Al Jazeera’s Jessica Washington reports from Indonesia’s Aceh Tamiang, one of the areas worst hit by the deadly floods. Survivors there are now threatened by disease and starvation after entire villages were wiped out, leaving people with nothing.
Thailand and Cambodia have traded blame for renewed clashes along their disputed border and pledged to continue the fighting, as the death toll climbs in the latest outbreak of hostilities between the neighbours.
Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence said on Tuesday nine civilians had been killed and 20 injured since Monday, while the Thai military said two more deaths meant that three soldiers had been killed and 29 wounded on its side since clashes resumed.
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Renewed fighting broke out on Sunday night in a skirmish in which one Thai soldier was killed, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and shattering an uneasy peace that had held since five days of clashes in July.
That bout of fighting, involving the exchange of rockets and heavy artillery fire and fuelled by competing territorial claims along their border, resulted in at least 48 deaths on both sides and the temporary evacuation of more than 300,000 civilians before a ceasefire was brokered by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and United States President Donald Trump.
Thailand, however, suspended the implementation of the ceasefire pact last month, following a landmine blast that maimed one of its soldiers.
Cambodia’s powerful Senate President Hun Sen claimed in a statement on social media on Tuesday that the military had been refraining from firing at Thai forces the previous day, but had begun shooting back overnight.
He said targeting areas where Thai forces were advancing would allow Cambodia’s military to “weaken and destroy enemy forces through counterattacks”.
“Cambodia wants peace, but Cambodia is forced to fight back to defend its territory,” the former prime minister said.
Thailand’s army said Cambodian forces had fired artillery at a village in eastern Sa Kaeo province early on Tuesday, although no casualties were reported, and that Cambodia attacked Thai positions with rockets and drones.
Each side blames the other for firing the first shots.
In a statement on Tuesday morning, the Thai navy said it was taking action to expel Cambodian forces from its territory in the coastal province of Trat.
The navy said Cambodian forces there were increasing their presence, deploying snipers and heavy weapons, developing fortified positions and digging trenches, in what it viewed “as a direct and serious threat to Thailand’s sovereignty”, prompting the launch of operations to expel them.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Cambodia is “not ready” for peace negotiations.
“They say they’re ready on one hand, but their actions on the ground are entirely in the opposite direction,” he said.
“Diplomacy will work when the situation provides the space for diplomacy,” he said. “I’m sorry to say that right now we don’t have that space.”
Although the ongoing hostilities and military operations are bringing losses to both sides, Phuangketkeow added that “we want the Cambodian side to show that they’re ready to stop what they’re doing – and then, of course, we can consider the prospect for diplomacy and negotiations”.
Both sides say the renewed violence has forced civilians on either side of the border to flee to shelter.
A statement from Thailand’s 2nd Army Region, situated along the border, said almost 500 temporary shelters have been set up in four border provinces, accommodating more than 125,000 people.
For more than a century, Thailand and Cambodia have contested sovereignty at points along their 817km (508-mile) border, first mapped in 1907 by France when it ruled Cambodia as a colony.
Simmering tension has occasionally exploded into skirmishes, such as a weeklong artillery exchange in 2011, despite attempts to resolve the dispute peacefully.
A 2013 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) upheld a 1962 judgement by the same body awarding part of the land around Preah Vihear temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to Cambodia and instructing Thailand to withdraw its personnel stationed in the area.
Thailand has refused to acknowledge the ICJ’s jurisdiction in this issue.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Tymofey’s palms and fingers are still dotted with lilac, half-healed scars left by the razor-sharp barbed wire on the walls around the military training centre he busted out from six months ago.
The lanky 36-year-old office worker in Kyiv told Al Jazeera he has done it twice after being forcibly conscripted in April.
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He said he chose to desert after realising how perfunctory and ineffective his training was for real combat, and that he would inevitably become a front-line stormtrooper with no chances of survival.
“There’s zero training. They don’t care that I won’t survive the very first attack,” Tymofey said, referring to the drill sergeants who were training him in April after police rounded him up in central Kyiv.
He claimed that his trainers were mostly preoccupied with preventing desertions from the centre, which was surrounded by a 3-metre (9.8 ft) high concrete wall covered with barbed wire.
“They don’t care whether a soldier learns to shoot. They gave me a gun, I shot a round in the direction of a target, and they ticked a box next to my name,” he said.
Tymofey asked to withhold his last name and personal details because he is hiding from the authorities.
He claimed he has not been officially charged with desertion or going AWOL (absent without leave), charges that can be seen in the online and publicly-accessible registry of pretrial investigations.
His explanation is simple: “Half the country is on the run”, while military and civilian authorities do not have the capacity to track down and apprehend each deserter.
Prosecutors said in October that some 235,000 servicemen went AWOL, and almost 54,000 have deserted since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Those numbers began to snowball last year. Some 176,000 AWOL cases and 25,000 desertions were registered between September 2024 and September 2025.
“Even in Russia, there aren’t that many soldiers going AWOL,” Valentyn Manko, top commander of storm troops, told the Ukrainian Pravda on Saturday.
The desertion crisis exacerbates the disastrous shortage of servicemen amid the gradual, grinding loss of Ukrainian territory to Russia.
In November, Russian forces occupied some 500 square kilometres (190 sq miles), mostly in eastern Ukraine, while the Washington-mediated peace talks stalled again.
Manko said that about 30,000 men are mobilised monthly, but the preferred number is 70,000 to “restaff” all military units.
A serviceman can be accused of deserting 24 hours after leaving his military unit, and can face between five and 12 years in jail, according to wartime regulations, while going AWOL is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Many prefer jail.
“The number of our deserters, servicemen gone AWOL is too high,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera. “They think that from the legal standpoint, it’s easier to go to jail than to the front line.”
Romanenko has long been advocating for the introduction of stricter wartime laws and harsher punishment for deserters and corrupt officials, who he believes should be sent to the front line instead of jail.
The legal difference between desertion and going AWOL is an “intention to leave the service for good”.
But since November 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government has declared an amnesty for first-time deserters, who can return to their unit without any punishment.
Some 30,000 have, counting on the lenience of military authorities and their commanding officers.
“There’s more understanding towards them,” a psychologist at a military unit in southern Ukraine told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, because he is not authorised to talk to the media.
Desertion does not always stem from fear of death, and is often caused by inattentive commanding officers who ignore their servicemen’s issues, the psychologist said.
“Some say their commander didn’t let them go on leave, didn’t let them visit their sick relatives, didn’t let them get married,” he said.
In one case, a man in his early twenties deserted after learning he would be dispatched to the front-line town of Pokrovsk, the psychologist said.
After fleeing, the deserter worked in a factory job despite the risk of being caught, the psychologist found out later.
Meanwhile, the military police force is severely understaffed and cannot detain a serviceman without a court order unless he is drunk or threatens them with a weapon – while courts are swamped with thousands of cases that cannot be processed promptly.
So, a deserter’s nightmare is the “conscription patrols” that comprise military and police officers who comb public places asking men of fighting age to show IDs and “soldier’s tickets”, QR-coded documents about their conscription status.
But many deserters know their way around such places, or even carry enough cash to pay a bribe of up to several hundred dollars.
Deserters can also be caught while driving cars registered to them, or even connected to them via traffic fines paid for from their cards.
That is how Tymofey got caught.
For months, he had been driving his brother’s car, but in April, he used his own credit card to pay a fine for running a red light.
Days later, traffic police rounded him up, saying that a conscription notice had been sent to him months earlier.
Tymofey claimed to have never received the notice.
He was sent to a training centre in the central Zhytomyr region and escaped after finding a gap in the barbed wire and securing a ride from a friend.
To reach the car, he said he walked for five hours in the rain through a forest, stumbling and scratching his face and arms.
“The friend almost drove away without me,” Tymofey said.
Once in Kyiv, he moved to his friend’s apartment, went back to work, and even started using his old SIM card.
But two months later, he was caught again while driving his brother’s car.
His second escape was an easier, fast-forwarded version of the first one, because “the training centre was in Kyiv and the fence was lower”, he said, showing his scarred palms.
Tymofey shrugged off the opinion of his friends and relatives who condemn his “cowardice” and a “lack of patriotism”.
Some have cut ties with him altogether, he said.
Many former servicemen despise draft dodgers and deserters, thinking they should face tougher punishment and have their civil rights limited.
“There is low intensity crimes of vengeance because people know their tormentors.”
An Israeli drone company, malaria testing technology, and the proposed sale of an American billionaire’s oil and gas empire are among the many previously unknown business ventures that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussed with the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, leaked emails reveal.
Epstein served as a trusted financial adviser, fixer, concierge, sounding board, and even friend to the ex-Israeli leader during a long-running relationship that blurred professional and personal boundaries, the emails suggest.
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While Barak has previously acknowledged having a business relationship with Epstein via the Israeli emergency services startup Reporty, the communications suggest that the politician coordinated with the disgraced financier on several previously unknown business proposals, relying heavily on his advice and connections.
Barak, who led Israel from 1999 to 2001 and served as the country’s defence minister from 2007 to March 2013, also sought Epstein’s input on drafts of newspaper op-eds and used an apartment in New York City arranged by the financier to write his autobiography.
The two men also exchanged holiday greetings, and Epstein sent his condolences to Barak when his mother passed away in 2013.
Like many powerful figures in Epstein’s orbit, Barak, who said he first met the late financier in 2003, continued his association with Epstein for years after he became a convicted sex offender following a controversial plea deal in 2008.
The emails, which span 2013 to 2016, were published in August by the whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets after being stolen by the hacktivist group Handala, which the government of Canada has linked to Iran’s intelligence agencies.
Barak did not respond to requests for comment sent to his personal email address and those of his lawyers and publisher.
Barak’s prospective business partners in the various deals he discussed with Epstein also did not respond to requests for comment.
Just months after Barak ended his tenure as Israel’s defence chief in 2013, Epstein promised to make the politician hundreds of millions of dollars in an email flexing his skills as a financial adviser.
“We both know that with my involvement at a senior level you will be able to achieve, not so many but at least few hundred million more than without my help. To date you have not made a real proposal, and though I am happy to move forward I would need a firm serious offer to do so,” Epstein wrote to Barak in the email dated September 20, 2013.
That November, it appears that Epstein sought to renegotiate the terms of an agreement for his financial services following a delayed payment.
“I think best that after this is received we look to form a new arrangement that meets both of our needs,” Epstein wrote.
Epstein, who indicated in their correspondence that he had already been paid at least $5m, proposed that he receive a $2m annual retainer plus a percentage of profits.
It is unclear what terms, if any, the two men ultimately agreed upon.
Among the projects that Barak appears to have sought Epstein’s advice on was a proposed investment in Israeli startup Light & Strong, which in 2014 was working on solar-powered, high-altitude, long endurance (HALE) drones in an initiative dubbed “Project Sun Spark”.
Founded in Israel in 2007, Light & Strong produced military and aerospace components for the Israeli state and defence industry.
Two Israeli businessmen, Ofer Amir and Gal Erez, bought the company from a liquidator in 2014 after a previous owner went bankrupt.
Amir and Erez hoped that Light & Strong could rival Google and Facebook with solar-powered drones capable of boosting mobile phone and broadband coverage, according to a company prospectus. The drones also offered a secondary use for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, the emails show.
“They would like me to join as Chairman and to consider invest up to $1M based on $13M pre money as part of a round that will raise $3.0M ($16M post money valuation),” Barak wrote to Epstein in October 2014 after he was approached by Amir.
Epstein and his lawyer reviewed the company’s financial statements over a flurry of email exchanges with Barak over the next few weeks before Epstein issued a hard “no” on the investment.
“this is crazy. the people writing this have no financial knowledge. they write for ex that this cashflow does not include depreciation.???? of course not. deprecitation has nothing to do with cashflow nothing. STAY AWAY,” Epstein wrote in a typically error-strewn email on November 27, 2014.
Light & Strong was later acquired by an Indian aerospace conglomerate, according to Israeli media.
Epstein’s advice took a similar tone when Barak asked about a potential deal with the late Denver, Colorado-based oil tycoon Jack Grynberg.
Barak’s emails indicate that he felt a personal affinity for Grynberg, who had shared his experience of surviving the Holocaust as a child before making a multibillion-dollar fortune in oil and gas.
A judge later found that Grynberg, who died in 2021 aged 89, “suffered from insane delusions and failed to make rational decisions” in the waning years of his life as he tried to keep his fortune out of the hands of his family.
Grynberg engaged Barak in 2014 to help broker the sale of one of his oil and gas companies, Gadeco LLC.
The oil tycoon proposed offloading a 25 percent stake in the company for $400m, or a 100 percent stake for $1.6bn.
Barak agreed to help broker the deal for a 5 percent commission – to be divided among himself and business associates – and suggested two “Chinese and Russian candidates”.
Barak’s emails show that in October 2014, he approached China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the Israeli-Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, and Hong Kong entrepreneur Joachim Chao, who was representing a “consortium of Chinese private companies”.
The emails also suggest that Epstein helped Barak approach the staff of Leon Black, the billionaire cofounder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, about the sale.
Barak asked for Epstein’s advice in late October in a series of emails with the subject line “JG Co. Sale”.
“Hi Jeff Thx for your support. Pl share with me your impression from the JG Co. Materials once you’ve looked through them. Do not hesitate to correct or direct me along the way. I don’t have enough time to learn from my own mistakes,” Barak wrote.
Epstein told him to avoid the sale at all costs a few hours later.
“This is total 100 percent BULLSHIT. I told you on the phone before sending or asking anyone about it you should do your own homework, You cannot be seen to be selling garbage ,frauds. Bad things and or trouble,” Epstein wrote.
“This is a total waste of your time. Call me when awake.”
Two days later, Barak emailed Epstein to thank him for his advice and inform him he had “softly killed the GADECO story”.
In early November, Barak informed Grynberg he could no longer help with the sale, but by the middle of the month, negotiations with Chao were back on, according to the emails.
Negotiations with Chao appeared to fizzle out by December, and the sale did not proceed.
Grynberg later lost control of his business empire in 2019 following a successful lawsuit by his family.
Epstein played a supporting role for Barak in other ways, including by offering his Manhattan home to host business meetings.
Those meetings included a September 2013 encounter between Barak and Boris Nikolic, a biotech venture capitalist and then-chief adviser for science and technology at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
At the time, Barak sat on the advisory board of the Israeli biotech startup Parasight, which was developing a platform to test blood for malaria and parasites.
Barak solicited Nikolic’s feedback on the technology, which was undergoing clinical trials in India, in the hopes that the Gates Foundation might invest in Parasight, later renamed Sight Diagnostics.
Nikolic later passed on the opportunity, telling Parasight that the Gates Foundation was avoiding “machine-based technology” due to the difficulty of deploying it in remote parts of Africa.
Epstein often steered Barak to reach out to high-profile individuals spanning politics, business, academia and entertainment, or in many cases offered to connect Barak himself.
The list included then-president of the Maldives Abdulla Yameen; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy; outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; former Harvard President Larry Summers; billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel; public intellectual Noam Chomsky; and film director Woody Allen.
It is unclear how many of these meetings took place.
One event that did go forward, however, was a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 while Barak was in Moscow.
“I think you should let Putin know you will be in Moscow. See if he wants private time,” Epstein wrote to Barak in May of that year.
Epstein and Barak both hoped to convince Putin to abandon his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and help bring an end to the Syrian civil war, according to an investigation by Drop Site News that reviewed the same trove of emails.
Acting as a backchannel for the Israeli government, Barak met with Putin in June 2013, but he failed to sway him.
Another important connection for Barak was the billionaire French banker Ariane de Rothschild, whose relationship with Epstein was also reported on by Drop Site news.
Epstein advised Barak on how to approach the banker, the emails show.
De Rothschild had previously told Epstein that Barak would need to “build a relationship” with her if he wanted “to make serious money”, according to Epstein’s account of the conversation.
“I’m ready. But I need your advise re HOW? ( ladies is your forté),” Barak wrote to Epstein on November 21, 2013, in reference to De Rothschild.
“time. attention. stable. recurring., PREDICTABLE where what when,” Epstein replied a few hours later.
Epstein also suggested in a June 2014 email to Barak that De Rothschild’s foundation had unspecified problems with the Israeli government that the politician should be briefed on.
Around this time, Epstein was pursuing Rothschild to fund Israeli “offensive cyber” startups, according to Drop Site News.
Barak shared similar interests, including in the Israeli cloud security startup Guardicore. He suggested in August 2014 that Epstein pass a one-page backgrounder on Guardicore to PayPal.
It is unclear whether Epstein followed his advice, and Guardicore was later acquired by cloud service provider Akamai Technology.
Barak’s correspondence with Epstein at times pointed to a deep personal friendship.
“[t]here are very few people that i enjoy spending time with, you are unique,” Epstein wrote to Barak on September 21, 2013.
“Thx. The same. EB,” Barak wrote back.
Epstein gave Barak access to an apartment in New York, and on one occasion, arranged for the delivery of a piano to the property.
“We are in the apartment. So cute. And your team prepared it with so much attention to details. Thank you very much. It is so helpful for this task of writing a book,” Barak wrote on July 25, 2015.
Epstein also invited Barak and his wife, Nili Priel, to visit his private island, Little Saint John, in the Caribbean.
Barak shared a potential travel itinerary with Epstein to visit his island in January 2014, but that trip appears to have been cancelled.
In December of that year, Barak’s wife shared a new travel itinerary to travel to St Thomas, an island close to Little St James, with Epstein.
“we can arrive to St. Thomas Friday, December 12 from NY at 12:55 PM with AA 1275 And leave on Monday, December 15 at 2 PM to NY with AA 1275. Does this suit you?” she wrote in an email forwarded to Barak.
The following week, Barak thanked Epstein for his “hospitality” and complimented him on his “Great, impressive island”.
Barak referred to the visit again in a February 2015 email to Epstein that mentioned a bodyguard who joined the former Israeli leader in “LSJ on the second day”.
After Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019, Barak announced that he had “cut all ties” with his former business partner.
In a 2023 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Barak adamantly denied attending any of Epstein’s “parties or activities involving girls and women”.
The leaked emails show that Barak had been approached years earlier for comment about his knowledge of Epstein’s activities.
In 2015, The Mirror newspaper contacted Barak to give him a chance to comment on whether he was aware that his business partner was “paying underage girls for sex”.
In a letter sent through his lawyers, Barak denied any knowledge of criminality by Epstein.
“As to your question about my awareness of Mr. Epstein’s activity, you are assuming allegations as fact and, even if the allegations turn out to be true, I was never aware that Mr. Epstein, to quote you, ‘was paying underage girls for sex.’”
The Mirror ultimately did not publish an article about Barak’s ties to Epstein following its correspondence with the politician.
While Barak’s relationship with Epstein opened up a world of elite connections and business opportunities, it overshadowed his aspirations for a political comeback in Israel.
At the time of Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, Barak was seeking to challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming elections under the banner of the newly formed Democratic Union, an alliance of left-leaning parties.
One month later, Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in what was later ruled a suicide.
Israel’s military has carried out a wave of air strikes in southern Lebanon, damaging several homes, according to Lebanese state media. Israel says it targeted around 13 Hezbollah-linked sites. The attacks are the latest Israeli violation of a ceasefire agreed last year.