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After Days at Sea, Some Migrants Reach Italy

Migrants disembark a coast guard vessel, after arriving by the hundreds packed on boats, on the southern island of Lampedusa, Italy May 9, 2021. REUTERS/Mauro Buccarello
Migrants disembark a coast guard vessel, after arriving by the hundreds packed on boats, on the southern island of Lampedusa, Italy May 9, 2021. REUTERS/Mauro Buccarello
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After Days at Sea, Some Migrants Reach Italy

Migrants disembark a coast guard vessel, after arriving by the hundreds packed on boats, on the southern island of Lampedusa, Italy May 9, 2021. REUTERS/Mauro Buccarello
Migrants disembark a coast guard vessel, after arriving by the hundreds packed on boats, on the southern island of Lampedusa, Italy May 9, 2021. REUTERS/Mauro Buccarello

A German charity boat carrying 257 rescued migrants docked Saturday in Sicily after Italian authorities granted permission, but another humanitarian vessel with 549 aboard still awaited an assigned port six days after the start of rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea.

After several days in limbo at sea, Sea-Watch 3 sailed into port at Trapani, western Sicily. Among the migrants aboard were 70 minors, some of them traveling without adult guardians while trying to reach Europe. Health workers were administering COVID-19 tests to the migrants.

German maritime rescue group Sea-Watch said Italian authorities assigned the German-flagged vessel a port on Friday after sea conditions in the central Mediterranean deteriorated.

Italy appealed to the European Union earlier in the week to press fellow EU nations to take some of the thousands of asylum-seekers who have arrived in the country in recent months, a sharp uptick since 2020. But similar past appeals for EU solidarity largely went unheeded, and there was no immediate signal the Italian government’s latest pitch would prove more effective.

A French charity, SOS Mediterranee, said Saturday that its rescue vessel was still awaiting port authorization. The Ocean Viking is carrying 549 passengers, including a 3-month-old infant, who were rescued in six separate operations over the course of the week, the organization said.

The Italian coast guard took one migrant off the boat for medical reasons on Friday night, the fourth such evacuation from the Ocean Viking in recent days, The Associated Press reported.

“The #OceanViking is still without any information about disembarking,'' SOS Mediterranee tweeted. “Our medical team is observing ever more signs of psychological unease aboard. Yesterday, a person fainted due to exhaustion. We're running out of medicines.''

Italy's interior minister earlier in the week pressed the European Union for an “urgent” change of direction on migrant policy. Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, whose anti-migrant League party is a member of the country's wide-ranging coalition, is insisting Premier Mario Draghi act decisively to stem the flow of migrants arriving on Italy's shores.

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Russia Says It Captured a Southern Ukraine Village in a Push before Winter Comes

A view shows buildings damaged during a Russian drone attack, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Vylkove in Odesa region, Ukraine October 11, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows buildings damaged during a Russian drone attack, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Vylkove in Odesa region, Ukraine October 11, 2024. (Reuters)
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Russia Says It Captured a Southern Ukraine Village in a Push before Winter Comes

A view shows buildings damaged during a Russian drone attack, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Vylkove in Odesa region, Ukraine October 11, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows buildings damaged during a Russian drone attack, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Vylkove in Odesa region, Ukraine October 11, 2024. (Reuters)

Russia said Monday that it has captured the village of Levadne in southern Ukraine as it probes for weaknesses along the war ’s roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, including in eastern areas that are the main focus of Moscow’s military effort before winter arrives.

Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, reported no nighttime Shahed drone attacks on the country for the first time in about six weeks, after saying five days ago they struck a Shahed storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region where around 400 drones reportedly were being kept.

Levadne, in the Zaporizhzhia region, was seized by the Russians early on during the full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but was recaptured by Ukrainian forces during a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.

Ukrainian officials made no comment about Levadne’s possible capture, though they had previously noted that the Russian army was assembling troops there and was conducting local assaults at the end of last week.

Ukraine’s troops are straining to hold back Russia’s military might, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, and don’t have the manpower or weaponry to launch their own offensive. Though Russia’s gains have been incremental, its steady forward movement is slowly adding up as the Ukrainians are pushed backward.

Ukraine says it needs more Western help to have a chance of holding back Russia’s invasion.

Russia illegally annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, in September 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all four regions as the main condition for a prospective peace deal — a demand Ukraine and the West have rejected.

Last week, the Ukrainian General Staff reported a direct hit on the Shahed drone warehouse inside Russia.

“The destruction of the Shahed drone storage base will significantly reduce the ability of Russian occupiers to terrorize peaceful residents of Ukrainian cities and villages,” it said at the time.

Ukrainian officials are keen to show the West that they aren't giving up the fight against their much bigger neighbor. An incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region has put Ukrainian troops on Russian soil for more than two months.

The Russians are managing to retake some territory in Kursk but the Ukrainians are capturing even more, according to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst from Information Resistance, a Kyiv-based think tank.

He told The Associated Press that the onset of winter fog and rain will affect the use of drones — an important element in Ukraine’s military strategy.

Ukraine has deployed sophisticated long-range drones to strike targets inside Russia, including airfields, oil refineries and ammunition depots.

The Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence said Monday that it destroyed a Russian military transport aircraft, a Tu-134, at a military airfield in Russia’s Orenburg region.

Russia, meanwhile, struck port infrastructure in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with a ballistic missile Monday, killing one person and wounding eight others, as well as damaging two merchant ships, officials said.

The attack damaged grain storage facilities, cargo cranes, administrative buildings, port equipment and vehicles, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksii Kuleba said on his Telegram channel.

Recent attacks on Odesa port facilities appear intended to disrupt the country’s exports of grains and other food staples.