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First Thing: Austrian chancellor to meet Putin in Russia
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Good morning.
Austria’s chancellor is to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Russian president’s first face-to-face meeting with an EU leader since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, amid warnings of a fresh offensive and shelling in the east.
Karl Nehammer said the meeting would take place in Moscow and that Austria had a “clear position on the Russian war of aggression”, calling for humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and full investigation of war crimes.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser in Washington, has warned that the appointment of a new general in command of Russia’s military campaign is likely to usher in a fresh round of “crimes and brutality” against civilians. Alexandr Dvornikov, 60, came to prominence at the head of Russian troops in Syria in 2015-16, when there was particularly brutal bombardment of rebel-held areas, including civilian populations, in Aleppo.
What might Russia do next? The UK Ministry of Defence warned on Monday morning that Russian forces may resort to using phosphorous weapons in Mariupol as fighting for the city intensifies. It cited the previous use of the munitions by Russian soldiers in Donetsk.
What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 47 of the invasion.
Liz Cheney disputes report January 6 panel split over Trump criminal referral
Liz Cheney. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
A key Republican on the House January 6 committee disputed a report that said the panel was split over whether to refer Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading to the Capitol attack.
“There’s not really a dispute on the committee,” the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney told CNN’s State of the Union.
The New York Times said otherwise on Sunday, in a report headlined: “January 6 panel has evidence for criminal referral of Trump, but splits on sending.”
“The debate centers on whether making a referral – a largely symbolic act – would backfire by politically tainting the justice department’s expanding investigation into the January 6 assault and what led up to it,” the paper said.
Citing “members and aides”, the Times said such sources were reluctant to support a referral because it would create the impression Democrats had asked the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to investigate Trump.
What did Cheney say? “We have not made a decision about referrals on the committee … [but] it’s actually clear that what President Trump was dealing with, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was awful. That they did it anyway.”
France faces bruising runoff after Macron and Le Pen top first-round vote
Projected results in the first part of the presidential race put Macron (pictured) on 27.6% and his far-right rival, Le Pen, on 23.4%. Photograph: Alfonso Jimenez/Rex/Shutterstock
France faces a brutal two-week campaign over the country’s future, as the centrist incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, faces the far-right Marine Le Pen for the presidency, positioning himself as a pro-European “progressive” against what he calls her anti-Muslim, nationalist programme and “complacency” about Putin.
Macron topped Sunday’s first round of the French presidential election with 27.6% of the vote, ahead of Le Pen’s 23.4%, according to initial projected results by Ipsos for France Télévisions.
He scored higher than his result in the first round five years ago, and clearly gained support in the final hours of the campaign after his harsh warnings to voters to hold back the far right and protect France’s place on the international diplomatic stage during the war in Ukraine. But Le Pen’s score was also higher than five years ago.
Why is Le Pen doing better this time? She had steadily gained support after campaigning hard on the cost of living crisis and inflation, which had become voters’ biggest concerns.
What has Macron said? He told reporters: “When the far-right, in all its forms, represents that much in France, you can’t consider things are going well, so you must go out and convince people with a lot of humility, and respect for those who weren’t on our side in this first round.”
In other news …
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump during a rally in Commerce, Georgia, last month. Photograph: Alyssa Pointer/Reuters
A federal judge has indicated that an attempt to stop the far-right Republican congress person Marjorie Taylor Greene running for re-election will be allowed to proceed . The challenge from a group of Georgia voters says Greene should be disqualified because she supported insurrectionists on 6 January 2021.
After dozens of botched, evidently painful lethal injections in recent years, prisoners in at least 10 states have been making a surreal argument: they would prefer the firing squad . As more “technological” methods have proved grisly, some states are considering shooting prisoners instead.
Elon Musk has performed a U-turn on joining Twitter’s board despite becoming the social media company’s largest shareholder with a 9.2% stake . He was due to become a board member on Saturday but Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, said on Monday morning that Musk had declined the offer.
The British chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has written to the prime minister to ask for an investigation into his own affairs after days of criticism over his wife’s “non-dom” tax status. Sunak has also been criticised over his decision to keep a US green card conferring permanent residency months while chancellor.
Don’t miss this: What happens when a group of Fox News viewers watch CNN for a month?
A study that paid viewers of the rightwing cable network to switch shed light on the media’s influence on people’s views. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA
In an unusual and labor intensive project, two political scientists paid a group of regular Fox News viewers to instead watch CNN for a month. At the end of the period, the researchers found surprising results; some of the Fox News watchers had changed their minds on a range of key issues, including the US response to coronavirus and Democrats’ attitude to police. The findings suggest political perspectives can be changed – but also reveals the influence partisan media has on viewers’ ideology, writes, Adam Gabbatt.
… or this: Jack White on the White Stripes, bar brawls and fame
Jack White … ‘Seven Nation Army might be the biggest multicultural hit of all time.’ Photograph: Paige Sara
As one half of the White Stripes, the Detroit musician conquered the world. His supercharged garage rock duo was a global phenomenon, and he has barely paused since. He fronted the Raconteurs and played drums in the Dead Weather, worked with the country singer Loretta Lynn and has been a producer and video-maker, while his eclectic Third Man operation takes in everything from a record label and record shops to a publishing imprint. After a busy lockdown, he is back with two new solo albums.
Climate check: Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how to tackle both
‘Autocrats are often directly the result of fossil fuel.’ Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images
The world of money is at least as unbalanced and unfair as the world of political power – but in ways that may make it a little easier for climate advocates to make progress. Putin’s grotesque war might be where some of these strands come together. It highlights the ways that fossil fuel builds autocracy, and the power that control of scarce supplies gives to autocrats. But we’ve got years, not decades, to get the climate crisis under some kind of control. We won’t get more moments like this.
Last Thing: Connecticut mechanic finds art worth millions in dumpster at abandoned barn
Francis Hines attends the SLAG Gallery opening on 12 June 2008 in New York City. Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
Paintings and other artwork found in an abandoned barn in Connecticut turned out to be worth millions of dollars. Notified by a contractor, Jared Whipple, a mechanic from Waterbury, retrieved the dirt-covered pieces from a dumpster that contained materials from a barn in Watertown. Whipple later found out the works were by Francis Hines, an abstract expressionist who died in 2016 at 96 and had stored his work in the barn, Hearst Connecticut Media Group reported.
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news
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Russia ‘ready to discuss’ prisoner swap but will resist pressure to free Brittney Griner
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Russia is ready to discuss a prisoner swap for imprisoned Americans, said its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, but added that the Kremlin would resist public pressure to free US basketball star Brittney Griner and others being held in Russian prisons.
Lavrov’s remarks came a day after Griner received a nine-year prison sentence on drug charges that were seen as a gambit to demand an exchange for high-profile Russians in prison in the US, including the arms trafficker Viktor Bout.
“We are ready to discuss the issue [of a swap], but this should be done via the channel approved by the presidents, Putin and Biden,” Lavrov said during a press conference in Cambodia.
He referred to a backchannel that had been set up by Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, saying “no matter who says what in public, this channel remains relevant”.
That backchannel appeared to have been successful in arranging the release of Trevor Reed, an ex-marine who had been detained in Russia for more than two years before he was exchanged in April for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who had been held for more than a decade on drug smuggling charges.
But Lavrov also warned that Russia would not respond to “megaphone diplomacy”, demanding that any negotiations be carried out discreetly.
“If this is another case of the Americans resorting to public diplomacy and loud statements on their pending steps, it’s their business or I would even say their problem, because the Americans often fail to honour the agreement on doing calm, professional work,” he said.
On Friday afternoon at the White House, Joe Biden said he was “hopeful” about the prospects for the basketball star.
When asked after a bill-signing if he had a comment about Griner, the US president said, before leaving the event: “I’m hopeful. We are working hard.”
"I'm hopeful," Biden says on returning WNBA star Brittney Griner home.
The basketball player was just sentenced to 9 years in a Russian prison for drug charges on Thursday https://t.co/x2XmYCGpnu pic.twitter.com/75HRFNdzIJ — Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) August 5, 2022
Griner and her legal team tried to steer clear of politics during her trial. “I know everybody keeps talking about ‘political pawn’ and ‘politics’, but I hope that is far from this courtroom,” Griner said in a closing statement on Thursday.
Lavrov said that he had not discussed the issue of a swap with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who also attended the Asean conference in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on a possible swap for Bout, the arms trafficker. “These swaps will never happen if we start discussing any nuances of the exchange in the press,” he told reporters on Friday.
Griner’s US teammates at the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury were in tears as they watched on television, pre-match, their star player receive her sentence and plead for clemency.
Then they headed out to play their scheduled match against the Connecticut Sun, but not before the sports players and officials stood arm in arm on court for 42 seconds – Griner’s team number is 42 – while fans called “we are BG” and “bring her home”, the New York Times reported.
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news
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Sergei Lavrov', 'Brittney Griner', 'Lavrov', 'Griner', 'Viktor Bout', 'Putin', 'Biden', 'Joe Biden', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Konstantin Yaroshenko', 'Joe Biden', 'Griner', 'Biden', 'Brittney Griner', 'Griner', 'Griner', 'Antony Blinken', 'Dmitry Peskov', 'Griner', 'Griner'], 'organizations': ['Kremlin', 'Lavrov', 'Trevor Reed', 'Lavrov', 'WNBA', 'Bloomberg Quicktake', '@Quicktake', 'Lavrov', 'state', 'Kremlin', 'Bout', 'Phoenix Mercury', 'the Connecticut Sun', 'the New York Times'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'US', 'US', 'Cambodia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'US', 'US', 'Cambodia', 'Phnom Penh', 'US', 'WNBA']}
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 117 of the invasion
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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he expects Russia will intensify attacks on Ukraine and possibly other European countries after the EU Commission proposed it as a candidate for EU membership. “Obviously, this week we should expect from Russia an intensification of its hostile activities,” he said in a nightly video address. “And not only against Ukraine, but also against other European countries. We are preparing. We are ready. We warn partners.”
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Volodymyr Zelenskiy'], 'organizations': ['the EU Commission', 'EU'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 138 of the invasion
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At least 24 people have died and dozens more were injured after a Russian missile attack hit a five-storey apartment building in the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. Emergency crews worked to pull people trapped in the rubble. Rescuers are still combing the rubble and nine people have been rescued. The strike destroyed three buildings in a residential quarter of town, inhabited mostly by people who work in nearby factories. Zelenskiy accused Moscow of purposely targeting civilians in the Chasiv Yar attack and promised “punishment is inevitable for every Russian murderer”.
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War
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{'people': ['Chasiv Yar'], 'organizations': ['Chasiv Yar', 'Zelenskiy'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Moscow']}
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Russia is guilty of inciting genocide in Ukraine, expert report concludes
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Russia is guilty of inciting genocide and having the intent to commit genocide in Ukraine, legally obliging other countries to stop it, according to a new report by more than 30 internationally recognised legal scholars and experts.
The report, compiled by two thinktanks, the New Lines Institute in Washington and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in Montreal, found that there were “reasonable grounds to conclude” that Russia is already in breach of two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, by publicly inciting genocide, and by the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, which the report notes is itself a genocidal act under article II of the convention.
The report concludes there is “a serious risk of genocide in Ukraine, triggering the legal obligation of all states to prevent genocide” under the convention. States will not be able to say they were unaware of the risk, it warns, but neither the report nor the 1948 convention stipulates what actions foreign governments should take. The report just notes “a minimum legal obligation on states to take reasonable action to contribute toward preventing genocide and protecting vulnerable Ukrainian civilians from the imminent risk of genocide”.
Joe Biden labelled Russian atrocities in Ukraine as genocide in April, and some other governments have followed suit, though the state department said it was ultimately up to a court to determine. The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, Karim Khan, is leading an investigation of war crimes and has the authority to bring charges of genocide if he feels there is evidence of intent to “destroy, in whole or in part”, the Ukrainian people.
“I’ve never seen anything like this report this early during a conflict,” said Tanya Domi, one of the expert contributors to the report, and an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. “I think the documentation of crimes in Ukraine outstrips anything that we’ve seen in the recent past.”
The report finds ample evidence of incitement to genocide, noting the Kremlin leadership and Russian state media commentators have consistently denied the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity, “implying that those who self-identify as Ukrainian threaten the unity of Russia or are Nazis, and are therefore deserving of punishment”.
“Denial of the existence of protected groups is a specific indicator of genocide under the United Nations guide to assessing the risk of mass atrocities,” the report said.
It also looked at the language used by Russian officials depicting Ukrainians as somehow subhuman, with terms like “zombified”, “bestial” or “subordinate”, or as diseased or contaminated, using words like “scum” and “filth”.
“What they’re saying is: if you’re Ukrainian you’re a Nazi, and therefore we’re going to kill you,” Domi said. “They are saying this is a Nazi regime and that means that they are pursuing Ukrainians and the Ukrainian state for the purposes of elimination and destruction.”
By issuing blanket denials of the atrocities and by rewarding soldiers suspected of mass killings, as Putin did with the units that were in Bucha at the time of the mass killings of civilians there, the Kremlin is enabling Russian forces to commit more war crimes and conditioning the Russian public to condone them, the report said.
The public incitement at the time of the invasion points towards a genocidal plan, the experts argue, as does the pattern of atrocities committed: the mass killings, the shelling of shelters and evacuation routes, and the indiscriminate bombardment of residential areas.
In that category, the report points to the sieges of cities such as Mariupol, the 248 attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare system documented by the World Health Organization, and the destruction or seizure of basic necessities, humanitarian aid and grain.
A systematic pattern of rape and sexual violence is also part of an overall picture of atrocities that point towards genocidal intent, the experts said, as is the forcible transfer of over a million people to Russia, including more than 180,000 children. The report cites Ukrainian officials as pointing to planned reforms in Russian legislation to accelerate adoption procedures for children from the Donbas, while abducted Ukrainian children have been forced to take Russian classes.
“I think the forced transfers of people is just one of the most egregious crimes because that shows intent to remove them from their country. There is no ability of those individuals to resist,” Domi said.
The international court of justice ruled in 2007 that state parties to the Genocide Convention had an obligation to take preventive action when they learn of, or should have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.
“Each state then will determine whether it has the means to help deter those suspected of preparing genocide and take action as the circumstances permit,” David Scheffer, a former US ambassador at large for war crimes issues and now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, said. “There are many options: provision of military weaponry, humanitarian and refugee aid, economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and even military intervention, that complies with the UN Charter.”
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{'people': ['Joe Biden', 'Karim Khan', 'Tanya Domi', 'Domi', 'Putin', 'Bucha', 'Donbas', 'Domi', 'David Scheffer'], 'organizations': ['the New Lines Institute', 'the state department', 'the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs', 'Kremlin', 'United Nations', 'Kremlin', 'Mariupol', 'the World Health Organization', 'the Genocide Convention', 'the Council on Foreign Relations'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Washington', 'Montreal', 'Russia', 'Ukrainian', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukrainian', 'US']}
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The Guardian
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Russia steps up Azovstal siege as freed civilians reach Zaporizhzhia
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Russian forces have shelled and attempted to storm the Azovstal steelworks, the last holdout of Ukrainian troops defending the southern port city of Mariupol, as a first convoy of refugees from the plant reached the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Video footage showed thick smoke in the sky above the site where officials said up to 200 civilians, including children, remained trapped in a network of underground bunkers and tunnels with up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
The Red Cross (ICRC) said more than 100 civilians had managed to escape in a convoy of buses and ambulances accompanied by ICRC and UN teams, joined by families and individuals in private vehicles.
The convoy, including some injured, safely reached Ukrainian-held Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230km) to the west, on Tuesday, the ICRC said. Others from the plant “went elsewhere” under their own steam and unaccompanied, it said.
01:49 Ukrainian evacuee describes months of horror inside Azovstal bunker – video
On Tuesday night, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, confirmed the evacuees had reached safety and that Russian troops were trying to storm the steelworks.
“We finally have the result, the first result of our evacuation operation from Azovstal in Mariupol, which we have been organising for a very long time. It took a lot of effort, long negotiations and various mediations,” he said.
“Today 156 people arrived in Zaporizhzhia. Women and children. They have been in shelters for more than two months. Just imagine! For example, a child is six months old, two of which are underground, fleeing bombs and shelling. Finally, these people are completely safe. They will get help.”
Exhausted-looking people, including young children and pensioners laden with bags, clambered off buses in the car park of a shopping centre. “I can’t believe I made it, we just want rest,” said Alina Kozitskaya.
One middle-aged woman walked away from the evacuation bus sobbing and comforted by an aid worker. A few women greeting the convoy held up handmade signs, calling on Ukrainian authorities to evacuate the soldiers – their relatives and loved ones – who are trapped in Azovstal and encircled by Russian forces.
Evacuees from Mariupol and its surrounds arrive in Zaporizhzhia. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA
“We’re scared … the guys will be left there. We don’t see any sign of help,” said Ksenia Chebysheva, 29, whose husband is among Azov battalion troops there. She had heard that her husband was still alive on 26 April, but had had no news since.
The UN confirmed the “successful evacuation” of 101 civilians in the five-day operation. “Women, men, children and older persons could finally leave the bunkers below the steelworks and see the daylight after two months,” said Osnat Lubrani, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.
“Over the past days, travelling with the evacuees, I have heard mothers, children and frail grandparents speak about the trauma of living day after day under unrelenting heavy shelling and the fear of death, and with extreme lack of water, food, and sanitation,” Lubrani said.
“They spoke of the hell they have experienced since this war started, seeking refuge in the Azovstal plant, many being separated from family members whose fate they still don’t know.” She said another 58 people had joined the convoy from the city of Mangush, outside Mariupol.
Pascal Hundt of the ICRC said the organisations “had hoped more people would have been able to join” and that “similar agreements are urgently required to alleviate the immense suffering of civilians trapped in hostilities”.
Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, had earlier said the column of evacuees should reach Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday, adding that 200 more civilians were still trapped under the complex and about 100,000 remained in the rest of the city.
Hospitals had been stocked up and medical staff reinforced by volunteers in preparation for the arrival of the convoy, Dorit Nitzan, the World Health Organization (WHO) incident manager for Ukraine, told Reuters.
“We are ready for burns, fractures and wounds, as well as diarrhoea, respiratory infections. We are also ready to see if there are pregnant women, children with malnutrition. We are all here and the health system is well prepared,” she said, adding that mental health was the “big issue”.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces and pro-Moscow separatists were targeting the Azovstal plant with heavy artillery and aircraft fire, accusing its defenders of taking up new fighting positions during the weekend ceasefire that allowed the partial civilian evacuation.
The deputy commander of the Azov regiment, which is holed up in the plant, said Russian forces were storming the site, while another Ukrainian officer confirmed the assault on public television.
“The enemy is trying to storm the Azovstal plant with significant forces, using armoured vehicles. Our fighters are repelling all attacks,” said Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th operational brigade of Ukraine’s national guard.
Having failed to capture the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has switched the invasion’s focus to the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as Donbas, parts of which have been held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
Fresh attacks in the Donetsk region killed 21 civilians and injured 27, the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Tuesday. He said the figure was the highest daily death toll in the region since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in April that killed more than 50 people.
“There are no safe cities in Luhansk region,” he said on Telegram.
Three more civilians were killed in the town of Vuhledar, and another three in Lyman, Kyrylenko said. Some other areas of Donetsk were under constant fire and regional authorities were trying to evacuate civilians from frontline areas, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
Attacks and shelling also intensified in Luhansk, with the most difficult area being Popasna, where it was impossible to organise evacuations, said the regional governor, Serhiy Haida.
Ukraine’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, again came under heavy bombardment on Tuesday, the country’s military command said.
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It said its forces were defending the approach to Kharkiv from Izium, a town on the Donets river, about 75 miles to the south-east, adding that Russian forces were also trying to take the frontline town of Rubizhne and heavy clashes were taking place around Popasna, in Luhansk.
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 116 of the invasion
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Russia’s war in Ukraine could take years, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said. “We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,” he said. “Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices.”
Russia was sending a large number of reserve troops to Sievierodonetsk from other battle zones to try to gain full control of the besieged eastern city, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region said on Sunday. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will throw in all the reserves they have … because there are so many of them there already, they’re at critical mass,” Serhiy Gaidai said on national television.
Two top commanders of fighters who defended the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported. Citing an unnamed Russian law enforcement source, TASS said late on Saturday that Svyatoslav Palamar, a deputy commander of the Azov battalion, and Serhiy Volynsky, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, were moved to Russia.
A big explosion rocked an area near Sievierodonetsk on Saturday. Rodion Miroshnik, an official in the self-styled separatist administration of the Luhansk People’s Republic, posted a video of what he said was the cloud on the Telegram messaging app.
Five civilians were killed on Saturday in Ukrainian strikes on the eastern separatist city of Donetsk, according to local authorities. “As a result of the bombardment by Ukrainian forces, five people were killed and 12 others were wounded in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the authorities said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Several Russian missiles hit a gasworks in the Izium district in eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov said on Saturday. “A large-scale fire broke out, rescuers localised the fire,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters reported him adding that some other buildings had also been damaged.
Russian missiles destroyed a fuel storage depot in Novomoskovsk, a town in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday. According to the head of the regional administration, three people have been sent to the hospital.
The Pentagon is considering sending four additional rocket launchers to Ukraine, Politico reports. According to US defence department officials, speaking to the outlet on anonymity, the US may likely send four more high mobility artillery rocket systems, making their total number about eight. The decision would be “based on Ukrainian immediate needs,” the official told Politico.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out a prisoner exchange, the Kyiv Independent reports. Five captured Ukrainian individuals were returned to Ukraine on 18 June in exchange for five captured Russian individuals, according to the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence directorate.
Yuliia Paievska AKA “Taira”, the Ukrainian captured paramedic who was freed from Russian captivity during the week, released a video thanking Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for her release. “I always believed that everything would be exactly this, and everyone who is now on the other side, they know everything will work out,” she said.
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{'people': ['Jens Stoltenberg', 'Serhiy Gaidai', 'Svyatoslav Palamar', 'Azov', 'Serhiy Volynsky', 'Rodion Miroshnik', 'Oleh Synehubov', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy'], 'organizations': ['Nato', 'Azovstal', 'TASS', 'TASS', 'Marine Brigade', 'the Ukrainian Armed Forces', 'the Luhansk People’s Republic', 'Telegram', 'the Donetsk People’s Republic', 'Telegram', 'Telegram', 'Reuters', 'Pentagon', 'Politico', 'the Kyiv Independent', 'the Ukrainian defence ministry’s', 'Paievska'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Luhansk', 'Mariupol', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Sievierodonetsk', 'Ukrainian', 'Ukraine', 'Novomoskovsk', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Politico', 'US', 'US', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 137 of the invasion
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Canada has granted a sanctions exemption to allow a repaired Russian turbine to be sent back to Germany for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. The Canadian government said the “time-limited and revocable permit” would support “Europe’s ability to access reliable and affordable energy as they continue to transition away from Russian oil and gas”. Canada also announced it would expand sanctions against Russia’s energy sector to include industrial manufacturing. Kyiv urged the Canadian government not to return the part to Germany, but Germany, which is facing severe gas shortages, is being threatened with a further squeeze on Russian gas by Moscow if the turbine isn’t returned.
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, said Russian forces were “purposefully” destroying crops in the Kherson region. He said fires occurred in the fields every day from shelling, and added: “Russian troops do not allow locals to put out fires, destroying granaries and equipment.”
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has fired his ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary, without giving further details as to why. Zelenskiy has urged his diplomats to drum up international support and high-end weapons to slow Russia’s advance. It was not immediately clear whether the envoys would be handed new jobs.
Zelenskiy said on Saturday night the Russian army had attacked the cities of Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kryvy Rih, and communities of Zaporizhzhia region, covering a broad swathe of the country.
Russia is moving forces across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, according to the UK ministry of defence. The latest intelligence update said a large proportion of the new infantry units were “probably” deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage.
The governor of the Luhansk region said Russian forces were creating “hell” in shelling the eastern region of Donetsk. Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces fired eight artillery shells, three mortar shells and launched nine rocket strikes overnight.
At least five people were killed on Saturday, and seven others injured, by renewed Russian shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine officials said. A missile attack in Druzkivka, northern Donetsk, tore apart a supermarket.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said his country’s “commitment to the people of Ukraine is resolute” while announcing more than $360m in additional aid.
The United Nations said Ukraine’s armed forces bore a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for an assault at a nursing home in Luhansk, where dozens of elderly and disabled patients were trapped inside without water or electricity. At least 22 of the 71 patients survived, but the exact number killed remains unknown. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, making the building a target, the UN said.
Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP with the centrist Golos party, said rockets struck central Kharkiv, injuring and hospitalising four civilians, including a child.
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{'people': ['Serhiy Bratchuk', 'Odesa', 'Kherson', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Kryvy Rih', 'Serhiy Haidai', 'Antony Blinken', 'Kira Rudik', 'Golos'], 'organizations': ['the Nord Stream 1', 'Zelenskiy', 'Zelenskiy', 'Mykolaiv, Kharkiv', 'MT-LB', 'Druzkivka', 'The United Nations', 'UN', 'Kharkiv'], 'locations': ['Canada', 'Germany', 'Canada', 'Russia', 'Germany', 'Germany', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Germany', 'India', 'the Czech Republic', 'Norway', 'Hungary', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'UK', 'Luhansk', 'Donetsk', 'Donetsk', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Luhansk']}
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 115 of the invasion
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A Ukrainian paramedic has been released from Russian captivity, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Saturday. He said Ukraine had been able to secure the release of Yulia Payevska, a civilian parademic who was captured by Russian forces in Mariupol on 16 March.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that the bravery of Ukrainians had created the opportunity for Europe to “create a new history of freedom, and finally remove the grey zone in Eastern Europe between the EU and Russia”. In his nightly video addrees, Zelenskiy hailed Brussels’ support for Ukraine’s European Union bid as a “historic achievement”. “Ukrainian institutions maintain resilience even in conditions of war. Ukrainian democratic habits have not lost their power even now.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin said Moscow has “nothing against” Ukraine’s possible membership of the European Union. He made the comments on Friday after the European Commission recommended granting Kyiv candidate status of the 27-member bloc. “We have nothing against it,” Putin told Russia’s annual economic forum in St Petersburg. “It’s their sovereign decision to join economic unions or not … It’s their business, the business of the Ukrainian people.”
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said it was “absolutely necessary” for leaders to speak directly with Putin in attempts to end the war. Speaking to German news agency DPA on Friday, Scholz said: “It is absolutely necessary to speak to Putin, and I will continue to do so, as the French president will also.”
Four civilians died and six were wounded on Friday in Russian bombing in the Donetsk region of the Donbas, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.
Dozens of Ukrainian civilians performed military exercises on Friday in fortified positions left by Russian troops in Bucha, a town synonymous with war crimes blamed on Moscow’s forces. A sergeant known as Ticha said: “Most of those who are here aren’t soldiers, they’re just civilians who want to defend their country – 50% of them have never held a weapon until today.”
Lithuania has told the Russian region of Kaliningrad it will block the import and export of a large number of goods by rail because of western sanctions, the regional governor said on Friday. The region is home to the Russian Baltic fleet and a deployment location for nuclear-capable Iskander missiles. Governor Anton Alikhanov said the clampdown was “a most serious violation” to free transit and would affect 40-50% of the products imported to and exported from Russia through Lithuania.
Ukraine received a $733m loan from Canada. In a statement released on Friday, Ukraine’s finance ministry said the funds, which were “raised in accordance with the loan agreement between Ukraine and Canada”, would be “directed to the state budget to finance priority expenditures – in particular, to ensure priority social and humanitarian expenditures”.
The Biden administration’s plan to sell four large, armable drones to Ukraine has been paused over the fear its sophisticated surveillance equipment might fall into enemy hands, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. The objection to the export of the drones arose due to concerns the radar and surveillance equipment on the drones could create a security risk for the US if it fell into Russian hands.
Russian media has supposedly shown images of two US citizens captured in Ukraine. On Friday, the Izvestia newspaper showed footage of what it said was an interview with Andy Huynh, 27. The Russian channel RT also posted a photo of a man it identified as Alexander Drueke, 39. Drueke’s mother, Lois Drueke, told the Guardian she believed the clip was authentic and it gave her “great hope”.
US Republican senators on Friday asked TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew about reports the social media site had allowed Russian state-approved media content but barred other videos. The senators said they were “deeply concerned” that TikTok “is enabling the spread of pro-war propaganda to the Russian public”. TikTok said in a statement the company was looking forward to continuing to engage with members on these issues and answer their questions.
A group of international investigators and experts have visited war-torn areas near Kyiv, including a burnt-out school, as part of Ukraine’s ongoing investigation into alleged war crimes. One expert told Reuters: “The scale of these crimes, the systematic nature of them, it very clearly appears to be crimes against humanity … It runs the whole gamut of violations of international humanitarian law.”
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{'people': ['Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Payevska', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Pavlo Kyrylenko', 'Ticha', 'Anton Alikhanov', 'Biden', 'Andy Huynh', 'Alexander Drueke', 'Drueke', 'Lois Drueke', 'Shou Zi Chew'], 'organizations': ['EU', 'Zelenskiy', 'European Union', 'the European Union', 'the European Commission', 'Olaf Scholz', 'DPA', 'Scholz', 'Telegram', 'Iskander', 'Reuters', 'Izvestia', 'RT', 'Guardian', 'TikTok', 'TikTok', 'TikTok', 'Reuters'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Yulia', 'Mariupol', 'Russia', 'Brussels', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'St Petersburg', 'Donbas', 'Bucha', 'Moscow', 'Lithuania', 'Russia', 'Lithuania', 'Ukraine', 'Canada', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Canada', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Kyiv', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 136 of the invasion
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Luhansk’s governor said Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling populated areas on Friday, Reuters reports. “They are not stopped even by the fact that civilians remain there, dying in houses and yards,” Serhiy Gaidai said.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister has asked all residents in the Russian-occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to “evacuate by all possible means”. There would be “harsh battle” as the Ukrainian army would be “de-occupying these territories”, he said.
Belgium will reopen its embassy in Kyiv and send a new ambassador, the Belgian prime minister confirmed. The embassy would open next week and ambassador Peter Van De Velde, whom Alexander De Croo met before he was sent to Ukraine, will represent Belgium.
Ukraine’s military says it has destroyed two Russian command posts near Kherson, according to Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the joint southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.
The Ukrainian foreign minister criticised Russia at the G20 summit in Bali, saying it prefers to follow its own rules instead of cooperating multilaterally with the international community. “I am strong supporter of multilateralism,” Dmytro Kuleba said. “But it lacks tools to protect itself from those who disrespect other nations, who prefer to play with common rules instead of playing by the rules. We have such a country at this table today – Russia.”
The Ukrainian parliament adopted a set of new laws on Friday during its plenary session. The new laws include safety guarantees for journalists working in battle areas, improved social protection for rescuers, and postponed transitioning to keep records of the gas volumes in units of energy.
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{'people': ['Serhiy Gaidai', 'Kherson', 'Zaporizhzhia', 'Peter Van De Velde', 'Alexander De Croo', 'Dmytro Kuleba'], 'organizations': ['Reuters', 'Natalia Humeniuk', 'G20'], 'locations': ['Luhansk', 'Ukraine', 'Belgium', 'Kyiv', 'Ukraine', 'Belgium', 'Ukraine', 'Kherson', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Bali', 'Russia']}
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 135 of the invasion
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warned Moscow had barely started its campaign in Ukraine and dared the west to try to defeat it on the battlefield. Putin said the prospects for any negotiation would grow dimmer the longer the conflict dragged on, during a speech to parliamentary leaders. “Everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t started anything yet in earnest,” he said. “The further it goes, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.”
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{'people': ['Vladimir Putin', 'Putin'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Moscow', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 114 of the invasion
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Vladimir Putin described western sanctions against Russia as “reckless and insane” and of trying to “crush the Russian economy in one go by force”. The European Union has “completely lost sovereignty” he said, and is “dancing to someone else’s tunes”. He accused the EU of “taking everything that is dictated to them and dealing harm” to its population, business and economy. The Russian president was addressing the St Petersburg Economic Forum almost two hours behind schedule after a “denial of service” cyber-attack.
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{'people': ['Vladimir Putin'], 'organizations': ['The European Union', 'EU', 'the St Petersburg Economic Forum'], 'locations': ['Russia']}
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Lavrov walks out of G20 talks after denying Russia is causing food crisis
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The Russian foreign minister left the G20 meeting of leading economies early after telling his counterparts that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not responsible for a global hunger crisis and that sanctions designed to isolate Russia amounted to a declaration of war.
The gathering on Friday was Sergei Lavrov’s first direct confrontation with leaders from the west since Russia mounted its attack on Ukraine, and he accused the west of frenzied criticism of what he claimed were Moscow’s justified actions.
In a stern if brief lecture at the meeting in Bali hosted by Indonesia, this year’s chair of the G20, Lavrov said: “If the west doesn’t want talks to take place but wishes for Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield – because both views have been expressed – then perhaps there is nothing to talk about with the west.”
The veteran Russian diplomat, sitting between Saudi Arabia and Mexico at the meeting, also accused the west of pressing Ukraine to “use its weapons” in the fighting. He walked out when the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, started to speak.
Later Baerbock said: “The fact that [Lavrov] spent a large part of the negotiations not in but outside the room underlines that there is not a millimetre of willingness to talk on the Russia side.” She claimed the mood in the room was 19 to 1 against Russia’s invasion, even if disagreements existed on sanctions.
Lavrov claimed he had come to Bali to get an impression “of how the west breathes”. It had been obvious that the west did not use the G20 for the purposes for which it was created, Lavrov said. Participants from developing countries did not support this approach, he claimed.
“Aggressors, invaders, occupants. We’ve heard quite a few such things today,” he said while describing the speeches made by his western counterparts. He said some of the speeches were made for theatrical effect, citing Boris Johnson as a prime example. “Well, he resigned, and so be it,” Lavrov said. “Everyone said Russia must be isolated. But so far his own party has isolated Boris Johnson.”
Much of the meeting and discussions on the sidelines were taken up with efforts to persuade Russia to allow the export of stockpiles of Ukrainian grain through an independently policed safe naval corridor in the Black Sea. But talks, largely led by Turkey and the UN, have been continuing for weeks with no breakthrough.
Lavrov said: “Ukraine should end the blockade of its ports, demine them or ensure passage through the minefields.”
After that, Russia and Turkey would ensure the safety of the cargo ships outside Ukrainian sovereign territory so they could proceed further into the Mediterranean, he said. But a meeting in Bali between Lavrov and the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, did not lead to any immediate breakthrough.
Lavrov denied the dispute was a central factor in the broader global grain shortage, saying the blockaded grain accounted for 1% of global supply.
Western diplomats say Russia sees stealing Ukrainian grain and blocking its exports as measures designed to weaken the Ukrainian economy and increase the cost for the west of subsidising the struggling country. At a plenary session, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urged Moscow to let Ukrainian grain out to the world.
An official said Blinken addressed Russia directly, saying: “To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Its grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out.”
Lavrov again said Russia could not export its own grain because of western sanctions, for example because ships were not insured or could not call at foreign ports.
The EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, hit back by saying EU sanctions “do not prohibit the import of Russian goods or fertilisers, nor payment for such Russian exports”. Russia, he said, had invaded a breadbasket of the world and turned the shipping lanes of the Black Sea into a war zone.
Western leaders refused to join a group photo with Lavrov but said their presence at the meeting, as opposed to a complete boycott, showed a greater willingness to make their argument rather than assume other neutral states side with them.
Baerbock, for instance, said before the meeting: “I am here as German foreign minister with my European colleagues to demonstrate that we will not leave the international stage to Russia.”
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Lavrov will have been most closely noting the attitude not of the west but of the other major powers such as China, Saudi Arabia and India. Lavrov met the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, telling him about “the implementation of the main missions of the special military operation” in Ukraine and repeating the Kremlin’s rhetoric that its aim was to “denazify” the country.
Lavrov’s visit to Bali was also intended to prepare for a possible trip by Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in November. It is unclear whether Putin will attend in person or via video.
The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, left the meeting early to return to London to campaign for the premiership. She left a Foreign Office official, Sir Tim Barrow, to represent the UK.
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{'people': ['Sergei Lavrov', 'Annalena Baerbock', 'Bali', 'Boris Johnson', 'Boris Johnson', 'Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu', 'Lavrov', 'Antony Blinken', 'Blinken', 'Lavrov', 'Josep Borrell', 'Wang Yi', 'Bali', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Putin', 'Liz Truss', 'Tim Barrow'], 'organizations': ['G20', 'Lavrov', 'Baerbock', 'Lavrov', 'Lavrov', 'G20', 'Lavrov', 'Lavrov', 'UN', 'Lavrov', 'Lavrov', 'state', 'EU', 'EU', 'Lavrov', 'Baerbock', 'First Edition', 'Lavrov', 'Lavrov', 'Kremlin', 'Lavrov', 'G20', 'Foreign Office'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Bali', 'Indonesia', 'n’t', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Mexico', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Turkey', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Turkey', 'Bali', 'Russia', 'US', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'China', 'Saudi Arabia', 'India', 'Ukraine', 'UK', 'London', 'UK']}
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Putin says Russia is only just getting started in Ukraine – as it happened
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From 7 Jul 2022 18.14 Putin warns Russia is just getting started in Ukraine Vladimir Putin has said “everyone should know that” Russia was just getting started in Ukraine and has not “started anything yet in earnest”. Any prospects for peace negotiations will grow dimmer the longer the conflict dragged on, the Russian leader said in a hawkish speech to parliamentary leaders. He said if the west wanted to defeat Russia on the battlefield, it was welcome to try.
Putin said: Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this. He added: Everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t started anything yet in earnest. At the same time, we don’t reject peace talks. But those who reject them should know that the further it goes, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.
Updated at 18.36 BST
7 Jul 2022 00.51 Russia taking 'operational pause', analysts say Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in eastern Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a new assault. Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine on Wednesday “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The Washington-based think tank suggested Moscow may be taking an “operational pause,” but said that does not entail “the complete cessation of active hostilities.” Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations” and rebuild the necessary combat power, the institute said. Russia’s Defence Ministry seemed to confirm that assessment, saying in a statement Thursday that Russian soldiers had been given time to rest. “The units that performed combat missions ... are taking measures to recover their combat capabilities. The servicemen are given the opportunity to rest, receive letters and parcels from home,” read the statement, quoted by Russian state news agency Tass.
7 Jul 2022 00.29 UN warns of ‘looming hunger catastrophe’ due to Russian blockade Patrick Wintour A looming hunger catastrophe is set to explode over the next two years, creating the risk of unprecedented global political pressure, the director of the UN World Food Programme has warned. Calling for short- and long-term reforms – including an urgent lifting of the blockade on 25m tonnes of Ukrainian grain trapped by a Russian blockade – Patrick Beasley said the current food affordability crisis is likely to turn into an even more dangerous food availability crisis next year unless solutions are found. The number of people classed as “acutely food insecure” by the UN before the Covid crisis was 130 million, but after Covid this number rose to 276 million. Writing a preface to a new pamphlet from the Blair Institute on the looming hunger crisis, Beasley says: “This number has increased to 345 million due to the Ukraine crisis. And a staggering 50 million people in 45 countries are now just one step from famine. “The international community must act to stop this looming hunger catastrophe in its tracks – or these numbers will explode. “Global food markets have been plunged into turmoil, with soaring prices, export bans and shortages of basic foodstuffs spreading far from Ukraine’s borders. Nations across Africa, the Middle East, Asia and even Latin America are feeling the heat from this conflict.” UN warns of ‘looming hunger catastrophe’ due to Russian blockade Read more
7 Jul 2022 00.13 Russian prosecutors have called for prison sentences for a prominent opposition activist and for a Moscow city council member who opposes the invasion of Ukraine. Prosecutors asked that Andrei Pivovarov, former head of the Open Russia organisation, be given a five-year sentence for “directing an undesirable organisation,” according to his lawyer, Sergei Badamshin, as reported by the Associated Press. Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound plane at St. Petersburg’s airport just before takeoff in May 2021. He was taken to the southern city of Krasnodar, where he was accused of supporting a local candidate on behalf of an “undesirable” organisation. The criminal charge is based on a his social media posts supporting independent candidates in Krasnodar’s municipal elections, according to AP. A Russian prosecutor has also asked for a seven-year sentence for a Moscow city council member who spoke up against Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Alexei Gorinov, who was detained in April, is the first Russian elected representative to face prison for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Gorinov criticised Moscow’s military actions in Ukraine at a city council meeting in March, a recording of which is now available on YouTube. The video shows him voicing skepticism over a planned children’s art competition in his constituency while “every day children are dying” in Ukraine. At a court hearing last month, Gorinov was photographed holding up a sign saying “I am against the war” as he sat in the defendant’s cage.
7 Jul 2022 23.33 Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, has said the economic sanctions imposed by the west against Russia have not worked. “The economic barriers that the United States and Europe imposed against Russia did not work,” Bolsonaro told supporters on Thursday, adding that his position towards Putin and the war “was one of balance.” Bolsonaro said that stance had allowed him to acquire fertilisers, a key input for Brazil’s vast agricultural sector, from Russia. He also said Russia shared Brazil’s concerns over “sovereignty” of the Amazon. Earlier on Thursday, Putin said it was obvious that western sanctions were creating difficulties, “but not at all what the initiators of the economic blitzkrieg against Russia were counting on.”
7 Jul 2022 23.02 Summary of the day so far It’s 1am in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand: A Reuters exclusive report has revealed that Ukraine opposes Canada’s handing over a turbine to Russia’s Gazprom that Moscow says is critical for supplying natural gas to Germany. According to a Ukrainian energy ministry source, Ukraine believes that doing so would defy sanctions against Russia.
According to a Ukrainian energy ministry source, Ukraine believes that doing so would defy sanctions against Russia. Images have emerged of fields of grain in Ukraine set on fire allegedly by Russian forces. According to Ukrainian serviceman Ihor Lutsenko, the “flame sometimes reaches a height of 5 metres, a strip of hundreds of metres in width. Black smoke flies up and spreads across the sky for many kilometers.” The dry stalks of grain are set ablaze “like matches” from incendiary munitions, he added.
According to Ukrainian serviceman Ihor Lutsenko, the “flame sometimes reaches a height of 5 metres, a strip of hundreds of metres in width. Black smoke flies up and spreads across the sky for many kilometers.” The dry stalks of grain are set ablaze “like matches” from incendiary munitions, he added. Canada will send 39 General Dynamics-made armored vehicles to Ukraine later this summer in attempts to assist the war-torn country in its fight against Russian forces. On Thursday, Canadian defense minister Anita Anand said that the armored vehicles deal is on top of a separate multi-billion dollar contract for 260 vehicles for the Canadian armed forces which was negotiated with General Dynamics Land Systems in 2019.
On Thursday, Canadian defense minister Anita Anand said that the armored vehicles deal is on top of a separate multi-billion dollar contract for 260 vehicles for the Canadian armed forces which was negotiated with General Dynamics Land Systems in 2019. A Russian prosecutor on Thursday requested a seven-year prison term for a Moscow city councillor accused of criticising Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Alexei Gorinov, a 60-year-old lawyer by training, was arrested in late April for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army and is now on trial. Gorinov is the first elected member of the opposition to face jail for criticising Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.
Alexei Gorinov, a 60-year-old lawyer by training, was arrested in late April for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army and is now on trial. Gorinov is the first elected member of the opposition to face jail for criticising Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. Andriy Zagorodnyuk - Ukraine’s former defence minister - says Russian claims that Ukrainian servicemen were killed on Snake Island are untrue. Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday it had eliminated Ukrainian troops who installed a huge national flag on the island after regaining control.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday it had eliminated Ukrainian troops who installed a huge national flag on the island after regaining control. The European parliament has endorsed a proposal that allows Ukrainian refugees to continue using their driver’s license without needing to switch it out for a European driver’s license. The European Union council will now formally adopt the draft rules.
Updated at 23.05 BST
7 Jul 2022 22.41 A Reuters exclusive report has revealed that Ukraine opposes Canada’s handing over a turbine to Russia’s Gazprom that Moscow says is critical for supplying natural gas to Germany. According to a Ukrainian energy ministry source, Ukraine believes that doing so would defy sanctions against Russia. A senior Ukrainian energy ministry source told Reuters that Ukraine opposed the move and that its energy minister had lobbied Canada in June not to hand over the turbine being serviced by Germany’s Siemens Energy in Canada. “The sanctions forbid the transfer of any equipment related to gas,” the energy ministry source said. “If, God forbid, this decision is approved, we will undoubtedly appeal to our European colleagues that their approach must be reassesed. Because if countries do not follow decisions they have agreed about sanctions, how can we talk about solidarity?”
7 Jul 2022 22.19 Images have emerged of fields of grain in Ukraine set on fire allegedly by Russian forces, Euromaidan Press reports. According to Ukrainian serviceman Ihor Lutsenko, the “flame sometimes reaches a height of 5 meters, a strip of hundreds of meters in width. Black smoke flies up and spreads across the sky for many kilometers.” The dry stalks of grain are set ablaze “like matches” from incendiary munitions, he added. Russians purposefully burn Ukrainian grain
The dry stalks go up in fire "like matches" from incendiary munitions
The fire advances like a wall, as a single front; sometimes it reaches 5 m in height, 100's of meters in length.
📷 Serviceman Ihor Lutsenko https://t.co/o4XQNLpCd2 pic.twitter.com/oxuqhPi697 — Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) July 7, 2022
7 Jul 2022 21.44 Canada will send 39 General Dynamics-made armored vehicles to Ukraine later this summer in attempts to assist the war-torn country in its fight against Russian forces. On Thursday, Canadian defense minister Anita Anand said that the armored vehicles deal is on top of a separate multi-billion dollar contract for 260 vehicles for the Canadian armed forces which was negotiated with General Dynamics Land Systems in 2019. “Those 39 vehicles will begin to ship this summer, and the remaining 360 will continue to be delivered over the next number of months as well,” she said. The vehicles can be used as ambulances, maintenance and recovery vehicles, in addition to carrying troops.
7 Jul 2022 20.57 A Russian prosecutor on Thursday requested a seven-year prison term for a Moscow city councillor accused of criticising Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Agence France-Presse reports: Alexei Gorinov, a 60-year-old lawyer by training, was arrested in late April for spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army and is now on trial. Gorinov is the first elected member of the opposition to face jail for criticising Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. The charges come under new legislation that allows prison time for discrediting the Russian military and is part of Moscow’s increasing efforts to snuff out the last vestiges of dissent. Speaking in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court, the prosecutor accused Gorinov of undermining the “authority of the armed forces” and being guided by “political hatred,” an AFP journalist said. Gorinov spoke up against Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine during a work meeting in March that was recorded on video and is available on YouTube. During his speech, he questioned plans for an art competition for children in his constituency while “every day children are dying” in Ukraine. On Thursday, he once again spoke out against what the Kremlin has termed a “special military operation”. “No matter what you call it, war is the dirtiest, vilest thing there is,” he said. “Why are many of my compatriots feeling ashamed and guilty? Why did so many leave?” he added, referring to an exodus of liberal-minded Russians from the country. Several dozen people came out to support Gorinov, including his wife and sister. Dmitry Fyodorov, a 50-year-old programmer, said that the charges against Gorinov were “unlawful” and described him as a “kind man and a good lawyer”. Russian society is reeling from a historic crackdown on dissent which has intensified since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine on February 24. Criticism of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine has essentially been banned in the country. In March, Russia passed into law prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading false information aimed at discrediting its military forces. On Wednesday, parliament introduced harsh prison terms for calls to act against national security and criminal liability for maintaining “confidential” cooperation with foreigners.
7 Jul 2022 20.15 Luke Harding Andriy Zagorodnyuk – Ukraine’s former defence minister – says Russian claims that Ukrainian servicemen were killed on Snake Island are untrue. Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday it had eliminated Ukrainian troops who installed a huge national flag on the island after regaining control. “I spoke to these guys. They say they all came back intact,” Zagorodnyuk told the Guardian. According to a report by Ukrainskaya Pravda, combat swimmers from the 73rd marine centre of Ukraine’s special forces took part in the operation. They set off for the island during the night using underwater vehicles. An advance team surveyed the coastal zone for mines and gave a signal for boats from the main group to approach, the newspaper said. Engineers clambered on the island, also known as Zmiiny, and swept for mine barriers and other traps. They logged abandoned Russian equipment and weapons, and raised Ukrainian flags in several areas. The report added: “While our soldiers were performing their tasks, Russian ships began maneuvering in the direction of Zmiiny. Having completed the task, the combined group left the island. “After that, the Russians launched a missile attack on Snake Island, hitting the pier. The group of Ukrainian soldiers returned unscathed in its entirety to the base.” Russia’s defence ministry has said it killed Ukrainian servicemen who were trying to raise Ukraine’s flag on the recently retaken island. Authorities in Odesa appeared to confirm that missiles had struck the island, and that Russians had also destroyed two grain hangars in the region which contained “about 35 tonnes of grain”. Ukrainian military released footage showing troops installing a huge national flag on Snake Island after regaining control.
Updated at 22.15 BST
7 Jul 2022 19.20 The European parliament has endorsed a proposal that allows Ukrainian refugees to continue using their driver’s license without needing to switch it out for a European driver’s license, the Kyiv Independent reports. The European Union council will now formally adopt the draft rules. Wir haben heute im @Europarl_DE eine Übergangsregelung für 🇺🇦 ukrainische Führerscheine verabschiedet. Damit können Ukrainer, die vorübergehenden Schutz in der EU 🇪🇺 suchen, ihren ukrainischen Führerschein unbürokratisch weiter benutzen.#StandWithUkraine#WeStandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/oGeLdfgrl6 — CDU/CSU in Europa (@CDU_CSU_EP) July 7, 2022
Updated at 19.59 BST
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 134 of the invasion
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The British prime minister Boris Johnson has announced he is to resign, telling Ukraine “we in the UK will continue to back your fight for freedom for as long as it takes”. Defence secretary Ben Wallace had already said he would not be stepping down from office, due to national security issues, which include the UK’s contributions to Ukraine’s war effort. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said reports that Johnson would shortly resign as prime minister were of little concern for the Kremlin, saying “he doesn’t like us, we don’t like him either.”
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{'people': ['Boris Johnson', 'Ben Wallace', 'Johnson'], 'organizations': ['Defence', 'Kremlin', 'Kremlin'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'UK', 'UK', 'Ukraine']}
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Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Wednesday allies would continue to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons and long-range systems, with an agreement on a new package of assistance to Kyiv expected at the summit in Madrid later this month. The agreement would help Ukraine move from old Soviet-era weaponry to “more modern Nato standard” gear, he said. Stoltenberg was speaking before a meeting in Brussels of defence ministers from Nato and other countries to discuss and coordinate help for Ukraine.
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{'people': ['Jens Stoltenberg', 'Stoltenberg'], 'organizations': ['Nato', 'Nato', 'Nato'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Madrid', 'Ukraine', 'Brussels', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia will not take Donbas in ‘immediate future’, say western officials – as it happened
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From 27 Jul 2022 17.47 Russia will not manage to take Donbas in 'immediate future', say western officials Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. They said there has been “wax and wane” in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has the capacity to “adapt and adjust what they are doing”, according to a Press Association report. Earlier this month, western officials said the sustainability of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine was “challenging”, with Moscow making “genuine headway” on the objective it claimed was the rationale for the invasion - the supposed liberation of the Donbas. But a western official said on Wednesday that Russia has “definitively lost the initiative” in the battle for the region. They said it is believed that securing the full extent of Donetsk Oblast remains the “minimum political objective of the Donbas campaign”, but it looks “increasingly unlikely” that Russia will achieve this in the next several months.
Updated at 17.50 BST
27 Jul 2022 19.00 Summary The time in Kyiv is now 9pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s top headlines: Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. Ukraine’s navy confirmed on Wednesday that work had started at three Ukrainian Black Sea ports aimed at preparing for the resumption of grain exports. “In connection with the signing of the agreement on the unblocking of Ukrainian ports for the export of grain, work has been resumed in the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdeny,” the navy said on Facebook. Russia cannot be trusted to honour an agreement to allow the export of Ukrainian grain from Odesa, the Polish prime minister said on Wednesday, after Moscow launched a missile strike on the Black Sea port. “The day after the signing [of the agreement], the Russian armed forces ... attacked Odesa,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference. Ukrainian parliament approved the appointment of lawmaker Andriy Kostin as the country’s prosecutor general on Wednesday, the prosecutor general’s office said. Some 299 deputies in the 450-seat parliament endorsed Kostin’s appointment, it said on the Telegram messaging app. A key Russian-held bridge into the occupied southern city of Kherson has been hit with a barrage of rocket fire by Ukrainian forces, who appeared to be stepping up operations to isolate the city. Video and witness accounts showed up to 18 detonations on the Antonivskiy Bridge over the Dnieper river, one of the main Russian resupply routes into Kherson, with Russian anti-missile air defences apparently failing to intercept the strikes. There were also reports that a railway bridge was targeted. Germany has accused Moscow of engaging in “power play” over energy exports, as Russian state-run Gazprom further throttled gas supplies into Europe. As announced two days earlier, the energy giant on Wednesday reduced the gas flow through Nord Stream 1 to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s total capacity and half the amount it has been delivering since resuming service last week after 10 days of maintenance work. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign affairs minister, was in Uganda on Tuesday for bilateral talks with President Yoweri Museveni, on his third stop of an African tour that ends in Ethiopia today. The trip comes against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is having devastating consequences on food supply across Africa. The war has fuelled food shortages in east Africa, which was already hard-hit by climate change and disruptions to the food supply due to Covid-19. One person has been killed and four wounded in a Russian attack on a hotel in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, according to local emergency services and the regional governor. A bipartisan group of three US senators urged Meta’s Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to do a better job of stopping Russian efforts to spread Spanish-language disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Senators Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent the letters, dated Wednesday, along with Senators Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Republican. A tongue-in-cheek petition to give the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country’s prime minister has garnered over 2,500 signatures hours after being put up on Ukraine’s official petitions site on Tuesday. The European Union had understood how “essential” to Russia the issue of goods transit to the country’s Kaliningrad exclave is, according to Moscow. Reuters reported that the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said developments around the exclave were “positive”, after a deal with the EU to unblock transit to Kaliningrad. That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for tonight. Thanks for following along. The latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine can be found here.
27 Jul 2022 18.50 A bipartisan group of three US senators urged Meta’s Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to do a better job of stopping Russian efforts to spread Spanish-language disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Senators Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent the letters, dated Wednesday, along with Senators Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Republican. In particular, the lawmakers asked the companies to better moderate Russia’s RT en Espanol and Sputnik Mundo, Reuters reported. “We ... know that disinformation campaigns by Russian state media’s Spanish-language outlets targeted at Latin American and Caribbean audiences regularly reach Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, directly harming our national interests,” they said in the three letters. The letters were sent to Telegram Chief Executive Pavel Durov, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO. Representatives of Facebook and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment while Telegram could not be reached. A group of 21 US lawmakers sent a similar letter to Facebook in April.
27 Jul 2022 18.08 The British foreign secretary Liz Truss has said Vladimir Putin is holding the rest of the world to ransom over gas prices and said allowing him to succeed would cause “untold misery” across Europe. Asked by broadcasters whether she believed “Vladimir Putin is effectively holding the rest of the world to ransom” by “cutting off supplies to Germany,” she replied:
That is exactly what he is trying to do and it’s vitally important that we stay strong in the face of his appalling aggression. If we allow Vladimir Putin to succeed, it will cause untold misery across Europe. We know that he wouldn’t just stop at Ukraine the east of Europe is under threat and democracy is under threat.
27 Jul 2022 17.47 Russia will not manage to take Donbas in 'immediate future', say western officials Russia has “definitively” lost the initiative in the battle for the Donbas in Ukraine, according to western officials. Moscow will not take the eastern industrial heartland in the “immediate future”, one official said, but “they are not just going to give up and go home”. They said there has been “wax and wane” in the war in Ukraine, and Russia has the capacity to “adapt and adjust what they are doing”, according to a Press Association report. Earlier this month, western officials said the sustainability of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine was “challenging”, with Moscow making “genuine headway” on the objective it claimed was the rationale for the invasion - the supposed liberation of the Donbas. But a western official said on Wednesday that Russia has “definitively lost the initiative” in the battle for the region. They said it is believed that securing the full extent of Donetsk Oblast remains the “minimum political objective of the Donbas campaign”, but it looks “increasingly unlikely” that Russia will achieve this in the next several months.
Updated at 17.50 BST
27 Jul 2022 16.34 Germany accuses Russia of ‘power play’ as gas pipeline supply drops by half Philip Oltermann Germany has accused Moscow of engaging in “power play” over energy exports, as Russian state-run Gazprom further throttled gas supplies into Europe. As announced two days earlier, the energy giant on Wednesday reduced the gas flow through Nord Stream 1 to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s total capacity and half the amount it has been delivering since resuming service last week after 10 days of maintenance work. According to network data from the gas transfer station in Lubmin, north-east Germany, only about 17m kilowatt hours of gas arrived between 8am and 9am, compared with more than 27m kWh between 6am and 7am. Germany accuses Russia of ‘power play’ as gas pipeline supply drops by half Read more
Updated at 16.54 BST
27 Jul 2022 16.03 A tongue-in-cheek petition to give the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Ukrainian citizenship and make him the country’s prime minister has garnered over 2,500 signatures hours after being put up on Ukraine’s official petitions site on Tuesday. Despite losing domestic popularity and eventually having been forced to announce his resignation after dozens of ministerial departures in early July, Johnson remains a cult figure in Kyiv for his vocal support of Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. The Reuters news agency reported: The petition, addressed to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, lists Johnson’s strengths as “worldwide support for Boris Johnson, a clear position against the military invasion of Ukraine, (and) wisdom in the political, financial and legal spheres.” The petition, however, does acknowledge one negative side of such an appointment: its non-compliance with Ukraine’s constitution. In an apparent coincidence, several hours after the petition was put up on Tuesday, Johnson presented Zelenskiy with the Sir Winston Churchill Leadership award for what his Downing Street office described as “incredible courage, defiance, and dignity” in the face of Russia’s invasion. Zelenskiy did not mention the new petition when accepting the award, but he will be obliged to officially respond if it receives 25,000 signatures. Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelenskiy visit an exhibition of destroyed Russian military vehicles and weapons in Kyiv. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
Updated at 16.09 BST
27 Jul 2022 15.39 The Czech government has backed allowing its fighter jets to protect neighbouring Slovakia’s air space from September, the defence ministry said on Wednesday. Slovakia has sought help from its Nato allies as it looks to ground its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets in August under long-standing plans to modernise the military. Slovak government officials have said the old jets could be sent to neighbouring Ukraine to help Kyiv defend itself against Russia’s invasion, Reuters reported. From September, the Czech army’s Gripen JAS-39 fighter jets will provide air policing for Slovakia until at least the end of 2023, the Czech Defence Ministry said. Poland is also expected to take part, it said. More details will come as part of a joint declaration from the countries to be signed in the near future.
27 Jul 2022 15.13 Russia cannot be trusted to honour an agreement to allow the export of Ukrainian grain from Odesa, the Polish prime minister said on Wednesday, after Moscow launched a missile strike on the Black Sea port. “The day after the signing [of the agreement], the Russian armed forces ... attacked Odesa,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference. “It follows that such agreements cannot be considered fully credible, because unfortunately that is what Russia is like.”
27 Jul 2022 14.48 Peter Beaumont In response to the attack on the Antonivskiy Bridge, Russian military bloggers, some of whom have become more critical of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war, underlined the problems facing Russian forces in the Kherson area. Among them was the Voennyi Osvedomitel (military informant) Telegram channel, which has a following of 450,000 people. “The repeated attacks by the armed forces of Ukraine have led to – so far – a temporary failure of the Antonivskiy Bridge, forcing the construction of ferry and pontoon crossings as an alternative.
“There are exactly two problems here. First, the consequences of shelling the bridge have a cumulative effect, that is, each subsequent one does more damage than the previous one … The second is that alternatives in the form of pontoons / ferries are much more vulnerable to enemy fire.
“We are forced to conclude that the problem with the ongoing attempts of the armed forces of Ukraine to cut off the right-bank grouping of [Russian forces] from supplies is not being resolved.” Map of the Kherson region The bridge has come under repeated attack in the past week as Ukraine has tried to cut off the handful of routes Russia can use to move heavy weapons in and around Kherson, including a road over the dam at nearby Nova Kakhovka.
27 Jul 2022 14.42 Gazprom says turbine used for Nord Stream 1 has not arrived from Canada Gazprom’s deputy CEO, Vitaly Markelov, has said the company has still not received a Siemens turbine used at Nord Stream 1’s Portovaya compressor station that has been undergoing servicing in Canada.
Reuters reports Markelov blamed Siemens, which is servicing the turbine, for the delay, saying that there were sanctions risks associated with the machinery. Yesterday energy ministers from the 27 EU member states, except Hungary, backed a voluntary 15% reduction in gas usage over the winter, a target that could become mandatory if the Kremlin ordered a complete shutdown of gas to Europe.
Updated at 15.11 BST
27 Jul 2022 14.40 Here are some pictures of the newly opened joint coordination centre (JCC) in Istanbul which will oversee the export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in a deal brokered by Turkey. Military delegations of Turkey, Russia and Ukraine sit at the opening of the coordination centre for Ukrainian grain exports. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images A general view of the JCC in Istanbul. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA Reuters reports that a Turkish official close to the matter said that prior to last week’s agreement the Ukrainian and Russian sides initially did not talk to each other during the negotiations, but then they softened. “The Ukrainian and Russian representatives are staying here at the joint centre. The parties have social conversations with each other in this campus. They are eating together here,” he said. A Ukrainian official attends the opening of the JCC. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images Russian military delegation during the opening ceremony. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA
Updated at 14.42 BST
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 112 of the invasion
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Zelenskiy repeated his call for the west to step up the provision of heavy weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said the country had received only 10% of what it asked for and there was no path to victory without the aid: “No matter how hard Ukraine tries, no matter how professional our army is, without the help of western partners we will not be able to win this war”. Zelenskiy added that Ukraine does not have enough anti-missile systems to shoot down Russian projectiles targeting its cities. “Our country does not have enough of them ... there can be no justification in delays in providing them.”
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{'people': ['Hanna Malyar'], 'organizations': ['Zelenskiy', 'Zelenskiy'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia-Ukraine war update: what we know on day 133 of the invasion
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The battle for Sloviansk is likely to be the next key contest in the struggle for Donbas as Russian forces approach within 10 miles (16km) of the Donetsk town, the UK Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday. Russian forces from the eastern and western groups of forces are likely now about 16km north of Sloviansk as central and southern groups of forces also pose a threat to the town, according to the latest British intelligence report.
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{'people': ['Donbas'], 'organizations': ['the UK', 'Ministry of Defence'], 'locations': ['Sloviansk', 'Sloviansk']}
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Tui Group terminates branding deal with Tui Russia
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Tui, Europe’s largest holiday company, has cancelled a deal allowing the Russian oligarch Alexei Mordashov to use its name after the billionaire was hit by EU sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Tui Russia was established in 2009 as a joint venture with Mordashov’s Severgroup to expand the business in Russia and Ukraine. Mordashov had invested in Tui and joined its supervisory board but he was forced to resign last week after the sanctions were revealed.
Tui had sold its stake in the joint venture at the end of March 2021 to KN-Holdings LLC, a company then wholly owned and controlled by Mordashov’s sons, Kirill and Nikita. However, Mordashov recently took back control of the company.
The brand licence agreement allowed Tui Russia to continue using the name in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is thought that the Russian business is planning to announce a new brand name as soon as Thursday.
Fritz Joussen, the chief executive of Tui Group, said: “Tui condemns Russia’s attack and war against Ukraine. Our position is clear. The Tui brand must no longer be used by Tui Russia for its business and the company’s presence.”
Tui’s links with Mordashov have come under close scrutiny since the invasion of Ukraine, and Italian authorities last week reportedly seized a 65m yacht said to belong to him. Mordashov controls about a third of Tui’s shares via different investment vehicles.
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Mordashov’s shares in Tui have been frozen, meaning he cannot sell them to realise any profits. He also resigned from Tui’s board as soon as the sanctions were announced.
Mordashov, one of Russia’s richest men, owns Severgroup, which includes the vast Severstal steel producer and a Tui stake.
The EU’s announcement of sanctions on Mordashov said he was, through Severgroup’s banking, media and industrial interests, “responsible for supporting actions and policies that undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”.
In a statement on Monday, Mordashov said he had “absolutely nothing to do with the emergence of the current geopolitical tension” and did not understand why the EU had imposed sanctions on him.
Vladimir Lukin, another Russian with links to Severgroup, also resigned from Tui’s board this week.
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Russia and Ukraine
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Zelenskiy accuses Russia of using rising gas prices to terrorise Europe – as it happened
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From 26 Jul 2022 21.35 Zelenskiy accuses Russia of using rising gas prices to terrorise Europe Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday said Russia was deliberately cutting supplies of natural gas to impose a “price terror” against Europe, and he called for more sanctions on Moscow, Reuters reports. “Using Gazprom, Moscow is doing all it can to make this coming winter as harsh as possible for the European countries. Terror must be answered - impose sanctions,” he said in a late-night video address. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaking yesterday during a joint press conference with President of Guatemala Alejandro Giammattei. Photograph: Alexey Furman/Getty Images Meanwhile, a deal agreed by EU states to curb their gas use should yield enough gas savings to last through an average winter, if Russia were to fully cut supplies in July, the bloc’s energy chief Kadri Simson said. The Kremlin said a repaired gas turbine for Nord Stream 1, Russia’s biggest gas pipeline to Europe, had not yet arrived after maintenance in Canada, and that a second turbine was showing defects. Russian gas giant Gazprom has sharply increased pressure in the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline that delivers Russian gas to Europe without prior notice, the Ukrainian state pipeline operator company said. Such pressure spikes could lead to emergencies including pipeline ruptures, according to the Ukrainian company. The Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin reports from Brussels and has written an explainer tackling the question ‘How does the EU plan to cut gas usage by 15% this winter?’ EU member states have agreed a plan for gas savings to avoid a winter energy crisis, but loaded with exemptions. Said to be overwhelming consensus in favour, but one member state objected — Hungary. — Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) July 26, 2022
Updated at 22.02 BST
27 Jul 2022 01.23 Summary Thank you for joining us for today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. We will be pausing our live reporting overnight and returning in the morning. In the meantime, you can read our comprehensive summary of the day’s events below. The strategic Antonivskiy bridge in the Russian-occupied region of Kherson has reportedly been struck by Ukrainian forces hoping to disrupt Russia’s main supply route into the southern Ukrainian city. Multiple, yet unconfirmed, suggest Ukrainian forces conducted new strikes late on Tuesday night. “Explosions in the Antonivskiy Bridge area,” Ukraine’s armed forces said in a Telegram update just before midnight alongside a video purportedly showing the strikes. Russian forces continued to strike civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and the surrounding region in the country’s northeast. Regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said the strikes on the city resumed around dawn Tuesday. “The Russians deliberately target civilian infrastructure objects hospitals, schools, movie theatres. Everything is being fired at, even queues for humanitarian aid,” Syniehubov told Ukrainian television. Russia’s defence ministry plans to hold strategic military exercises in the east of the country from 30 August to 5 September. Interfax reported that the militaries of unspecified other countries will be taking part in the regular ‘Vostok’ exercises, citing the defence ministry. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will hold a one-day visit to the Russian resort of Sochi on 5 August, his office announced. It is anticipated that he will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The EU has been forced to water down its plan to ration gas this winter in an attempt to avoid an energy crisis generated by further Russian cuts to supply. Energy ministers from the 27 member states, except Hungary, backed a voluntary 15% reduction in gas usage over the winter. Ministers agreed opt-outs for island nations and possible exclusions for countries little connected to the European gas network. Zelenskiy has accused Russia of deliberately cutting supplies of natural gas to impose a “price terror” against Europe. “Using Gazprom, Moscow is doing all it can to make this coming winter as harsh as possible for the European countries. Terror must be answered - impose sanctions,” he said in a late-night video address. A joint coordination centre (JCC) for Ukrainian grain exports under a UN-brokered deal will be opened in a ceremony in Istanbul on Wednesday, Turkey’s defence ministry said. Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations signed the accord last week to resume Ukraine’s grain exports. Insurance uncertainty poses the biggest obstacle to grain ships leaving Ukraine’s Black Sea ports this week, exporters say. Questions remain over whether insurance companies will be willing to insure the vessels as they navigate the mined waters, while buyers are hesitant to make new orders given the risk of Russian attacks. The first train with sanctioned goods has arrived from Russia to Kaliningrad via Lithuania in the first such trip since the EU said Lithuania must allow Russian goods across its territory. Russian news agency Tass cited regional governor Anton Alikhanov as saying: “It is indeed the first train to have arrived after the EU decision ... [it is] quite an important achievement.” The train reportedly consisted of 60 freight cars with cement. Russia will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost, the country’s space chief said. Yuri Borisov said Russia would fulfil its obligations to its partners on the ISS before leaving the project. “The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said, to which Putin responded: “Good.” Ukraine aims to strike a deal for a $15-$20bn programme with the International Monetary Fund before year-end to help shore up its war-torn economy, the country’s central bank governor, Kyrylo Shevchenko, told Reuters. The Russian economy appears to be doing better than expected despite western sanctions. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund upgraded Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimate for this year by 2.5%, although its economy is still expected to contract by 6%. “That’s still a fairly sizeable recession in Russia in 2022,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told AFP, adding that rising energy prices are “providing an enormous amount of revenues to the Russian economy”. Boris Johnson compared Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s leadership of Ukraine to the war-time exploits of Sir Winston Churchill. The British prime minister said he believed “Churchill would have cheered and probably have wept too” when the Ukrainian president insisted he needed “ammunition, not a ride” out of Kyiv when Russia invaded in February. A British citizen who video blogs pro-Kremlin material from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine has been added to a UK government sanctions list. Graham Phillips – the first UK citizen to be added to the growing sanctions list – has been accused of being a conduit for pro-Russian propaganda, receiving medals from the Russian state for his reporting.
Updated at 01.29 BST
26 Jul 2022 00.40 Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has defended his country’s relationship with Russia, as Moscow’s top diplomat toured Africa to rally support over the war in Ukraine. “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us,” the Ugandan leader said alongside Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov at a press conference in the town of Entebbe, according to Agence France-Presse. “If Russia makes mistakes, we tell them. When they have not made mistakes, we can’t be against them,” he added, hailing Russia for backing anti-colonial movements in Africa. Uganda was one of 17 African nations to abstain during a vote in March on a UN resolution that overwhelmingly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 🇷🇺🇺🇬 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni held a meeting in Entebbe.#RussiaUganda #RussiaAfrica pic.twitter.com/aAojBveWLl — MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) July 26, 2022 As Russia’s relations with the west have collapsed over the conflict, Lavrov said Africa would play a greater role in Russia’s foreign policy.
Museveni also said Uganda would cooperate with Moscow in a range of fields including space, energy, agriculture and vaccines. “Our interest with Russia is when there is progress with Russia, we (Africa) benefit,” he added. Lavrov continued in Ethiopia later on Tuesday on the latest leg of his four-day trip.
26 Jul 2022 00.22 Ukraine shells Kherson's Antonivskiy bridge - reports In the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in southern Ukraine, there are multiple, yet unconfirmed, reports of Ukrainian forces conducting new strikes on the strategic Antonivskiy bridge across the Dnieper River. “Explosions in the Antonivskiy Bridge area,” Ukraine’s armed forces said in a Telegram update just before midnight alongside a video purportedly showing the strikes. Kviv Independent defence reporter, Illia Ponomarenko, tweeted late Tuesday night: “Reportedly, we have another heavy Ukrainian strike upon the Antonivsky Bridge, the key Russian supply line in occupied Kherson.” Pending official confirmation: the Russian-held Antonivsʹkyy Bridge next to Kherson has been reportedly destroyed by the #Ukrainian #army. #HIMARSoCLOCK. — KyivPost (@KyivPost) July 26, 2022 The Antonivskiy Bridge is the main supply route for Russian troops and if damaged, Moscow’s forces would potentially be trapped in Kherson with little ammunition and little supplies - part of Ukraine’s plan to re-take the city. Kherson is accessed by four key bridges. Kherson is accessed by four key bridges. Kherson, captured in early March, has long been a focus for the Ukrainians, with the defenders making limited gains in the countryside between Mykolaiv and the target city since April. But, apparently helped by the longer-range weapons, with an effective firing distance of up to 50 miles (80km), the Ukrainians are growing more confident. The city is accessed by four key bridges. Ukraine’s goal appears is not want to destroy the bridges as food supplies are still needed to cross into the city but rather to damage them to the point where the Russians cannot transport heavy equipment across them. Can Ukrainian forces recapture Kherson from Russia? Read more
26 Jul 2022 23.58 Ukraine aims to strike a deal for a $15-$20bn programme with the International Monetary Fund before year-end to help shore up its war-torn economy, the country’s central bank governor Kyrylo Shevchenko told Reuters. Battered by Russia’s invasion, Ukraine faces a 35%-45% economic contraction in 2022 and a monthly fiscal shortfall of $5bn and is heavily reliant on foreign financing from its western partners. Shevchenko, 49, speaking during his visit to London, also said he hoped to agree on a swap line with the Bank of England “within weeks”, though he did not specify the amount. Kyiv had already submitted its request to the IMF, the governor said, and was now in consultation with the fund over the new financing that he hoped would provide as much as $20bn over two or three years in form of a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) or an Extended Fund Facility (EFF). It was the first time Ukraine has put a number on the fresh financing it needs from the Washington-based lender. A $20bn programme would be the second largest currently active loan from the IMF after Argentina. “The IMF has always acted as Ukraine’s partner during the war,” Shevchenko told Reuters. “My hope is to start the programme this year.”
26 Jul 2022 23.36 First Russian train reaches Kaliningrad, governor says The first train with sanctioned goods has arrived from Russia to Kaliningrad via Lithuania in the first such trip since the European Union said Lithuania must allow Russian goods across its territory, according to the regional governor. Russian news agency Tass cited regional governor Anton Alikhanov as saying: It is indeed the first train to have arrived after the EU decision ... [it is] quite an important achievement.” The train reportedly consisted of 60 freight cars with cement. Wedged between Lithuania and fellow EU and Nato member Poland, Russia’s heavily militarised exclave of Kaliningrad depends on mainland Russia for a sizeable portion of its supplies. But these must transit through Lithuanian territory. The region has found itself increasingly isolated since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.
Updated at 23.40 BST
26 Jul 2022 23.26 Russia to pull out of International Space Station Russia will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost, the country’s new space chief has confirmed. The announcement throws into question the future of the 24-year-old space station, with experts saying it would be extremely difficult to keep it running without the Russians. Nasa and its partners had hoped to continue operating it until 2030. “The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Yuri Borisov, head of Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. He added: “I think that by that time we will start forming a Russian orbiting station.” Nasa officials said they had yet to hear directly from their Russian counterparts on the matter. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson issued a statement saying that the agency was “committed to the safe operation” of the space station through 2030 and continues “to build future capabilities to assure our major presence in low-Earth orbit.” US state department spokesman Ned Price called the announcement “an unfortunate development” given the “valuable professional collaboration our space agencies have had over the years.” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the US is “exploring options” for dealing with a Russian withdrawal.
26 Jul 2022 23.00 Summary The time in Kyiv is around 1am on Wednesday July 27. Here is a round-up of the day’s top headlines: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was deliberately cutting supplies of natural gas to impose a “price terror” against Europe, and he called for more sanctions on Moscow. “Using Gazprom, Moscow is doing all it can to make this coming winter as harsh as possible for the European countries. Terror must be answered - impose sanctions,” he said. Despite damaging Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy appears to be weathering the storm better than expected as it benefits from high energy prices, the International Monetary Fund said. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook upgraded Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimate for this year by a remarkable 2.5%, although its economy is still expected to contract by 6%. EU member states have agreed to ration gas this winter, in an attempt to avoid an energy crisis generated by further Russian cuts to supply. Energy ministers from the 27 member states mostly backed a plan for a voluntary 15% reduction in gas usage over the winter, but added in several opt-outs for island nations and countries unconnected or little connected to the European gas network, which will blunt the overall effect. Russia’s defence ministry plans to hold strategic military exercises in the east of the country from 30 August to 5 September, news agencies reported on Tuesday. Interfax reported that the militaries of unspecified other countries will be taking part in the regular “Vostok” exercises, citing the defence ministry. A British citizen who video blogs pro-Kremlin material from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine has been added to a UK government sanctions list. Graham Phillips, who has been accused of being a conduit for pro-Russian propaganda, is one of 42 new designations added to the UK’s Russia sanctions list. Boris Johnson has compared Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s leadership of Ukraine to the war-time exploits of Sir Winston Churchill. The British prime minister said he believed “Churchill would have cheered and probably have wept too” when the Ukrainian president insisted he needed “ammunition, not a ride” out of Kyiv when the Russian invasion was renewed in February. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will hold a one-day visit to the Russian resort of Sochi on 5 August, his office has just announced. Reuters reports that no further details were immediately available, but it is anticipated that he would meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Worries over insurance are the biggest obstacle to grain ships leaving Ukraine’s Black Sea ports this week, exporters say. Questions remain over whether insurance companies will be willing to insure the vessels as they navigate the mined waters, while buyers are hesitant to make new orders given the risk of Russian attacks. A joint coordination centre (JCC) for Ukrainian grain exports under a UN-brokered deal will be opened in a ceremony in Istanbul on Wednesday, Turkey’s defence ministry said. Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations signed the accord last week to resume Ukraine’s grain exports, which had stalled after Russia’s invasion of its neighbour. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it believes former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is in Moscow and did not rule out possible contact with him. “As far as we know, he is in Moscow,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked if the Kremlin was aware of reports that Schroeder had travelled to Moscow on Tuesday. Russia’s armed forces destroyed eight Ukrainian missile and artillery arms depots in the southern Mykolaiv region and in the eastern Donetsk region, the defence ministry said in its daily briefing on Tuesday. Ukrainian officials said earlier on Tuesday that Russia launched a “massive missile strike” against the south of the country overnight, including hits against infrastructure in the black sea port of Mykolaiv. A major fire broke out at an oil depot in the Budyonnovsky district of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine after Ukrainian troops shelled the province, according to local media reports. No casualties or injuries have been reported so far, but the occupying forces of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic issued photographs which showed train tank cars on fire. Your United States blogger today now hands over the war news baton to Australia, where our colleagues will continue to bring you developments as they happen.
26 Jul 2022 22.09 Russian forces continued to strike civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and the surrounding region in the country’s northeast, the Associated Press writes. Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said the strikes on the city resumed around dawn Tuesday and damaged a car dealership. The Russians deliberately target civilian infrastructure objects hospitals, schools, movie theaters. Everything is being fired at, even queues for humanitarian aid, so we’re urging people to avoid mass gatherings,” Syniehubov told Ukrainian television.
Here are some images from the region. Chuhuev, Kharkiv oblast, Jul.26. Cat sitting in the rubble of his house ruined by a russian missile.
Photo: Vyacheslav Madievsky#russiaisateroriststate #RussianWarCrimes pic.twitter.com/RHrvVBHjbf — Stratcom Centre UA (@StratcomCentre) July 26, 2022 More damage. Consequences of a Russian missile hitting a private house in Chuhuyiv, Kharkiv region on July 26. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Some of the people affected in the region. A group of elderly women sit outside their apartment building on Tuesday, which has suffered months of shelling in Saltivka, Kharkiv. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images More. A rescuer hugs a man who helped find his wife’s body under the rubble of the cultural center of the city of Chuhuiv, under which two more people have been found. Russia shelled the city on Monday night. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Sorting through rubble, where people were trapped. Ukrainian rescuers and local residents are sorting through the rubble of the cultural center of the city of Chuhuiv, hit on Monday night. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images More from the bombed Chuhuiv cultural centre. For the second day, rescuers have been sorting through the rubble in order to get three people out from under the destroyed cultural centre in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv region. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
26 Jul 2022 21.35 Zelenskiy accuses Russia of using rising gas prices to terrorise Europe Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday said Russia was deliberately cutting supplies of natural gas to impose a “price terror” against Europe, and he called for more sanctions on Moscow, Reuters reports. “Using Gazprom, Moscow is doing all it can to make this coming winter as harsh as possible for the European countries. Terror must be answered - impose sanctions,” he said in a late-night video address. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaking yesterday during a joint press conference with President of Guatemala Alejandro Giammattei. Photograph: Alexey Furman/Getty Images Meanwhile, a deal agreed by EU states to curb their gas use should yield enough gas savings to last through an average winter, if Russia were to fully cut supplies in July, the bloc’s energy chief Kadri Simson said. The Kremlin said a repaired gas turbine for Nord Stream 1, Russia’s biggest gas pipeline to Europe, had not yet arrived after maintenance in Canada, and that a second turbine was showing defects. Russian gas giant Gazprom has sharply increased pressure in the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline that delivers Russian gas to Europe without prior notice, the Ukrainian state pipeline operator company said. Such pressure spikes could lead to emergencies including pipeline ruptures, according to the Ukrainian company. The Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin reports from Brussels and has written an explainer tackling the question ‘How does the EU plan to cut gas usage by 15% this winter?’ EU member states have agreed a plan for gas savings to avoid a winter energy crisis, but loaded with exemptions. Said to be overwhelming consensus in favour, but one member state objected — Hungary. — Jennifer Rankin (@JenniferMerode) July 26, 2022
Updated at 22.02 BST
26 Jul 2022 21.09 Russian economy better than expected despite sanctions - IMF Despite damaging Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy appears to be weathering the storm better than expected as it benefits from high energy prices, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday, Agence France Presse reports. The sanctions were meant to sever Russia from the global financial system and choke off funds available to Moscow to finance the war. But the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook upgraded Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimate for this year by a remarkable 2.5%, although its economy is still expected to contract by 6%. That’s still a fairly sizable recession in Russia in 2022,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told AFP in an interview. He explained a key reason that the downturn was not as bad as expected: The Russian central bank and the Russian policymakers have been able to stave off a banking panic or financial meltdown when the sanctions were first imposed , [while rising energy prices are] providing an enormous amount of revenues to the Russian economy,” he said.
After starting the year below $80 a barrel, oil prices spiked to nearly $129 in March before easing back to under $105 on Tuesday for Brent, the key European benchmark, while natural gas prices are rising again and approaching their recent peak. Major economies including the United States and China are slowing, the report said. But Russia’s economy is estimated to have contracted during the second quarter by less than previously projected, with crude oil and non-energy exports holding up better than expected [but] there is no rebound [ahead]. In fact [IMF is] revising down the Russian growth in 2023,” he said, 1.2 points lower than the April forecast, for a contraction of 3.5%. The penalties already in place, as well as new ones announced by Europe, mean: The cumulative effect of the sanctions is also growing over time,” he said. Gourinchas noted overall that the world may soon be on the edge of recession. World may soon be on edge of recession, says IMF's top economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas @moneycontrolcom https://t.co/NXRgD7AwUe — Shounak Banerjee (@shounak1985) July 26, 2022 Appeal for IMF funds: LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine aims to strike a deal for a $15-$20 billion programme with the International Monetary Fund before year-end to help shore up its war-torn economy, the country's central bank governor Kyrylo Shevchenko told Reuters. — Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) July 26, 2022
Updated at 22.21 BST
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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Thursday briefing: Fears Russia may use chemical weapons
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Top story: Moscow ‘setting stage for false flag’
Hello, Warren Murray with enough to get you started.
Western officials have warned of “serious concern” that Vladimir Putin could use chemical weapons on Kyiv as Russian propagandists spread what the US has called “false claims about alleged US biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine”. “We should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” wrote the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki. Experts have pointed to the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, where Russia is involved. The Kremlin has produced no evidence to support its weapons lab claims, which were called “preposterous” by Psaki and have been dismissed by Ukraine’s government.
01:26 Zelenskiy accuses Russia of genocide in hospital bombing – video
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called a Russian strike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol “the ultimate evidence of genocide”. Zelenskiy said children were buried under rubble and the regional governor said 17 people were wounded when the hospital was destroyed by a Russian airstrike on Wednesday afternoon. We have made a series of slider images from satellite photos to show how Mariupol has been hit. The UK is gearing up to send state-of-the-art Starstreak anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine, as well as Javelin anti-tank missiles, and will continue to supply NLAW anti-tank weapons, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said.
In the last few hours, the US has moved to drastically bolster support to war-ravaged Ukraine with a $13.6bn aid package. The House of Representatives voted to rush through the package that would increase military and humanitarian support. Senate approval is expected within days. It includes $6.5bn for the US costs of sending troops and weapons to eastern Europe and equipping allied forces there, and $6.8bn to care for refugees and provide economic support to allies. The House also passed a bill banning Russian oil imports. Make sure to keep up with further developments at our live blog.
Chancellor’s spring dilemma – Rishi Sunak is facing intense pressure from Conservatives to take action in this month’s spring statement to alleviate the cost of living crisis, which has been exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sunak’s February package of a £200 energy bill cut, to be paid back over five years, and a £150 council tax rebate have been criticised as too meagre to cushion the blow significantly for many households. Anti-poverty campaigners and thinktanks are calling on the chancellor to uprate benefits by more than the planned 3.1%, and many backbench Tories would love him to ditch the 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance contributions, proceeds of which are earmarked to fix health and social care. Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee, has called on ministers to follow Ireland’s approach of cutting fuel duty.
Bad drainage doomed train – A drainage system wrongly built by Carillion and unchecked by Network Rail led to the Stonehaven train crash. Three people died on 12 August 2020 in the worst fatal event on the UK railways in 18 years, when a Scotrail passenger train from Aberdeen to Glasgow derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven, after hitting debris washed by heavy rain on to the track. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch also noted the outdated “crashworthiness” of the 1970s-built HST model involved. The train drivers’ union Aslef called for moves to immediately start to take the HST train type out of service. A separate report on the crash is due in coming months from the rail regulator, ORR, in conjunction with Scottish police and British Transport police.
Covid rise in over-55s – Covid cases appear to be rising in older people as increased socialising, waning immunity and the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron variant threaten to fuel a resurgence of the virus. One in 35 people tested positive between 8 February and 1 March, with cases either level or rising in those aged 55 and over. Scientists on Imperial College’s React-1 study said the R value – the average number of people an infected person passes the virus to – remained below 1 for those aged 54 and under, meaning cases were in decline. But for those aged 55 and over, R stood at 1.04. Latest government figures show that as of this Tuesday there were 11,639 confirmed UK Covid-19 patients in hospital.
Shrewsbury report delayed again – Families have voiced frustration after publication of the final report into the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal was delayed for a second time. The Ockenden review investigated 1,862 maternity cases at the NHS trust in which mothers and babies may have been harmed over almost 20 years. It was delayed from December 2021 until this month, but this week families were told publication had been delayed again due to “parliamentary processes” that need to take place. Rhiannon Davies, whose daughter Kate Stanton-Davies died under the care of the trust shortly after she was born in 2009, said: “We’ve had this date ahead of us, everyone’s lives are on hold and we’re holding our breath to finally get this report.” A new date for the report’s delivery has yet to be confirmed.
‘Anti-feminist’ wins – South Korea has a new president: the conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, who narrowly defeated the ruling party’s Lee Jae-myung with 48.6% of the vote to 47.8%. As an avowed “anti-feminist” he has pledged to abolish the ministry for gender equality, claiming South Korean women do not suffer systemic discrimination – despite voluminous evidence to the contrary.
Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s incoming president. Photograph: Getty Images
Yoon will be sworn in as president on 10 May, taking over from Moon Jae-in. South Korean presidents get a single five-year term.
Today in Focus podcast: Could Nato be doing more?
Nato has refused to intervene militarily in the Ukraine war. Dan Sabbagh explains what more the world’s most powerful military alliance could do – and why full intervention is off the table for now.
Today in Focus Could Nato be doing more? Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp3 00:00:00 00:32:50
Lunchtime read: Hack your happy hormones
Can we really harness our brain chemicals to give ourselves a blast of positivity? Researchers share their shortcuts to boosting oxytocin, serotonin and more.
Illustration: Adam Higton/The Guardian
Sport
Karim Benzema scored a 17-minute hat-trick in an epic comeback as Real Madrid overturned a 2-0 aggregate deficit to dump PSG out of the Champions League, while Manchester City made it through to the quarter-finals after a 0-0 second-leg draw with Sporting gave them a 5-0 aggregate win. England began life on the road without Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad on a stop-start second day of the first Test against West Indies.
Novak Djokovic cannot enter the US while he remains unvaccinated from Covid-19 and will not be allowed to compete at the Indian Wells and Miami ATP Masters 1000 tournaments this month. The sacked Formula One driver Nikita Mazepin has been included on a list of people who face sanctions from the European Union over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. England’s netball captain, Serena Guthrie, has announced her retirement from the sport after revealing she is pregnant with her first child. And Eddie Jones will hold a crucial training session on Thursday morning before finalising his England team to face Ireland with Kyle Sinckler understood to be among the players hampered by injury or illness this week.
Business
Asian markets have surged after oil prices dropped, easing fears of accelerating inflation. Wall Street’s S&P 500 index rose 2.6% for its biggest daily gain in 12 years as prices swung wildly amid uncertainty about the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This morning the FTSE is pegged to open higher, going by futures trading. The pound is worth $1.317 and €1.190 at time of writing.
The papers
The Guardian print edition’s splash today is “‘An atrocity’: Russia bombs Ukraine children’s hospital” about which there is opprobrium everywhere. “Barbaric” says the Mirror which uses the same picture as the Guardian of a pregnant woman being stretchered out of the ruins. The Metro has “A new low for Putin – Russians hit baby hospital”.
The Times underpins the same picture with “Aiming at mothers and babies” while the Daily Mail accompanies it with “Depraved” while the Express deplores “The ultimate in depravity”. The Financial Times says “Zelenskiy accuses Russians of hospital ‘atrocity’ in plea for world’s assistance”.
“Evil upon evil” – the Sun shows a bloody-faced woman leaving the scene wrapped in a quilt. The same patient is shown on the front of the i picking her way down a mangled stairwell – that paper says “Putin bombs children’s hospital”. The Telegraph uses pictures of both the aforementioned victims while headlining its front-page lead “Russia ‘plotting chemical attack’”.
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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First Thing: Russia strikes Kyiv during UN visit to Ukraine
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Good morning.
Russia hit Kyiv with cruise missile strikes hours after Joe Biden announced the US would double its military and economic aid to Ukraine.
The attacks took place while the UN secretary general was visiting the city, leading the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to call for a “strong response”, saying the strikes “say a lot about Russia’s true attitude to global institutions”.
At least 10 people were injured, Ukrainian state emergency officials said. Zelenskiy said the attacks on Kyiv and other cities “prove that we cannot let our guard down”.
Thursday’s strikes came hours after Biden asked Congress to grant immediate approval for spending that would include more than $33bn in military aid, $8.5bn in economic aid to Kyiv and $3bn in humanitarian relief.
The UK is sending 8,000 troops to take part in exercises across eastern Europe – one of the largest deployments since the cold war.
Zelenskiy said Russian forces came close to capturing or assassinating him within hours of the invasion.
Capitol attack panel to issue letters to key Republicans
Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader. The scope and subjects of the letters are not yet finalized. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is expected to issue letters asking significant Republican figures, including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and about a dozen others, to appear before the panel voluntarily, sources close to the matter said.
The list has not yet been finalized, but two sources said that Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, as well as some Republican senators, are being considered.
The panel is understood to be particularly interested in McCarthy after it emerged this week he had told the Republican leadership that days after the Capitol attack Donald Trump admitted at least partial responsibility to him.
When will the letters be sent? Either this week or next week, according to the sources. The list is expected to be authorized as soon as this week.
Have they been asked to testify before? It would be the second time McCarthy, Jordan and Perry are requested to appear.
What if the figures don’t cooperate? The panel will then consider ways to compel them to: subpoenas are no longer off the table.
British Virgin Islands premier arrested on cocaine charges in US sting operation
Andrew Fahie, the premier of the British Virgin Islands. Photograph: Ricki Richardson/Handout
The premier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, has been arrested in Miami on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the US and money laundering during a sting operation.
The BVI governor, John Rankin, confirmed Fahie had been arrested on Thursday morning and called for calm. Fahie was involved in conspiracy to import at least 5kg of cocaine and money laundering from 16 October last year, court papers filed in Florida alleged.
Were others arrested? Oleanvine Maynard, the manager director of the BVI’s port authority, and her son Kadeem were also detained.
How were they caught? Fahie and Maynard were arrested at a Miami airport after being invited by undercover agents to see the $700,000 that BVI officials expected to receive.
In other news …
A meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower in August 2021. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Dozens of people in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi reported seeing a remarkably bright meteor on Wednesday after hearing loud booms. It was first sighted 54 miles above the Mississippi River, near Alcorn, Mississippi, Nasa said.
Elon Musk has sold nearly $4bn-worth of Tesla shares since reaching his $44bn Twitter deal. The sales, on Tuesday and Wednesday, came as Tesla’s share price nosedived amid investor fears Musk would sell to finance the deal.
An American family flying back from Israel caused a bomb scare after they showed security an unexploded bombshell they were planning to bring back as a souvenir. Panicked passengers fled the area, with one man hospitalized for his injuries.
The number of Algerians reaching Spain in small boats in 2021 rose by a fifth. Residents such as 65-year-old Nouara are considering this dangerous route if the legal option is closed to them: “If plan A doesn’t work, illegal migration will be my last refuge.”
Stat of the day: Nearly 5bn medications are prescribed annually in the US
Two fishers are seen in the ocean as a bonefish swims across, Florida, US. Photograph: Jose Azel/Getty Images/Aurora Open
Almost 5bn medications are prescribed annually in the US, and Americans on average have about 12 prescriptions a year. This may be having an impact on marine populations: when Dr Jennifer Rehage, a fish ecologist and associate professor at Florida International University, set out to learn why bonefish numbers are dropping, her team found all 93 fish they sampled tested positive for at least one drug.
Don’t miss this: the Texan revolt against giant new highways
Residents are voicing fury over highway expansions Photograph: Arturo Olmos/The Guardian
The seemingly endless expansion of highways in Texas has provoked anger from residents, who last week protested against plans for roads that will displace residents as well as as churches, schools and businesses. While highways are expanded, the state is obstructing local initiatives encouraging cycling and walking, and residents say public transport options are limited. Could the state’s “car-centric status quo” be beginning to shake?
Climate check: Climate crisis, not military tensions, is biggest threat to Pacific, say former leaders
Pacific elders say the climate crisis is the primary threat to the region. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Former leaders of Pacific nations have warned that the climate crisis – not rising military tensions – pose the biggest threat to their region. Pacific nations are often seen as acting as a bellwether for the climate emergency, which is already causing migration away from some island groups.
Last Thing: ‘I bake recipes I find on gravestones’
‘So far, the recipes have all been on women’s graves’: Rosie Grant at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington DC. Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick
During the strange early days of lockdown, many got into baking, along with other hobbies that fell by the wayside within months (if not weeks). Rosie Grant, who is studying to be an archivist, did too – but with something of a twist. She began baking recipes she found on gravestones, which has led her to research the lives of the women behind the recipes.
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If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Joe Biden', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Biden', 'Kevin McCarthy', 'Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images', 'Kevin McCarthy', 'Scott Perry', 'Jim Jordan', 'Marjorie Taylor Greene', 'Mo Brooks', 'Lauren Boebert', 'Andy Biggs', 'McCarthy', 'Donald Trump', 'McCarthy', 'Jordan', 'Perry', 'Andrew Fahie', 'Ricki Richardson/Handout', 'Andrew Fahie', 'John Rankin', 'Oleanvine Maynard', 'Kadeem', 'Rex/Shutterstock', 'Elon Musk', 'Nouara', 'Jose Azel/Getty Images/Aurora Open', 'Dr Jennifer Rehage', 'Arturo Olmos/', 'Mario Tama/Getty Images', 'Rosie Grant', 'Rosie Grant'], 'organizations': ['UN', 'Zelenskiy', 'Congress', 'Zelenskiy', 'House', 'House', 'Capitol', 'House', 'Capitol', 'BVI', 'Fahie', 'Fahie', 'BVI', 'Fahie', 'BVI', 'meteor', 'meteor', 'Nasa', 'Tesla', 'Tesla', 'Florida International University', 'Guardian', 'First Thing'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukrainian', 'UK', 'British Virgin Islands', 'US', 'the British Virgin Islands', 'the British Virgin Islands', 'Miami', 'US', 'Florida', 'Maynard', 'Miami', 'Arkansas', 'Louisiana', 'Mississippi', 'Alcorn', 'Mississippi', 'Israel', 'Spain', 'US', 'Florida', 'US', 'US', 'Texas', 'Washington DC', 'US']}
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The Guardian
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 111 of the invasion
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Pope Francis has said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps somehow provoked” as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned that Nato was “barking at the gates of Russia”. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, conducted last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff condemned the “ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops” while warning against what he said was a fairytale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.
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{'people': ['Pope Francis', 'La Civiltà Cattolica'], 'organizations': ['Nato'], 'locations': ['Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Jesuit']}
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The Guardian
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 110 of the invasion
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River crossing operations are likely to be among the most important determining factors in the course of the war over the coming months, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest report. Ukrainian forces have often managed to demolish bridges before they withdraw from territory, while Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large-scale river crossings under fire, the report added.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['the UK Ministry of Defence'], 'locations': ['Russia']}
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Russia increasing speed of attack in south-east, says Ukraine
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Russia has stepped up the pace of its offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine, and is preventing the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian fighters from a steelworks in Mariupol because it wants to capture them, Ukrainian officials have said.
“The enemy is increasing the pace of the offensive operation. The Russian occupiers are exerting intense fire in almost all directions,” Ukraine’s military command said of the situation on the main front in the east.
According to the officials, the focus of Russia’s main attack was near the towns of Slobozhanske and Donets, along a strategic frontline highway linking Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, with the Russian-occupied city of Izium.
The Kharkiv regional governor said Russian forces were intensifying attacks from Izium, but Ukrainian troops were holding their ground. Kharkiv regional prosecutors said two civilians were killed and seven wounded in Russian shelling of the village of Pokotilovka. Russia denies targeting civilians.
Although Russian forces were pushed out of northern Ukraine last month, they are heavily entrenched in the east and still hold a swathe of the south that they seized in March.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of planning to stage a fake independence referendum in the occupied south. Russian state media quoted an official from a self-styled pro-Russia “military-civilian commission” in Kherson on Thursday as saying the area would start using Russia’s rouble currency from 1 May.
Ukrainian troops are still holed up in a steelworks in Mariupol, the ruined south-eastern port where thousands of people have died under two months of Russian siege and bombardment.
Russian forces have been pummelling the factory, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said the plant need not be stormed. Kyiv has pleaded for a ceasefire to let civilians and wounded soldiers escape.
“They [want to] use the opportunity to capture the defenders of Mariupol, one of the main [elements] of whom are the … Azov regiment,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the eastern region of Donetsk, told a briefing, referring to a group of fighters that Moscow has vilified. “Therefore the Russian side is not agreeing to any evacuation measures regarding wounded [Ukrainian] troops.”
Capt Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov regiment, told Reuters in a video link from an undisclosed location beneath the complex: “As long as we’re here and holding the defence … the city is not theirs. The tactic [now] is like a medieval siege. We’re encircled, they are no longer throwing lots of forces to break our defensive line. They’re conducting airstrikes.”
01:45 Azovstal evacuation possible with UN help, says Zelenskiy – video
Mariupol city council said about 100,000 residents were “in mortal danger” because of Russian shelling and unsanitary conditions. It said the shortage of drinking water and food was “catastrophic”.
More than 5 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia launched its “special military operation” on 24 February. Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour and defeat nationalists there. The west calls that a bogus pretext for a war of aggression.
In another indication that Russia might be planning to expand the scope of its conflict, Kremlin officials again weighed in to denounce “acts of terrorism” in Moldova’s Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria which borders southern Ukraine.
“We are alarmed by the escalation of tensions in Transnistria,” the foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said during her weekly briefing, pointing to reports of shootings and explosions.
“We regard these actions as acts of terrorism aimed at destabilising the situation in the region and expect a thorough and objective investigation,” Zakharova said.
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{'people': ['Kherson', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Azov', 'Capt Svyatoslav Palamar', 'Azov', 'Maria Zakharova'], 'organizations': ['Slobozhanske', 'Donets', 'Kharkiv', 'Mariupol', 'Reuters', 'UN', 'Zelenskiy', 'Mariupol city council', 'Kremlin', 'Zakharova'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Mariupol', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Izium', 'Izium', 'Pokotilovka', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Mariupol', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Moldova', 'Moscow', 'Transnistria', 'Ukraine', 'Transnistria']}
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The Guardian
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Russia doubles fossil fuel revenues since invasion of Ukraine began
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Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced.
Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
For the EU, imports were about €44bn for the past two months, compared with about €140bn for the whole of last year, or roughly €12bn a month.
The findings demonstrate how Russia has continued to benefit from its stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply, even while governments have frantically sought to prevent Vladimir Putin using oil and gas as an economic weapon.
Even though exports from Russia have been reduced by the war and sanctions, the country’s dominance as a source of gas has meant cutting off supplies has only increased prices, which were already high because of tight supply as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Crude oil shipments from Russia to foreign ports fell by 30% in the first three weeks of April, compared with rates in January and February, before the invasion, according to the CREA data.
But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst for CREA, said the cash propped up Putin’s war effort, and the only way to disable his war machine was to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. “Fossil fuel exports are a key enabler of Putin’s regime, and many other rogue states,” he said. “Continued energy imports are the major gaps in the sanctions imposed on Russia. Everyone who buys these fossil fuels is complicit in the horrendous violations of international law carried out by the Russian military.”
Russia in recent days has moved to cut off fossil fuel supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, which has provoked outrage.
Louis J Wilson, senior adviser at campaigning group Global Witness, said Russia’s willingness to violate its own contracts meant businesses now had no excuse for continuing to trade with Russia. “Fossil fuel majors and commodity traders who have continued trading in Russian fossil fuels, claiming that they are forced to do so by their long-term contracts, should take note of the value of the agreements they hold with Russian entities. Russia is willing to tear up these contracts to support their own war effort, yet European companies supposedly feel compelled to continue financing war crimes out of respect for them,” he said.
“The corporate enablers of this deadly trade have shown they will stop at nothing to continue profiting from Russia’s blood oil.”
CREA’s data found that many fossil fuel companies continued to do high volumes of trade with Russia, including BP, Shell and ExxonMobil.
Germany was the biggest importer in the last two months, despite repeated avowals by the government that halting dependence on Russian oil was a priority. The country paid about €9bn for imports during the period. Italy and the Netherlands were also big importers, with about €6.8bn and €5.6bn respectively, but as those countries operate major ports, which take in products for refining and use in the chemical industries as well as for domestic consumption, many of those imports were probably used elsewhere.
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A spokesperson for Shell told the Guardian that the company had taken decisive action in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. “We have announced our intent to exit our joint ventures with Gazprom and related entities and to phase out all Russian hydrocarbons, in consultation with governments. Since we announced this intent, we have stopped all spot purchases of Russian crude, liquefied natural gas and of cargos of refined products directly exported from Russia.”
And a spokesperson for Exxon said: “We support the internationally coordinated efforts to bring Russia’s unprovoked attack to an end, and we are complying with all sanctions. We have not made any new contracts for Russian products since the Russian invasion, and there are no deliveries of Russian crude or refined products currently scheduled for the UK. We will not invest in new developments in Russia.”
“Two months after Putin invaded Ukraine, Germany is still funding the Russian war chest to the tune of €4.5bn a month. Berlin is the largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels,” Bernice Lee, a research director at the Chatham House thinktank, told the Guardian. “The world is looking to Germany to demonstrate strength and determination towards Russia, but instead they’re bankrolling the war and blocking a European embargo on Russian oil.”
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{'people': ['Vladimir Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Louis J Wilson', 'Putin', 'Bernice Lee'], 'organizations': ['EU', 'the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air', 'EU', 'EU', 'EU', 'CREA', 'Global Witness', 'BP', 'Shell', 'ExxonMobil', 'First Edition', 'Shell', 'Guardian', 'Exxon', 'Guardian'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Lauri', 'Myllyvirta', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Poland', 'Bulgaria', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Germany', 'Italy', 'Netherlands', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Gazprom', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'UK', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Germany', 'Berlin', 'Germany', 'Russia']}
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Ukrainian forces retreat from Lysychansk as Russia claims strategic city
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From 3 Jul 2022 19.09 Ukrainian forces withdraw from Lysychansk The Ukrainian army retreated from the strategic city of Lysychansk on Sunday as Russia claimed a major victory by seizing control of the entire eastern Luhansk region. Agence France-Presse reports: The Ukrainian withdrawal followed weeks of fierce fighting and marked a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces more than four months after their invasion and after turning their focus away from the capital, Kyiv. Lysychansk had been the last major city in the Luhansk area of the eastern Donbas region still in Ukrainian hands and its capture frees up Moscow’s forces to advance on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in neighbouring Donetsk. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier denied Russian claims of Lysychansk’s fall before the Ukrainian army announced the retreat on Sunday evening. “The continuation of the defence of the city would lead to fatal consequences” in the face of Russia’s superiority in numbers and equipment, the army said in a statement. “In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw. “Unfortunately, steel will and patriotism are not enough for success – material and technical resources are needed.” Russian forces seized Lysychansk’s twin city of Sievierodonetsk last week after weeks of intense fighting. The latest blow to Ukrainian resistance came after the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Sunday pledged further military support including armoured vehicles and drones during a meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv.
Updated at 19.22 BST
4 Jul 2022 01.15 Summary Thank you for joining us for today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. We will be pausing our live reporting overnight and returning in the morning. In the meantime, you can read our comprehensive summary of the day’s events below. Ukrainian forces have retreated from Lysychansk as Russia claims it is now in control of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said Moscow’s forces had established “full control” over Lysychansk and several nearby settlements. Ukraine’s military command confirmed on Sunday evening that its troops had been forced to pull back from the city, saying there would otherwise be “fatal consequences”. Lysychansk was the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the Luhansk region. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, vowed to regain Lysychansk with the help of long-range western weapons. “We will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons. Ukraine does not give anything up,” he said in an evening address. The eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was hit by powerful shelling from multiple rocket launchers on Sunday, killing six people and injuring 20 others, the city’s mayor Vadim Lyakh said. In the post-2014 regional capital of Kramatorsk, a missile destroyed a hotel, according to its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko. He said three rockets hit the town on Sunday and that there were no reported victims so far. At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings damaged in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border on Sunday, the region’s governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least 11 apartment buildings and 39 private residential houses were damaged, including five houses destroyed. Australia will send more than $100m in new aid to Ukraine including military equipment, as well as levelling sanctions on 16 new Russian officials, following prime minister Anthony Albanese’s secret trip to Kyiv. Albanese visited Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, three towns in the Kyiv region where evidence of mass killings and torture was uncovered after the withdrawal of Russian forces. Britain will host a 2023 recovery conference to help Ukraine rebuild from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion. The Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) will begin on Monday in Lugano, Switzerland, to discuss how to rebuild Ukraine, bringing together a Ukrainian delegation with representatives of other countries, international organisations and civil society, the UK foreign office said. The UK may follow the example of Canada and seize the assets of Russians in Britain in order to give them to Ukraine. Foreign secretary, Liz Truss, told MPs she was supportive of the idea that the government could seize frozen Russian assets in the UK and redistribute them to victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine. A new New York Times investigation has revealed that Nazism references spiked to record-high levels the day Russia invaded Ukraine. The outlet surveyed eight million articles about Ukraine collected from over 8,000 Russian websites since 2014, and found that since 2014, references to Nazism were “relatively flat for eight years and then spiked to unprecedented levels on February 24” of this year. The president of Belarus and Vladimir Putin’s closest ally has said his ex-Soviet state stands fully behind Russia, adding that the country’s “have practically a unified army”. Alexander Lukashenko said he had thrown his weight behind Putin’s campaign against Ukraine “from the very first day” in late February. “We are being criticised for being the only country in the world to support Russia in its fight against Nazism,” a video on the state BelTA news agency showed Lukashenko telling a gathering. “We will remain together with fraternal Russia.” Turkish customs authorities have detained a Russian cargo ship carrying grain allegedly stolen from Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador to the country has said. “We have full co-operation. The ship is currently standing at the entrance to the port, it has been detained by the customs authorities of Turkey,” ambassador Vasyl Bodnar said on Ukrainian national television.
Updated at 01.19 BST
3 Jul 2022 00.53 The president of Belarus and Vladimir Putin’s closest ally says his ex-Soviet state stands fully behind Russia in its military drive in Ukraine as part of its longstanding commitment to a “union state” with Moscow. Addressing a ceremony marking the anniversary of the World War Two liberation of Minsk by Soviet troops, Alexander Lukashenko said he had thrown his weight behind Putin’s campaign against Ukraine “from the very first day” in late February. Today, we are being criticised for being the only country in the world to support Russia in its fight against Nazism. We support and will continue to support Russia,” a video on the state BelTA news agency showed Lukashenko telling the gathering. And those who criticise us, do they not know that we have such a close union with the Russian Federation?…That we have practically a unified army. But you knew all this. We will remain together with fraternal Russia.” Lukashenko has allowed Russian troops to use his country’s territory in invading Ukraine. Some Ukrainian officials suggest Belarus could soon become directly involved in the conflict. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Belarusian leader’s statement amounted to a “signal”, with his actions to be watched carefully. Zelenskiy, quoted by Ukrainian media, told reporters in Kyiv that Lukashenko’s comments were a “dangerous” development. Lukashenko’s statement about a unified army with Russia is, above all, dangerous for the Belarusian people. He must not drag Belarus into a Russian war of invasion against Ukraine. I believe this is a dangerous signal. And I believe that we will all see the results of this signal.”
3 Jul 2022 00.21 Patrick Wintour The UK wants to follow the example of Canada and seize the assets of Russians in the UK in order to give them to Ukraine, foreign secretary Liz Truss has said. It comes as Truss is due to give a speech on Monday to a Ukraine reconstruction conference in Lugano, Switzerland, which will be attended either in person or virtually by most of Ukraine’s senior political leadership. It is estimated that more than 120,000 homes in Ukraine have been destroyed during the Russian invasion, creating the need for billions in income to restore the country economically and make it a Europe-faced economy. Truss told MPs last week she was supportive of the idea that the government could seize frozen Russian assets in the UK and redistribute them to victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine. She said: “I am supportive of the concept. We are looking at it very closely. The Canadians have in fact just passed legislation This is an issue that we are working on jointly with the Home Office and the Treasury, but I certainly agree with the concept. We just need to get the specifics of it right.” She said the initiative would “most probably” need legislation but not necessarily. Liz Truss mulls seizure of Russian assets in UK to give to Ukraine Read more
3 Jul 2022 23.50 Australia will send more than $100m in new aid to Ukraine including military equipment, as well as levelling sanctions on 16 new Russian officials, following prime minister Anthony Albanese’s secret trip to Kyiv. Albanese tacked on a day visit to Ukraine at the end of his European trip for the Nato summit, where he met the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and toured parts of the country devastated by Russia’s aggression. Albanese visited Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, three towns in the Kyiv region that became synonymous with the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s invasion when evidence of mass killings and torture was uncovered after the withdrawal of Russian forces. The PM said in a statement following his trip:
Russia’s brutal invasion is a gross violation of international law. I saw first-hand the devastation and trauma it has inflicted on the people of Ukraine ... My visit to Kyiv and recent visits by other world leaders sends a clear message that democratic nations like Australia will stand side by side with the Ukrainian people in their time of need.
01:24 Russian attacks on Irpin are war crimes, says Australian prime minister – video Albanese committed $99.5m in military assistance, including 14 armoured personnel carriers, 20 Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles and other military equipment; a contribution to Nato’s Ukraine Comprehensive Assistance Package Trust Fund; and $8.7m to assist Ukraine’s Border Guard Service to upgrade border management equipment, cybersecurity and border operations in the field.
Australia will also impose new financial sanctions and travel bans on 16 further Russian ministers and oligarchs, as well as plans to intervene at the international court of justice in support of Ukraine in its case against Russia. The government will also allow duty-free access to Australia for Ukrainian imports, and prohibit the import of Russian gold. Albanese said the new contributions bring Australia’s total military assistance to Ukraine to approximately A$388m. Zelenskiy acknowledged Albanese’s visit as a “historical moment”. Australia is one of the top countries in terms of its level of support. We have already received significant defence assistance from it.” Australian PM visits sites of alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine Read more
3 Jul 2022 23.26 Zelenskiy vows to regain Lysychansk Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, earlier vowed to regain the eastern city of Lysychansk after Ukrainian troops were forced to withdraw. In an address broadcast shortly before midnight, local time, he said: And if the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest fire superiority, in particular this applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing: we will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons. Ukraine does not give anything up. And when someone over there in Moscow reports something about the Luhansk region - let them remember their reports and promises before February 24, in the first days of this invasion, in the spring and now. Let them really evaluate what they got over this time and how much they paid for it. Because their current reports will turn into dust just as the previous ones. We are gradually moving forward - in the Kharkiv region, in the Kherson region and at sea: Zmiinyi is a good example of this. There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.”
3 Jul 2022 23.00 Summary It’s 1am in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand: Britain will host a conference next year focused on helping Ukraine recover from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion, the foreign office said, as nations gather in Switzerland for this year’s event. The Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) beginning on Monday in Lugano will discuss how to rebuild Ukraine, bringing together a Ukrainian delegation with representatives of other countries, international organisations and civil society.
The Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) beginning on Monday in Lugano will discuss how to rebuild Ukraine, bringing together a Ukrainian delegation with representatives of other countries, international organisations and civil society. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met with the president of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach on Sunday. The meeting comes as at least 89 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed and 13 have been captured since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
The meeting comes as at least 89 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed and 13 have been captured since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. A new New York Times investigation has revealed that out of eight million articles about Ukraine collected from over 8,000 Russian websites since 2014, Nazism references spiked to record-high levels the day Russia invaded Ukraine. According to the outlet, since 2014, references to Nazism were “relatively flat for eight years and then spiked to unprecedented levels on February 24” of this year.
According to the outlet, since 2014, references to Nazism were “relatively flat for eight years and then spiked to unprecedented levels on February 24” of this year. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Donbas, but vowed to restore control over the area thanks to the army’s tactics and the prospect of new, improved weaponry. “If the commanders of our army withdraw people from certain points at the front, where the enemy has the greatest advantage in fire power, and this also applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing,” Zelenskiy said in his evening video address.
“If the commanders of our army withdraw people from certain points at the front, where the enemy has the greatest advantage in fire power, and this also applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing,” Zelenskiy said in his evening video address. The French region of Île-de-France has offered to rebuild the destroyed Ukrainian city of Borodyanka as an ecological city, Euromaidan Press reports. “ Borodyanka should become an ecological city with “systems working on modern energy-saving technologies,” said the president of the region.
Borodyanka should become an ecological city with “systems working on modern energy-saving technologies,” said the president of the region. Ukraine received 17 border guards released during a prisoner exchange on 29 June, Euromaidan reports. In a video released by Ukraine’s State Border Service, the guards, said to have serious injuries, are shown leaving ambulances and entering hospitals.
In a video released by Ukraine’s State Border Service, the guards, said to have serious injuries, are shown leaving ambulances and entering hospitals. The Ukrainian army retreated from the strategic city of Lysychansk on Sunday as Russia claimed a major victory by seizing control of the entire eastern Luhansk region. The Ukrainian withdrawal followed weeks of fierce fighting and marked a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces more than four months after their invasion and after turning their focus away from the capital, Kyiv.
The Ukrainian withdrawal followed weeks of fierce fighting and marked a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces more than four months after their invasion and after turning their focus away from the capital, Kyiv. Germany is one of the countries that is doing the most to provide military aid to Ukraine, said the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, while defending his country’s delays in delivering weapons. The long delays for German weapons, compared with the speedy deliveries of American ones, are because of the need to train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany, Scholz told CBS News on Sunday.
The long delays for German weapons, compared with the speedy deliveries of American ones, are because of the need to train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany, Scholz told CBS News on Sunday. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has cast doubt on Russia’s claim that Russian forces have captured and taken over Lysychansk, a strategic eastern city in Ukraine. “We cannot say today that Lysychansk is under [Russian] control. There is fighting on the outskirts,” Zelenskiy said on Sunday at a press conference with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese. That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as I hand the blog over to my Australian colleagues who will bring you the latest updates. Thank you.
3 Jul 2022 22.53 Britain will host a conference next year focused on helping Ukraine recover from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion, the foreign office said, as nations gather in Switzerland for this year’s event. Reuters reports: The Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) beginning on Monday in Lugano will discuss how to rebuild Ukraine, bringing together a Ukrainian delegation with representatives of other countries, international organisations and civil society. Britain said it was working with Ukraine and others to host next year’s conference, and it would sit on a supervisory board to help coordinate between Ukraine and its allies on recovery measures. An office will be set up in London. “We have led on support for Ukraine during the war and will continue to lead in supporting the Ukrainian Government*s Reconstruction and Development Plan,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement. “Ukraine’s recovery from Russia*s war of aggression will be a symbol of the power of democracy over autocracy. It will show [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that his attempts to destroy Ukraine have only produced a stronger, more prosperous and more united nation.” Russia says what it calls a “special military operation” aims to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speakers from nationalist or neo-Nazi persecution. Ukraine and its Western allies say this is a baseless pretext for a war of imperial conquest. The Foreign Office said Britain had been asked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to champion the recovery of Kyiv and the surrounding region. Britain pledged to use its financial sector expertise to help draw investment into Ukraine.
3 Jul 2022 22.32 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met with the president of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach on Sunday. The meeting comes as at least 89 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed and 13 have been captured since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. “Many Ukrainian athletes joined the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to defend our country, to defend it on the battlefield. Some 89 athletes and coaches have been killed in hostilities. Thirteen were captured and are in Russian captivity,” Zelenskiy said. He added that over 100,000 athletes have been unable to train and multiple sports facilities have been destroyed. “Russia’s invasion has become a cruel blow to Ukrainian sports. More than 100,000 Ukrainian athletes do not have the opportunity to train today. Many infrastructure facilities have been destroyed. These are large objects of sports infrastructure and objects at our schools and Ukrainian universities, at sports clubs,” Zelenskiy said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach shake hands before a meeting, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, during a parliament session in Kyiv, Ukraine July 3, 2022. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
3 Jul 2022 21.57 A new New York Times investigation has revealed that out of eight million articles about Ukraine collected from over 8,000 Russian websites since 2014, Nazism references spiked to record-high levels the day Russia invaded Ukraine. According to the outlet, since 2014, references to Nazism were “relatively flat for eight years and then spiked to unprecedented levels on February 24” of this year. “News stories have falsely claimed that Ukrainian Nazis are using noncombatants as human shields, killing Ukrainian civilians and planning a genocide of Russians,” the outlet said. According to Larissa Doroshenko, a Northeastern University disinformation researcher who spoke to the New York Times, the strategy was most likely to intended to justify the Kremlin’s goal of a quick ouster of the Ukrainian government. “It would help to explain why they’re establishing this new country in a sense...Because the previous government were Nazis, therefore they had to be replaced,” she said.
3 Jul 2022 21.20 President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Donbas, but vowed to restore control over the area thanks to the army’s tactics and the prospect of new, improved weaponry. “If the commanders of our army withdraw people from certain points at the front, where the enemy has the greatest advantage in fire power, and this also applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing,” Zelenskiy said in his evening video address. “That we will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons,” he added.
Updated at 21.21 BST
3 Jul 2022 20.40 The French region of Île-de-France has offered to rebuild the destroyed Ukrainian city of Borodyanka as an ecological city, Euromaidan Press reports. Borodyanka should become an ecological city with “systems working on modern energy-saving technologies,” said the president of the region. Experts from France will conduct an official assessment of the area and participate in the development of the master plan, the president added. The French region of Île-de-France offered to rebuild the destroyed Borodyanka as an ecological city
According to the President of the region, Borodyanka should become an ecological city with "systems working on modern energy-saving technologies" https://t.co/yIoTfavsHq pic.twitter.com/jctbtDh6hB — Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) July 3, 2022
3 Jul 2022 19.56 Ukraine received 17 border guards released during a prisoner exchange on 29 June, Euromaidan reports. In a video released by Ukraine’s State Border Service, the guards, said to have serious injuries, are shown leaving ambulances and entering hospitals. Ukraine met 17 border guards released during the largest exchange of prisoners on June 29th.
They all have serious injuries, currently under medical supervision.
🎥: 🇺🇦 State Border Service pic.twitter.com/rTU1ppTBvh — Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) July 3, 2022 “There was hope. There was always hope, I knew that I had to return, I knew for whom, for my wife, for my daughter, that they are waiting for me and I need to return,” one border guard said.
Updated at 20.07 BST
3 Jul 2022 19.09 Ukrainian forces withdraw from Lysychansk The Ukrainian army retreated from the strategic city of Lysychansk on Sunday as Russia claimed a major victory by seizing control of the entire eastern Luhansk region. Agence France-Presse reports: The Ukrainian withdrawal followed weeks of fierce fighting and marked a decisive breakthrough for Moscow’s forces more than four months after their invasion and after turning their focus away from the capital, Kyiv. Lysychansk had been the last major city in the Luhansk area of the eastern Donbas region still in Ukrainian hands and its capture frees up Moscow’s forces to advance on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in neighbouring Donetsk. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier denied Russian claims of Lysychansk’s fall before the Ukrainian army announced the retreat on Sunday evening. “The continuation of the defence of the city would lead to fatal consequences” in the face of Russia’s superiority in numbers and equipment, the army said in a statement. “In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw. “Unfortunately, steel will and patriotism are not enough for success – material and technical resources are needed.” Russian forces seized Lysychansk’s twin city of Sievierodonetsk last week after weeks of intense fighting. The latest blow to Ukrainian resistance came after the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Sunday pledged further military support including armoured vehicles and drones during a meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv.
Updated at 19.22 BST
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 109 of the invasion
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The EU executive will this week make a recommendation on whether Ukraine should be given candidate status, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen has said. In a joint press conference with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday, Von der Leyen said: “We want to support Ukraine in its European journey.” Such a recommendation would be a step on a long road to full membership. Speaking alongside Von der Leyen, Zelenskiy said that the EU’s decision on Ukraine would “determine” the future of Europe.
The US president, Joe Biden, has said that Volodymyr Zelenskiy “didn’t want to hear” warnings of the Russian invasion. Speaking at a fundraising reception in Los Angeles, Biden said “there was no doubt” Vladimir Putin had been planning to “go in”. “Nothing like this has happened since world war two,” he told donors. “I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain [Putin] was going to go in, off the border. There was no doubt … and Zelenskiy didn’t want to hear it.”
The family of a British man sentenced to death for fighting Russian forces have said they are “devastated” and called for “urgent cooperation” to secure his release. Shaun Pinner, 48, received the death penalty, along with fellow Briton Aiden Aslin, in what the UK government has branded a “sham” sentencing. The pair were captured in April while fighting as part of the Ukrainian army to defend the southern port city of Mariupol against invading Russian troops.
Rolls-Royce Germany has provided two superpower generators to Ukraine, the country’s ministry of health announced on Saturday. In a statement, the ministry of health said, “One such generator is capable of providing the work of not only one building, but all the buildings, if it is a large regional hospital.”
The US has announced that it will be boycotting the St Petersburg International Forum that is set to take place in Russia later this month. “We urge governments and companies to join our boycott and send a clear message that there is no ‘business as usual’ while Russian forces brutalise Ukraine,” said Ned Price, the US state department spokesperson.
Russia’s military has set up another field hospital due to heavy casualties, Kyiv Independent reports. It is in the village of Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, according to the general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Ukraine remains in control of the Azot chemical plant in Sievierodonetsk where hundreds of civilians are sheltering, the region’s governor has said. Ukraine has said about 800 people were hiding in several bomb shelters underneath the Azot plant, including about 200 employees and 600 residents of Sievierodonetsk. A Russia-backed separatist claimed 300 to 400 Ukrainian fighters were also trapped there.
A United Nations commission arrived in Ukraine on Saturday to investigate war crimes. The deputy speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Olena Kondratyuk, said the commission’s goal was to record war crimes and human rights violations.
Approximately 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s invasion of the country in February, according to a military adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He added that in terms of daily Ukrainian casualties, around “200 to 300 die, no less”.
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency says 2.5 million Ukrainians have returned there since the war started in February. The agency said 5.5 million Ukrainians have fled to the EU since the war began.
Russia is attempting to repeat the Holodomor, a deliberately induced famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of people under the Soviet regime, the head of the office of the Ukrainian president has said. On Saturday, Andriy Yermak, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office head, said: “Russians shell Ukrainian fields with firebombs. Those creating global food crisis attempt to reconstruct Holodomor.”
The armed forces of Ukraine have received new Starlink satellite communication systems from SpaceX. The Ukrainian defence ministry said the Starlinks would be used for intelligence missions.
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{'people': ['Ursula von der', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Von', 'Von der', 'Joe Biden', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Biden', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Putin', 'Shaun Pinner', 'Ned Price', 'Azot', 'Azot', 'Olena Kondratyuk', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Andriy Yermak', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s', 'Starlinks'], 'organizations': ['EU', 'the European Commission', 'Zelenskiy', 'EU', 'Zelenskiy', 'the ministry of health', 'Kyiv Independent', 'Belgorod Oblast', 'the Armed Forces of Ukraine', 'United Nations', 'The European Border and Coast Guard Agency', 'EU', 'Starlink'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Leyen', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Los Angeles', 'UK', 'Mariupol', 'Germany', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Russia', 'Shebekino', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Sievierodonetsk', 'Ukraine', 'Sievierodonetsk', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Soviet Ukraine', 'Ukrainian', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 110 of the invasion
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River crossing operations are likely to be among the most important determining factors in the course of the war over the coming months, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest report. Ukrainian forces have often managed to demolish bridges before they withdraw from territory, while Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large-scale river crossings under fire, the report added.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['the UK Ministry of Defence'], 'locations': ['Russia']}
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Govor agrees to buy all McDonald’s in Russia and rebrand them
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McDonald’s has reached a deal to sell all its restaurants in Russia to one of its licensees in the country, the businessman Alexander Govor, who will operate them under a new name.
The fast food company temporarily closed hundreds of outlets across Russia in March after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, a decision that has cost McDonald’s about $55m (£44m) a month.
On Monday, it announced it would sell those stores and leave Russia, saying the humanitarian crisis caused by the war and the unpredictable operating environment meant continuing running restaurants there was “no longer tenable” or “consistent with McDonald’s values”.
Govor, who operates 25 restaurants in Siberia, has agreed to buy its 850 Russian restaurants and run them under different branding, McDonald’s said on Thursday.
McDonald’s did not disclose how much the outlets were sold for. Last year, its Russian operations contributed 9% of the company’s total annual sales, or about $2bn.
Govor, a licensee since 2015, has agreed to retain McDonald’s 62,000 Russian employees for at least two years on equivalent terms and to fund existing liabilities to suppliers, landlords and utilities. He also agreed to pay the salaries of McDonald’s corporate employees until the sale is completed.
The sale is subject to regulatory approval but is expected to close within a few weeks, McDonald’s said.
Govor is also half-owner of Neftekhimservis, a construction investor that owns an oil refinery in Siberia, and is a board member of another firm that owns projects in Siberia including Novokuznetsk’s Park Inn hotel and private clinics.
McDonald’s was among the first western consumer brands to enter Russia in 1990. Its large, gleaming store near Pushkin Square in Moscow, which opened shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, signalled a new era of optimism in the wake of the cold war.
It’s the first time the company has “de-arched,” or exited a major market. It plans to start removing golden arches and other symbols and signs with the company’s name. McDonald’s said it will will maintain its trademarks in Russia and take steps to enforce them if necessary.
It’s unclear if other US chains will follow McDonald’s lead and leave Russia. McDonald’s owned 84% of its Russian stores, which gave it more control over operations than many of its rivals whose stores are owned by franchisees.
Starbucks’ 130 Russian stores have been closed since early March. Its franchisee in the country, Kuwait-based Alshaya Group, is continuing to pay its 2,000 Russian employees.
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Papa John’s suspended corporate operations in Russia and is no longer accepting royalty payments from its 185 stores there. But the stores, which are owned by Colorado-based entrepreneur Christopher Wynne, remain open. A message was left Thursday with one of Wynne’s companies.
McDonald’s left open the possibility that it could one day return to Russia.
“It’s impossible to predict what the future may hold, but I choose to end my message with the same spirit that brought McDonald’s to Russia in the first place: hope,” the chief executive, Chris Kempczinski, wrote in a letter to employees. “Thus, let us not end by saying, ‘goodbye.’ Instead, let us say as they do in Russian: until we meet again.”
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Alexander Govor', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Govor', 'Govor', 'Govor', 'Papa John’s', 'Christopher Wynne', 'Wynne', 'Chris Kempczinski'], 'organizations': ['McDonald’s', 'McDonald', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald', 'McDonald’s', 'Starbucks', 'Alshaya Group', 'Guardian Business', 'McDonald’s', 'McDonald’s'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Neftekhimservis', 'Novokuznetsk', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'US', 'Russia', 'Kuwait', 'Russia', 'Colorado', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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Democratic
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The Guardian
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Sanctions are hitting hard enough to hurt Russia, if not stop it
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Sanctions have affected many aspects of life in Russia, but one particular shortage has sent the wealthy elite into a spin: beauty clinics are running out of Botox.
The business daily newspaper Kommersant reported this month that Botox imports saw a threefold drop to 74,500 units in the period between January and March compared with the same time last year, after one western manufacturer stopped exporting to Russia.
While the beauty industry is a small cog in the machine, the decision by western allies to sever financial and trade ties with Russia has plunged the country’s economy into a deep recession, with the OECD forecasting a 10% contraction this year and a fall of more than 4% in 2023.
Sanctions have not halted the military assault, but some are now asking whether a promise to lift them could bring Russia to the negotiating table: a return to global markets, in exchange for peace in Ukraine. The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, held out such a prospect in March, when she suggested Britain could lift sanctions if Russia commits to a full ceasefire and withdrawal, with a promise of “no further aggression”.
Some of the allies have closer links to Russia than others. Last week, Germany’s former premier Angela Merkel defended her decision to increase trade links with Russia, and Germany’s reliance on Russian hydrocarbons, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. “It is a great tragedy that it didn’t work, but I don’t blame myself for trying,” she said. But Tim Ash, a Russia expert at the Chatham House thinktank, says Germany underestimated Putin for a long time. He says sanctions, which should have been tougher in response to Crimea, are working and should remain in place.
“The sanctions have exceeded most people’s expectations and they have exceeded Putin’s as well,” he says. “The self-sanctioning by the likes of McDonald’s has also hit the Russian economy, with around 1,000 major businesses pulling out of the country when they didn’t need to. They weren’t on any sanctions list.”
Output in industries from aviation to automotive has crashed. In May, the number of cars sold across Russia tumbled by 83% from the previous month, to 24,000. Rewind to May 2021 and monthly sales were nearer 150,000. Likewise, Russian plane makers are in a fix now that US, Japanese, EU and UK sanctions have blockaded the industry.
Russia’s transport ministry, forecasting a successful outcome to hostilities from Moscow’s perspective, believes it will take until 2030 for air passenger traffic to reach pre-pandemic levels. A “pessimistic” forecast based on sanctions continuing for years concluded that more than half of the Russian aircraft fleet could be dismantled for parts by 2025 to keep the remainder in the sky.
The high-end machine tools and sophisticated components needed to run major IT systems in Russia’s major cities come from countries robustly supporting the sanctions regime
At the beginning of the invasion, many people believed the west would impose only weak sanctions and that Moscow would find allies to circumvent the most damaging ones. Ash says neither assumption has proved to be true.
When Russia was booted out of the international payments network Swift, for example, China was expected to step in and build an alternative in alliance with Moscow’s central bank.
But, says Ash, “President Xi is angry because Putin lied about his intentions towards Ukraine. Now the invasion has gone ahead, it has triggered a cost-of-living crisis in China that makes worse Xi’s other economic problems.” Also, he adds, “Xi doesn’t want to upset the US too much.”
Yakov Feygin, a Russia expert at the Berggruen Institute in the US, agrees that China has rejected Putin’s overtures to circumvent sanctions. India is also likely to be wary of sanctions-busting, he says. “It was a major flaw in Putin’s strategy to think China would bail him out. It was a colossal delusion.”
There will be countries that buy Russian oil rejected by Europe, and there is also likely to be a market for stolen Ukrainian grain, but the high-end tools and sophisticated components needed to run IT systems in Russia’s major cities come from countries robustly supporting the sanctions regime. “You can smuggle in components and raw materials” says Feygin. “And Russia will probably do what it can to import goods by the back door. But they cannot do it on a large scale or dependably. And that will force Russian companies to ration how much they produce. It will also limit how much the Russian military can replenish the hardware it needs to fight in Ukraine.”
Critics of sanctions tend to believe that Putin’s aims are limited to eastern Ukraine and sanctions detract from diplomatic efforts to secure a peace. Robert Skidelsky, the economist and Labour peer who until last year was a board member of a Russian company, argues against the use of wide-ranging sanctions during the current war in a new pamphlet, Economic Sanctions: A Weapon Out of Control.
There is no evidence that sanctions trigger regime change, he says. Instead, citizens blame the sanctioners for their hardships. Accusing governments of wasting sanctions for decades in the pursuit of incoherent aims, he says they “should be used only after diplomatic efforts at peaceful solutions have been exhausted, never as an alternative to them”.
Some analysts have argued that the recovery in Russia’s currency since last month and recent reductions by the central bank in previously sky-high interest rates shows that Moscow is coping with the sanctions regime.
Feygin says the increase in the rouble can be explained by the collapse in imports while exports, primarily of oil and gas, have continued unabated. “When you have more exports than imports your currency appreciates, but that is not really a guide to the health of the nation or its financial situation. The rouble is not really a currency at the moment. It is more like funny money,” he says.
At the moment, peace seems a distant prospect. Sanctions, with their boomerang effect on wheat and gas, restricting shipments and raising prices, will remain in place for many more months.
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War
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Liz Truss', 'Angela Merkel', 'Tim Ash', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Ash', 'Ash', 'Xi', 'Putin', 'Xi', 'Xi', 'Yakov Feygin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Feygin', 'Putin', 'Robert Skidelsky', 'Feygin'], 'organizations': ['Kommersant', 'OECD', 'Crimea', 'Crimea', 'McDonald’s', 'EU', 'the Berggruen Institute', 'Labour'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Britain', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'US', 'UK', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'China', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'China', 'US', 'Russia', 'US', 'China', 'India', 'China', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow']}
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The Guardian
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Russia accuses Nato of ‘proxy war’ in Ukraine | First Thing
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Good morning.
Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, as defence ministers gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks.
Sergei Lavrov told Russian state media: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”
He also warned that the risks of nuclear conflict were now “considerable” – a claim Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said showed Moscow had lost its “last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine”.
When asked about the importance of avoiding a third world war, Lavrov said: “I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”
Where are the talks happening? The US talks, hosted in Germany by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, are expected to see more than 40 countries and the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, gather at Ramstein airbase south-west of Frankfurt.
What will be discussed? Gen Mark Milley, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, said a key goal of the talks was to coordinate mounting security assistance to Kyiv that included heavy weaponry, such as howitzers, as well as armed drones and ammunition.
What else is happening? Here is what we know on day 62 of the invasion.
Elon Musk, world’s richest man, reaches deal to buy Twitter for $44bn
Elon Musk has described himself as a ‘free speech absolutist’. Photograph: Patrick Fallon/Reuters
Elon Musk has reached a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in a takeover that will give the world’s richest man control of a social network with more than 200 million users.
The sale will put the Tesla chief executive in charge of a company that he has frequently criticized, saying it has not lived up to its potential as a platform for “free speech”.
The deal yesterday comes after a dramatic few weeks of speculation about Twitter’s future, triggered by Musk’s emergence as the platform’s largest single shareholder on 4 April. He then declared a takeover bid on 14 April, offering to buy all Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each.
At first, Twitter’s board seemed opposed, enacting an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. But its initial reluctance appeared to fade after Musk confirmed a funding package for the deal – including $21bn of his own money, alongside debt funding from Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions – and shareholders warmed to it.
What has Musk said? “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said. “Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and users to unlock it.”
What has Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, said? “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important,” he said in a tweet.
Marjorie Taylor Greene texted Trump chief of staff urging martial law to overturn 2020 election
Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘The only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Days before Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, a text by the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to the then-White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, appeared to press for Donald Trump to overturn his 2020 election defeat by invoking martial law, new messages show.
The message – one of more than 2,000 texts turned over by Meadows to the House select committee investigating the 6 January storming of the Capitol, and first reported by CNN – shows that some of Trump’s most ardent allies on Capitol Hill were pressing for Trump to return himself to office even after the Capitol attack.
“In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law,” Greene texted. “I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”
When was the message sent? The message about Trump potentially invoking martial law was sent on 17 January and came a month after the idea had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting , where Trump considered ways to overturn the 2020 election.
In other news …
An image released by the Santa Fe county sheriff’s office shows Alec Baldwin being processed after the death of Halyna Hutchins. Photograph: Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office/AFP/Getty Images
The actor Alec Baldwin is seen practising drawing his revolver on the set of the Rust movie in footage released by the Santa Fe county sheriff’s office . The department has released all files relating to its ongoing investigation into the fatal shooting of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming.
Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce a new prime minister in the coming days as he turns his focus to legislative elections in June after his defeat of Marine Le Pen . Analysts suggest Macron may name Élisabeth Borne as prime minister, only the second woman in France to hold the post.
The Texas court of criminal appeals has issued a stay of execution for Melissa Lucio, the Mexican-American woman who was scheduled to be judicially killed within 48 hours , ordering a lower court to consider new evidence of her innocence in the death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah.
One of the most senior US officials in the Pacific has refused to rule out military action against Solomon Islands if it were to allow China to establish a military base there, saying that the security deal between the countries presented “potential regional security implications” for the US and other allies.
Stat of the day: Can a $100m clean-up operation save Mead, Nebraska, from putrid pesticide-laced waste?
Stan and Evelyn Keiser’s farm pond in Mead, Nebraska, has been heavily contaminated with toxic pesticides. Photograph: Brian Bell
It has been just over a year since state regulators stepped in to close down the AltEn LLC ethanol plant on the outskirts of Mead, Nebraska. The plant was found to be the source of huge quantities of toxic, pesticide-laced waste, which was accidentally spilled and intentionally spread throughout the area. A monumental cleanup is under way that could cost 100m or more, according to Bill Thorson, the village board chair. “The stench would be so bad your eyes would burn here in town,” Thorson said.
Don’t miss this: Bennifer and the couples who get back together
Laying the groundwork … Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in 2003. Composite: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images/Guardian Design
It is the latest revival from the carefree early 00s to brave the fire-scorched hellscape of the 21st century, writes Zoe Williams. The relationship between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, AKA Bennifer, has roared back with a vengeance, with Lopez announcing their re-engagement this month, almost 19 years after they called off their wedding. They are not the only ones. Why do some pairings work better the second time around?
Climate check: too many new coal-fired plants planned for 1.5C climate goal, report concludes
‘There is simply no carbon budget left to be building new coal plants. We need to stop now.’ Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The number of coal-fired power plants under development around the world fell last year but far too much coal is still being burned and too many new coal-fired power plants are planned for the world to stay within safe temperature limits. The authors of the report concluded that “coal’s last gasp is not yet in sight”, despite countries agreeing at the Cop26 UN climate summit last November to a “phasedown” of coal.
Last Thing: trucker convoy driven out after being egged by kids in California
Beat it: about 20 drivers were pelted with eggs. Photograph: RapidEye/Getty Images
A convoy of trucks that had gathered outside a California lawmaker’s house over the weekend to protest against her support of an abortion rights bill was forced to leave the area after crossing paths with a group of young people armed with eggs. The people’s convoy had gathered outside lawmaker Buffy Wicks’s house to protest against her support of an abortion rights bill. The convoy, however, drew fierce opposition from neighbors, and children and local residents began throwing eggs to the cheers of the crowd.
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{'people': ['Sergei Lavrov', 'Dmytro Kuleba', 'Lloyd Austin', 'Jens Stoltenberg', 'Mark Milley', 'Elon Musk', 'Elon Musk', 'Elon Musk', 'Twitter', 'Musk', 'Musk', 'Musk', 'Twitter', 'Parag Agrawal', 'Twitter', 'Marjorie Taylor Greene', 'Marjorie Taylor Greene', 'Marshall', 'Joe Biden’s', 'Marjorie Taylor Greene', 'Mark Meadows', 'Donald Trump', 'Marshall', 'Greene', 'Alec Baldwin', 'Halyna Hutchins', 'Alec Baldwin', 'Halyna Hutchins', 'Emmanuel Macron', 'Macron', 'Élisabeth Borne', 'Melissa Lucio', 'Stan', 'Evelyn Keiser’s', 'Brian Bell', 'Bill Thorson', 'Thorson', 'Ben Affleck', 'Jennifer Lopez', 'Patrick McMullan/Getty Images/Guardian Design', 'Zoe Williams', 'Ben Affleck', 'Jennifer Lopez', 'AKA Bennifer', 'Sean Gallup/Getty Images'], 'organizations': ['Nato', 'Nato', 'Lavrov', 'Nato', 'Patrick Fallon/Reuters', 'Tesla', 'Morgan Stanley', 'Trump', 'Trump', 'White House', 'House', 'CNN', 'Trump', 'Capitol Hill', 'Trump', 'Capitol', 'Trump', 'Trump', 'Oval Office', 'Trump', 'the Santa Fe', 'Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office/AFP/Getty Images', 'the Santa Fe', 'UN', 'RapidEye', 'Buffy Wicks’s', 'First Thing'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Germany', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'Germany', 'US', 'Frankfurt', 'US', 'France', 'Texas', 'US', 'China', 'US', 'Nebraska', 'Nebraska', 'Nebraska', 'California', 'California', 'US']}
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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 108 of the invasion
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The world’s chemical weapons watchdog says it is keeping a close eye on Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, monitoring “threats of use of toxic chemicals as weapons”. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons chief, Fernando Arias, met Ukraine’s parliamentary chairman, Ruslan Stefanchuk, to discuss “the implementation of the chemical weapons convention”, the Hague-based organisation said on Friday.
Russia has demolished 1,300 high-rise buildings in the city of Mariupol without removing dead bodies of residents, according to Vadym Boichenko, mayor of Mariupol. He said cholera and other deadly diseases could kill thousands of people in the southern Ukrainian city as the corpses lie uncollected and summer brings warmer weather.
Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in intense street fighting and under day and night shelling in Sievierodonetsk, officials said. It came amid Ukrainian appeals for more help from the west as Russia pushes to control the key frontline city in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Russia has labelled a non-governmental organisation that fights for investigations into torture allegations as a “foreign agent”. On Friday, the Russian justice ministry updated its website list of blacklisted entities to include the Committee Against Torture, a United Nations-linked human rights treaty body.
Moscow announced its withdrawal on Friday from the UN World Tourism Organisation after it suspended Russia in April as a result of its military invasion of Ukraine. The Russian government said that it “accepted a proposal from the foreign ministry ... concerning the withdrawal of Russia” from the organisation, according to a decree signed by the prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin.
Thirty-seven thousand women are in the Ukrainian army and more than 1,000 women have become commanders, the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenskam said on Friday. “Most of our doctors are women, as well as 50% of our entrepreneurs who work to support the economy at war.”
Ihor Zhovka, diplomatic adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that Ukraine will not “cede an inch” of territory to Russia. Speaking to Bloomberg, Zhovka said, “We are not going to give away territory, we won’t cede an inch - especially not in Donbas. Russia has thrown everything at it – I won’t get tired of saying Ukraine needs immediate supply of heavy weapons.”
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, appeared on Friday to reject calls from the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for Serbia to join the European Union in imposing sanctions on Russia. Vučić said he did not believe sanctions were “efficient” and that his country was in a complicated position, given the longstanding special relationship between Serbia and Russia.
A video of one of many mass graveyards in Ukraine has emerged online, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security under the ministry of culture and information policy tweeted on Friday.
Ukraine has conducted its 11th prisoner swap with Russia since the start of Moscow’s invasion in February, exchanging four Russian captives for five Ukrainians, the Mykolaiv region governor, Vitaliy Kim, wrote on Telegram. Reuters reported him saying one of the freed Ukrainians was a local village head who had been “kidnapped” by Russian forces on 10 March.
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{'people': ['Fernando Arias', 'Ruslan Stefanchuk', 'Vadym Boichenko', 'Mikhail Mishustin', 'Olena Zelenskam', 'Ihor Zhovka', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Mykolaiv', 'Vitaliy Kim'], 'organizations': ['The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons', 'the Committee Against Torture', 'United Nations', 'the UN World Tourism Organisation', 'Zhovka', 'Aleksandar Vučić', 'Olaf Scholz', 'the European Union', 'the ministry of culture and information', 'Telegram', 'Reuters'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Hague', 'Russia', 'Mariupol', 'Mariupol', 'Ukrainian', 'Sievierodonetsk', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Bloomberg', 'Donbas', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Serbia', 'Serbia', 'Russia', 'Vučić', 'Serbia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow']}
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The Guardian
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Russia bombs five railway stations in central and western Ukraine
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Five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were hit by Russian airstrikes in the space of an hour on Monday, as the war ground on relentlessly in the south and east of the country.
Oleksander Kamyshin, the head of Ukrainian Railways, said five train stations came under fire, causing an unspecified number of casualties, as most of Ukraine was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.
Kamyshin said one of the attacks took place at about 8.30am in Krasne, near Lviv in western Ukraine, at what the governor of the region described as a “traction substation” that handled power supply to other lines. He said emergency workers were at the scene.
Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the regional government in Lviv, said that during the attack Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems destroyed another missile fired at the region.
Ukraine’s military command said Russia was trying to bomb rail infrastructure to disrupt arms supplies from foreign countries. “They are trying to destroy the supply routes of military-technical assistance from partner states. To do this, they focus strikes on railway junctions,” it wrote in a Facebook post.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed six railway facilities used to supply Ukrainian forces with foreign weapons.
Officials look at shards of twisted metal from a Russian rocket in undergrowth near a train line near Lviv. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Meanwhile, a government building in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria was shelled from a hand grenade launcher on Monday, the press service of the Russian-backed unrecognised state said on its Telegram channel.
According to Transnistrian officials, a building belonging to the ministry of state security was hit in the region’s capital, Tiraspol, on Monday evening. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
A number of images circulating on social media appeared to show smoke coming out of broken windows of the government building. It was not immediately clear who was behind the apparent attack.
Last week a senior Russian commander said the goal of Russia’s new offensive was to seize control of southern Ukraine and to gain access to Transnistria, which lies on the southern Ukrainian border.
While military experts have said it was unlikely that Russian forces would be able to stage an offensive towards the border with Moldova at this moment, the statements nevertheless raised fears in Moldova over Russia’s intentions.
With Moscow’s support, Transnistria fought a war against Moldova in the 1990s that left the territory with de facto independence and a garrison of about 1,500 Russian troops.
If confirmed to be linked to the war, it would be the first spillover of the conflict into another European country.
The train station attacks in Ukraine were not the first of the war. On 8 April in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, two ballistic missiles exploded over the railway station building, dropping deadly cluster munitions that killed 59 people and injured hundreds more.
On Sunday Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power plant in Kremenchuk killed one person and wounded seven, according to officials. Moscow said it had destroyed oil production facilities there. Serhiy Borzov, the governor of the Vinnytsia region in central Ukraine, said Moscow fired rockets at two towns, causing an unspecified number of deaths and injuries.
Russian shelling and assaults continued on Monday along most of the front in the east, including missile and bomb attacks on a huge steelworks in Mariupol where 1,000 civilians are holed up along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.
Serhiy Volyna, the commander of Ukraine’s 36th marine brigade forces in Mariupol, said in an interview with an opposition lawmaker posted on YouTube on Sunday that Russia was targeting the complex with air and artillery bombardments.
“We are taking casualties, the situation is critical … we have very many wounded men, [some] are dying, it’s a difficult [situation] with guns, ammunition, food, medicines … the situation is rapidly worsening,” Volyna said, speaking from the plant.
The Russian defence ministry said it was opening a humanitarian corridor at 2pm (11am GMT) on Monday for all civilians to leave the besieged plant.
Shards of twisted metal from a Russian rocket are in undergrowth near a train line near Lviv. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
“The armed forces of the Russian Federation and the formations of the Donetsk people’s republic from 2pm Moscow time on 25 April 2022 unilaterally cease any hostilities, units are withdrawn to a safe distance and ensure the withdrawal of the specified category of citizens in any directions they choose,” the defence ministry said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.
Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of not holding fire during previous attempts to establish humanitarian routes out of the city.
The Russian defence ministry on Monday repeated its claims that “nationalists” were holding civilians hostages as “human shields” at the Azovstal plant. It said: “If civilians are still at the metallurgical plant, then we demand that the Kyiv authorities immediately give the appropriate order to the commanders of nationalist formations for their release.”
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, have returned to Poland after a visit to Kyiv, the highest-level US visit to the capital since Russia invaded in February.
During talks, Blinken and Austin told Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that the US would provide more than $300m (£235m) in military financing and had approved a $165m sale of ammunition, bringing total US security assistance since the invasion to about $3.7bn. More than $400m will also be split among 15 other nations in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Russia told the US to stop sending arms to Ukraine, with Moscow’s ambassador to Washington warning that large western deliveries of weapons were inflaming the conflict and would lead to more losses.
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Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the US, said such arms deliveries were aimed at weakening Russia but that they were escalating the conflict in Ukraine while undermining efforts to reach some sort of peace agreement.
“What the Americans are doing is pouring oil on the flames,” Antonov told the Rossiya 24 TV channel. “I see only an attempt to raise the stakes, to aggravate the situation, to see more losses.”
Antonov, who has served as ambassador to Washington since 2017, said an official diplomatic note had been sent to Washington expressing Russia’s concerns. No reply had been given, he said.
“We stressed the unacceptability of this situation when the United States of America pours weapons into Ukraine, and we demanded an end to this practice,” Antonov said. The interview was replayed on Russian state television throughout Monday.
Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report
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{'people': ['Oleksander Kamyshin', 'Kamyshin', 'Leon Neal/Getty Images', 'Moldova', 'Kremenchuk', 'Serhiy Borzov', 'Serhiy Volyna', 'Volyna', 'Leon Neal/Getty Images', 'Antony Blinken', 'Lloyd Austin', 'Blinken', 'Volodymyr Zelenskiy', 'Anatoly Antonov', 'Antonov', 'Antonov', 'Antonov'], 'organizations': ['Ukrainian Railways', 'Telegram', 'the ministry of state security', 'Tiraspol', 'YouTube', 'GMT', 'the defence ministry', 'Azovstal', 'state', 'First Edition', 'Reuters', 'Agence France-Presse', 'Associated Press'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Lviv', 'Ukraine', 'Maksym Kozytskyi', 'Lviv', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Lviv', 'Moldova', 'Transnistria', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Transnistria', 'Moldova', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Transnistria', 'Moldova', 'Ukraine', 'Kramatorsk', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Vinnytsia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Mariupol', 'Ukraine', 'Mariupol', 'Russia', 'Lviv', 'the Russian Federation', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'US', 'Poland', 'US', 'Russia', 'Austin', 'Ukraine', 'US', 'US', 'Russia', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Washington', 'Russia', 'US', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Washington', 'Washington', 'Russia', 'the United States of America', 'Ukraine']}
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The Guardian
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Liz Truss speaks to Ukraine about Britons’ death sentences for fighting Russia
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The UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has raised the case of two Britons sentenced to death for fighting against Russian forces in a phone call with her Ukrainian counterpart.
Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, have been convicted of taking action towards violent seizure of power at a court in the self-proclaimed republic in Donetsk.
Truss said she had called the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, on Friday to “discuss efforts to secure the release of prisoners of war held by Russian proxies”.
No 10 has said the men are entitled to combatant immunity as prisoners of war.
Downing Street has also said that while Boris Johnson was “appalled” at the sentences, there were no plans for direct interventions with Russia, with the emphasis being on their status as members of Ukrainian forces.
“The judgment against them is an egregious breach of the Geneva convention,” Truss said. “The UK continues to back Ukraine against Putin’s barbaric invasion.”
An adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister said on Friday that Russia had the men sentenced to death in order to gain leverage in its negotiations with Ukraine and its western allies.
“The trial of the foreigners raises the stakes in the Russian Federation’s negotiation process. They are using them as hostages to put pressure on the world over the negotiation process,” Vadym Denysenko said.
He said Ukraine would coordinate its position on the sentences with Britain, the US and the EU. Ukraine has already sentenced several Russian soldiers to long prison terms for war crimes and Russia may seek to trade the prisoners to get them back.
‘I utterly condemn the sentencing of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner,’ said Truss. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
Russia has claimed it had no influence on the proceedings, which took place in a Russian-occupied territory in east Ukraine. “I’d rather not hinder the operation of the judiciary and law enforcement authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” said the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, referring to the proxy government.
The MPs who represent the two men as constituents, Robert Jenrick, the MP for Newark, and Richard Fuller, the MP for North East Bedfordshire, have called for Russian officials to be summoned to answer for their proxies’ actions in the Ukrainian region.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Jenrick said: “I’ve urged the foreign secretary to raise this immediately at the highest levels with the Russian government. The UK needs to be clear you can’t treat British nationals in this way. This really is the most egregious breach of international law.”
He added: “Aiden and Shaun are not mercenaries, they are combatants, who are prisoners of war now and should be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and the Geneva convention is being breached in the most egregious manner by Russia in holding this kangaroo court and now this sentence to death.”
Jenrick said the men were being “hooked out and used in a Soviet-era show trial as a way of taking hostages or taking revenge against the UK”.
He said a prisoner exchange could be a solution but that required Russia to “play ball, take this issue seriously and start living up to their international obligations”.
02:14 UK officials condemn Russian 'show trial' that sentenced two Britons to death – video
Fuller said the men needed access to healthcare and legal advice. He said it was fair to argue they had exposed themselves to risk, but added: “What’s at the centre of this is the recognition by the Russian authorities and their proxies in this region that Shaun and Aiden were members of the Ukrainian military, they are prisoners of war, and that the Geneva convention applies. There appears to be no recognition of that.”
On Friday morning the school standards minister, Robin Walker, said the government would use all diplomatic channels to raise the case. He told Sky News: “We utterly condemn the approach that’s been taken here and we will use every method at our disposal to take this issue up.”
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A Moroccan national, Saaudun Brahim, was convicted alongside Aslin and Pinner. The men were accused of being mercenaries after fighting with Ukrainian troops.
The Russian news agency Interfax claimed the men would be able to appeal against their convictions. The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has described the British reaction to the sentences against the men as “hysterical” and said a UK appeal should be directed at the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic, a Russian-occupied territory internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.
Aslin is originally from Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, and Pinner is from Watford, but his mother lives in Fuller’s constituency. They were both members of regular Ukrainian military units fighting in Mariupol, the southern port city that has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Concerns were also raised in Ukraine about the status of Andrew Hill, 35, who was captured in fighting in southern Ukraine. Unlike the other two Britons, Hill is a member of the International Legion, the group of several thousand volunteer soldiers who have agreed to fight as part of Ukraine’s army during the war.
A spokesperson for the Legion said they were worried about Hill’s welfare, who local reports had suggested was also going to be put on trial alongside Aslin and Pinner. “Then the trial came and went and it turned out that Andrew Hill was not among those sentences, which raises the question of what has happened to him. What’s his status? Is he even alive?”.
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{'people': ['Liz Truss', 'Aiden Aslin', 'Shaun Pinner', 'Truss', 'Dmytro Kuleba', 'Boris Johnson', 'Truss', 'Putin', 'Vadym Denysenko', 'Aiden Aslin', 'Shaun Pinner', 'Truss', 'Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock', 'Sergei Lavrov', 'Robert Jenrick', 'Richard Fuller', 'Jenrick', 'Aiden', 'Shaun', 'Jenrick', 'Shaun', 'Aiden', 'Robin Walker', 'Saaudun Brahim', 'Maria Zakharova', 'Pinner', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Andrew Hill', 'Andrew Hill'], 'organizations': ['Britons', 'EU', 'the Donetsk People’s Republic', 'BBC Radio 4’s', 'Fuller', 'Sky News', 'First Edition', 'Interfax', 'Fuller', 'Hill', 'the International Legion', 'Legion', 'Hill'], 'locations': ['UK', 'Donetsk', 'Russia', 'UK', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'the Russian Federation’s', 'Ukraine', 'Britain', 'US', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Newark', 'UK', 'Russia', 'UK', 'Russia', 'UK', 'Aslin', 'Pinner', 'UK', 'Ukraine', 'Aslin', 'Newark', 'Nottinghamshire', 'Watford', 'Mariupol', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Britons', 'Ukraine', 'Aslin', 'Pinner']}
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Russia attacks infrastructure in western Ukraine to slow supply lines
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While tanks and troops exchange fire in Donbas, Ukraine faces another escalating battle on another invisible front line – one that may be equally crucial to determining the outcome of the war.
Russia is stepping up attacks on infrastructure deep into western parts of the country that Moscow has admitted for now it cannot capture, striking targets that keep both the war effort and the national economy running, including the railway network, a critical bridge and fuel depots.
The aim of Russian attacks is likely to slow the rapidly expanding delivery of weapons from Nato allies to the eastern front, while also hindering exports of grain and other commodities that help Kyiv pay for the war. With the country’s Black Sea ports are closed to shipping, overland routes are even more vital.
“It is my opinion that they didn’t believe the west will give Ukraine the necessary heavy weapon supplies so now the process is started, they feel they need to do something about that,” said one Ukrainian military official monitoring the infrastructure attacks. “Because western weapons and Ukrainian combat experience combined give us a big advantage.”
On Monday, five railway stations were hit by Russian missiles. The head of Ukraine’s railways company, Oleksandr Kamyshin, said it was the heaviest assault on his system since the war began. “The repair of all infrastructure damage will take months,” he acknowledged in a news conference.
Fuel depots have been another regular target, along with a critical bridge that provides the only overland link on Ukrainian territory to the southern Bessarabia region.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s defence staff said infrastructure was being hit to stop western arms shipments. “Russians are attacking military and civilian infrastructure to prevent getting weapons from our partners,” Oleksandr Shtupun told a press conference.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in a broadcast on state TV: “These weapons will be a legitimate target for Russia’s military. Storage facilities in western Ukraine have been targeted more than once. How can it be otherwise?”
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It is not a one-sided battle. A series of destructive explosions and fires at strategic locations inside Russian territory and neighbouring Belarus – fuel depots and railways – are widely considered the work of Ukrainian forces, although none have been claimed officially by Kyiv.
In the early weeks of the war, Ukrainian forces were highly effective at damaging Russian logistics in areas that were contested or recently seized. But in this round of attacks both countries are targeting infrastructure deep inside enemy-held territory.
Senior presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak in a tweet about “self-destructing” Russian infrastructure appeared to hint broadly at his country’s role; on the list of destroyed assets he gave was the Moskva ship, widely acknowledged to have been sunk by a Ukrainian missile.
“How can we not believe in karma for the murder of [Ukrainian] children? Many are still willing to turn a blind eye to financing terrorism by buying Russian oil. But should the European Union depend on a country where everything is self-destructing?” he said.
The operations on Russian territory have often been bold and spectacular, boosting morale as much as hindering the enemy’s capacity. They include a daring helicopter raid on the border town of Belograd and Sunday night’s attack on oil storage facilities near a critical crude pipeline junction in Bryansk.
The same night another blast near Bryansk took out a military rail spur used to bring rockets and other munitions from storage onto the main railway network, a Ukraine security source said.
And a powerful radio control tower destroyed in Transnistria, part of Moldova controlled by Russian-backed separatists, was broadcasting propaganda across the region and may also have been used for military communications.
The battle over infrastructure deep inside enemy-held territory is an area where Ukraine may be more vulnerable than Russia because of the size of the country, the extent of Russia’s military resources and the battle for the air.
While not dominant in the skies, it is still easier for Russian planes, drones and helicopters to fly over Ukraine than the reverse and its own skies are largely open, while the government in Kyiv relies entirely on land transport for its military and economic lifelines.
“Rail has always been important [in Ukraine] for exporting things like coal, grain and steel, but it no longer has access to sea ports so a lot more has been going by rail out of the country,” said Tracey German, professor in conflict and security at King’s College London.
“So potentially this isn’t just a way of disrupting the military effort but also of putting pressure on the country economically.”
Russians perhaps did not move strongly against these targets at the start of the war because President Vladimir Putin anticipated a quick victory and perhaps the Russian military thought they would be using the infrastructure themselves.
They also expected to control the skies, which would have made it easier to deny access to roads and railways, said Niklas Masuhr at the Center for Security Studies thinktank in Switzerland. Now there are strong military incentives for a campaign behind front lines.
“The focus has shifted towards the Donbas and there are two underlying drivers of attacks on infrastructure, particularly in western Ukraine. They are potentially trying more to cut off supplies into the Donbas, create a battle of attrition in that part of Ukraine.”
“With strikes on Lviv and Kyiv they may also be trying to hit targets throughout the country, to force them to disperse air defence systems throughout the country, so they don’t have them where needed in the Donbas.”
For Ukraine to win this battle, it needs more air defences for the west, in addition to the heavy weapons and short range air defence systems heading east, the Ukrainian military source said.
“Ukraine on its own cannot protect any inch of its territory from the threat from the air, because Ukraine uses very old aerial defence systems,” the source said.
“Britain is sending short-range things that work great in Donbas. But the strategic thing really necessary for Ukraine is heavy and long-range defence systems to close the skies over [relatively] peaceful areas of the country.”
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{'people': ['Kyiv', 'Oleksandr Kamyshin', 'Sergei Lavrov', 'Mykhailo Podolyak', 'Tracey German', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Niklas Masuhr', 'Donbas'], 'organizations': ['Nato', 'Oleksandr Shtupun', 'First Edition', 'Belarus', 'the European Union', 'King’s College London', 'the Center for Security Studies'], 'locations': ['Donbas', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Bessarabia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Belograd', 'Bryansk', 'Bryansk', 'Ukraine', 'Transnistria', 'Moldova', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Switzerland', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas', 'Ukraine', 'Lviv', 'Donbas', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Britain', 'Donbas', 'Ukraine']}
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For a Kyiv Techno Collective, ‘Now Everything Is About Politics’
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When Slava Lepsheiev founded the Ukrainian techno collective Cxema in 2014, “I thought it should be outside politics and just a place where people can be happy and dance,” the D.J., 40, said in a recent video interview from Kyiv.
Until the pandemic, the biannual Cxema (pronounced “skhema”) raves were essential dates in the techno calendar of Ukraine, which has become an increasingly trendy destination for club tourists over the past decade. These parties — in factories, skate parks and even an abandoned Soviet restaurant — united thousands on the dance floor to a soundtrack of experimental electronic music.
But as the Cxema platform grew bigger, and Ukraine’s political climate grew more tense, “I realized I had a responsibility to use that influence,” Lepsheiev said, and to look beyond escapism on the dance floor. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February deepened that commitment, and the war has transformed how Lepsheiev and his team think about their priorities and work.
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{'people': ['Slava Lepsheiev', 'Cxema', 'Lepsheiev', 'Lepsheiev'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['D.J.', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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After a Pivotal Period in Ukraine, U.S. Officials Predict the War’s Path
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Several military analysts say Russia is at peak combat effectiveness in the east, as long-range artillery systems promised to Ukraine from NATO countries are still trickling in. Ukraine is hugely outgunned, they say, a stark fact that President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged last week.
“The price of this battle for us is very high,” he said in a nightly address. “It’s just scary. And we draw the attention of our partners on a daily basis to the fact that only a sufficient number of modern artillery for Ukraine will ensure our advantage and finally the end of Russian torture of the Ukrainian Donbas.”
President Biden on Wednesday announced an additional $1 billion in weapons and aid for Ukraine, in a package that includes more long-range artillery, anti-ship missile launchers, and rounds for howitzers and for the new American rocket system. Overall, the United States has committed about $5.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
Mr. Zelensky and his aides have appealed to the West to supply more of the sophisticated armaments it has already sent. They have questioned their allies’ commitment to the Ukrainian cause and insisted that nothing else can stop Russia’s advance, which even by conservative estimates has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers.
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{'people': ['Volodymyr Zelensky', 'Donbas', 'Biden', 'Zelensky'], 'organizations': ['NATO'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'the United States', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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The Corpse of a Russian Soldier, and the Cold but Human Urge to Look
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The Russians have abandoned the bodies of many of their troops, a startling practice that flouts a common code among combatants. Does it signal disarray? Low morale? Or was it, in this case, something more personal?
Maybe if he had been popular in the platoon, the guy who picked you up from the bar at 4 a.m. no questions asked, they would have fought to put out the flames. Or at least to get his body, so he could be buried under a familiar sky.
Or maybe it was so catastrophic that by the time the survivors made it to safety and looked around and realized, good god, he’s missing, they knew there was nothing they could do. He was still in there. Trapped.
I’m looking at him, thinking about all this, trying to figure out if that’s his rib cage, listening to the artillery in the distance and wondering if it’s getting closer or farther away.
Husarivka was a speed bump in a Russian advance that failed, leaving the village of dairy farms, and little else, briefly occupied by Russian soldiers — and saturated with Ukrainian artillery fire in response — until the Ukrainians advanced at the end of March.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['Husarivka'], 'locations': []}
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Biden Races to Expand Coalition Against Russia but Meets Resistance
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A month later, Mr. Ramaphosa lamented the impact that the conflict was having on “bystander” countries that he said “are also going to suffer from the sanctions that have been imposed against Russia.”
Brazil, India and South Africa — along with Russia and China — are members of a group of nations that account for one-third of the global economy. At an online meeting of the group’s foreign ministers last month, Moscow offered to set up oil and gas refineries with its fellow partners. The group also discussed expanding its membership to other countries.
Other nations that abstained from the United Nations vote, including Uganda, Pakistan and Vietnam, have accused the U.S.-led coalition against Russia of shutting down any chance of peace talks with its military support of Ukraine. U.S. and European officials maintain that the weapons and intelligence it has provided serves only to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s military.
The growing urgency in the Biden administration is embodied in the president’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia, despite his earlier denunciations of its murderous actions and potential war crimes. Mr. Biden’s effort, which is already being criticized by leading Democrats, is partly aimed at getting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help on the margins with Ukraine. One goal is to have those nations coordinate a substantial increase in oil production to help bring down global prices while the United States, Europe and others boycott Russian oil.
U.S. officials have been disappointed by the proclaimed neutrality of the two Gulf Arab nations, which buy American weapons and lobby Washington for policies against Iran, their main rival.
Israel, which also buys American weapons and is the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East, has expressed solidarity with Ukraine. At the same time, however, it has resisted supporting some sanctions and direct criticism of Russia.
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{'people': ['Ramaphosa', 'Biden', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['United Nations'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Brazil', 'India', 'South Africa', 'Russia', 'China', 'Moscow', 'Uganda', 'Pakistan', 'Vietnam', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'U.S.', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Saudi Arabia', 'the United Arab Emirates', 'Ukraine', 'the United States', 'U.S.', 'Washington', 'Iran', 'Israel', 'the United States', 'Ukraine', 'Russia']}
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As China Rattles Sabers, Taiwan Asks: Are We Ready for War?
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Underlying Taiwan’s defense dilemma is a question left unanswerable by design: Will the United States send military forces to Taiwan’s aid? In May, President Biden suggested he would, but the United States offers no explicit security guarantees, a strategy it hopes will avoid either provoking Beijing or emboldening Taiwan to declare formal independence.
Mr. Xi has said he seeks a peaceful unification with Taiwan, and he may be deterred by the huge economic and diplomatic blowback China would suffer for an invasion. But China has also been pointed in its warnings. Its defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, said over the weekend that Beijing would “fight to the very end” for Taiwan. It is sending fighter jets toward the island almost daily — including 30 aircraft in one day last month alone.
The concern is that such maneuvers could, intentionally or otherwise, be a prelude to conflict.
“We cannot wait; we are competing with time,” said Michael Tsai, a former defense minister of Taiwan. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happened in an instant — who knows when the P.L.A. might choose to invade Taiwan.”
The ‘Porcupine Strategy’
Several military drills conducted in January were intended as a show of force to China — to demonstrate how Taiwan planned to stop invaders from intruding on its airspace, landing on its beaches and, in the worst case, taking over its cities.
At an air base in central Taiwan, a siren wailed, and within minutes pilots were taking off in F-16 fighter jets to ward off intruders. Off the northern coast, the navy debuted new mine-laying craft as two small warships fired live ammunition. In a southern city, smoke filled the air as soldiers practicing urban combat shuffled past fake storefronts of bubble tea shops and cafes, exchanging gunfire with combatants.
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{'people': ['Biden', 'Xi', 'Wei Fenghe', 'Michael Tsai'], 'organizations': ['navy'], 'locations': ['Taiwan', 'the United States', 'Taiwan', 'the United States', 'Beijing', 'Taiwan', 'Taiwan', 'China', 'China', 'Beijing', 'Taiwan', 'Taiwan', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Taiwan', 'China', 'Taiwan', 'Taiwan']}
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U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say
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Of course the U.S. intelligence community collects information about nearly every country, including Ukraine. But American spy agencies, in general, focus their collection efforts on adversarial governments, like Russia, not current friends, like Ukraine. And while Russia has been a top priority for American spies for 75 years, when it came to the Ukrainians, the United States has worked on building up their intelligence service, not spying on their government.
The result, former officials said, has been some blind spots.
“How much do we really know about how Ukraine is doing?” said Beth Sanner, a former senior intelligence official. “Can you find a person who will tell you with confidence how many troops has Ukraine lost, how many pieces of equipment has Ukraine lost?”
Even without a complete picture of Ukraine’s military strategy and situation, the Biden administration has pushed forward new capabilities, like the rocket artillery systems President Biden announced last week. Ukraine is awaiting the arrival of more powerful Western weapons systems as both sides in the war suffer heavy losses in the eastern Donbas region of the country.
Pentagon officials say they have a robust process for sending weapons in place, which begins with a request from the Ukrainians and includes a U.S. assessment of what kind of equipment they need and how quickly it can be mastered.
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{'people': ['Beth Sanner', 'Biden', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['Pentagon'], 'locations': ['U.S.', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'the United States', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas', 'U.S.']}
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U.S. Technology, a Longtime Tool for Russia, Becomes a Vulnerability
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Technology restrictions have harmed other Russian industries as well, U.S. officials say. Equipment for the oil and gas industry has been degraded, maintenance for tractors and heavy equipment made by Caterpillar and John Deere has halted, and up to 70 percent of the commercial airplanes operated by Russian airlines, which no longer receive spare parts and maintenance from Airbus and Boeing, are grounded, officials say.
But some experts have sounded notes of caution. Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Va., voiced skepticism about some claims that the export controls were forcing some tank factories and other defense companies in Russia to shutter.
“There’s not been much evidence to substantiate reports of problems in Russia’s defense sector,” he said. It was still too early in the war to expect meaningful supply chain problems in Russia’s defense industry, he said, and the sourcing for those early claims was unclear.
Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who has studied sanctions on Russia, said the lack of critical technologies and maintenance was likely to start being felt widely across Russian industry in the fall, as companies run out of parts and supplies or need upkeep on equipment. She and other analysts said even the production of daily goods such as printer paper would be affected; Russian companies had bought the dye to turn the paper white from Western companies.
“We expect random disruptions in Russia’s production chains to manifest themselves more frequently,” Ms. Snegovaya said. “The question is: Are Russian companies able to find substitutes?”
U.S. officials say the Russian government and companies there have been looking for ways to get around the controls but have so far been largely unsuccessful. The Biden administration has threatened to penalize any company that helps Russia evade sanctions by cutting it off from access to U.S. technology.
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{'people': ['John Deere', 'Michael Kofman', 'Maria Snegovaya', 'Snegovaya', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['Caterpillar', 'Airbus', 'Boeing', 'CNA', 'George Washington University'], 'locations': ['U.S.', 'Russia', 'Arlington', 'Va.', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Russia', 'U.S.']}
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U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Yacht Company That Caters to Russian Elites
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. government leveled sanctions against a yacht management company and its owners, describing them as part of a corrupt system that allows Russian elites and President Vladimir V. Putin to enrich themselves, the Treasury Department announced on Thursday.
Imperial Yachts, which is based in Monaco and controlled by the Moscow-born Evgeniy Kochman, caters to Russian oligarchs. The Treasury Department said Mr. Kochman and his company provide yacht-related services to “Russia’s elites, including those in President Putin’s inner circle.” Imperial Yachts, the department said, conducts business with at least one person subject to sanctions.
The Treasury Department also identified four yachts linked to Mr. Putin: the Shellest, the Nega, the Graceful and the Olympia. The department said Mr. Putin used the Nega for travel in Russia’s north, and the Shellest periodically travels to his Black Sea palace. The department said Mr. Putin has taken numerous trips in the Black Sea on the Graceful and the Olympia.
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{'people': ['Vladimir V. Putin', 'Evgeniy Kochman', 'Kochman', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin'], 'organizations': ['the Treasury Department', 'The Treasury Department', 'Imperial Yachts', 'The Treasury Department'], 'locations': ['WASHINGTON', 'U.S.', 'Monaco', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning
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ABOARD U.S.S. KEARSARGE, in the port of Stockholm — If ever there was a potent symbol of how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered Europe, the sight of this enormous warship, bristling with 26 warplanes and 2,400 Marines and sailors, moored among the pleasure craft and tour boats that ply this port, would certainly be it.
“No one in Stockholm can miss that there is this big American ship here in our city,” said Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, standing on the amphibious assault ship's deck in the shadow of an MV-22 Osprey under a clear sky on Saturday. “There are more capabilities on this ship,” he marveled, “than I could gather in a garrison.”
In this perennially neutral country that is suddenly not so neutral, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which showed up just two weeks after Sweden and Finland announced their intention to seek membership in NATO, is the promise of what that membership would bring: protection if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia turns his ire toward his Nordic neighbors.
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{'people': ['Micael Byden', 'an MV-22 Osprey', 'Vladimir V. Putin'], 'organizations': ['ABOARD', 'KEARSARGE', 'the Swedish Armed Forces', 'the U.S.S. Kearsarge', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['Stockholm', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Stockholm', 'Sweden', 'Finland', 'Russia', 'Nordic']}
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Russian Military Is Repeating Mistakes in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. Says
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But by May 13, control of the city had flipped again. “The Russians took Kharkiv for a short period of time; the Ukrainians counterattacked and took Kharkiv back,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said at a news conference at the Pentagon last week. “We’ve seen them really proceed at a very slow and unsuccessful pace on the battlefield.”
Ukraine is now pushing Russian troops north and east from Kharkiv, “in some cases all the way back to Russia,” said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, the former supreme allied commander for Europe. “So now Ukrainians are threatening to cut off Russian lines of supply and pushing their forces to the rear.”
Cutting off Russian supply lines east of Kharkiv would put Russian troops in the same situation they were in after their advance on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, at the beginning of the war, officials said. Ukrainian units carrying shoulder-fired Javelin antitank missiles picked off Russian soldiers as miles-long Russian convoys near Kyiv stopped moving forward. The invasion stalled, and thousands of Russian troops were killed or injured. Russia then refocused its mission on the east.
In the early weeks of the war, Russia ran its military campaign out of Moscow, with no central war commander on the ground to call the shots, American and other Western officials said. In early April, after Russia’s logistics and morale problems had become clear, Mr. Putin put General Dvornikov in charge of a streamlined war effort.
General Dvornikov arrived with a daunting résumé. He started his career as a platoon commander in 1982 and later fought in Russia’s brutal second war in Chechnya. Moscow also sent him to Syria, where the forces under his command were accused of targeting civilians.
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{'people': ['Lloyd J. Austin III', 'Philip Breedlove', 'Kyiv', 'Javelin', 'Putin', 'Dvornikov', 'Dvornikov'], 'organizations': ['Defense', 'Pentagon'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Chechnya', 'Moscow', 'Syria']}
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Forces Battle for Ukraine City, as E.U. Ratchets Up Responses
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BRUSSELS — Russian troops battled their way into the devastated Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk on Tuesday, as their slow, brutal offensive in eastern Ukraine shifted from indiscriminate shelling to street fighting, with thousands of civilians still trapped among the ruins.
With Moscow pressing its advance despite heavy losses, Ukraine’s allies looked to new ways to raise the price Russia pays for aggression, while easing the pain it causes elsewhere. A day after the European Union agreed to ban most Russian oil imports, the bloc’s focus shifted to aiding Ukraine and helping it resume food exports that are vital to feeding the world.
Wrapping up a two-day summit meeting in Brussels, E.U. leaders agreed to $9.7 billion in aid to Ukraine this year, albeit with demands attached to fight the corruption that has plagued the country. And Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U. executive commission, said the developing global food crisis is “only the fault of Russia,” which has seized or blockaded all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
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{'people': ['Ursula von der'], 'organizations': ['the European Union'], 'locations': ['BRUSSELS', 'Sievierodonetsk', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Brussels', 'E.U.', 'Ukraine', 'Leyen', 'E.U.', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Putin’s Threats Highlight the Dangers of a New, Riskier Nuclear Era
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WASHINGTON — The old nuclear order, rooted in the Cold War’s unthinkable outcomes, was fraying before Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, it is giving way to a looming era of disorder unlike any since the beginning of the atomic age.
Russia’s regular reminders over the past three months of its nuclear might, even if largely bluster, were the latest evidence of how the potential threat has resurfaced in more overt and dangerous ways. They were enough to draw a pointed warning to Moscow on Tuesday from President Biden in what amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the world had entered a period of heightened nuclear risks.
“We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible,” Mr. Biden wrote in a guest opinion essay in The New York Times. “Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.”
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{'people': ['Biden', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['The New York Times'], 'locations': ['WASHINGTON', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia']}
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Two Telling Numbers
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In the Opinion section, President Biden has published an essay explaining that his administration will continue to send weapons to Ukraine but not troops. In the essay, he announces that the U.S. will send longer-range missiles to Ukraine than it previously has.
Alongside those pieces, we’re using today’s newsletter to give you an overview of the war.
A Russian pincer
The big question over the next several weeks — according to our colleague Julian Barnes, who covers U.S. intelligence agencies — will be whether Russia can encircle Ukraine’s forces in Donbas. If Russia can, the Ukrainian troops could be cut off from the rest of the country and suffer heavy losses. Russia might then be in position to take control of nearly all of Donbas.
“Intelligence officials have repeatedly said, both publicly and privately, that this next phase is going to be very important in setting the tenor for the war in the months to come,” Julian said. “It will determine whether we stay in something approximating a stalemate or if one side gets the upper hand.”
In the war’s early weeks, Russia tried to move quickly and capture large sections of territory. Its military proved incapable of doing so, rebuffed by Ukrainian troops, with help from weapons provided by the U.S., E.U. and other allies. In the war’s current phase, Russia has emphasized a strategy from other recent wars, in Syria and Chechnya: using missiles and other heavy artillery to bombard cities and towns and eventually take them over.
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{'people': ['Biden', 'Julian Barnes'], 'organizations': ['Opinion', 'Intelligence'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'U.S.', 'Ukraine', 'U.S.', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Donbas', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'E.U.', 'Russia', 'Syria', 'Chechnya']}
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U.S. to Send Ukraine $700 Million in Military Aid, Including Advanced Rockets
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That has proved to be a tricky line to walk for the president and his advisers since Mr. Putin sent his troops into Ukraine nearly 100 days ago.
In his article on Tuesday, Mr. Biden described his administration’s resolve to support Ukraine in its attempts to repel Russian invaders. But Mr. Biden also offered specific assurances for Mr. Putin that the United States does not intend to provoke a wider conflict or the use of weapons of mass destruction.
“We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible,” Mr. Biden wrote. “Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.”
Mr. Biden stated bluntly in his article that he did not seek to overthrow Mr. Putin, despite his off-the-cuff remarks during a speech in Poland earlier this year, when he said the Russian president “cannot remain in power.” On Tuesday, Mr. Biden presented a different view.
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{'people': ['Putin', 'Biden', 'Biden', 'Putin', 'Biden', 'Biden', 'Putin', 'Biden'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'the United States', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Poland']}
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Diplomats Fear Russia May Use Syrian Aid as Bargaining Chip in Ukraine
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An international pressure campaign to keep the route open is now underway. The United States is presiding over the Security Council this month and has held a series of meetings touching on the plight of Syrians who have become homeless or otherwise need assistance to survive.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said Moscow had not decided how it would vote. But in an interview on Friday, he said that under the current system, the aid was vulnerable to extremists in Idlib.
“I do not deny that it goes to refugees as well, but the terrorist groups — they benefit from this,” he said, adding that the extremists had attacked deliveries.
Mr. Polyanskiy would not discuss negotiations to keep the corridor open, except to say that talks between Russia and the United States were stagnant, given “current geopolitical circumstances.”
“Frankly, we don’t have very many things to make us optimistic at this stage,” he said.
But three foreign diplomats said Russia had sent vague signals suggesting it might try to use the vote to gain concessions in the standoff over Ukraine. The United States and European countries have imposed a variety of sanctions on Russia to punish the country for invading its neighbor.
The diplomats would not describe the signals in detail and said Moscow had stopped short of directly tying the corridor’s fate to the war in Ukraine. But they said they believed Moscow would lean on countries that would be directly affected by a new wave of refugees for help in evading the sanctions.
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{'people': ['Dmitry Polyanskiy', 'Polyanskiy'], 'organizations': ['the Security Council', 'U.N.'], 'locations': ['The United States', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Idlib', 'Russia', 'the United States', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'The United States', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow']}
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For NATO, Turkey Is a Disruptive Ally
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WASHINGTON — When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey threatened this month to block NATO membership for Finland and Sweden, Western officials were exasperated — but not shocked.
Within an alliance that operates by consensus, the Turkish strongman has come to be seen as something of a stickup artist. In 2009, he blocked the appointment of a new NATO chief from Denmark, complaining that the country was too tolerant of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and too sympathetic to “Kurdish terrorists” based in Turkey. It took hours of cajoling by Western leaders, and a face-to-face promise from President Barack Obama that NATO would appoint a Turk to a leadership position, to satisfy Mr. Erdogan.
After a rupture in relations between Turkey and Israel the next year, Mr. Erdogan prevented the alliance from working with the Jewish state for six years. A few years later, Mr. Erdogan delayed for months a NATO plan to fortify Eastern European countries against Russia, again citing Kurdish militants and demanding that the alliance declare ones operating in Syria to be terrorists. In 2020, Mr. Erdogan sent a gas-exploration ship backed by fighter jets close to Greek waters, causing France to send ships in support of Greece, also a NATO member.
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{'people': ['Recep Tayyip Erdogan', 'Muhammad', 'Barack Obama', 'Erdogan', 'Erdogan', 'Erdogan', 'Erdogan'], 'organizations': ['NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['WASHINGTON', 'Turkey', 'Finland', 'Sweden', 'Denmark', 'Turkey', 'Turkey', 'Israel', 'Russia', 'Syria', 'France', 'Greece']}
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Why the Once-Hawkish Heritage Foundation Opposed Aid to Ukraine
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On Thursday, Mr. Roberts published a podcast interview with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of only 11 Senate Republicans to oppose the Ukraine aid package and the author of a recent op-ed entitled “No to Neoconservatism.”
“Neither you, nor we, intend any opposition to an aid package to be dismissive of the heroism that we’ve seen in Ukraine,” Mr. Roberts told Mr. Hawley. “But I can at least speak for Heritage and say, ‘We’ve had enough of business as usual.’”
The core tenets of the organization have long been grounded in promoting free enterprise, limited government and strong national defense. But it has increasingly fed off the rising populism in the party, first during the ascent of the Tea Party and then during the Trump administration, stocking some of the most prominent members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and boasting that nearly two-thirds of its ideas had been carried out or embraced by his White House during his first year in office.
“What was so surprising about this moment was Heritage, which has always been tough on Russia, strong on NATO and guided by the mantra of ‘What Would Reagan Do?’ took a very odd turn,” said Eric Sayers, a current nonresident at the American Enterprise Institute who began his career at Heritage as a junior staff member.
The move, Mr. Sayers said, reflected the ascendancy in the organization “of more populist forces focused more on following the right than leading it.”
Mr. Roberts, who referred to himself in an interview as a “recovering neocon,” said Heritage’s stance on the aid package reflected “a real skepticism among the conservative grass-roots about the entrenched conservative foreign policy leadership.”
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{'people': ['Roberts', 'Josh Hawley', 'Roberts', 'Hawley', 'Trump', 'Reagan', 'Eric Sayers', 'Sayers', 'Roberts'], 'organizations': ['Senate', 'Heritage', 'fed', 'the Tea Party', 'Trump', 'White House', 'Heritage', 'NATO', 'the American Enterprise Institute', 'Heritage', 'Heritage'], 'locations': ['Missouri', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia']}
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U.S. Aims to Cripple Russian Oil Industry, Officials Say
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But sanctions have a mixed record. Severe economic isolation has done little to change the behavior of governments from Iran to North Korea to Cuba and Venezuela.
One measure American officials are discussing would require foreign companies to pay a below-market price for Russian oil — or suffer U.S. sanctions. Washington would assign a price for Russian oil that is well under the global market value, which is currently more than $100 per barrel. Russia’s last budget set a break-even price for its oil above $40. A price cap would reduce Russia’s profits without increasing global energy costs.
The U.S. government could also cut off most Russian access to payments for oil. Washington would do this by issuing a regulation that requires foreign banks dealing in payments to put the money in an escrow account if they want to avoid sanctions. Russia would be able to access the money only to purchase essential goods like food and medicine.
And as those mechanisms are put in place, U.S. officials would press nations to gradually decrease their purchases of Russian oil, as they did with Iranian oil.
“There wouldn’t be a ban on Russian oil and gas per se,” said Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who has studied sanctions on Russia. “Partly this is because that would send the price skyrocketing. Russia can benefit from a skyrocketing price.”
But enforcing escrow payments or price caps globally could be difficult. Under the new measures, the United States would have to confront nations that are not part of the existing sanctions coalition and, like India and China, want to maintain good relations with Russia.
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{'people': ['Maria Snegovaya'], 'organizations': ['George Washington University'], 'locations': ['Iran', 'North Korea', 'Cuba', 'Venezuela', 'U.S.', 'Washington', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Washington', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'the United States', 'India', 'China', 'Russia']}
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Chinese Hackers Tried to Steal Russian Defense Data, Report Says
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Under China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, Beijing has refined its approach to cyberspying, transforming over the past decade into a far more sophisticated actor. China’s premier spy agency, borrowing a page from Russia, has recruited beyond its ranks, pulling from the country’s growing pool of tech workers. The strategy has made its attacks more scattershot and unpredictable, but analysts say it has also helped strengthen the country’s efforts, enabling spies to run stealthy attacks that target intellectual property as well as political and military intelligence around the world.
Mr. Xi has made improving China’s scientific and technical capabilities a priority in the coming years, with ambitions of becoming a global leader in high-tech fields such as robotics, medical equipment and aviation. The campaign targeting Russian defense research institutes “might serve as more evidence of the use of espionage in a systematic and long-term effort to achieve Chinese strategic objectives in technological superiority and military power,” Check Point’s report said.
More recently, hackers based in China, like their counterparts elsewhere, have taken advantage of the war in Ukraine to break into the computer systems of organizations across Europe. Hackers have preyed upon heightened anxiety about the invasion, tricking their victims into downloading documents that falsely claim to contain information about the war or pose as aid organizations raising money for charity.
Many of the attacks originating from China appear to be focused on gathering information and intellectual property, rather than on causing chaos or disruption that could sway the conflict in favor of Ukraine or Russia, security researchers said.
In late March, Chinese hackers began going after Ukrainian organizations, according to security researchers and an announcement from Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency. A hacking team known as Scarab sent a document to Ukrainian organizations that offered instructions on how to film evidence of Russian war crimes but also contained malware that could extract information from infected computer systems, researchers at the security firm SentinelOne said.
Also in March, another hacking team affiliated with China, which security researchers have called Mustang Panda, created documents that purported to be European Union reports on conditions at the borders of Ukraine and Belarus, and emailed them to potential targets in Europe. But the documents contained malware, and victims who were tricked into opening them inadvertently allowed the hackers to infiltrate their networks, researchers at Google and the security firm Cisco Talos said.
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{'people': ['Xi Jinping', 'Xi', 'Mustang Panda', 'Cisco Talos'], 'organizations': ['SentinelOne', 'European Union', 'Google'], 'locations': ['China', 'Beijing', 'China', 'Russia', 'China', 'China', 'Ukraine', 'China', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'China', 'Ukraine', 'Belarus']}
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On Ukraine, McConnell Tries to Show the World This Isn’t Trump’s G.O.P.
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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why did you decide to make the trip to Europe last weekend?
One was to try to convey to the Europeans that skepticism about NATO itself, expressed by the previous president, was not the view of Republicans in the Senate. And I also was trying to minimize the vote against the package in my own party.
We have sort of an isolationist wing, and I think some of the Trump supporters are sort of linked up with the isolationists — a lot of talk out in the primaries about this sort of thing. And I felt this would help diminish the number of votes against the package. I think that worked out well.
I’d had a private dinner with the president of Finland back in March, right after the invasion, so we’d sort of developed a relationship. So we decided to head up to Stockholm and Helsinki. These are incredibly important admissions to NATO. They both have great militaries. They’re both independent of Russian energy. If anybody’s ready to be a part of NATO, these two countries are, so it was exciting to be there.
I think the trip helped convince Europeans that Republicans are the way we used to be on NATO.
Did you personally lobby individual senators to try to allay some of their concerns about the aid bill?
I certainly was talking about it for the last two weeks to my own colleagues. I said, No. 1, this is a pittance compared to the $2 trillion the Democrats dumped on the economy last year, producing 40-year-high inflation. If ever there were a reason where for an expenditure of this amount, this is it. And if the Russians succeeded, it would cost us a lot more. So yes, I was arguing for support for the package.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['NATO', 'Senate', 'Trump', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['Finland', 'Stockholm', 'Helsinki']}
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G7 nations pledge $20 billion to Ukraine.
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KÖNIGSWINTER, Germany — The Group of 7 economic powers agreed on Friday to provide nearly $20 billion to support Ukraine’s economy over the coming months to help keep the country’s government running while it fights to repel a Russian invasion.
In a joint statement after two days of meetings, finance ministers from the Group of 7 affirmed their commitment to help Ukraine with a mix of grants and loans. Ukraine needs approximately $5 billion per month to maintain basic government services, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The $19.8 billion of financing was agreed on after the United States, which is contributing more than $9 billion in short-term financing, pressed its allies to do more to help secure Ukraine’s future. The statement did not break down how much the other Group of 7 nations will contribute.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['KÖNIGSWINTER', 'the International Monetary Fund', 'Group of 7 nations'], 'locations': ['Germany', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'the United States', 'Ukraine']}
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Biden Seeks Swift Effort to Bring Finland and Sweden Into NATO
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Under an agreement with the Soviet Union, Finland stayed outside the alliance, which was created to contain Russia after World War II. It remained independent in the post-Soviet era even after joining the European Union and growing ever closer with the West. Until now, Sweden had kept to more than 200 years of neutrality.
But that posture has been quickly abandoned after Mr. Putin’s decision in February to invade Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. Both Finland and Sweden suddenly realized that the threat from Russia had changed and that their status as a bystander to great-power conflict was now a huge risk.
The speed of the reversal has been so great that there has been virtually none of the debate that took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when even some of Washington’s most experienced Cold War diplomats warned that the more Russia felt encircled, the higher the chances that it might eventually lash out, especially if the effort to integrate the country with the West failed.
On Wednesday, Mr. Sullivan said that Mr. Biden had asked his national security officials whether they backed the addition of Finland and Sweden to the alliance and that they had “emphatically supported” the move in a unanimous fashion.
The Rose Garden ceremony deliberately contained echoes of a state visit, complete with a military band. Mr. Biden characterized the move to usher Finland and Sweden into the alliance as almost a formality, noting that both countries had contributed forces to conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq — the major NATO commitments of the past 20 years — and that they were strong democracies that “meet every NATO requirement and then some.”
Mr. Biden argued that the two countries would add to the alliance’s firepower.
Finland has a sophisticated military that runs complex operations to track Russian activity in the seas of Northern Europe and spends heavily on modern equipment. Sweden is a more difficult case: It dismantled some of its military power and, as Ms. Andersson conceded, would have to reorient its budget to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense, the target for NATO members.
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{'people': ['Putin', 'Sullivan', 'Biden', 'Biden', 'Biden', 'Andersson'], 'organizations': ['the European Union', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['the Soviet Union', 'Finland', 'Russia', 'Sweden', 'Ukraine', 'Finland', 'Sweden', 'Russia', 'Washington', 'Russia', 'Finland', 'Sweden', 'Finland', 'Sweden', 'Kosovo', 'Afghanistan', 'Iraq', 'Finland', 'Sweden']}
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The Senate overwhelmingly approves $40 billion in aid to Ukraine, sending it to Biden.
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Determined to project strong bipartisan support for Kyiv, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, worked for days leading up to the vote to tamp down on the anti-interventionist strain in his party, arguing both privately and publicly to his colleagues that the United States needed to aid a young democracy standing between Russian aggression and the Western world.
The pinnacle of that effort came over the weekend, when Mr. McConnell traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine, Stockholm and Helsinki, Finland, in what he said was partly a bid to push back on former President Donald J. Trump’s hostility toward NATO and the aid legislation itself. When Mr. Trump announced his opposition to the $40 billion package, Mr. McConnell said, he worried that he “could lose a lot more than 11” Republican votes.
The trip was designed “to convey to the Europeans that skepticism about NATO itself, expressed by the previous president, was not the view of Republicans in the Senate,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview. “And I also was trying to minimize the vote against the package in my own party.”
“We have a sort of an isolationist wing,” he continued. “And I think some of the Trump supporters have sort of linked up with the isolationists — a lot of talk out in the primaries about this sort of thing. I felt this would help diminish the number of votes against the package. I think that worked out well.”
Most of the Republicans regarded as presidential prospects in 2024 — Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Marco Rubio of Florida — backed the legislation even in the face of opposition from right-wing organizations.
In a 24-minute speech on the Senate floor, announcing his vote on Wednesday night, Mr. Cruz said he had carefully listened to a litany of arguments against the aid bill, including that it was too expensive and bloated with provisions unrelated to military aid, and that it was not in America’s security interest to counter Russia’s campaign when there were so many domestic problems at home.
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{'people': ['Kyiv', 'Mitch McConnell', 'McConnell', 'Donald J. Trump’s', 'Trump', 'McConnell', 'McConnell', 'Ted Cruz', 'Tom Cotton', 'Tim Scott', 'Marco Rubio', 'Cruz'], 'organizations': ['NATO', 'NATO', 'Senate', 'Trump', 'Senate'], 'locations': ['Kentucky', 'the United States', 'Kyiv', 'Ukraine', 'Stockholm', 'Helsinki', 'Finland', 'Texas', 'Arkansas', 'South Carolina', 'Florida', 'America', 'Russia']}
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The Senate is expected to pass a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, sending it to Biden.
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The Senate is set on Thursday to give final approval to a $40 billion emergency military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine, as the United States deepens its support for an increasingly costly and protracted fight against a Russian invasion.
The measure is the largest foreign aid package passed by Congress in at least two decades, and its enactment would bring the American investment in the war to roughly $54 billion in just over two months. The Senate was expected to approve it overwhelmingly, in the latest reflection of the remarkable bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for a massive investment in Ukraine’s war effort, which propelled the spending package through the House last week.
President Biden was expected to quickly sign it into law. His administration and Ukrainian leaders have pressed hard for its swift enactment, warning that they would run out of aid by Thursday if Congress failed to act.
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{'people': ['Biden'], 'organizations': ['Senate', 'Congress', 'Senate', 'Capitol Hill', 'House', 'Congress'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'the United States', 'Ukraine']}
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G7 Finance Ministers Race to Secure More Ukraine Aid
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KÖNIGSWINTER, Germany — Top economic officials from the world’s advanced economies moved closer toward agreement on a global rescue package for Ukraine on Thursday, with finance leaders negotiating the details of a multibillion-dollar plan to keep the Ukrainian government operating amid Russia’s onslaught.
Finance ministers of the Group of 7 nations expressed optimism about the emergency financing deal on the first day of a two-day summit, where they are focused on how to provide aid to Ukraine and exert pressure on Russia while avoiding economic blowback that will slow the global economy. Officials have been consumed with how to contain rising food and energy prices that have some economists worrying about a global recession.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said at the end of the first day of meetings that the G7 was prepared to spend what is necessary to help Ukraine.
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{'people': ['Janet L. Yellen'], 'organizations': ['KÖNIGSWINTER', 'Treasury'], 'locations': ['Germany', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Brittney Griner and the Total Lopsidedness of Prisoner Swaps with Russia
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Reports are circulating that the United States is negotiating with Russia to exchange two Americans being held in Russian prisons for a notorious arms dealer serving time in America. The deal is totally lopsided: The two Americans — the basketball star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a security company executive — are not criminals and certainly not remotely comparable to Viktor Bout, a notorious purveyor of arms to terrorists once known as the “Merchant of Death.”
But if that’s the way to get American citizens out of a Russian prison, do it. The only caveat, an urgent one, would be to include in the deal Marc Fogel, an American teacher sentenced to an absurd 14 years in prison for taking marijuana into Russia. His infractions are similar to the ones Ms. Griner, 31, is charged with. She was detained in February with two hashish oil vape cartridges in her luggage; Mr. Fogel, 61, was carrying 14 vape cartridges of marijuana and some cannabis buds.
Both say they need cannabis for dealing with injuries and pain. But for reasons the State Department has not clarified, the U.S. government has designated Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan as “wrongfully detained” but not Mr. Fogel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not mention this third American prisoner during a recent news conference, in which he said he intended to take up the matter of a swap for Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia.
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{'people': ['Brittney Griner', 'Paul Whelan', 'Viktor Bout', 'Marc Fogel', 'marijuana', 'Griner', 'Fogel', 'marijuana', 'Griner', 'Whelan', 'Fogel', 'Antony Blinken', 'Griner', 'Whelan', 'Sergey Lavrov'], 'organizations': ['the State Department', 'State'], 'locations': ['the United States', 'Russia', 'America', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Russia']}
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The U.S. and Russia Need to Start Talking Before It’s Too Late
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Starting talks while the fighting rages would be politically risky and would require significant diplomatic efforts, particularly with Ukraine — and success is anything but guaranteed. But talking can reveal the possible space for compromise and identify a way out of the spiral. Otherwise, this war could eventually bring Russia and NATO into direct conflict.
The current U.S. approach assumes that would happen only if the Ukrainians are given particular systems or capabilities that cross a Russian red line. So when President Biden recently announced his decision to provide Ukraine with the multiple-launch rocket system that Kyiv says it desperately needs, he deliberately withheld the longest-range munitions that could strike Russia. The premise of the decision was that Moscow will escalate — i.e., launch an attack against NATO — only if certain types of weapons are provided or if they are used to target Russian territory. The goal is to be careful to stop short of that line while giving the Ukrainians what they need to “defend their territory from Russian advances,” as Mr. Biden said in a statement in June.
The logic is dubious. The Kremlin’s focus is precisely on making advances on Ukrainian territory. The problem is not that providing Ukraine with some specific weapon could cause escalation but rather that if the West’s support of Ukraine succeeded in stemming Russia’s advance, that would constitute an unacceptable defeat for the Kremlin. And a Russian battlefield victory is equally unacceptable to the West.
If Russia continues to push farther into Ukraine, Western partners would likely provide yet more and better weapons. If those weapons allow Ukraine to reverse Russia’s gains, Moscow may feel compelled to double down — and if it is really losing, it might well consider direct attacks against NATO. In other words, there’s no mutually acceptable outcome right now. But talks could help identify the compromises needed to find one.
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{'people': ['Biden', 'Kyiv', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['NATO', 'NATO', 'Kremlin', 'Kremlin', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow']}
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A Maestro and His Musicians Face Scrutiny Over Ties to Russia
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“He belongs to the system of Putin,” Vasyl Khymynets, the Ukrainian ambassador to Austria, said in an interview. “He hasn’t criticized this brutal war, yet he has the chance to be presented on one of the most famous stages in Europe and probably in the world.”
The esteemed pianist Evgeny Kissin, a frequent performer in Salzburg, said that while he would not object if Currentzis appeared with a Western orchestra, MusicAeterna’s ties to the Russian government were problematic.
“In the current situation, groups funded by the Russian state should not be allowed to perform in the civilized world,” said Kissin, who was born in Moscow and is now based in Prague, citing Russia’s “criminal war in Ukraine.”
Currentzis, through his representatives, declined to comment.
Since founding MusicAeterna in Siberia in 2004, Currentzis has sought to defy labels. He is known as an uncompromising classical musician but has also earned a reputation as a punk, a goth and an anarchist. Born in Athens, he went to Russia in his 20s to study music and now carries a Russian passport. (Putin awarded him citizenship by presidential decree in 2014, the Russia news media reported.)
Currentzis began his career as an outsider trying to build artistic centers away from the traditional bases of Moscow and St. Petersburg, including at the Novosibirsk State Opera in Siberia and in the industrial city of Perm. He stood up to the Russian authorities, including in 2017, when his friend and collaborator Kirill Serebrennikov, one of Russia’s most prominent theater directors, was detained in Moscow, a move seen as retribution for his critical portrayals of life under Putin.
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{'people': ['Putin', 'Vasyl Khymynets', 'Evgeny Kissin', 'Kissin', 'Putin', 'Currentzis', 'Kirill Serebrennikov', 'Putin'], 'organizations': ['Currentzis', 'Currentzis', 'Novosibirsk State Opera'], 'locations': ['Austria', 'Salzburg', 'MusicAeterna', 'Moscow', 'Prague', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'MusicAeterna', 'Athens', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'St. Petersburg', 'Russia', 'Moscow']}
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Russian National Charged With Spreading Propaganda Through U.S. Groups
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MIAMI — The Russian man with a trim beard and patterned T-shirt appeared in a Florida political group’s YouTube livestream in March, less than three weeks after his country had invaded Ukraine, and falsely claimed that what had happened was not an invasion.
“I would like to address the free people around the world to tell you that Western propaganda is lying when they say that Russia invaded Ukraine,” he said through an interpreter.
His name was Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, and he described himself as a “human rights activist.”
But federal authorities say he was working for the Russian government, orchestrating a yearslong influence campaign to use American political groups to spread Russian propaganda and interfere with U.S. elections. On Friday, the Justice Department revealed that it had charged Mr. Ionov with conspiring to have American citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government.
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{'people': ['Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov', 'Ionov'], 'organizations': ['MIAMI', 'YouTube', 'the Justice Department'], 'locations': ['Florida', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'U.S.']}
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Blinken Resists Push to Label Russia a Terrorist State
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate supports it unanimously. So does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the Ukrainian Parliament.
But Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is not so sure.
For weeks, pressure has mounted on Mr. Blinken to formally declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, a label currently reserved for North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran. But despite the emotional appeal, Mr. Blinken is resisting a move that could force him to sanction U.S. allies that do business with Russia and might snuff out the remaining vestiges of diplomacy between Washington and Moscow.
Amid outrage over Russia’s brutal military campaign in Ukraine, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution calling on Mr. Blinken to designate Russia as a terrorism sponsor for its attacks in Ukraine, as well as in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, that resulted “in the deaths of countless innocent men, women and children.”
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{'people': ['Nancy Pelosi', 'Volodymyr Zelensky', 'Antony J. Blinken', 'Blinken', 'Blinken', 'Blinken'], 'organizations': ['The U.S. Senate', 'House', 'the Ukrainian Parliament', 'State', 'the U.S. Senate'], 'locations': ['WASHINGTON', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'North Korea', 'Syria', 'Cuba', 'Iran', 'U.S.', 'Russia', 'Washington', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Chechnya', 'Georgia', 'Syria']}
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Russia Cuts Natural Gas Flow to Germany Yet Again
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Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, followed through on Wednesday with its announcement earlier this week that it would further restrict the flows of natural gas to Germany and other European countries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. It also blamed Siemens Energy, the German maker of turbines used on the pipeline, for causing the cutbacks, prompting a sharp retort from the company.
News of the reduced flows of natural gas caused a jump in the already-high price for natural gas in Europe, to heights not seen since the days immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Prices later moderated, but remained about double what they were in mid-June, when Russia began a series of restrictions on flows through the pipeline.
Data from Nord Stream showed that flows were reduced to about 20 percent of the pipeline’s capacity.
Gazprom said maintenance issues concerning turbines supplied by Siemens Energy were to blame for diminished output. German officials dispute this claim, and European officials say Russia is cutting back its gas deliveries to punish Europe for its opposition to the war in Ukraine.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['Siemens Energy', 'Nord Stream', 'Siemens Energy'], 'locations': ['Germany', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Russia Is Making Heaps of Money From Oil, but There Is a Way to Stop That
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It is an audacious and untested idea. It also appears to be the best available option. If it works, it could deprive Russia of revenue without devastating the economies of nations that are trying to support Ukraine.
Constructing a cartel is not easy. The United States has already secured the agreement in principle of the other members of the Group of 7, a coordinating body for the major democratic economic powers. American officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, are working with their counterparts to hammer out the details. The buyers’ cartel would be strengthened if other big buyers of Russian oil, notably India and China, could be persuaded to participate. That seems unlikely. But U.S. officials argue the cartel could still increase pressure on Russia by allowing nations that are not participating to extract larger discounts, too.
Maintaining a cartel is also hard. Because the participants can benefit by cheating on the price ceiling, policing a price-fixing agreement is notoriously difficult. But in this case, there may be a plausible enforcement mechanism. A key piece of the new sanctions by the European Union and Britain is a ban on insuring tankers that carry Russian oil. Shippers need insurance to navigate canals and to enter harbors. European companies dominate the market; in April and May, 68 percent of Russian oil exports traveled on tankers insured by European businesses. That measure could be modified to ban insurance for tankers with oil purchased at a price above the cartel’s ceiling.
The Russian government has sought to forestall the plan by warning that it would refuse to go along with it. “As far as I understand, we won’t be supplying oil to those countries which would impose such a cap, and our oil, oil products will be redirected to the countries which are ready to cooperate with us,” Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of Russia’s central bank, said at a news conference last week. Analysts, however, say that if a cartel is established, Russia’s real choice would be between accepting its terms and leaving a large share of current oil production in the ground.
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{'people': ['Janet Yellen', 'Elvira Nabiullina'], 'organizations': ['the Group of 7', 'Treasury', 'the European Union'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'The United States', 'India', 'China', 'U.S.', 'Russia', 'Britain', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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Europe Weans Itself Off Russian Gas
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Before the meeting, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of waging “an overt gas war” against “a united Europe” and urged leaders not to give in to Russian threats. Russian gas accounts for 40 percent of E.U. consumption, and gas is a leading source of energy for homes and businesses.
All of the E.U.’s 27 member states supported the move, except for Hungary, which voted against the agreement but couldn’t veto it. Some exemptions were given to Ireland, Cyprus and Malta, which have little flexibility to seek alternative energy sources, as well as to the Baltic States that have electricity grids connected to Russia’s.
The bloc’s gas storage tanks, usually almost full before winter, are currently at 66 percent capacity, according to the E.U.’s energy commissioner, Kadri Simson.
The stakes are particularly high for Germany, which relied on Russia to supply 55 percent of its natural gas before the invasion. It has cut that share to 30 percent over the past months but is scrambling to ensure that it will have sufficient fuel in storage to last the winter.
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{'people': ['Volodymyr Zelensky', 'Kadri Simson'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Moscow', 'E.U.', 'Hungary', 'Ireland', 'Cyprus', 'Malta', 'the Baltic States', 'Russia', 'E.U.', 'Germany', 'Russia']}
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Russia Says It Will Quit the International Space Station After 2024
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Mr. Putin’s response: “Good.”
With tensions between Washington and Moscow rising after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian space officials including Dmitry Rogozin, Mr. Borisov’s predecessor, had made declarations in recent months that Russia was planning to leave. But they all left ambiguity about when it would happen or whether a final decision had been made.
If Russia follows through, it could accelerate the end of a project that NASA has spent about $100 billion on over the last quarter-century and set off a scrambling over what to do next. The space station, a partnership with Russia that also involves Canada, Europe and Japan, is key to studying the effects of weightlessness and radiation on human health — research that is still unfinished but needed before astronauts embark on longer voyages to Mars. It has also turned into a proving ground for commercial use of space, including visits by wealthy private citizens and the manufacturing of high-purity optical fibers.
An official at the White House said the United States had not received any formal notification from Russia that it would withdraw from the space station, although officials have seen the public comments.
“We are exploring options to mitigate any potential impacts on the I.S.S. beyond 2024 if in fact Russia withdraws,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
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{'people': ['Putin', 'Dmitry Rogozin', 'Borisov', 'John Kirby'], 'organizations': ['NASA', 'I.S.S.', 'the National Security Council'], 'locations': ['Washington', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Canada', 'Japan', 'the United States', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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U.S. Offers to Swap Russian Arms Dealer for Griner and Whelan
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In an interview last month, however, the judge who sentenced Mr. Bout, Shira A. Scheindlin, said that Mr. Bout “was not a terrorist, in my opinion. He was a businessman.” She added that she felt the mandatory 25-year sentence she was forced to impose was too high and that a trade of Mr. Bout for Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan would be reasonable.
A White House national security spokesman, John F. Kirby, declined to provide more specifics about the U.S. proposal.
“I’m sure you can all understand that it’s not going to help us get them home if we’re negotiating publicly,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. But he seemed to welcome the opportunity to say something beyond months of past official assurances that the administration was working quietly behind the scenes.
“What I will say is that the president and his team are willing to take extraordinary steps to bring our people home,” Mr. Kirby said. “We believe it’s important for the American people to know how hard President Biden is working to get Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan home. We think it’s important for their families to know how hard we’re working on this.”
A senior administration official said Justice Department lawyers, who have long argued against releasing Mr. Bout, part of an institutional reluctance to trade away federal prisoners, voiced initial opposition to the deal but were overruled by Mr. Biden.
Mr. Blinken disclosed the existence of the proposal hours after Ms. Griner testified for the first time about her arrest, telling a Russian courtroom that she had been tossed into a bewildering legal system with little explanation of what was happening and what she might do to try to defend herself.
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{'people': ['Bout', 'Shira A. Scheindlin', 'Bout', 'Bout', 'Griner', 'Whelan', 'John F. Kirby', 'Kirby', 'Kirby', 'Biden', 'Brittney Griner', 'Paul Whelan', 'Bout', 'Biden', 'Blinken', 'Griner'], 'organizations': ['White House', 'Justice Department'], 'locations': ['U.S.']}
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Russians, Risking Isolation in the South, Build Up for Ukrainian Attack
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In Kherson, which the Russians captured quickly after invading in February, they have had months to fortify their defensive lines, and the Ukrainians have yet to launch any major land-based counteroffensive.
“Of course, we are waiting for the command to attack, but it’s not really that simple,” said Senior Sgt. Oleksandr Babynets, 28, a member of the Ukrainian 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which is dug in along the Kherson region’s western border.
“The Russians have organized defensive lines, dug in and deployed a lot of weaponry,” he said. “We don’t just want to go ahead and die just like that. We need to work intelligently.”
In the last month, with most Russian forces tied down in the battles far to the east, in the Donbas region, Ukrainian forces in the south have managed to force Moscow’s troops back a few miles in the direction of Kherson. At their closest, along the Kherson region’s western border, they are about 30 miles from the city. There, the lines have largely frozen as each army jockeys for advantage.
As the counteroffensive brews, Russia has renewed attacks on the north, launching strikes from the Black Sea, Belarus and Russia that injured at least 15 people in the region of the capital, Kyiv, the Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday. The attacks were the first in weeks to hit the capital region, which the initial Russian offensive failed to capture early in the war.
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{'people': ['Kherson', 'Oleksandr Babynets', 'Kherson', 'Kherson', 'Kherson', 'Kyiv'], 'organizations': ['the Ukrainian 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade'], 'locations': ['Donbas', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Belarus', 'Russia']}
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Brittney Griner’s Lawyers Argue for Leniency in Russian Court
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Wearing a black and gray sweatshirt with the slogan “Black lives for peace” printed on the back, Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. star who has been detained in Russia on drug charges, appeared in a court near Moscow on Tuesday as her defense team continued to present evidence that she had not intended to break the law.
She was escorted to a courtroom by a group of police officers, one of them wearing a balaklava, and stood in a metal cage, holding photographs of her relatives, teammates and friends, according to video footage from the scene published by Russian state television.
After being detained in a Moscow airport one week before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Ms. Griner has become an unlikely pawn in a diplomatic game between Moscow and Washington. With her guilty plea making the verdict seem a foregone conclusion, experts said that her best hope was that the Biden administration could find a way to swap her for a high-profile Russian being held by the United States.
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{'people': ['Brittney Griner', 'Griner', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['W.N.B.A.'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Moscow', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Washington', 'the United States']}
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Russia Tells Famine-Fearing Africa It’s Not to Blame for Food Shortage
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CAIRO — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia likes to cast himself as the leader of a global movement rising up against domination by the United States and its allies. On Sunday, his top diplomat brought that message directly to Africa, hoping to turn the hunger and social strife across the continent to Russia’s advantage.
He is likely to find a receptive audience.
Even before setting out on his four-country tour, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov made clear he would use the trip to blame the West for the grain shortages tied to the war in Ukraine that are raising fears of famine in African countries and to paint Russia as the continent’s faithful ally.
Ahead of the trip, Russia acquiesced to an agreement that allows Ukraine to resume exporting critically needed grain that has been blocked in Black Sea ports by the fighting, a sign of Mr. Putin’s apparent concern for public opinion across the developing world.
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{'people': ['Vladimir V. Putin', 'Sergey V. Lavrov', 'Putin'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Russia', 'the United States', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Brittney Griner Describes Her Legal Ordeal to Russian Court
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The authorities detained Ms. Griner, 31, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, about a week before President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine in February. She was accused of having two vape cartridges of hashish oil in her luggage when she arrived at an airport near Moscow on her way to Yekaterinburg, where she plays for a team in the W.N.B.A. off-season.
Russia did not make her detention public until after the invasion began.
Earlier this month, Ms. Griner pleaded guilty, saying that she had unintentionally carried a banned substance into Russia because she had packed in a hurry. In Russia, a guilty plea does not end a trial and the proceedings are expected to continue into August. She faces a possible 10-year sentence.
Ms. Griner’s lawyers have said they hope her guilty plea will make the court more lenient, but experts say that her best hope is that the Biden administration finds a way to swap her for a high-profile Russian who is being held by the United States.
On Wednesday, the American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said the United States had “put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago” to gain the release of Ms. Griner and Paul Whelan, a former Marine who was sentenced last year to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He declined to discuss details of the offer.
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{'people': ['Griner', 'Vladimir V. Putin’s', 'Griner', 'Griner', 'Biden', 'Antony J. Blinken', 'Griner', 'Paul Whelan'], 'organizations': ['the Phoenix Mercury', 'state'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Yekaterinburg', 'W.N.B.A.', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'the United States', 'the United States']}
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Russia Cuts Gas Flow to Europe, Intensifying Fears It Is Weaponizing Fuel
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BERLIN — On the eve of a European Union emergency meeting on cutting natural gas consumption, Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly said Monday that it would slash gas deliveries to Germany, as President Vladimir V. Putin once again showed his unpredictability and his power to inflict pain on the bloc for backing Ukraine.
E.U. energy ministers are set to meet Tuesday to weigh a 15 percent reduction in gas use, specifically because of fears that the Kremlin could create artificial shortages threatening heat and power generation over the winter. As if to confirm such worries, Gazprom, the Russian company, on Monday said it would cut by half the flow through its pipeline to Germany to just 20 percent of capacity — less than a week after resuming limited flows following a maintenance shutdown.
Western officials dismissed the Russian explanation of equipment troubles — coincidentally or not, with German equipment — as nothing but a cover for its manipulation. “Based on our information, there is no technical reason for a reduction in deliveries,” the German Economy Ministry said in a statement.
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{'people': ['Vladimir V. Putin', 'Gazprom'], 'organizations': ['BERLIN', 'European Union', 'Kremlin', 'the German Economy Ministry'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Germany', 'Ukraine', 'E.U.', 'Germany']}
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Blinken Speaks to Russia’s Foreign Minister, Seeking Deal for Griner and Whelan
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Ms. Griner, a W.N.B.A. star who had been playing for a Russian team during the off-season, is on trial in a Russian court and faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison on drug charges. The 31-year-old athlete was detained in a Moscow airport about a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after customs officials discovered hashish oil in her luggage.
Mr. Whelan, a former Marine and corporate security executive, was detained in 2018 in a Moscow hotel, where he had been staying for a friend’s wedding. In 2020, a Russian court sentenced him to 16 years in prison for espionage, a charge that he and his family have denied.
The State Department has classified both Mr. Whelan and Ms. Griner as “wrongfully detained.”
According to a person briefed on the matter, the Biden administration offered last month to trade the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence in the United States, for Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan.
Mr. Blinken also said he had pressed Mr. Lavrov to make good on a recent Russian agreement to allow the passage of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports, and told him that the world would never accept the further Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory.
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{'people': ['Griner', 'Whelan', 'Whelan', 'Griner', 'Biden', 'Viktor Bout', 'Griner', 'Whelan', 'Blinken', 'Lavrov'], 'organizations': ['W.N.B.A.', 'The State Department'], 'locations': ['Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'the United States']}
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Bucking the global trend, Russia lowers interest rates again.
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Moving in the opposite direction to much of the rest of the world, Russia’s central bank lowered its interest rate 1.5 percentage points to 8 percent on Friday, taking it even lower than it was before the country invaded Ukraine.
The bank said inflation, which fell to 15.9 percent last month from about 17 percent in May, was slowing in the country because of “subdued” consumer demand and the strength of the ruble, which reached a seven-year high against the dollar last month. The rate cut was larger than economists had expected.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, energy and food prices across the globe have soared as the war has disrupted the export of wheat and other commodities, while nations can no longer be assured of the security of Russia’s supply of natural gas.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia']}
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Russia Announces Deeper Cuts in Natural Gas Flows to Germany
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BERLIN — Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, said on Monday that it would further reduce the amount of natural gas it sends to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, less than a week after it resumed limited flows after an annual maintenance shutdown.
Flows had already been cut back to 40 percent of capacity, but Gazprom said that it would crimp them to 20 percent starting Wednesday, citing problems with one of the powerful turbines that are manufactured by the German company Siemens Energy. The turbines build pressure within the pipeline to ship the gas long distances.
In mid-June Russia started cutting the amount of gas shipped through the 760-mile undersea pipeline, blaming the reduction on a missing turbine that had been shipped to Canada for repairs.
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{'people': ['Gazprom'], 'organizations': ['BERLIN', 'Flows', 'Siemens Energy'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Gazprom', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'Canada']}
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Russia Restarts Gas Shipments Through Pipeline, but Keeps Germany Guessing
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Russia’s decision to restart the flow of natural gas through a vital pipeline on Thursday brought a moment of relief to Germany, which uses the fuel to power its most important industries and heat half its homes. But it is unlikely to be much more than that.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made clear that he intends to use his country’s energy exports as a cudgel, and even a weapon, to punish and divide European leaders — loosening or tightening the taps as it suits him and his war aims in Ukraine.
He is counting on that uncertainty to impose heavy economic and political costs on European leaders. Those elected officials are under growing pressure to bring down energy prices and avoid gas rationing that might force factories and government buildings to close and require people to lower thermostats in winter. Leaders in some nations, like Spain and Greece, are already chafing at a European Union plan to have every member country cut its gas use, arguing that they are already much less reliant on Russia than Germany.
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{'people': ['Vladimir V. Putin'], 'organizations': ['European Union'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Spain', 'Greece', 'Russia', 'Germany']}
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Democratic
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Russia Moves to Close Agency Handling Emigration to Israel
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The Jewish Agency official said that Russian disgruntlement with Israel over a variety of other matters might also help explain the new Russian pressure. These include Israeli military activities in Syria and a dispute over church property in Jerusalem.
Israeli officials have also become increasingly outspoken in their criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine, after initially trying to tread a diplomatic middle path. Last week, Israel began providing helmets and other protective equipment to Ukrainian rescue forces and civilian organizations after earlier refusing to do so, and Mr. Lapid signed a joint declaration with President Biden expressing “concerns regarding the ongoing attacks against Ukraine.”
“The attempt to punish the Jewish Agency for Israel’s stance on the war is deplorable and offensive,” Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, Nachman Shai, said in a statement on Thursday. “The Jews of Russia cannot be detached from their historical and emotional connection to the State of Israel.”
The Jewish Agency, founded nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in helping establish Israel in 1948, and has facilitated the emigration of millions of Jews from around the globe. It describes itself as the largest Jewish nonprofit organization in the world, and runs social programs in Israel and for Jewish communities abroad.
The agency was banned in the Soviet Union, where Jews faced pervasive discrimination, until its final years. About a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived in Israel from the late 1980s to the end of the 1990s. The agency now helps Russians with Jewish roots move to Israel and runs Sunday schools and Hebrew classes across Russia.
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{'people': ['Lapid', 'Biden'], 'organizations': ['the Jewish Agency', 'The Jewish Agency', 'the Jewish Agency'], 'locations': ['Israel', 'Syria', 'Jerusalem', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Israel', 'Ukrainian', 'Ukraine', 'Israel', 'Israel', 'Nachman Shai', 'Russia', 'Israel', 'Palestine', 'Israel', 'Israel', 'the Soviet Union', 'Soviet Union', 'Israel', 'Israel', 'Russia']}
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Democratic
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Russia Agrees to Let Ukraine Ship Grain, Easing World Food Shortage
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BRUSSELS — After three months of talks that often seemed doomed, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on Friday to free more than 20 million tons of grain stuck in Ukraine’s blockaded Black Sea ports, a deal with global implications for bringing down high food prices and alleviating shortages and a mounting hunger crisis.
Senior United Nations officials said that the first shipments out of Odesa and neighboring ports were only weeks away and could quickly bring five million tons of Ukrainian food to the world market each month, freeing up storage space for Ukraine’s fresh harvests. The difference might be felt most powerfully in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa, which relies heavily on Ukrainian and Russian grain.
The breakthrough, brokered with the help of the United Nations and Turkey, is the most significant compromise between the warring nations since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, but it moves them no closer to peace. While government ministers signed the agreement in an ornate room in Istanbul, with their countries’ flags lined up together, a few hundred miles away their troops continued to kill and maim each other.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['BRUSSELS', 'United Nations', 'the United Nations'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Odesa', 'Ukraine', 'Ukrainian', 'Turkey', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Istanbul']}
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Russia Strikes Odesa Port, Stirring Doubts on Deal to Export Grain
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ODESA, Ukraine — A string of explosions rocked Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa on Saturday, hitting one of the country’s most important ports less than 24 hours after Russia and Ukraine signed a deal to secure the transit of millions of tons of grain through Black Sea routes.
The strikes raised concerns about Russia’s commitment to the agreement, which was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, before it could even be put into action. The deal is seen as critical for shoring up global supplies after a steep drop in Ukrainian grain exports raised fears of food shortages in poorer nations.
The string of explosions were also grim reminders of Russia’s violent fulcrum of the five month old war: signals from Moscow that it can rain destruction on any part of Ukraine at random, no matter the military situation on the front lines or diplomatic breakthroughs elsewhere.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['ODESA', 'the United Nations'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Odesa', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Turkey', 'Ukrainian', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine']}
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With Russia using energy as leverage, the quest in many parts of Europe is to shrink demand.
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But European nations can hardly wait to see how the weather turns out.
Seeking to speed up its energy independence from Russia, Italy has looked to Algeria as a potential new supplier of gas, ramped up renewable energy sources and burned more coal to keep homes lighted and businesses running.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has warned that the country should brace itself for a total cutoff of Russian natural gas, has said that to tackle the gas shortage, the government would prepare a measured conservation plan to limit energy use. He has also noted that France’s large nuclear power industry makes it less vulnerable than some of its European neighbors.
“Russia is using energy, like it is using food, as a weapon of war,” Mr. Macron said earlier this month.
Élisabeth Borne, the French prime minister, told lawmakers in early July that France would renationalize its state-backed electricity giant, Électricité de France, which produces most of the country’s electricity and operates all of its nuclear plants.
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{'people': ['Emmanuel Macron', 'Macron', 'Élisabeth Borne', 'Électricité de France'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Italy', 'Algeria', 'France', 'France', 'Russia', 'France']}
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Russia Signals That It May Want a Bigger Chunk of Ukraine
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Russia’s top diplomat said Wednesday that his country’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine might broaden, as European leaders warned their citizens to prepare for sacrifices in the face of a conflict that shows no sign of ending any time soon.
In recent months, Russian forces have concentrated their assault on eastern Ukraine, which by all indications Russia appears determined to annex as it did Crimea in 2014. But on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov told the Russian state news agency that Moscow was now casting its gaze on a swath of Ukraine’s south, as well, specifically naming the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as well as “a number of other territories.”
“This is an ongoing process,” Mr. Lavrov said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
In comments reminiscent of the justification offered for the invasion by President Vladimir V. Putin, who said Western military aggression had left him no choice, Mr. Lavrov said Ukraine’s allies were to blame if Russia expanded its military objectives.
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{'people': ['Sergey V. Lavrov', 'Kherson', 'Zaporizhzhia', 'Lavrov', 'Vladimir V. Putin', 'Lavrov'], 'organizations': ['Crimea', 'RIA Novosti'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia']}
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As Ukraine defends in the east and south, a U.S. official says Russia’s war effort is failing.
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Although Russia’s forces are trying to push deeper into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, they have not been able to break through Ukrainian defenses, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
“Throughout July, the occupiers have been trying to storm Donetsk region,” Serhii Haidai, the head of the military administration in neighboring Luhansk Province, said in a statement. But unlike with the Russians’ push in the spring and early summer, when they could use their significant artillery advantage to flatten areas before advancing, Mr. Haidai said the Ukrainians’ destruction of Russian ammunition depots had “made it much more difficult for them to replenish arms stocks and maneuver.”
Still, he said, Russian forces continued “to destroy settlements, employing barrel and jet artillery.” At least six civilians were killed and 15 others were injured by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region on Friday, local Ukrainian officials said.
On the southern front, at least one civilian in the port city of Mykolaiv died when a Russian missile struck a high-rise building overnight, according to Vitalii Kim, the local governor.
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{'people': ['Serhii Haidai', 'Haidai', 'Vitalii Kim'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukrainian', 'Ukrainian', 'Luhansk Province', 'Mykolaiv']}
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How the Kremlin Is Forcing Ukrainians to Adopt Russian Life
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Mr. Konstantinov, a longtime pro-Russia politician in Crimea, sat next to Mr. Putin at the Kremlin when the Russian president signed the document annexing the peninsula to Russia. He also helped organize the Crimean “referendum” in which 97 percent voted in favor of joining Russia — a result widely rejected by the international community as a sham.
Now, Mr. Konstantinov said, he is in constant touch with the Russian-imposed occupying authorities in the neighboring Kherson region, which Russian troops captured early in the war. He said that the authorities had told him a few days ago that they had started printing ballots, with the aim of holding a vote in September.
Kherson is one of four regions in which officials are signaling planned referendums, along with Zaporizhzhia in the south and Luhansk and Donetsk in the east. While the Kremlin claims it will be up to the area’s residents to “determine their own future,” Mr. Putin last month hinted he expected to annex the regions outright: he compared the war in Ukraine with Peter the Great’s wars of conquest in the 18th century and said that, like the Russian czar, “it has also fallen to us to return” lost Russian territory.
At the same time, the Kremlin appears to be keeping its options open by offering few specifics. Aleksei Chesnakov, a Moscow political consultant who has advised the Kremlin on Ukraine policy, said Moscow viewed referendums on joining Russia as its “base scenario” — though preparations for a potential vote were not yet complete. He declined to say whether he was involved in the process himself.
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{'people': ['Konstantinov', 'Putin', 'Konstantinov', 'Kherson', 'Kherson', 'Zaporizhzhia', 'Putin', 'Peter the Great', 'Aleksei Chesnakov'], 'organizations': ['Kremlin', 'Kremlin', 'Kremlin', 'Kremlin'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Crimea', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Luhansk', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Russia']}
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A Ukrainian appeals court reduces the life sentence of a Russian soldier tried for war crimes.
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His case became a milestone of Ukrainian justice as the war raged on: Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old Russian soldier, was sentenced in May to life in prison after pleading guilty to shooting a 62-year-old riding a bicycle in northeastern Ukraine.
On Friday, the Kyiv Court of Appeals reduced his sentence to 15 years, saying it would provide the reasoning for its decision on Aug. 3. His lawyers had argued that he had not intended to kill the victim, Oleksandar Shelipov, when he shot him in the northern region of Sumy in the early days of the war.
Ukraine’s justice system has come under criticism in the past from human rights advocates for imposing life sentences in which the only possibility for release was terminal illness or a presidential pardon.
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{'people': ['Vadim Shishimarin', 'Oleksandar Shelipov', 'Sumy'], 'organizations': ['the Kyiv Court of Appeals'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine']}
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‘An abyss of fear’: A report accuses Russia of further abuses against civilians.
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Russian forces have tortured and beaten civilians in the areas of southern Ukraine that they control, part of a series of abuses that may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said this weekend in a report that further undermined the public case repeatedly made by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for the invasion.
Atrocities committed by Russian forces north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, have already drawn global outrage and have been the subject of war crimes trials by Ukrainian prosecutors, but the report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, casts a spotlight on the south of the country, where the Russian occupation forces tightly control access and information.
Starting in February, Russian forces pushed north from Crimea, a region of Ukraine that Moscow seized in 2014, and took control of territory along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts including in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces.
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{'people': ['Vladimir V. Putin', 'Kyiv', 'Zaporizhzhia Provinces'], 'organizations': ['Human Rights Watch', 'Human Rights Watch'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'New York', 'Crimea', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Kherson']}
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Russia’s foreign minister says he will propose a time for a phone call about a prisoner exchange.
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During a trip to Uzbekistan on Friday, Mr. Lavrov said that he had learned about Mr. Blinken’s statement from television during a visit to Africa this week. He said that any phone conversation between the two men would have to be conducted from his office and that Russia had asked the American side “to clarify the questions they want to discuss.”
Mr. Lavrov said that the question of prisoner exchanges had been discussed during a January meeting in Geneva between President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and both leaders ordered their government agencies to discuss it further. Mr. Lavrov said that his ministry was not involved in that discussion, but that he would listen to what Mr. Blinken has to say.
The American government has come under increased pressure from relatives of U.S. citizens to get them released from Russian prisons.
Ms. Griner, a W.N.B.A. star who had been playing for a Russian team during the off-season, is on trial in a Russian court and faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison on drug charges. The 31-year-old athlete was detained in a Moscow airport about a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and customs officials discovered hashish oil in her luggage.
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{'people': ['Lavrov', 'Blinken', 'Lavrov', 'Biden', 'Vladimir V. Putin', 'Lavrov', 'Blinken', 'Griner'], 'organizations': ['W.N.B.A.'], 'locations': ['Uzbekistan', 'Russia', 'Geneva', 'Russia', 'U.S.', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Ukraine Is the Next Act in Putin’s Empire of Humiliation
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Mr. Putin’s manipulation of the cycle of humiliation and aggression is integral to his psychological grip on Russia. That manipulation can look like legislating to criminalize opposition to the war while also appealing for solidarity in the fight against the West. As the impact of economic sanctions rolls across Russia, Kremlin propaganda has called for Russians to show how tough they are: Haven’t they survived great trials in the past? These calls for toughness can resonate — people can learn to define themselves through surviving pain to the point of getting a certain satisfaction from it.
The Kremlin, of course, avoids any suggestion that it is the source of any pain, now or in the past. There are no major public memorials in Russia, in the shape of museums or movies, statues or open archives, that stand as a record of how the Soviet Union sadistically slaughtered its citizens in the gulags and colonized and repressed other territories and peoples. Some school textbooks in Russia celebrate Stalin as an “effective manager.”
Certainly, Russia is not the only country with a history of colonialism and internal repression. But in other countries these histories are usually part of an active debate. In Russia there seems to be nothing in the mainstream discourse that tries to make sense of the past, take responsibility for it or imagine a different path forward.
For Russia to have a chance to come to terms with itself, it will be necessary to confront this history and bring it into the public consciousness — via TV shows or public memorials and educational projects. But admitting one’s own role in this cycle of humiliation and aggression is stymied by the very culture of humiliation: The humiliated feel they have no agency, so why should they feel responsible?
Meanwhile, the threat Russia poses — to Ukraine and to the world — must be mitigated now.
Mr. Putin recently declared that there are only two types of countries: “Either a country is sovereign, or it is a colony,” he said. This is the logic of internal humiliation projected onto geopolitics. For those who are chronically humiliated and humiliate others in turn, the idea that countries large and small alike could have rights is impossible: The world is split into those who dominate and those who are dominated.
Mr. Putin is not just trying to break Ukraine; he is using energy dependency to get Europeans to kneel to Russia’s demands and until recently was holding hostage in Ukrainian ports more than 22 million tons of grain that the world needs. In the face of such threats, it can be tempting to try to placate Russia. The editorial board of The New York Times has said that Ukraine will most likely have to accept territorial compromises. Mr. Macron has said that the West should avoid humiliating Russia. Such proposals are fundamentally misguided: Russia’s sense of humiliation is internal, not imposed upon it. To coddle the Putin regime is merely to participate in the cycle. If you yearn for sustainable security and freedom, abusive partners and predators cannot be indulged. The only option is to limit the sources of dependency.
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{'people': ['Putin', 'Stalin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Macron', 'Putin'], 'organizations': ['Kremlin', 'Kremlin', 'The New York Times'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'the Soviet Union', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukrainian', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia']}
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With Russian Cutoff Feared, Europeans Are Told to Curb Natural Gas Use
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The main argument to get all E.U nations on board, despite their different levels of vulnerability, is that the bloc’s economies are so interconnected that a blow to one is a blow to all.
“The choice we have today is triggering solidarity now or waiting for an emergency that will force solidarity upon us,” said Frans Timmermans, a senior Dutch politician who is the commission’s energy and climate czar.
He said savings in gas around the E.U. would create spare capacity to direct to the countries most in need in the wintertime, ensuring that no member state goes into economic shock because of the lack of power.
Ms. von der Leyen, putting a political spin on a seemingly economic issue, said this approach would deliver a blow to Mr. Putin, who wants to sow discord within the European Union, undermining the bloc and its most powerful countries economically and politically. Determined to make that backfire on him, European leaders have drawn closer together since the war began and have taken the first step toward possibly making Ukraine an E.U. member — something Mr. Putin set out to prevent.
“Putin is trying to push us around this winter and he will dramatically fail if we stick together,” Ms. von der Leyen said.
With Russia having slashed or completely cut gas supply to a dozen E.U. countries already, and the looming threat that it will not fully reconnect an important pipeline on Thursday that has been offline for maintenance, the bloc’s alternatives are few. Mr. Putin suggested late Tuesday that natural gas would resume flowing to Europe through the pipeline, but warned that supplies may be severely curtailed.
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{'people': ['von der', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin', 'von der', 'Putin'], 'organizations': ['E.U', 'the European Union'], 'locations': ['E.U.', 'Leyen', 'Ukraine', 'E.U.', 'Leyen', 'Russia']}
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Ukraine hits a key bridge in Kherson as Russia steps up missile strikes across the south.
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Explosions lit up the sky over the southern city of Kherson overnight, and as dawn broke on Wednesday it was clear that Ukrainian long-range missiles had once again found their target: a bridge that is critical in the Russian effort to resupply the forces charged with holding the port city.
At the same time, dozens of Russian missiles struck targets across the southern regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv, hitting port and transport infrastructure, two leisure centers, houses, a parking lot and two restaurants, according to Ukraine’s southern military command.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said its forces struck Ukrainian military strongholds, killing scores of soldiers, and other key Ukrainian infrastructure. The claims could not be verified. But it was clear that both armies were trying to limit their opponents’ logistical operations.
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{'people': ['Kherson', 'Mykolaiv'], 'organizations': ['The Russian Ministry of Defense'], 'locations': ['Odesa', 'Ukraine']}
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Democratic
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Russia restarts gas shipments through a key pipeline to Germany.
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BERLIN — Russia resumed flows of natural gas to Germany early Thursday, easing fears in Europe that a key pipeline would become the latest target in the escalating confrontation between Moscow and the West as the war in Ukraine stretches into its fifth month.
A steady stream of weapons from Western allies that are being used by Ukraine to increasingly devastating effect against Russian forces had raised the suspense around whether Moscow would resume gas deliveries after a 10-day hiatus for annual maintenance. The tensions served as a stark reminder of how dangerously dependent Germany — Europe’s largest economy — and several of its neighbors remain on energy from Russia.
The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that over the past 24 hours it had conducted 10 strikes across southern Ukraine using attack helicopters and fighter jets, targeting five Russian strongholds. They also targeted six Russian ammunition depots and several command posts with missile and artillery strikes against more than 200 Russian targets.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['BERLIN'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Germany', 'Moscow', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Moscow', 'Germany', 'Russia', 'Ukraine']}
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Leading Russian Tennis Player Criticizes War in Ukraine
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Kasatkina’s comments come as Russian players have returned to the top level of professional tennis following a forced hiatus.
In April, acting at the behest of the British government, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which runs Wimbledon, and the Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees the other annual spring and summer tournaments in England, barred Russian and Belarusian players from their tournaments.
“The U.K. government has set out directional guidance for sporting bodies and events in the U.K., with the specific aim of limiting Russia’s influence,” said Ian Hewitt, the chairman of the All England Club. “We have taken that directional guidance into account, as we must as a high-profile event and leading British institution.”
He said the combination of the scale and severity of Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, the condemnation by over 140 nations through the United Nations and the “specific and directive guidance to address matters” made this a “very, very exceptional situation.”
The move was popular in Britain, according to opinion polls, but received significant pushback from the men’s and women’s tennis tours. They condemned it as discriminatory and decided to withhold rankings points for any victories at Wimbledon. It also represented a dramatic break with precedents of not letting politics interfere with individual athletes’ participation in sports and of limiting punishments taken in reaction to the war to barring Russian and Belarusian teams or any flags or other symbols of the countries from competitions.
In a twist of irony, Elena Rybakina, who was born in Russia but opted to represent Kazakhstan four years ago in exchange for funding from that country’s tennis federation, won the Wimbledon women’s singles title. Rybakina, whose parents still live in Russia and who still spends time there, deferred when asked about the war, claiming her English skills were limited, despite holding lengthy news conferences in English on a variety of subjects throughout the tournament.
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{'people': ['Ian Hewitt', 'Elena Rybakina'], 'organizations': ['the Lawn Tennis Association', 'the All England Club', 'the United Nations', 'Rybakina'], 'locations': ['Kasatkina', 'England', 'U.K.', 'U.K.', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Britain', 'Russia', 'Kazakhstan', 'Russia']}
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Explosion Kills Dozens of Ukrainian Captives at Russian-Held Prison
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ODESA, Ukraine — For the Russians, the Ukrainian fighters held prisoner at Correctional Colony No. 120 are a trophy. For the Ukrainians, they are war heroes.
Why either side would want any of them dead is a mystery, but that is the question that hung over the fighting in Ukraine on Friday after another deadly episode, with each side accusing the other of committing a war crime.
What is known is that an explosion ripped through a barracks of the prison camp in the Russian-occupied town of Olenivka in southeastern Ukraine early Friday morning, killing at least 50 captured fighters and maiming dozens more, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Videos posted by Russian war bloggers show twisted metal bunk beds and the charred bodies of their former occupants.
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{'people': [], 'organizations': ['ODESA', 'Videos'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Olenivka', 'Ukraine', 'Ukrainian']}
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Democratic
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NYT
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Why Russia Believes It Cannot Lose the War in Ukraine
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Sergey Karaganov is a prominent Russian political scientist whom I have known for almost 20 years in covering Russia and have interviewed many times as a window into Kremlin thinking. The academic director of the faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics and honorary chairman of Russia’s premier nongovernmental think tank, Mr. Karaganov warned for years about a potential conflict in Ukraine over NATO expansion. Since the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February, he has written articles and given interviews in broad support of President Vladimir Putin, so I interviewed him to better understand Mr. Putin’s aims in the conflict. Ukraine continues to suffer, and those who hope to support Ukraine must understand those aims as it tries to confront Russia’s aggression.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In your articles and interviews, you have said, as President Putin has, that the war against Ukraine is existential for Russia. Why? In February 2022, there was no more talk of Ukraine joining NATO, Ukraine was posing no economic risk to Russia, the United States was far more concerned with China and the Middle East than with Russia. Where was the existential threat that required an all-out invasion?
When the military conflict started, we saw how deep Ukraine’s involvement with NATO was — a lot of arms, training. Ukraine was being turned into a spearhead aimed at the heart of Russia. Also we saw that the West was collapsing in economic, moral, political terms. This decline was especially painful after its peak in the 1990s. Problems within the West, and globally, were not solved. That was a classic prewar situation. The belligerence against Russia has been rapidly growing since the late 2000s. The conflict was seen as more and more imminent. So probably Moscow decided to pre-empt and to dictate the terms of the conflict.
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{'people': ['Sergey Karaganov', 'Karaganov', 'Vladimir Putin', 'Putin', 'Putin'], 'organizations': ['Kremlin', 'World Economy and International Affairs', 'Higher School of Economics', 'NATO', 'NATO', 'NATO'], 'locations': ['Russia', 'Moscow', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'the United States', 'China', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Russia', 'Moscow']}
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Eyeing a City Captured by Russia, Ukraine Prepares an Ambitious Counterattack
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After losing control over most of the region in the war’s first weeks, Ukrainian troops have now liberated 44 towns and villages along the border areas, about 15 percent of the territory, according to the region’s military governor, Dmytro Butrii. Ukraine’s top officials have given no clear timeline for retaking Kherson, but the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has made clear it is a top priority.
“Our forces are moving into the region step by step,” Mr. Zelensky said this week.
Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive in the south has created debate among Western officials and some analysts about whether Ukraine was ready for such a big effort, or if it is the best use of resources when Russian advances have come mostly in the Donbas.
Still, Ukrainian officials and several Western intelligence officials said it was important that Ukraine try to launch a counterattack. They say that the Russian military is in a relatively weaker position, having expended weapons and personnel in their Donbas offensive. Richard Moore, the chief of the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, predicted that the Russians would be forced to take a pause, offering an opening to Ukrainian forces.
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Russia and Ukraine
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{'people': ['Dmytro Butrii', 'Kherson', 'Volodymyr Zelensky', 'Zelensky', 'Richard Moore', 'MI6'], 'organizations': [], 'locations': ['Ukrainian', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas', 'Ukraine', 'Donbas']}
|
Democratic
| null | null | null | null | null | null |
NYT
| null | null |
Ukraine steps up attacks on key Russian targets in the south.
|
“Ukraine and its Western partners may have a narrowing window of opportunity to support a Ukrainian counteroffensive into occupied Ukrainian territory before the Kremlin annexes that territory,” said the spokesman, John Kirby.
Since April, Ukrainian forces have effectively been locked into a defensive posture as they gradually retreated from an onslaught of Russian artillery in the eastern Donbas region. The Russians have not seized new territory in weeks, and the Ukrainians say their defensive positions have stabilized.
But the purpose of the longer-range missile systems that Ukraine has been pleading for, and that Western countries have increasingly started to supply to its government, is not just to forestall Russia’s advance, but also to win back lost territory.
“We all strive to liberate Ukraine from the enemy,” the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern forces, Natalia Humeniuk, said on Tuesday. “We have a single goal.”
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news
| null | null | null | null |
War
|
Russia and Ukraine
|
{'people': ['John Kirby'], 'organizations': ['Kremlin', 'Natalia Humeniuk'], 'locations': ['Ukraine', 'Ukrainian', 'Donbas', 'Ukraine', 'Russia', 'Ukraine', 'Ukraine']}
|
Democratic
| null | null | null | null | null | null |
NYT
| null | null |
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