At least 15 people have died and 113 others are still missing after landslides buried homes in six villages in eastern Uganda, police said.

Another 15 injured people have been rescued and admitted to Buluganya Health Center.

The Uganda Red Cross Society said Thursday that 13 bodies had been recovered after landslides buried 40 homes and the rescue effort was continuing.

Local media reported that authorities expect the death toll could rise to 30.

The landslides happened after heavy rains on Wednesday night in the mountainous district of Bulambuli, where landslides are common. The district is about 280 kilometers (173miles) east of the capital, Kampala.

A journalist in the area told The Associated Press that local officials said an excavator would be brought to assist in the rescue efforts, but the roads were covered in mud and the rain was still falling.

The affected area is about 50 acres (20ha) with homesteads and farmlands spread downhill.

Photos and videos of people digging through mud in search of victims were shared on social media platforms. Some of the houses were completed covered by mud while others only had a roof showing above the ground.

The Daily Monitor newspaper reported that most of the bodies recovered so far were those of children.

The prime minister’s office issued a disaster alert on Wednesday stating that heavy rains across the country had cut off major roads.

Two rescue boats capsized on Wednesday during a rescue mission on River Nile where Pakwach bridge was submerged.

Georgia is suspending talks on its bid to join the European Union for four years, its prime minister said Thursday, in view of what he described as “blackmail and manipulation” from some of the bloc’s politicians. His announcement outraged the opposition and triggered a new wave of protests.

The move by Irakli Kobakhidze came hours after he was reappointed to the job by members of the governing Georgian Dream party after its disputed victory in last month’s parliamentary election that has sparked massive demonstrations and led to an opposition boycott of parliament.

The October 26 election was widely seen as a referendum on the country’s aspirations to join the European Union. The opposition said the vote was rigged under the influence of Russia seeking to keep Georgia in its orbit, and declared a boycott of parliament.

European election observers said the balloting took place in a divisive atmosphere marked by instances of bribery, double voting and physical violence.

The EU granted Georgia candidate status in December 2023 on condition that it meets the bloc’s recommendations but put its accession on hold and cut financial support earlier this year after the passage of a “foreign influence” law widely seen as a blow to democratic freedoms.

Kobakhidze said Thursday that while the country will pursue its bid to join the EU, “it will not put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028.”

“Additionally, we are rejecting any budgetary grants from the European Union until the end of 2028,” he added.

Thousands of protesters poured into the streets following Kobakhidze’s announcement, rallying outside the parliament building in Tbilisi and staging demonstrations in other cities.

Earlier in the day, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that condemned last month’s Georgian parliamentary vote as neither free nor fair, representing yet another manifestation of the continued democratic backsliding “for which the ruling Georgian Dream party is fully responsible.”

EU lawmakers urged a rerun of the parliamentary vote within a year under thorough international supervision and by an independent election administration. They also called on the EU to impose sanctions and limit formal contacts with the Georgian government.

The Georgian prime minister fired back, denouncing what he described as a “cascade of insults” from the EU politicians and declaring that “the ill-wishers of our country have turned the European Parliament into a blunt weapon of blackmail against Georgia, which is a great disgrace for the European Union.”

“We will continue on our path toward the European Union; however, we will not allow anyone to keep us in a constant state of blackmail and manipulation, which is utterly disrespectful to our country and society,” Kobakhidze said. “We must clearly show certain European politicians and bureaucrats, who are completely devoid of European values, that they must speak to Georgia with dignity, not through blackmail and insults.”

Critics have accused Georgian Dream — established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia — of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted toward Moscow. The party recently pushed through laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ rights.

Speaking in parliament earlier on Thursday, Kobakhidze described last month’s parliamentary vote as “also a referendum between immoral propaganda and traditional values, and our society chose traditional values.”

The EU suspended Georgia’s membership application process indefinitely in June, after parliament passed a law requiring organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “pursuing the interest of a foreign power,” similar to a Russian law used to discredit organizations critical of the government.

President Salome Zourabichvili, whose six-year term expires next month, has rejected the official results and refused to recognize the parliament’s legitimacy. Zourabichvili, whose post is mostly ceremonial, met with EU ambassadors and opposition leaders after Kobakhidze’s announcement.

In an address to the nation, Zourabichvili denounced what she described as a “coup” aimed at taking the country away from Europe and toward Russia. The president accused the governing party of waging a “war on our future, the future of our society, and the future of our country.” “Because on this path, there is no Georgian statehood, no independence, and no future — except in Russia,” she said.

Zourabichvili was elected by popular vote, but Georgia has approved constitutional changes that abolished the direct election of the president and replaced it with a vote by a 300-seat electoral college consisting of members of parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures.

On Wednesday, the ruling party nominated Mikheil Kavelashvili, a 53-year-old former national team and Premier League player, for the presidential post. He is all but certain to win the Dec. 14 vote by the electoral college controlled by the ruling party.

Russia’s widespread overnight attack targeting critical energy infrastructure facilities in Ukraine was a response to strikes on Russian territory using US-made ATACMS missiles, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

Putin claimed Russia hit 17 targets that were “military facilities, defense industry facilities and their support systems,” without acknowledging the hits to power infrastructure. “As I have said many times, there will always be a response from our side (to the use of American ATACMS),” Putin said during comments made at a security summit in Kazakhstan.

More than a million households in Ukraine were left without power following the aerial bombardment, authorities in the country said. This is Russia’s 11th large-scale assault on Ukraine’s energy supplies this year alone, according to the energy ministry in Kyiv, a strategy that has caused nationwide rolling blackouts.

Ukraine’s energy system came “under massive enemy attack,” overnight, Energy Minister German Halushchenko said Thursday, adding the attacks took place “all over Ukraine.” Bombardments have intensified in recent months, leaving Ukraine in a precarious position as the war grinds into its third winter.

In the immediate aftermath, Ukraine’s energy operator introduced emergency power cuts in many regions, with large outages in the western regions of Lviv, Volyn and Rivne. It has since shifted back to implementing scheduled hourly power cuts.

At least five people were injured, including one person in the central Vinnytsia region, two in the southern Odesa region, and two in the capital Kyiv, officials said. In the city of Kharkiv, a missile struck a civilian business, according to local military authorities.

Air defenses were activated across the country, with damage reported in 14 regions, according to the Interior Ministry. In the capital Kyiv, residents took shelter in metro stations as the air raid alert lasted for more than nine hours, due to the combined missile and drone attack. There were no immediate reports of casualties there, authorities said.

About 215,000 households in the Volyn region were temporarily without power, authorities said earlier.

“I have a power bank for charging my phone, but I did not buy a more powerful station because I did not take it seriously that there would be such attacks and that missiles would reach us,” Dorotiy said, adding that it seemed Russia was concentrating on attacking eastern Ukraine instead. “But it did reach us.”

Kyiv resident Olha Vaynrikh, 32, told Reuters, “Our mornings begin with checking the phone to see if there is an air alert… We are indeed fed up with all of it.”

Several critical infrastructure facilities had been attacked, he later discovered.

“I expected to be without power for three hours, but according to the new schedule, it looks like we will be without electricity for eight hours today,” Turiy said. “We all understand that every winter is getting harder.”

The onslaught involved about 100 drones and more than 90 missiles, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

This comes after Russia launched a record 188 drones at Ukraine on Tuesday in a mass attack that damaged critical infrastructure in the west of the country, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

“Every attack like this proves that air defense systems are needed in Ukraine now, where they save lives, not at storage bases,” Zelensky added, urging allies to help his country increase its air defense capabilities.

In his comments on Thursday, Putin warned that he will consider further launches of Russia’s new medium-range ballistic missile, called ‘Oreshnik,’ which was used to attack Ukraine’s Dnipro region last week.

“We will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory by Western-made long-range missiles, including the possible continuation of the Oreshnik test in combat conditions,” Putin said.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense is “selecting targets for hitting on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defense industry enterprises or decision-making centers in Kyiv,” he added.

Putin previously said that Moscow also considers itself entitled to use weapons against military targets belonging to countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russia.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

In a single post, the president–elect told the world what the end of the Ukraine war might look like. And it is going to be a big diplomatic ask, to say the least.

“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social channel. “Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

By appointing Keith Kellogg as his special envoy to Ukraine, Donald Trump has also chosen a very specific, pre-announced plan for the thorniest foreign policy issue on his plate.

Kellogg, Trump’s 80-year-old former national security advisor, has laid out his peace plan in some detail, writing for the America First policy institute in April.

It begins calling the war “an avoidable crisis that, due to the Biden Administration’s incompetent policies… has entangled America in an endless war.”

In short, a ceasefire will freeze the frontlines and both sides will be forced to the negotiating table. But it is in the longer details where it all gets complex.

Changing the US’ involvement

Kellogg spends most time berating Biden’s actions – saying that his administration gave too little lethal aid too late. He says Trump’s decision to give the first lethal aid to Ukraine in 2018 conveyed the strength needed to confront Putin, and that Trump’s soft approach to the Kremlin head – not demonizing him like Biden has – will enable him to strike a deal.

Kellogg says more weapons should have been given before the Russian invasion, and immediately afterwards, to enable Ukraine to win.

Kellogg says the United States doesn’t need involvement in another conflict, and its own stocks of weaponry have suffered from aiding Ukraine, leaving the country potentially exposed in any conflict with China over Taiwan. He says Ukraine’s NATO membership – in truth a very distant prospect, tentatively offered to Kyiv in symbolic solidarity – should be put on hold indefinitely, “in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees.”

Foremost, the plan says it should become “a formal US policy to seek a ceasefire and negotiated settlement.”

It says future US aid – likely given as a loan – will be conditioned on Ukraine negotiating with Russia, and the US will arm Ukraine to the extent it can defend itself and stop any further Russian advances before and after any peace deal. This latter suggestion is perhaps dated by the fast Moscow advance underway in eastern Ukraine and the current high US level of aid already makes Kellogg uncomfortable.

Kellogg credits partially a 2023 article by Richard Haas and Charles Kupchan for some of the next ideas.

A freeze to the frontlines

The frontlines would be frozen by a ceasefire, and a demilitarized zone imposed. For agreeing to this, Russia would get limited sanctions relief, and full relief only when a peace deal is signed that is to Ukraine’s liking. A levy on Russian energy exports would pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Ukraine would not be asked to give up on reclaiming occupied territory, but it would agree to pursue it through diplomacy alone. It accepts “this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough which probably will not occur before Putin leaves office.”

It is fetchingly simple and swift in its approach. But it lacks an accommodation of what Moscow will demand and has used the diplomatic process for in the past: To cynically pursue military advances. The freezing of the frontlines will precipitate a very violent few months ahead as Moscow seeks to take as much ground as it can. The Kremlin has in the past ignored ceasefires and pursued its territorial objectives – often blankly denying that it is.

A demilitarized zone would likely need to be policed, possibly putting NATO troops, or soldiers from other non-aligned nations, in between the two sides. That will be hard to maintain and staff, to say the least. It would be enormous, spanning hundreds of miles of border, and a massive financial investment.

Arming Ukraine to the extent it can stop present and future Russian advances will also be tough. The plan notes the United States manufactures 14,000 155 artillery rounds a month, which Ukraine can use up in just 48 hours. Paradoxically, Kellogg wants the US to arm Ukraine more, yet also accepts they really can’t.

A change in values

Two lines provide a wider insight into the author’s thinking. He says that national security, the American First way, was about practical necessities.

“Biden replaced the Trump approach with a liberal internationalist one that promoted Western values, human rights, and democracy,” he writes. That is a pretty grim base from which to build a compromise on European security.

He adds that some critics of continued aid to Ukraine – in which he seems to include himself – are “worried about whether America’s vital strategic interests are at stake in the Ukraine War, the potential of the involvement of US military forces and whether America is engaged in a proxy war with Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflict.”

These two sentences provide the ultimate backdrop for the deal proposed: That Ukraine’s war is about values we don’t need to perpetuate, and we should step back from Putin’s nuclear threat. It is the opposite of the current unity in which the West prioritizes the values of its own way of life and security, based on the lesson of the Thirties that appeased dictators don’t stop.

The plan presents Ukraine with a welcome chance for an end to the violence, at a time when it is losing on all fronts, and darkly short of basic manpower – a hurdle it may never overcome, and something in which Russia will likely always outpace it.

But it begins a process in which a wily and deceitful Putin will revel. Exploiting a ceasefire and Western weakness is his forte, the moment he has been waiting nearly three years for. The plan accepts Western fatigue, that its armament production cannot keep pace, and that its values are wasteful. It also makes little accommodation for what Russia will do to upset its vision.

It is a bleak compromise for a bleak war. But it may not end it and instead open a new chapter where Western unity and support begins to crumble, and Putin edges, both at the negotiating table and at the front, closer towards his goals.

Over 1,000 days of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned Kyiv’s Western allies of dire – potentially nuclear – consequences if they “escalate” the war by giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself.

Putin’s threats became even fiercer this month after the Biden administration finally gave Kyiv permission to launch longer-range American weapons at targets deep inside Russia. In response, Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine and fired a new, nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine. The message was taken as a clear threat to Ukraine’s backers: Don’t test us.

But, nearly three years into the war, these developments have assumed a familiar rhythm. Each time Ukraine made a request – first asking for tanks, then fighter jets, then cluster munitions, then long-range weapons – its allies agonized over whether to grant it, fearing it would escalate the conflict and provoke a Russian response.

Each time, when the West finally accepted Ukraine’s requests, Russia’s most catastrophic threats did not materialize. What was taboo one week became normal the next.

Instead, they said the anxious reaction to Ukraine’s newly granted powers is another example of the Kremlin’s successful strategy of forcing the West to see the conflict on Russia’s terms, confusing each fresh attempt by Ukraine to resist Russian aggression as a major “escalation.”

Alongside the battlefields, the Kremlin has been engaged in a fight to force the West to argue from Russian premises rather than its own, and to “make decisions in that Kremlin-generation alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think-tank, said in a report in March.

“The persistent Western debates and delays in Western military aid to Ukraine is a clear example of the Kremlin’s successful reflexive control strategy, which had committed the Western to self-deterrence despite routine Russian escalations of the war,” Stepanenko said.

This strategy could be seen in action on Thursday after Russia launched a large-scale attack targeting Ukraine’s power grid. Although Putin said the attack was “a response from our side” to the Biden administration’s decision on longer-range weapons, Russia has not needed a pretext for such strikes in the past.

The recent policy changes by Ukraine’s Western allies – which came after Russia involved some 11,000 North Korean troops in its war effort – “is not an escalation as the Kremlin is attempting to frame it,” Stepanenko said.

“Russia launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine and had been routinely escalating the war to sustain its initiative on the battlefield. The approval of Ukraine’s use of long-range strike systems against Russia is finally allowing Ukraine to level out its capabilities,” she said.

‘Nonsense’ policies

The Biden administration sent US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to Ukraine earlier this year, but placed strict conditions on how they could be used: They could be fired at Russian targets in occupied Ukraine, but not on Russia’s own territory.

William Alberque, a former director of NATO’s Arms Control, Disarmament, and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre, said this policy made little sense – and was to Russia’s huge benefit.

“I’m sure the Russian commanders couldn’t believe their luck. ‘So if I set up my command headquarters here, they’ll blow me up, but if I set up a kilometer away, I’m fine? Really? Awesome!’”

In effect, this policy led to “the idea that Russia can kill anyone anywhere in Ukraine, but Ukraine can’t kill the troops that are actually attacking them if they’re across the border (in Russia).” This idea is “nonsense,” Alberque said.

Shifting red lines

Amid the anxious responses to last week’s developments, it is easy to forget that Ukraine has long launched home-grown drones at targets extremely deep in Russia – and that it had already fired Western weapons at territory the Kremlin considers its own. The decision to fire slightly longer-range Western weapons is a difference of degree, not of kind.

For more than a year, Kyiv has used British Storm Shadows to strike Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014. For months, Kyiv has been allowed to fire ATACMS at Russian targets in occupied Ukraine. By law, Russia considers these territories its own, and warned of dire consequences if Ukraine targeted them with Western weaponry.

Since May, Washington has also allowed Kyiv to use shorter-range American rockets to strike targets in Russia across the border from Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Before President Joe Biden green-lighted that decision, Putin made similar nuclear threats, warning the move could lead to “serious consequences” for “small and densely populated countries.” It did not.

“Again and again, we prove that when you cross a fake red line – nothing really happens,” said Alberque. Still, he said the threats were enough to prevent the West from giving Ukraine what it needed to defend itself.

Although the threats have yet again intensified following last week’s developments, Albuquerque said there is little reason to suspect that this time really is different. The prospect of an incoming Donald Trump administration – long assumed to be Putin’s desired outcome – means Russia is even less likely than usual to make good on its threats.

“The (risk) that they’re suddenly going to do something that would risk actual intervention by the United States or by NATO allies – or would fundamentally change global attitudes towards the conflict – is relatively low,” said Alberque.

A Beijing court sentenced veteran Chinese state media journalist Dong Yuyu on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, a family member told Reuters.

Former Guangming Daily editor and journalist Dong Yuyu, 62, was detained by police in Beijing in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, according to a statement from the US National Press Club, and later charged with espionage.

There was a heavy police presence outside Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, with at least seven police cars parked nearby. Reuters journalists were asked to leave the area.

A US diplomat told Reuters that they had been barred from attending the hearing.

Dong has been detained in a Beijing prison awaiting the verdict since a closed-court hearing in July 2023, the press club said in September.

He regularly had in-person exchanges with foreign diplomats from various embassies and journalists. The Japanese diplomat he met was also detained for several hours, triggering a strong complaint from the Japanese foreign ministry.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said at the time that the diplomat was engaged in activities “inconsistent with their capacity” in China. The diplomat was later released.

Dong participated in the prestigious Harvard Nieman Fellowship and was a visiting scholar and visiting professor at Keio University and Hokkaido University in Japan, according to a family statement in April 2023.

He joined the Communist Party-affiliated Guangming Daily in 1987 after graduating from Peking University law school, and was the deputy editor of its commentary section.

He had written opinion articles in Chinese media and liberal academic journals on topics from legal reforms to social issues, and co-edited a book promoting the rule of law in China. His articles advocated moderate reforms while avoiding direct criticism of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

His family had initially kept news of his detention private in the hope that charges could be reduced or dropped but were notified in March 2023 that his case would be sent to trial, their statement said.

Multiple press freedom non-government organizations (NGO) have called for his release. An online petition for his release has collected over 700 signatures from journalists, academics and NGO workers.

“Dong Yuyu is a talented reporter and author whose work has long been respected by colleagues at home and abroad,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. “We stand with many in hoping for his release and return to his family.”

The Australian writer and pro-democracy blogger Yang Hengjun was handed a suspended death sentence on espionage charges by a Beijing court in February.