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Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Two osprey chicks have been filmed hatching on top of a crane in the Daintree Rainforest.
The
crane is run by James Cook University's Daintree Observatory, and the
video live stream has been running for more than a decade.
What's next?
The observatory was threatened with decommissioning, but the university recently confirmed it would stay operational.
Each
year for more than a decade, a pair of ospreys have built a nest 47
metres in the air, on the top of a crane in the Daintree Rainforest.
The
crane is similar in structure to those used in construction, but this
one is part of a research observatory run by James Cook University (JCU)
in the heart of the World Heritage-listed rainforest.
Researchers
are confident the same osprey pair returns to the exposed location each
year, and the birds have again become proud parents to two squirming
chicks.
Daintree Rainforest
Observatory manager Johan Larson said the chicks began life "pretty
helpless" after hatching sometime between last Thursday and Saturday.
"They
struggle to hold their necks upright but, pretty quickly, once they've
had a few meals of fish, they start getting pretty strong," he said.
Researchers believe the same pair of ospreys have been returning to the observatory crane to nest every year. (Supplied: James Cook University)
Mr
Larson said the parents took turns flying the roughly 2 kilometres to
the ocean to fish, bringing meals back several times a day until the
chicks reached fledgling age.
"Then
slowly, slowly they start practising [flapping] their wings and, after
about two months, they start their first flight — [they] usually just
hover a little bit above the nest,"
he said.
Mr
Larson said the ospreys had been extremely successful parents, raising
chicks on a live-streamed video every year since cameras were installed
atop the crane about 11 years ago.
The canopy crane at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory has been in place since 1998. (Supplied: Johan Larson)
Crane's clearer future
The
future now appears more secure for the Daintree Rainforest Observatory
and the crane where the osprey nest — two years after it was revealed
JCU was considering closing both.
In
a statement this week, deputy vice-chancellor Jenny Seddon said a
consultation process found ways to increase use and public engagement
with the observatory and crane.
"For
example, last year, there was an increase in the number of
undergraduate students who used the facilities as part of their degree
program, along with a rise in the number of domestic high school
students who visited," Professor Seddon said.
She said the crane was in good working order, with its next 10-year certification review due in 2028.
Researchers sometimes use drones in tandem with the James Cook University crane, in the Daintree Rainforest Observatory. (Supplied: Emmeline Norris, James Cook University)
"There is no indication at this stage that this date would be the end of useful life for the crane," she said.
Mr
Larson said he expected the crane would need some significant servicing
or replacement, possibly in 2028, but was pleased it and the
observatory would continue to operate.
He
said despite advances in technology like drones and satellites, a lot
of research in rainforest canopies was best done on a crane.
"[The
canopy is] where you get most of the photosynthesis, pollination,
fruiting and flowering, and you have quite different communities of
insects and other types of wildlife up in the canopy compared to on the
ground,"
Mr Larson said.
"Without
a canopy crane, that work is very difficult. You have to use climbing
equipment, or you can use things like slingshots to get branches down
for leaf samples and things like that."
Australia has strengthened economic and political ties with Indonesia but our Asia capability is in decline. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
Rod
Brazier presented his credentials as Australia's ambassador to
Indonesia to President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta on May 6 last year.
In
terms of the Australia-Indonesia relationship, the event was sandwiched
perfectly between the signing of the Australia Indonesia Defence
Cooperation Agreement in August 2024 and the Treaty on Common Security
in December last year.
Announcing
Brazier's appointment at the end of 2024, Foreign Minister Penny Wong
observed that it was "impossible to overstate Indonesia's importance to
Australia".
"A strong and prosperous Indonesia is vital to the peace, stability and prosperity of our region," she said.
We
have re-strengthened our economic ties, and, significantly, our defence
and strategic ties with Indonesia in recent years and the shock that
went round the globe with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz in March
only highlights the importance of such ties in the region.
Remember
our prime minister's lap around South-East Asia on the search for more
energy and fertiliser supplies a few months ago? And his reminder to our
near neighbours at the time that it really is a two-way street between
their economies and ours, particularly for resources?
The
world is making a lot more local and dense trade and diplomatic ties in
the Trumpian world. Whether or not countries walk from the United
States — always the extreme and unlikely journey — they are just quietly
rewiring and reinforcing bilateral connections.
Yet
despite the worthy rhetoric about the significant of Indonesia to
Australia, we seem to have only regressed in our focus on our nearest
large neighbour.
Investors are nervous about the contradictions in Prabowo Subianto's economic strategy. (AAP: Lukas Coch)
Fears of another Asian financial crisis
Despite
two-way trade being at record highs, despite the closer defence ties,
and despite one island in Indonesia helping making it Australia's top
destination for short term travel, news desks in Australia don't seem to
rate it very much.
"Bombs, bongs and boats" — is the way some jaded Jakarta correspondents describe their bosses' interest in Indonesia.
Through
much of this year, there has been a major tremble going through the
Indonesian economy which, at times, analysts have feared might presage
another Asian financial crisis.
Just
this week, Bloomberg reported that the three biggest foreign banks in
Indonesia have shipped around $US640 million ($920 million) of their
earnings out of Southeast Asia's largest economy since 2024 "as they
pare exposure amid President Prabowo Subianto's increasingly
state-focused economic policies".
"The
Indonesian units of Citigroup Inc., Standard Chartered Plc and HSBC
Holdings Plc remitted a total of 11.5 trillion rupiah ($US640 million)
over the last two years, slightly exceeding their combined profits for
the period, according to an analysis of their financial statements,"
Bloomberg said.
There have been other alarming signs.
The
Indonesian rupiah has depreciated "a lot" against the US dollar — to
more than 18,000 rupiahs to one US dollar — the weakest point in its
history, weaker than during the Asian Financial Crisis.
Currencies fall when more people are selling them than buying them.
In
February this year, trading on the Indonesian stock exchange was
briefly suspended after a two day sell off saw an 8 per cent drop in the
market, worth an estimated $US 80 billion ($115 billion).
Overall
the stock market has lost about a third of its value since the start of
the year — making it one of the worst performers globally.
What's
making investors nervous are the contradictions in Prabowo's economic
strategy and how his administration deals with them: it aims for 8 per
cent annual growth (compared to around 5 per cent recently).
But
significant capital outflow has forced the central bank to lift
interest rates (which slows growth) and the government has been mostly
reluctant to cut back on the president's expensive pledges to deliver a
multi-billion dollar school meal program as well as fuel subsidies.
Indonesia has also imposed tighter export controls on some goods in the name of "resource nationalism".
As analyst James Guild wrote in The Diplomat this week there is always a tension between state and market in Indonesia.
"With
the current administration, we are seeing a sharper turn toward state
intervention and economic nationalism and this is causing a strong
market reaction," he said.
Committee
chair Tim Watts reflected on investments like school language and
exchange programs, as well as university courses in Asian studies and
languages. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Relevant to Australia's interests
How this all develops is of significant interest to Australia in the short term and the longer term.
Which brings us back to Rod Brazier.
Ambassador Brazier speaks fluent Indonesian.
That's because, as a young chap, he spent six months learning it in Makassar and living with an Indonesian family.
He then did an honours degree in Asian studies at Griffith University.
That makes him something of a dying breed.
Remember
when Paul Keating talked about greater engagement in Asia? Or Kevin
Rudd pushed for more Asian languages in Australian schools?
Well, the direction of our studies and engagement in Asia have only seemed to go backwards.
The
grand vision at one point might have been an Australian population that
had an awareness of our Asian neighbours, and all the opportunities
they presented.
But now the
problem is now rather more existential: will we even have enough
Indonesian-speakers, or for that matter Mandarin speakers, or Japanese
speakers to fill the ranks of our diplomatic corps in the future?
Will we have any deep academic knowledge of what is happening in our own region?
The report found language subjects have faced a steady decline in Australian education. (ABC News: Lachlan Bennett, file)
Language enrolments falling
The
House of Representatives standing committee on education this week
handed down its report into "Building Asia capability through the
education system and beyond".
Committee
chair Tim Watts reflected on the long investment made by — and for —
our diplomats like Brazier: school language and exchange programs;
university courses in Asian studies and languages.
"These
steps led them to be at the forefront of our engagement with the region
and to make an enormous contribution to our nation's security and
prosperity in Asia", Watts said.
But
the committee is warning that "school and university language programs,
in-country exchange and immersion programs, Asian studies courses at our
universities —all of these stages in Australia's Asia capability
pipeline are now facing an existential crisis".
"Australia
still has the people and the knowledge to make our own way in Asia
today. But the school language programs and university courses that
produced them are closing, one by one," it warned.
"To
ensure Australian self-reliance in Asia in challenging and contested
times, we need to act to preserve the institutions that build our Asia
capability."
The numbers are indeed staggering.
Domestic enrolments in South-East Asian languages at Australian universities have fallen by 75 per cent between 2005 and 2024.
"Barely
500 of the one million domestic Australian university students are
studying Indonesian language, fewer than when Menzies was prime
minister", the committee's report says.
"The
situation is even more dire in our schools. Just 3.3 per cent of
Australian Year 12 students studied a priority Asian language in 2023,
down from 4.7 per cent at the time of the Australia in the Asian Century
White Paper (2012)."
"The number of Year 12 Indonesian students across Australia fell from 1,160 in 2010 to 486 in 2024.
"In
Queensland, Indonesian is already functionally extinct. Over the past
15 years, only two schools have consistently taught a Year 12 or
combined Year 11 and 12 class in Indonesian. In 2026, just four students
across the state were projected to sit a year 12 Indonesian exam."
The
committee's report notes there has been a multitude of earlier reports
that have urged government strategies to help Australia make its way in
Asia.
But it says that "while
Asia has grown more important to Australia during this time, governments
from both sides of politics have not met the challenge set by these
reports", which will require "sustained national policy focus over the
long term".
An incentive to study language without culture
The committee heard two justifications for why nothing had to be done about this.
One
was AI translation tools which, it is claimed, will make language
learning redundant. This overlooks the fact that relationship building
actually needs just a bit of contextual and cultural expertise.
And it is perhaps worth noting here how government policies with different agendas can often destroy good intentions.
Independent MP Kate Chaney noted in the committee's report how the Morrison government's 'Job-Ready' graduates package worked.
(Job
ready restructured university fees to cut the costs of some degrees in
areas like STEM subjects while doubling or even tripling fees for arts,
law and business. It felt like there may have been just a tad of
woke-smacking going on in the policy process. It was a singular failure:
it turns out that people study things they are interested in, not what
they can afford).
Chaney noted
Job Ready did actually lower the student fee contribution for foreign
language courses, but "it simultaneously raised costs for Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) degrees, increasing the maximum student
contribution for the latter from $6,804 to $14,500.
"The
result is a purported financial incentive for students to study
language without culture, precisely the opposite of genuine Asia
capability," she said.
"Deterring students from HASS study reduces the pipeline into Asian language and area studies programs.
"It
weakens the institutional sustainability of programs in history,
politics, international relations, linguistics and cultural studies,
which produce precisely the kind of deep regional expertise this report
identifies as critical to Australia's national interest."
"Targeted
investments in language programs, teaching pipelines and in-country
experiences will have limited effect if the underlying funding structure
continues to signal that understanding Asia's societies, cultures and
politics is not worth students' time or money."
The other justification put to the committee was that the Asian-Australian diaspora would solve the problem.
Yet
our universities and schools don't even give communities an opportunity
to learn their heritage language. Only two Australian universities, for
example, offer courses in Hindi.
It's
not just Indonesian or Hindi that are in trouble. The language and
cultural expertise in China — our largest trading partner — is also
fading.
It only becomes more
important that we have people like Rod Brazier who are competent to
protect our interests in the future if we don't seem that keen as a
nation to understand the people and places around us.
Jews should be able to criticise the actions of Israel without risking exclusion from communal life
Today,
I’m giving evidence to the royal commission on antisemitism and social
cohesion, established after the slaughter of 15 people at a Hanukah
celebration at Bondi beach. Their murders demand an honest reckoning.
The question is whether we can confront antisemitism without weaponising
Jewish grief or turning Holocaust memory into a political instrument to silence the very forms of solidarity and dissent it should compel.
Over
the past two years, as a Jewish person publicly supporting Palestinian
freedom, Israel’s defenders have repeatedly turned symbols of Jewish
persecution against me. Online, I am called a “Kapo” and “Judenrat”,
invoking the institutions the Nazis created to make Jews complicit in
their own persecution. Those who claim to be the inheritors of the
Holocaust circulate memes depicting me as a rat, pin yellow stars on my
clothing, place me on a train to concentration camps and describe me as
“Hitler’s Jew”. During a live ABC interview, another Jewish guest
declared that I was “an anti-Jew”. Afterwards, a publication launched a
“debate” about whether that description was justified, as though my
Jewishness itself had become a matter for public adjudication.There is something profoundly disorienting about being compared to Nazis
At
the same time, I’m a target of actual neo-Nazis. They traffic in
conspiracies such as the “Great Replacement”, portraying Jews as the
hidden force behind multiculturalism, migration and anti-racism. They
recycle familiar caricatures of Jewish appearance and Jewish power that
have animated antisemitism for generations. They are indifferent to my
views on Israel. They target me because I am publicly Jewish, and
because I stand with those they imagine to be the enemies of a white
Christian nation: Muslim people, migrants and anti-racists.
There
is something profoundly disorienting about being compared to Nazis. I
understand why people reach for this language. For many Jews, the
Holocaust is the deepest moral reference point. It is the vocabulary
through which fear, vulnerability and collective memory are expressed.
But the language directed at me is not simply an expression of grief or
lateral violence. It is part of a political framework cultivated over
decades: one that collapses Jewish identity into the state of Israel,
recasts criticism of Israel as hostility towards Jews, and turns the
Holocaust from a warning against atrocity into a test of political
loyalty. Israel becomes the “persecuted collective Jew”. Its critics
become antisemites.
Last week, a UN commission of inquiry concluded that
Israel has continued to commit genocide through the deliberate
targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza. It found that Israeli forces
deliberately shot at children’s vital organs, used high-payload
munitions in densely populated areas, and that starvation caused by
Israel’s blockade had inflicted profound and lasting harm.
Rather
than engaging with these findings, Israeli officials again reached for
the language of historic Jewish persecution. They dismissed the report
as part of an “anti-Israel narrative” and accused those
sharing its findings of “parroting blood libels”, invoking one of
history’s oldest antisemitic myths. The allegations themselves became
the persecution. The question ceased to be what had happened in Gaza,
but whether those describing it were the latest antisemites.
This
framework has travelled well. Australia’s debate has become almost
entirely disconnected from Gaza itself. We argue about protesters,
slogans, university encampments and definitions of antisemitism.
Universities adopt managerial policies to mitigate “controversy”.
Regulators adopt contested definitions which chill speech. Journalists
learn which stories attract organised campaigns.
For
Palestinians, the result is global silence; turning evidence of mass
atrocity into a debate about permissible speech. For Jews, it flattens
our identities into allegiance to a nation-state. Jews who refuse that
allegiance must be cast out. My attempted public humiliation tells Jews
that our place in communal and public life is conditional on political
conformity.
Over the past two years I have
spoken to countless Jewish people who feel unable to express their
political convictions without risking public exposure, family rupture or
exclusion from communal life. After I was publicly described as an
“anti-Jew”, one wrote: “Growing numbers of Jews are feeling excluded and betrayed by communal institutions because of their political convictions.”
No
government or institution can or should decide the boundaries of Jewish
identity. But they can stop reinforcing the fiction that Jews and
Israel are interchangeable.
When the Holocaust
is used to police Jewish identity, silence those who bear witness to
atrocity, or to recast allegations of mass violence as acts of
persecution against the accused, it is hollowed of any moral force.
Instead its memory should be not only about what we inherit, but what we choose to do with that inheritance.
Only about 1 per cent of white-throated snapping turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood. (ABC Wide Bay: Grace Whiteside)
In short:
An
environmental group says flooding in Bundaberg earlier this year is
preventing endangered riverine turtles from laying their eggs.
WYLD Projects says steep banks, loose sand and low water levels are resulting in extremely low clutch numbers.
What's next?
The group is also concerned the floods have damaged the turtles' food source.
After a record nesting season
for an endangered species of turtle last year, it is a "devastating"
start to this year's laying after major flooding drastically changed the
banks of the Burnett River.
The
white-throated snapping turtle, known as milbi in Taribelang Bunda
language, is only found in the Burnett, Mary and Fitzroy Rivers in
Queensland.
WYLD Projects Indigenous Corporation has been monitoring and relocating turtle nests for the past decade.
WYLD Projects has reinstalled its predator-safe cages after losing infrastructure in the floods. (Supplied: Brad Crosbie)
Last year, it found 187 clutches and was able to relocate 94 to predator-safe cages.
Only 1 per cent of the hatchlings survive to adulthood.
The turtles' historic nesting banks were damaged when the Burnett River peaked at Bundaberg at 7.4 metres in March this year.
Brad Crosbie says the flooding drastically changed the riverbanks. (ABC Wide Bay: Grace Whiteside)
WYLD Projects founder and director Brad Crosbie said the flood had washed away sand in some areas, and dumped it in others.
"[Flooding] impacts the bank angle, which is critical for our turtles to lay," he said.
"It changes the substrate of the historical nesting bank and it removes a lot of vegetation."
Mr Crosbie said the steep banks and loose sand were resulting in extremely low clutch numbers.
Mother turtles are choosing not to nest on the steep, sandy banks. (Supplied: Brad Crosbie)
"We've got 3 metres of loose sand that's now on our banks, which is not ideal for our turtles," he said.
"Turtles have been coming up, trying to nest and just deciding not to."
In past years, WYLD Projects would have relocated about 30 clutches to predator-safe cages by now.
This year, the group had found seven.
Mr Crosbie said he believed low water levels were also contributing to the small clutch count.
A burned mountain is seen after a wildfire near Thessaloniki, Greece. (AP: Giannis Papanikos)
In short:
Two people have died after a wildfire tore through a house in northern Greece.
Firefighters
have also been tackling several blazes in the centre of the country,
where authorities are urging residents in two villages to evacuate.
A large wildfire has also been raging across an area of southern France.
Authorities
have urged residents of two villages in central Greece to evacuate as
more than 135 firefighters battle a wildfire, a day after a separate
forest fire killed a father and his 12-year-old son.
Firefighters
on Wednesday, local time, identified a body found inside a home
destroyed by the fire the previous day as that of the boy.
His
father's body was found Tuesday outside the property, which was in a
woodland area north-east of the northern city of Thessaloniki.
A fire broke out about 25 kilometres from the port city of Thessaloniki. (AP: Giannis Papanikos)
The boy's mother is being treated for burns in a hospital.
Wednesday's
fire was burning through forest and agricultural land in the central
Greek region of Fthiotida, the fire department said.
Nineteen
water-dropping planes, six helicopters and 135 firefighters backed up
by volunteers and special forest fire units were tackling the blaze.
At
least three other wildfires broke out in Greece on Wednesday — one in
the northern region of Halkidiki, another on the island of Salamina,
near the Greek capital, and a third in southern Greece.
All three were quickly contained, the fire department said.
A fire broke out in bushland on Tuesday afternoon, near Thessaloniki. (Reuters: Alexandros Avramidis)
While
Greece suffers frequent wildfires during its hot, dry summers, it has
so far been spared the heatwaves that have scorched much of western
Europe in recent weeks.
Scientists
have said the heatwave, which began on June 20, was the worst recorded
in Europe, and the blistering conditions disrupted power generation,
damaged infrastructure and overwhelmed healthcare systems.
Wildfires also break out across southern France
Emergency services were also tackling a large wildfire in the south-east of France on Wednesday.
Hundreds
of firefighters were mobilised to battle the blaze in the Herault and
Aude departments, close to the border with Spain, fuelled by drought and
strong winds.
Water-dumping aircraft were being used.
Temperatures of around 30C combined with strong wind gusts drove the spread of the fire through low, very dry vegetation.
About 200 people were evacuated or confined in the villages of Pouzols‑Minervois and Mailhac, officials said.
Kyiv residents walk past the aftermath of a Russian strike that killed at least eight people. (Reuters: Alina Smutko)
In short:
Russian forces have attacked Ukraine's capital, killing at least 25 people and injuring at least 86.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cut his Dublin trip short as the strikes
trapped paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station.
What's next?
Ukraine has recently intensified strikes deeper into Russian territory, triggering a fuel crisis in Russia.
Russian forces have attacked Kyiv in Ukraine, killing at least 25 people and injuring at least 86.
Drones and missiles struck residential buildings and started a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.
Tymur
Tkachenko, the head of the capital's military administration, said on
Telegram the death toll stood at 25 and was likely to rise as rescue
teams worked through the night sifting through rubble in search of
trapped residents.
He said
teams at one site in an eastern suburb on the left bank of the Dnipro
River had recovered five bodies while eight residents were unaccounted
for.
"Rescue crews will work without interruption until all the debris is cleared," he said.
"Unfortunately, more victims may still be found."
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had earlier warned of a possible attack
on Wednesday night, local time, and said he was cutting short his visit
to Dublin for the start of Ireland's six-month term in the rotating
presidency of the European Union.
Damage was recorded in 30 locations across Kyiv. (Reuters: Viacheslav Ratynskyi)
"If
our partners had delivered on their promises in a timely manner, I
think we could have saved more homes and lives today," he said.
"All we ask of our partners is simply to do what we’ve agreed on. We’re not even asking for more."
Later,
in his nightly video address, Mr Zelenskyy said the issue of air
defences would be "one of the key outcomes" of next week's NATO summit
in Türkiye, as he repeated his call for the development of European air
defences.
"If, of course, NATO still means anything to the allies," he said.
"Europe
must have its own sufficient capability to defend against all types of
threats, including this one — from Russian ballistic missiles."
Damage
to more than 130 buildings was recorded in 30 locations across Kyiv,
mainly residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, said Kyiv City
Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 20 residential buildings were damaged across the city.
The
Emergency Service said it deployed nearly 500 personnel and 100 units
of specialised vehicles, including a helicopter, to deal with the
aftermath of the attack.
Hundreds of emergency service personnel were deployed across the city. (Reuters: Viacheslav Ratynskyi)
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 13 people had been killed, with 86 injuredand announced a day of mourning for the capital.
Ukraine's emergency services later raised the death toll to 21.
Kyiv urged its allies to send more air defence.
"Do
not delay decisions on air defense for Ukraine! This is our main
request to our partners after Kyiv suffered a night of horror," Foreign
Minister Andriy Sybiga said on social media.
Russia fired 496 drones and 74 missiles, including hard-to-intercept ballistic projectiles, Ukraine's air force said.
It said it shot down 48 of the missiles and 476 drones.
Moscow said the attacks were retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia.
Kyiv,
which has stepped up strikes in recent weeks on Russia's domestic fuel
supply, said it had hit an oil refinery overnight in the Russian region
of Nizhny Novgorod, where the governor reported one person killed in a
strike on an industrial facility.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was briefed by his top military commander about the massive overnight strike, the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin added Moscow would continue to increase pressure on Ukraine in order to achieve its goals.
In
a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Europe
of escalating tensions, and said Russia was unable to turn a blind eye
to such moves.
Reuters video
footage showed emergency services working through the rubble of what
used to be a nine-storey building as the sun started to rise over Kyiv.
Moscow is trying to increase pressure on Ukraine after more than four years of war. (Reuters: Viacheslav Ratynskyi)
In
an earlier post, Mr Klitschko said the injured included paramedics and
drivers at an ambulance station, and that some people were still trapped
inside damaged residential buildings.
Pictures
posted online showed a fire burning out of control at the top of a
building on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while elsewhere in the
city, windows blew out and cars were destroyed. Multiple explosions were
heard in Kyiv, a Reuters witness said.
People
carried children, belongings, tents and pets, and crowded into
underground stations as air raid alerts were issued for most of
Ukraine's territory on Thursday in Russia's worst attack on the country
since mid-June.
"Another
horrific night for the residents of the city, who were forced to spend
it in shelters," Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's ambassador to the United
States, said in a post on X.
Katarina
Mathernova, the EU ambassador to Ukraine, said "Russia unleashed hell
on Kyiv" overnight and had struck accommodation used by diplomatic
personnel.
Diplomats were unharmed, but their belongings were damaged in a fire that engulfed the building, she said.
Neighbouring
Poland, a NATO and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter
jets on Thursday, local time, as a preventive measure before calling
them back and saying no airspace violation was recorded.
Smoke rises from an apartment building damaged overnight in Kyiv. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko)
Ukraine intensifying strikes deeper into Russia
Mr
Zelenskyy has proposed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to
end the more than four-year war, which the Kremlin leader has rejected.
Ukraine
has recently intensified strikes deeper into Russian territory,
triggering a widespread fuel crisis in the world's third-biggest oil
producer and forcing it to import gasoline from as far away as India.
Governor
Alexander Drozdenko of Russia's north-western Leningrad region, Mr
Putin's home and where large export and oil refining facilities are
located, said on Telegram that Russian forces brought down seven drones
on Thursday, local time.
Neighbouring
Finland, a NATO and European Union member like Poland, briefly issued a
temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland
before lifting it, its defence forces said on X.
Russia's strikes on Kyiv left a crater on a residential street. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko)
In
the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, a man was killed and his
wife injured after a drone hit their home, local authorities said
separately on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify details of the casualties.
Russia and Ukraine say they do not deliberately target civilians.
