By Christina Lu
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the latest battlefield advances from Ukraine and Russia, hopes for humanitarian relief in Sudan, and Thailand’s new prime minister.
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Widening Battle
Ukrainian service members operate a tank on a road near the border with Russia, seen in the Sumy region of Ukraine on Aug. 14.Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images
More than a week after Ukraine launched its surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, Kyiv has reportedly pushed its attack deeper into Russian territory.
Ukrainian forces have now expanded their incursion past Kursk and into the bordering Russian region of Belgorod, Ukrainian soldiers told the Washington Post. Russia has declared a federal emergency in Belgorod, according to Alexander Kurenkov, the head of Russia’s emergency ministry, who described the situation as “complex and tense.” “As a result of terrorist attacks by Ukrainian armed groups in the Belgorod region, residential houses and infrastructure facilities have been damaged, there are dead and injured citizens,” he said.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been tight-lipped about why he ordered the Kursk attack, experts say one of the likely goals is thwarting Russia’s ongoing campaign in Ukrainian territory, particularly in the country’s eastern Donetsk region.
“Ukraine likely holds that, at a bare minimum, this operation will force the Russian military to deploy a much larger force to counter their offensive, thereby sapping their operations in Donetsk,” Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Foreign Policy earlier this week.
To battle back advancing Ukrainian troops, Moscow has indeed withdrawn some of its forces from Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions and rerouted them to the fight in Kursk. Russia is reportedly also rushing to recruit trench diggers in its bid to ramp up its defenses in Kursk and stymie approaching Ukrainian forces.
But Moscow has also continued its advance in Donetsk, with Russian troops reportedly pushing closer to Pokrovsk, a strategic city that has served as a key defensive Ukrainian stronghold in the region, according to the New York Times. As Russian forces close in, authorities in Pokrovsk have been urging residents of the town to immediately evacuate, with officials’ Telegram messages stressing that the enemy troops are “advancing at a fast pace” and warning that “with every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”
“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” said Serhii Dobriak, the head of Pokrovsk’s military administration, in a Telegram post on Thursday. “Evacuation is underway in the community. Don’t delay!”
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Vital relief. Sudan’s military has decided to reopen a key crossing at the country’s border with Chad for a three-month period, a move that would allow aid groups to deliver much-needed humanitarian relief to millions of people suffering from chronic hunger as a result of the country’s civil war. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) closed the crossing six months ago because it said its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), was using it for weapons deliveries. U.N. experts have corroborated the allegations, which the RSF denies.
The announcement follows weeks of mounting international criticism of the SAF’s closure of the crossing amid the country’s deepening humanitarian crisis. At least 755,000 people are facing “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, while 25.6 million people—or more than half of the country’s population—are suffering from extreme hunger. Famine has already been declared in Sudan’s Darfur region.
The news also comes shortly after U.S.-led peace talks aimed at ending the country’s civil war commenced in Geneva on Wednesday. The SAF, however, has so far refused to send representatives to the city to participate in the negotiations, which are now in their third day; the RSF has sent a delegation to Geneva, but members have thus far not attended the talks, either. Diplomats from the African Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Nations are all participating.
Thailand’s new leader. Thailand’s parliament has elected Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the 37-year-old daughter of billionaire former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, to be the country’s next prime minister. A 2006 military coup ended her father’s rule; now, Paetongtarn’s rise to power signals the return of a polarizing and divisive political dynasty. Her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra, is also a former prime minister of Thailand.
Paetongtarn’s ascent comes during a tumultuous time in Thai politics. Even though the progressive Move Forward Party triumphed in national elections last year—bringing an end to military rule—the party was disbanded last week by a Thai court, which said the party’s pledges to amend a royal family defamation law violated the constitution. On Wednesday, Thailand’s Constitutional Court removed then-Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on grounds of breaching ethical standards.
Tenuous talks. The United States, Qatar, and Egypt have presented a final cease-fire and hostage deal proposal to Hamas and Israel, the three countries said in a joint statement on Friday following two days of cease-fire talks in Doha. The proposal “builds on areas of agreement over the past week” and “bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal,” the statement said, without offering any details as to the deal’s provisions.
The talks, which began Thursday, are now paused and are expected to resume next week. In the coming days, the statement said, working teams will continue to hammer out technical implementation stipulations. By the end of next week, senior officials from all three countries will reconvene in Cairo with the goal of finalizing the agreement.
Israel and Hamas, the latter of which skipped this week’s talks, have not yet said whether they will take part in the negotiations in Cairo. Both parties have accused the other of attempting to scupper the potential deal. On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that while “we’re not there yet,” “we’re much, much closer than we were three days ago.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday.
Odds and Ends
There’s no shortage of films visualizing the potential risk of shark attacks, from Sharknado to the more creatively imagined Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre. But some beachgoers in Japan are facing a different kind of the threat. In the past month, at least 16 people have been attacked by what some experts believe is a solitary—and potentially sexually frustrated—dolphin. Due to the creature’s size and strength, researchers said, what beachgoers see as an attack could be an attempt to mate. “Dolphins, when they are mating, can be very wild,” Putu Mustika, a lecturer and marine researcher at James Cook University in Australia, told the New York Times.
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