Read the daily news to learn English

Nepal-Tibet floods: Nepal calls for technical support for rescue efforts as number of missing rises to nearly 3,000 – latest updates

Chinese rescuers were progressing on Saturday towards the epicentre of a deadly mudslide at the Tibet-Nepal border that has left hundreds missing, as a lake that had threatened more damage has drained, state media said. The massive wave of mud and debris swept into Tibet’s border hub of Gyirong on Wednesday, killing at least seven people and leaving 554 missing in that area, according to figures published early Saturday by China’s Xinhua news agency. More than 500 rescuers had reached the heart of the devastation by Saturday, the agency reported. Rescue operations had been temporarily paused because of the threat of renewed flooding from a lake formed by the mudslide. But state broadcaster CCTV said that the lake was “discharging naturally” and had been “essentially drained”, citing China’s ministry of water resources.

Number of missing in Nepal and Tibet rises to nearly 3,000 as operations continue

The number of people killed in the floods in Nepal has risen to at least 675, the country’s disaster authority has said. Seven have also been confirmed dead in Tibet by Chinese state media, taking the total killed when a glacial collapse unleashed a deadly torrent through river systems in the Himalayan mountains to 682. Seven bodies have also been recovered in India from rivers flowing from Nepal and are believed to be flood victims. The number of people missing in Nepal and Tibet was revised up to nearly 3,000 on Saturday. The missing list includes 517 foreigners and 933 workers on hydropower projects on the river where the torrent smashed down, Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said. A number of rescue workers are also missing, including 45 Nepali army soldiers and 40 police officers. When a Chinese rescue team reached the all-but-obliterated Gyirong border crossing complex for the first time on Friday, they found “nothing but ruins”. Surveillance camera footage from the complex showed huge torrents of water and debris on Wednesday engulfing buildings and people trying to flee. Only ⁠on Friday were rescuers able to reach the area. Amid the deepening crisis, Nepal has now said it needs foreign ⁠help in specialised and technical areas, but not in search and rescue. On ⁠Friday, Nepal’s foreign ministry had said that Kathmandu could manage the rescue efforts on its own for now and declined foreign involvement. The areas in which Nepal is seeking help include opening transport and communication services in places where bridges have been destroyed, identification of dead bodies, DNA testing, rescuing people stuck in tunnels, and storing bodies for longer durations, the foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, said late on Friday. Khanal said there was no need for assistance in general search and rescue which was being done by Nepali rescuers. “We think there is no need for repetition in this,” he said. Nepal has requested that its neighbours, India and China, provide bailey bridges to reopen transport and communication in an area where about two dozen bridges have been destroyed. So far, India has sent three flights carrying about 60 tons of relief material to Nepal, including blankets, medicines, food and water purification tablets, ⁠and a specialised tunnel rescue team. China has also dispatched five tunnel experts from Tibet to Nepal for flood-related rescue work, Chinese state media reported, as the country called for emergency aid to be sent to disaster-hit areas and for international rescue cooperation. Rescuers – including army personnel and police – have been clawing through mud and using drilling equipment to reach more than 100 people trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa. More than 350 people have already been evacuated from the site under “extremely risky” conditions and the office of Nepal’s prime minister said the rescue effort had become “extremely challenging” due to adverse weather. Search and rescue operations were temporarily halted because of rain and fog but resumed on Saturday afternoon after the weather improved. Kawan Koirala, a rescue worker from the Nepal Scout Disaster Response Team, said they had been struggling in thick, leg-sucking mud. “People want their family member’s body back, either dead or alive, but we cannot find them … you can see the mud,” he told Agence France-Presse, exhausted after an 18-hour shift. Nepal is continuing to monitor two barrier lakes upstream of the flood zone, with an official warning that flood risks will persist until both lakes fully drain. Satellite imagery showed the second lake growing larger with no visible outlet, raising concerns that water pressure could still be building. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said that the first barrier lake was reducing in size, citing analysis by the water resources ministry. A Chinese government geohazards expert warned, however, that the lake may be ‌unstable and that more than 100 glacial lakes scattered throughout the area could pose a threat. In Beijing, a politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping called for stronger monitoring of glacier lakes and landslide risks, and for closer international disaster cooperation, Xinhua reported. China’s Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No 2 official, arrived in the area of Gyirong on Thursday afternoon, Xinhua said. The visit suggested Beijing was treating the disaster as a matter of the highest national priority. In China, strict controls on the flow of information from one of its most sensitive regions are hampering the public’s understanding of events. The BBC and New York Times have reported that videos of the catastrophic floods, widely shared globally, have not appeared on Chinese social media sites. Tibet, brought under Chinese control in the 1950s, is the most sensitive and tightly controlled region in the country. The Gyirong border port plays a key role in China’s belt and road network linking the country to south Asia, with logistics zones and vehicle parks built there in the past decade. Nepal’s finance minister, Swarnim Waglé, estimated the country will ⁠need $4-$5bn (£3-£3.7bn) for rebuilding. “This is just an estimate. Loss and ⁠damage is being assessed,” he said. More than 90,000 people have been affected by the disaster, the Red Cross estimated. Some of the bodies being recovered had decomposed beyond recognition and will need to be identified using DNA samples, Nepali officials have said.

‘Their whole village has disappeared’: frantic hunt for survivors in Kathmandu hospital

Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peaking out from behind a door. These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet. So far, Nepal has recovered 669 bodies, but many remote areas have only been accessed by army helicopters on the hunt for survivors. Rescuers said it was too difficult to assess how many more people might be buried beneath the mud. The task of identifying the dead is also gargantuan. In the Nepalese city of Chitwan, the morgues have been overrun by the sheer number of bodies and a makeshift building has been set up to house the dead. Some of the bodies were carried so far down the river by the force of the floods, they were recovered in neighbouring India. At Tribhuvan University teaching hospital in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, desperate relatives gathered in the hope of news. Four days on since the disaster struck, people continued to crowd round the police desk to register the names of missing family members. Hundreds of the injured are recovering in the hospital’s wards and people were frantically checking lists of patients, desperate to find a sign that their loved ones were still alive. In the absence of information and with affected areas almost completely cut off, many families have resorted to making posters to appeal for information. Yavraj Lama said his sister, her husband and their two children were missing after their village of Jaydada, in Rusawa district, had been entirely washed away. His eyes filled with tears as he glued a photo of one-year-old Sijan Tawang, a baby in the arms of his mother, to the hospital wall. A picture of 12-year-old Sahil, his brother, hung next to it. “We are numb, we don’t have words to say how sad and distraught we are,” said Lama. “Our main focus is trying to find baby Sijan. He was so sweet and innocent; it’s impossible for us to think he is not with us any more. “But their whole village has disappeared,” he added, “so we have no hope left that any of them survived.” Monita Nepali, 22, howled in grief as a poster of her missing husband Vishal Nepali, 30, was pinned to the hospital wall. They had married six months ago and his work as a driver regularly took him to the border between Nepal and Tibet. She had spoken to her husband an hour before the floods hit when he was out for a morning walk in Rusawa. He had promised to call her that evening, but his phone has been ever off since. “I don’t want to live on the face of this earth without him,” she said. Four days may have passed, Nepali said, but she had not stopped believing in her husband’s return. “I feel it in my heart he will come back.” For some families, the scale of the loss was too hard to comprehend. Tulmaya Tamang, 36, came to the hospital bearing posters of some of her 12 family members, including her five-month-old niece, who lived in a village in Rusawa and have not been seen since the floods. “Our family is under tremendous stress,” she said. “So many are gone, and those of us who are left behind are struggling.” As hopes for their survival faded, Tamang said they were now just hoping the bodies could be retrieved. “If we had the bodies, then at least we could have peace,” she said. “Otherwise, the family will never stop wondering and this pain will go on for a very long time.” At least 900 of those still missing were working on the vast hydropower projects along the Trishuli River corridor, high up in the Himalayas, which were decimated by the floods and mudslides. Many of the workers were low-paid labourers, including at least 63 from India. On Friday, dramatic footage showed Nepali soldiers pulling several survivors out through a thick wall of mud from a tunnel in the Trishuli-1 hydropower project. The Nepali army said they believed at least another 100 people were still trapped inside the tunnels, as well as dozens more trapped underground in the Trishuli-3 hydropower plant. Among those missing was 24-year-old Sujan Nepali, who had just finished his night shift at the hydropower project and was asleep in bed when the wall of water came gushing down the valley. At the hospital trauma centre in Nepal, his sister, Sushisha Maluwar, had returned anxiously every day to check if his name was listed. “We haven’t lost hope,” she said. “We are writing down his name at the hospitals and putting up his photographs everywhere, hoping that we might find him somewhere. Maybe he has already been rescued. Maybe he had managed to escape and survive.”

‘The world needs to pay attention’: Nepalis and Tibetans in New York respond to the Himalayan disaster

Geeta Tamang was getting ready for bed when her aunts shared news that upended her world. “My aunts came into my room and told me what had happened,” said Tamang, a 24-year-old computer science student at Queens College. She lives in Jackson Heights, home to one of the largest Nepali and Tibetan communities in New York City. Tamang’s family village lies in Rasuwa near the Nepal-Tibet border, where a Himalayan glacier collapsed on Wednesday. The torrent of water, mud and rock tore through communities downstream, sweeping away most of the village where Tamang grew up. As her calls to relatives went unanswered, the uncertainty only fueled her fears. Those she did reach were largely unaware of the disaster that had unfolded. From her bedroom in Queens, Tamang found herself breaking the news to her own family, one call at a time. Across New York’s Nepali and Tibetan diaspora, the flood has stirred grief and fear for relatives back home, and desperation to help in any way possible. More than 600 people have been confirmed dead, and almost 3,000 remain missing, including Tamang’s grandmother’s sister. “My grandmother’s sister, she’s really like a grandmother to me,” Tamang said, her voice trembling. “I don’t think there’s any chance she survived.” Across the border in Tibet, Chinese authorities have reported at least seven deaths. But the official toll has been met with deep suspicion among some Tibetans living abroad, including Sonam Tshiring, 58, a Tibetan refugee who settled in Queens three decades ago who believes the number of people killed in Tibet is far higher than Chinese authorities have acknowledged. For Nepali and Tibetan communities thousands of miles away in New York and across the US, the catastrophe is about more than relatives missing and villages destroyed. It has sharpened the focus on an urgent injustice: who is being forced to bear the consequences of a warming planet, and why should communities that contributed so little to the climate crisis bear some of its greatest costs? Nepal is responsible for only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet its Himalayan communities face mounting dangers as temperatures rise and glaciers retreat. The disaster has also arrived at a particularly fraught political moment, as the US has retreated from international climate commitments while dramatically reducing foreign aid and humanitarian assistance, leaving vulnerable countries with fewer resources to prepare for and recover from disasters. The anxiety has reached a younger generation of Nepali Americans, some of whom have spent much of their lives moving between Nepal and New York. Ninima Rai, 19, lived in Nepal before moving to New York when she was 11. She was still a child when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal in 2015. This time, she watched a catastrophe in her homeland from thousands of miles away. Her relatives in Nepal were safe, she said, though communications had been disrupted. From New York, she and other young Nepalis have been following updates, sharing information and supporting organizations that are assisting flood victims. “It’s hard to see how we can support them from so far away,” Rai said. Tashi Sherpa, 16, was born in the United States but spent four formative years of her childhood in Nepal after her parents worried she might lose touch with their culture. She returned to New York for greater educational opportunities and describes herself as having grown up “between Nepal and New York”. For Sherpa, crises in both countries have produced a peculiar sense of having two homes but, at moments, feeling secure in neither. “As a Nepali American … it’s not just Nepal, but it’s America too,” she said. “I think it is a very chaotic time for us to feel like there is no safe space … and we feel very easily overwhelmed.” Still, both teenagers described action as an antidote to helplessness. Friends in Nepal were preparing aid kits and collecting donations for food and clothing, Sherpa said, while young Nepalis in New York were sharing information and checking on relatives. “There’s only so much that we can do, especially being so far away,” Sherpa said. Tsomo Dasel, 40, is the owner of Himalayan Yak. Tucked on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, it was New York’s first Nepali restaurant and is now a staple in the community. On Friday afternoon, she expressed her growing frustration with the US government’s response to the climate crisis. “The world needs to pay attention,” she said. Back home in Nepal, her husband’s family is safe – but it’s not just her loved ones that she’s worried about. Dasel said the priority in the aftermath should be to exhaust all available resources to find the missing. Each passing moment is crucial to the search, which she fears won’t match the enormity of the disaster. She voiced her distaste with the Trump administration’s humanitarian response, after the state department pledged an initial $500,000 in emergency aid for Nepal – an amount she called an “insult” to address a catastrophe with a death toll that’s in the hundreds, and still rising. “It’s a joke – if you don’t want to do anything, then don’t do it.” Dasel is particularly concerned about a media landscape that often overlooks Tibet. “[Tibet] is a climate issue – what kind of world will we leave behind if our president doesn’t believe in climate change?” she asked. While local non-profits addressing the disaster have advised direct donation, Dasel is ready to help in any way that’s needed. Since she arrived in the US in 2002, she’s been a champion of her community. However, it’s been difficult for her to help delegate support, with power outages slashing lines of communication in Nepal and Tibet. “We don’t know how we can help them … so we’re sitting down together, like, OK, what are the resources? … Maybe their emergency needs … anything that, you know, they may not have, and we can provide them.” When the time comes, she’ll be ready: “Whatever the team needs.”

Russian drone strike on Kyiv warehouse storing weapons kills at least 37

At least 37 people have been killed after a Russian drone struck a warehouse near Kyiv’s western suburbs that was storing “explosive objects”. The attack damaged at least 50 residential buildings, including a care home for elderly and disabled people, and sparked a huge fire and explosions in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region. The regional governor, Tymur Tkachenko, said a further 42 people, including four children, had been injured in the strike. More than 370 people have been evacuated from the area and the evacuation process was continuing, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said. In a statement, he said a warehouse in the town of Myla had been struck, “followed by a detonation”. The warehouse was a depot owned by the Ukrainian military and stored shells, drones and other munitions, he said in a video address. “The first impact was on a place where ammunition was being stored that absolutely should not have been there – a depot of the defence forces. [There was] detonation of shells, mines, other munitions and drones on a significant scale,” Zelenskyy said. Criminal proceedings had been opened on charges of official negligence, he added. “There are regulations in place; ammunition cannot be stored near homes or other residential areas.” He said one of the people killed was the head of the Dmytrivka community, Taras Didych, who died while rescuing others. Ukrainian prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the legality of the “storage of explosive objects and materials”. The Ukrainian prime minister, Serhii Koretskyi, expressed regret that mistakes had not been learned from a previous deadly strike on a munitions depot in Vyshneve, near Kyiv, in July. An investigation into that incident, in which 22 people were killed and fires tore through nearby homes, revealed serious failings on the part of a state-owned company, which did not comply with regulations on the proximity of residential buildings. “Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” Koretskyi said. “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.” In a statement, Russia’s ministry of defence said it had hit a warehouse in Myla storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It said it had also attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, as well as a logistics centre and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region. Elsewhere, Russian attacks across Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 27 more on Saturday, including a child, a local official said.

Was it a mistake for 99 Colombian guerrillas to lay down their arms?

In mid-June, 99 guerrilla fighters were flown by helicopter to a small settlement in a rural area of southern Colombia where they lined up and, one by one, handed their weapons to government officials: rifles, pistols, machine guns and grenade launchers. They also stripped off their heavy tactical vests, field packs and camouflage uniforms, which were each piled into a bonfire to mark the beginning of a new life away from an armed conflict that has claimed nearly half a million lives in the last six decades. That was precisely what the former president Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” plan had sought to achieve: negotiating with and disarming all of Colombia’s criminal groups, which are estimated to have nearly 30,000 members. But the group of just 99 people was the only one to disarm, and did so just three days before the presidential runoff, which was won by the far-right millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who had campaigned on a promise to end “total peace” and return to a full-on strategy of jailing or killing criminals. Now, several weeks after the new president took office – and amid efforts to deal with the aftermath of the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, as his government has already begun the promised airstrikes against criminal groups – the 99 do not know what will happen to them. “We’re in limbo,” said Natalia Bríñez, 29, one of 13 women among the group staying in the temporary location zone, or ZUT by its Spanish initials, a government-controlled zone where, under surveillance and unable to leave, they were supposed to make the transition to civilian life over the following months. The former guerrillas are housed in beige brick buildings decorated with drawings they painted themselves, including doves of peace, with a communal dining hall where three meals a day are served. No weapons are allowed inside and soldiers guard the ZUT from a perimeter less than a mile away. One former combatant built a makeshift gym with weights made from metal pipes and tins filled with cement and sand, and there is an improvised football pitch, but most of them spend their days on their phones. De la Espriella has repeatedly said his government will no longer negotiate peace agreements and has yet to announce what he intends to do regarding the people at the ZUT. The president has not responded to requests for comment. In theory, any arrest warrants against the group are suspended, and they remain under state protection until 25 December, when Petro’s decree establishing the ZUT expires. But De la Espriella could revoke the decree at any time. Armando Novoa, the former government official who led peace negotiations with the group, said “the worst-case scenario would be for the new government to close the ZUT, launch a military operation and try to capture or kill them. That would be a crime against humanity, because these people are unarmed.” Between 2 and 4 August, days before De la Espriella’s inauguration, Novoa led journalists including the Guardian through the ZUT. The Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, where he worked, has since been absorbed into the newly created National Security Commission – a move expected to result in more than 200 job losses – and Novoa has resigned. For now, at least, the ZUT remains in operation and has a small library run by Bríñez, who has a phoenix tattoo on her left shoulder as a symbol of her rebirth away from the armed conflict. “The hardest thing for me has been being away from my children,” said Bríñez, who has a seven-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son and speaks to them on video calls, but will only be able to see them in person once her “transition” is complete, a process that includes vocational training and psychosocial support. They were also supposed to receive financial support of about £425 a month, which had not yet been paid. In the meantime, some of them were planning to start a chicken-rearing business. The 99 made up a small part of a group of about 1,000 combatants called Commandos of the Frontier – most of whom remain armed – and are part of the National Coordinator of the Bolivarian Army (CNEB), a former dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) with about 2,500 members which controls the border with Ecuador. The Petro administration said negotiations were also under way with other members of the CNEB, who published an open letter addressed to De la Espriella saying they were willing to continue talks with him. It is not known whether the president responded. The CNEB’s chief “peace negotiator”, Geovany Andrés Rojas, known as “Araña” (Spider), had been in custody since February under a US extradition request for drug trafficking, which Petro had delayed. Last Wednesday, De la Espriella ordered extradition. Although such groups emerged in the 1960s as leftwing rebels fighting government abuses and seeking revolution – followed soon afterwards by far-right paramilitary groups – ideology has long since been overtaken for most of them by economic interests, above all drug trafficking (Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine) and illegal mining. “Here in the ZUT, the vast majority were not in the group because of any ideological commitment, but for economic reasons,” said Novoa. “It even surprised us that most of them simply called the group ‘the company’.” Petro repeatedly tried to negotiate peace agreements with larger groups. The armed factions took advantage of temporary ceasefires to continue expanding, a process that had already begun before he took office. They also clashed among themselves for control of territory and illicit economies, which many security experts say contributed to a rise in homicides, kidnappings and massacres. “Total peace” was an attempt to address what the landmark 2016 peace deal between the government and the Farc failed to resolve, as other armed groups and Farc dissidents remained active. Petro’s administration failed to reduce violence, which instead reached its worst levels in a decade, and to reach the disarmament stage with any of the gangs, apart from the 99 former combatants – who handed over their weapons only on the eve of an election that every poll indicated the government-backed candidate would lose. “They [the government] told us: ‘If this works, you’re opening the door for other groups and will set an example,’” said Bríñez. Some security experts saw the agreement as rushed. “It was a somewhat irresponsible decision,” said Paula Tobo, a senior researcher at the thinktank Ideas for Peace Foundation, which published an extensive report on why Total Peace failed. Tobo said the 99 were now in a “legal limbo” because their protection rested on decrees that could be revoked and there is no legal framework for their transition to civilian life. All of the Petro administration’s proposals to regulate surrenders failed in Congress and, under current law, anyone who has committed crimes such as kidnapping or drug trafficking is not eligible for amnesty. “It’s positive that these people wanted to lay down their arms, but it really wasn’t the right time for the government to take that decision … The previous administration clearly put them at risk of this government suddenly deciding to abolish the ZUT and arrest them,” said Tobo. The group wrote a letter to De la Espriella reaffirming its “irreversible decision to commit to peace” and inviting him to visit the ZUT. At the time of publication it had received no response. The youngest member of the group, a 19-year-old who asked to be identified only as Adrián, said they wanted “to have a home, a family”. However, he knows what he will do if things do not go according to plan. “Honestly, I’d take up arms again, because we’re keeping our side of the bargain and the government should do the same, shouldn’t it?” he said. Daniela Díaz travelled to Valle del Guamuez at the invitation of the Colombian government’s former Office of the High Commissioner for Peace.

Love under anti-drone nets: Ukrainian couple wed in Kramatorsk combat zone

In the bright early afternoon sun of Kramatorsk’s central and now ironically named Peace Square, Tetiana, in her bridal dress, and Oleksandr, in his military uniform, are holding up their phones at the ready. It is a public holiday, 35 years since Ukraine’s declaration of independence, and a popular day for a wedding, though the open-air location is not obviously ideal. Three days earlier, Kramatorsk, perhaps Vladimir Putin’s principal target, was formally designated part of the combat zone, the front inching towards the city as Russia closes in on the parts of the Donetsk region it does not control. It is quiet at 2pm though; the ceremony brief. There are no guests other than the Guardian team. Tetiana and Oleksandr pose for a wedding photo on Mount Karachun, near Sloviansk, the scene of fierce fighting in 2014. Getting married in Kramatorsk, Oleksandr says, is a necessary act of memory, because soon there may not be much more left to survive. “In this war, all this can just be vaporised, in a few months, in a few days,” the groom explains after the ceremony. “On the battlefield, many cities, towns, small villages where I was two, three years ago, they are now just ruins, just destroyed.” A year ago, Kramatorsk was a functioning city, a regional industrial centre, swollen with the presence of the military. It was possible to slowly sip coffee in the street and talk to local people and soldiers about how the city is an intrinsic part of Ukraine. Now it is covered in anti-drone netting, people and businesses are in short supply; many buildings have been bombed, chipboard replacing windows in those still standing. En route to Kramatorsk. The truck ahead is carrying ‘dragon’s teeth’, concrete anti-tank obstacles used in fortifications. Final preparations for the wedding ceremony in Kramatorsk. Six people were reported killed between Saturday and Tuesday in 51 shelling incidents as the city heads towards becoming uninhabitable for all but the most stubborn civilians. Reports swirl that Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit has deployed to attack a city that Putin wants captured by the end of the year, though his forces will almost certainly take far longer, smashing it as they try to do so. The day before the wedding, Russian quadcopter drones had repeatedly tried to target the vast Ukrainian flag atop an 80-metre (262ft) pole in the city’s central park, just under a mile to the south. There were at least 10 attempts, such is the pettiness of the war at times, and a small tear was visible in the standard afterwards. Yet the couple were determined to marry there, regardless of the threat. Tetiana and Oleksandr cross a street beneath anti-drone netting in Kramatorsk. Tetiana says it is “about preserving memories of the Donetsk region, if only in this way”. Oleksandr is from Mariupol, captured after a bloody siege at the beginning of the war, while Tetiana spent “every summer” at her grandmother’s home, now in occupied Donetsk, until she was 15. On her right forearm is a bucolic tattoo, the dacha taking pride of place, its blue tones signifying the Ukrainian region split by over a decade of conflict. A volunteer combat medic – “I don’t want to say no to military service, the number of wounded isn’t getting any smaller”, she says – Tetiana had been based in Kramatorsk until a few days earlier, but her Hospitallers crew was redeployed to Kyiv. Undeterred, she travelled back east the day before to meet Oleksandr, a battle captain on deployment. On the day itself, the pair drove for several more hours, the final miles beneath anti-drone netting, to reach their chosen wedding location on time. *** Ukraine introduced online weddings in 2024, a necessity in a war in which soldiers and their partners can be physically separated for months on end. The service has rapidly gained popularity in a digitally literate country – 38% of marriages were conducted online in the first half of the year, according to Ukraine’s justice ministry. Though Tetiana and Oleksandr were together, the officiant was on a video call. The two met as recently as February, after she had reached out online, offering to treat him. Each already looks sure of the other. Oleksandr believes their shared understanding of the war, forced on to their country, will bind them close, at a time when “there is a big gap between military and civilians”. Her “experience in battlefield medical evacuations and so on makes it easier for us to understand each other,” he says. Tetiana and Oleksandr pose for a photo outside a railway station in Kramatorsk, where trains have not stopped since early November 2025 because of security concerns. Their adult lives have been dominated by the conflict. Tetiana and Oleksandr are the same age as Ukraine itself – 35 – meaning they would have been in their early 20s when Russian-backed separatists captured Kramatorsk and neighbouring Sloviansk in April 2014, beginning fighting in eastern Ukraine that has never ended. Both cities were liberated that July, and only now has the frontline returned. Proceedings begin promptly. Bride and groom hold their phones forward; the town’s already battered Palace of Culture, a five-storey museum and landmark in the Soviet classical style, behind. They place a white, traditional embroidered cloth, a rushnyk, in front of them, though it will not stay down in the wind. Oleksandr carries loose tiles to hold the rushnyk in place for the ceremony. Oleksandr brings over two loose tiles, taken from the square’s flooring, to hold the rushnyk in place. The newlyweds will take the tiles with them afterwards. It is not an act of vandalism but rather one of preservation, taking tiles from a square that was relaid six years ago as part of the decommunisation of what had been Lenin Square. Tetiana plans to break the tiles and make a mosaic with them. Tetiana and Oleksandr before the ceremony. The empty central square is surrounded by ‘dragon’s teeth’ and anti-drone netting. Tetiana and Oleksandr step on to the wedding rushnyk, a traditional embroidered cloth. The ritual symbolises the start of the couple’s life together. Rings and vows are exchanged, a bridal kiss is shared, and the couple step on the rushnyk together. This is an act of egalitarianism; tradition holds that whoever steps on the embroidered towel first has the last word in the family. After a few more photographs, it is time to head indoors to the nearby Sweet Coffee House Bakery, one of the few businesses still open, though its owner, Kateryna Seledtsova, has relocated to Kharkiv and the cafe feels more like a shelter, albeit one with cream cakes inside. There is a moment of worry in the cafe, because a drone has been spotted above while Tetiana is outside. But she is quickly found and, over wedding cake, the newlyweds focus on their plans for children. “Starting a family during the war is about hope. I think it’s important to build something new, to build something beautiful, in a world that Russia is trying to destroy,” she says. The newlyweds in Sweet Coffee House Bakery, one of the few businesses still open. “I think that at a time when Russia is trying to spread gloom and darkness, destroy us and frighten us, it is important to create something beautiful, to wear beautiful clothes, to do kind deeds, to help and look after one another, and to love one another. That is what Russia wants to take away from us.”

Sovereignty, farming and fishing: Iceland votes on its future with the EU

For a long time, the prospect of becoming the third generation to run his family farm was an exciting one, says Davíð Clausen Pétursson. Icelandic farmers were starting to get higher prices for their meat and milk, debt was no longer an occupational prerequisite and innovation was on the rise. Now the 29-year-old is anxiously awaiting the result of a referendum on Saturday, when Icelanders will be asked whether or not they want to restart accession talks with the EU. Davíð believes joining the bloc could have negative ramifications for farmers all over Iceland, slowing down progress made in the sector and reducing profits. Across Europe small and medium-sized farms have struggled, with thousands closing each year because of brutal economic circumstances. In Iceland, however, the picture has been somewhat brighter for some farmers who have been able to make a profit and innovate. Since the government announced that it was bringing forward the planned vote, amid Donald Trump’s efforts to take control of neighbouring Greenland, debate has taken in everything from food security to national identity, defence, housing, inflation, language, and natural resources. The latest polls show the two sides – which cut across the political spectrum and generations – are neck and neck. According to Thursday’s Gallup poll, the no campaign is slightly in the lead with 51.6% of the vote and yes at 48.4%. While the yes campaign has strong support, critics of the EU have in some ways been louder in part because a yes vote is less decisive: it is agreeing to begin negotiations, not saying yes to joining the EU. “Of course I am quite invested in how it goes,” says Davíð at his remote farm in Hvammur, south-west Iceland, overlooked by a mountain that features in the Icelandic sagas. “I want at least to build my life around farming for the next 30-40 years and I would also like my kids to be able to do that as well. I am just not sure that it will be possible if we go that route.” He says a “yes” win would lead to the years of negotiations before the nation votes again on any deal reached, and he fears the resulting uncertainty would put a halt to all the progress and the momentum in farming. Then, they would have to deal with the repercussions of the outcome, where he fears farmers’ interests, drowned out by the more valuable and noisier fishing lobby, would not be prioritised. As Davíð explained to his nine-year-old son – the vote has been a big talking point at school – a litre of milk currently costs them about 100 ISK to produce, which they can sell for 145 ISK. He worries that joining the EU would mean he would have to significantly decrease the price of his milk and other products. “It is not that I am against anything in the EU at all. I am half Danish, my mother is Danish and we of course buy a lot from Europe,” he says. “The regulations they have there are suitable for countries that live next to each other, but I am fearful that if it is a yes, the uncertainty will make it quite hard for us to see where we are going, so that will put everything at a bit of a halt.” Iceland’s current farming system was built on the country being a lone independent state in the Atlantic with unique weather conditions, he says. “We can figure it out ourselves. We make trade agreements with everyone around us, we try to take off the tariffs and have free trade with the products we really need, we put tariffs on the products we are trying to produce here.” He understands that high food costs are frustrating for consumers, but believes it is worth it. “There is a high cost to food security in Iceland. But there is an even bigger cost to losing that and being dependent.” The EU vote taps into a sense of lament among some in Iceland that in a globalised, highly connected world the country’s foundation in agriculture and fishing – central to life there until a few decades ago – is being rapidly forgotten. Davíð says that 30 years ago children came to work on the farm in the summer, but machinery and specialisation mean that is no longer possible. Sigurrós Birta Jóhannsdóttir, 22, visited the farm on an educational visit with a coach load of other agriculture students. Jóhannsdóttir, who works on a farm that she will take over in the future, will be voting no on Saturday because she believes that negotiations will only slow down progress and cost money. Supporters believe joining the EU could help bring down the high cost of living and inflation in Iceland, and would be good for the country’s security. At his home by the sea in Þorlákshöfn, Kári Böðvarsson, 79, says he plans to vote yes, despite being right-leaning politically. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or on the left, what your opinion is, people are just voting across politics,” the retired fisher says. He is an outlier at the gym among his training buddies, where discussions can get quite heated. He enjoys provoking them but he will be glad when the debate is over. “We have to trust these people to negotiate well for us because why shouldn’t they?” he says. “But the ‘no’ people don’t trust them.” When it comes to fishing, there is not much the EU can do to win back power over fishing quotas from the big fishing companies to individuals, Kári says. But perhaps it could help with housing costs. At a public meeting in Reykjavík, the prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, told a packed Icelandic-flag-waving house that joining the EU was a “unique opportunity”. “Iceland’s sovereignty is not a museum piece that we keep in a cupboard while isolating ourselves from other countries,” she said, to cheers. She said it was also “good timing” for Iceland’s security – not just in light of the US and its unpredictable economic and geopolitical moves, but also China. “This isn’t about being afraid,” she said. “It’s about being prepared and seizing opportunities when they arise.” But at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, Kristrún and the yes campaign still have some convincing to do before polling stations open at 9am on Saturday. The first results are expected between 10pm and midnight. Student Saga Gautadóttir, 20, is considering spoiling her ballot because she agrees with arguments on both sides. Anna María Magnúsdóttir, 20, has not made up her mind yet how to vote, she says, sitting in the sunshine on campus with friends. “I just want the best for our country, whichever one it is.”