Two members of the New York State National Guard were identified Friday as victims in a military helicopter crash that killed three people in Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border.

John M. Grassia III, a New York State soldier, and Casey Frankoski, a National Guard helicopter pilot, were killed near La Grulla, Texas, when the helicopter crashed in a field. Chris Luna, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, also died in the crash, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

All three had been deployed along the southern U.S. border since October.

The death of Mr. Grassia, 30, was announced by the New York State Troopers Union in a social media messagestating that he had joined the force in 2022 as a state soldier. Mrs. Frankoski was mentioned in one Facebook post by the mayor of her hometown of Rensselaer, NY, where her father is a retired police chief.

Last week’s operation was said to be a “routine mission” along the U.S.-Mexico border, with Mr. Grassia, Ms. Frankoski and two others working with the Joint Task Force North, a U.S. Defense Department initiative that runs the border along the border. follows. with local and federal law enforcement.

The group “provided monitoring and detection capabilities along that portion of the border,” said Maj. Ryan Wierzbicki, a spokesman for the task force.

The helicopter was following people entering the United States illegally when it crashed, said Judge Eloy Vera, a top local official in Starr County, the site of the accident.

Army investigators arrived at the site this weekend and were tasked with combing the wreckage for the plane’s black box, a UH-72 Lakota, which was regularly used by the military on such missions as a light utility aircraft.

A third National Guardsman was seriously injured in the crash, the National Guard said.

On the front lines just outside Bakhmut, Ukraine, a 32-year-old Ukrainian artillery platoon commander rocked back and forth in the passenger seat of a beaten-up Lada while another soldier navigated the car through a dense forest, sometimes mowing. cutting down young trees. When they reached their destination, a small village less than two miles from the Russian lines, only ruined houses remained, their shattered roofs visible in the moonlight.

The commander, a female soldier who uses the call sign Witch, is a former lawyer who, along with two of her brothers and her mother, joined the army the day after Russia invaded in February 2022. Her first combat experience came in the suburbs. of Kiev that year, and much of what she has learned about weapons systems since then has been self-taught and on-the-fly.

Since the beginning of 2023, Witch has been with her platoon at the 241st Brigade in the area around Bakhmut and oversees all artillery systems. She is determined to stay in the army even when the war is over. “People who want to join the armed forces need to understand that it is a way of life,” she said.

As Ukraine struggles with intense Russian attacks and losses mount, there has been a wave of women enlisting and increasingly volunteering for combat roles. The Ukrainian military has also made a concerted effort to recruit more women to fill its ranks.

Currently, about 65,000 women serve in the Ukrainian armed forces, an increase of about 30 percent since the start of the war. About 45,000 serve as military personnel, and the rest hold civilian positions, according to the Defense Department. Just over 4,000 are in combat positions.

Unlike Ukrainian men, there is no compulsory military service for women; However, women with a medical or pharmaceutical degree must register for the service.

These women are filling a growing number of positions in the military: combat medics in assault units; senior gunners; snipers; commanders of tank units and artillery batteries; and at least one medevac team co-pilot who dreams of becoming Ukraine’s first female attack helicopter pilot. Dozens have been injured in the battle, and some have been killed or captured.

Along the front lines, they operate under the same blanket of fear and hardship as male soldiers. In the damp, fortified shelter where Witch and one of her mortar teams spent most of their days, they waited in near darkness in the basement. Switching on the lights would mean that the crew would not be able to quickly adjust their eyes to the dark if they had to go outside to shoot.

Farther north, a commander with the call sign Tesla, a former Ukrainian folk singer, sat hunched on a stool in the bare house that served as field headquarters for the 32nd Mechanized Brigade. Russian forces in the Kupiansk region rained artillery fire on Ukrainian lines.

Tesla simultaneously sent text messages and voice notes to the soldiers in her unit as she spoke to the second-in-command about the battlefield plan. Her oversized pants were rolled up, revealing neon orange socks with cartoon avocados on them.

She attempted to divert Russian fire on another battalion to her own soldiers’ position so that the other unit could evacuate a comrade who had been badly wounded. “Three tourniquets on three different limbs,” came a voice message, she said.

“Send one more,” Tesla ordered through a ballot, ordering her soldiers to fire again. “When you’re done, let me know.”

Shortly after a Russian attack began in October, overwhelming Ukrainian lines, 24 of its artillery-trained soldiers were ordered to reinforce infantry forces, which are always closest to Russian lines. Tesla talked to them before they were deployed and felt helpless.

“The worst part is that I have instructed them on completely different things in artillery, and then they are sent to the infantry,” she said. “And imagine them standing there looking at you as their commander, knowing they’re going to be sent into the worst situation.”

Of the 24 sent forward, 15 were wounded, Tesla said, and one was captured during the fighting. The incident continued to weigh on Tesla’s conscience, but she kept her concerns to herself. Her mother still did not know that Tesla led an artillery battery, thinking that her daughter worked as an instructor at an academy, a safe distance from the front.

Until 2018, women were banned from holding combat positions in the Ukrainian army, although some ignored the rules. Restrictions have been relaxed since the Russian invasion. The induction of thousands more female soldiers into the military is largely seen as a welcome step for the country, whose efforts to join NATO and the European Union are still under review.

The downside is that the military has not been able to adapt quickly enough to accommodate them. Female soldiers say there is still a dire lack of women’s clothing and boots, properly fitted body armor and feminine hygiene products. That allows women to acquire many items themselves.

As a result, organizations like Veteranka and Zemliachky have helped fill the gap by raising money for items tailor-made for women.

But the problems go deeper, into issues of gender-related inequality and discrimination.

Many women who served in combat roles said male soldiers and immediate superiors largely did not discriminate on the basis of gender – although sexual innuendos and inappropriate comments still occur.

Rather, it is senior commanders, often holdovers from the Soviet era, who look down on women in the military, especially those in combat roles. In some cases, women choose to join newly formed brigades with younger, more dynamic commanders.

“I didn’t want to join a brigade that was created many years ago because I knew they wouldn’t listen to me as a young officer and as a woman,” Tesla said.

In one case, a brigade commander was so outraged by a woman commanding an artillery battery that he directly belittled her. “You crawl back to me on your knees and beg to leave when you realize the job is too difficult, and I won’t let you leave your post,” she recalled him saying, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about to talk about a sensitive topic. .

Claims of sexual harassment have also surfaced. According to some women, there are no official channels for reporting harassment other than to battalion commanders, who must then decide whether to follow up. In some cases, female soldiers say, witnesses may refuse to testify for fear of repercussions.

These barriers, as well as the potential to harm their military careers, discourage women from reporting harassment, female soldiers said.

Diana Davitian, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the military launched a hotline Jan. 1 for soldiers to report sexual harassment. The reports would be investigated, she said, and action would be taken if the allegations were found to be true.

The ministry also said it planned to create a separate unit dedicated to ensuring gender equality and providing educational programs, including a unit focused on combating war-related sexual violence.

Back in the basement, Tesla received a call from the command post: it was time to shoot. The team scrambled into a partially covered courtyard a few yards away, where a mortar barrel lay ready.

There was silence as Kuzya, 20, a senior rifleman in the mortar platoon, looked through the scope and read the coordinates on her phone. “Firework!” someone shouted. Several more rounds were broadcast before the team scrambled back into the basement to await a possible return of the Russians.

Just months earlier, Kuzya’s friend was killed during the fighting. She and Witch, who has a seven-year-old son whom she has barely seen in the past year, seemed to find comfort in each other’s company. The two women trained at the same judo club in Kiev, the capital, and the day after the invasion they went to the recruitment office together to register.

For many women, war and the desire to go into battle feels like something they have been preparing for for years. Foxy, 24, a former barista turned gunman and medic, volunteered to make camouflage netting after school during her teenage years before working with wounded veterans. She joined the army last year after weeks of training.

Her battalion commander gave her two options: “You are a woman. You can work with documents or cook borscht,” Foxy recalls. “I had no choice but to complete the paperwork until I changed battalions.”

She subsequently became part of a mortar team in some of the most intense frontline fighting in Bakhmut, and was treated as an equal by her team. “Although I faced a certain amount of sexism early on,” she said, “I feel like I don’t have to prove anything or convince anyone of what I can do.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Kateryna, 21, a lieutenant and pilot of an Mi-8 medical evacuation helicopter. Kateryna has yet to fly her first medevac mission, but she hopes to become Ukraine’s first female fighter pilot.

Ukrainian society is also gradually overcoming its skepticism toward women serving in the military. For now, it is up to the new generation of women and their allies who will also be better able to tackle discrimination and sexual harassment.

Evelina Riabenko reporting contributed.

The United States has a history of using its military to provide food, water and other humanitarian aid to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are adorned with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.

But it is rare for the United States to try to provide such services to people bombarded with tacit American support.

President Biden’s decision to order the US military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip so that aid can be delivered by sea puts US military personnel in a new phase of their history of humanitarian assistance. The same army that sends the weapons and bombs that Israel uses in Gaza is now also sending food and water to the besieged area.

The idea of ​​a floating pier came a week after Mr Biden authorized humanitarian airborne landings on Gaza, which were criticized as inadequate by aid experts. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate suffering in the area, where residents are on the brink of starvation.

Nevertheless, senior Biden officials said, the United States will continue to supply Israel with the munitions it uses in Gaza as it tries to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians bombed there.

So the Pentagon does both.

For decades, the Army Corps of Engineers, with the help of combat engineers, has built floating docks where troops can cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Virginia, would be one of the key military units involved are involved in the construction of the floating pier for Gaza.

The dock will be built and assembled next to an army ship off the coast of Gaza, General Ryder said. The ship will need armed escorts, especially if it comes within range of the coast, Defense Ministry officials said, adding that they are working to ensure its protection.

A US military official said these operations typically involve a large ship being moored off the coast of the desired location, and a “roll-on-roll-off discharge facility” – a large floating dock – being built next to the ship to serve. as a waiting area. Cargo driven or placed on the dock is loaded onto smaller Navy boats and moved to a temporary pier or causeway anchored to shore.

The 1,800-foot-long, two-lane temporary levee is being built by Army engineers, flanked by tugboats and driven, or “stabbed,” into the shore. Cargo on board the smaller naval boats can then be driven up the dike and onto land.

General Ryder insisted Friday that the military could build the causeway and insert it into the coast without putting American boots — or fins — on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take 60 days and about 1,000 U.S. troops to move the ship into place from the east coast and build the wharf and causeway.

After the ship arrives offshore, it will take about seven to 10 days to assemble the floating dock and causeway, a Defense Department official said.

“This is part of an all-out push by the United States to focus not only on opening and expanding land roads, which is of course the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also on conducting air drops” , he said. Ryder said.

The floating pier will enable the delivery of “more than two million meals a day,” he said. The Gaza Strip has approximately 2.3 million inhabitants.

General Ryder acknowledged that neither the airborne landings nor the floating pier would be as effective as sending aid by land, which Israel has blocked. “We want to see a significant increase in the amount of aid coming through land,” General Ryder said. “We understand this is the most viable way to get help.”

But, he added, “we’re not going to wait.”

The United States will work with regional partners and European allies to build, finance and maintain the corridor, officials said, noting that the idea for the project originated in Cyprus.

On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, welcomed Biden’s announcement. But speaking to reporters after briefing the Security Council, she added: “At the same time, I cannot but repeat: air and sea are not a substitute for land, and no one is saying otherwise.”

Biden’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza so far “might make a few people in the United States feel good,” Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said in an interview. But, he added, “this is putting a very small band-aid on a very large wound.”

The humanitarian aid will likely be collected in Larnaca, Cyprus, about 130 nautical miles from Gaza, officials said. That would allow Israeli officials to first screen the shipments.

Although the temporary port will initially be operated by military personnel, Washington envisions it will eventually be operated commercially, the official said.

Officials did not elaborate on how aid delivered by sea from the coast would be transferred further into Gaza. But the help is partly distributed by the Spanish chef José Andrésfounder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which has served more than 32 million meals in Gaza.

Two diplomats briefed on the plans said the port would be built on Gaza’s coastline, just north of the Wadi Gaza border crossing, where Israeli forces have built a key checkpoint.

However, the central problems remain unresolved. Aid officials say delivering supplies by truck is much more efficient and cheaper than bringing them to Gazans by boat. But trucks are still unable to deliver goods amid Israeli shelling and ground fighting, which is fierce in southern Gaza.

And delivering aid by sea may not prevent the chaos associated with deliveries.

More than 100 people in Gaza were killed last month, health officials there said, when hungry civilians rushed a convoy of aid trucks, sparking a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire into the crowd.

The U.S. military has dropped aid in the Middle East and South Asia during previous conflicts, even during wars in which the United States was directly involved.

In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered military planes to drop food and water to tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped on an arid mountain range in northwestern Iraq. The Yazidis, members of an ethnic and religious minority, were fleeing militants who threatened genocide.

In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered British and American forces attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan to drop daily rations to civilians trapped in remote areas of the country.

Facing warnings that the war-ravaged Gaza Strip is on the brink of widespread famine, the United States on Thursday announced plans for a large-scale, amphibious military operation in the Mediterranean that would ferry food and other aid to desperate civilians in the enclave. .

U.S. officials outlined the plan, which would involve the United States more directly in providing aid, hours before President Biden was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address on Thursday evening. Details about what they described as a floating pier off the coast of Gaza would be included in the speech, the officials said.

The White House called it an “emergency mission” that would allow hundreds of truckloads of additional aid to be delivered to Gaza through the temporary port, which would be attached to some kind of temporary causeway.

Briefing reporters, officials said it could take more than 30 to 60 days to implement, and would involve hundreds or thousands of U.S. troops on ships just off the coast, in accordance with the mandate of the Mr Biden that there should be no American soldiers on the ground in Gaza as the conflict rages. The port would be built in collaboration with other countries in the region, officials said.

U.S. officials said they had “worked closely” with the Israelis in developing the seaport initiative, but they did not specify whether Israel would provide direct assistance or support for its construction or operation.

Shani Sasson, spokeswoman for COGAT, the Israeli agency that regulates aid to Palestinians in Gaza, did not respond to a request for comment. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic negotiations, said that under the latest plan, aid donated by the United Arab Emirates would be sent to Cyprus, where it would eventually be inspected and then shipped by ship to the coast of Cyprus would be transported. Gaza.

The new facility could be another way to get truckloads of aid into the region. But it would not solve a central problem of aid distribution within Gaza, as heavy fighting and Israeli bombing continue in the south, and lawlessness in the north has become so bad that aid groups are halting operations there.

So far, the United States has pressured Israel to allow more aid into Gaza through two border crossings and recently joined France and Jordan in dropping aid from planes, including 38,000 meals on Thursday.

The number of trucks entering Gaza carrying food and other aid increased in early March compared to February, according to United Nations data. But the flow is still much lower than before the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on October 7.

The new project gives Mr. Biden a concrete program to point to at a time when he is facing sharp criticism for failing to curb Israel’s attacks and for moving too slowly to address the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.

And while U.S. officials have held wide-ranging, multinational talks seeking a temporary ceasefire, hopes of an imminent ceasefire after five months of war were further dimmed Thursday when Hamas negotiators left the Cairo talks without a breakthrough.

International mediators have tried to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of some hostages in Gaza and Palestinians in Israeli prisons, but weeks of indirect negotiations appear to have stalled. Hamas wants Israel to commit to a permanent ceasefire during or after the release of hostages, a demand Israel has rejected.

The lull in the talks comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to continue his country’s offensive against Hamas, including in the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in vast makeshift tent camps after facing Israeli bombardments in other countries have fled. parts of Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged that he was facing mounting international pressure as health officials in Gaza reported that the toll in the territory had surpassed 30,000 deaths.

“Especially when international pressure is increasing, we must close ranks,” Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday. “We must unite against the attempts to stop the war.”

He added that Rafah was Hamas’s “last stronghold.”

“Anyone who tells us not to operate in Rafah is telling us to lose the war – and that won’t happen,” he said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also signaled on Thursday Israel’s willingness to continue the fight against Hamas. “Surrender or death,” he was quoted by The Times of Israel. “There is no third option.”

Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, are trying to broker a ceasefire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10, amid fears that flare-ups could occur during the fasting month.

The The United Nations has warned that more than 570,000 Gazans are facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and famine” and that northern Gaza is of particular concern.

South Africa on Wednesday asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to issue emergency orders to Israel to end what it called the “genocidal starvation” of the Palestinian people, part of a case brought by South Africa in December filed accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians. in Gaza. Israel has categorically denied the accusation.

It is unclear where the Biden administration plans to build its new floating port or pier off the coast of Gaza, although the Army Corps of Engineers has long experience in rapidly building floating facilities to accommodate U.S. military operations. Based on the description provided by White House and military officials, this ship would be built from American ships and then moved close to shore.

One of the main military units involved in the construction will be the 7th Army Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary)from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, near Norfolk, according to U.S. Defense Department officials.

The ships, large, bulky vessels, will need armed escorts, especially if they come within range of the Gaza coast, officials said. So the Department of Defense is working to ensure their protection while they build the pier. Assuring them that armed protection could last from weeks to a few months, the White House did not set a firm timeline for the construction effort.

While aid workers welcomed the US plan to deliver more goods by sea, they also warned that a maritime corridor would not be a substitute for opening more land routes for trucks.

“We support all means of getting supplies into Gaza – maritime, air drops – but the priority is road convoys,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the top UN aid official in Jerusalem, adding that it would take time to build up the maritime passage infrastructure to put. .

Reporting was contributed by Erik Schmitt, Adam Sella, Aaron Bokserman, Matthew Mpoke Bigg And Victoria Kim.