Blog entry by Aurelia Thorne
April 8 (Reuters) - A missile fired from Ukrainian-held territory was shot down over the Black Sea town of Feodosia in Russian-controlled Crimea, the Moscow-installed head of Crimea's administration said on Saturday.
SEOUL, April 9 (Reuters) - South Korea is aware of news reports about a leak of several classified U.S.
military documents and it plans to discuss "issues raised" as a result of the leak with the United States, a South Korean presidential official said on Sunday.
And it turns out her day of fun in the sun, which
included swimming, strolling and a relaxing massage, was just a
warm up for another night behind the turntables as the guest DJ
at the trendy LIV nightclub.
Vladimir Putin gave a a tub-thumping address yesterday to tens of thousands of Russians gathered at Moscow's world cup stadium, celebrating his invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and drumming up support for his new war
The premier also made clear that the UK intends to push ahead with North Sea oil and gas development - and potentially fracking - saying the country will 'make better use of our own naturally occurring hydrocarbons'.
Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has taken thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas, but presents this it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
Lvova-Belova said earlier this week that her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect the interests of children in an area where military action was taking place and had not moved anyone against their will or that of their parents or legal guardians, whose consent was always sought unless they were missing.
Speaking in front of banners that read 'For a world without Nazism' and 'For Russia' - with the letter 'Z' in each picked out in bold - he said: 'Sevastopol [capital of Crimea] did the right thing when they put up a barrier to neo-Nazis and radicals, which is already happening on other territories.
Asked if South Korea planned to lodge a protest or demand an explanation from the United States, the official, who declined to be identified, said the government would review precedents and cases involving other countries.
The newspaper said that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, insisting that the "end user" should be the U.S.
military. But internally, top South Korean officials were worried that the United States would divert them to Ukraine.
UKRAINE/BELARUS BORDER, April 8 (Reuters) - More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.
Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Moscow president was toppled amid mass street protests.
Kyiv has vowed to recapture the Black Sea peninsula along with all other Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces.
Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the Crimea anniversary.
Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer from a Ukrainian NGO called Regional Centre for Human Rights, told the briefing they were collecting evidence to build a case that Russian officials deliberately prevented return of the Ukrainian children.
The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.
Putin, who called the rally to mark the anniversary of the last time he attacked Ukraine to annex the Crimea region, spoke of sharing a 'common destiny' with Crimeans, of 'de-Nazifying' the region in 2014, and of the 'bravery' of soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of flag-waving Russians packed out Moscow's Luzhniki World Cup stadium on Friday as the despot attempted to drum up support for his stalled invasion of Ukraine, peddled debunked claims about why the war started and shilled a false narrative of Russia's battlefield 'success'.
Putin used the rally to peddle falsehoods about why the war started and to shill a narrative of Russia's battlefield success, speaking of 'how our guys are fighting during this operation, shoulder to shoulder, helping each other'
"Now the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity," said Mykola Kuleba, the founder of the Save Ukraine humanitarian organisation that helped arrange the rescue mission.
The three said they had been separated from their parents who were pressured by Russian authorities to send their children to Russian summer camps for what was billed as two weeks, from occupied parts of Kherson and Kharkiv regions.