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VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV made a surprise appearance in a crowd of 120,000 young Catholics who gathered on Tuesday in Rome for the Vatican’s Jubilee of Youth — an event that takes place every 25 years.

The week-long event is taking place just over two months after Leo XIV became the head of the Catholic Church and the first American pope.

Since Monday, groups of pilgrims — chanting and draped in flags of their countries — have flooded the streets of Italy’s capital and the corners of the Vatican City.

The Vatican had last week said it expected some half a million people from more than 150 countries to take part, with this year’s events dedicated to faith and culture.

Some 120,000 people attended the opening mass at St. Peter’s Basilica Tuesday evening, according to the Vatican, where the Pope said he had a special welcome for people from regions affected by war, naming Ukraine and Palestine.

Afterwards, he made a surprise appearance in the crowd aboard his “Popemobile.”

The week will culminate with a giant mass led by Pope Leo on Sunday.

The Jubilee of Youth is aimed at people aged between 18 and 35.

Pilgrims told AFP the subjects they most wanted to discuss at the events were wars, climate change, social inequalities and the dangers linked to AI.

“The most important topic for me is war. Everyone is talking about it, thinking about it, and we want to know what the pope thinks about it and what he expects from us,” said 25-year-old Tiago Santos from Portugal.

The event is taking place after almost two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and UN groups warning of starvation in the blockaded territory.

Thousands have also been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, with Moscow continuing deadly attacks despite Western pressure to end its campaign.

Teophanie Nasta, a 26-year-old from Lebanon traveling overseas for the first time, said that despite the conflicts in the Middle East she was filled with “faith in humanity by seeing so many young people” gathered for the church.

In an unprecedented move, the Vatican dedicated a series of events to Catholic influencers — a sign of growing importance of social media for the church.

Speaking to them on Tuesday morning, Pope Leo warned against the dangers of undermining “human dignity” in the AI era.

KYIV: A Russian missile hit a Ukrainian army training ground, killing three soldiers and wounding 18 others, authorities said, in the latest attack to embarrass military officials as they struggle to make up a severe manpower shortage in the nearly 3½-year war.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the strike killed or wounded about 200 Ukrainian troops. The ministry said that Ukraine’s 169th training center near Honcharivske in the Chernihiv region was hit with two Iskander missiles, one armed with multiple submunitions and another with high explosives.

Meanwhile, Russia continued its stepped-up aerial campaign against Ukrainian civilian targets, launching 78 attack drones overnight, including up to eight newly developed jet-powered drones, Ukraine’s air force said Wednesday. At least five people were wounded.

Civilian casualties

The U.N. mission in Ukraine says there has been a worsening trend in civilian casualties from Russian attacks this year, with 6,754 civilians killed or injured in the first half of 2025 — representing a 54% increase from the same period in 2024.

Since Russia launched an all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, at least 13,580 Ukrainian civilians, including 716 children, have been killed, according to the U.N.

In an effort to stop that, U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he's giving Russian President Vladimir Putin until Aug. 8 for peace efforts to make progress or Washington will impose punitive sanctions and tariffs. Western leaders have accused Putin of dragging his feet in U.S.-led peace efforts in an attempt to capture more Ukrainian land.

Recent attacks under investigation

Ukrainian forces are mostly hanging on against a grinding summer push by Russia’s bigger army, though the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed some recent small advances at places along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line.

Ukrainian ground forces acknowledged that a Russian strike hit a military training ground in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine, but its casualty report differed widely from one issued by Moscow.

A Russian Defense Ministry video showed multiple small explosions apparently caused by a missile with a shrapnel warhead followed by one big blast, apparently from the other one armed with a high-explosive warhead.

A similar Russian strike occurred last September, when two ballistic missiles blasted a Ukrainian military academy and nearby hospital, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 200 others.

Ukrainian authorities said that a commission led by the head of the Military Law Enforcement Service has been formed to determine whether negligence or misconduct by officials contributed to the casualties in Chernihiv.

The attack was the fourth deadly strike in as five months on Ukrainian military facilities. The three previous strikes killed at least 46 soldiers and wounded more than 160, according to official reports.

Ukraine badly needs more troops

Ukraine can ill afford to lose more troops. Though it has more than 1 million Ukrainians in uniform, including the National Guard and other units, it badly needs more.

Deeply rooted problems have bedeviled Ukraine and brought questions about how Kyiv is managing the war, from a flawed mobilization drive to the overstretching and hollowing out of front-line units through soldiers going AWOL.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a bill Tuesday that allows Ukrainian men over the age of 60 to voluntarily sign contracts with the armed forces. The new law allows those who want to contribute their experience and skills, particularly in noncombat or specialized roles.

In February, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry began offering new financial and other benefits that it
hopes will attract men between the ages of 18 and 24 to military service. Men in that age group are exempt from the country’s draft, which covers men between 25 and 60 years old.

Ukraine lowered its conscription age from 27 to 25, but that has failed to replenish ranks or replace battlefield losses.