Focus on future as Worcestershire town twins with war-torn city
Ms Kraievska, who works for Malvern Hills District Council, came to Malvern with other families fleeing the conflict in May 2022.Her father, an active member of the Korosten community, died last year and she has dedicated the project to his memory.Ms Lawson said, it was "massively important" for Ukraine to feel they were making progress and ties with the UK, and more widely across Europe, adding: "They need support at this awful time."She said the two communities could benefit from each other in different areas, including economy, tourism and education, and that the Ukrainian community was particularly interested in democratic processes within the Malvern local authorities.
People who have left Ukraine are being supported by the council, Citizens Advice and community workers, and there are plans to provide mental health support, she added.Ms Lawson also confirmed that talks are ongoing to bring school children from Korosten over to visit."We are twinning with a town in Ukraine – a country at war," Ms Lawon said. "But it's still definitely a two-way process. People are now at war but they are focusing on looking to the future. It's a resilient town and a resilient country."It's difficult for them," she said, adding that more people had died in Ukraine in recent days."[But] they still have the passion and the drive to be looking at rebuilding and moving forward."
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Our lame-duck £1BILLION destroyer that won't be heading over to help Kyiv... due to its record
While British warships are poised to defend Ukrainian waters a £1billion destroyer has been ruled out due to its maintenance record. HMS Daring has spent more time being repaired and worked on than it has at sea, according to independent analysis. A respected social media account which reports on UK ships said the vessel had spent more than eight years out of service, a total of more than 3,000 days. The next longest absent ship is the Astute-Class submarine HMS Ambush, which has not been used in just over three years. HMS Daring is not expected to report for duty before the end of 2026. It is currently being refitted. Six Type 45 destroyers, known as Daring Class, replaced the Royal Navy's Sheffield-Class destroyers which served in the Falklands War. The warships are primarily designed for anti-aircraft and anti-missile warfare. At the Royal Navy's peak in 1945 there were over 800 destroyers and frigates in its fleet. A 2009 Ministry of Defence report stated that the warships cost more than one billion pounds each to build, including the research and development. HMS Daring's worst problems have been associated with its propulsion systems. All Daring-class ships are expected to be upgraded by 2028. It is hoped that all Daring-class ships will be fully upgraded by 2028. HMS Daring was originally removed from service in April 2017, with the Covid-19 pandemic causing several delays. She was taken to Merseyside for work before returning to Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 2023, but remains in the trial phase and unable to operate. A naval expert posting on X as Britsky said HMS Daring's problems showed the 'severe issues' facing the Royal Navy. He told the Portsmouth News: 'It's not just one issue for HMS Daring, it's many compounding issues over years and years. 'A shortage of personnel is making it hard to crew ships, there's a lack of support infrastructure such as docks delaying work and an insufficient stock of parts meaning ships can't be kept operational and others are robbed for parts. On Tuesday the Royal Navy said: 'We do not comment on the material state of our ships. The Royal Navy continues to fulfil all of its operational commitments.'
The National
10-08-2025
- The National
Inside the Scottish charity working to demine Ukraine
Three years after the liberation of Chernihiv Oblast, the main threat in Budy no longer comes from the air, but lingers in the forests and sunflower fields. I'm two hours north of Kyiv with Scottish demining charity The HALO Trust, which has detected and destroyed almost 7000 explosive devices across 1.82 million square metres of land in the Chernihiv region, while 1.71 million square metres remain contaminated. 'Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world and the threats are different across the country,' HALO sub-unit commander Mykyta Kryzhanovskyi says. 'The impact of the Russian invasion is so huge that we'll have work to do for decades.' The Ukrainian Government estimates that an area larger than the size of Greece will need to be surveyed nationwide. As of December 2024, the UN reported almost 1,500 civilian mine casualties in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022. In a secured field, we are given PPE – body armour and visors – and a safety briefing by HALO staff. READ MORE: 'Absolutely crazy': Scottish jazz artist scores new film by Hollywood director Kryzhanovskyi, a former paediatric anaesthetist in Odesa, southern Ukraine, joined in 2023. 'I wanted to help my country on a larger scale and I saw that HALO needed people,' he says. 'I'm happy to be part of this global process now in Ukraine.' He jokes, asking if I – as a Scot – have been 'sent from HQ'. The HALO Trust, founded in 1988 and based in Thornhill near Dumfries, employs 58 staff in Scotland and 8700 worldwide. The organisation gained global recognition during Princess Diana's visit to Angola's minefields in the 1990s. In 2016, HALO began work in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions following Russia's 2014 invasion and has since grown its local staff from 400 to 1600 to help secure a safer future for Ukrainians living alongside these remnants of conflict. We watch as the staff present their tasks, referencing colour-coded maps of affected areas. Between March and April 2022, they explain, Ukrainian soldiers set up defensive positions on Budy's outskirts, laying anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines and enduring heavy shelling from multiple launch rocket systems, tanks, mortars, cluster munitions and small arms from three Russian-occupied villages nearby. The village remains damaged and civilians have been killed or injured by mines and unexploded ordnance. The main threats in this region, Kryzhankovskyi says, are tripwires loaded with grenades, submunitions and anti-vehicle mines. Blast scars from the fighting in surrounding fields are clearly visible in satellite imagery. Surveying the land from above using aerial photography and AI technology is revolutionising mine clearance. Image analyst Oleksandr Tereshchenko and drone pilot Serhii Pasholok demonstrate remote sensing using a large drone – a technique pioneered by HALO since the full invasion began, speeding-up the detection of war debris and minimising the risks of boots on the ground. 'We started with just the two of us,' Oleksandr says. 'With huge support from our colleagues in Scotland, this department has now expanded to more than 20 people.' The large drone surveys territory using a camera with high-resolution zoom capabilities, creating imagery that preserves scale. Using AI, a final map report is produced, pinpointing abnormalities on the ground for survey staff to focus on across vast swathes of land. While watching Tereshchenko's monitor, the camera hones in on a dummy blue mine as cows nonchalantly chew grass nearby. Drones aren't the only technology used in modern mine clearance. We look on as a Seppi Max 50 vehicle – controlled remotely by an operator wearing a VR headset and protected by an armoured shield – roams the ground. READ MORE: Anas Sarwar blasted as 'hypocrite' after branding Benjamin Netanyahu 'war criminal' These machines clear vegetation, tripwires and munitions, absorbing blasts from any explosions and accelerating the demining process with lower risks to staff. 'In this area, we had an incident involving our demining machine – it detonated a TM-62M anti-vehicle mine in a metal casing,' Kyrylo Holovko, Task Group Commander, says. The robot isn't entirely reliable: staff must sweep the area manually afterwards. Many of HALO's 1600 staff across six regions in Ukraine are internally displaced people who have reskilled to assist the war effort, and 30% are women. In the dense forests where the robot can't operate, deminers use metal detectors in a painstaking manual process. Wooden posts mark locations of detected and destroyed debris, with a description of the type of ordnance found, its depth and the date of clearance noted. 23mm and 30mm cannon rounds – with a lethal blast radius of one to five metres or beyond – are commonly found in this area. Our eyes widen as we pass a post marking a KTM-1 high-explosive projectile fuze, recently found at a depth of ten centimetres and cleared. On the edge of the forest, Viacheslav Baliurko is on his knees, manually excavating a small patch of ground. Before the full-scale invasion he worked in reproductive medicine, helping to increase Ukraine's birth rate – a task that became 'impossible' after the full-scale invasion began. Viacheslav Baliurko'I saw a HALO job advert online, I was curious and decided that this is where I would be most useful,' he says. 'Before, I worked to make sure there were children and now I work to make sure those children can walk freely and safely.' As Viacheslav scrapes away the soil in 5-10cm layers by hand, repeatedly sweeping each section with a metal detector and marking the areas where a signal sounds, the instrument buzzes. 'There's something here!' he says. Fortunately, it's just a scrap of metal, which he tosses aside into a bucket. The staff are keenly aware of the risks of such dangerous work. Maryna Kostiuk was previously a nursery teacher in Sloviansk, Donetsk region and followed her husband into the organisation after being displaced to Kyiv. 'I couldn't just sit at home, I wanted to do something useful,' she says. 'Sometimes it's scary because we understand that we work with explosive objects, but I really like the job and we follow all safety rules and instructions.' In December 2023, HALO Ukraine completed national certification in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), enabling greater efficiency while reducing the strain on national authorities. For the specialist technicians who dispose of complex ordnance including IEDs and booby-traps, the risks can increase. In May, widely-respected British EOD volunteer Chris 'Swampy' Garrett – founder of the mine clearance nonprofit Prevail, who worked alongside the Ukrainian Army and National Police – was killed alongside a colleague in an incident in eastern Ukraine. From the fields opposite, a whistle blows and the forest deminers walk to a safe area and remove their visors for a break. Kateryna Vechkanova, from Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region, joined HALO two years ago. Today, she is scanning the forest floor for 9N210/9N235-type cluster munitions and other ordnance. Kateryna Vechkanova'We used to go outdoors as a family every weekend,' Kateryna says. 'I joined so that someday I can take my children to the forest and live as before. We will clear our land so that it can be ploughed, planted, walked on safely and we can breathe freely.' As the world's breadbasket, Ukraine's mine-contaminated crop fields have devastated the agricultural economy. READ MORE: Police Scotland 'on notice' for visit by JD Vance during UK holiday Since 2022, the UK government has contributed £12.9 million to HALO Ukraine, returning 688,760m2 of land. 'The release of agricultural land back to communities is enabling the production of corn, wheat, sunflower oil, and other agricultural products that are exported globally and is part of ensuring a stable global food market amidst the ongoing conflict,' says Calum Craig, policy and advocacy manager at The HALO Trust. In 2022, a Budy farmer was seriously injured after detonating a mine with his tractor while cultivating his crops. 'The work on these areas is very important for us, as many people were left without their regular income from agricultural activities,' says Holovko. 'In Budy, there are 72 beneficiaries to whom we will hand over these territories after clearance so that they can continue to safely use this land.' Elsewhere in the Chernihiv region, a family picking mushrooms were killed after their car triggered a mine in 2022. As the autumn foraging season approaches, Kostiuk wishes for the simple pleasure of spending time in nature with her child again. 'We really loved to walk in the forest and pick mushrooms,' she says. 'But now our forests are heavily mined and it's too dangerous.' In addition to demining operations, HALO teams organise mine awareness sessions for the community, teaching children and adults how to live safely in affected areas. 'So far, about 54,000 people in the Chernihiv region have been informed,' Kryzhanovskyi says. While HALO unearths the lethal legacies embedded in Ukrainian soil, the global conversation on future mine use is shifting. Since Ukraine and five other European countries recently announced plans to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, citing an increasing Russian military threat, the issues surrounding mine use have been brought to the fore. 'The Ottawa Treaty is a key part of the human security architecture of tomorrow and one of the great successes of recent times,' Craig says. 'It has been instrumental in saving millions lives with more than 55 million AP mines destroyed since 1997 and over 30 countries now mine free. HALO believes in the rules-based international system and we urge all signatories to the Treaty to stay firm and adhere to global norms on landmines.' In the forest, the whistle sounds again as we prepare to leave. For this dedicated group of deminers, however, the work continues. They don their vests and visors once more. 'We don't have a deadline for our work,' Kryzhanovskyi says. 'I don't want other countries to forget that this problem is not solved. We're doing our best job and the war is still going on.' This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine's Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G Buffett Foundation.
South Wales Argus
24-07-2025
- South Wales Argus
Caerphilly Library gifted artwork from Ukrainian artist
The event at Caerphilly Library last week saw Olesia Miftahova, a Ukrainian artist and poet, donate the artwork as her exhibition at the library came to an end. Both the library and Caerphilly County Borough Council were thanked by Ms Miftahova for their 'welcome, care, and solidarity' towards the Ukrainian community. The library has become more than just a place to borrow books, with art clubs, conversation sessions, support groups, and cultural events helping Ukrainians to build new lives. Representing Ukrainians in Caerphilly, Yulia Bond said: "Today was more than just the closing of an art exhibition – it was a moment of connection, reflection, and heartfelt thanks. "The support we've received from Caerphilly Library and the council has helped so many of us feel seen, safe, and valued." Councillor Jamie Pritchard, deputy leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council, said: "It's been a privilege to meet with members of our Ukrainian community and witness the incredible talent and resilience they bring to Caerphilly. "The artwork presented today is not just beautiful – it's a powerful symbol of gratitude, friendship, and hope." Caerphilly County Borough Council is 'proud to stand in solidarity with those who have sought safety and belonging' in the country.
