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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — There is a cost to war — to the countries that wage it, to the soldiers who fight it, to the civilians who endure it. For nations, territory is gained and lost, and sometimes regained and lost again. But some losses are permanent. Lives lost can never be regained. Nor can limbs.

And so it is in Ukraine.

The stories of the people who undergo amputations during conflict are as varied as their wounds, as are their journeys of reconciliation with their injuries. For some, losing a part of their body can be akin to a death of sorts; coming to terms with it, a type of rebirth.

For soldiers wounded while defending their country, their sense of purpose and belief in the cause they were fighting for can sometimes help them cope psychologically with amputation. For some civilians, maimed while going about their lives in a war that already terrified them, the struggle can be much harder.

For the men, women and children who have lost limbs in the war in Ukraine, now in its third month, that journey is just beginning.

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OLENA

The explosion that took Olena Viter’s left leg also took her son, 14-year-old Ivan, a budding musician. Her husband Volodymyr buried him, along with another boy killed in the same blast, under a guelder rose bush in their garden. Amid the fighting, they couldn’t get to the cemetery.

“How am I going to live without Ivan? He will remain in my heart forever, like the fragment that hit him,” she said. When she’s alone, Olena cries.

Bombs rained down on Olena’s village of Rozvazhiv, in the Kyiv region, on March 14. Ivan and four others died; Olena was one of about 20 who were wounded.

At first, “I was thinking, ‘Why did God leave me alive?’” said Olena, 45, her soft voice breaking. Hearing Ivan was dead, she begged a neighbor to get his rifle and shoot her.

But Volodymyr pleaded with her, saying he couldn’t live without her.

Now, she endures the devastation of the loss of her child, and the physical pain of the loss of her leg, cut below the knee.

“Every day I get used to some new type of pain. I am thinking what kind of new pain will I see in the future,” she said.

She has yet to accept either of her losses.

“I am still not accepting myself as I am now,” Olena said. “I really liked to dance. I was doing sports. I don’t know, I need to learn.” She can’t yet imagine what it will be like to walk again.

Perhaps, Olena said, her life was spared because she was meant to do something, to help others, perhaps as a volunteer or by donations to a music school in Ivan’s memory.

“At the moment, I don’t know what I would want to do. I should keep searching. … I must learn how to live. How? I do not know yet.”

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YANA AND NATASHA

Devastation struck out of a clear blue sky for Yana Stepanenko. On April 8, the 11-year-old went to the eastern city of Kramatorsk with her mother, Natasha, and twin brother Yarik to board an evacuation train.

Yarik stayed in the station to guard their luggage while Yana and her mother went outside to buy tea.

A missile hit, and the world went black, and silent. Natasha fell. She couldn’t stand. She looked over and saw her little girl, her leggings dangling where her feet should be. Blood was everywhere.

“Mom, I’m dying,” Yana cried.

The injuries to mother and daughter were devastating. Yana lost two legs, one just above the ankle, the other higher up her shin. Natasha lost her left leg below the knee.

Yarik was uninjured and has been reunited with his mother and sister. The children’s father died of cancer several years ago, and their stepfather is fighting at the front. So now the little boy cares for his mother and sister, running around the hospital corridors, fetching wheelchairs and bringing food.

Natasha still struggles to comprehend what happened.

“Sometimes it seems like it happened not to us,” she said, crying softly.

She worries most about her daughter. “I cannot help her as a mother, I cannot pick her up, or help her move,” she said. “I can only support her with my words from my bed.”

Yana, like children everywhere, is eager to be up and about.

Yana misses her home and her friends and is looking forward to getting prosthetics.

“I really do want to run,” she said.

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SASHA

Alexander Horokhivskyi, known as Sasha, is in pain. And he is angry. He winces as he rubs the stump of his left thigh where his leg was amputated on April 4, nearly two weeks after he was injured.

Sasha was shot in the calf by his own side. A territorial defense member mistook him for a spy because he was snapping photos of bombed buildings near his home in Bobrovytsya, a city in the Chernihiv region, after emerging from a bomb shelter.

He was questioned for about 90 minutes at a police station before being taken to an overwhelmed hospital. Days later, he was moved to a hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where doctors decided they had to take his leg to save his life.

The 38-year-old, an avid table tennis player, only found out about the amputation when he awakened from surgery.

“How did they dare do all that without my consent?” he railed. Between the drugs and the pain, he doesn’t remember much. “I swore a lot.”

His journey has been painful, both physically and psychologically. He worries whether he’ll be able to play sports again, or travel. And the injustice of it all weighs on him.

“I try to understand how it could happen. Especially during the first week, I couldn’t think about anything else.” It would be different if he was wounded while fighting. “But to be injured in such a way was very hard.”

Still, he’s spoken with a psychologist, and he’s come a long way from those initial dark days. “It does not make sense to return to this moment,” he said. “Because you can’t change anything.”

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NASTIA

There had been no electricity or running water for two or three days in the Chernihiv basement where Nastia Kuzik, her parents, her brother, and another 120 people had taken shelter. Tired of the dark, she decided to go to her brother’s house nearby — just for a while.

Walking back toward the bomb shelter, the 21-year-old heard the noise: “tsch, tsch, tsch.” She ran. She was just a few steps from the entrance when the explosion flung her to the ground.

She drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time she opened her eyes, her brother was there, telling her everything would be OK. But nothing would ever be the same.

Doctors worked hard to save her leg, but it just wasn’t possible. Her lower right leg was amputated below the knee. Her other leg was badly broken.

Now, gradually, as she goes through painful physical therapy, reality is sinking in.

“I am accepting it,” she said. Nastia’s usually bright, cheerful disposition falters. A tear runs down her cheek. “I had never thought it would ever happen to me. But since it did, what can I do?”

She’s working hard to be optimistic. A German speaker, she has tutored children in the language, and she’s always wanted to study in Germany. In early May, she was evacuated to a specialized rehabilitation facility in Leipzig.

This was not the way wanted her dream to come true, but she said she’s going to make the most of it.

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ANTON

Lidiya Gladun had lost contact with 22-year-old Anton, a military medic deployed on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, for about three weeks. Then someone sent her a Facebook post by a nurse in a hospital in Kharkiv. They had an Anton Gladun in their hospital. Did anybody know him?

Lidiya contacted the nurse, who was sparing with information on Anton’s condition. When he was well enough to do so, Anton phoned his mother. He asked her to bring some clothes to the hospital. “He was mentioning flip-flops, and then he said he didn’t need flip-flops anymore.”

He believes it was a cluster bomb that struck his unit as it retreated on March 27. Anton lost both legs and his left arm, and his right arm was injured.

For days, Anton had been in a coma. When he regained consciousness, he said, “I was smiling, like everything was OK, basically. I was thinking that the most important thing was that I was alive.”

But he was haunted by nightmares and horrific hallucinations. A volunteer psychologist visited him, and with his help the hallucinations subsided. He no longer has nightmares. He doesn’t really dream at all.

He’s eager to get his prosthetics and start walking. He figures his military career is probably over, but he wants to study information technology.

What helps, he said, “is my understanding that if I would be sad, would cry because of what happened, then it would only be worse.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — AP photojournalist Emilio Morenatti lost his left leg while covering the conflict in Afghanistan in 2009. “When a part of your body is amputated, you cross over into the disabled community, and a camaraderie inevitably develops,” he said. “My need to access this group is above any kind of impediment: I’m fascinated by comparing experiences, amputee to amputee. This is why I’m no longer interested in covering the war from the front line, but rather from behind the front lines, where the only thing that remains is the raw testimony of the cruelty marked by this damned war.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest winners plan a tour of Europe to raise money for the army as it continues to put up fierce resistance to Russian forces more than 80 days after they invaded the country, they said on Tuesday.

Kalush Orchestra on Saturday rode a wave of popular support to win the competition, giving their compatriots a much-needed morale boost.

Frontman Oleh Psiuk told a televised news conference in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv that the band would soon announce on Instagram where it would tour.

“At every performance we are going to collect funds for the needs of the army,” he said.

Psiuk said he hoped Ukraine would host Eurovision next year and thanked the defenders of the besieged Azovstal steel works in the southern city of Mariupol for their courage in holding out for so long.

Fighters in the last stronghold in Mariupol have started to surrender, but a Ukrainian presidential adviser said their defiance had changed the course of the war.

Bookmakers had made Kalush Orchestra clear favourites in Eurovision. Their song “Stefania” that fuses rap with traditional folk music was lying fourth after national juries voted, but stormed into top spot thanks to a record score during voting by viewers.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets,; Writing by Alexander Winning, editing by Ed Osmond)

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By Tom Balmforth and Jonathan Landay

KYIV/KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Even as the Kremlin prepares to take full control of the ruins of Mariupol city, it faces the growing prospect of defeat in its bid to conquer all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas because its badly mauled forces lack the manpower for significant advances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have to decide whether to send in more troops and hardware to replenish his dramatically weakened invasion force as an influx of modern Western weaponry bolsters Ukraine’s combat power, analysts say.

Russia’s forces are unlikely to be vanquished quickly even if no major new troop deployment materialises, setting the stage for the four-week-old Battle for the Donbas to grind on.

“I think it’s either going to be defeat with the current force posture, or mobilise. I don’t think there is any middle ground,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of the Poland-based Rochan consultancy.

He and other analysts said Russia’s invasion force was facing unsustainable troop and equipment losses, and that their window for a breakthrough was narrowing with Ukraine now bringing Western heavy artillery into the fray.

“Time is definitely working against the Russians. They’re running out of equipment. They’re running out of particularly advanced missiles. And, of course, the Ukrainians are getting stronger almost every day,” said Neil Melvin of the RUSI think-tank in London.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that “everything is going to plan … there’s no doubt that all the objectives will be achieved,” the RIA news agency reported.

But in an unusually critical commentary on Russia’s main television channel this week, a prominent military analyst said Russians should stop swallowing “informational tranquilizers” about what Putin calls a special military operation.

With the increasing flow of U.S. and European weapon supplies to Ukrainian forces, “the situation will frankly get worse for us,” said Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired colonel.

AZOVSTAL FALLS

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in a failed drive to capture the capital, Kyiv. It then withdrew to focus on a “second phase” announced on April 19 to capture the south and all of the Donbas, a chunk of which has been held by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.

Russia retained its land corridor in southern Ukraine, but was hampered by Ukrainian troops who held out against massive bombardments for 82 days in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel works before ending their resistance this week.

Meanwhile, Putin’s forces pressed against Ukraine’s battle-hardened, fortified positions in the east, while trying to cut them off in a massive encirclement by advancing south from the Ukrainian town of Izium.

Around a third of the Donbas was held by Russia-backed separatists before the invasion. Moscow now controls around 90% of Luhansk region, but it has failed to make major inroads towards the key cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk in order to extend control over the entire region.

“I’m deeply skeptical of their prospects” of conquering all of the Donbas, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military with CNA, a U.S. nonprofit research and analysis organisation.

“They’re dealing with a dramatically weakened force, probably substantially reduced morale. There’s a weak desire by officers to keep trying to prosecute offensives and the Russian political leadership on the whole seems to be procrastinating even as it’s facing the strategic defeat itself,” he said.

Muzyka said Russia appeared to be switching its focus in Donbas and had shifted battalion tactical groups eastward after failing to break the Ukrainian defences in Donetsk.

“They couldn’t push through from Izium so they moved to Sievierodonetsk and Lyman, possibly with the goal of trying to encircle Ukrainian forces around Sievierodonetsk and Lyman. Whether or not this occurs is an entirely different matter,” he said.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Russian chief of army staff, visited the front this month in an apparent bid to iron out problems, but there is no evidence he succeeded, said Jack Keane, the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

“That offensive has indeed stalled,” he said.

To the north of the Donbas, Kyiv has mounted a counter-offensive near the city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine that has cleared Russian forces from shelling range of the country’s second biggest city and even reached the border in one place.

Muzyka said Ukraine might secure a significant part of its border with Russia north of Kharkiv this week.

But Ukraine will not be able to replicate that quick advance in the Donbas where Russia’s troops are much more densely concentrated.

“It’s going to be a hard fight. There’s going to be a hard fight and potentially a long fight. The Russian military hasn’t done well on the offensive, but it doesn’t rout or surrender easily either,” said Kofman.

‘ARTILLERY WAR’

The influx of Western heavy guns, including scores of U.S. – and some Canadian – M777 howitzers that have longer range than their Russian equivalents, could give Ukraine an edge in a war that has revolved around artillery duels.

“The Ukrainians are starting to outrange the Russians. That means they are able to operate without the threat of counter-battery fire from the Russians,” said Muzyka.

“Don’t get me wrong, the Russians still enjoy overall artillery superiority in terms of numbers, but I’m not sure if the same goes for the quality now… This is an artillery war.”

Muzyka and Kofman said that even if Putin does send more troops, such a move could take months to organise.

“It’s very clear they’re preparing for at least some kind of measures to call up men with prior service experience. But right now, from what I can tell, Putin is just kicking the can down the road and letting the situation within the Russian military actually get worse,” he said.

“For now,” he said, “this is looking like the Russians’ last offensive.”

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

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By Natalia Zinets

KYIV/NOVOAZOVSK, Ukraine (Reuters) -Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday it was working to evacuate all remaining troops from their last stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol, ceding control of the city to Russia after months of bombardment.

The evacuation of hundreds of fighters, many wounded, to Russian-held towns, likely marked the end of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine war and a significant defeat for Ukraine. Mariupol is now in ruins after a Russian siege that Ukraine says killed tens of thousands of people in the city.

With the rest of Mariupol firmly in Russian hands, hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians had holed up beneath the city’s Azovstal steelworks. Civilians inside were evacuated in recent weeks, and more than 260 troops, some of them wounded, left the plant for Russian-controlled areas late on Monday.

“The ‘Mariupol’ garrison has fulfilled its combat mission,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement.

“The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel … Defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time,” it added.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Anna Malyar said 53 injured troops from the steelworks were taken to a hospital in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk, some 32 km (20 miles) to the east, while another 211 people were taken to the town of Olenivka, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

All of the evacuees will be subject to a potential prisoner exchange with Russia, she added.

About 600 troops were believed to have been inside the steel plant. Ukraine’s military said efforts were under way to evacuate those still inside.

“We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an early morning address. “There are severely wounded ones among them. They’re receiving care. Ukraine needs Ukrainian heroes alive.”

Reuters saw five buses carrying troops from Azovstal arrive in Novoazovsk late on Monday. In one, marked with Z like many Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, men were stacked on stretchers on three levels. One man was wheeled out, his head tightly wrapped in thick bandages.

LVIV EXPLOSIONS, KHARKIV FIGHTING

Moscow calls its nearly three-month-old invasion a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of fascists, an assertion Kyiv and its Western allies say is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.

Russia’s invading forces have run into apparent setbacks, with troops forced out of the north and the environs of Kyiv in late March. A Ukrainian counterattack in recent days has driven Russian forces out of the area near Kharkiv, the biggest city in the east.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces were reinforcing and preparing to renew their offensive near Slovyansk and Drobysheve, southeast of the strategic town of Izyum, having suffered losses elsewhere.

Areas around Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, near the Polish border, have continued to come under Russian attack. A series of explosions struck Lviv early on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

On Monday, Ukraine’s defence ministry said troops had advanced all the way to the Russian border, about 40 km north of Kharkiv.

The successes near Kharkiv could let Ukraine attack supply lines for Russia’s main offensive, grinding on further south in the Donbas region, where Moscow has been launching mass assaults for a month.

A village in Russia’s western province of Kursk bordering Ukraine came under Ukrainian fire on Tuesday, regional Governor Roman Starovoit said. Three houses and a school were hit but there were no injuries, he said.

Russian border guards returned fire to quell the shooting from large-calibre weapons on the border village of Alekseyevka, Starovoit wrote on messaging app Telegram.

PUTIN CLIMBDOWN OVER NATO

Russia has faced massive sanctions for its actions in Ukraine, but EU foreign ministers failed to pressure Hungary to lift its veto of a proposed oil embargo.

McDonald’s Corp became one of the biggest global brands to exit Russia, laying out plans to sell all its restaurants after operating in the country for more than 30 years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on Monday to climb down from threats to retaliate against Sweden and Finland for announcing plans to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

“As far as expansion goes, including new members Finland and Sweden, Russia has no problems with these states – none. And so in this sense there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion to include these countries,” Putin said.

The comments appeared to mark a major shift in rhetoric, after years of casting NATO enlargement as a direct threat to Russia’s security, including citing it as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine itself.

Putin said NATO enlargement was being used by the United States in an “aggressive” way to aggravate an already difficult global security situation, and that Russia would respond if the alliance moved weapons or troops forward.

“The expansion of military infrastructure into this territory would certainly provoke our response,” Putin said.

Finland and Sweden, both non-aligned throughout the Cold War, say they now want the protection offered by NATO’s treaty, under which an attack on any member is an attack on all.

Finalnd and Sweden’s plans, however, hit a snag when NATO member Turkey’s president said he would not approve either bid.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv and a Reuters journalist in Novoazovsk; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Rami Ayyub and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s president has condemned the shooting at a Taiwanese church in California by a man reportedly driven by hatred of the island, while a lawmaker from her ruling party questioned whether Chinese propaganda was a motivating factor behind the violence.

President Tsai Ing-wen’s office issued a statement Tuesday saying she condemned “any form of violence,” extended her condolences to those killed and injured and had asked the island’s chief representative in the U.S. to fly to California to provide assistance.

David Chou, 68, of Las Vegas, was expected to appear in California state court Tuesday on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. Police said he hid firebombs before Sunday’s shooting at a gathering of mostly elderly Taiwanese parishioners at the church in Orange County outside Los Angeles. One man was killed and five people wounded, the oldest 92. A federal hate crimes investigation is also ongoing.

Chou, who he said was born in China and is a U.S. citizen, apparently had a grievance with the Taiwanese community, police said. Chou was born in Taiwan in 1953, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported, citing the head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, Taiwan’s de-facto consulate in the city.

According to Taiwanese media, Chou had ties to a Chinese-backed organization opposed to Taiwan’s independence, although details could not immediately be confirmed.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary and regularly denounces Tsai, her ruling Democratic Progressive Party and their foreign supporters in increasingly violent terms.

Tensions between China and Taiwan are at the highest in decades, with Beijing stepping up its military harassment by flying fighter jets toward the self-governing island.

In Taiwan, DPP legislator Lin Ching-yi said “ideology has become a reason for genocide” in a message on her Facebook page.

Lin said Taiwanese need to “face up to hateful speech and organizations” backed by China’s ruling Communist Party, singling out the United Front Work Department that seeks to advance China’s political agenda in Taiwan and among overseas Chinese communities.

The U.S. is Taiwan’s chief political and military ally though it doesn’t extend the island formal diplomatic ties in deference to Beijing.

Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s de-facto ambassador, on Monday tweeted that she was “shocked and saddened by the fatal shooting at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in California.”

“I join the families of the victims and Taiwanese American communities in grief and pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded survivors,” Hsiao wrote.

Chou’s hatred toward the island, documented in hand-written notes that authorities found, appears to have begun when he felt he wasn’t treated well while living there.

A former neighbor said Chou’s life unraveled after his wife left him and his mental health had been in decline.

Chou’s family appeared to be among the roughly 1 million refugees from mainland China who moved to Taiwan at around the time of the Communist sweep to power on the mainland in 1949.

The former Japanese colony had only been handed over to Nationalist Chinese rule in 1945 at the end of World War II, and relations between mainlanders and native Taiwanese were often tense.

Separated by language and lifestyle, incidents of bullying and confrontation between the sides were frequent.

Many mainlander youth, who were concentrated in the major cities, joined violent organized crime gangs with ties to the military and Chinese secret societies, in part to defend themselves against Taiwanese rivals.

The Presbyterian Church is the most prominent of the Christian dominations in Taiwan and was closely identified with the pro-democracy movement under decades of martial law era and later with the Taiwan independence cause.

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By Julie Zhu and Engen Tham

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s worst COVID-19 outbreak has frayed nerves and stirred resentment among many residents of Shanghai but some have thrived in the face of adversity, stepping up with bright ideas and commitment to help their communities through the crisis.

Not surprisingly, many such people have used the skills they developed in their jobs to help others navigate the frightening new world of forced quarantine and lockdowns that no one dreamed of before COVID.

Li Di, a senior executive with a global bank, knew he had to help when he was admitted to the Nanhui quarantine site in April, after testing positive for COVID, and was confronted by chaos.

“There were only 120 to 150 staff to take care of 10,000 patients. The staff literally had their hands full,” said Li.

Li set up a team of more than a dozen volunteers to arrange meals, distribute various supplies and help elderly patients who were struggling with various quarantine centre requirements.

He also set up a more efficient way for people in quarantine to communicate with staff, which helped to streamline the process for the compulsory testing of the 400 people in his building, cutting the time it took from three hours to just one, to the approval of over-stretched staff.

He even helped organise halal food for Muslims.

“You have to bring in some modern management skills to make things more efficient and make life easier,” Li said.

Shanghai has become the epicentre of China’s largest outbreak since the virus was first identified in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. Under China’s zero-COVID policy, everyone who tests positive, and their close contacts, must quarantine at designated sites.

Videos on social media have shown hastily arranged quarantine centres across the city, including one made of shipping containers and one at a school with no blankets or hot water.

The huge majority of Shanghai residents who have dodged COVID have not escaped the ordeal of lockdown.

People ordered to stay at home in their flats have struggled to get fresh food and other essential items as the restrictions have shut shops and exposed a huge shortage of delivery staff.

‘WORKING LIKE A TRADER’

The last thing tech-savvy banker Vera expected was to take charge of bulk-buying for her housing compound. But within days of lockdown, Vera, who works for a large U.S. house in Shanghai and asked that her family name not be used, had taken on the job, known as “tuanzhang” in Chinese.

Trapped with 1,000 neighbours at home and everyone struggling to order food, Vera saw an opportunity to improve the situation for all.

She approached neighbours through the messaging service WeChat to collect orders and then loaded them into Excel spreadsheets for bulk buying.

“I’ve been working like a trader as I have to monitor a number of screens and loads of new messages at the same time,” said Vera, who usually ends up checking orders and communicating with suppliers and delivery services late into the night.

Shirley, a mergers and acquisition banker in Shanghai, said apart from good Excel skills, a strong social network, just like in the real world of business, can be a crucial asset for getting through lockdown.

She was able to use connections she made at work to get in touch with several major suppliers including online grocery firm Missfresh and household brand China Mengniu Dairy and arrange bulk-buying.

“You really need good connections,” she said.

Sun Chuan, a Shanghai-based partner at a global law firm, helped raise donations for the elderly as part of a campaign a Peking University alumni association helped launch.

According to official data, China’s most-populous city has nearly 6 million people aged 60 or older, accounting for about 23% of the population. Many live alone and struggle with online shopping.

Sun called on friends via WeChat to join the campaign and his post quickly spread.

“At first, most donors were my friends but later many others I don’t know at all donated. I was deeply touched by their kindness,” Sun said.

Initially aiming to raise 660,000 yuan ($97,350), the campaign eventually secured nearly 870,000 yuan and provided food for a week for more than 4,000 older people in Shanghai.

($1 = 6.7796 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Julie Zhu in Hong Kong and Engen Tham in Shanghai; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Robert Birsel)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian troops near the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv to within 3 to 4 kilometers (1.9-2.5 miles) of the Russian border, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart)

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By Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Sweden’s government has formally decided to apply for NATO membership, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Monday, setting it on the road toward ending military non-alignment that lasted throughout the Cold War.

Sweden’s governing Social Democrats dropped their 73-year opposition to joining NATO on Sunday and are hoping for a quick accession, following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“We are leaving one era behind us and entering a new one,” Andersson told a news conference. She said the application could be handed in on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and would be synchronised with Finland, which has also confirmed it would apply to join the military alliance.

“NATO will strengthen Sweden, Sweden will strengthen NATO,” she said.

The decision to abandon the military non-alignment that has been a central tenet of Swedish national identity for two centuries marks a sea change in public perception in the Nordic region following Russia’s attack on its neighbour.

However, she said Sweden did not want permanent NATO military bases or nuclear weapons on its territory if its membership was approved.

There is broad backing in parliament for an application, though the government does not need its approval to go ahead. Andersson said she hoped for a quick accession process but that it could take up to a year to get approval from the parliaments of the 30 NATO member states. Andersson warned that Sweden would be particularly vulnerable during that period.

Sweden has received assurances of support from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany among others but not any legally binding guarantees of military aid.

In a joint statement on Monday, Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway and Iceland also pledged support.

“Finland and Sweden’s security is a matter of common concern to us all. Should Finland or Sweden be victim of aggression on their territory before obtaining NATO membership, we will assist Finland and Sweden by all means necessary,” they said in a statement.

One obstacle has already emerged even before the applications have landed at NATO’s Brussels headquarters.

Turkey surprised its NATO allies by saying it would not view applications by Finland and Sweden positively, mainly citing their history of hosting members of Kurdish militant groups.

President Tayyip Erdogan called the Scandinavian countries “guesthouses for terrorist organisations”.

Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist said on Monday that Sweden would start diplomatic discussions with Turkey to try to overcome Ankara’s objections to its plan to join NATO.

“We will send a group of diplomats to hold discussions and have a dialogue with Turkey so we can see how this can be resolved and what this is really about,” Hultqvist told public service broadcaster SVT.

Turkey has said it wanted the Nordic countries to halt support for Kurdish militants on their territory, and to lift bans on sales of some weapons to Turkey.

Turkish state media said separately that Sweden and Finland had rejected requests for the repatriation of 33 people that Turkey alleges have links to groups it deems terrorists.

Sweden’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

NATO and the United States said they were confident Turkey would not hold up membership of Finland and Sweden.

Diplomats said Erdogan would be under pressure to yield as Finland and Sweden would greatly strengthen NATO in the Baltic Sea.

“I’m confident that we will be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the membership,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson; Additional reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul; Editing by Nick Macfie, Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)

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KYIV (Reuters) – At least 10 civilians were killed by Russian shelling of the city of Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine on Monday, regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said.

Gaidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, had said earlier on Monday that heavy shelling had caused fires in residential areas.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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By Laila Bassam, Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iran-backed Hezbollah has been dealt a blow in Lebanon’s parliamentary election with preliminary results showing losses for some of its oldest allies and the Saudi-aligned Lebanese Forces party saying it had gained seats.

With votes still being counted, the final make-up of the 128-member parliament has yet to emerge. The heavily armed Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah and its allies won a majority of 71 seats when Lebanon last voted in 2018.

The current election is the first since Lebanon’s devastating economic meltdown blamed by the World Bank on ruling politicians after a huge port explosion in 2020 that shattered Beirut.

One of the most startling upsets saw Hezbollah-allied Druze politician Talal Arslan, scion of one of Lebanon’s oldest political dynasties who was first elected in 1992, lose his seat to Mark Daou, a newcomer running on a reform agenda, according to the latter’s campaign manager and a Hezbollah official.

Initial results also indicated wins for at least five other independents who have campaigned on a platform of reform and bringing to account politicians blamed for steering Lebanon into the worst crisis since its 1975-90 civil war.

Whether Hezbollah and its allies can cling on to a majority hinges on results not yet finalised, including those in Sunni Muslim seats contested by allies and opponents of the Shi’ite movement.

Gains reported by the Lebanese Forces (LF), which is vehemently opposed to Hezbollah, mean it would overtake the Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) as the biggest Christian party in parliament.

The LF won at least 20 seats, up from 15 in 2018, said the head of its press office, Antoinette Geagea.

The FPM had won up to 16 seats, down from 18 in 2018, Sayed Younes, the head of its electoral machine, told Reuters.

The FPM has been the biggest Christian party in parliament since its founder, President Michel Aoun, returned from exile in 2005 in France. Aoun and LF leader Samir Geagea were civil war adversaries.

The LF, established as a militia during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, has repeatedly called for Hezbollah to give up its arsenal.

“A NEW BEGINNING”

An opposition candidate also made a breakthrough in an area of southern Lebanon dominated by Hezbollah.

Elias Jradi, an eye doctor, won an Orthodox Christian seat previously held by Assaad Hardan of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, a close Hezbollah ally and MP since 1992, two Hezbollah officials said.

“It’s a new beginning for the south and for Lebanon as a whole,” Jradi told Reuters.

Nadim Houry, executive director of Arab Reform Initiative, said the results of 14 or 15 seats would determine the majority.

“You are going to have two blocs opposed to each other – on the one hand Hezbollah and its allies, and on the other the Lebanese Forces and its allies, and in the middle these new voices that will enter,” he said.

“This is a clear loss for the FPM. They maintain a bloc but they lost a lot of seats and the biggest beneficiary is the Lebanese Forces. Samir Geagea has emerged as the new Christian strongman.”

The next parliament must nominate a prime minister to form a cabinet, in a process that can take months. Any delay would hold up reforms to tackle the crisis and unlock support from the International Monetary Fund and donor nations.

(Reporting by Timour Azhari, Laila Bassam, Maya Gebeily and Lina Najem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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