Latest news with #EspresoTV
NDTV
23-05-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
Russia, Ukraine Each Free First 390 Prisoners In Start Of War's Biggest Swap
Chernihiv Region: Russia and Ukraine each released 390 prisoners on Friday and said they would free more in the coming days, in what is expected to be the biggest prisoner swap of the war so far. The agreement to exchange 1,000 prisoners each was the only concrete step towards peace to emerge last week from the first direct talks between the warring sides in more than three years, when they failed to agree a ceasefire. Both sides said they had each released 270 soldiers and 120 civilians so far, with more due to be released on Saturday and Sunday. The freed Russians are currently in Belarus, which neighbours Ukraine, receiving psychological and medical assistance before being moved to Russia for further care, the Russian Defence Ministry said. They include civilians captured inside Russia's Kursk region during a Ukrainian incursion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted photographs of released captives, all with shaven heads, celebrating their release and wrapped in Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian media outlet Espreso TV published a video of the wife of a prisoner crying tears of joy, wrapped in a flag on Kyiv's Independence Square. She said she had been waiting for her husband's release since 2022, and had just received the call from Ukrainian authorities confirming the good news. "We waited, hoped and fought," said the woman, whose name was given as Victoria. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities told reporters to assemble at a location in the northern Chernihiv region in anticipation that some freed prisoners could be brought there. Referring to the prisoner swap earlier on Friday, US President Donald Trump, who had pressed the sides to meet last week, wrote on Truth Social: "Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???" Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been wounded or killed in Europe's deadliest war since World War Two, although neither side publishes accurate casualty figures. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also died as Russian forces have besieged and bombarded Ukrainian cities. CEASEFIRE? Ukraine says it is ready for a 30-day ceasefire immediately. Russia, which launched the war by invading its neighbour in 2022 and now occupies about a fifth of Ukraine, says it will not pause its assaults until conditions are met first. A member of the Ukrainian delegation called those conditions "non-starters". Trump, who has shifted US policy from supporting Ukraine towards accepting some of Russia's account of the war, had said he could tighten sanctions on Moscow if it blocked peace. But after speaking to Putin on Monday he decided to take no action for now. Moscow says it is ready for talks while the fighting goes on, and wants to discuss what it calls the war's "root causes", including its demands Ukraine cede more territory, and be disarmed and barred from military alliances with the West. Kyiv says that is tantamount to surrender and would leave it defenceless in the face of future Russian attacks. Russia claimed on Friday to have captured a settlement called Rakivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. The governor of Ukraine's Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said Russia had struck port infrastructure there with two missiles on Friday afternoon, killing one person and wounding eight.
Russia Today
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Ukrainians still not sure about their state language
A Ukrainian language czar has sounded the alarm over its position in the country, despite the government's aggressive Ukrainization campaign. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine has largely been a bilingual nation, with most citizens able to speak or understand both Russian and Ukrainian, particularly in the eastern half of the country. People are still unsure which language they consider to be the 'main one' for them, Kiev's Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin has stated, adding that its use has been in decline, particularly in schools. 'The Ukrainian language has actually become less common among both children and teachers,' the language commissioner told Espreso TV on Thursday, urging the Education Ministry to take swift measures to tackle the issue. According to Kremen, local authorities in various parts of the country are also in no rush to comply with government restrictions on the use of language. 'Dozens of our local council members still have not learned three elementary words in Ukrainian,' the official said, adding that the local authorities 'react quite poorly' to the 'Ukrainization' process. Read more Kiev intensifying 'Ukrainization' campaign – ombudsman In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business, and the service industry, obliging all Ukrainian citizens to know the language. The move severely limited the use of Russian, effectively banning it in such fields as education and media. In 2024, Kiev maintained that Ukrainian children still did not have a good enough command of their state language as they were still using Russian in their daily lives. According to Kremen himself, a third of children in some Ukrainian regions preferred to speak Russian. In October, the language czar hailed what he called a transition from a 'gentle' Ukrainization campaign to a 'fervent' one. Kiev was to impose 'strict control over compliance with the language law in all spheres of public life on the territory of Ukraine,' he said at that time. On Thursday, the official admitted that Ukrainians 'still doubt which language is the main one for us, which is the state language' decades after gaining independence. After the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine's new authorities abolished Russian as an official regional language and started suppressing it, prompting a backlash from Russian-speaking residents in now former Ukrainian territories, which was one of the reasons they rejected the post-coup government.
Al Arabiya
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Russian attack kills at least one in eastern Ukraine's Kupiansk, officials say
A Russian guided bomb killed at least one person on Wednesday in and around Ukraine's northeastern city of Kupiansk, a key logistics centre subjected to increasing attacks in recent months. Kupiansk, east of Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv, was seized by Russian troops in the early weeks of their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It was recaptured by Ukrainian troops in a lightning offensive later that year, but has now come under new, intense Russian pressure. Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces targeted a residential area of Kupiansk and rescuers retrieved the body of one resident from under rubble. He said two people were injured in an attack on a village south of the city. Prosecutors in the region said two people were killed in the course of the day. Andriy Besedin, head of Kupiansk's military administration, told Ukrainian media outlet Espreso TV on Tuesday that the situation around the town was 'very difficult and critical'. 'The enemy is constantly shelling the city with all types of weapons and is very close along the entire line, both from the north and the south,' Besedin said. Russian troops burst into Kupiansk briefly last November for the first time since Ukrainian forces recaptured it. But the troops were repelled by Ukrainian defenders in the city, which has a pre-war population of 26,000. In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian forces hit a multi-story apartment building with guided bombs, injuring three people and causing serious damage, Roman Mrochko, head of the city's military administration, said on Telegram. Mrochko said rescue efforts continued into the night. Online pictures showed parts of the building reduced to piles of twisted building materials. The injured included 13-year-old twins. Kherson was also captured early in the initial Russian advance and taken back by Ukrainian troops later in 2022.
