoline to the domestic market, enough to meet rising seasonal demand
The water level in the Ural is rising, said Alexei Kudinov, the first deputy head of Orenburg. Reuters footage showed swathes of areas near the city under water
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Tuesday in a sign of mutual support and shared opposition to Western democracies amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. We would like to express our highest appreciation and admiration for the successes that you have achieved over the years and, above all, over the last decade under your leadership," Lavrov told Xi, according to Russian media. "We are sincerely pleased with these successes, since these are the successes of friends, although not everyone in the world shares this attitude and are trying in every possible way to restrain the development of China - in fact just like the development of Russia, Lavrov said. Russia's growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War. In past decades, the two have closely aligned their foreign policies, held joint military exercises and sought to rally non-aligned
A court in Russia on Tuesday added two more years to a 7 1/2 year prison term of a former associate of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the latest step in the Kremlin's yearslong crackdown on dissent. Lilia Chanysheva, who used to head Navalny's office in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, was convicted on extremism charges, and Bashkortostan's Supreme Court extended her sentence to a total of 9 1/2 years, her lawyer Ramil Gizatullin said on the messaging app Telegram. The hearing took place behind closed doors. The Kremlin's crackdown against opposition activists, independent journalists and government critics has intensified after Russia sent troops into Ukraine more than two years ago. Hundreds have faced criminal charges over protests and remarks condemning the war in Ukraine, and thousands have been fined or briefly jailed. Chanysheva was convicted of calling for extremism, forming an extremist group and founding an organization that violates rights last summer. The ..
Downstream, water levels in Orenburg, a city of around 550,000, rose towards the critical level of 9.3 metres as sirens warned major floods were imminent
The Kremlin has said the drone attacks on the nuclear plant were carried out by Ukraine and said they were very dangerous with extremely grave potential consequences
"Our cooperation on counter-terrorism will continue, including within the framework of multilateral institutions," Lavrov said
With their properties either destroyed or severely damaged, some are unhappy with the compensation offered by authorities
The two continent-sized authoritarian states, increasingly in dispute with democracies and NATO, seek to gain influence in Africa, the Middle East and South America
Russia's government has declared on Sunday flood-hit areas in the Orenburg region a federal emergency, state media reported. The floods, caused by rising water levels in the Ural River, forced over 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate, the regional government said. State news agency Tass said that a further 2,000 homes were flooded, bringing the total to nearly 6,300 in the region. Russia's Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov arrived in Orsk one of the most hard-hit cities on Sunday to supervise rescue operations. I propose classifying the situation in the Orenburg region as a federal emergency and establishing a federal level of response, the minister said, according to RIA Novosti. Orsk, less than 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) north of the border with Kazakhstan, suffered the brunt of the floods which caused a dam to break on Friday, according to Orsk mayor Vasily Kozupitsa. By Sunday morning, 4,500 residential buildings in the city of 200,000 were floode
More than 6,100 people have already been evacuated from the city of 230,000, according to local authorities. Fifteen of 40 schools in the school had been flooded
Europe's third-longest river burst through a dam on Friday, April 5th, flooding at least 10,000 homes. Torrential rain caused the Ural River, originating in the Ural Mountains and flowing into the Cas