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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Armored vehicles rammed the doors of Bolivia’s government palace Wednesday in an apparent coup attempt against President Luis Arce, but he vowed to stand firm and named a new army commander who ordered troops to stand down.

The soldiers later pulled back as supporters of Arce waved Bolivian flags and cheered in a central square.

In a video of Arce surrounded by ministers in the palace, the Bolivian leader said: “Here we are, firm in Casa Grande, to confront any coup attempt. We need the Bolivian people to organize.”

Military Police gather outside the main entrance as an armored vehicle rams into the door of the presidential palace in Plaza Murillo in La Paz, Bolivia, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Arce confronted the general commander of the army — Juan José Zúñiga, who appeared to be leading the rebellion — in the palace hallway, as shown on video on Bolivian television. “I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination,” Arce said.

Before entering the government building, Zúñiga told journalists in the plaza: “Surely soon there will be a new Cabinet of ministers; our country, our state cannot go on like this.” But, he said, “for now” he recognizes Arce as commander in chief.

FILE – Bolivian President Luis Arce attends an Indigenous ritual before delivering his annual state of the nation address at the presidential palace in La Paz, Bolivia, Jan. 22, 2024. Armored vehicles rammed into the doors of Bolivia’s government palace Wednesday, June 26, 2024, as a top government official warned of a coup attempt. (AP Photo/Juan Karita, File)

Zúñiga did not explicitly say he’s leading a coup, but in the palace, with bangs echoing behind him, he said the army was trying to “restore democracy and free our political prisoners.”

In a message on his X account, Arce called for “democracy to be respected.” It came as Bolivian television showed two tanks and a number of men in military uniform in front of the government palace.

“We cannot allow, once again, coup attempts to take the lives of Bolivians,” he said from inside the palace, surrounded by government officials, in a video message sent to news outlets.

An hour later, Arce announced new heads of the army, navy and air force amid the roar of supporters. Video showed troops setting up blockades outside the government palace.

“I order all that are mobilized to return to their units, said the newly named army chief José Wilson Sánchez. “No one wants the images we’re seeing in the streets.”

Soon after troops and armored vehicles start pulling back from Bolivia’s presidential palace.

The leadership of Bolivia’s largest labor union condemned the action and declared an indefinite strike of social and labor organizations in La Paz in defense of the government.

The incident was met with a wave of outrage by other regional leaders, including the Organization of American States; Gabriel Boric, the president of neighboring Chile; the leader of Honduras, and former Bolivian leaders.

Bolivia, a country of 12 million people, has seen intensifying protests in recent months over the economy’s precipitous decline from one of the continent’s fastest-growing two decades ago to one of its most crisis-stricken.

The country also has seen a high-profile rift at the highest levels of the governing party. Arce and his one-time ally, leftist icon and former President Evo Morales, have been battling for the future of Bolivia’s splintering Movement for Socialism, known by its Spanish acronym MAS, ahead of elections in 2025.

Two international bodies have on the same day accused Russia of carrying out war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) pretrial Chamber said on Tuesday it had issued arrest warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov for “the war crime of directing attacks at civilian objects” in Ukraine.

On the same day, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Grand Chamber said Moscow had committed human rights violations in Crimea in the decade since the beginning of its illegal occupation of the peninsula in February 2014.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for an international human rights group whose report this month outlined how Putin’s forces had employed starvation tactics during the siege of the southern city of Mariupol in 2022, told Newsweek that “food and objects indispensable to survival are being weaponized across the conflict” by Russia.

Russian president Vladimir Putin on June 20, 2024, in Moscow. On June 25, 2024, two international bodies accused Russia of human rights violations and war crimes in Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin on June 20, 2024, in Moscow. On June 25, 2024, two international bodies accused Russia of human rights violations and war crimes in Ukraine.
Getty Images

In its statement released Tuesday, ICC judges said there were grounds that the suspects were responsible for missile strikes carried out against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure “from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023.”

Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin and the Russian defense ministry for comment on the decisions by both bodies. Russia’s Security Council, which Shoigu now heads, called the ICC arrest warrants “hot air” since the court’s jurisdiction did not cover Russia and “part of the West’s hybrid war” against Russia.

The ICC report was damning in its criticism of Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of causing incidental harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects and inhumane acts.

These are violations of the Rome Statute that established the court in the Hague that relies on its 124 members to arrest anyone under a warrant.

It is the latest war crimes accusation linked to Putin and his inner circle. In March, 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the alleged abduction of children from Ukraine, a claim which Moscow has dismissed.

A Russian sapper checks a ruined building in Mariupol, in Russian-controlled Ukraine. A report in June says Russian forces employed starvation tactics in their 2022 siege of the southern port city.
A Russian sapper checks a ruined building in Mariupol, in Russian-controlled Ukraine. A report in June says Russian forces employed starvation tactics in their 2022 siege of the southern port city.
Getty Images

Siege of Mariupol

This month, the group Global Rights Compliance (GRC) released a report which it said proved that Russian forces had starved Ukrainians in the southern city of Mariupol in the siege that lasted until May 20, 2022.

Drawing on satellite imagery, pictures, videos, public statements and digital data, the group concluded that Russian forces had targeted water, food and medical supplies in a deliberate tactic of starvation before they seized the port city.

It found that 450,000 civilians were targeted with all water, electricity and gas supply cut off. Ukrainians were forced to drink from puddles, radiator batteries, and melted snow, while food distribution points, medical facilities and humanitarian corridors were bombed.

“What is the most shocking is the findings showed the strategy Russian forces pursued in starving the civilian population as a means to accelerate the capitulation of Mariupol,” said Naomi Prodeau, report’s co-author and lawyer on the GRC’s starvation mobile justice team.

“Attacks on civilian populations, attacks on civilian objects, attacks on hospitals—some of those constitute attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of civilians,” she told Newsweek.

She said that such tactics were employed in other sieges by pro-Russian forces prior to Mariupol, such as in Aleppo, where Moscow intervened in the Syrian civil war, “so there were prior instances of these tactics before Mariupol.”

“There are strong indicators that Russian and pro-Russian forces employed similar siege tactics and starvation tactics in northeastern regions at approximately the same time as the siege of Mariupol,” she said. “It demonstrates that this is a tactic that is regularly employed and deployed against Ukrainian civilians.”

“Food and objects indispensable to survival are being weaponized across the conflict beyond siege tactics,” she added.

The ECHR Grand Chamber said on Tuesday that since 2014 when Putin seized Crimea, Russia had committed human rights violations on the peninsula, including the ill-treatment of Ukrainian soldiers, persons of Ukrainian ethnic origin, journalists and members of the Turkic Crimean Tatar minority.

After its full scale invasion in 2022, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe, of which the ECHR is part and its ruling was welcomed by the Ukrainian foreign ministry which called it a “crucial milestone.”

Meanwhile, the GRC is taking its evidence to the ICC Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to build a larger war crimes case against Putin.

Prodeau said that similar to genocide, the crime of starvation requires a specific intent to attack objects indispensable to civilian survival, and specific intent to starve that population, “which is a higher bar.”

“Under that standard, if Russian or pro-Russian forces knew that in the ordinary course of events, civilians would starve, that qualifies as intent,” she said. “There has never been a prosecution for the war crime of starvation before international courts,” she said, “it’s an underappreciated crime and is hard to prove.”

Correction: 6/26/24, 9 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the date of the end of the siege of Mariupol to May 20, 2022.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pardoned potentially thousands of former U.S. service members convicted of violating a now-repealed military ban on consensual gay sex, saying Wednesday that he is “righting an historic wrong” to clear the way for them to regain lost benefits.

Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts.

Those covered by the pardon will be able to apply to receive proof that their conviction has been erased, petition to have their discharges from the military upgraded and move to recover lost pay and benefits.

“Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves,” Biden said in a statement. “We have a sacred obligation to all of our service members –- including our brave LGBTQI+ service members: to properly prepare and equip them when they are sent into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families when they return home. Today we are making progress in that pursuit.”

The president’s use of his pardon powers is occurring during Pride Month and his action comes just days before he is set to hold a high-profile fundraiser with LGBTQ donors in New York on Friday. Biden is trying to rally support within the Democratic-leaning community ahead of the presidential election.

Administration officials declined to say why Biden did not act on the pardons sooner.

This is the third categorial pardon by Biden — using his clemency powers to cover a broad group of people convicted of particular crimes — after moves in 2022 and 2023 to pardon those convicted federally for possessing marijuana.

The White House estimates that several thousand service members will be covered — the majority convicted before the military instituted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 1993 that eased the way for LGBTQ troops to serve if they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation. That policy was repealed in 2011, when Congress allowed for their open service in the military.

Service members convicted of nonconsensual acts are not covered by Biden’s pardon action. And those convicted under other articles of the military justice code, which may have been used as pretext to punish or force-out LGBTQ troops, would need to request clemency through the normal Department of Justice pardon process.

Biden had previously ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to move to provide benefits to service members who were other than honorably discharged because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.