Russia, Ukraine Continue Air Attacks with Ceasefire Prospects Uncertain

 Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. (Reuters)
Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. (Reuters)
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Russia, Ukraine Continue Air Attacks with Ceasefire Prospects Uncertain

 Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. (Reuters)
Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. (Reuters)

Russia and Ukraine continued aerial attacks on each other, inflicting injuries and damages, officials said early on Sunday, as the fate of a proposed ceasefire to the three-year-old war remained uncertain.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he supported in principle Washington's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.

Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.

The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday that its air defense units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

In a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, three people were injured, including a 7-year-old, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app.

Two of the people were injured after a drone hit their house, sparking a fire in the Gubkinsky district of the region, while the other person was injured in a drone attack on the village of Dolgoye, Gladkov said.

Alexander Gusev, governor of Voronezh, said on Telegram that there was no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The acting governor of the southern Russian region of Rostov said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage reported there either.

In Ukraine, authorities reported several Russian drone strikes, including on the northern region of Chernihiv, where firefighters were battling a blaze at a high-rise building that was sparked by Russian drone attack, Ukraine's state of emergency service said.

Ukrainian media reported a series of explosions in the region surrounding the capital Kyiv, after Ukraine's air force issued warnings of a threat of drone attacks on Kyiv and a number of other central Ukrainian regions.

By 0300 GMT on Sunday, there was no official information about damage in the Kyiv region.



Doctor Deported to Lebanon Had Photos ‘Sympathetic’ to Hezbollah on Phone, US Says

A general view of The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, US, July 27, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo
A general view of The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, US, July 27, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo
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Doctor Deported to Lebanon Had Photos ‘Sympathetic’ to Hezbollah on Phone, US Says

A general view of The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, US, July 27, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo
A general view of The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, US, July 27, 2021. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo

US authorities on Monday said they deported a Rhode Island doctor to Lebanon last week after discovering "sympathetic photos and videos" of the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and its fighters in her cell phone's deleted items folder.

Alawieh had also told agents that while in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of Hezbollah's slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a "religious perspective" as a Shiite.

The US Department of Justice provided those details as it sought to assure a federal judge in Boston that US Customs and Border Protection did not willfully disobey an order he issued on Friday that should have halted Dr. Rasha Alawieh's immediate removal.

The 34-year-old Lebanese citizen, who held an H-1B visa, was detained on Thursday at Logan International Airport in Boston after returning from a trip to Lebanon to see family. Her cousin then filed a lawsuit seeking to halt her deportation.

In its first public explanation for her removal, the Justice Department said Alawieh, a kidney specialist and assistant professor at Brown University, was denied re-entry to the United States based on what CBP found on her phone and statements she made during an airport interview.

"It's a purely religious thing," she said about the funeral, according to a transcript of that interview reviewed by Reuters. "He's a very big figure in our community. For me it's not political."

Western governments including the United States designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. The Lebanese armed group is part of the "Axis of Resistance", an alliance of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East that also includes the Palestinian movement Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war by attacking Israel almost a year ago on Oct. 7.

Based on those statements and the discovery of photos on her phone of Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, the Justice Department said CBP concluded "her true intentions in the United States could not be determined."

Alawieh and a lawyer for her cousin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Monday's filing, the Justice Department also defended CBP officials against claims by the cousin's legal team that Alawieh was flown out of the country on Friday evening in violation of an order issued by US District Judge Leo Sorokin that day.

The judge had issued an order barring Alawieh's removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours' notice. Yet she was put onto a flight to France that night and is now back in Lebanon.

The judge on Sunday had directed the government to address "serious allegations" that his order was willfully violated ahead of a hearing that had been scheduled for Monday.

That hearing was canceled on Monday at the request of the cousin's lone remaining attorney, after lawyers at the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer representing her pro bono withdrew, citing "further diligence" about the quickly-moving case.

A lawyer with that firm said she had gone to the airport on Friday and shown a CBP officer a copy of Sorokin's order on her laptop before Alawieh's Air France flight departed, and another CBP official in a declaration on Monday said he was made aware that occurred before taking Alawieh to the boarding area.

But the Justice Department said the notification needed to be received through standard channels and be received by the agency's legal counsel for their review and guidance, which did not happen.

"CBP takes court orders seriously and strives to always abide by a court order," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

The Justice Department's filing was later sealed by Sorokin at the request of a lawyer for the cousin. Reuters reviewed it from a public terminal in the courthouse before access was further restricted.