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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. ex-Marine Trevor Reed arrived back in the United States, his spokesperson said on Thursday, after being freed by Russia in a prisoner swap that took place amid the most tense bilateral relations in decades over the war in Ukraine.

Reed was released on Wednesday on an airport tarmac in Ankara, Turkey, in exchange for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.

The swap was not part of broader diplomatic talks and did not represent an American change in approach on Ukraine, U.S. officials said. Russian-American ties have been at their worst since the Cold War era following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.

Reed, from Texas, was back in the United States, his spokesperson said without elaborating.

Reed’s parents said earlier he would be taken to a military hospital for monitoring. Senior U.S. officials said the 30-year-old was in “good spirits” despite some health issues.

Reed was convicted in Russia in 2019 of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow. The United States called his trial a “theater of the absurd.”

The 30-year-old American was released in exchange for Yaroshenko, who was arrested by American special forces in Liberia in 2010 and convicted of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Russia had proposed a prisoner swap for Yaroshenko in July 2019 in exchange for any American.

Russian news agencies reported that Yaroshenko landed back in Moscow and Wednesday and was reunited with his wife and daughter.

The months of tense diplomacy that led to Reed’s release focused strictly on securing his freedom and were not the beginnings of discussions on other issues, senior Biden administration officials said. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the swap followed a lengthy negotiation process.

“The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly,” Biden added.

Russian news agencies reported on April 4 that Reed had ended a hunger strike and was being treated in his prison’s medical center. Reed’s parents said at the time that he had been exposed to an inmate with tuberculosis in December. The prison service said Reed tested negative for tuberculosis.

U.S. officials were working to free another American held in Russia, Paul Whelan, also a former Marine, Biden said. Whelan was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges in June 2020.

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was detained at a Moscow airport on Feb. 17 when a search of her luggage allegedly revealed multiple cannabis oil vape cartridges. She faces up to 10 years in prison.

(Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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BERLIN (AP) — Germany was the biggest buyer of Russian energy during the first two months since the start of the war in Ukraine, an independent research group said Thursday.

A study published by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air calculates that Russia earned 63 billion euros ($66.5 billion) from fossil fuel exports since Feb. 24, the date Russian troops attacked Ukraine.

Using data on ship movements, real-time tracking of gas flows through pipelines and estimates based on historical monthly trade, the researchers reckoned Germany alone paid Russia about 9.1 billion euros for fossil fuel deliveries in the first two months of the war.

Claudia Kemfert, a senior energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research who was not involved in the study, said the figures were plausible given the recent sharp increase in prices for fossil fuels. Last year Germany paid about 100 billion euros in total for imports of oil, coal and gas — a quarter of which went to Russia, she said.

The German government said it couldn’t comment on estimates and declined to provide any figures of its own, saying these would need to come from companies that procure the coal, oil and gas.

Germany has faced strong criticism for its reliance on Russia fossil fuels despite warnings from allies that this could endanger its own and European security. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back last year against U.S. efforts to sanction a Russian gas pipeline to Germany, a decision strongly backed by her successor, Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party have long advocated energy cooperation with Russia.

The pipeline was only frozen by Scholz’s new center-left government shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has since scrambled to find alternative energy supplies, particularly for Russian natural gas, which now accounts for 35% of Germany’s total imports.

Kemfert said a recent pledge by the German government to produce electricity only from renewable sources by 2035 was welcome.

“But as long as Germany continues to buy fossil fuels, whether from Russia or other autocracies, it undermines both its own credibility and its energy security,” she said.

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which is based in Finland and funded through grants and research contracts, said the second biggest importer of Russia fossil fuels in the two months since the outbreak of war was Italy (6.9 billion euros), followed by China (6.7 billion euros).

As a whole, the European Union accounted for 71% of Russia’s total income from oil, gas and coal, worth approximately 44 billion euros, it said.

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POKROVSK, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. defense chief urged Ukraine’s allies to “move at the speed of war” to get more and heavier weapons to Kyiv as Russian forces rained fire on eastern and southern Ukraine amid new fears that the fighting could spill over the country’s borders.

For the second day, explosions rocked the separatist region of Trans-Dniester Tuesday in neighboring Moldova, knocking out two powerful radio antennas. And a Russian missile hit a strategic railroad bridge linking Ukraine’s Odesa port region to neighboring Romania, a NATO member, Ukrainian authorities said.

Meanwhile, two other neighboring NATO members, Poland and Bulgaria, said the Kremlin is cutting off natural gas supplies starting Wednesday, the first such actions of the war. Poland has been a major gateway for the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and confirmed this week that it is sending the country tanks.

Poland said it was well-prepared after working for years to reduce its reliance on Russian energy. Poland also has ample natural gas in storage, and it will soon benefit from two pipelines coming online, analyst Emily McClain of Rystad Energy said.

Bulgaria gets over 90% of its gas from Russia, and officials said they were working to find other sources, such as from Azerbaijan.

Both countries had refused Russia’s demands that they pay in rubles, as have almost all of Russia’s gas customers in Europe.

Two months into the fighting, Western arms have helped Ukraine stall Russia’s invasion, but the country’s leaders have said they need more support fast.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convened a meeting Tuesday of officials from about 40 countries at the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, and said more help is on the way.

“We’ve got to move at the speed of war,” Austin said.

He said he wanted officials to leave the meeting “with a common and transparent understanding of Ukraine’s near-term security requirements because we’re going to keep moving heaven and earth so that we can meet them.”

After unexpectedly fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces thwarted Russia’s attempt to take Ukraine’s capital, Moscow now says its focus is the capture of the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking industrial area in eastern Ukraine.

In the town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, people fleeing the shelling lined up Tuesday to board a train headed to the far west of the country. One person was lifted onto the train in a wheelchair, another on a stretcher.

The passengers took with them cats, dogs, a few bags and boxes, and the memory of those who did not flee in time.

“We were in the basement, but my daughter didn’t make it and was hit with shrapnel on the doorstep” during shelling on Monday, said Mykola Kharchenko, 74. “We had to bury her in the garden near the pear tree.”

He said his village, Vremivka, was under heavy fire for four days and all but destroyed. With tears in his eyes, Kharchenko said he somehow held himself together at home, but once he reached the train station he fell apart. In a flash of anger, he lashed out at Russia.

“Is this liberation? From whom am I, a Russian speaker, from whom am I being liberated? From whom? From my daughter? From everything I have built during my whole life?

In the gutted southern port city of Mariupol, authorities said Russian forces hit the Azovstal steel plant with 35 airstrikes over 24 hours. The plant is the last known stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the city. About 1,000 civilians were said to be taking shelter there with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said Russia was using heavy bunker bombs. He also accused Russian forces of shelling a route they had offered as an escape corridor from the steel mill.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region of the Donbas, said on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces “continue to deliberately fire at civilians and to destroy critical infrastructure.”

Ukraine also said Russian forces shelled Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, which lies in the northeast, outside the Donbas. But it is seen as key to Russia’s apparent bid to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donbas from the north, east and south.

Ukrainian forces struck back in the Kherson region in the south.

The attack Tuesday on the bridge near Odesa — along with a series of strikes on key railroad stations a day earlier — appeared to signal a major shift in Russia’s approach. Until now, Moscow has spared strategic bridges, perhaps in hopes of keeping them for its own use in seizing Ukraine. But now it seems to be trying to thwart Ukraine’s efforts to move troops and supplies.

No injuries were reported in the strike on the bridge, and Ukraine’s military said repair work was underway.

The southern Ukraine coastline and Moldova have been on edge since a senior Russian military officer said last week that the Kremlin’s goal is to secure not just eastern Ukraine but the entire south, so as to open the way to Trans-Dniester, a long, narrow strip of land with about 470,000 people along the Ukrainian border where about 1,500 Russian troops are based.

It was not clear who was behind the blasts in Trans-Dniester, but the attacks gave rise to fears that Russia is stirring up trouble so as to create a pretext to either invade Trans-Dniester or use the region as another launching point to attack Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the explosions were carried out by Russia and were “designed to destabilize,” with the intention of showing Moldova what could happen if it supports Ukraine.

Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, said the U.S. was still looking into blasts and trying to determine what was going on, but added: “Certainly we don’t want to see any spillover” of the conflict.

With the potentially pivotal battle for the east underway, the U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to deliver artillery and other heavy weaponry in time to make a difference.

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said her government will supply Gepard self-propelled armored anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has faced mounting pressure to send heavy weapons such as tanks and other armored vehicles.

Austin noted that more than 30 allies and partners have joined the U.S. in sending military aid to Ukraine and that more than $5 billion worth of equipment has been committed.

The U.S. defense secretary said the war has weakened Russia’s military, adding, “We would like to make sure, again, that they don’t have the same type of capability to bully their neighbors that we saw at the outset of this conflict.”

A senior Kremlin official, Nikolai Patrushev, warned that “the policies of the West and the Kyiv regime controlled by it would only be the breakup of Ukraine into several states.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cautioned that if the Western flow of weapons continues, the talks aimed at ending the fighting will not produce any results.

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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalist Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, David Keyton in Kyiv, Oleksandr Stashevskyi at Chernobyl, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.

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

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MADRID (AP) — The Spanish government is set to pass a decree Tuesday aimed at boosting transparency in a monarchy still reeling from scandals involving King Felipe VI’s father, Juan Carlos. The move comes a day after Felipe made public his personal assets of 2.6 million euros ($2.8 million) for the first time .

The government said the decree, to be approved at its weekly cabinet meeting, would “strengthen transparency, accountability, efficiency and exemplarity in the royal household.”

In recent years Spain’s royal family has been tarnished by allegations of financial wrongdoing involving former King Juan Carlos. The most recent scandal involved investigations into millions of dollars in foreign accounts that saw Juan Carlos leave Spain for the United Arab Emirates in 2020.

On Monday, the palace said that the unprecedented disclosure of Felipe’s estate was part of a wider push toward a modernization aimed at making the monarchy “worthy of the respect and trust of its citizens.”

The palace said the king’s wealth was made up of around 2.3m euros in savings, current accounts and securities. The rest is in art, antiques and jewelry.

The king does not have any real estate or any financial dealings abroad, a palace official said.

Felipe’s wealth stems from his earnings as king and those he received as heir-in-waiting to Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014.

The palace statement noted that the king had paid tax on all his earnings.

Minutes after the disclosure, the Spanish government announced it would approve the transparency decree Tuesday.

In 2020, Felipe renounced his personal inheritance from his father after allegations emerged of financial wrongdoings. Months later, Juan Carlos left Spain and moved to the United Arab Emirates.

Investigations by Spanish and Swiss prosecutors into Juan Carlos’ dealing have since been shelved.

Juan Carlos, who helped steer Spain back to democracy following the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975, was once Spain’s most respected public figure. But scandals of one type or another affecting the family began to mount in the later years of his reign.

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ROME (AP) — Pope Francis again canceled his daily meetings Tuesday because of acute knee pain that has greatly curtailed his mobility in recent months.

The Vatican said in a statement that Francis’ doctors had recommended he interrupt his planned activities, which included a meeting of his cabinet of cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican.

Francis last Friday cleared his schedule for medical checks, the results of which have not been released. The 85-year-old has said he strained the ligaments in his right knee, making walking, standing and getting up from his chair increasingly difficult and painful.

Francis has long had a pronounced limp due to sciatica nerve pain, but the knee pain has aggravated it. He has had to bow out of celebrating several recent liturgical events, including the Easter Vigil and a Mass this past Sunday. He now frequently walks with a shuffle and the assistance of an aide.

He has a packed travel schedule coming up, including reported trips to Lebanon in June, Congo, South Sudan and Canada in July and Kazakhstan in September.

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KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — An explosion ripped through a van inside a university campus in southern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver, officials said. A separatist militant group claimed responsibility and said the attack was carried out by a woman suicide bomber.

The bombing at the University of Karachi also wounded a fourth Chinese national, as well as a Pakistani guard accompanying the van, according to university spokesman Mohammad Farooq.

Karachi police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon said the initial investigation suggests a suicide bomber was behind the attack. He said that closed circuit television footage from the site showed a person dressed in the female burqa head-to-toe covering walking up to the van, followed by an instantaneous explosion.

The Chinese fatalities included the director of the Chinese-built Confucius Institute, which offers Chinese language graduate classes, and two teachers.

The Baluchistan Liberation Army, a militant group in nearby Baluchistan province, has targeted Chinese nationals in attacks in the past.

The group’s statement that followed Tuesday’s attack identified the bomber as Shari Baluch or Bramsh, saying she was the group’s first female bomber. The attack marks “a new chapter in the history of Baluch resistance,” the statement said.

Baluchistan has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency by armed Baluch groups demanding more autonomy and a greater share in the region’s natural resources if not outright independence from Islamabad.

However, the Pakistani Taliban have also targeted Chinese interest in the past. Last July, the group — also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus that killed nine Chinese nationals in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province. Four Pakistanis also died in that attack.

The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group from the Afghan Taliban, their allies who have seized power in neighboring Afghanistan.

Thousands of Chinese workers are living and working in Pakistan, with most of them involved in Beijing’s multi-billion dollar project known as “One Belt One Road Project” that is to connect south and central Asia with the Chinese capital.

A key road linking Pakistan’s southern port of Gwadar, in southwestern Baluchistan province, with China’s northwest Xinjiang province, is part of what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The project includes a number of infrastructure projects and several power projects.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States, as well as the Taliban authorities, is contributing to the suffering of women in Afghanistan through asset freezes, U.N. independent experts said on Monday.

The United Nations and foreign governments, including Washington, have condemned moves by the Taliban to backtrack on women’s rights commitments such as on girls’ education in the months following their takeover in Aug. 2021.

However, the statement by 14 U.N. independent rights experts also blamed the U.S. government for making life worse for Afghan women through blocking billions of dollars of central bank assets made up in part of aid money for the country accumulated over decades.

“While gender-based violence has been a long-standing and severe threat to women and girls, it has been exacerbated by the measures imposed by the US…,” said the statement, without giving specific details.

It also blamed the Taliban’s “widening gender-based discrimination” for deteriorating women’s rights.

The current humanitarian crisis where 23 million are reliant on food aid is having a “disproportionate impact” on women and children, the statement added.

Central bank funds have been frozen since August as the Taliban took over and foreign forces withdrew.

U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in February to renew the freeze and said it was working to free up half of that money to help the Afghan people while holding the rest to possibly satisfy terrorism-related lawsuits against the Taliban.

The U.N. experts appointed by the Geneva-based Rights Council called the order’s provisions “overly broad” and said they were resulting in “over-zealous compliance with sanctions thus preventing people of Afghanistan from any access to basic humanitarian goods”.

Under international human rights law, governments including the United States have an obligation to ensure their activities do not result in rights violations, the statement said.

The experts said they formerly relayed their concerns and recommendations to Washington. They have not yet received a reply, they said. Reuters is seeking comment from the United States.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch public prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct at “The Voice of Holland” talent show, authorities said Monday.

The prosecutor’s office said it was acting on five complaints against four people at the television show, and now officially considered them suspects after the first allegations were aired in January.

The show was taken off the air when it became one of the most serious #MeToo reckonings yet to hit the Dutch entertainment world. It focuses on a show created in the Netherlands but broadcast in local versions around the globe.

The scandal erupted after a local broadcaster’s YouTube show called “BOOS” — the Dutch word for angry — contacted “The Voice of Holland” to say it had spoken to victims of “sexually transgressive behavior.” It aired a broadcast about their allegations soon after.

Dutch broadcaster RTL, which airs “The Voice of Holland,” reacted swiftly to the reports and suspended the show.

The prosecutor’s office said it expected the investigation to take quite a while and will only decide then whether to prosecute the suspects.

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TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) — Funerals were held across northern Lebanon on Monday for seven people killed when a boat packed with migrants sunk over the weekend as the Lebanese navy tried to force it back to shore.

The small vessel was carrying nearly 60 people — many times its capacity — when the disaster struck on Saturday night. The tragedy was the latest in a growing trend involving mostly Lebanese and Syrians trying to travel to Europe from Lebanon in search of better lives.

The navy rescued 47 people and some are still missing.

Among those laid to rest on Monday were Sarah Ahmed Talib and her four year old daughter from the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city.

Women wailed from balconies in Tripoli as bodies were carried to the mosque and bursts of gunfire rang out in mourning. Dozens attended the funerals.

The migrant vessel had set off from the coastal town of Qalamoun on Saturday night, Lebanese officials have said, adding that no precautionary measures were taken and no one was wearing life vests when the boat meant to carry only six people capsized later that night.

Survivors blame the Lebanese navy for sinking the ship, saying a naval vessel rammed the vessel while trying to force it back to shore.

Angry residents attacked a main army checkpoint in Tripoli on Sunday, throwing stones at troops who responded by firing into the air. Some shops closed as angry men blocked several streets in Tripoli, Lebanon’s most impoverished city. There were no reports of injuries.

Since Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds have left on boats hoping for a better life in Europe, paying smugglers thousands of dollars. Many have made it to European countries, while others have been stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy.

Several have lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

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By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis called for halt to attacks in Ukraine on Sunday so aid can reach the exhausted population and urged leaders to “listen to the voice of the people”, who fear an escalation.

Speaking to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, he noted that the day most Eastern Christians, including Orthodox and Catholics in Ukraine and Russia, celebrate Easter coincided with the two month mark of the war.

“Instead of stopping, the war has become more harsh,” he said from the window of the official papal study.

“I renew an appeal for an Easter truce, the minimum and tangible sign of a willingness for peace. Stop the attacks in order to help the exhausted population. Stop,” Francis said.

As Christians in Ukraine celebrated Orthodox Easter, there was no end in sight to a war that has killed thousands, uprooted millions more and reduced cities to rubble. Ukraine said two children were among those killed in shelling on Sunday.

Western Christians celebrated Easter last Sunday.

“It is sad that in these days that are the most holy and solemn for all Christians, the deadly sound of weapons is heard more than sound of bells that announce the resurrection. And it is sad that weapons are increasingly taking the place of words,” Francis said.

“Please, political leaders, listen to the voice of the people who want peace, not an escalation of the conflict,” Francis said.

Francis, 85, has not specifically mentioned Russia or its president, Vladimir Putin, since the start of the conflict but he left little doubt which side he has criticised, using terms such as unjustified aggression and invasion and lamenting atrocities against civilians.

Putin, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, has described Moscow’s actions as a “special military operation” in Ukraine aimed at demilitarising and “denazifying” the country. Moscow has denied targeting civilians.

Francis has specifically rejected Russia’s terminology, calling it a war that has caused “rivers of blood”.

Earlier Francis again attended but did not preside at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, the latest time over the Easter season that a flare up of pain in his knee forced him to curtail some activities. He read the homily in a clear and strong voice while seated.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

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