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The Ukrainian army was battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

This marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region previously largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine regained land there in a swift 2022 counter-offensive.

“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Hrabovske,” Ukraine’s joint task force said, adding the troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory.”

It has also refuted media reports saying that the Moscow troops were in the neighboring Ryasne village.

Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian rights ombudsman said the enemy’s troops forcibly moved about 50 people from Hrabovske to Russia.

On Thursday, Russian soldiers “illegally detained about 50 civilians -- residents of the village of Hrabovske in the Sumy region,” ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.

He added that they were held incommunicado in poor conditions, before the Russians “forcibly took them to the territory of the Russian Federation” on Saturday.

AFP is unable to verify the claims, and there was no official Russian comment on the matter.

However, on Saturday, the Russian army said it had captured the village of Vysoke, a few miles from Grabovske.

Sumy military administration said on Saturday it evacuated residents from the border communities in the area, who previously refused to leave, in armored vehicles.

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The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the US diplomatic posture abroad with personnel deemed fully supportive of Donald Trump’s “America first” priorities.

The chiefs of mission in at least 29 countries were informed last week that their tenures would end in January, according to two state department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel moves.

All of them had taken up their posts in the Biden administration but had survived an initial purge in the early months of Trump’s second term that targeted mainly political appointees. That changed on Wednesday when they began to receive notices from officials in Washington DC about their imminent departures.

Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, although they typically remain at their posts for between three and four years. Those affected by the shakeup are not losing their foreign service jobs but will be returning to Washington for other assignments should they wish to take them, the officials said.

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Here are the major developments of the day:

The Israeli army has confirmed it was responsible for a strike on a shelter for displaced Palestinians that killed at least six people, but said it was firing on “suspects”. Gruesome videos from the scene showed terrified civilians carrying several wounded people away.

Top UN agencies warned that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza could quickly slide back into famine if Israel does not allow in enough aid.

US State Secretary Marco Rubio has said Hamas must no longer pose a threat to Israel when asked whether the group can undergo partial disarmament and hold onto its light weapons.

The United Nations has condemned Washington for imposing sanctions on two more International Criminal Court judges over their investigation of Israel.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Houthis’ detention of another 10 UN personnel in ⁠Yemen, taking the total to ​69.

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Sven Lilienström, founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative, spoke via Zoom with Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk (42) about the humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine, the red lines in peace negotiations, and whether a world led predominantly by women would be a better one.

Ms. Matviichuk, democracy is facing a crisis of credibility and trust. How would you personally speak up for democracy? And what do democracy and democratic values mean to you?

Let me explain this with something concrete, because when we speak about values, it is very difficult to talk about abstract things.

Twelve years ago, millions of people in Ukraine raised their voices against the corrupt and authoritarian Russian-backed government. They demonstrated peacefully for the chance to build a country with a European future. In response, the authoritarian government launched large-scale and systematic persecutions.

It was tough. At that time, I was the coordinator of the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS. Every day we provided support to hundreds of people throughout the country who had been beaten, arrested, tortured, or charged with fabricated criminal cases.

When journalists or sociologists asked these people why and for what they were fighting, they used the language of values to explain it. Ordinary people have no detailed knowledge of how the European Union functions, what the mandate of the European Parliament is, or what the role of the Council of Ministers is. But they used the language of values to say: we are peacefully fighting for a chance to build a country where everyone’s rights are protected, where the government is accountable, the judiciary is independent, and the police do not beat students who are peacefully demonstrating.

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When 10-year-old Bayan Al-Ankah was fatally shot in the head by the Israeli military while in a displaced persons camp in Gaza last week, according to her family, she became one of several hundred Palestinians killed during a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Mediators Qatar and Egypt worry that the truce is threatened by near-daily Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The continued viability of the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza hinges on two crucial next steps: the deployment of an international force in Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas.

But countries involved in this key phase of the ceasefire are still debating fundamental details about how to proceed — and the U.S. goal of having international forces in Gaza by early 2026 faces challenges.

A U.S. State Department document this month obtained by NPR lays out the Trump administration's vision for the international troops: to be "supporting the demilitarization of Gaza, dismantling terrorist infrastructure" and "decommissioning weapons used by terrorists."

But many countries say they will refuse to send troops to confront Hamas over its weapons.

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The US military launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in retaliation for an attack on US personnel, two US officials said on Friday.

The attacks come after Donald Trump vowed to hit back after an attack last weekend in Syria by a suspected Islamic State member.

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the strikes as a large-scale response that included targets across central Syria.

Trump said on social media that the Syrian government fully supported the strikes and that the US was inflicting “very serious retaliation”.

US Central Command said the strikes hit more than 70 targets across central Syria, adding that Jordanian fighter jets supported the operation.

Syria reiterated its steadfast commitment to fighting Islamic State and ensuring that it has “no safe havens on Syrian territory”, according to a statement by the foreign ministry.

Two US Iowa national guard members and a civilian interpreter were killed on Saturday in the central Syrian town of Palmyra by an attacker who targeted a convoy of American and Syrian forces before being shot dead, according to the US military. Three other US soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

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