Health authorities in Argentina say they will inspect and quarantine a cargo ship in its waters after a crew member showed symptoms of mpox.

Once the ship arrives, medical personnel will board it and inspect whether the crew member’s symptoms are compatible with mpox. If they are, they will take samples for study. The entire crew will be quarantined until the results of the studies are available.

So far, the ministry has not said how many people are on board the Liberia-flagged ship named Ina-Lotte.

On Friday, the ministry called for strengthening border health control measures in Argentina, two days after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern due to an outbreak of mpox in parts of Africa.

Other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela and Mexico have announced similar surveillance measures.

A deadlier strain of the virus, clade Ib, is spreading quickly in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has reached at least four previously unaffected countries in Africa.

This is a breaking story. More to come.

Panama on Tuesday carried out its first migrant deportation flight funded by the United States, part of a widening effort to reduce the number of migrants traveling north through the region.

Twenty-nine Colombians were deported from Panama City to Medellín, Colombia, according to Panama’s Deputy Security Minister Luis Felipe Icaza.

The deportees boarded the plane early in the morning with cuffs around their hands and ankles, escorted by authorities from Panama’s migration agency. One of the people on board the flight was a member of the Clan del Golfo criminal organization, Icaza alleged.

The deportation flight was carried out after the US and Panama signed a memorandum of cooperation on July 1 to reduce the number of migrants crossing Panama without permission, on their way to the US.

Last month, Panama placed barbed wire across several routes in the Darién jungle, a treacherous passage between Panama and Colombia, in a bid to block the northward route.

So far this year, more than 230,000 people have entered Panama through the Darién jungle from Colombia. And so far in August, more than 8,000 have passed through. These figures would represent a decrease of 30% compared to the same period from January to August 2023, according to Roger Mojica, director of Panama’s migration agency.

For now, Panama is only carrying out deportation flights to Colombia, Mojica said.

He added that Panama is working on coordinating flights to other countries such as Ecuador and India, but not to Venezuela – where economic devastation and an authoritarian government have driven out more people than anywhere else in the region.

A Russian soldier has defected to Ukraine, according to the Freedom for Russia Legion, the “I Want to Live Project,” and the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.

The defected soldier – with the call sign “Silver” – was an active serviceman for the unit “Storm” before volunteering for the Freedom for Russia Legion during the “winter of 2024,” the legion, a group of Russian dissidents fighting for Ukraine, said.

Silver, a 24-year-old from Siberia who joined the Russian army in 2021, gave his reasons for defecting in an interview posted on YouTube by the “I Want to Live” project – a Ukrainian government initiative which receives appeals from Russian servicemen in Ukraine wishing to surrender.

“I wanted to serve in the army, I gave an oath to protect my motherland. My motherland is there [in Russia] and no-one attacked it. I didn’t want to serve for Russia during the war and didn’t want to die for Putin,” he said.

Silver took part in the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Avdiivka area from the Russian side of the border as a drone operator, he explained in the interview. He had also previously served on China’s border with Russia.

“Silver was a member of the resistance for several months and transmitted important operational information to us (the location of forces and equipment, plans, tasks in a specific section of the front, etc.),” the Freedom for Russia Legion said.

Escaping the Storm unit, Silver “activated explosive devices” in the unit’s headquarters, seriously injuring the commander and several senior officers, according to the legion.

The legion posted a video to its YouTube channel taken from a hidden camera claiming to show the operation. Several men are seen in the video in army uniforms before an explosion erupts, causing a fire.

“During the retreat, Silver mined the path and went along the agreed route. The legion command, together with the ‘I Want to Live’ team, organized Silver’s exit from the combat line. Now he is undergoing a basic training course as a legion recruit,” the Legion said.

Ukraine’s intelligence department said the operation to get Silver out was named “Ocheret.”

“The Russian was motivated to cooperate with Ukraine by the systematic war crimes and other crimes of the command, including extrajudicial executions, beatings, and robberies in the occupation unit,” the Defense Intelligence said on Telegram on Tuesday.

Silver claimed in the interview that he had seen some Russian soldiers killed by their own commander.

The Defense Intelligence said Ukraine was able to obtain valuable intelligence on the location, number, and intentions of Russian forces “in a particular frontline area” because of the interaction with Silver.

Emergency workers in southern Italy are still hunting for six people missing after a tornado sank a luxury yacht early Monday – prompting an air and naval operation off the coast of Sicily.

Fifteen people were rescued from the wreckage on Monday, according to Italy’s Coast Guard. One body was later recovered from the hull of the stricken vessel.

Two Americans and four Britons are among those missing – including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and Chris Morvillo, a prominent lawyer.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

A small waterspout – a type of tornado – spun over the Mediterranean island early Monday, likely capsizing the sailing boat amid lashings of rain and strong thunderstorms.

Eyewitnesses described furious gales and hurricane-like winds that left an avalanche of debris near the pier.

More than a dozen survivors were spotted in the area hanging onto life rafts, according to the captain of a nearby boat, who steadied his ship to avoid colliding with the Bayesian.

“We got this strong hurricane gust and we had to start the engine to keep the ship in an angled position,” Karsten Bower told reporters in Palermo on Monday. “After the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone.”

Bower and his crew rescued four injured people, he said, before calling Italy’s Coast Guard – who later rescued the remaining survivors.

One of those rescued – a child – was airlifted to the children’s hospital in Palermo. Eight people were hospitalized in total, according to the mayor’s office.

The girl’s mother, Charlotte, described how she battled to hold onto Sofia, her 1-year-old daughter, as reported by Italian news agency ANSA.

“In two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately hugged her again amidst the fury of the waves. I held her tightly, close to me, while the sea was stormy,” she told journalists. “Many were screaming.”

The mother and daughter were later reunited with the father, James, according to a doctor at the local children’s hospital in Palermo.

“The survivors are very tired and are constantly asking about the missing people,” the doctor, Domenico Cipolla, said Monday. “They are talking and crying all the time because they have realized that there is little hope of finding their friends alive.”

Italy’s fire brigade dispatched helicopters to aid in the search, officials said Monday. The brigade also said they would send divers to try and enter the sunken ship Tuesday, after an unsuccessful attempt on Monday.

The depth of the wreck means divers can only work there for limited periods of time, according to Marco Tilotta, an inspector for the diving unit of Palermo’s local fire brigade. The Italian fire brigade said Monday its divers had reached the yacht’s hull 49 meters (160 feet) below sea level.

Who was on board?

A troupe of high-profile guests are among those missing, including Lynch, the 59-year-old British tech investor who fought a fraud case earlier this year in the United States – which spiraled from the disastrous $11 billion sale of his company to tech firm Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.

His 18-year-old daughter was also named missing. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived the accident. Bacares told Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica that she woke up at 4 a.m. local time, as the boat tilted. She and her husband were not initially concerned, she said, but became worried when the windows of the yacht shattered and chaos erupted.

Bacares spoke to the newspaper while sitting in a wheelchair, at a hospital in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese. She had abrasions on her feet and bandages on other parts of her body, it reported.

Bloomer, the finance tycoon, and Morvillo, a prominent lawyer – and both their wives – are also among the missing, according to Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s Civil Protection.

Morvillo, an American partner at Clifford Chance, was involved in successfully defeating the US fraud case against Lynch in June. Another employee of the firm, Ayla Ronald, and her partner, survived the incident, according to a spokesperson for Clifford Chance.

What do we know about the boat?

Built in 2008, the 56-meter (184-foot) yacht was manufactured by Italian company Perini Navi, Reuters reported. According to the Associated Press, the boat has been available for charter for $215,000 (€195,000) per week.

Lynch’s wife is linked to the yacht. The Bayesian is held by the company Revtom Limited, according to records from the maritime information service Equasis. The company’s latest annual return from April lists Bacares as the proprietor.

“Bayesian,” the name given to the vessel, is linked to the statistical theory on which Lynch built his fortune, according to Reuters.

The yacht’s mast stood 72.27 meters (237 feet) high above the designated water line, just short of the world’s tallest mast which is 75.2 meters, according to Guinness World Records. It was the tallest aluminium mast in the world, the Perini Navi website said.

Perini Navi is known for making “good quality boats,” according to Caroline White, deputy editor of BOAT International, a media group serving the superyacht industry.

Dangerous weather conditions

Strong storms across Sicily brought torrential rainfall late Sunday. Initial reports suggest a small waterspout, which developed over the area Monday morning, could have been behind the yacht’s sinking.

Waterspouts – one of several types of tornadoes – are spinning columns of air that form over water, or move from land out to water. They are often accompanied by high winds, high seas, hail and dangerous lightning. While they are most common over tropical oceans, they can form almost anywhere.

Waterspouts rely on warm waters to gain energy and the Mediterranean Sea has been very hot, reaching a record daily median of 28.9 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) last week, according to preliminary data from researchers at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Spain.

“Warmer oceans have more energy and more humidity to transfer to the atmosphere, the most important fuels for storms,” he said.

The world’s oldest person, US-born Maria Branyas Morera, has died at the age of 117, her family announced on social media.

Guinness World Records (GWR) also released a statement confirming her death at the age of 117 years 168 days, making her the eighth-oldest person with a verifiable age in history.

“Maria passed away peacefully at the nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, where she resided for the past two decades,” read the GWR statement, which added that she died on Monday.

On Tuesday, Morera’s family published a post on her X account announcing her death.

“She has gone the way she wanted: in her sleep, at peace, and without pain,” reads the post.

Her family added that Morera told them shortly before her death: “I don’t know when, but very soon this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want it to find me smiling, free, and satisfied.”

Morera was named the world’s oldest living person by GWR in January 2023 after the death of French nun Sister André at the age of 118.

She told GWR that she had lived such a long life thanks to “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.”

“I think longevity is also about being lucky. Luck and good genetics,” she added.

Her birth on March 4, 1907 came less than four years after the Wright Brothers launched the first ever power driven flight and two years before construction had even begun on the ill-fated Titanic.

Morera was born a year after her parents emigrated to the US from Spain. Eight years later, the family moved back, arriving in Barcelona during World War I. Morera’s life has also spanned the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

She spent the last decades of her life in a nursing home in Catalonia, where, despite her advancing years, Morera used X – with a little help from her daughter – to communicate with her thousands of followers.

“I am old, very old, but not an idiot,” her bio reads on the social media platform.

Morera is believed to be among the oldest people to have recovered from Covid-19, having tested positive for the virus in May 2020.

According to the Gerontology Research Group, a scientific non-profit which validates the ages of people aged at least 110, the oldest living person is now a 116-year-old Japanese woman named Tomiko Itooka.

The title of the oldest person ever recorded belongs to Jeanne Louise Calment. Born on February 21, 1875, her life spanned 122 years and 164 days, according to GWR.

The bodies of six Israeli hostages have been retrieved from Gaza during an overnight military operation, Israeli authorities said Tuesday.

In a joint announcement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel’s security agency (ISA) named them as Yoram Metzger, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Chaim Peri, Nadav Popplewell and Yagev Buchshtab.

All but Munder had been announced dead in recent months by the Israeli military.

“Tonight our forces returned the bodies of six of our hostages who were held by the murderous terrorist organization Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, thanking those involved in the operation for their “bravery and determined action.”

“Our hearts ache for the terrible loss,” he said.

Israeli authorities did not immediately release details of the operation to recover the hostages’ bodies but the joint statement said it was “enabled by precise intelligence from the ISA, IDF intelligence units, and the IDF Intelligence Directorate Hostage Headquarters.”

Munder, 79, Metzger, 80, and Peri, 80, were all residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza border, where they were captured during Hamas’ October 7 attacks, according to statements from the kibbutz.

Munder was taken along with his wife, daughter and grandson. They were later freed during a temporary truce in November. Munder’s son, Roee, was killed during the attack.

Metzger’s wife Tami was also kidnapped and later released in the November truce.

Popplewell, who was 51 when abducted, and Buchshtab, 35, were taken from Kibbutz Nirim, the kibbutz said in a statement.

The IDF said in July that Buchshtab was believed to have been held in Khan Younis and died several months ago, while the IDF was operating there. It did not detail the circumstances of the death at the time.

About 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 other kidnapped during Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 92,000 injured during Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the enclave.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Sham Abu Tabaq, age 5, has a piercing stare. Behind her dark eyes are memories she has hardly begun to process.

She has experienced war. She has been forced from her home. And she was in her father’s arms when he was fatally shot, and saw both him and her older sister left for dead in the street.

And then, there’s this: Sanaa doesn’t just blame the Israeli military for killing her husband and daughter and shooting her in the leg – though certainly she does blame the Israeli military.

An Israeli soldier may also have saved her life.

That should not be extraordinary. All militaries are obligated under international law to help injured civilians. But in the war in Gaza, stories like Sanaa’s are exceedingly rare.

“He had mercy towards us,” she said of the soldier. But he and his comrades, she said, “also took from me the most precious thing I had.”

Sanaa and her husband Akram – a schoolteacher – lived with their daughters Sham and Yasmeen in Beit Lahia, in the northernmost end of Gaza.

She worked at a foundation that provides support for orphans. Like many women in Gaza, she dressed conservatively and often covered her face, which is marked by deep burn scars from a childhood accident.

In the days after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s ensuing military campaign, the family were forced from their home – fleeing Israel’s unprecedented bombardment of the Gaza Strip. When a brief ceasefire was announced in late November as part of a hostage release deal, they saw an opportunity to return.

“We were so happy we weren’t even able to sleep,” Sanaa recalled. “A truce was happening, and we were going to go home.”

They departed the United Nations-run health clinic where they had been living, in the Jabalya refugee camp, and began the roughly three-mile journey on foot. They were almost home, she said, when shots rang out.

“It was like there was a sniper and he was shooting at us. We didn’t see him,” she said. “Suddenly we were all injured.”

‘They finished him off’

Seven-year-old Yasmeen’s condition was the most serious. She was shot in the back and shoulder. Akram was struck in the stomach, and Sanaa in the leg. Only Sham was left unscathed by the hail of bullets.

“My husband was telling me, ‘Let’s crawl and maybe we can find an ambulance to take us, or somebody might see us and help us.’ But I couldn’t crawl. And Yasmeen was in a very terrible condition – two bullets, and she was all covered in blood. So, I told him, ‘We can’t.’ He said, “I’ll try to crawl.’ So he crawled a little bit. They finished him off! He remained in his place. He was killed,” Sanaa said.

For several hours they lay there in the middle of the street – too injured and fearful to move. Sanaa held Yasmeen, promising her daughter that an ambulance was on the way and that they would survive. But no help was on the way. False hope was all Sanaa could offer her daughter in that moment.

Life drained out of Yasmeen, and she succumbed to her wounds.

“I laid my daughter Yasmeen on the ground, may God bless her soul. And I covered her with a blouse. And I told Sham, ‘Come on darling, let’s crawl.’”

Crawling along the ground, speaking in whispers, they left behind the bodies of their family and made it inside a partially bombed two-story house. They huddled in a bathroom as night fell.

“In the morning, around 7:30, we heard the sounds of the Israelis and of the tanks,” Sanaa said. “I told her, ‘Sham my darling, the Israelis have come. They are going to shoot us. But don’t be afraid. It’s over. And we are going to die.’ She said, ‘Okay mom, but hide me. I don’t want to see them when they come and shoot me.’”

As Sanaa cradled her daughter, an explosion shook the house, blowing in the door of the bathroom where they were huddled and shattering the window above them, sending glass raining down.

Soon, the soldiers were inside the house. After some tense moments of shouting, she said, the soldiers were convinced that Sanaa and Sham were not harboring militants and tended to their wounds.

Sanaa soon began pleading with an Arabic-speaking soldier, who denied that his forces had killed Sanaa’s husband and eldest daughter, and instead blamed Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, for their deaths.

“I told him, ‘Please hand me over to an ambulance to Gaza (City). Can you at least take me to my family, so they take my daughter? I am not important. I know I’m going to die. I just want my family to take my daughter.’”

“He told me, ‘No, we cannot hand you over to Gaza. Wait a little bit. I might be able to help you,’” Sanaa said.

Sanaa says the Israeli soldiers concluded they could not treat her in the field. Her condition was critical, she says, and she needed to be treated in a hospital. After making several calls, she recalled, the Arabic-speaking soldier said they would take them to a hospital in Israel. They carried her out of the house on a stretcher with Sham.

As she was being loaded onto a Humvee, Sanaa says she saw her daughter Yasmeen’s body in the street.

“I told him: ‘This is Yasmeen. Please bring her to me.’ He said no. I told him, ‘Then, please bury her for me,’” Sanaa recalled. “They kept going with the stretcher.”

An hour’s drive later, Sanaa says, they arrived at what appeared to be a mostly empty military staging ground. Standing in an open area, soldiers doing a security check ordered Sanaa to remove her jilbab – a full-body covering garment – in front of female soldiers, while male soldiers said they would look away. All the while, she continued to bleed from the bullet wound to her leg.

“Then they made me lift off my blouse and my undergarment items,” she recalled. “Sham – they took off all her clothes as well.”

“If it was not for Sham, I wouldn’t have agreed to take off my clothes. Because I was scared that if I didn’t take off my clothes, they would shoot Sham. Or they would shoot me in front of Sham, and I would never know what happened to her. If I had been alone I would have rather they shoot me, and I wouldn’t have taken off my clothes.”

‘This is God who stood by my side’

For eight months, she has had a slow recovery, with physical therapy. She and Sham have lived in a single, shared hospital room. She has no idea what happened to the bodies of her daughter and husband.

It is a vexing limbo – aware of the privilege of their safety yet pining for a home and life that has been irrevocably changed.

And she is terrified at being sent back into the warzone that was her home. Indeed, Israeli authorities are now planning on returning the pair to Gaza next month unless another government takes them in, according to hospital officials, Israeli officials and human rights organizations.

The Israeli military denies its soldiers shot Sanaa and her family.

Sanaa called that claim a lie. The IDF claimed that the militants fired grenades on their position – Sanaa said she did not hear any explosions.

“If we had heard the voice of Israelis, we would have fled and returned (to the shelter). If we had heard the voice of resistance, we would have fled and returned,” Sanaa said.

“It’s true he helped me,” Sanaa says of the Arab-speaking soldier who helped facilitate the decision to take her out of Gaza, to Israel.

But she cannot bring herself to thank him. And she says she would not, if she saw him again.

“This was a miracle from God that the soldier who was speaking to me in Arabic was helping me,” she said.

“This is God who stood by my side, and He put mercy in them towards me. It is from God,” she said. “Not by (the soldier’s) own will.”

Nicaragua has revoked the registration of 1,500 non-profit organizations, the latest in a years-long crackdown in the small Central American nation.

The organizations, which include hundreds of religious groups, are accused of failing to report their financial statements for a period of between one and 35 years, according to a notice published Monday in the government gazette, La Gaceta.

Some associations effectively shuttered by the announcement were sports oriented, hosting basketball, tennis and soccer teams. There were groups for health, womens’ rights, LGBTQ rights, legal associations and veterans’ clubs. Over 400 of the groups were religiously-tied organizations, most of them Christian.

Earlier this month, Nicaragua canceled the legal status of the Diocese of Matagalpa’s Caritas for alleged bureaucratic reasons, according to Vatican News. The diocese is headed by Bishop Rolando Alvarez, a vocal critic of the government who lives in exile after being convicted of charges including conspiracy and treason.

Civil liberties in Nicaragua have shrunk dramatically under the longtime leadership of authoritarian President Daniel Ortega, who claimed a fifth term in 2021.

Widespread anti-regime protests in 2018 were also met with brutal force, with Nicaraguan security forces killing hundreds of people, injuring thousands and arbitrarily detaining many, according to Human Rights Watch. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the country.

In June, the United Nations expressed “grave concern” over the human rights situation in Nicaragua. At least 35 people have been arrested since March as part of a “crackdown on civic space,” said Nada al-Nashif, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.

A witty pun about a sailing trip has been crowned the funniest joke told at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Thousands of performers flock to Scotland’s capital each year to entertain and delight crowds at the Fringe.

British entertainment channel U&Dave, owned by British broadcaster UKTV, has handed out the “Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award” for the last 15 years, according to a UKTV news release on Monday.

Despite vast competition, comedian Mark Simmons won with his gag: “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it.”

A panel that included leading UK comedy critics and comedians attended hundreds of shows across the festival and submitted their 10 top gags.

A shortlist of jokes that were anonymized was then presented to 2,000 members of the British public to vote on the one that evoked the most laughter.

“I’m really chuffed to win U&Dave’s Funniest Joke of the Fringe,” Simmons said in the release. “I needed some good news as I was just fired from my job marking exam papers, can’t understand it, I always gave 110%.”

Simmons became a comedian after his friend convinced him to do an open-mic night, and he began performing solo at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014, according to the release.

This is the first time he has won the top joke prize, with his humorous one-liner being taken from his PHB’s Free Fringe show at Liquid Room Annexe.

The runner-up was this joke by comedian Alec Snook: “I’ve been taking salsa lessons for months, but I just don’t feel like I’m progressing. It’s just one step forward… two steps back.”

Hosted in Scotland’s capital annually, the Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival.

Gags that made the top 10:

1. “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it.” Mark Simmons

2. “I’ve been taking salsa lessons for months, but I just don’t feel like I’m progressing. It’s just one step forward… two steps back.” Alec Snook

3. “Ate horse at a restaurant once – wasn’t great. Starter was all right but the mane was dreadful.” Alex Kitson

4. “I sailed through my driving test. That’s why I failed it.” Arthur Smith

5. “I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton: well, he came up with the idea, I ran with it.” Mark Simmons

6. “My dad used to say to me ‘Pints, gallons, liters’ – which, I think, speaks volumes.” Olaf Falafel

7. “British etiquette is confusing. Why is it highbrow to look at boobs in an art gallery but lowbrow when I get them out in Spoons?” Chelsea Birkby

8. “I wanted to know which came first the chicken or the egg so I bought a chicken and then I bought an egg and I think I’ve cracked it.” Masai Graham

9. “My partner told me that she’d never seen the film Gaslight. I told her that she definitely had.” Zoë Coombs Marr

10. “The conspiracy theory about the moon being made of cheese was started by the hallouminati.” Olaf Falafel

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Ukraine, officials said Monday, weeks after he made his first trip to Moscow since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

His forthcoming visit to Ukraine – also his first since the start of the war – comes at a crucial moment, as Kyiv’s troops push further into Russian territory in a shock military offensive that stunned even Kyiv’s closest allies.

Modi has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Ukraine, without condemning Russia’s aerial campaign or denouncing the ground invasion. India has also abstained from all resolutions on Ukraine at the United Nations.

India remains heavily reliant on the Kremlin for its military equipment and has ramped up purchases of discounted Russian crude oil, giving Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nation a major financial lifeline as it faces isolation from the West.

Modi visited Putin in July, a sign that the two nations remain close. Images and video showed the two leaders hugging, chatting over tea, riding in an electric vehicle and watching a horse show.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the meeting that coincided with a brazen assault on several Ukrainian cities and a deadly strike on a children’s hospital.

The Ukrainian leader described the meeting as a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day.”

Modi did not address the strikes directly during his trip, but did say solutions to conflict are unlikely to come through war, but rather peace and dialogue. The remarks appeared to be his most critical comments to date against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Whether it’s conflict, war or terror, any person who believes in humanity is troubled when there are deaths, especially when innocent children die,” Modi said while seated alongside the Russian president.

“As a friend, I have always said that peace is necessary for the prosperity of future generations, but I also know that on the battlefield, solutions aren’t easy to come by between guns, bombs and bullets. We have to adopt a path to peace through dialogue,” he added.