RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s federal police detained a Spanish citizen in Sao Paulo’s international Guarulhos airport for racism on Wednesday, the latest in a series of high-profile arrests of foreign tourists on similar grounds.
Brazil, which has grappled with its legacy of slavery, has some of the strictest anti-racism laws in Latin America, with protections enshrined in the 1988 constitution. Insulting a person on the basis of race carries a penalty of imprisonment from 2 to 5 years and a fine.
The crew of a LATAM airlines flight arriving from the northeastern city of Sao Luis called police, who arrested the Spanish national as she disembarked, after she allegedly made racially abusive remarks directed at the workers who unload the aircraft’s baggage, police said in a statement.
The airline company said that there was no justification for the aggression directed at its employees and condemned all forms of racism and discrimination.
In January, police arrested Argentine citizen Agostina Páez in Rio after being filmed mimicking a monkey toward a waiter at a nightclub. Video footage of the incident went viral.
Initially barred from leaving Brazil, Páez eventually returned to Argentina in April where images showed her meeting with Sen. Patricia Bullrich, a close ally of Argentina’s President, Javier Milei. Both celebrated her return to Argentina. Legal proceedings are still ongoing.
Police arrested another Argentine, Eduardo Ignacio Murias, in Minas Gerais in May, after he allegedly photographed and filmed a young child without authorization and shared the images accompanied by racist messages in Spanish. Local news outlet G1 reported on June 17 that a court indicted Murias, who remains in pretrial detention.
Police also arrested a Chilean citizen in May for racial and homophobic slurs against crew members of a flight between Guarulhos and Frankfurt, according to a May 15 statement. The suspect tried to open the aircraft door during the flight and, when restrained by the crew, uttered racial and homophobic slurs against the professionals, the statement said.
Brazil kidnapped more Africans for forced labor than any other nation and was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.
But South America's biggest country also has a history of laws against racism due to pressure from movements for racial equality.
“Social movements played a very important role in ensuring that the Black population was recognized in the 1988 constitution,” which outlaws racism, said Irapuã Santana, a lawyer specializing in anti-racism and a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think-tank and university.
In January 2023, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned a law which equated racial insults to the crime of racism, a move which strengthened judicial tools for combating racism.
Cases of racism in Brazil have been attracting more visibility as people become more aware of the laws and see that it is possible to get a response from the state, said Santana.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
FILE - This photo shows a view of the new terminal 3 at the Sao Paulo International airport in Guarulhos, Brazil, May 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in their latest nighttime attacks on Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday.
The operation was part of Ukraine’s aerial campaign targeting energy facilities and military industries that has intensified as Kyiv builds bigger and better long-range weapons to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fifth year.
In response, Moscow has ordered the redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The bridge connects the Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland.
“It is important that as many Russians as possible come to understand that it is the Russian leadership’s rejection of diplomacy that is prolonging the war,” Zelenskyy said on X.
Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused.
In northern Ukraine, meanwhile, military officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for communities and settlements in the Chernihiv region bordering Belarus starting July 1, according to Viacheslav Chaus, the head of regional military administration, in a statement on his Telegram channel.
Last month, Zelenskyy said his intelligence services had learned Moscow recently stepped up efforts to “draw Belarus much deeper into the war" and launch operations from Belarusian territory. He said he ordered the military and security agencies to prepare a response and strengthen northern defenses. Belarus and Russia denied Zelenskyy's claim.
The overnight attack hit the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, which is part of a complex that also houses the only helium plant in Russia, the General Staff said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. The attack set the complex on fire, it said.
Orenburg, in the southern Urals near Russia's border with Kazakhstan, is more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) behind the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The plant is one of the largest gas complexes in the world, according to the General Staff. It produces helium, used in liquid-fuel rocket engines and guidance systems, and ethane, a key component in producing solid rocket fuel and gunpowder, it added.
Overnight attacks also hit two satellite communication centers used by the Russian military, according to the General Staff.
One was the Dubna Space Communications Center near Moscow, which it described as Russia's largest ground-based satellite communications complex, and the other was in the Vladimir region east of the capital.
It was not possible to independently verify the General Staff’s report, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.
The General Staff's statement did not say whether the military used drones or missiles in the assault, but drones have recently been used to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Ukraine has recently focused its drone and missile attacks on Crimea, aiming to cut off the vital Russian-held peninsula, and overnight drone strikes knocked out power in Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the city’s Moscow-installed governor, said Wednesday.
Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, sits in a strategic location on the Black Sea. It has naval bases and also provides an important supply line to Moscow's forces inside Ukraine.
Ukraine recently destroyed more than 60,000 tons of Russian ammunition when it hit a Baltic Fleet arsenal near St. Petersburg, Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine is trying to disrupt military supply lines in Crimea and strike the peninsula’s power grid at the height of the summer tourist season. Kyiv hopes the campaign will embarrass Putin and increase public pressure on him to end the war, according to Western analysts.
Ukraine’s Security Service said Wednesday it struck two military airfields and destroyed missile systems in Crimea.
Two staff members of Norwegian People’s Aid were killed during a Russian attack in Ukraine, the demining organization said Wednesday, although local officials said only one person was killed.
Four other workers with the organization were injured, two of them critically, according to the head of the southern Kherson region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Russian forces shot down 323 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.
Two people were killed and two others wounded overnight in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, regional Gov. Gleb Nikitin said. Also, a Ukrainian drone strike killed one person overnight in Russia’s Belgorod border region bordering Ukraine, local officials said.
Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, said Russia launched 101 long-range attack drones overnight.
Russian drones attacked the city of Balakliia in northeastern Ukraine, killing a 56-year-old woman, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration. Also, a 57-year-old streetcar driver man died as a result of a Russian guided aerial bomb that hit the outskirts of Sumy, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the regional military administration.
In addition, the death toll rose to four from Tuesday's ballistic missile strike using cluster munitions on Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s hometown, after a 62-year-old woman died from her injuries, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, said.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have deployed the controversial munitions during the war.
Elise Morton in London contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin in the cockpit of the new Yakovlev MC-21-300 medium-haul passenger aircraft during a visit to the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Yuri Kochetkov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin sits in the cockpit of the Superjet 100 (SJ-100) short-haul jet aircraft during a visit to the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire after Russia's air attack in Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a fire rages in a multistory building after Russia's air attack in Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
An owner rummages through the ashes on the site of the ruined city marketplace after Russian recent missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 24, 2026.(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Commander of the Presidential Regiment Maj. Gen. Mikhail Suraikin, right, attend a ceremony to present the Order of Zhukov to the Presidential Regiment of the Russian Federal Guard Service at the Kremlin's St. George Hall in Moscow, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to present the Order of Zhukov to the Presidential Regiment of the Russian Federal Guard Service at the Kremlin's St. George Hall in Moscow, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to present the Order of Zhukov to the Presidential Regiment of the Russian Federal Guard Service at the Kremlin's St. George Hall in Moscow, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
People buy food at an improvised outdoor market surrounded by damaged buildings covered with street artist paintings close to a big city marketplace that was ruined recently by Russian missiles in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
