9/11’s death toll was a fraction of Covid’s, but there will probably be no comparable memorial for the over 40,000 New Yorkers killed by the virus

What will we remember of the plague years? It’s easy to project on to the future what we feel now, the memories of the suffering so visceral, the evidence of the reckoning clear enough. People still get sick and die from Covid. Signage lingers, warning of the defunct 6ft social distancing rule or the importance of hand-washing. Certain American cities and colleges maintain mandates for the Covid vaccine.

More than a million Americans are dead, and their deaths, in the public imagination, were not created equal. In 2020, Covid deaths were a terror, and 100,000 of them were worthy of bellowing headlines on the front page of the New York Times. And then the body counts, for those not experiencing them directly, became more ordinary, the carnage a backdrop to another year.

Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York

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Sam Bankman-Fried may find it hard to argue the fraud charges against him should be tossed because of uncertainty as to how U.S. law treats cryptocurrency, as other high-profile defendants in criminal cases involving digital assets have done.

That is because Manhattan federal prosecutors’ charges against the founder of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX have largely sidestepped an ongoing debate as to whether cryptocurrencies should be regulated as securities or commodities, legal experts told Reuters.

Bankman-Fried, 30, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and six conspiracy counts last month in Manhattan federal court for allegedly stealing FTX customer deposits to pay debts from his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lying to equity investors about FTX’s financial condition. He has pleaded not guilty.

“It’s a pretty simple deception,” said Shane Stansbury, a professor at Duke University School of Law and former Manhattan federal prosecutor. “You really don’t need to get into the weeds of how we view cryptocurrencies.”

The question of whether cryptocurrencies are considered securities, like stocks or bonds, or commodities – a category that in the United States encapsulates foreign currency trading as well as raw materials such as crude oil – remains largely unresolved.

But the uncertainty is irrelevant to most of the charges leveled against Bankman-Fried, according to experts. While he faces one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, that charge alleges he misled FTX’s equity investors, and does not touch on the nature of the assets traded on the exchange.

He also faces two wire fraud charges and two related conspiracy counts for allegedly providing false information to Alameda lenders about the hedge fund’s financial health and for the alleged theft of customer assets.

“There’s no need to establish that what the customers ultimately bought with fiat currency was a security or commodity or whatever,” said Mark Kasten, counsel at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in Philadelphia. “Customers put money into the platform and the money was supposed to be used in a certain way. And according to the allegations in the indictment, it wasn’t.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.

Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. The onetime-billionaire has previously acknowledged shortcomings in FTX’s risk management practices, but has said he does not believe he is criminally liable.

Gary Gensler, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman, has said bitcoin is a commodity but that other digital assets behave more like securities – defined broadly as contracts in which investors profit from others’ efforts – because their value derives from promotion.

The debate matters to cryptocurrency companies because it could determine which agency regulates the trading of digital assets. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is seen by many crypto players as potentially friendlier than the better-funded SEC.

San Francisco-based blockchain payments company Ripple is contesting a 2020 SEC lawsuit accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering by arguing its XRP token is not a security and thus not subject to SEC oversight. The case is ongoing.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan who took office in 2021, has made enforcement of cryptocurrency-related financial crimes a centerpiece of his tenure.

Last year, in the first-ever insider trading cases involving digital assets, his office brought wire fraud charges against Nathaniel Chastain, a former employee of non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, and Ishan Wahi, a former manager at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc (COIN.O).

Both have pleaded not guilty and argued the charges should be dismissed because insider trading charges must involve securities or commodities. In bringing wire fraud charges in both cases, prosecutors avoided taking a position on how cryptocurrencies or NFTs should be classified.

A judge in October denied Chastain’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the charges.

It is unlikely Bankman-Fried’s lawyers will attempt a similar argument because the wire fraud charges are more straightforward, Kasten said.

He said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate’s defense would likely focus on the arguments that he had no intent to commit fraud, that other executives at FTX and Alameda bore the blame, and that he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the companies.

But prosecutors could also prove wire fraud charges by establishing that a defendant willfully blinded himself to the consequences of his actions, said Victor Hou, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb and former Manhattan federal prosecutor.

“Wire fraud is a powerful and frequently used weapon in the prosecutor’s arsenal because it captures an exceptionally broad range of illegal conduct,” Hou said.

A Russian missile slammed into a village market in east Ukraine on Monday, killing two women and wounding four others including a 10-year-old girl, regional prosecutors said.

Footage posed by public broadcaster Suspilne on the Telegram messaging app showed rescue workers sifting through large piles of rubble, burning debris and a large crater in Shevchenkove, about 80 km (50 miles) southeast of the city of Kharkiv.

A photograph posted online by the Ukrainian president’s office showed rescuers trying to pull out a woman in a thick winter coat. Her head and arms poked out from under the rubble but it was not clear whether she was alive.

“The Russian army committed another act of terror against the civilian population — a child was wounded, two women were killed,” the regional prosecutor’s office said. “An enemy missile hit the territory of the local market.”

It said in a written statement that it had opened an investigation into a potential war crime, citing preliminary information that the attack came from an S-300 air defence system in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports. Russia, which invaded Ukraine more than 10 months ago, did not immediately comment on the reports from Shevchenkove, which Ukraine retook in September after months of Russian occupation.

Criticising Russia over the attack, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, wrote on Telegram: “Common terrorists.”

Oleh Synehubov, the Kharkiv region’s governor, wrote on Telegram that a 60-year-old woman had been killed and the other victims were being treated in hospital.

The prosecutors gave no details of the others victims except to say that all were female and one was aged 10.

Suspilne quoted a local official as saying at least three pavilions were destroyed in the attack and that a shopping centre was damaged, but that Monday was not a market day.

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A year after Hollywood boycotted the Golden Globes, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg and other big names are set to return as organizers try to restore the luster to what had been one of the biggest stops on the industry’s awards circuit.

Most of this year’s nominees are expected to attend the red-carpet ceremony in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, said Helen Hoehne, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that hands out the Globes.

“We’ve gotten a really great response from the nominees,” said Hoehne, a German journalist elected in late 2021 to lead the group through diversity and ethics scandals. “We have very few not coming, so we are thrilled.”

She vowed the night would be “the party of the year.”

Now in their 80th year, the Globes had been known as a festive, alcohol-fueled ceremony that kicked off Hollywood’s awards season and helped propel nominees and winners in their quest for Academy Awards.

The future of the Globes was thrown into doubt after a 2021 Los Angeles Times investigation revealed the organization had no Black journalists in its ranks. Some members were accused of making sexist and racist remarks and soliciting favors from celebrities and movie studios.

Longtime broadcaster NBC dropped the 2022 telecast, but the Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) network agreed to air the ceremony again this year after the HFPA instituted changes and new ethics rules. Among roughly 200 current voters, nearly 52% are racially and ethnically diverse, including 10% who are Black.

“The organization really went through a total reform process in the last 18 months,” Hoehne said. “We increased diversity, transparency, accountability.”

The lineup for Tuesday shows Hollywood appears ready to give the HFPA a shot at redemption.

Comedian Jerrod Carmichael, who is Black, will host the three-hour ceremony, while Eddie Murphy will receive a lifetime achievement honor. Director Quentin Tarantino and actor Jamie Lee Curtis are listed among presenters.

Nominees expected to attend include Pitt and his “Babylon” co-star Margot Robbie, Spielberg and cast from his coming-of-age film “The Fabelmans,” “The Woman King” star Viola Davis, “Avatar” director James Cameron and singer Rihanna, a nominee for a song from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

Some celebrities will stay away.

Brendan Fraser, nominated for his leading role in “The Whale,” has said he will not attend after accusing a former HFPA president of groping him.

Tom Cruise is not expected to appear even though his blockbuster movie “Top Gun: Maverick” is nominated for best drama film. Cruise returned his three Globe statues in protest of the organization’s practices in 2021.

Chris Beachum, managing editor at awards website Gold Derby, said producers likely will stage a lively show, but there is a risk that some of the winners might skip the ceremony.

“It’s a matter of how many people are getting their name called and not going on stage because they’re not there. That’s more of a an issue,” he said.

Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic are among the contenders for best drama film. Dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” leads all movies with eight nominations, and “Abbott Elementary” tops the field of TV contenders.

Even with the recent controversy, Beachum believes most actors, studios and publicists would be happy to have a Globe honor to tout as they head toward the Oscars in March.

“You want to be winning awards in this period of December, January and February,” Beachum said. “You hardly ever see somebody go through an entire cycle, losing most everywhere and then winning the Oscar. It just doesn’t happen.”

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Private equity firms that deemed drug development too risky for their liking in the past are increasingly investing in the sector, raising dedicated funds and coming up with deals that compensate them for the uncertainty involved.

These firms are seeking to capitalize on the growing gap between the supply of capital for clinical research and the number of drugs competing for it, eight buyout executives and investors interviewed by Reuters said.

Annual spending on pharmaceutical research and development globally is projected to rise to $254 billion by 2026 from around $200 billion in 2020, according to Evaluate Pharma, a research firm focused on healthcare.

These deals are not structured as the leveraged buyouts that private equity firms are mostly known for. Instead, the buyout firms invest in the development of the drugs, typically when they are in so-called Phase 3 clinical trials, one step away from regulatory clearance. They negotiate with pharmaceutical companies the returns they will receive in advance.

In most cases, the drug makers start paying the money back to the private equity firms when the drug is being developed, either by issuing equity, tapping cash on hand or borrowing. They also share a slice of the newly developed drug’s revenue with the private equity firms once it’s approved.

Blackstone Inc (BX.N) has been leading the charge, having made ten investments out of a $4.6 billion of a dedicated life sciences fund it launched in 2020.

“Over the last ten years there have been many more products that have emerged that are really important to fund but less funding available by the pharma companies,” said Blackstone’s global head of life sciences Nick Galakatos.

Among Blackstone’s deals are a 300 million euro ($320 million) commitment to the development of Sanofi SA’s (SASY.PA) immunotherapy drug Sarclisa, a $150 million investment in the advancement of Autolus Therapeutics Plc’s (AUTL.O) pipeline of cancer treatments, and a check of up to $1.15 billion to back Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc’s (ALNY.O) drugs for diseases including for tackling cholesterol. Some of these deals came with investments in the stock of the drug developers and loans to them.

As its risk appetite for drug development grows, Blackstone has also been mulling the acquisition of companies with drugs still in clinical trials, as long as these companies also have some medicines that have hit the market, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Blackstone established a major presence in the sector in 2018 after acquiring Clarus, an investment firm specializing in clinical trial deals with $2.6 billion in assets. The strategy was emulated last year by Carlyle Group Inc (CG.O) when it acquired Abingworth, a peer of Clarus with $2 billion in assets.

Carlyle is now preparing to raise a dedicated life sciences fund, using the Abingworth team, that could amass several billions of dollars, according to people familiar with the fundraising plans. Carlyle made its first clinical-trial investment last August, committing up to $170 million to back an Opthea Ltd (OPT.AX) eye drug under development.

“We are big believers in what we’ve called the biopharma revolution and in the explosion of discovery and science,” said Carlyle’s global head of halthcare Steve Wise.

Blackstone has been presenting its bets as relatively safe investments. It told high net-worth investors in 2021 that the drugs in Phase 3 it invested in had an 86% approval rate.

Still, Blackstone’s three-year-old life sciences fund has been off to a slow start when it comes to generating returns. It reported a net internal rate of return of just 2% as of the end of September, according to Blackstone’s most recent quarterly earnings. By comparison, the predecessor fund that Clarus raised in 2018, before Blackstone took over, was delivering a 15% net internal rate of return as of the end of September.

Carlyle has not disclosed Abingworth’s returns and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on them.

Other private equity firms racing to get a piece of the action include Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N), which last year acquired a minority stake in life sciences investment firm Sofinnova Partners and committed up to 1 billion euros in its funds, and EQT AB (EQTAB.ST), which acquired Life Sciences Partners (LSP), a life sciences-focused venture capital firm, in 2021.

To be sure, many private equity firms participate in the sector by just making venture capital-type investments in entire drug companies and allowing them to use the proceeds for their clinical trials. For example, KKR & Co Inc (KKR.N) invested in gene-therapy company BridgeBio Pharma Inc (BBIO.O) in an early-stage funding round in 2016, funded the company through its initial public offering in 2019, and continues to be its largest shareholder.

Private equity firms also provide capital to spin out drugs into new companies. Bain Capital, for example, created Cerevel Therapeutics (CERE.O) by transferring Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) neurology drugs under development to a newly created company in a $350 million deal in 2018.

“That is an example of taking an unloved asset out of a big company, providing funding and a big slug of capital, and creating a company that’s got some diversity to it,” said Tom Davidson, a partner focusing on the life sciences sector at investment bank PJT Partners Inc (PJT.N).

Throughout the eastern Donbas region, fighting and freezing temperatures are forcing couples to spend long periods in close quarters, straining some relationships and strengthening others.

Washington State is threatening to refer Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project for prosecution unless it clarifies what became of its $18.5 million bankroll in 2021. But even that isn’t motivating the embattled charity to open its books.

On Tuesday, Washington’s secretary of state ordered the New Georgia Project to “immediately cease” all fundraising activities until it renews its charitable solicitation license in the state. To do so, New Georgia Project would have to disclose top-line financial information from its 2021 Form 990, which was due to the IRS in November. New Georgia Project strategic communications manager Simran Jadavji brushed off the delay, telling the Washington Free Beacon that the charity’s staff, “including our accountant, are just now returning to work after a much-deserved break for the holidays.”

That excuse likely won’t fly with the secretary, who closed out the charity’s registration in the state and threatened to report it to the state’s attorney general and impose fines of up to $2,000 per violation if it continues to solicit funds in Washington. As of this writing, the New Georgia Project is raising funds nationwide through the online fundraising platform ActBlue.

New Georgia Project’s missing IRS financial disclosure would help clarify how the charity went from controlling $18.5 million in assets at the end of 2020 to having to dismiss half its leadership team in October 2022 because of a lack of funds. The voter registration group, which was founded by Abrams in 2013 and once helmed by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), fired its top financial officer in June after the official said he couldn’t do his job without violating the law, a former executive of the charity told the Free Beacon.

Washington isn’t the only state threatening legal action against the New Georgia Project. The group’s charitable solicitation license is expired, closed, delinquent, or noncompliant in at least 16 states as of Thursday. New Georgia Project’s ongoing solicitation of charitable funds in those states could open the charity up to fines and criminal inquiries, the Free Beacon reported.

Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center, said an independent audit of New Georgia Project’s books is warranted to determine if the charity engaged in any financial impropriety.

“It’s astounding that despite failing to be currently registered as a charity in numerous states, and specifically barred by some from soliciting funds from the public, the New Georgia Project appears to continue to flout the law, subjecting the group to civil fines and penalties,” Kamenar said.

The New Georgia Project was once touted as the “poster child” of Abrams’s efforts to boost Democrats in the state by expanding its non-white electorate. But the group failed to fulfill its mandate. Democrats, including Abrams, suffered blistering losses in statewide contests across Georgia in the November midterm elections.

Abrams has a record of squandering massive fundraising hauls. The Democrat raised $100 million for her 2022 gubernatorial campaign but now can’t afford to pay employees and owes over $1 million to vendors. Abrams’s campaign exhausted its war chest on frivolities such as rent for a $12,500-per-month “hype house” in Atlanta to film TikTok videos, and a “swag truck” to distribute Abrams paraphernalia to young voters.

The post Embattled Stacey Abrams Group Could Be Fined for Missing Financial Disclosure. It Doesn’t Seem To Care. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Soaring prices of onions in the Philippines led agriculture authorities to announce this weekend that the country would have to resort to importing around 22,000 tons of the vegetable by March, to augment dwindling domestic supply and arrest rising costs.

Onion is a staple of the Southeast Asian nation’s local cuisine—often coupled with garlic as a base of many dishes. The country’s average monthly demand for the vegetable is around 17,000 metric tons.

But as of Monday, Jan. 9, red and white onions in the Philippines were sold for as high as 600 pesos ($10.88) per kilogram, or about $5 per pound, based on the agriculture department’s monitoring of Manila-area market prices.

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That’s about three times as expensive as chicken and 25%-50% more expensive than pork or beef, according to the same market monitoring estimates. The cost of a kilogram of onions is greater than the minimum wage for a day’s work in the Philippines.

What’s caused the price increase?

Philippine lawmakers want to investigate the cause of the surge, asserting that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who also serves as the agriculture secretary, is “directly accountable.”

Part of the price hike stems from forces beyond individual control. Global inflation—due to a multiplicity of causes including the Russia-Ukraine war, supply chain snags, and extreme weather events—is putting a strain on food prices everywhere.

Read More: Inflation of Food Prices Climbs to a Record High in the U.K.

Inflation in the Philippines hit a record 14-year-high in December, with onion making up 0.3 percentage points of the 8.1% uptick in consumer prices, National Statistician Dennis Mapa said in a Jan. 5 briefing.

But it’s not just inflation.

The business sector blames the agriculture department for failing to make accurate supply projections despite warnings last year. Agriculture officials warned of possible shortages of onion and garlic as early as August, when the local red onion variety only cost at most 140 pesos ($2.54). However, the department resisted importations, insisting that existing supply would be sufficient, even as Philippine farmers warned consumption was expected to rise during the holidays.

Agriculture officials suspect other local crises, such as internal price manipulation, share responsibility for the skyrocketing onion prices, too. Restoperez said on Dec. 13 that the agriculture department believes a criminal syndicate hoarded onion supply, and an investigation is underway.

How is the government responding?

On Dec. 30, the Philippines’ trade department, upon the President’s orders, imposed a “suggested retail price” of 250 pesos ($4.53) per kilogram for onions. But while the trade department can charge those who set prices higher than the SRP with profiteering, it’s hardly enforced. Despite the price ceiling, the cost of onions has stayed high.

Last month, customs authorities intercepted an estimated $362,000 worth of smuggled red onions from China concealed by boxes of bread and pastry products and another $309,000 worth of smuggled white onions in containers supposedly containing garments.

Marcos Jr. said on Dec. 29 that the government was looking for a legal way to sell the smuggled goods to address supply shortfall. Some of the smuggled onions, however, were found unfit for human consumption. Local news network GMA reported that bacteria like E. coli and traces of pesticide were found on some batches, which had to be discarded.

Agriculture assistant secretary Rex Estoperez told Bloomberg Sunday that the just-announced imports will be a “temporary solution,” with new supply arriving no later than the first week of February, before domestic harvests pick up between March and May.

The Philippines also recently came to a bilateral agreement with China to increase agriculture and trade cooperation. It’s unclear if onion imports will be part of such cooperation.

Ukraine is strengthening its forces in the eastern Donbas region and repelling constant attacks on Bakhmut and other towns there by Russian mercenary group Wagner, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday.

Reinforcements had been sent to Soledar, a small town near Bakhmut where the situation was particularly difficult, they said.

“The enemy again made a desperate attempt to storm the city of Soledar from different directions and threw the most professional units of the Wagnerites into battle,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in nightly video remarks on Sunday that Bakhmut and Soledar were holding on despite widespread destruction after months of attacks.

“Our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance,” he said. In Soledar “things are very difficult”.

In an evacuee centre in nearby Kramatorsk, Olha, 60, said she had fled Soledar after moving from apartment to apartment as each was destroyed in tank battles.

“All of last week we couldn’t come outside. Everyone was running around, soldiers with automatic weapons, screaming,” said Olha, who gave only her first name.

“There isn’t one house left intact,” she said. “Apartments were burning, breaking in half.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group which has been trying to capture Bakhmut and Soledar at the cost of many lives on both sides, said on Saturday its significance lay in the network of mines there.

“It not only (has the ability to hold) a big group of people at a depth of 80-100 metres, but tanks and infantry fighting vehicles can also move about.”

Military analysts say the strategic military benefit for Moscow would be limited. A U.S. official has said Prigozhin, a powerful ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is eyeing the salt and gypsum from the mines there.

Serhiy Cherevaty, a Ukrainian military spokesman for the eastern region, said he thought it would be possible to stabilise the situation.

“There are brutal and bloody battles there – 106 shellings in one day,” he said on Ukrainian television.

“Our troops in Soledar have been allocated additional forces and means for this purpose and everything is being done to improve the operational situation there.”

Reuters was not able to independently verify the battlefield reports.

Further north in the Kharkiv region, a Russian missile strike on a marketplace in the village of Shevchenkove killed a 60-year-old woman and wounded several other people, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said.

Badly injured people lay on the ground and rescue workers sifted through piles of rubble, overturned and burning stalls, and a large crater in video footage from police and Ukraine’s presidential office. A police officer carried a girl with blood on her face from the scene.

The perpetrators were “common terrorists” Andriy Yermak, chief of the Ukrainian president’s staff, wrote on Telegram.

Zelenskiy made a fresh denunciation of what he called Russia’s failure to observe a ceasefire it had declared for Russian Orthodox Christmas on Friday and Saturday.

Ukraine never agreed to the ceasefire, which it called a Russian excuse to reinforce troops. Both sides accused the other of continuing hostilities throughout the period.

“Russians were shelling Kherson with incendiary ammunition immediately after Christmas,” he said, referring to the southern city abandoned by Russian forces in November.

“Strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Donbas – on civilian targets and at the very time when Moscow was reporting a supposed ‘silence’ for its army.”

On Sunday, Russia said a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut, had killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers, but a Reuters reporter at the scene found no visible signs of casualties.

A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and which it had targeted as revenge for a New Year’s attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers and caused outcry in Russia.

Neither dormitory appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There were no obvious signs that soldiers had been living there and no sign of bodies or traces of blood.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, a Ukrainian military spokesperson for the eastern region, described the claim of mass casualties as an attempt by the Russian defence ministry to show it had responded forcefully to Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian soldiers.

“This is an information operation of the Russian defence ministry,” Cherevatyi told Suspilne News.

The Kremlin said on Monday that it was confident its defence ministry was correct when it said that 600 Ukrainian servicemen had been “destroyed” in the attack.

As Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine grinds towards the one-year mark, Russia’s military is under domestic pressure to deliver battlefield successes.

Hawkish voices have sought an escalation of the war effort after setbacks such as loss of captured territory and high rates of death and injury. Some pro-Kremlin military bloggers criticised the Russian defence ministry claims.

“Let’s talk about ‘fraud’,” wrote one prominent pro-war military blogger on the Telegram messaging app, who posts under the name of Military Informant and who has more than half a million subscribers.

“It is not clear to us who, and for what reason, decided that 600 Ukrainian soldiers died inside, all at once, if the building was not actually hit (even the light remained on).

The militaries of both Russia and Ukraine have often overstated enemy losses, while minimising their own.

Ukraine’s top military officials said last week some 760 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in two attacks on Moscow-controlled parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. These reports could not be independently verified.

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