Category World News

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, August 13:

Fighting

• A Russian attack killed a civilian and injured one other person in Shakhove, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
• Russian forces bombed the town of Bilozerske, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, overnight, killing two people and injuring seven, including a 16-year-old boy, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
• The AFP news agency reported that Ukrainians were evacuating Bilozerske as Russian troops made gains in the area, while Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported that Russian forces had advanced in Nikanorivka, Shcherbynivka and near Petrivka in the Donetsk region.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia wants Ukraine to withdraw from the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine as part of a ceasefire deal, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin is due to meet United States President Donald Trump for talks about the war in Alaska on Friday.
• The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces were involved in “difficult” fighting close to Pokrovsk and Dobropillia in Donetsk, and that reinforcements were required to block attacks by small groups of Russian troops.
• Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service claimed that Ukrainian drones hit a Russian long-range drone storage warehouse in the Kzyl-Yul settlement in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
• A person died after being injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Monday in Arzamas, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, which cited the regional governor.
• Russian forces shot down six guided bombs and 179 drones in 24 hours, the Russian Ministry of Defence reported on Tuesday, according to TASS.

Ceasefire

• Zelenskyy said that the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday is a “personal victory” for Putin, “because he is meeting on US territory”, and because he “has somehow postponed sanctions”.
• Zelenskyy also said he had received a “first signal” from US envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia might agree to a ceasefire, without providing further details.
• White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the meeting in Alaska’s capital, Anchorage, would be “a listening exercise for the president”, and that the aim was for him “to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war”.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov spoke on the phone on Tuesday. The US State Department said that “both sides confirmed their commitment to ensure a successful event” in Alaska.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Putin spoke with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about his upcoming meeting with Trump. Putin also expressed appreciation for North Korea’s support in the “liberation of the Kursk Region from the invading forces of the Kyiv regime”, the ministry said in a post on Telegram.
• Zelenskyy held calls with the president of Turkiye, the emir of Qatar, the president of Romania and the prime minister of the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Mexico has expelled 26 alleged high-ranking cartel members to the United States, in its latest deal with the administration of President Donald Trump.

The transfer was confirmed by a joint statement from the Mexican attorney general’s office and its security ministry on Tuesday.

The statement said that the US Justice Department had sought the extradition and that it had given guarantees that the death penalty would not be levied against any of those prosecuted.

The transfer comes as the Trump administration continues to exert pressure on Mexico to take more action against criminal gangs involved in drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Part of that pressure campaign has come in the form of tariffs, with certain Mexican exports to the US now taxed at a higher rate.

Trump has described the import tax as necessary to hold Mexico “accountable” for the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs”.

In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has struck a careful balance when dealing with Trump, cooperating on some security issues, while drawing clear lines when it comes to her country’s sovereignty. That has included vehemently opposing any US military intervention on Mexican soil.

Still, US media reported last week that Trump has secretly signed an order directing the military to take action against drug-smuggling cartels and other criminal groups from Latin America, which could presage the deployment of US forces both domestically and abroad.

The move on Tuesday was the second time in recent months that Mexico has expelled alleged criminal gang members wanted by the US.

In February, Mexico extradited 29 alleged cartel figures, including Rafael Caro Quintero, who is accused of killing a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in 1985.

That deal came as Trump threatened to impose blanket 25-percent tariffs on Mexican imports, but the scope of that tariff threat was later pared down.

Currently, the US imposes a 25-percent tariff on Mexican-made cars and products not covered under a pre-existing free trade accord, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Mexico also faces a 50-percent tax on its steel, aluminium and copper products.

But at the end of July, Trump agreed to extend a tariff exemption for goods that fall under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement for 90 days.

The Associated Press news agency reported that Abigael González Valencia, the leader of “Los Cuinis”, a drug-trafficking group closely aligned with the notorious Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), was among those expelled to the US in the latest deal.

The Trump administration took the unorthodox move of designating the CJNG and seven other Latin American crime groups as “foreign terrorist organisations” upon taking office.

Valencia is the brother-in-law of CJNG leader Nemesio Ruben “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, who is considered one of the most wanted people in Mexico and the US.

Valencia was arrested in February 2015 in Mexico and had since been fighting extradition to the US.

A Guatemalan court has convicted six people in connection with the deaths of 41 girls at a state-funded youth shelter in 2017.

On Tuesday, Judge Ingrid Cifuentes gave the former officials, who had all pleaded not guilty, sentences of between six and 25 years for charges ranging from abuse of authority to manslaughter.

Two of the people convicted were ex-police officers, while the other four were ex-child protection officials.

Prosecutors had sought sentences of up to 131 years for some of those on trial.

The judge said she did not have the jurisdiction to make a ruling against a seventh defendant, who used to be the children’s prosecutor at the attorney general’s office.

As well as handing down the prison terms, Cifuentes also ordered an investigation into former President Jimmy Morales, who was Guatemala’s leader at the time of the blaze.

Emily del Cid Linares, 25, a survivor of the fire who suffered burns, said she was satisfied with the verdict.

“I feel like a weight has been lifted from me,” she said. “What I most feel is that they [the victims] will be able to rest in peace. [Those responsible] are going to pay for what they did.”

The tragedy at the Virgen de la Asuncion youth shelter, which is located 22km (14 miles) east of the capital, Guatemala City, shook the country and went on to highlight the widespread abuse in the government’s shelter system.

The fire broke out on March 8, 2017, a year after the home, which housed hundreds more children than its legal capacity, was ordered to close by a court.

The blaze started in a classroom in which 56 girls had been locked after their attempt to escape the shelter the previous day. After being brought back to the site by the police, they were shut in a room with no access to a toilet.

Witnesses said that one of the girls set fire to their foam mattresses to protest against their treatment at the home, which is alleged to have included sexual abuse.

The United States has sanctioned an armed group accused of illicit mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as both the army and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group traded accusations of violating a recently reached US-mediated ceasefire deal by attacking each other’s positions.

The US Department of the Treasury said on Tuesday that it was blocking all interests and restricting transactions with Pareco-FF, an armed group that it said controlled the key coltan mining site of Rubaya from 2022 to 2024, and which has opposed the M23 group.

The administration of President Donald Trump has been pushing for US access to the region’s minerals, as it has done in other parts of the world, including Ukraine.

It also slapped sanctions on the Congolese mining company CDMC, saying it sold minerals that were sourced and smuggled from mines near Rubaya and two Hong Kong-based export companies, East Rise and Star Dragon, which have been accused of buying minerals from the armed group.

“The United States is sending a clear message that no armed group or commercial entity is immune from sanctions if they undermine peace, stability or security in the DRC,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

Rubaya is currently under the control of the M23 group, which is already targeted by US sanctions. The mine there produces 15 to 30 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, a mineral used in electronics such as laptops and mobile telephones.

Many Pareco rebels integrated into the DRC military in 2009, but Pareco-FF emerged in 2022 in response to the M23 gains.

The sanctions come as Congolese army spokesman Sylvain Ekenge said in a statement that the M23 group’s “almost daily” attacks constitute an “intentional and manifest violation” of the declaration of principles, which the two parties signed in mid-July in Doha, whose terms include a “permanent ceasefire”.

It followed a separate peace deal between the Congolese and Rwandan governments, signed in Washington, DC, the previous month, which also helped the US government and US companies gain control of critical minerals in the region.

The Congolese army said it was ready to respond “to all provocations from this [M23 group] coalition, accustomed to violating agreements”, the statement said.

M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said in a post on X on Monday that DRC’s government was continuing “its offensive military manoeuvres aimed at full-scale war”.

The eastern DRC, a region bordering Rwanda with abundant natural resources but plagued by non-state armed groups, has suffered extreme violence for more than three decades.

A new surge of unrest broke out early this year when the M23 group captured the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, setting up their own administrations, with thousands killed in the conflict.

Violence has continued on the ground despite the US and Qatar-brokered peace deal, with fighting becoming more intense since Friday around the town of Mulamba in South Kivu province, where the front line had been relatively stable since March.

The M23 attacked positions between Friday and Monday held by pro-Kinshasa militia and army forces, and pushed them back several kilometres, after clashes using light and heavy weapons, local and security sources said.