Russia becomes first country to recognise Taliban government of Afghanistan
"We believe that the act of official recognition of the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will give impetus to the development of productive bilateral cooperation between our countries in various fields," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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The Independent
32 minutes ago
- The Independent
Russia and Ukraine trade drone strikes, disrupting air travel
Russia and Ukraine struck each other with hundreds of drones on Sunday, throwing Russian air travel in disarray, days after Moscow launched its largest aerial assault in the more than 3-year-old war. Photos circulating on social media showed crowds huddling at Russian airports including key international hubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Saturday and overnight, according to Russia's Transport Ministry. The flight disruptions hit Moscow's Sheremetyevo and St. Petersburg's main Pulkovo airports. Other airports in western and central Russia also faced disruptions. Russian air defenses shot down 120 Ukrainian drones during the nighttime attacks, and 39 more before 2 p.m. Moscow time (11 GMT) on Sunday, Russia's Defense Ministry said. It did not clarify how many had hit targets, or how many had been launched in total. Early on Sunday, Ukrainian drones injured two civilians in Russia's Belgorod region near the border, its Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Sunday. The Ukrainian attacks came just days after Russia pummelled Kyiv with waves of drones and missiles overnight into Friday, in what Ukrainian officials called the largest such strike since Moscow's all-out invasion. The seven-hour onslaught killed at least two civilians, wounded dozens more and caused widespread damage, Ukraine said, while Moscow ramped up its push to capture more of its neighbor's land. In total, Russia launched 550 drones and missiles across Ukraine that night, according to the country's air force. The barrages have coincided with a concerted Russian effort to break through parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukrainian troops are under severe pressure. Large-scale Russian drone strikes on Sunday injured three civilians in Kyiv and at least two in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast, officials said. A large Russian attack involving Shahed drones also targeted port infrastructure in Mykolaiv in central Ukraine, according to local Gov. Vitaliy Kim. He reported warehouses and the port's power grid were damaged but there were no casualties. Hours later, Russia launched a glide bomb and a drone at the front-line town of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine, killing four civilians and injuring a fifth, the prosecutor's office said. The drone struck a car in which a married couple were travelling, killing the 39-year-old woman and 40-year-old man on the spot, it said. ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Afghan man, 45, 'marries girl aged SIX before Taliban intervene... and say he must wait until she is NINE'
A six-year-old girl has allegedly been forced to marry a 45-year-old man in Afghanistan after she was given away for money. The haunting photo of an older man and a little girl standing together horrified even the Taliban, who intervened with the union. The youngster had allegedly been exchanged by her father for money to a man who already has two wives, it was reported by The marriage was allegedly set to take place on Friday in Helmand province but the Taliban stepped in and arrested both men involved. No charges were brought against them but they have forced the creep to wait until the girl is nine before he can take her home, local media said. UN Women reported last year that there has been a 25 per cent rise in child marriages in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned girls' education in 2021. They also said there has been a 45 per cent increase in child bearing across the country. In the same year as the Taliban came to power, after the US' heavily criticised exit, a nine-year-old girl who was sold by her father to a 55-year-old man as a child bride was rescued by a charity. Parwana Malik was sold for the equivalent of £1,600 in land, sheep and cash to a stranger named Qorban so her father Abdul Malik could pay for food. The little girl had cried day and night before her sale, begging her father instead to go to school to become a doctor. Parwana's buyer Qorban said at the time of his deal it was his 'second marriage' and insisted he would treat her well. Her father Abdul said he was 'broken' with guilt at the sale of his daughter and was unable to sleep at night. Only months before had Parwana's 12-year-old sister been sold to help the family survive. A US-based charity, Too Young to Wed, helped free the girl from the barbaric arrangement and her siblings and mother were moved from their camp to a safe house in Herat - the first time they had even been in a real home after living in tents. The horrific deal drew international outrage at the time with all 24 then-female senators in the US pushing President Joe Biden to take action to prevent child marriages in Afghanistan. Young boys have also fallen victim to the brutalities of the Taliban government, with many sexually exploited by older men and turned into sex slaves for the elite. Under the barbaric tradition of the 'Bacha Bazi', young boys and adolescents are adorned in makeup, dressed in brightly coloured women's clothing and sent before groups of powerful men to dance and entertain. Bacha Bazi, whose name translates to 'boy play', has persisted for centuries and, while Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership claim to oppose it, the practice continues as an open secret. A report released in November detailed how boys remain at high risk of commercial sexual exploitation through Bacha Bazi and 'are frequently underreported due to stigma and fear, particularly when perpetrators are police'. 'Despite the Taliban's public stance against the practice, reports suggest it remains prevalent and largely unaddressed,' the UK government report said. Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torment, only to be cast out once they grow facial hair and are no longer considered desirable. Many turn to prostitution, drug addiction, or suicide, unable to escape the trauma they have endured. Though some boys reportedly volunteer, many are sold into this life by their own impoverished families desperate to get by. Others are quite simply abducted, including by police officers - the very people supposed to prevent Bacha Bazi from resurging. Photographs and videos that have surfaced online show boys at these gatherings, forced to perform in front of groups of men who later pass them around as objects of pleasure. Once young boys are sold by their families or abducted, many are harangued into harems and flogged by pimps and traffickers. Some boys are kept effectively as personal property, with their owners wary of allowing other men to see the children for fear they would try to steal them away. Others, however, are traded willingly as a commodity. It is widely believed that every military commander has had a young companion as part of a sick game. In 2015, a New York Times investigation revealed that child rape by government-affiliated Afghan commanders was so common that it became an open secret among US troops. But the Taliban's own morality police - the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - focus almost exclusively on policing women's behaviour, while crimes like Bacha Bazi continue in the shadows. The repeated crackdown on women's rights has snowballed in recent years, with girls banned from primary school, effectively denying all women from education across Afghanistan after it was made forbidden for them to attend secondary or higher education. The extremist government also said women could no longer teach, visit mosques, attend seminaries, funfairs, parks and gyms in a crackdown on women's rights. According to the UN, more than 70 decrees, directives, statements, and systematised practices have targeted what women can and can't do. Women have been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside (Afghan burqa-clad women walk along a street in Kandahar) There has been a reported rise in female suicides and UNICEF said the education ban will create harrowing repercussions for generations to come. 'With fewer girls receiving an education, girls face a higher risk of child marriage with negative repercussions on their well-being and health,' the United Nations agency for children said. More than four million girls will be out of education if the ban continues until 2025. Most recently, women have been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside, in the Taliban's latest bid to control and subjugate an entire gender. Any woman who dares to break the new rules will be arrested and sent to prison, the terror group said. Women are also ordered to cover their faces 'to avoid temptation and tempting others', and are banned from speaking if unfamiliar men who aren't husbands or close relatives, are present. The UN reported that nearly one in five women said they hadn't spoken to another woman outside of their immediate family in three months. Malala Yousafzai has since urged the world to do more to help women and girls who are forced to live under the Taliban's 'gender apartheid' in Afghanistan. 'When we look at the scale of the oppression that Afghan women are facing, there is no legal term. There is no internationally recognised crime that can explain the intensity of it,' she told The Times.
The Sun
5 hours ago
- The Sun
Is this how World War 3 will start? Nato chief gives chilling prediction with simultaneous attacks by Putin & China
A CHILLING forecast of how World War Three will start has been revealed by Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte. The alliance chief has warned of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin launching simultaneous invasions - putting the planet under threat of nuclear Armageddon. 8 8 8 8 8 China would start by seeking to grab Taiwan - while ensuring the Kremlin dictator simultaneously attacks Nato territory. Stressing the urgent need to re-arm and boost military budgets, Rutte chillingly told the New York Times: 'Let's not be naive about this: If Xi Jinping would attack Taiwan, he would first make sure that he makes a call to his very junior partner in all of this, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, residing in Moscow, and telling him, 'Hey, I'm going to do this, and I need you to to keep them busy in Europe by attacking Nato territory'. 'That is most likely the way this will progress." Rutte explained that in order to "deter" the two powerful nations, there are two things that must be done. He said: "One is that Nato, collectively, being so strong that the Russians will never do this. 'And second, working together with the Indo-Pacific - something President [Donald] Trump is very much promoting. 'Because we have this close interconnectedness, working together on defence industry, innovation between Nato and the Indo-Pacific.' Russia could rebuild its military to a worrying capacity as early as 2027, according to a report by a top security think tank. The International Institute for Strategic Studies said Putin may deploy his army onto a 'war footing' and try to test Nato by evoking Article 5. This may see the Kremlin decide to leave Ukraine alone as it continues to recover from Russia's three-and-a-half year onslaught. Instead, Putin could commit to an attack on Nato states in the Baltics. Fears are already looming that the Russian dictator is eyeing the Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, formerly part of the USSR. Acknowledging how Putin is rearming at a speed "which is unparalleled in recent history," Rutte has insisted that Western countries increase defence spending. He said: "We have an enormous geopolitical challenge on our hands. 'They are now producing three times as much ammunition in three months as the whole of Nato is doing in a year. 'This is unsustainable, but the Russians are working together with the North Koreans, with the Chinese and Iranians, the mullahs, in fighting this unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. 'So here, the Indo-Pacific and your Atlantic are getting more and more interconnected. We know that China has its eye on Taiwan.' Russia today hit back at ex-Netherlands premier Rutte, claiming he had 'gorged on too many of the magic mushrooms beloved by the Dutch', while warning he should look forward to a future in a hellish Siberian labour camp. 8 8 8 Senior Putin puppet and security official Dmitry Medvedev lashed out on X: "He sees collusion between China & Russia over Taiwan, and then a Russian attack on Europe. "But he's right about one thing: he should learn Russian. It might come in handy in a Siberian camp.' The warnings came as Russia continued its onslaught on Ukraine - days after Putin informed US President Donald Trump by telephone that he had no intention of halting his war of invasion. Mad Vlad pummelled Ukraine with four S-300 missiles and 157 drones, with 127 of the UAVs shot down or suppressed by electronic warfare. Explosions hit Kyiv and the surrounding region, with multiple people wounded and residential buildings damaged. Putin unleashes huge onslaught of 500 missiles & drones in night of hell for Ukraine as Nato warplanes scrambled In Ukraine's second city Kharkiv, a two year old child and a woman, 46, were among those hurt as Putin continued to terrorise civilians, seeking to weaken the population's resolve. The Russians also hit Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region. Apartment buildings were also hit in Kramatorsk in drone strikes. Ukraine hit back with an attack sea drone seen being destroyed by Russian defences in Novorossiysk Bay in the Black Sea. Moscow was forced to close its major international airport Sheremetyevo due to the threat of drones. Rutte praised Trump for seeking to make progress with Putin just a few weeks after calling the US President "daddy" during a summit. The Nato chief said: "He is the one who broke the deadlock with Putin. When he became president in January, he started these discussions with Putin, and he was the only one who was able to do this. 'This had to happen. A direct dialogue between the American president and the president of the Russian Federation.' Yet this had not yet resulted in a long-awaited peace deal. "We are not there yet, and that means that in the meantime you have to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to stay in the fight.' Trump rages Putin 'just wants to keep killing people' By Patrick Harrington, Foreign News Reporter DONALD Trump issued a bleak warning that Putin wants to "keep killing people" after Russia launched its largest-yet barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine. In a middle finger to the US, the onslaught hit just hours after Putin and Trump had a fruitless 60-minute phone call - which touched on the possibility of fresh American sanctions. Trump fumed on Friday that he was "very unhappy" about the phone call with Putin and ensuing strikes. He said: "[Putin] wants to go all the way, just keep killing people, it's no good." Trump revealed the two leaders had spoken "a lot" about sanctions, adding: "He understands that it may be coming." The Kremlin said on Friday it was "preferable" to reach its goals of its invasion through political and diplomatic means - despite having just blitzed Ukraine with masses of explosives. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov continued: "But as long as that is not possible, we are continuing the special operation." Hours after hanging up on Thursday night, Vlad green-lighted the largest volley of missiles and drones since the start of the war. Fires broke out in multiple locations as almost every district in the capital city was struck, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration. Dozens of Ukrainians were injured as toxic smoke engulfed the city.
