Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met on Thursday with Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and other members of a new group looking into the environmental consequences of war. They discussed the impact of the attack on the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant earlier this month as well as other issues related to the “destructive impact of Russian aggression on nature,” Zelensky said in his nightly address.
Former U.S. vice president Mike Pence also visited Kyiv and met with Zelensky on Thursday, in a surprise trip that highlighted the Republican divide over American assistance to Ukraine. He is the only GOP presidential candidate to have visited Ukraine.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
The use of such mines is in violation of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which Ukraine is a signatory, Eve Sampson and Samuel Granados report. (Russia is not a signatory and has used several different types of banned antipersonnel mines in the invasion, HRW found in previous reports.) The bodyweight-triggered mines are considered particularly pernicious because of their small size and innocuous appearance, which can lead to children or other civilians handling them unknowingly.
“These antipersonnel mines have had immediate and devastating consequences for civilians in and around Izium, including by tearing off limbs of residents as they go about their daily lives,” Ida Sawyer, the director of HRW’s crisis and conflict division, said.