Beijing — Chinese President Xi Jinping called for further cooperation with Italy on Monday at a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, saying the two countries were the ends of the historical Silk Road trade route.

Meloni pulled Italy out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — whose name refers to the ancient overland trade route — in December, but signed an agreement Sunday that provides a new path for the two countries to cooperate on trade and other issues.

Meloni is on a five-day state visit, her first trip to China as prime minister.

The Belt and Road Initiative, one of Xi’s signature policies, aims to build power and transportation infrastructure around the world in order to stimulate global trade while also deepening China’s ties with other nations.

“China and Italy are located at opposite ends of the ancient Silk Road,” Xi told Meloni, “and the long-standing friendly exchanges between the two countries have made important contributions to the exchange and mutual learning of Eastern and Western civilizations, as well as human development and progress.”

“If countries are inter-connected, they will advance; if they are closed to each other, they will retreat,” said Xi.

Meloni said Italy could play an “important role” in China’s relationship with the European Union and creating balanced trade relationships. The EU imposed provisional tariffs of up to 37.6% on China-made electric vehicles in early July. China’s support for Russia after it invaded Ukraine has further strained relations with the EU.

She also noted China’s role as a diplomatic power on the global stage. “There is growing insecurity at the international level, and I think that China is inevitably a very important interlocutor to deal with all these dynamics,” said Meloni.
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Midyat, Turkey — Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century before Jesus Christ.

Archaeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020.

Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120 meters of tunnel carved out of the rock.

But that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000-square-metre area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s southern Anatolia region.

“Maybe even in the world,” said Midyat conservation director Mervan Yavuz who oversaw the excavation.

“To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves which they turned into an actual city,” Yavuz added.

The art historian traces the city’s ancient beginnings to the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC.

At its height in the seventh century BC, the empire stretched from The Gulf in the east to Egypt in the west.

Referred to as Matiate in that period, the city’s original entrance required people to bend in half and squeeze themselves into a circular opening.

It was this entrance that first gave the Midyat municipality an inkling of its subterranean counterpart’s existence.

“We actually suspected that it existed,” Yavuz recounted as he walked through the cave’s gloom.

“In the 1970s, the ground collapsed and a construction machine fell down. But at the time we didn’t try to find out more, we just strengthened and closed up the hole.”

A hiding place underground

The region where the cave city is located was once known as Mesopotamia, recognized as the cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in the world.

Many major empires conquered or passed through these lands, which may have given those living around Matiate a reason to take refuge underground.

“Before the arrival of the Arabs, these lands were fiercely disputed by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans and then the Byzantines,” said Ekrem Akman, a historian at the nearby University of Mardin.

Yavuz noted that “Christians from the Hatay region, fleeing from the persecution of the Roman Empire… built monasteries in the mountains to avoid their attacks”.

He suspects that Jews and Christians may have used Matiate as a hiding place to practice their then-banned religions underground.

He pointed to the inscrutable stylized carvings — a horse, an eight-point star, a hand, trees — which adorn the walls, as well as a stone slab on the floor of one room that may have been used for celebrations or for sacrifices.

As a result of the city’s long continuous occupation, he said it was “difficult to pinpoint” exactly what at the site can be attributed to which period or group.

But “pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate,” Yavuz said.

Centuries of invasions

Even after the threat of centuries of invasions had passed, the caves stayed in use, said curator Gani Tarkan.

He used to work as a director at the Mardin Museum, where household items, bronzes and potteries recovered from the caves are on display.

“People continued to use this place as a living space,” Tarkan said.

“Some rooms were used as catacombs, others as storage space,” he added.

Excavation leader Yavuz pointed to a series of round holes dug to hold wine-filled amphorae vessels in the gloomy cool, out of the glaring sunlight above.

To this day, the Mardin region’s Orthodox Christian community maintains that old tradition of wine production.

Turkey is also famous for its ancient cave villages in Cappadocia in the center of the country.

But while Cappadocia’s underground cities are built with rooms vertically stacked on top of each other, Matiate spreads out horizontally, Tarkan explained.

The municipality of Midyat, which funds the works, plans to continue the excavation until the site can be opened to the public.

It hopes the site will prove a popular tourist attraction and attract visitors to the city of 120,000.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainians urged their government to do more to get Russia to release prisoners of war, voicing their anger on Sunday at a ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50.

Several thousand soldiers and civilians gathered at Kyiv’s Independence Square Sunday to commemorate the second anniversary of an explosion that killed more than 50 Ukrainians that Russia held in the Olenivka prison barracks.

Impassioned speakers at the ceremony urged the Ukrainian government to work harder to get the soldiers freed in a prisoner exchange.

The Olenivka explosion was one of the most painful pages in the war, according to many soldiers.

“I was there in Olenivka. I was rocked by the explosion,” said Sgt. Kyrylo Masalitin, who was later released. “Never before have I felt so helpless. And those still in captivity feel that helplessness every day. They must know that we have done everything we can do to get them released.”

Behind Masalitin, more than 300 soldiers of the Azov brigade stood in formation. In unison they recited a prayer before holding aloft red flares to honor their comrades.

Russia has claimed that the Olenivka explosion was caused by Ukrainian forces firing a missile that hit the prison barracks. But increasing evidence suggests that Russian forces set off the explosion, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

The AP interviewed more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of details of the attack, including survivors, investigators and families of the dead and missing. All described evidence they believe points directly to Russia as the culprit. AP also obtained an internal United Nations analysis that found the same. Despite the conclusion of the internal analysis that found Russia planned and executed the attack, the U.N. stopped short of accusing Russia in public statements.

Two years after the explosion, many Ukrainians still want to know exactly how it happened. The demonstration Sunday brought together people who are commemorating Olenivka with others who are protesting Russia’s imprisonment of Ukrainian fighters who defended the Azovstal steel works and were taken prisoner when Russia seized the city of Mariupol.

Many were also pressing for the release of Ukrainian soldiers who were defending the Avovstal steel works and were captured when Mariupol fell in 2022. At least 900 soldiers from the Azov brigade are held as prisoners of war by Russia. The “Free Azov” campaign has become a vociferous pressure group in Kyiv and holds weekly vigils to urge President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government to do a prisoner exchange to get free Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia.

“We’re here to remember those who died and also those in captivity. We’re here to push our government to work hard on this,” said a soldier who identified himself as Stanislav.

He said he had been a defender of Mariupol when the Russians invaded in February 2022 and he was injured in an artillery attack, losing his left arm. He was treated in the army base inside the Azovstal steel works before he was taken captive by the Russian forces and then released. After physical rehabilitation, Stanislav returned to the army and now works in military headquarters in Kyiv.

He said he will keep pushing for the release of captive soldiers.

“We’re here for a special reason, to see that our brothers-in-arms in captivity come back,” he said. “All of those in captivity.”

The event in the center of Kyiv drew together many families, including the mothers, wives and children of soldiers who were killed at Olenivka or are currently imprisoned by Russia.

Her voice cracking with emotion, Halyna Stafiichuk, 71, said her son is being held by the Russians and she hasn’t heard from him in more than two years.

“I’m crying every day. I’m just praying for a note from him that says he is OK and that he will be home soon,” said Stafiichuk. “We trust that God and our government will bring all our soldiers back.”
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Ankara — President Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.

Erdogan, who has been a fierce critic of Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas, started discussing that war during a speech praising his country’s defense industry.

“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them,” Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party in his hometown of Rize.

“There is no reason why we cannot do this … We must be strong so that we can take these steps,” Erdogan added in the televised address.

AK Party representatives did not respond to calls asking for more detail on Erdogan’s comments. Israel did not immediately make any comment.

The president appeared to be referring to past actions by Turkey.

In 2020, Turkey sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord of Libya.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who heads the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, is backed by Turkey.

Turkey has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh but said last year it was using “all means,” including military training and modernization, to support its close ally.
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CLARK, Philippines — France renewed a commitment to help defend freedom of navigation and overflight in the Asia-Pacific Sunday and said that its supersonic fighter jets — a pair of which landed for the first time in the Philippines — and advance military power would enable it to respond rapidly to any humanitarian or security crisis in the region. 

France is also working to quickly conclude a defense pact that would allow it to deploy a larger number of forces for joint exercises to the Philippines, French Ambassador to Manila Marie Fontanel said. 

France has moved to broaden its defense engagements in the Indo-Pacific region, including with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. 

That dovetails with the effort of the administration of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to boost his country’s territorial defense by allowing a larger U.S. military presence in the Philippines under a 2014 defense agreement and by building security alliances with Asian and Western nations as it deals with China’s increasingly assertive actions in the disputed South China Sea. 

An annual French air force mission called Pegase, which showcases its combat power and travels to friendly countries to deepen defense relations, arrived over the weekend at Clark air base, a part of the former U.S. Air Force base, north of Manila, with two French-made Rafale fighter jets and air force cargo and transport aircraft. 

The French air force flew a small group of journalists, including from The Associated Press, aboard an Airbus A400M cargo aircraft over Philippine waters facing the South China Sea Sunday to demonstrate its crucial capability to undertake aerial refueling. But pockets of turbulence prompted the French military to abort the maneuver for safety reasons. 

Philippine air force personnel will also get the chance to fly onboard the Rafale jets and familiarize themselves with the aircraft. The fighter jets have been a “game changer,” French air force Brig. Gen. Guillaume Thomas, who was heading the air force mission, told a news conference. 

“They enable us to go very far and very fast and to be able to react very quickly… in case of a humanitarian crisis or even security crisis,” Thomas said. “We are able to deploy forces from France to be in this area in the Pacific in a very short notice.” 

The French air force mission “is not designed to target any specific country or any specific situation” and does not aim to escalate regional tensions, Fontanel said. 

France and the Philippines have begun preliminary talks on a status-of-forces agreement that would provide a legal framework and enable troops from each country to hold exercises in the other’s territory. France has been tasked to finish an initial draft of the agreement by September that would be the basis of future talks, Fontanel said. 

Aside from France, the Philippines has been holding separate talks with Canada and New Zealand for such agreements. It signed a similar pact with Japan earlier this month. 

China has strongly criticized such alliance-building and large-scale U.S. military exercises in the Philippines, saying the Philippines is “ganging up” with countries from outside Asia, and warned that military drills could instigate a confrontation and undermine regional stability. 

Philippine military officials have dismissed China’s criticism, saying the drills and alliances are aimed at boosting Manila’s territorial defense and are not directed at any country. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country may deploy new “strike weapons” in response to a U.S. plan to place missiles in Germany. Both the U.S. and Russia recently signaled a readiness to deploy intermediate-range weapons that were banned for decades under a Cold War-era treaty. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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KYIV — Five civilians died and 15 more were wounded following Russian strikes Saturday and overnight in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, its governor said, as Moscow claimed further gains in its monthslong grinding offensive in the country’s war-battered industrial heartland.

Shortly after Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on the casualties Sunday, other local Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling wounded more civilians in the east and south.

At least eight people suffered wounds after Moscow’s forces Sunday struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported that same day. Lysak said a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among the victims, six of whom had to be hospitalized.

Russian shelling Sunday also wounded eight more civilians, including a 10-year-old and two teenagers, in a village in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, local official Roman Mrochko reported.

Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, sending millions of people fleeing to neighboring countries. Taking control of all of Donetsk is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.

In the Donetsk region, Russian troops continued to eke out gains as they pushed westward toward the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had taken control of two neighboring villages some 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk, Prohres and Yevhenivka. The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.

Earlier Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said seven Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over Russian territory, while a regional official said a drone strike set fire to an oil depot in southern Russia. Firefighters were battling the blaze Sunday morning after three fuel tanks went up in flames in the Kursk region, according to acting regional Gov. Alexey Smirnov. Smirnov said nobody was hurt.
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