India’s Modi lands in Russia for first visit since Ukraine offensive

SEOUL: South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been arrested and suspended from duties over his declaration of martial law, was in court again Tuesday for hearings that will decide whether to officially remove him from office.
The former prosecutor plunged democratic South Korea into political turmoil when he declared martial law on December 3, suspending civilian rule and sending soldiers to parliament.
His attempt to impose martial law only lasted around six hours as the opposition-led parliament defied troops to vote it down, and later impeached him over the move.
As part of a separate criminal probe, Yoon was detained in mid-January on insurrection charges, becoming the first sitting South Korean head of state to be arrested.
He is being held in detention but has been attending hearings at the Constitutional Court, which will determine whether his impeachment is upheld.
If the court upholds the impeachment, an election must be held within 60 days to elect a new president.
Yoon suggested at the hearing that even if he had ordered the arrest of MPs to prevent them from voting down his decree, it would not legally matter because it had not been carried out.
“Debating whether I had given the (arrest) order or not when nothing had happened felt like chasing the shadow of the moon on the river,” he said.
At previous hearings, Yoon denied instructing top military commanders to “drag out” lawmakers from parliament, a claim refuted by opposition MPs.
He has argued that he did not believe the short-lived martial law was a “failed martial law,” but rather one that “ended a bit sooner” than he expected.
During Tuesday’s hearing, two former military commanders and an ex-spy agency official testified as witnesses.
Hong Jang-won, a former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, testified before lawmakers earlier that he had been ordered to arrest politicians — a claim that contradicts Yoon’s denial of such an order.
Yoon, 64, was indicted in January, with prosecutors accusing him of being a “ringleader of the insurrection.”
He faces a separate criminal trial on those charges. Insurrection is not covered by presidential immunity.
If convicted, he faces jail time or the death penalty.
Yoon’s lawyers on Tuesday filed a motion to a court to cancel his detention, they told AFP, saying they had made the move “in consideration of illegality of probe” into his alleged crime.
The Seoul Central District Court, which is handling Yoon’s case, is expected to review the motion in coming days.
Yoon has been in detention since his January 15 arrest.

GOMA, DR Congo: Rwandan-backed armed group M23 announced a humanitarian “ceasefire” from Tuesday in DR Congo’s perennially explosive east, days before a planned crisis meeting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Last week, the M23 and Rwandan troops seized Goma – the provincial capital of North Kivu, a mineral-rich region that has been blighted by war for over three decades.
Fighting has stopped in the city of more than a million but clashes have spread to the neighboring province of South Kivu, raising fears of an M23 advance to its capital Bukavu.
A political-military coalition of groups called the Alliance Fleuve Congo (River Congo Alliance), of which M23 is a member, said in a statement late Monday that it would implement “a ceasefire” from the next day “for humanitarian reasons.”
It added that it had “no intention of taking control of Bukavu or other localities,” despite the M23 having said last week that it wanted to “continue the march” to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.
In more than three years of fighting, half a dozen ceasefires and truces have been declared, before being systematically broken.
The Kenyan presidency announced on Monday that Tshisekedi and Kagame would attend a joint extraordinary summit of the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam on Saturday.
Amid fears of a regional conflagration, the 16 member countries of the southern African regional organization had called on Friday for “a joint summit” with the eight countries of the East African Community, of which Rwanda is a member.
According to a local source in Bukavu interviewed by AFP, the city “remains calm for the moment” but information suggests the M23 was “reorganizing itself with troop reinforcements and weapons to go to the front now that fighting has ceased in Goma.”
In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed on Monday to continue providing support to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the face of nationwide calls to withdraw Pretoria’s troops following the deaths of 14 South African soldiers.
Most of those killed were part of an armed force sent to the eastern DRC in 2023 by the SADC bloc.
“A ceasefire is a necessary precondition for peace talks that must include all parties to the conflict whether they are state or non-state actors, Congolese or non-Congolese,” Ramaphosa said.
“Diplomacy is the most sustainable pathway to achieving a lasting peace for the DRC and its people.”
Amid an ongoing war of words between Ramaphosa and Kagame, Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo reacted strongly to the South African leader’s statement.
“You are sending your troops to fight Tshisekedi’s war to kill his own people,” she said to Ramaphosa on X.
Kagame has said that South African troops have no place in eastern DRC and are a “belligerent force engaging in offensive combat operations to help the DRC government fight against its own people.”
A UN expert report said last year that Rwanda had up to 4,000 troops in the DRC, seeking to profit from the mining of minerals – and that Kigali has “de facto” control over the M23.
Eastern DRC has deposits of coltan, the metallic ore that is vital in making phones and laptops, as well as gold and other minerals.
Rwanda has never admitted to military involvement in support of the M23 group and alleges that the DRC supports and shelters the FDLR, an armed group created by ethnic Hutus who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
South Africa dominates the SADC force, which is estimated to number around 1,300 troops, but Malawi and Tanzania also contribute soldiers.
The United States announced Monday it was further reducing its staff at its embassy in Kinshasa.