By HANNA ARHIROVA

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.

In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.

Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.

Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.

“(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,” said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin “will go all the way … I’m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.”

Despair and destruction

Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow’s forces.

“They was always shooting,” Ivanova said. “You’d be standing there … and all you’d hear was the whistle of shells.”

She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones “like beetles” filled the sky, she said.

“I never thought I’d leave,” she added. “I was a stolid soldier, holding on. I’m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.”

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For years now, Ivanova had watched the region’s cities fall: Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and others. But the war, she said, still felt far away, even as it closed in on her doorstep.

“I felt for those people,” she said. “But it wasn’t enough to make me leave.”

A blast near her building finally forced her out. The explosion bent her windows so badly she couldn’t shut them before fleeing. Her apartment remained wide open. She left her whole life behind in Kostiantynivka, the city where she was born.

“Please, stop it,” she pleaded, directing her appeal to world leaders as she sat in an evacuation hub shortly after fleeing. “It’s the poorest people who suffer the most. This war is senseless and stupid. We’re dying like animals — by the dozens.”

Living through it together

Olena Voronkova decided to leave Kostiantynivka earlier, in May, when she could no longer run her two businesses: a beauty salon and a cafe.

She and her family relocated to nearby Kramatorsk, which is so close yet, in many ways, far away, as she is no longer able to enter her hometown. It wasn’t the first loss she had suffered since the war began. In 2023, a rocket strike from a multiple-launch system severely damaged their house.

The move to Kramatorsk wasn’t by choice, she added, but “because the circumstances left us no other option.”

First came the mandatory evacuation orders. Then a curfew so strict they could only move around the city for four hours a day. Then came the floods of remote-controlled drones.

“We’re used to life in Donetsk region. We feel good here. Kramatorsk is familiar. A lot of people from our city moved here — even local municipal workers,” Voronkova said.

Not long after arriving in Kramatorsk, she opened a cafe that is nearly identical to the one she left behind. She said the space just happened to look similar. It has high white walls and ornate mirrors she brought from her beauty salon, which is now in the combat zone.

The cafe has since become a refuge for others who also fled Kostiantynivka.

“At first there was hope that maybe some homes would survive — that people might go back,” she said. “Now we see it’s unlikely anyone has anything left. The city is turning into another Bakhmut, Toretsk or Avdiivka. Everything is being destroyed.”

She described the mood as “heavy” because “people are losing hope” and it felt easier in Kramatorsk because everyone shared the same loss, which created a sense of connection and mutual support.

“No one really knows where to go next. Everyone sees that Russia isn’t stopping. And that’s where the hopelessness begins. No one has a direction anymore. The uncertainty is everywhere,” she said.

Seizing the day

War is slowly draining the life out of Kramatorsk, as if warning that it may be the next city to be reduced to rubble.

Daria Horlova still remembers it as a bustling place where, at 9 p.m., life in the central square was just getting started. Now it’s deserted at all hours and 9 p.m. is when a strict curfew begins. The city is regularly bombed thanks to its proximity to the front line about 21 kilometers (13 miles) east.

“It’s still terrifying — when something’s flying overhead or strikes nearby, especially when it hits the city,” the 18-year-old said. “You want to cry, but there are no emotions left. No strength.”

Horlova studies remotely at a local university that relocated to another region and works as a nail artist. One day, she hopes to open her own salon. For now, she and her boyfriend are stuck in limbo, unsure of what to do next.

“It’s terrifying that most of the Donetsk region is occupied — and that it was Russia who attacked,” she said. “That’s why it feels like everything could change at any moment. Just look at Kostiantynivka — not long ago, life there was normal. And now …”

To distract herself from the anxiety, and the difficult decision she might soon have to make to leave, Horlova tries to focus on what brings her joy in the moment.

She already was evacuated from Kramatorsk once, earlier in the war, and doesn’t want to repeat it.

Instead of dwelling on what the future could hold, she asked her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, to ink a large tattoo of a goat skull on her right leg, something she has dreamed about for years.

“I think you just have to do things — and do them as soon as you can,” she said. “Being here, I know this tattoo will be a memory of Kramatorsk, if I end up leaving.”

Vasilisa Stepanenko and Yehor Konovalov contributed to this report.

By KANIS LEUNG, Associated Press

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong lawmakers on Wednesday voted down a bill that would have granted recognition to same-sex partnerships in the Chinese city, despite the rights offered being limited, in a major setback to the LGBTQ+ movement.

The Registration of Same-Sex Partnerships Bill, unveiled in July, stemmed from one of the legal victories that pushed the government to offer more equal rights to gays and lesbians. However, the bill met fierce opposition from lawmakers, even though it followed the top court’s 2023 ruling stating the government should provide a framework for recognizing such relationships.

Out of the lawmakers who attended the meeting, 71 voted against the bill, 14 approved it and one abstained.

The staunch opposition from lawmakers was a rare sight despite the Chinese government’s overhaul of the electoral rules of the territory that effectively filled the legislature with Beijing loyalists. It was the first government bill to be voted down since the overhaul.

Resistance in the legislature

The bill had proposed to allow residents who have already formed unions overseas to register their partnerships locally and to grant them rights in handling medical and after-death matters for their loved ones. That included the ability to access their partners’ medical information and participate in medical decisions with consent, and claim their deceased partners’ remains.

Some lawmakers suggested using individual policies or administrative measures to resolve the challenges facing same-sex couples, instead of through such legislation. Others insisted voting down would not amount to a constitutional crisis and would instead show the legislature is not a rubber stamp.

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Lawmaker Holden Chow from the city’s biggest pro-establishment party said that the bill’s passage would mean opening “a Pandora’s box,” and “subverting Hong Kong’s marriage system between one man and one woman.”

Another legislator, Junius Ho, said the bill would cause the entire society to become restless for the sake of a small group of people.

Lawmaker Regina Ip, who supported the bill, likened it to a “minimum spending” requirement, given the rights offered were limited.

Outside government headquarters near the legislature, two women laid out a banner supporting the traditional marriage system.

Rights advocates left disappointed

Many gay rights advocates in Hong Kong were already unsatisfied with the draft bill as its proposed registration system was only available to those in registered overseas unions. Still, they expressed frustration over its rejection.

Activist Jimmy Sham, whose legal challenge led to the 2023 top court ruling on same-sex partnerships, told reporters after the vote he had expected the outcome. He said he hoped the government would in the future pass legislation that fulfills its constitutional duty toward the LGBTQ+ community.

“I hope today marks a beginning we haven’t yet stepped into, rather than an end,” he said, adding he would study how to follow up on the matter with his legal team.

Nick Infinger, who had won a separate legal challenge to seek equal rights for same-sex couples, was also let down by the results. “Just do not give up,” he said.

Hong Kong Marriage Equality, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on fair treatment for same-sex couples, said the rejection sent a troubling signal to local and international communities that “court rulings may be disregarded and the dignity of individuals overlooked.”

It earlier argued that the results of public opinion submissions — which the government previously reported as 80% opposing the bill — did not accurately reflect public sentiment. It noted that about half the publicly viewable submissions against the bill used standardized templates, which suggested “strong mobilization by specific groups.”

Next steps are uncertain

Hong Kong’s top court ruled in 2023 that the government should develop a framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships by October.

Erick Tsang, the secretary for constitutional affairs, told reporters that while the government felt disappointed with Wednesday’s outcome, it would respect the lawmakers’ decision.

Surveys showed 60% of respondents supported same-sex marriage in 2023, up from 38% in 2013, according to a report by researchers from three universities.

Tsang said the administration won’t ask the top court for an extension to the two-year deadline, but his team will further discuss with the Department of Justice how to move forward.

The growing acceptance came as multiple legal challenges won more equal rights for same-sex couples, ranging from dependent visas to subsidized housing benefits. On Tuesday, the Court of First Instance ruled in favor of a lesbian couple’s parental recognition of their son born through reciprocal in vitro fertilization.

Nadia Rahman, Amnesty International’s researcher on gender, urged authorities to introduce a revised bill to protect the rights of same-sex couples in full compliance with the court’s ruling.

On Wednesday night, performance artist Holok Chen gathered members of the queer community to embroider on a rainbow flag to reflect their grievances. Other LGBTQ+ groups also hosted similar activities, Chen said, and they plan to display the rainbow flags they embroidered in a show of unity later this month.

Chen pointed to the communal nature of embroidery, saying, “It’s a gentle yet powerful form of resistance.”

By STEPHEN McGRATH and ANDREEA ALEXANDRU

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Russia’s violation of Poland’s airspace with drones on Wednesday marks the most serious cross-border incident into a NATO member country since the war in Ukraine began.

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But other alliance countries have reported similar incursions and drone crashes on their territory since 2022.

The overnight incident in Poland has been labelled an “act of aggression” and drew a military response by NATO in shooting down multiple drones, as several European leaders said they believed Moscow was intentionally escalating the war.

But since Russia fully invaded Ukraine in 2022, Croatia and Romania, and non-NATO member Moldova — the latter two of which share long borders with Ukraine — have reported multiple airspace violations and have found drone fragments on their territory.

Poland’s experience is not the first time NATO airspace has been violated.

String of airspace violations since war started

Romania found several drone crash sites on its territory in 2023, including one that caused a crater near a village across the Danube River from the Ukrainian port of Izmail. That crash site finding followed several other similar incidents that left many Romanians near the border nervous that the war could spill over.

In February 2024, Moldova destroyed explosives discovered in a part of a Shahed drone that crashed on its territory in the southern town of Etulia. Moldova’s Foreign Minister Mihai Popsoi called it “a stark reminder of the violence and destruction sown by the Kremlin.”

Since 2023, numerous airspace incursions and drone fragment findings have been reported in both countries, and while no one has been hurt in any of the incidents and the origin not always determined, the proximity has often highlighted how easily the war could cross over the Ukrainian border.

Just weeks after the war in Ukraine started, a 6-ton Soviet-era military drone armed with explosives drifted uncontrolled from the Ukrainian war zone over NATO members Romania and Hungary, before entering Croatia and crashing in the capital, Zagreb. About 40 parked cars were damaged in a large explosion, but no one was injured. Croatian investigators never made public whether the aircraft belonged to Ukraine or Russia.

In early February this year, Russian drones crashed within a day in Moldova and Romania as the two eastern European neighbors reported aerial vehicles entered their airspace during Russia’s overnight attacks on neighboring Ukraine’s Danube port.

Both countries determined that the drones were Shahed unmanned aircraft that Moscow uses in its war on Ukraine. Moldovan President Maia Sandu said at the time that the violations put “Moldovan lives at risk,” and the head of the Russian diplomatic mission in Chisinau was summoned. Days later, two more drones entered Moldovan airspace near the border.

In March, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said that fragments of a Russian drone carrying explosives were found in southeast Galati county, just 500 meters from a border crossing with Moldova. Investigators determined the fragments were “of Russian origin.” It was subject to a controlled detonation.

Romania adopts legislation to down errant drones

Airspace violations have become so commonplace in Romania in recent years that lawmakers adopted legislation in February allowing the army to shoot down drones that enter its airspace, as a last resort if other measures fail. Romania’s hard-right parties opposed the law.

Analysts have long viewed such incidents in Romania as potential tests by Russia to see how NATO would react. Romania is frequently scrambling fighter jets — as it did early Wednesday — to monitor its airspace for potentially encroaching drones.

Radu Tudor, a defense analyst in Bucharest, says “military provocations” from Russia have become commonplace on the eastern flank and that “Russia is behaving more and more aggressively.”

“Here is the threat: on air, on the land … in the Black Sea,” he told The Associated Press. “Also huge, huge cyber attacks and hybrid attacks, so it’s a multi-dimensional attack from Russia on the eastern flank of NATO.”

‘Russia must be stopped’

After the incident on Wednesday in Poland, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said Russia’s latest airspace violation of NATO-member Poland proved that Moscow is “constantly testing our limits” and shows it is not interested in peace in Ukraine.

“Russia must be stopped and pressured to come to the negotiation table,” Dan wrote on X. “We are united to make NATO and especially the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, more secure.”

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO bolstered its presence on Europe’s eastern flank by sending additional multinational battlegroups to Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Stephen McGrath reported from Warwick, U.K; Dusan Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia.

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three high-ranking FBI officials were fired last month in a “campaign of retribution” carried out by a director who knew better but caved to political pressure from the Trump administration so he could keep his own position, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that seeks reinstatement of the agents.

The complaint asserts that Director Kash Patel indicated directly to one of the ousted agents, Brian Driscoll, that he knew the firings were “likely illegal” but was powerless to stop them because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who helped investigate President Donald Trump. It quotes Patel as having told Driscoll in a conversation last month “the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.”

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans, three of five agents known to have been fired last month in a purge that current and former officials say has unnerved the workforce. It represents a legal challenge from the top rungs of the FBI’s leadership ladder to a flood of departures under Trump’s Republican administration that has wiped out decades of experience. Fired agents have leveled unflattering allegations of a law enforcement agency whose personnel moves are shaped by the White House and guided more by politics than by public safety.

“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the suit says. It adds that “his decision to do so degraded the country’s national security by firing three of the FBI’s most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime.”

Spokespeople for the FBI had declined to comment after the agents were ousted.

FILE – Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel speak during a news conference at the Department of Justice, May 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Concerns of reputational damage

The suit was filed in federal court in Washington, where judges and grand juries have pushed back against Trump administration initiatives and charging decisions. It names as defendants Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, as well as the FBI, the Justice Department and the Executive Office of the President.

Besides reinstatement, the suit seeks, among other remedies, the awarding of back pay, an order declaring the firings illegal and even a forum for them to clear their names. It notes that Patel, in a Fox News Channel interview two weeks after the terminations, said “every single person” found to have weaponized the FBI had been removed from leadership positions even though the suit says there’s no indication any of the three had done so.

“This false and defamatory public smear impugned the professional reputation of each of the Plaintiffs, suggesting they were something other than faithful and apolitical law enforcement officials, and has caused not only the loss of the Plaintiffs’ present government employment but further harmed their future employment prospects,” the suit states.

FILE – An FBI agent walks inside the front entrance of ex-Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s Washington office, Aug 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

Unnerving requests from leadership

The three fired officials, according to the lawsuit, had participated in and supervised some of the FBI’s most complex work, including international terrorism investigations.

“They were pinnacles of what the rank-and-file aspired to, and now the FBI has been deprived not only of that example but has been deprived of very important operational competence,” said Chris Mattei, one of the agents’ lawyers. “Their firing from the FBI, taken together, has put every American at greater risk than when Brian Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans were in positions of leadership.”

Another of their attorneys, Abbe Lowell, said the lawsuit shows FBI leadership is “carrying out political orders to punish law enforcement agents for doing their jobs.”

Perhaps the most prominent of the plaintiffs is Driscoll, a former commander of the FBI’s specialized hostage rescue team who served as acting director between when then-Director Christopher Wray resigned in January and Patel was confirmed in February.

In that job, he had a well-publicized standoff in the first days of the Trump administration with a senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove, over Bove’s demand for a list of agents who worked on the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Driscoll resisted the order in a dispute that led Bove to accuse him of “insubordination.”

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Driscoll survived the dispute and took another high-profile position overseeing the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG, which deploys to crises. But new problems arose last month, the complaint says, when an FBI pilot whose duties including flying the bureau’s private jet was falsely identified on social media as having been a case agent on the investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The complaint says Driscoll was told that the pilot, Chris Meyer, could no longer fly Patel on the FBI plane. Driscoll acceded to the request but refused to strip Meyer entirely of his pilot duties and balked when told of Trump administration desires to fire him.

The lawsuit recounts a conversation from early August in which Driscoll told Patel that it would be illegal to fire someone based on case assignments. Patel, according to the suit, said he understood the actions were “likely illegal” but that he had to fire who his superiors wanted him to “because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President.”

Meyer was later fired but is not among the plaintiffs in Wednesday’s suit.

One of the plaintiffs, Jensen, was picked by Patel to run the bureau’s Washington field office despite a backlash from Trump loyalists about his earlier leadership role coordinating investigations into the Capitol riot. The suit says that even as Jensen was publicly defended by FBI leadership, he was told by Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino that they were spending “a lot of political capital” to keep him in the position.

In May, according to the complaint, Bongino told him he would have to fire an agent assigned to his office who’d worked on Trump-related cases but also investigations into officials of both major political parties. That agent, Walter Giardina, was also among the five who were fired.

Another plaintiff, Evans, says he was targeted for retribution over his leadership role in the FBI’s Human Resources Division during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made him responsible for reviewing accommodation requests from employees seeking exemption from vaccine requirements.

That position exposed Evans to a barrage of criticism from a former agent who the lawsuit says regularly aired his grievances against Evans on social media and maintained access to Patel.

Evans was among senior executives told in late January to either retire or be fired, but he was given a reprieve and permitted to remain in his job as leader of the Las Vegas field office. Despite being reassured that he had the support of Patel and Bongino, he was told in May that he would have to leave his position.

On Aug. 6, the lawsuit says, Evans was packing for a new FBI assignment in Huntsville, Alabama, when he was notified that he had been fired. The stated cause was a “lack of reasonableness and overzealousness” in implementing COVID-19 protocols, though the suit says he has no recollection of having ever denied a request for a vaccination exemption.