When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the Bykovetz family to flee Kyiv in February, 6-year-old Sonya took the toys she could carry. What she left behind, she remembers through drawings: On one piece of paper is a colored picture of her cat.
The United Nations reports that 90% of the nearly 5 million people that escaped Ukraine are women and children.
To help Sonya deal with the trauma, her parents post her artwork online and created the site, UA Kids. They also collect drawings from other Ukrainian children and post them online.
“We know that children want to have an appreciation… to feel them like [they are] not alone but part of a bigger community,” Artem and Anastasiia Bykovets told CBS News’ Roxana Saberi.
The drawings come from children ages 5 and older. Each child uses a picture to tell a story. Some pictures display soldiers, bombs and death.
“Maybe it’s very hard for them to speak about it. They don’t know what’s going on,” Artem said.
Artem and Nastia left their home but decided to stay in Ukraine, searching for safety in different towns. They said they believe encouraging kids to draw can also help parents like them. “Sending them to sit somewhere and turn on their fantasy and put it on the paper, give the parents also an opportunity to recharge the battery,” Artem said.
“We hope that people looking on these pictures can feel compassion to support kids, to support Ukraine,” said Anastasiia.
A shotgun blast and a scream causes panic
Saturday Sessions: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram performs “Outside Of This Town”
The IOM said the bodies of six people were retrieved from the sea while 29 others were missing and presumed dead.
At least 35 people are presumed dead after a boat capsized off the Libyan coast, the United Nations migration agency said on Saturday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the boat sank off the western Libyan city of Sabratha, a major launching point for people from Africa who attempt to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean.
The IOM said the bodies of six people were retrieved from the sea while 29 others were missing and presumed dead. It was not immediately clear what caused the wooden boat to capsize on Friday.
“The continued loss of life in the Mediterranean must not be normalized, human lives are the cost of inaction,” the IOM tweeted.
🚨 A small wooden boat carrying around 35 migrants capsized off Sabratha, #Libya yesterday. The bodies of six people have been retrieved while 29 others are missing and presumed dead. At least 53 migrants have been reported dead or missing off Libya this week alone. pic.twitter.com/XaM5waGp3M
“Dedicated search and rescue capacity and a safe disembarkation mechanism are urgently needed to prevent further death and suffering,” the UN organisation said.
A better life in Europe
The deaths on Friday were the latest to involve migrants departing from North Africa to seek a better life in Europe.
In the past week alone, at least 53 people were reported dead or presumed dead off the Libyan coast, according to the IOM.
Libya has become a major transit route for migrants trying to reach Europe by sea since chaos erupted in the North African country after the 2011 revolt that toppled longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
For years, the UN and rights groups have repeatedly warned that migrants in Libya risk torture, sexual abuse and human trafficking.
Human researchers in recent years have benefitted from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in people across the oil-rich country’s lengthy borders with six nations. The migrants are then typically packed into ill-equipped rubber boats and set off on risky sea voyages.
Investigators commissioned by the UN’s human rights body found evidence of possible crimes against humanity committed in Libya against migrants who were detained in government-run prisons, and abused at the hands of human traffickers.
At least 476 people died along the Central Mediterranean route between January 1 and April 11, according to the IOM.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, universities across Europe and the United States have condemned the war and cut ties with Russia altogether. In the following Q&A, Arik Burakovsky, an expert on relations between the US and Russia, shines light on the future of cooperation between Russia and the West in the realm of higher education.
What kinds of ties have existed between Western and Russian universities?
Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Western and Russian higher education institutions have formed hundreds of partnerships and cooperated on different initiatives. These activities have included academic exchanges, curriculum development, joint online courses and collaborative research projects.
Russia has worked over the past two decades to make its universities more prestigious. The Russian government internationalized and updated its higher education system. This meant moving away from Soviet traditions and adopting European higher education standards, particularly transitioning from the one-tier, five-year “specialist” degree to the two-tier “bachelor-master” system.
Sign up here for The 74’s daily newsletter. Donate here to support The 74’s independent journalism.
In their desire for global competitiveness, Russian universities built international branch campuses throughout former Soviet countries. They also offered more opportunities for Russian students to study abroad and attracted more international students. The number of foreign students in Russia nearly tripled, from 100,900 in the 2004-2005 academic year to 282,900 a decade later.
Russian universities have opened more courses taught in English and established joint- and dual-degree programs with Western universities in a variety of disciplines. For example, the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences offers joint bachelor’s and master’s degree diplomas with the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
What have these relationships produced?
Western and Russian students have learned about each other’s cultures, languages and societies. Scientists in Russia and the West have worked together on research projects related to outer space exploration, particle physics, climate change, biodiversity in the Arctic and many other areas.
However, as geopolitical tensions grew over time, the Russian authorities became apprehensive about what they believed to be efforts “to educate young people in a pro-Western way, form a protest electorate and inculcate a hostile ideology.” Subsequently, Putin began to stifle international academic bonds by imposing restrictions on them.
Russia has dissolved academic connections with the West through legislation on so-called “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations.” The government ramped up scrutiny of foreign funding and outlawed dozens of Western think tanks, charities, and universities that previously had worked in Russia. These banned organizations include the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank in Washington, DC, and Bard College, a private liberal arts college in New York state.
In 2021, Russia banned all educational activities not approved by the government. This includes cooperation with foreign universities. Before Russian academics meet with foreign scholars, they must notify the government.
In my work at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University since 2017, I have managed collaborative teaching, research and academic exchanges with universities and think tanks in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. I have seen students and experts in the two countries gain mutual understanding of international affairs by sharing diverse perspectives and learning from one another.
These interactions were formally ended by the university where I work on March 15, 2022, as they are now considered “morally unacceptable.”
A man walks down a street covered in rubble and debris.
Western universities have condemned Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. (Getty Images)
Does Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten these relationships?
Yes. The Ukrainian government has called for an academic boycott of Russia. Many colleges have pulled students out of Russia. They have also paused scientific cooperation, cut financial ties and increased scrutiny of donations from Russia. These moves are all part of a global wave of condemnation against the invasion.
While many academic leaders have urged caution about moving too quickly, some American and European universities have already frozen their relationships with Russia completely. Universities in Estonia and Belgium collectively decided to suspend all ties with Russia.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended its high-tech teaching and research cooperation with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow on Feb. 25. The partnership, which began in 2010, had been bolstered by a five-year extension and multimillion-dollar funding in 2019. Yet the program had been mired in controversy since 2018 over sponsorship from sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Many European governments, such as Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Norway, Latvia and Lithuania, have asked their universities to cut ties with Russia entirely. The United Kingdom announced on March 27 that it will halt tens of millions of pounds in funding for all research projects with links to Russia.
What are the reasons given for and against severing ties?
Proponents claim these actions are needed to take a moral stance against Putin. They also say they are meant to fight corruption, reduce the risks of spying, block Putin’s propaganda machine and prevent technology theft. Chris Philp, the United Kingdom’s minister for technology and the digital economy, says he does not see how “anyone in good conscience can cooperate with Russian universities.”
Opponents argue that by shutting out Russian academia, the West is alienating Russian students and scholars and setting a bad precedent for international academic cooperation broadly. They maintain that scientific openness promotes democracy and human rights, helps counter misinformation inside Russia and encourages conflict resolution.
Lawrence Bacow, president of Harvard University, emphasizes the value of academic diplomacy. He points out that “individuals are not necessarily responsible for the policies of their governments.” On March 9, the university’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies suspended its relationships with Russian universities whose administrations expressed support for the war.
How will these severe ties affect higher education in Russia?
By closing lines of communication with Russia, Western universities may be unwittingly aiding Putin’s efforts to isolate Russian students and academics. Putin wants to convince young people and academics, who tend to be more pro-Western and anti-authoritarian than the rest of the population, that there is no hope for them now that they are alone.
Russian researchers say they feel disconnected from the West and disheartened about the future science. The Russian government declared on March 22 that it will bar its researchers from participating in international conferences.
Are Russian academics free to condemn the invasion?
A climate of fear reigns over people in Russia who oppose the war. A new law punishes the spread of intentionally “fake” information about the military with up to 15 years in prison. In his televised speech on March 16, vowed to cleanse Russia of pro-Western “scum and traitors,” setting the stage for a severe domestic crackdown.
Russian scholars are unable to criticize the invasion without risking employment terminations, fines and jail sentences. Saint Petersburg State University has expelled 13 students who were detained at anti-war protests. While more than 700 government-appointed Russian university presidents issued a statement of support for the “special military operation” in Ukraine, almost 8,000 Russian scholars voiced their opposition to the war in an open letter condemning the hostilities.
Hundreds of thousands of members of Russia’s liberal intelligentsia and political opposition fled the country in the wake of the war. They are afraid of political persecution and conscription. As room for free speech rapidly closes, some universities abroad have opened temporary teaching and research positions for Russian scholars in search of refuge.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Moscow says the move is in ‘response to London’s unbridled information and political campaign aimed at isolating Russia internationally’.
Russia has banned entry to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and several other top officials after the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine.
“This step was taken as a response to London’s unbridled information and political campaign aimed at isolating Russia internationally, creating conditions for restricting our country and strangling the domestic economy,” Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Saturday.
The ministry accused the UK government of “unprecedented hostile actions”, in particular referring to senior sanctions on Russia’s officials.
“The British leadership is deliberately aggravating the situation surrounding Ukraine, pumping the Kyiv regime with lethal weapons and coordinating similar efforts on the behalf of NATO,” the ministry said.
Russia’s entry blacklist includes UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, former PM Theresa May and the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.
The UK has been part of an international effort to punish Russia with asset freezes, travel bans and economic sanctions since President Vladimir Putin moved troops into Ukraine on February 24.
CAIRO (AP) — Yemen’s Houthis criticized a new US-led task force that will patrol the Red Sea following a series of attacks by the Iran-backed rebels in a waterway that’s essential to global trade.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesman, said late Friday that the US move in the Red Sea, which comes amid a cease-fire in the country’s civil war, contradicts Washington’s claim of supporting the UN-brokered truce.
The task force “enshrines the aggression and blockade on Yemen,” he claimed on his Telegram social media account.
Abdul-Salam apparently referred to a Saudi-led coalition the rebels have been fighting for years. The coalition, which until recently was backed by the US, imposes an air and sea blockade on Houthi-held areas.
Iran is the main supporter of the Houthis who seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. The Saudi-led coalition entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting has pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.
Another Houthi leader, Daifallah al-Shami, also criticized the US-led task force, saying it sends negative signals and “gives a darker reading to the truce,” according to the rebels’ media office. He also did not elaborate.
The new task force of two to eight ships patrolling at a time will be commissioned Sunday and aims to target those smuggling coal, drugs, weapons and people in the Red Sea, according to Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, who oversees the US Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet.
The USS Mount Whitney, a Blue Ridge class amphibious command ship previously part of the Navy’s African and European 6th Fleet, will join the task force, Cooper said.
While Cooper did not name the Houthis explosives when he announced the task force Wednesday, the rebels have launcheds-laden drone boats and mines into the waters of the Red Sea.
The Red Sea runs from Egypt’s Suez Canal in the north down through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the south that separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula.
Coal smuggling through the Red Sea has been used by Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militant group to fund attacks. Weapons linked by the US Navy and analysts to Iran have been intercepted in the region as well, likely on their way to the Houthis. The rebels also fired missiles in the Red Sea that have come near an American warship in the past.
A 60-day cease-fire around the holy Muslim month of Ramadan appears for now to be holding despite repeated violations that both parties blamed each other for.
The UN-brokered cease-fire, that began on April 2, is the first nationwide one in six years. It has relieved Yemenis in Sanaa and other rebel-held areas of coalition coalitions during the truce and people in government-held areas of Houthi attacks, especially those on the outskirts of the central city of Marib, which the rebels have been trying to seize for over a year.
Vessel, headed from Egypt to Malta, had requested entry to Tunisian waters on Friday evening due to bad weather.
A ship carrying 750 tons of diesel from Egypt to Malta has sunk in the Gulf of Gabes off Tunisia’s southeast coast.
“The ship sank this morning in Tunisian territorial waters. For the moment, there is no leak,” Mohamed Karray, a spokesman for a local court said on Saturday, adding that a “disaster prevention committee will meet to decide on the measures to be.”
Earlier, authorities in Tunisia said the ship that ran into difficulty risks leaking and creating an “environmental disaster”.
The merchant ship, the Xelo, requested entry to Tunisian waters on Friday evening due to bad weather, the environment ministry said in a statement.
The Equatorial Guinea-flagged ship, headed from the Egyptian port of Damietta to Malta, began taking water about 7km (4 miles) offshore in the Gulf of Gabes and the engine room was engulfed.
authorities had earlier evacuated the seven-member crew from the ship, which “risks leaking”, the ministry said, adding that the defense, interior, transport and customs ministries were working to avoid “a marine environmental disaster in the region and its limit impact”.
The environment ministry said the ship’s situation was “alarming” and that it had put in place an “urgent national intervention plan” to avoid a disaster.
On Friday, Twitter’s board showed it will not go quietly after Musk offered to buy the company.
Twitter is trying to thwart billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover attempt with a “poison pill”, a financial device that companies have been wielding against unwelcome suitors for decades.
On Thursday, Musk offered to buy Twitter with the revelation coming just days after the Tesla CEO said he would no longer be joining the social media company’s board of directors.
He offered $54.2 per share of Twitter’s stock, calling the price his best and final offer.
On Friday, Twitter’s board showed it will not go quietly, saying any acquisition of more than 15 percent of the firm’s stock without its approval would trigger a plan to flood the market with shares and thus make a buyout much harder.
What are poison pills supposed to do?
The ingredients of each poison pill vary, but they are all designed to give corporate boards an option to flood the market with so much newly created stock that a takeover becomes prohibitively expensive.
The strategy was popularized in the 1980s when publicly held companies were being stalked by corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn – now more frequently described as “activist investors”.
Twitter did not disclose the details of its poison pill on Friday but said it would provide more information in a forthcoming filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which the delayed company because public markets were closed on Friday.
Musk currently holds a roughly 9 percent stake.
Can a poison pill be a negotiating ploy?
Although they are supposed to help prevent an unsolicited takeover, poison pills also often open the door to further negotiations that can force a bidder to sweeten the deal.
If a higher price makes sense to the board, a poison pill can simply be cast aside along with the acrimony it provoked, clearing the way for a sale to be completed.
True to form, Twitter left its door open by emphasising that its poison pill will not prevent its board from “engaging with parties or accepting an acquisition proposal” at a higher price.
Adopting a poison pill also frequently results in lawsuits alleging that a corporate board and management team is using the tactic to keep their jobs against the best interests of shareholders.
How did Musk react to Twitter’s announcement?
Musk, with 82 million followers on Twitter, had no immediate reaction to the company’s poison pill.
But on Thursday he indicated he was ready to wage a legal battle.
“If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to the shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty,” Musk tweeted. “The liability they would thus assume would be titanic in scale.”
Musk has publicly said his $43bn bid is his best and final offer for Twitter, but other corporate suitors have made similar statements before ultimately upping the ante.
With an estimated fortune of $265bn, Musk would seem to have deep enough pockets to raise his offer, although he is still working out how to finance the proposed purchase.
Musk also questioned Saudi Arabia’s role in Twitter Inc after the kingdom’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal tweeted his opposition to the billionaire entrepreneur’s offer to buy the social media company.
The prince tweeted on Thursday that Musk’s offer does not come close to the “intrinsic value” of Twitter.
“Being one of the largest & long-term shareholders of Twitter, @Kingdom_KHC & I reject this offer,” the prince said, referring to the Saudi Arabia-based Kingdom Holding Company, which he owns.
Musk responded to the tweet, asking how much of Twitter, directly and indirectly, was owned by Saudi Arabia.
“What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?” Musk added.
MYKULYCHI, Ukraine (AP) — This is not where Nadiya Trubchaninova thought she would find herself at 70 years of age, hittingchhiking daily from her village to the shattered town of Bucha trying to bring her son’s body home for burial.
The questions wear her down, heavy like the winter coat and boots she still wears against the chill. Why had Vadym gone to Bucha, where the Russians were so much harsher than the ones occupying their village? Who shot him as he drove on Yablunska Street, where so many bodies were found? And why did she lose her son just one day before the Russians withdrew?
Now 48-year-old Vadym is in a black bag in a refrigerated truck. After word reached her that he had been found and buried by strangers in a yard in Bucha, she had spent more than a week trying to bring him home for a proper grave. But he is one body among hundreds, part of an investigation into war crimes that has grown to global significance.
Trubchaninova is among the many elderly people left behind or who chose to stay as millions of Ukrainians fled across borders or to other parts of the country. They were the first to be seen on empty streets after the Russians withdrew from communities around the capital, Kyiv, peering from wooden gates or carrying bags of donated food back to freezing homes.
Some, like Trubchaninova, survived the worst of the war only to find it had taken their children.
She last saw her son on March 30. She thought he was taking a walk as part of his long recovery from a stroke. “It would be crazy to go farther,” she said. She wonders whether he went driving to search for a cellphone connection to call his own son and wish him happy birthday.
She wonders whether Vadym thought the Russians in Bucha were like those occupying their village, who told them they wouldn’t be harmed if they didn’t fight back.
More than a week later, she found his makeshift grave with the help of a stranger with the same name and age as her son. The following day, she spotted the body bag containing Vadym at a Bucha cemetery. He always stood out as tall, and his foot stuck out from a hole in the corner. Anxious not to lose him, she found a scarf and tied it there. It is her marker.
She believes she knows where her son’s body is now, in a refrigerator truck outside Bucha’s morgue. She is desperate to find an official to hurry the process of inspecting her son and issuing the documents needed to release him.
“I get worried, where he’d go, and whether I’d be able to find him,” she said.
Once she collects his body, she’ll need a casket. A casket equals a month of her pension, or about $90. She, like other elderly Ukrainians, hasn’t received her pension since the war began. She gets by selling the vegetables she grows, but the potatoes she meant to plant in March withered while she was hiding in her home.
Her aging cellphone keeps losing battery life. She forgets her phone number. Her other son, two years younger than Vadym, is unemployed and troubled. Nothing is easy.
“I would walk out of this place because I feel it’s so hard to be here,” Trubchaninova said, sitting at home under a tinted black-and-white photo of herself at age 32, full of determination.
She recalled watching her television, when it still worked, in the early days of the war, as broadcasts showed so many Ukrainians fleeing. She worried about them. Where are they going? Where will they sleep? What will they eat? How will they remake their lives again?
“I felt so sorry for them,” she said. “And now, I’m in that situation. I feel so lost inside. I don’t even know how to describe how lost I am. I’m not even sure I’ll put my head on this pillow tonight and wake up tomorrow.”
Like many Ukrainians of her age, she worked without taking time for herself, determined to give her children an education and a better life than her own. “Those were my plans,” she said, agitated. “What plans do you want me to have now? How do I make new plans if one of my sons is lying there in Bucha?”
The cemetery where she wants to place her son can be seen from Vadym’s old room, where his canes are still propped against the door.
On Thursday, she waited outside the Bucha morgue again. After another long day without progress, she sat on a bench in the sun. “I just wanted to sit in nice weather,” she said. “I’m going to go home. Tomorrow I’ll come again.”
Across town was the kind of closure that Trubchaninova wants so badly. At a cemetery, two 82-year-old women rose from a bench and crossed themselves as the now-familiar white van carrying another casket.
The women, Neonyla and Helena, sing at funerals. They have performed at 10 since the Russians withdrew. “The biggest pain for a mother is to lose her son,” Neonyla said. “There is no word to describe it.”
Like Trubchaninova, they hadn’t fled ahead of the Russians. This is our land, they said.
They joined the priest at the foot of the grave. Two men with handfuls of tulips attended, along with a man with cap in hand. “That’s it,” a gravedigger said when the exhausted-looking priest was finished.
Another man with a gold-ink pen wrote basic details on a temporary cross. It was for a woman who had been killed by shelling as she cooked outside. She was 69.
A row of empty graves lay waiting.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Pakistan army says four members of an armed group also killed in Thursday’s incident in North Waziristan.
At least seven Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an ambush by an armed group near the Afghan border.
According to a military statement released on Friday, a Pakistani military convoy in a former stronghold of the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, near the Afghan border was ambushed, triggering an intense shoot-out in which seven soldiers and four members of the armed group were killed.
The statement said the ambush took place on Thursday in the Isham area of North Waziristan, a district in the volatile northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Pakistan Army is determined to eliminate the menace of terrorism and such sacrifices of our brave soldiers further strengthen our resolve,” the statement added.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The incident comes as Pakistan’s military said on Thursday that 128 armed fighters have been killed in the region bordering Afghanistan since January.
The military acknowledged that nearly 100 soldiers have been killed in such attacks during the same period.
Paying tributes to the killed soldiers, Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad would “continue fighting terrorism”.
North Waziristan – once dubbed the “heartland of militancy” – is one of the seven former semi-autonomous tribal regions in Pakistan where the army has conducted a series of operations since 2014 to eliminate the Pakistan Taliban.
Kim Jong Un oversaw a huge public procession to celebrate the birthday of North Korea’s founding leader, state media images showed Saturday, but the anniversary without an anticipated show of military strength passed.
Known as the Day of the Sun in the nuclear-armed country, the April 15 birthday of the late Kim Il Sung — grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un — is one of the most important dates in Pyongyang’s political calendar.
Analysts and South Korean and US officials had widely predicted a military parade or even a nuclear test, but the celebrations Friday involved a civilian parade, synchronized dancing and fireworks.
Photographs released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency showed thousands of colorfully dressed people marching through the capital’s Kim Il Sung Square as Kim Jong Un looked on from a balcony.
“Columns of workers, peasant dancers and others marched past the square,” carrying banners and boards bearing socialist slogans, and a giant national flag, KCNA said.
Three generations of the Kim family have ruled the country since 1948.
Kim also visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the bodies of Kim Il Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong Il lie in state.
– Civilian, not military –
There was a steady drumbeat of celebratory coverage in state media leading up to the day, including the opening of new apartment complexes, light festivals and floral tributes.
It was a calculated decision to highlight new apartments and citizens with smartphones taking pictures of flowers, said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“The Kim regime needs more sources of national pride and legitimacy than military parades,” he said.
“So the public commemorations around its founder’s birthday tried to portray an economy that is not only resilient but growing.”
The anniversary celebrations came three weeks after North Korea staged its largest intercontinental ballistic missile test ever — the first time Kim’s most powerful weapon had been fired at full range since 2017.
That test was the culmination of a record-breaking blitz of sanctions-busting launches this year and signaled an end to a self-imposed moratorium on long-range and nuclear tests.
The absence of military activity on the holiday “does not represent a shift away from North Korea’s military build-up”, Easley added.
Satellite imagery has shown signs of new activity at a tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, which North Korea said was demolished in 2018 ahead of a summit between Kim and then-US president Donald Trump.
South Korean officials have said Pyongyang could still stage a military parade or carry out a weapons test on or around April 25, the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army.
