As the war enters its 804th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Wednesday, May 8, 2024.
Fighting
One person was killed and four injured by Russian artillery fire in the eastern border region of Sumy, which has come under increasing aerial bombardment in recent weeks. Ukrainian police said Moscow’s forces had fired on the territory 224 times over the previous 24 hours.
Five people were injured after Ukraine hit an oil storage depot in the Russian-occupied city of Luhansk triggering a large fire.
Politics and diplomacy
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it uncovered a Russian plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other senior officials. The SBU said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had set up a network of agents to carry out the plan and two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine, which provides protection to top officials, had been arrested on suspicion of treason.
Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a fifth term as Russian president in a Kremlin ceremony boycotted by the United States, the United Kingdom and several European Union countries. In a speech to mark the occasion, Putin said the country would emerge victorious and stronger from a “difficult” period.
Several dozen protesters gathered outside The Hague’s Peace Palace to protest against Putin’s inauguration, calling for him to stand trial. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova on war crime charges related to the abduction of Ukrainian children in March 2023.
Chinese President Xi Jinping left France after a two-day trip during which he offered no major concessions on foreign policy, even as President Emmanuel Macron urged him to use his influence on Russia to help end the war in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said the island state of Cape Verde had become the first African country to agree to attend next month’s “peace summit” in Switzerland. Bern has invited 160 delegations to the event which is scheduled for June 15-16.
Russia banned the US-based non-profit Freedom House, labelling it an “undesirable” organisation in Russia. In its 2024 Freedom in the World report, Freedom House assessed Russia as “not free”, noting restrictions on political rights and civil liberties had tightened since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Protesters gathered in The Hague to call for Putin to be jailed [Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters]
Weapons
Ukrainian state prosecutors told the Reuters news agency they had examined debris from 21 of about 50 North Korean ballistic missiles launched by Russia between late December and late February, as they work to assess the threat from Moscow’s cooperation with Pyongyang. The prosecutors’ office said evidence so far suggested a high failure rate.
Speaking during a visit to the US, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said he was open to discussions on sending a Patriot missile system to Ukraine. Romania signed a $4bn deal to procure Patriots in 2017, with the first shipment delivered in 2020.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Russia and Ukraine each accused the other of using banned toxins on the battlefield in meetings in The Hague. The OPCW said the accusations were “insufficiently substantiated” but the situation remained “volatile and extremely concerning regarding the possible re-emergence of use of toxic chemicals as weapons”.
US soldier detained in Russia on charges of criminal misconduct, adding to strained relations.
A United States soldier has been detained in Vladivostok on charges of theft in Russia’s latest high-profile detention of an American.
Russia’s RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday that the soldier, identified by the court as Gordon Black, would be detained until July 2.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, US officials told the Associated Press news agency that the soldier, Staff Sergeant Gordon Black, 34, who is married, was stationed in South Korea and was in the process of returning home to Texas.
Instead, they said he travelled to Russia to see a longtime girlfriend.
Another US official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency Black was accused of stealing from a woman.
The soldier’s arrest is likely to further complicate relations between the US and Russia, which have grown increasingly tense as the war in Ukraine has dragged on.
Cynthia Smith, a spokeswoman for the US Army, confirmed that a soldier had been detained on Thursday in Vladivostok, a major Pacific port, on charges of criminal misconduct. She said Russia notified the US and the Army told the soldier’s family.
“The US Department of State is providing appropriate consular support to the soldier in Russia,” Smith said.
The soldier’s arrest was first reported by NBC News.
‘Wrongfully detained’
President Joe Biden’s administration has been lobbying Moscow to release multiple Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Gershkovich, 32, became the first US journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War when he was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on March 29 last year. He, his newspaper and the US government all deny he is a spy.
Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, an American convicted of spying against Russia and sentenced to 16 years in 2020, have both been designated by the US State Department as “wrongfully detained”, meaning Washington considers the charges against them bogus and is committed to working for their release.
Asked about the soldier’s detention, a US State Department spokesperson confirmed only that “a US citizen has been detained in Russia”.
“We reiterate our strong warnings about the danger posed to US citizens inside the Russian Federation. US citizens residing or travelling in Russia should depart immediately, as stated in our Travel Advisory for Russia,” the State Department spokesperson said.
“Due to privacy and other considerations we have no further details to provide at this time.”
The arrest comes less than a year after American soldier Travis King sprinted into North Korea across the heavily fortified border between the Koreas. North Korea later announced that it would expel King, who was returned to the US. He was eventually charged with desertion.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be sworn in for a fifth term as president in a ceremony at the Kremlin later on Tuesday.
The United States and most European Union nations have said they will not send envoys to Tuesday’s inauguration of Vladimir Putin as Russian president.
He gained 87.28 percent of the vote, weeks after the sudden death of his most vocal critic, Alexey Navalny, in an Arctic prison.
“We will not have a representative at his inauguration,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters. “We certainly did not consider that election free and fair but he is the president of Russia and he is going to continue in that capacity.”
The United Kingdom and Canada said they would not send anyone to the ceremony, while a spokesperson for the European Union told the Reuters news agency the bloc’s ambassador to Russia would not attend the inauguration, in keeping with the position of most of the EU’s member states.
The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – which have withdrawn their ambassadors from Moscow – ruled out attending the inauguration.
“We believe that the isolation of Russia, and especially of its criminal leader, must be continued,” Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said.
“Participation in Putin’s inauguration is not acceptable for Lithuania. Our priority remains support for Ukraine and its people fighting against Russian aggression.”
The Czech Republic is also expected to snub the ceremony, while Germany’s Foreign Office said its representative would not attend – it earlier recalled its ambassador over alleged Russian cyberattacks.
An aide to Putin said the heads of all foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow including those from “unfriendly states” had been invited to attend the inauguration, which starts at noon (09:00 GMT) and will be broadcast live on Russian television.
Putin is due to arrive in a luxury motorcade – state-run RT reported modifications to his armoured Aurus limousine including improved sound insulation and all-round cameras – at the Grand Kremlin Palace. The one-time KGB spy will then walk through the palace corridors to the ornate Saint Andrew Hall, where he will take the presidential oath and make a brief address. He will also received a blessing from the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The ceremony is taking place a day after Russia announced plans for a tactical nuclear weapons drill, blaming what it said were “provocative” moves by Western countries over Ukraine. Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
“Ukraine sees no legal grounds for recognising him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony, it said, sought to create “the illusion of legality for the nearly lifelong stay in power of a person who has turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship”.
Despite the apparent boycotts, France, Hungary and Slovakia are all expected to send representatives to the ceremony, Reuters reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.
Speaking alongside China’s president on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “We are not at war with Russia or the Russian people, and we have no desire for regime change in Moscow.”
The source said France had previously condemned the context of repression in which the election was held, depriving voters of a real choice, as well as the organisation of elections in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, which France considers a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.
Franco-Russian relations have deteriorated in recent months as Paris has increased its support for Ukraine.
Last week, Macron said it would be legitimate for France to send troops to Ukraine if Russia broke through the Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv requested assistance.
As the war enters its 803rd day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.
Fighting
Russia claimed to have taken control of two more Ukrainian settlements – Soloviove in the eastern Donetsk region and Kotliarivka further north in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s military made no mention of either area in its evening report.
About 400,000 households in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region were left without power after Russian drones struck high-voltage distribution lines. Officials said power was later restored to most homes but warned of “urgent challenges” in maintaining the grid.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, said six people were killed and 35 injured after Ukrainian drones struck two buses taking people to work at a meat factory.
The Ukrainian Weightlifting Federation (UWF) announced Olympian and two-time European champion Oleksandr Pielieshenko had been killed on the front lines of the war in Ukraine at the age of 30. The Ukrainian Olympic Committee said Pielieshenko had signed up in the early days of the war.
Politics and diplomacy
Russia said it would hold tactical nuclear weapons drills after some Western European countries voiced stronger military support for Ukraine. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
Russia warned the United Kingdom that if UK weapons were used by Ukraine to attack Russian territory, then Moscow could hit back at UK military installations and equipment inside Ukraine and elsewhere. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week that Ukraine had the right to strike Russia with UK weapons.
Chinese President Xi Jinping began his tour of Europe meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Paris. Von der Leyen said the EU hoped Xi would help persuade Russia to end its “war of aggression against Ukraine”.
Following the talks, Xi said he backed Macron’s proposal for a truce during the Olympics, which are scheduled to start in Paris on July 26. He said China had been working “vigorously” to facilitate peace talks for Ukraine.
Germany recalled its ambassador to Russia over alleged cyberattacks linked to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency on its defence and aerospace firms. The ambassador, (Otto) Graf Lambsdorff will remain in Berlin for a week before returning to Moscow.
Russia’s FSB security services said it had charged a Russian man in his mid-40s with terrorism. The man was detained near a railway station in the central city of Tambov and accused of attempting to blow up two court buildings on behalf of Ukraine.
Poland said it was financing the operation of 20,000 Starlink internet devices in Ukraine, an essential network for the country’s military communications.
Weapons
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz backed a proposal for about 90 percent of the revenues generated from frozen Russian assets to be channelled into arms purchases for Ukraine.
As the war enters its 802nd day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Monday, May 6, 2024.
Fighting
At least one person was killed and 24 injured in Russian drone and bomb attacks on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv and the surrounding region. Power cuts were also reported.
Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia had launched 24 Shahed attack drones and 23 were shot down.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had captured the village of Ocheretyne, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The village had a population of about 3,000 people before Russia began its full-scale invasion. There was no comment from Ukrainian officials and no mention of Ocheretyne in the evening report of the Armed Forces General Staff.
Drone footage obtained by The Associated Press news agency showed the village battered by fighting and not a single person in the street. No building in Ocheretyne appeared to have been left untouched by the fighting.
Politics and diplomacy
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in France for a state visit during which French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to press him over the war in Ukraine.
In a video to mark Orthodox Easter, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his fellow Ukrainians to unite in prayer for each other and the country’s soldiers on the front line. God, he said, has a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder” and with “such an ally… life will definitely win over death”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is on his first trip to Europe in five years, which is likely to be dominated by Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as economic strains between Beijing and Brussels.
The first stop will be France, with Xi due to hold talks in Paris on May 6 with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, before travelling south to the Pyrenees.
After that, he will travel to Serbia and Hungary, two countries that have maintained close ties with Russia despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to Matt Geracim, the assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, the Chinese president is travelling to Europe with three goals: “repairing relations in Europe damaged by China’s support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, blunting the EU’s economic security agenda vis-a-vis China, and showcasing Beijing’s strong ties with its stalwart partners Serbia and Hungary.”
Here is all you need to know about Xi’s European tour, which continues until Friday.
The big picture
Beijing and Paris are marking 60 years since diplomatic relations were established, with France the first Western country to formally recognise the People’s Republic of China on January 27, 2024.
But the trip also comes amid a deteriorating global security climate, with the war in Ukraine now into its third year and at least 34,683 Palestinians killed in Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
France has said those two conflicts, particularly Ukraine where Beijing has professed neutrality but not condemned Moscow for its full-scale invasion, will feature prominently in the talks.
“Exchanges will focus on international crises, first and foremost the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement ahead of the visit last week.
Macron has recently emerged as one of the most hawkish of the EU leaders on the continent’s security, and he will be urging Xi to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. In an interview with the Economist newspaper published last week, the French president argued the war was existential for Europe.
“If Russia wins in Ukraine there will be no security in Europe,” he said. “Who can pretend that Russia will stop there?” What security would there be, he asked, for neighbouring countries: Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and others?
To underline the unity of the European position, von der Leyen will also join Monday’s discussions, which are due to get under way just after 11am (09:00 GMT).
As well as the Ukraine war, Europe is also concerned about Chinese business practices and has initiated an investigation into China’s subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers, amid concerns such payments are undermining competition and harming European companies.
The more than two-year-long war in Ukraine will be high on the agenda when Macron meets Xi [Ukraine Patrol Police via AP]
Macron told the Economist that he would also convey to Xi why Europe needs to safeguard its own manufacturers and industries.
Ahead of Xi’s departure last week, Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Beijing was ready to “work with France and the EU to take this meeting as an opportunity to make the China-EU relations more strategic, stable, constructive and mutually beneficial, promote steady and sustained progress in China-EU relations, and contribute to the prosperity of both China and Europe and a peaceful world.”
Following Monday’s summit, Marcon and his wife, Brigitte, will host Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to a state banquet.
On Tuesday, Macron will take the Chinese leader to the Pyrenees mountains, where he made regular trips to see his grandmother as a child. The two couples are also expected to take a cable car up to the summit of the 2,877-metre (9,439 ft) Pic du Midi, a dark sky reserve.
After wrapping his trip in France, Xi will head to Serbia where he will arrive in Belgrade on the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic. Three people were killed when Washington said it accidentally struck the compound during the NATO air campaign against Serb forces occupying Kosovo, in an event that triggered outrage and protests in China.
China has since emerged as the biggest single source of investment in Serbia, which is not a member of the EU, and prior to the trip Lin, the MOFA spokesperson, referred to the two countries’ ties as “ironclad”.
“The bombing remains a significant topic for Chinese officials, who use it to support narratives that question the values of liberal democracies,” Stefan Vladisavljev, programme director at Foundation BFPE for a Responsible Society wrote in an online analysis. “For Serbia, the visit presents an opportunity to strengthen its position as China’s main partner in the Western Balkans.”
Xi Jinping will arrive in Belgrade some 25 years since US bombs struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade [Marko Djurica/Reuters]
Xi will then travel on May 8 to Budapest, the final stop on his European tour.
There he will meet Hungarian President Viktor Orban, the most Russia-friendly leader in the EU.
Hungary, whose policies have raised concern among other EU members, has become more closely aligned with Beijing and Moscow and recently signed a security cooperation agreement with China that allows Chinese police officers to work in areas where there are large populations of ethnic Chinese or which are popular with Chinese tourists, according to Zoltan Feher is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
Reports on such Chinese police stations have raised alarm in other parts of Europe, particularly among exiles and dissidents.
Hungary is also part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which it joined in 2015, and the two men are likely to discuss the ongoing construction of the high-speed rail between Budapest and Belgrade.
Ukraine war
Macron has spoken increasingly about the need to develop Europe’s own security architecture rather than rely on NATO and the US.
He has even suggested that France would be willing to send its troops to Ukraine, if Russia broke through the front lines and Kyiv asked for assistance.
China has long maintained it is neutral in the war, but Beijing and Moscow have deepened their ties since the full-scale invasion began, and Putin is expected to visit China this month.
Macron will be hoping to persuade Xi of the need for China to get more closely involved in efforts to secure peace as Switzerland organises a peace conference next month to discuss a 10-point plan put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the end of 2022.
The Swiss say they have already invited more than 160 delegations, but it is not clear whether Beijing, which has also put forward a proposal for peace talks and deployed its own envoy in the region, will attend.
Russia has repeatedly dismissed the process, and insists a precursor for negotiations is that Kyiv give up the 20 percent of its territory that Russia currently occupies.
“We must continue to engage China, which is objectively the international player with the greatest leverage to change Moscow’s mind,” the French newspaper Le Monde quoted an unnamed diplomatic source as saying.
Human rights
Chinese state media have been reporting breathlessly on Xi’s arrival in Paris; the streets decorated with Chinese and French flags and groups of Chinese nationals welcoming their president.
But campaigners for Tibet and Xinjiang, where the United Nations says China may have committed crimes against humanity in holding some 1 million ethnic Uighur Muslims in re-education camps, were also out on the streets of the capital.
The EU imposed targeted sanctions on certain Chinese officials and companies over Xinjiang in March 2021, prompting anger in Beijing.
Delighted to be at a protest in Paris “welcoming” Xi Jinping’s visit
Amazing to see global solidarity among Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and many others in pursuit of freedom from the CCP
Human Rights Watch says while the French president did not raise the issue publicly on his visit to China last year, he should do so while Xi is in Paris and call for the release of those arbitrarily detained or imprisoned including Ilham Tohti, an Uighur economist who was awarded the Sakharov Prize, Europe’s most prominent human rights award in 2019.
The human rights organisation said Macron should also raise the issue of Tibet, where some 1 million Tibetan children are being placed in boarding schools and separated from their language and culture, and Hong Kong, once the most free territory in China but now subject to two draconian security laws.
“President Macron should make it clear to Xi Jinping that Beijing’s crimes against humanity come with consequences for China’s relations with France,” Maya Wang, the acting China director at Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “France’s silence and inaction on human rights would only embolden the Chinese government’s sense of impunity for its abuses, further fuelling repression at home and abroad.”
On April 30, Macron was pictured at the Elysee Palace with Penpa Tsering, the president of the Tibetan government-in-exile, on the sidelines of a ceremony to honour former Senator Andre Gattolin, a longtime supporter Tibet, who was awarded the Legion d’Honneur.
Tibetans demonstrate in Paris on Sunday as Xi Jinping arrived for a state visit to France [Thomas Padilla/AP Photo]
Penpa Tsering presented the French president with a signed photo of his 2016 meeting with the Dalai Lama and “urged him not to forget Tibet”, according to a report the Central Tibetan Administration.
“We understand that the agenda between the two presidents will be dense given the many international crises such as in Ukraine and in the Middle East, but this must not be done at the expense of exchanges on human rights, which are in a deplorable state throughout the country as well as in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, where a latent conflict has been going on for over 60 years and poses a threat to regional and international security,” Vincent Metten, the EU policy director for the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement.
In Freedom House’s 2024 report on Freedom in the World, Tibet’s overall score was zero out of 100; the lowest in at least eight years.
Maryse Artiguelong, the vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said: “The conflict in Ukraine highlights the threat posed to international order and security by authoritarian regimes such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China. Their aggressive foreign policies and repressive domestic policies are inextricably linked: Anyone who does not oppose China’s human rights violations risks one day facing its aggressive foreign policy.”
As the war enters its 801th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Sunday, May 5, 2024:
Fighting
At least two people died after Russia launched attacks several attacks on Kharkiv, including a 49-year-old civilian in Slobozhanske, a village just northeast of the city.
Four others were wounded in the Kharkiv attack, including a 13-year-old hurt by falling debris. A two-storey civilian building was damaged and set ablaze, officials say.
In the Black Sea port of Odesa, three people were wounded after Russia launched rocket attacks on “civil infrastructure”, officials say.
Ukraine, meanwhile, said it downed 13 Shahed drones targeting Dnipro and Kharkiv, as well as a Russian Su-25 fighter-bomber over the eastern Donetsk region. An electrical substation in Dnipro was damaged in the drone attacks.
Russia launched eight missiles and nearly 70 guided aerial bombs in total, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian state agency RIA Novosti claimed troops struck a drone warehouse in Kharkiv that had been used by Ukrainian troops overnight.
A big fire engulfed a warehouse on the outskirts of the Russian-annexed Crimean city of Simferopol, Russian officials say. It is unclear what was stored at the warehouse but several emergency crews were dispatched to put it out.
Five people were wounded and hospitalised in Russia’s Belgorod after a strong blast on Saturday, officials say. About 30 residential buildings were damaged. It is unclear what caused the explosions. Russian journalists on Telegram channels speculated a bomb meant to be launched on Ukraine exploded by mistake.
Politics
Russia is opening a criminal case against Zelenskyy and has put him on a wanted list, officials say. Ukraine officials responding to the move called the decision “meaningless” and reminded Moscow that Russian President Vladimir Putin is on a wanted list by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
A spokesperson for Moscow separately said Russia will respond with “asymmetric measures” to the “hostile line” the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have drawn, which has led to them cutting off ties with Russia, which once enjoyed considerable influence over them.
Just last week, Estonia accused Russia of violating international airspace regulations by interfering with GPS signals. NATO officials also said last week that Baltic countries are among those that are “deeply concerned” about activities they called “Russian espionage” on their soil.
Economy
New measures from Ukraine’s central bank meant to ease tough restrictions for businesses imposed after Russia’s invasion will take effect from May 14. Restrictions on imports of goods and services and foreign currency transfers will be among those to be softened.
As the war enters its 800th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Saturday, May 4, 2024.
Fighting
France estimates that 150,000 Russian soldiers have been killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said in an interview.
Russia says it downed four US-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), recently supplied by the United States to Ukraine, over the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Two people have been killed in a Russian attack on the city of Kurakhove, located in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Two other people were also reported wounded.
Russia has launched an overnight drone attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, injuring at least six people, including three women and a child, and hitting critical infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings.
The Ukrainian Air Force says Russian forces launched 13 Iran-made Shahed drones targeting the regions in the northeast and centre of the country, but its air defence units downed all of them.
At least one person was severely injured and private houses and infrastructure facilities were damaged in Ukraine’s central Kirovohrad region as a result of a Russian missile attack, according to a local official.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has killed a man allegedly recruited by Ukraine to blow up military buildings and energy sites in the country, state media reported. The purported plans included the targeting of “defence ministry facilities in the Moscow region and against members of a volunteer battalion and a volunteer centre in Saint Petersburg”.
Politics
The Kremlin has called British Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s statement that Ukraine could use British weapons against targets inside Russia if it wanted to, as a direct and dangerous escalation of tensions around the conflict.
Cameron has promised 3 billion pounds ($3.7bn) of annual military aid for Ukraine for “as long as it takes”.
Russia has slammed new comments by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he repeated that the possibility of sending ground troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the statement “is very important and very dangerous”.
Russia has accused the US of using the threat of secondary sanctions against Chinese businesses engaging with it as a “pretext” to try and contain China. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova says China’s economy “irritates the US to an extreme degree”, so it is using the sanctions “to hold onto [its] economic leadership”.
A Russian military court has extended the detentions of a theatre director and a playwright by six months in a case that has shaken the already diminished theatre community. Director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk were arrested a year ago, accused of “justifying terrorism” in an award-winning play performed several years ago.
Economy
Ukraine’s central bank has introduced its largest wartime currency liberalisation measures aimed at easing restrictions for businesses, more than two years after Russia’s invasion prompted the imposition of tough restrictions.
Most of the new provisions, which will take effect on May 14, include the lifting of currency restrictions on imports of goods and services, as well as the easing of restrictions on transferring foreign currency from representative offices to parent companies.
Central bank governor Andriy Pyshnyi, writing on Facebook, described the moves as a “very tangible step” that would provide businesses with “opportunities to enter new markets or bring in investments”.
Ukraine’s economy, bolstered by financial aid from its Western partners, posted 5.3 percent growth last year and is forecast to expand by 3 percent this year, a reversal from 2022 when the economy shrank by about a third in the first year of the war.
Germany has blamed “state-sponsored” Russian hackers for an “intolerable” cyberattack on members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and warned there would be consequences.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said a German federal government investigation into who was behind the 2023 cyberattack on the SPD, a leading member of the governing coalition, had just concluded.
“Today we can say unambiguously [that] we can attribute this cyberattack to a group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia,” she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide.
“In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack on Germany, and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.”
APT28, also known as Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks around the world.
The attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD was made public last year and blamed on a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior said German companies, including in the defence, aerospace and information technology sectors, as well as targets related to Russia’s war in Ukraine were also a focus of the attacks.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the campaign was orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence service GRU and began in 2022.
A German Federal Foreign Office spokesperson said on Friday that the acting charge d’affaires of the Russian embassy in Berlin has been summoned.
The cyberattack showed “that the Russian threat to security and peace in Europe is real and enormous”, the spokesperson said.
Russia has denied past allegations by Western governments of being behind cyberattacks. On Friday, its embassy in Germany said it “categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident … as unsubstantiated and groundless”.
The Czech Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that the country’s institutions had also been targeted by APT28 by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook from 2023.
“Cyberattacks targeting political entities, state institutions and critical infrastructure are not only a threat to national security but also disrupt the democratic processes on which our free society is based,” the ministry said. It didn’t provide details about the targets.
The European Union condemned the “malicious cyber campaign conducted by the Russia-controlled Advanced Persistent Threat Actor 28 (APT28) against Germany and Czechia”.
NATO said APT28 targeted “other national governmental entities, critical infrastructure operators” across the alliance, including in Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden.
I strongly condemn #Russia’s malicious cyber activities against #NATO Allies, incl. #Germany & #Czechia. NATO remains committed to countering the substantial, continuous & increasing cyber threat. Read the statement:https://t.co/fDkRqLDemz
“We are determined to employ the necessary capabilities in order to deter, defend against and counter the full spectrum of cyberthreats to support each other, including by considering coordinated responses,” said the North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body within NATO.
‘Concrete signs’ of Russian origin
The EU’s computer security response unit, CERT-EU, last year noted a German media report that an SPD executive had been targeted in a cyberattack in January 2023, “resulting in possible data exposure”.
It said there were reportedly “concrete signs” it was of Russian origin.
Baerbock spoke after a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who said: “We have previously joined the United States, UK, Canada and New Zealand in attributing malicious cyberactivity to APT28.”
It is not the first time that Russian hackers have been accused of spying on Germany.
In 2020, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany found “hard evidence” that Russian hackers had targeted her.
One of the most high-profile incidents so far blamed on Russian hackers was a cyberattack in 2015 that paralysed the computer network of Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, forcing the entire institution offline for days while it was fixed.
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This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
