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KYIV, Ukraine -- KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Attention. Air raid alert, the voice says with a Jedi knights gravitas. Proceed to the nearest shelter.

It's a surreal moment in an already surreal war: the grave but calming baritone of actor Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker of Star Wars, urging people to take cover whenever Russia unleashes another aerial bombardment on Ukraine.

The intrusion of Hollywood science-fiction fantasy into the grim daily realities of war in Ukraine is a consequence of Hamill's decision to lend his famous voice to Air Alert a downloadable app linked to Ukraine's air defense system. When air raid sirens start howling, the app also warns Ukrainians that Russian missiles, bombs and deadly exploding drones may be incoming.

Dont be careless," Hamills voice advises. Your overconfidence is your weakness.

The actor says he's admired from afar, in California how Ukraine has "shown such resilience ... under such terrible circumstances." Its fight against the Russian invasion, now in its second year, reminds him of the Star Wars saga, he says of plucky rebels battling and ultimately defeating a vast, murderous empire. Voicing over the English-language version of the air-raid app and giving it his Star Wars touch was his way of helping out.

A fairy tale about good versus evil is resonant with whats going on in Ukraine, Hamill said in an interview with The Associated Press. The Ukrainian people rallying to the cause and responding so heroically ... Its impossible not to be inspired by how theyve weathered this storm."

When the dangers from the skies pass, Hamill announces via the app that the air alert is over." He then signs off with an uplifting: "May the Force be with you.

Hamill is also raising funds to buy reconnaissance drones for Ukrainian forces on the front lines. He autographed Star Wars-themed posters that are being raffled off.

Here I sit in the comfort of my own home when in Ukraine there are power outages and food shortages and people are really suffering," he said. It motivates me to do as much as I can.

Although the app also has a Ukrainian-language setting, voiced by a woman, some Ukrainians prefer to have Hamill breaking the bad news that yet another Russian bombardment might be imminent.

On the worst days, sirens and the app sound every few hours, day and night. Some turn out to be false alarms. But many others are real and often deadly.

Bohdan Zvonyk, a 24-year-old app user who lives in the repeatedly struck western city of Lviv, says he chose Hamill's voiceover rather than the Ukrainian setting because he is trying to improve his English. He's a Star Wars fan, too.

Besides," he said, we could use a little bit of the power that Hamill wishes us.

After one alert, Zvonyk was riding a trolley bus when Hamill's voice rang out from his phone. He said the man in front turned to me and said, smiling: Oh, those damn Sith,'" to describe Russian forces. The Sith are the malevolent enemies of the do-gooding Jedi.

Olena Yeremina, a 38-year-old business manager in the capital, Kyiv, said Hamill's May the Force be with you" signoff at first made her laugh. Now its enduring humor gives her strength.

Its a very cool phrase for this situation, she said. I wouldnt say that I feel like a Ukrainian Jedi, but sometimes this phrase reminds me to straighten my shoulders and keep working.

Sometimes it can be wise to shut Hamill off. Yeremina forgot to do that on a trip outside Ukraine to Berlin and paid for the error when the alarm started shrieking at 6 a.m. and, again, when she rode the subway in the German capital. She wasn't alone. Another person in the subway car also had the app and it erupted, too. The two of them first cursed, but then it made both me and that person smile, Yeremina recalled.

Ajax Systems, a Ukrainian security systems manufacturer that co-developed the app, hopes Hamill's star power will encourage people outside Ukraine to download it so they get a taste of the angst heaped on Ukrainians by nerve-shredding alarms and airborne death and destruction.

With Mark's approach, it wont be so terrifying," said Valentine Hrytsenko, the chief marketing officer at Ajax. But they will understand somehow the context.

In the invasion's first year, air-raid alarms sounded more than 19,000 times across the country, so of course people are getting tired, he said. The app has been downloaded more than 14 million times. Hrytsenko is among those who use its English-language setting to hear Hamills voice.

For Star Wars fans, it sounds really fantastic," he said. Its kind of a Ukrainian mentality to find some humor even in the bad situation or to try to be positive.

Hamill is pleased that the sci-fi saga is again transporting people, even if just temporarily, to its galaxy far, far away.

It does inspire people, he said. Everyone flashes back to being 6 years old again. And if the movie can help people get through hard times, so much the better.

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Follow APs coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine and https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-a-year-of-war

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Feel the Force: Hamill carries 'Star Wars' voice to Ukraine - ABC News

Russia

The Russian president has managed to rally people around the flag with talk of a fight for national survival

Tue 28 Mar 2023 05.44 EDT

One evening in late December, as Muscovites strolled along their citys brightly lit streets in anticipation of the end-of-year celebrations, a group of old friends gathered for dinner at the flat of a senior state official.

Some of the guests present, which included members of Russias cultural and political elite, toasted a new year in which they expressed hope for peace and a return to normality.

As the night went on, a man who needed little introduction stood up for a toast, holding his glass.

I am guessing you are expecting me to say something, said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putins longtime spokesperson, according to one of the two people who separately recounted the evening to the Guardian under conditions of anonymity.

Things will get much harder. This will take a very, very long time, Peskov continued.

His toast darkened the mood of the evening among the guests, many of whom have said in private that they oppose the war in Ukraine. It was uncomfortable to hear his speech. It was clear that he was warning that the war will stay with us and we should prepare for the long haul, one guest said.

More than a year into an invasion that, according to Russian planning, was supposed to take weeks, Vladimir Putins government is putting society on a war footing with the west and digging in for a multi-year conflict.

Speaking at length to workers at an aviation factory in the Buryatia region recently, Putin once again cast the war as an existential battle for Russias survival.

For us, this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children, the president said.

It followed a pattern of recent speeches, said the political analyst Maxim Trudolyubov, in which the Russian leader has increasingly shifted towards discussing what observers have called a forever war with the west.

Putin has practically stopped talking about any concrete aims of the war. He proposes no vision of what a future victory might look like either. The war has no clearcut beginning nor a foreseeable end, Trudolyubov said.

During Putins closely watched state of the nation speech last month, the Russian leader repeated some of the many grievances he holds against the west, stressing that Moscow was fighting for national survival and would ultimately win.

The thinly veiled message to the people, Trudolyubov said, was that the war in Ukraine would not be ending anytime soon and that Russians must learn to live with it.

Western officials have described listening to Putins combative speech in February with dismay, seeing it as the Russian leader doubling down on his war and leaving little room for retreat.

One western diplomat in Moscow described Putins message in the speech as preparing the Russian public for war that never ends.

The diplomat also said it was not clear that Putin could accept a defeat in the conflict because it did not seem that Putin understands how to lose.

The person said Putin did not appear to be reconsidering the conflict despite the heavy losses and setbacks of the last year. The diplomat noted that the Russian president was a former KGB operative and said they are trained to always continue to pursue their objectives, rather than reassessing the goals in the first place.

Others have noted that the Russian leader, who, according to western intelligence, is personally making operational and tactical decisions in Ukraine, has stopped discussing the situation on the front in Ukraine in his public comments.

According to a study of the presidents speeches by the Russian news outlet Verstka, Putin last mentioned the fighting in Ukraine on 15 January, saying that the dynamics of his army were positive.

These omissions reflect the Kremlins uneasy acceptance that it is unable to change the course of the war on the battlefield, argued Vladimir Gelman, a Russian politics professor at the University of Helsinki.

It is easier not to talk about the war efforts when your army is making no progress, Gelman added. But scaling back is not an option for Putin; that would mean admitting defeat.

Russias leadership initially expected the conflict would last just a matter of weeks before they declared victory, according to plans captured by western intelligence at the beginning of the war.

Over the winter, western military analysts and Ukrainian officials repeatedly warned that Russia, after drafting 300,000 men last autumn, would mount a major new attack.

But Moscows offensive across a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine, which started in February, has brought the country minimal gains at staggering costs. Western officials have estimated that there have been up to 200,000 killed or injured on the Russian side.

Russia simply does not have the offensive capabilities for a major offensive, said US military expert Rob Lee.

According to Lee, less than 10% of the Russian army in Ukraine is capable of offensive operations, with the majority of its troops now conscripts with limited training.

Their forces can slowly achieve a few grinding attritional victories but do not have the capacity to punch through Ukrainian defensive lines in a way that would change the course of the war.

To boost the militarys long-term prospects, Russias defence minister Sergei Shoigu has proposed increasing the armed forces from 1.15 million combat personnel to 1.5 million.

We see that Russias military is preparing for a long war. Putin is banking that his countrys resources will trump Ukraines as the west gets tired of helping Kyiv, Lee said.

Despite the setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Kremlin has weathered any potential backlash against the war at home, crushing the remnants of Russias civil society and remaking the face of the country in the process.

Many in the country have now fully accepted that this war will not go away and believe that they need to learn to live under the reality, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has studied public attitudes towards the war since its beginning.

Kolesnikov said that the populations ability and willingness to adapt to the new reality has turned out to be much stronger than many observers expected.

When Putin ordered a draft of 300,000 reservists in September, sociologists noticed a record uptick in fear and anxiety, with men concerned about going to fight and mothers and wives worried about their husbands, fathers and sons.

Yet within several months, the dread decreased, according to Kolesnikov.

The propaganda campaign has been successful despite the initial hesitance of the people, said a source close to the Kremlins media managers, referring to the early anti-war protests, which led to more than 15,000 arrests across the country in the first weeks after the invasion.

The government has managed to rally people around the flag. The way the conflict was framed helped people to accept it, the source added.

The full power of the state has been deployed to spread and enforce the message that the war is necessary for Russias very identity and survival.

National television has turned from airing light entertainment to broadcasting aggressive political talkshows.

Meanwhile, schools have been instructed to add basic military training and patriotic lessons that aim to justify the war in Ukraine. State rhetoric, including calls by Putin to get rid of scum and traitors, have led to a wave of denunciations by ordinary Russians of their colleagues and even friends.

The country has gone mad, said Aleksei, a former history teacher at an elite boarding school outside Moscow who recently quit after a disagreement with management over the new patriotic curriculum. I had to stop talking to colleagues and friends. We are living in different realities, he said.

But while hundreds of thousands of Russians have been silenced or fled the country, a vocal group of war supporters have embraced the countrys new direction.

They too have noted the growing costs of the conflict, but are calling for greater public buy-in while increasingly portraying the war as a global battle with Europe and the US.

At a Moscow launch event in mid-March for the International Movement of Russophiles, a group backed by Russias foreign ministry and heavily populated with fringe European activists and conspiracy theorists, the message was dire.

We are not just seeing neo-Nazism, we are seeing direct nazism, which is covering more and more European countries, said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a speech.

Konstantin Malofeev, a conservative oligarch who was sanctioned by the US in 2014 for threatening Ukraine and providing financial support to the Donetsk separatist region, said: We have not seen such hatred since after Russian soldiers ended the war with the victory in Berlin. We stopped that war and now we, the victors, are once again facing the fact that it has risen up from hell against us.

Yet there were few direct allusions to the situation on the front in Ukraine, and on the sidelines of the conference, some spoke about Russias difficult progress and the costs of the war.

Not everyone in this country yet understands what were going to have to pay to win this war, said Alexander Dugin, a radical Russian philosopher and prominent supporter of the war. People in our country have to pay for their love for Russia with their lives. Its serious and we werent ready for this.

Dugins daughter, Darya Dugina, was killed last year in a car bombing that may have targeted him. Putin has spoken several times about the attack on Dugina and her name was written on a briefing paper held by Putin during a recent security council meeting, video uploaded by the Kremlin showed.

I dont think people in this country fully understand what is happening after a year, Dugin added.

Of course theres full support from the president but it hasnt fully come into the hearts and souls of all our people some people have woken up, some people have not. Despite the year of war, it is going very slowly.

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Putin prepares Russia for forever war with west as Ukraine invasion stalls - The Guardian

The new information highlights how Russia continues to rely on China for help propping up its war effort in Ukraine despite western pressure on Beijing to scale back its support for Moscow. | Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

A Russian body armor manufacturer is importing Chinese components for its vests some of which are being used on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to trade data, photographs and Ukrainians who say theyve recovered the vests from the front lines.

In 2022, multiple Chinese companies, including one linked to the government in Beijing, sent parts for body armor manufacturing to Klass, a Russian manufacturer of body armor with ties to the countrys national guard and law enforcement, according to customs and trade data obtained by POLITICO from Import Genius, a customs data aggregator.

Armored vests produced by the company are being used by Russian troops in Ukraine, according to photos and videos posted online, and Ukrainians who are selling the vests on eBay say they took them from the battlefield.

While its unclear if the Russian militarys use of the Klass vests is widespread, it is the first confirmation that Chinese-made protective equipment is being used by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

The new information highlights how Russia continues to rely on China for help propping up its war effort in Ukraine despite western pressure on Beijing to scale back its support for Moscow.

The revelation also raises questions about how the U.S. plans to address with Beijing the issue of dual-use items commercial equipment that can also be used for military purposes.

The administration has likely seen a lot of things in the record that are discomforting. But they could say well, it is not a surface-air missile system so maybe well just kind of look the other way on this, said Ivan Kanapathy, the former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council. The line is fuzzy by design. And the assessment is being influenced by the U.S.-China relationship, perhaps naively hoping that China isnt already in the Russia camp, Kanapathy said.

The Biden administration has so far been hyper-focused on preventing Beijing from sending large amounts of weapons to Moscow weapons that could significantly alter the course of the fighting on the ground.

But a pattern may be emerging that suggests the administration needs to look more closely at dual-use items. This month, POLITICO reported that Chinese companies linked to the Beijing government were sending commercial assault rifles, drone parts and body armor to Russian entities. The drones have for months been seen on the battlefield.

The Treasury Department declined to comment. NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the U.S. has imposed extensive sanctions and export controls against companies that have enabled Russias war in Ukraine. We will continue to take action against companies that provide support to Russias war effort, Watson said.

POLITICO reviewed dozens of photos on social media sites and Google as well as several videos published on the Russian site VKontakte of Klass body armor parts. The videos, including one published in November 2022, specifically provide a glimpse into the manufacturing process of the Klass body armor.

Antifragmentation suits, bulletproof vests and textiles and stacks of specialized fibers appear in the clips. The photos, some of which were published on eBay, show the fully constructed Klass vests being sold by Ukrainians who say they captured them on the battlefield in the last year.

It was not clear when those Klass vests were manufactured, or if they included Chinese components, but the import data shows that its likely they did.

Klass, based in Moscow, imported parts for the manufacturing of its armored vests from China multiple times in 2022, including in November and December from several Chinese companies, according to the trade and customs data. Those parts included aramid fibers the same kind of fibers found in Kevlar vests.

The Russian distributor has a long-standing business relationship with Russias national guard, the ministry of internal affairs, the federal penitentiary services and other state military units, the data shows. In a press release posted on its website, Klass said it presented its body armor products to the leaders of the ministry of internal affairs in November 2022.

The Chinese companies that shipped the products include Yantai Tayho Advanced Materials Ltd, a producer of specialized fiber, and Beijing Tongyizhong New Material Technology Corp, a seller of polyethylene fiber products, a subsidiary of one of Beijings state-owned investment holding corporations.

Neither Klass nor the two Chinese companies responded to a request to comment.

Klass body armor products have previously been recovered from the battlefield in Ukraine before Russias invasion in 2022, said Lynn Hughes, an analyst on the research team at Import Genius who first identified the body armor components being shipped from China. The Ukrainian army picked up a Russian ballistic vest manufactured by Klass in 2019, according to a report from Conflict Armament Research published that same year.

Ukrainians who captured the Klass body armor on the battlefield in 2022 are now trying to sell them for money. POLITICO contacted several sellers on eBay all of whom said they had either served in Ukraine or knew someone who did and that they had taken the Russian vests directly from the battlefield.

This bulletproof vest was used in the Russian army and was obtained by the Ukrainian military during the counter offensive in the Kharkiv region, said one of the sellers, who was granted anonymity for security reasons. During the liberation of the city of Izyum in one of the houses where the [Russians] temporarily lived, they ran away so quickly that they abandoned their things.

U.S. officials have said they arent overly concerned about these dual-use items showing up on the battlefield, as Russia has long imported this kind of technology from China.

In response to a question about POLITICOs initial report March 16 about Chinese companies sending assault rifles, drone parts and body armor to Russia, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby described the relationship between the Chinese and Russian entities as long standing. He said the U.S. had not seen evidence that suggested the items had ended up on the battlefield.

We dont want anyone to do anything that will help them kill more Ukrainians, period, Kirby added.

But some of the dual-use items are being used in fighting in Ukraine and not all of the contracts are longstanding, according to the data.

The 1,000 assault rifles the Chinese state-backed defense contractor sent Russia in the summer of 2022 marked the first time Chinas North Industries Group Corporation sent the distributor a large shipment of weapons. The last time it sent the Russian distributor Tekhkrim rifles was in 2018, and it sent only two of them, according to an analysis of historical trade data by C4ADS, a research organization based in Washington.

C4ADS has also studied the use of Chinese drones by Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine. The drones have been widely reported and photographed as being deployed by Moscow during the war. The U.S. sanctioned one of the main Chinese suppliers of those drones last year.

The administration continues to downplay it because theyve drawn a red line. Declaring that China has crossed that line is irreversible and necessitates a strong U.S. response. But not declaring it gives China wiggle room, Kanapathy said. Xi Jinping is getting that sense, having pushed it little by little. And if the U.S. continues to say, no, we havent seen a violation, then what is Chinas takeaway?

The Chinese embassy declined to comment.

The Biden administration must decide which exports pose the biggest risk and then whether to penalize individual sellers or take broader action against the Chinese government, a move that would carry broader economic consequences and almost certainly invite retaliation from Beijing.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Commerce Department has imposed export restrictions on hundreds of products that contain American-made components or technology and could be used to support the Russian military. It has also added a long list of companies, including several based in China, to a trade blacklist as punishment for shipping controlled goods to Russia.

And the Biden administration has sought to expand its crackdown on Russias access to technologies with U.S. components that can be used for military and commercial purposes since the war entered its second year. In February, the Commerce Department issued new restrictions on a range of products, including toasters and coffee makers, in a bid to further strangle the Kremlins supply of semiconductors.

But the products listed in the Import Genius data likely do not contain U.S. materials, making it difficult for the administration to directly stop their shipment to Moscow. The Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on some Chinese companies that have supported Russias efforts in Ukraine, but it is not clear they are eyeing the businesses included in this report.

The Commerce Department declined to say whether its officials were aware that Chinese-made body armor has been used in Ukraine or have any immediate plans to target the companies involved in their sale.

We continually review reports of Russian military equipment used in Ukraine to assess whether there are actions we and our allies can take to impair Russias ability to produce or acquire such equipment, said Commerce Department spokesperson Jessica Stallone. We will not hesitate to use all the tools at our disposal to obstruct the efforts of those who seek to support Putins war machine.

William Reinsch, a former undersecretary of Commerce for export administration during the Clinton administration, argues its impossible for the U.S. to completely cut Moscow off from many exports. Not only are some foreign-made products beyond the governments reach, but the sale of illicit goods will always be lucrative enough to attract bad actors, said Reinsch, who is now at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

If your policy is zero leakage, he said, then youre doomed and youre going to fail and youre going to spend a lot of money trying to stop things that you wont be able to stop.

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Russian body armor on the battlefield in Ukraine has links to China - POLITICO

The WHO Country Office in Ukraine, with support from the European Union (EU) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has donated an additional 33 ambulances to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to enable the provision of emergency medical care to patients during the war.

The handover of ambulances took place on 27March in Lviv, western Ukraine, at a ceremony held jointly with the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, EU Humanitarian Aid and USAID. Participants included DrViktor Liashko, Minister of Health of Ukraine, DrJarno Habicht, WHO Representative in Ukraine, MrMaciej Popowski, Director General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, and MsTatiana Rastrigina, Senior Project Management Specialist at the USAID/Ukraine Health Office.

The donation includes 20 ambulances equipped with a stretcher and first aid equipment that are intended for the transportation of non-critical patients. A further 13 ambulances equipped withpatient ventilators, oxygen supply, medication bags and other equipment will allow the transportation of seriously injured patients to health facilities.

The ambulances will be distributed to hospitals and emergency medical centres throughout the entire country, with a particular focus on the eastern part of Ukraine.

The purpose of this donation is to further enhance the timeliness and quality of health services provided by national emergency medical services. This further strengthens the capacity of Ukraines health system to lead the activation and coordination of this response in the immediate aftermath of any emergency, explained DrHabicht during the ceremony.

The availability of ambulances is a priority to reduce mortality from emergency situations and mass casualty events. By providing these emergency vehicles, we pursue the goal of ensuring adequate conditions to provide urgent medical care and to further improve emergency response practices in Ukraine, he added.

Since 24February2022, a total of 56 ambulances have been donated to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine by WHO and its partners.

DrLiashko expressed, I want to thank our partners for their strong support. Despite all the odds, we work together to provide Ukrainians with high-quality, affordable and free medical help. Soon, we will send 33 ambulances to the regions where they are needed and will help our brave medics to save people's lives.

MrJanez Lenari, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, said, It is one of our top priorities to support the Ukrainian health-care system, which has come under extreme pressure since the start of the war. We are working with partners like WHO to ensure that medical professionals have the means and equipment to reach people in urgent need of medical assistance. These ambulances will save lives across the country, including in hard-to-reach areas.

USAID/Ukraine Mission Director MrJames Hope noted, These ambulances, co-funded by the United States and the European Union, will help Ukraines emergency workers respond to crises on the ground. It is just one example of how USAID assistance helps Ukraine meet urgent needs created by the war. We will continue partnering with the European Union, WHO and other partners to provide Ukraine with lifesaving support.

WHO has delivered more than 3000 metric tonnes of lifesaving medical supplies to Ukraine since the war began, including in hard-to-reach areas close to the front line. Deliveries have included power generators, ambulances, oxygen supplies for medical facilities, supplies for trauma and emergency surgeries, and medicines to help treat noncommunicable diseases and more.

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With EU and USAID support, WHO donates more ambulances to ... - World Health Organization

LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Britain and Poland will build two temporary villages in western and central Ukraine to provide housing for those forced from their homes by Russia's invasion, London said on Tuesday, pledging 10 million pounds ($12.3 million) in funding.

Almost 118,000 Ukrainians have been hosted by British families as part of the government's response to Russia's February 2022 invasion, but some are finding it increasingly difficult to get permanent housing.

Britain's government said the villages in Lviv in western Ukraine and Poltava in central Ukraine would be able to house more than 700 people, a fraction of the millions either displaced in Ukraine or who have fled the country.

"For the past year, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has continued to target civilian homes and infrastructure, with the Ukrainian people paying a heavy price," British foreign minister James Cleverly said in a statement.

"This new UK-Poland partnership will help bring light, heat and homes to those most in need."

($1 = 0.8149 pounds)

Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Kylie MacLellan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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UK, Poland to build new temporary villages in Ukraine - Reuters