Ukraine "preparing for everything" as Putin plots next move, ambassador says
CBSN
Washington — Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova said Sunday that the country is "preparing for everything" as Ukraine's military goes on heightened alert ahead of Russia's "Victory Day," with officials warning of possible escalation in the ongoing conflict.
"We know that there are no red lines for the regime in Moscow, so we're preparing for everything," Markarova said in an interview with "Face the Nation." "They said they will not go into — that they were not going to attack us, and they did. They said that there is no war in Ukraine for the past eight years, and we know [there] was. They said they didn't take the Crimea and they did. They said they're not killing civilians, and yet we see everywhere the deaths of women, children. They torture them, they rape them, they kill them. So we can count that Putin and imperialistic Russia will do everything bad they can possibly try to do."
Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.