A previous Russian president claimed that since the foreign secretary supported Ukraine’s right to attack Russia, British officials are now valid military targets.
Dmitry Medvedev, a close supporter of Vladimir Putin, issued the ultimatum, claiming that the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine amounted to “undeclared war” against Russia.
The UK is de facto leading an undeclared war against Russia today by acting as Ukraine‘s ally and giving it military assistance in the shape of equipment and professionals, according to Mr Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian president‘s security council.
‘That being the case, any of its public officials (either military, or civil, who facilitate the war) can be considered as a legitimate military target.
‘The UK’s foreign secretary [James] Cleverly has stated that Ukraine “has the legitimate right to … project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself”.
‘According to him, legitimate military targets beyond Ukraine’s border are part of its self-defence.’
He continued: ‘The goofy officials of the UK, our eternal enemy, should remember that within the framework of the universally accepted international law which regulates modern warfare, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols, their state can also be qualified as being at war.’
Mr Medvedev’s threats come after Mr Cleverly gave a speech in Estonia, outlining the UK’s efforts to bolster support for Ukraine and Nato.
The foreign secretary said Ukraine had ‘the legitimate right to defend itself’.
He added: ‘It has the legitimate right to do so within its own borders, but it does also have the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself.
‘Today, Margus and I discussed the Nato Summit taking place in Vilnius in July.
‘We agreed that we must bolster support for Ukraine and ensure that Nato adapts to an increasingly contested and volatile security environment.
‘And I know that we both feel it’s important that Sweden joins us at the table in Vilnius, too, as a fully fledged member of Nato, and as an important ally to us all.
‘Swedish accession will make us all safer and stronger.’
Russia accused Ukraine of being behind a drone attack on Moscow yesterday which Ukraine denied.
But there has been an escalation of incidents within Russia by Kyiv’s military or local groups opposed to the war.
Defence officials from the UK believe the incursions into Russia are causing the redeployment of Moscow’s forces.
The intelligence briefing from the Ministry of Defence said: ‘Since the start of May 2023, Russia has increasingly ceded the initiative in the conflict and is reacting to Ukrainian action rather than actively progressing towards its own war aims.
‘During May 2023, Russia has launched 20 nights of one-way-attack uncrewed aerial vehicle and cruise missile attacks deep inside Ukraine.
‘Russia has had little success in its likely aims of neutralising Ukraine’s improved air defences and destroying Ukrainian counter-attack forces.
‘On the ground, it has redeployed security forces to react to partisan attacks inside western Russia.’
As stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a drone strike on Moscow earlier today was directed at civilians with the intention of inciting the nation.
The incident, which resulted in minor building damage in the Russian capital and forced evacuations, has been attributed by the Kremlin to Ukraine.
Kyiv hasn’t responded, but yesterday the military intelligence chief of Ukraine, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, issued a warning about a quick response to prior strikes on Kyiv before sunrise.
An Australian guy who was snorkelling off the coast of far-north Queensland when he was bitten on the head by a crocodile managed to escape the unique attack by prying apart the reptile’s jaws.
The avid surfer and diver Marcus McGowan was snorkelling with his wife and a group of friends near a remote island off the northern edge of the country when he felt something had “got its jaws around my head.”
McGowan said in a statement on Tuesday that he initially believed he had been bitten by a shark, but that as he reached up, he discovered it was actually a crocodile.
“I was able to lever its jaws open just far enough to get my head out,” recalled the Gold Coast resident, who said the crocodile then struck at him again, but he managed to push it away with his hand.
The boat that had taken McGowan’s group to the diving spot near Charles Hardy Islands, some 40 kilometers off the coast, heard their screams and came to retrieve them.
McGowan was rushed to Haggerston, a resort island some 45 minutes away, before being helicoptered to a regional hospital. He suffered cuts and puncture wounds to his head and hands.
“I was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I’m just grateful it was me and not one of the kids or ladies in the group,” he said in the statement.
McGowan said the attack happened so quickly he was unable to get a proper look at the croc but guesses it was a juvenile, about two to three meters long.
Saltwater crocodiles can grow up to six meters long and weigh up to 1,000 kilograms, according to Australia Zoo.
Known locally as “salties,” the reptiles are more commonly found in the country’s warmer northern regions. According to federal government estimates, there are about 100,000 saltwater crocodiles in Australia.
Crocodiles were sighted on nine occasions in Cook Shire on Cape York since the start of this year, according to the Queensland government.
Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, has faced renewed attacks with heavy drone strikes for two consecutive nights. In the latest barrage, missiles were used, but no casualties have been reported so far.
Russia has launched 16 air attacks on Kyiv this month, typically occurring overnight. However, the most recent attack took place in mid-morning, targeting the city center. Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents to seek shelter and warned about the potential danger of falling debris.
According to Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat, the latest attack involved the use of Iskander ballistic missiles, and there is a possibility that S-300 and S-400 missiles were also deployed. Air raid sirens were reportedly heard in several other regions of Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have claimed to have destroyed most of the drones used in the weekend’s attacks. Additionally, explosions were reported in the Lviv, Odesa, Vinnytsya, and Khmelnytskyi regions.
In Khmelnytskyi, a military airfield was struck, resulting in damage to five aircraft and the runway, as confirmed by regional authorities.
Meanwhile, the governor of the Russian region of Belgorod stated that several frontier settlements were simultaneously shelled by Ukrainian forces.
Oleksandr Scherba, the ambassador-at-large at Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expressed that the recent days have been exceedingly difficult for the residents of Kyiv.
“Almost every night, the skies look and sound like another Star Wars episode, but we don’t feel much of Russian rockets hitting their targets here within the city area. And this is all thanks to the decent countries, decent people of the world who gave us this air defence,” he said.
Living in the capital was anything but normal at the moment, Mr Scherba said, adding that the drone attacks and sleepless nights had become “part of our routine”.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky praised his country’s air defence forces after Kyiv sustained the largest drone attack since the war began.
“You are heroes,” said Mr Zelensky, after military commanders said most of the so-called kamikaze drones launched by Russia were brought down.
Russia has stepped up its attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, seeking to overwhelm the capital’s defences.
Saturday’s overnight attack came as the people of the capital prepared to celebrate Kyiv Day, the anniversary of the city’s foundation. In a remarkable demonstration of resilience, people took to parks, bars and restaurants in the capital to celebrate the holiday.
In its recent attacks, Russia – which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 – has been using kamikaze drones as well as a range of cruise and ballistic missiles.
Analysts say Moscow is seeking to deplete and damage Ukraine’s air defences ahead of its long-expected counter-offensive.
On Saturday, one of Ukraine’s most senior security officials told the BBC the country was ready to launch such an operation.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the powerful National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, said an assault to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin’s occupying forces could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.
The trained accountant is unlikely to be fazed by the challenges. As a two-term governor of Lagos, he revitalised Nigeria’s commercial hub – no easy job – and is well aware of the issues.
His allies say he will take the same technocratic and thoughtful approach to running Nigeria, a vast country of more than 200 million people.
But opponents of the incoming president say he has lost the vitality he used to forcefully modernise Lagos.
Since the election he has travelled abroad twice, raising questions about his health. In 2021 he spent months in London being treated for an undisclosed illness.
He has brushed off the criticism, saying the job does not require the fitness of an Olympic athlete – and his associates are quick to remind everyone that US President Joe Biden is older, at 80.
But if the candidates who came second and third – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi – in February’s presidential election have their way then Mr Tinubu may not be in power for very long.
The election tribunal is expected to start hearing the main arguments on Tuesday and the outcome of the case should be known within the next six months.
President Akufo-Addohas emphasized that the bailout obtained from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not an immediate remedy for the country’s challenges.
He believes it will, nonetheless, play a crucial role in restoring confidence and reopening opportunities that have been limited in recent years.
During a national address on Sunday, the President acknowledged that the approval represents a positive step toward putting the country back on track.
“Access to the IMF facility will not spell the immediate end of the difficulties we are in presently, but the fact that we have been able to negotiate such a deal sends a positive message to our trading partners, creditors and investors,” President Akufo-Addo stated during his May 28 address.
Akufo-Addo further highlighted that the IMF agreement would aid in restoring confidence in the Ghanaian economy, which has been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine.
“It should lead to the restoration of confidence and the reopening of opportunities that have been closed to us this past year and a half,” Akufo-Addo explained, emphasizing that it would also result in the resumption of stalled infrastructure projects.
The President reiterated that the successful implementation of the necessary reforms to make the deal effective would require the support of the Ghanaian people.
“We must all collaborate to ensure the success of this program,” Akufo-Addo urged. “Together, we must work towards building a brighter future for Ghana.”
Ukraine is preparing to begin a long-anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces, according to one of the country’s top security leaders.
Oleksiy Danilov would not name a date but said an assault to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin’s occupying forces could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.
He warned that Ukraine’s government had “no right to make a mistake” on the decision because this was an “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose”.
As secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Mr Danilov is at the heart of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s de facto war cabinet.
His rare interview with the BBC was interrupted by a phone message from President Zelensky summoning him to a meeting to discuss the counter-offensive.
During the interview, he also confirmed that some Wagner mercenary forces were withdrawing from the city of Bakhmut, the site of the bloodiest battle of the war so far – but he added they were “regrouping to another three locations” and “it doesn’t mean that they will stop fighting with us”.
Mr Danilov also said he was “absolutely calm” about Russia beginning to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, saying: “To us, it’s not some kind of news.”
Ukraine has been planning a counter-offensive for months. But it has wanted as much time as possible to train troops and to receive military equipment from Western allies.
In the meantime, Russian forces have been preparing their defences.
Much is at stake because the government in Kyiv needs to show the people of Ukraine – and Western allies – that it can break through Russian lines, end the effective military deadlock and recapture some of its sovereign territory.
UK sending long-range missiles to Ukraine
Mr Danilov said the armed forces would begin the assault when commanders calculated “we can have the best result at that point of the war”.
Asked if Ukrainian armed forces were ready for the offensive, he replied: “We are always ready. The same as we were ready to defend our country at any time. And it is not a question of time.
“We have to understand that that historic opportunity that is given to us – by God – to our country we cannot lose, so we can truly become an independent, big European country.”
He added: “It could happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.
“It would be weird if I were to name dates of the start of that or those events. That cannot be done…. We have a very responsible task before our country. And we understand that we have no right to make a mistake.”
Image caption,Ukrainian troops have spent months training on Western equipment ahead of the expected attack
Mr Danilov dismissed suggestions the counter-offensive had already begun, saying that “demolishing Russian control centres and Russian military equipment” had been the task of Ukrainian armed forces since 24 February last year – the date Russia launched the invasion.
“We have no days off during this war,” he said.
He defended the decision by Ukraine’s army to fight in Bakhmut for so many months, a battle that has cost the lives of many of its soldiers.
Bakhmut not occupied by Russia, says defiant Zelensky
“Bakhmut is our land, our territory, and we must defend it,” he said. “If we start leaving every settlement, that could get us to our western border as Putin wanted from the first days of the war.”
He said that “we control only a small part of the city, and we admit to that. But you have to keep in mind that Bakhmut has played a big role in this war.”
Asked if Wagner mercenaries were leaving, he replied: “Yes, that is happening. But it doesn’t mean that they will stop fighting with us. They are going to concentrate more on other fronts… they are regrouping to other three locations.”
A medical clinic in Dnipro, located in eastern Ukraine, was targeted by a missile strike, resulting in the death of at least one person and the injury of 15 others.
Among the wounded are two young boys, aged three and six, according to Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the attack and assured that authorities were actively engaged in rescuing any remaining individuals trapped in the hospital.
Prior to this, on Thursday night, Dnipro experienced an assault, as stated by Governor Lysak.
“It was a very difficult night. It was loud – the enemy launched a mass attack on the region with missiles and drones,” he said. “Dnipro has suffered.”
⚡️1 killed and 15 injured in Dnipro after a supposed Russian missile struck a hospital. pic.twitter.com/KnjjJkPZee
Mr Zelensky posted a video of the damaged clinic building that showed firefighters at the scene and smoke billowing from the building.
“Russian terrorists once again confirm their status of fighters against everything humane and honest,” he said.
Another 🇷🇺 missile attack, another crime against humanity as such. The buildings of a psychological clinic and a veterinary clinic in the city of Dnipro were destroyed. As of now, one person was killed and 15 were wounded. The shelling aftermath is being eliminated and the… pic.twitter.com/D0bYBPByjn
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) May 26, 2023
Overnight, Ukrainian authorities claimed to have successfully intercepted and downed 17 missiles along with 31 drones that were launched from Russia. The attacks targeted various locations, including Dnipro and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, where an oil depot was hit.
Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv, also experienced attacks, resulting in intercepted drone fragments falling on the roof of a shopping center and causing damage to a house and multiple cars.
In recent weeks, Russia has escalated its assaults on Ukraine, specifically targeting critical infrastructure in anticipation of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
On Thursday, Ukraine reportedly launched a rocket and a drone towards two regions in Russia’s south. However, Russia’s air defense systems claim to have successfully shot down the missile.
A blast in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar caused damage to a residential and office building, although the cause remains unclear. Russian media sources have suggested that it was the result of a drone attack.
Ukraine has acknowledged that one of its top aims in the conflict is to murder Vladimir Putin.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian minister of defence, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and Valery Gerasimov are all on the hit list, according to intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky.
However, Putin “stayed holed up,” according to the second-in-command of Ukraine’s military intelligence, making it challenging to assassinate him.
Even while the Russian president “is now beginning to stick his head out,” he continued, spies can never be certain “it’s really him” because of the long-rumored employment of doppelgängers at public occasions.
Skibitsky said Putin ‘notices that we’re getting ever closer to him’ – a claim backed by new US intelligence that Ukraine was likely behind last month’s audacious drone attack on the Kremlin.
He also said the tyrant is ‘afraid of being killed by his own people’.
Putin sits at the top of the list ‘because he co-ordinates and decides what happens, Sibitsky went on: ‘Ultimately, however, everyone will have to answer for their actions.
‘Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu planned the attack and now they cannot turn back.’
Prominent Russian commanders are also on the list.
Prigozhin, whose troops have been accused of a catalogue of appalling war crimes, was relaxed about his inclusion.
‘Of course, Prigozhin, as one of the important actors in this war, must be eliminated. This is 100 per cent true, so they are doing absolutely the right steps,’ he said.
‘I always say that the enemy must be treated with respect. Of course, I respect their decision as well.’
Skibitsky claimed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was also on the wanted list even though he had ‘realised that strategically the Putin regime has already lost’.
‘General Armageddon’ Sergei Surovikin was also named.
‘We are at war and these are our enemies,’ he said. ‘If an important figure produces and finances weapons for them, then its elimination would save the lives of many civilians.
‘And then he gets wiped out. According to international conventions, it is then a legitimate target.’
Russia has already accused Ukraine of seeking to assassinate Putin with a strike on the Kremlin on May 3.
One of two drones hit the Senate building where his official apartment, which he seldom uses, is located.
Initially there were claims that the attack was a stunt by the secret services.
But a report in The New York Times said US officials are now less inclined to see it as some kind of false flag operation.
US spy agencies suggest it was orchestrated by Ukrainian military intelligence, although it was unclear if President Volodymyr Zelensky or his officials were aware of it.
Confidence it was directly authorised by the Ukrainian government was ‘low’, the report
Russian dissident fighters who had just returned from a raid in their own country paraded around Ukraine with an armoured car as a prize, but they had trouble explaining their actions in line with Kyiv‘s official line.
In a two-day attack that was extensively documented on social media, Ukrainian authorities claim the fighters were acting independently when they sped across the Russian border and started shooting up Russian communities in the Belgorod region earlier this week.
The Ukrainian security forces are in charge of the members of the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom for Russia Legion, both of which are made up of Russian citizens waging war in Ukraine against their motherland.
“Was this an independent action uncoordinated with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or did they give you instructions?” I asked Dennis Nikitin, leader of the far-right Russian Volunteer Corps on Wednesday.
He replied, “Obviously, everything we do, every decision we make behind, beyond the border [in Russia] … is our own decision.”
But he went on to admit a certain “encouragement and help and aid.”
“What we do, obviously, we can ask our, let’s say, [Ukrainian] comrades, friends for their assistance in planning. What do you think about this? Could you tell us if this is a plausible mission? Would it help Ukraine in this fight or would it make things worse?” Nikitin said.
“They will say ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘this is a good idea’, ‘this is a bad idea’. So this is a kind of encouragement and help and aid.”
Nikitin didn’t actually do a stage wink, but he might as well have.
Similar signals came from “Caesar,” the nickname of the spokesman for the Freedom for Russia Legion, a more moderate anti-Putin formation of a few hundred men which is also dedicated to ending the war in Ukraine and to toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Asked whether it was true that the Russian dissidents had used some US-made MRAP armored vehicles – perhaps even vehicles donated by the United States to Ukraine – Caesar said: “We used Humvees also. We buy them in international shops, war shops. Yeah … everyone who has some money can do it.”
He was wryly and consciously repeating a Russian propaganda trope dating back to Moscow’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when the Kremlin denied its troops were on the ground and suggested that pro-Moscow rebels had bought Russian vehicles on the open market.
The use of US vehicles in the operation has provoked minor consternation in Washington.
“The US government has not approved any third party transfers of equipment to paramilitary organizations outside the Ukrainian Armed Forces, nor has the Ukrainian government requested any such transfers,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday, emphasizing that the US would “keep a close eye” on the issue.
The West has insisted that Ukraine not use weapons it receives from members of the NATO security alliance inside Russia. A strike against a Russian target inside Russia itself using the UK-provided Storm Shadow cruise missile, for example, would risk the appearance of bringing NATO into direct conflict with Moscow.
But MRAP armored vehicles are armored trucks. It’s the weapons systems that really matter.
Ukraine doesn’t want any credit for the raid into Russia. So it has used Russians to do the job, and claimed they’re not under Ukrainian orders, this time.
Nevertheless, Kyiv will be delighted by the result. The dissident raid has had the desired effect – destabilizing Russia.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary company that’s been fighting in Ukraine alongside Russia’s military has already seized upon the raid as a proof of the military’s ineptitude.
“Sabotage and reconnaissance forces calmly enter Russia and march, uploading videos, driving their tanks, armoured infantry vehicles. Where’s the guarantee that they will not enter Moscow?…So far as I understand, nobody gives a sh*t about residents of Belgorod region,” thundered Prigozhin on Tuesday in an interview with pro-Russian blogger Konstantin Dolgov.
“I say to the elite of the Russian Federation – you sons of bitches, gather your children. Send them to war. When you come to a funeral and start burying them, people will say: ‘It is all fair now.’”
If not, warned the mercenary leader who still claims to back Putin, “All these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917.
It’s safe to assume that the scions of Moscow’s nomenklatura will not suddenly be flooding through the doors of recruitment offices for either the armed forces or Prigozhin’s dogs of war.
But chaos in the ranks of the enemy amounts to victory, according to the eponymous doctrine of Russian armed forces general Valery Gerazimov.
And Caesar is confident that Moscow’s been rattled.
“They [Russians defending Belgorod] were too stupid and too slow. About five hours, about five hours [to react]. They only try to understand what’s happened. It was about one mechanized company to, to force the counterattack. Yesterday, we destroyed those mechanized company. We bring them heavy casualties,” he said in English picked up in his school in Russia.
“It’s just a little beginning, just for reconnaissance,” he added.
Russian fighters supporting Ukraine cross the border into the Belgorod region of Russia, seize a checkpoint, and incite rage and uncertainty in Moscow.
As authorities continue “clearing the territory” following the cross-border incursion that started in Ukraine, residents of the settlements under attack in the Belgorod region of Russia have been relocated to other places, according to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov on Tuesday.
But questions linger about the groups behind the attack, how it took place, and what it means for the war: Was this a classic piece of a military sleight-of-hand, a brief show of force meant to confuse and distract Russian commanders? Does it signal the emergence of serious armed opposition inside Russia? Or are there murkier forces at work?
Here’s what you need to know.
A group of anti-Putin Russian nationals, who are aligned with the Ukrainian army, claimed responsibility for an attack in Russian’s southwestern region of Belgorod, which borders north-eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s Investigative Committee announced an investigation into the attack on Telegram, claiming: “Residential and administrative buildings and civilian infrastructure were subjected to mortar and artillery fire. As a result of these criminal actions, several civilians were wounded,”
Two areas of the region were then hit overnight by drones, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, causing two houses to catch fire. On Tuesday night, drone attacks sent nine people to hospital, Gladkov said.
One civilian from the village of Kozinka has died as a result of the cross-border fighting, Gladkov said on Tuesday. He added Wednesday that six districts of the Belgorod region, as well as the city itself, were targeted, but that a counter-terror operation launched in response had been lifted.
About 100 people were evacuated from the Russian border settlements of Glotovo and Kozinka in the Belgorod region, local authorities said.
Aleksey Baranovsky, a representative of the Kyiv-based Russian Armed Opposition Political Centre – the political wing of the Freedom of Russia Legion – told CNN that the operation had started Sunday night and fighting was “ongoing.”
He would not specify the number of fighters who had crossed the border into Russia. Baranovsky said the group wanted to “liberate our motherland from the tyranny of Putin.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in a daily briefing on Tuesday that its forces repelled attackers back into Ukrainian territory using air strikes, artillery fire and military units. It added: “The remnants of the nationalists were driven back to the territory of Ukraine, where they continued to be hit by fire until they were completely eliminated.”
The attackers appeared to have achieved surprise, apparently taking control of a border post and giving the world dramatic images of Russian nationals actively taking up arms against the Kremlin.
Smoke was also seen rising from apparent explosions in the regional capital of Belgorod, where local authorities confirmed what they described as two drone strikes.
The ground operation was far more ambitious than an incursion earlier this year into Russia’s southern Bryansk region that the Russians blamed on “armed Ukrainian nationalists.”
In a discussion with CNN’s Erin Burnett, retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling characterised the Belgorod operation as a raid — a surprise attack meant to keep the Russian military on the back foot ahead of a much-anticipated offensive by Kyiv.
“This is all part of shaping operations,” Hertling said. “What occurred today and it’s a magnificent tactic, is these Liberty of Russia Legion or Russian Volunteer Corps, the so-called little green men are going in the opposite direction, they’re trying to free Russian territory.”
“Little green men” was common shorthand for Russian special-forces troops who appeared in Crimea during Russia’s forcible annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.
Pro-Ukrainian activists on social media are already having a field day, posting memes that compare the Belgorod incident to Russia’s not-so-covert operations to prop up separatists in the Donbas region, joking the attackers would set up a Russian-style statelet called the “Bilhorod People’s Republic.”
The Freedom for Russia Legion said on Telegram early on Tuesday that it and another group, the Russian Volunteer Corps, “continue to liberate the Belgorod region!” The post described the groups as “patriot volunteers” and claimed that Russia was vulnerable to attack as “Russia has no reserves to respond to military crises. All military personnel are dead, wounded or in Ukraine.”
As one of its fighters, who goes by the call-sign “Caesar,” says in a video statement he recorded with his comrades before joining a cross-border raid into his motherland: “Russia will be free.”
CNN’s Sam Kiley interviewed that same fighter in December, while the group was fighting for Ukraine against Russian attacks on the frontline city of Bakhmut.
“From the first day of the war, my heart, the heart of a real Russian man, a real Christian, told me that I had to be here to defend the people of Ukraine,” Caesar said. CNN agreed not to reveal his name to protect his identity.
“It was a very difficult process,” Caesar said of joining the Ukrainian effort. “It took me several months to finally join the ranks of the defenders of Ukraine.”
Now with his family in Ukraine – where he considers them to be safer – Caesar said he was one of about 200 Russian citizens currently fighting alongside Ukrainian troops, against their own country’s armies. CNN has been unable independently to confirm this number.
The Ukrainian government, however, has distanced itself from the Russian fighters, saying they are operating independently in Russia.
“We can confirm that this operation is carried out by Russian citizens,” said Andriy Yusov, Ukrainian Defense Intelligence representative, in a comment to CNN: “In Ukraine these units are part of defense and security forces. In Russia they are acting as independent entities.”
As Russian officials condemned the attack, analysts noted widespread confusion in Russia’s information space about how the attack was allowed to take place and how Moscow should respond.
Russian bloggers and pundits reacted with a “degree of panic, factionalism, and incoherency as it tends to display when it experiences significant informational shocks,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank wrote in its daily briefing on the conflict.
“The attack took Russian commentators by surprise,” the ISW assessed.
It has the potential to be embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin, who has for 15 months been leading an invasion he baselessly claimed was needed to keep Russia safe. With limited returns on the battlefield, Putin may now face discontent that the war is disrupting life at home.
Earlier this month, the Kremlin publicized an incident which saw two drones fly above the Kremlin. It remains unclear who was responsible – Moscow blamed Ukraine for what it called an attack on Putin’s life; Ukraine and the US denied any involvement – but the dramatic video could be framed by Putin’s internal critics as a visual example of the unraveling nature of Moscow’s war.
In a separate incident Monday evening, the Freedom of Russia Legion posted a video on Telegram that appears to show the blue and white so-called flag of free Russia flying over Moscow State University.
Other videos posted by the group also appear to show another Russian opposition flag flying over various areas of the Russian capital.
The group did not claim direct responsibility for the incidents and CNN could not independently verify the reports.
As has often been the case following supposed violence on Russian soil since Moscow invaded Ukraine, the incident has drawn sharply different accounts from the Kremlin and Kyiv.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday described the instigators as “Ukrainian militants, from Ukraine,” despite the fact that the group claiming responsibility is made up of Russian nationals. Peskov had previously said the Kremlin’s forces were working to push out a “sabotage and reconnaissance group,” according to state media TASS.
A Ukrainian official acknowledged that the units had carried out an operation in the area but insisted they were acting independently.
The Ukrainian National Security Adviser Oleksiy Danilov has told CNN those responsible for the cross border-raid in Belgorod are Russians who want to get rid of “the darkness” in their country, denying any involvement from Kyiv.
“They are Russians, it is their country and they have the right to be there,” Danilov told CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen in an exclusive interview Tuesday. “There are some Russians who are on the side of the light and who went to deal with the darkness that exists in Russia now.
Danilov rejected accusations of Ukrainian involvement levied by Moscow against Kyiv and said the incident in Belgorod was solely a Russian matter.
Kyiv was, however, given advance warning about the cross-border raid, a Ukrainian defense source told CNN on Wednesday.
It is not entirely clear how the Russian formations fighting on the side of Ukraine are organized and equipped and how they answer to the Ukrainian military’s chain of command.
Some of the fighters appear to be operating up-armored Humvees and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles that are apparently of US origin, although the vehicles have been widely exported and sold to different end-users around the globe.
In response to a query from CNN, Ukraine’s International Legion — which incorporates volunteers from around the world — said neither the Russian Volunteer Corps or the Freedom for Russia Legion belong to the International Legion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It’s also a mystery how many fighters the Russian groups can actually muster. Open-source sleuths have scoured recent videos for clues to the identities of some of the individuals who appear to be fighting in Belgorod, including some with apparent far-right and extremist beliefs.
The attacks are unlikely to force a shift in momentum in the wider war in Ukraine, which has been largely focused in Ukraine’s eastern regions and has seen little territory change hands for several months. The conflict has been in a virtual stalemate and is more likely to be affected by Ukraine’s spring counter-offensive against Russian forces, which may already be underway.
But as with previous flashpoints away from the frontlines, it has the potential to shape the narrative surrounding the conflict in both Russia and Ukraine.
Moscow has always been eager to paint a picture of Russian victimhood as a pretext for ramping up attacks on Ukraine, given its public pretense that the invasion is an act of self-defense and is necessary to keep Russia safe. Putin will no doubt look to use these attacks to bolster that narrative, despite Kyiv’s denials that it had any official involvement.
It is possible that a short-term show of anger may also follow. After previous incidents that have embarrassed Russia – such as the murky drone incident above the Kremlin this month, and the strike on the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea in October – Moscow has responded with a barrage of missile attacks across Ukraine, including on the capital Kyiv.
Putin will likely be eager to focus Russian attention on incidents away from the frontlines, where his forces have been struggling to land a significant blow against Ukrainian defenses – most clearly shown by the months-long, costly effort to capture the relatively insignificant city of Bakhmut.
Alli Nansolo debated whether or not to trim his son’s dreadlocks for years. Although it is not required by law in Malawi, a widespread unwritten policy meant that his son was being turned away from government schools because of the colour of his hair.
With his meagre earnings from manufacturing dresses, Nansolo’s was unable to provide his son Ishmael with a private education, and cutting his hair—a significant Rastafari religious symbol—was out of the question.
“The rastafari way of life is spiritual. Maintaining dreadlocks is comparable to making a pledge before the Most High Creator that we shall live our lives in service to Him without disobeying His Laws or Commandments, according to Nansolo, who spoke to CNN.
The 48-year-old makes between 200,000 to 300,000 Malawian Kwacha (around $194 to $291) monthly, while his wifeEmpress supplements the family’s income by selling secondhand clothes.
“I felt oppressed,” Nansolo said as he recalled the staff of a state-run secondary school in Zomba, southern Malawi. refusing to register Ishmael because of his hair.
Nansolo said he contacted an officer at the Ministry of Education who advised him to cut his son’s hair so that he could go to school.
Nansolo found himself caught up in the discriminatory policies of Malawian public schools and decided to take legal action against the Ministry of Education, along with a group of parents.
“I went to the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi to ask for help. The association accepted and we went to court in November 2017,” he said.
For three years, Ishmael, then 15, would remain out of school as the court case dragged on.
Then, in 2020, the Malawi High Court placed an interim order compelling public schools to enroll Ishmael and other Rastafari children until a final ruling was reached.
It was a legal victory that marked a significant milestone for the estimated 15,000 Rastafarian community in Malawi, according to Nansolo, who is also a community elder.
However, the temporary relief did not address the broader issue of discrimination that around 1,200 affected students face, their lawyer Chikondi Chijozi told CNN.
“We saw a number of Rastafari children being admitted into government schools but there were still reported cases of children of [the]Rastafari community being denied admission into government schools, and their parents were forced to take the court injunction to the school to compel them to admit them,” Chijozi said.
After a six-year legal challenge, the Malawian High Court delivered a landmark ruling on May 8.
The court ruled that it was unlawful to require learners, including Rastafarian kids, to cut their hair before they are enrolled into public schools.
The ruling came into immediate effect but the government has until June 30 to issue a nationwide statement mandating acceptance of all dreadlocked children into school.
Chijoki told CNN: “We got a judgment from the court which essentially upheld the rights of the Rastafari children and abolished the policy that requires all learners, including Rastafari children, to cut off their dreadlocks for them to be admitted into government schools.”
Nansolo expressed his community’s jubilation that their children could now finally continue their education.
“The judgment means that we are now free because most of us in [the]Rastafarian community don’t earn much, so we couldn’t manage to send our children to private schools,” Nansolo said.
“We are happy seeing that our children will now be going to public schools without being sent back or denied their right to education.”
CNN has contacted the education ministry for comment on the ruling.
Despite this victory, Malawi’s Rastafarian community still faces numerous challenges. Unemployment, poverty, and corporate discrimination persistently plague the community. Data on the community is hard to come by but the US State Department says around 5.6 percent of Malawi’s nearly 21 million population is formed of other religions includingHindus, Baha’is, Rastafarians, Jews, and Sikhs.
“Most of us rely on business to survive. Lack of jobs is a big challenge for the Rastafarian community because those in offices are reluctant to employ Rastas,” Nansolo said.
“The corporate world feels that being Rastafari is associated with criminality, but we are not like that.”
A senior administration official tells CNN that President Joe Biden reminded the G7 leaders on Friday that the US will back an initiative to educate Ukrainian pilots on fourth generation aircraft, including F-16s, in collaboration with allies and partners.
The official stated that the training is most likely to take place exclusively in Europe and is not anticipated to take place in the US. However, the official stated that representatives from the US will train alongside European friends and partners. The completion time is anticipated to be many months, and the official expressed hope that it will start “in the coming weeks.”
The decision marks a stark turnaround for Biden, who said earlier this year that he did not believe that Ukraine needed the F-16s. The decision to support the training initiative came together very quickly, officials said, and was made by Biden following meetings with G7 leaders in Hiroshima, Japan, where the topic of F-16s to Ukraine was a key point of discussion. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been pushing particularly hard in recent days for countries that have the jets in their stockpile to send them to Ukraine so that the country can better defend itself against Russia’s daily aerial attacks.
“As the training takes place over the coming months, our coalition of countries participating in this effort will decide when to actually provide jets, how many we will provide, and who will provide them,” the official said.
The official added that “to date, the United States and our allies and partners have focused on providing Ukraine with the vast majority of the systems, weapons, and training it requires to conduct offensive operations this spring and summer. Discussions about improving the Ukrainian Air Force reflect our long-term commitment to Ukraine’s self-defense.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is on his way to the G7 meeting, tweeted to say he welcomed “the historic decision of the United States and @POTUS to support an international fighter jet coalition.”
“This will greatly enhance our army in the sky. I count on discussing the practical implementation of this decision at the #G7 summit in Hiroshima,” Zelensky added.
In March, the US hosted two Ukrainian pilots at a military base in Tucson, Arizona, to evaluate their skills using flight simulators and to assess how much time they would need to learn to fly various US military aircraft, including F-16s. Congress set aside money in the 2023 budget for such training.
CNN reported on Thursday that the Biden administration has signaled to European allies in recent weeks that the US would allow them to export F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, sources familiar with the discussions said, as the White House comes under increasing pressure from members of Congress and allies to help Ukraine procure the planes amid intensifying Russian aerial attacks.
A handful of European countries have a supply of US-made F-16s, including the Netherlands, which has signaled a willingness to export some of them to Ukraine. But the US would have to approve that third-party transfer because of the jets’ sensitive US technology.
A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said earlier this week that the UK and the Netherlands were looking to form an “international coalition” not only to procure the jets for Ukraine but also to train Ukrainian pilots on the 4th genertion fighters, which are more advanced than the Ukrainian fighter fleet.
Ukraine’s quest for US-made F-16 fighter jets received a big boost over the weekend when US President Joe Biden gave his backing for Kyiv’s pilots to be trained to fly them.
Biden’s comments at a summit with G7 leaders in Japan came days after Britain and the Netherlands said they were building an “international coalition” to help Ukraine procure F-16s as it seeks to improve its defenses against Russian air attacks.
The F-16s would be an upgrade to the largely Soviet-era aircraft currently in Ukraine’s fleet. President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Biden’s decision, saying in a tweet, “this will greatly enhance our army in the sky.”
But analysts cautioned that the jets aren’t a cure-all and have vulnerabilities that Moscow would be well aware of and could exploit.
In fact, one active duty F-16 pilot told CNN that expectations may be way too high.
“To your question about the F-16 being a difference maker. It’s not,” said the pilot, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.
Here’s what you need to know about the F-16.
F-16s are single-engine, multirole jet aircraft, meaning they can be used in air-to-air or ground-attack missions.
The US Air Force calls the F-16, which first flew in the 1970s, a “relatively low-cost, high-performance weapon system.”
Thousands of the jets have been built over the decades, and hundreds have been exported around the world.
According to Flight Global’s World Air Forces directory, almost 2,200 F-16s are active worldwide this year, making it the single most popular combat aircraft across the planet with 15% of the world’s fleet.
F-16s for Ukraine are expected to be older versions that have been in the fleets of US allies, especially those in Western Europe.
Analysts say the F-16s Ukraine would receive are not the oldest ones out there, but aircraft that have undergone what are called “mid-life upgrades,” meaning they’ve gotten improvements to avionics and software.
Ukraine has said it needs about 200 F-16s, so the numbers would work out.
“There is a surplus of F-16s in Western nations, offering immediate availability and a well-established logistics trail,” said Robert Hopkins, a military aviation author and former US Air Force pilot.
“There are other aircraft more capable than the F-16, but they are fewer in number and are not available to transfer,” Hopkins added.
Those more-capable aircraft are probably ones that you commonly hear about, US-made F-35s and F/A-18s or French Rafales, for instance.
And there are others that are lesser known.
“The best aircraft technically would arguably be the Swedish Grippen because of its combat capabilities, ability to operate from austere bases and easier maintenance,” said Peter Layton, a fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and former Royal Australian Air Force officer. “However, their annual production rate is low and there are none available off the shelf.”
Layton gives the Netherlands as a prime example of how the F-16 might be the easiest answer for Ukraine.
“The Dutch (have) about 40 F-16s on hand. These Dutch aircraft have been progressively upgraded, have relatively modern radars and avionics, and are able to use advanced weapons,” Layton said.
The analysts say the sheer numbers of F-16s active around the world means they have an established logistics trail and a good number of spare parts available – important components to keep the jets combat capable.
But they also note that for a modern fighter jet like the F-16, training maintenance personnel can take longer than training pilots.
“I think it’s possible to teach a Ukrainian pilot to fly an F-16 in three months,” Layton said.
But “training maintenance personnel can take months or years, depending on the desired level of proficiency,” according to a March report on the possible F-16 transfers from the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Even after undergoing up to 133 days of schooling, a US Air Force maintainer gains a year of on-the-job experience to become fully qualified, the CRS report says.
And the report notes that there can be a numbers problem. F-16s need a lot of maintenance; 16 hours per hour of flying time, it says.
As for pilot training, Layton and the active F-16 pilot who spoke to CNN both say three months of training is for the basics – getting the plane up in the air, keeping it there and landing it safely. Combat roles become much more complex, however.
F-16s are easy to learn how to fly, but employing them effectively in “a dynamic threat environment” could take years, according to the pilot.
“Learning to fly an F-16 is only one part of the battle. American pilots first learn to fly, then they learn how to lead two F-16s, then four F-16s. This is a multi-year process, and that’s just for the basic tactical unit of employment,” the F-16 pilot said.
Layton said Ukraine’s current jet fighter pilots have proven adept, and could “learn on the job” in the F-16s if confining themselves to air defense, shooting down intruding Russian aircraft or missiles, in the short term.
“My logic falls away if trying to teach them low altitude night/all-weather ground attack using infrared systems and laser guided bombs; this would take longer,” Layton said.
Then there is the question of where Ukrainian F-16s would be based.
“F-16s do best on long, pristine runways. They could face difficulties on the rougher, former Soviet ones dispersed across Ukraine,” RAND Corp. analysts John Hoehn and William Courtney wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
“To bring in Western aircraft, Ukraine might need to repave and potentially extend a number of runways, a process which Russia would likely detect. If only a few airfields were suitable and in known locations, focused Russian attacks could impede Ukrainian F-16s from flying,” they wrote.
Assuming Ukraine can overcome logistics and maintenance hurdles, and find secure runways from which to fly F-16s, they still need the right armaments to be effective against the key fighter jets Russia is using, like the Su-25 and MiG-31, analysts say.
“The advantages of transferring advanced western fighter jets in seeking air superiority are likely to be realized only if paired with large quantities of western-manufactured munitions,” the CRS report says.
Advanced western armaments for the F-16s would be expensive.
For instance, a single Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) costs about $1.2 million, CRS says, adding that it takes about two years to make one.
The US could provide AMRAAMs and other arms from its stockpile, but with the long manufacturing times, it runs the risk of its own inventories being depleted if needed in a conflict directly involving US forces, the CRS says.
Despite all the possible drawbacks to F-16s, Hopkins said a political war is being fought, and victories are needed in that battlespace.
Getting F-16s to Ukraine would demonstrate “a powerful political and diplomatic collaboration across multiple Western (and especially NATO) countries,” he said.
Layton said Ukraine needs to take a long view, too.
Hear Biden official’s response to admin’s pivot on F-16s
Kyiv is not going to be able to get replacements for its current Soviet-era aircraft as they wear out or are lost in combat, he said
“Over time, there will be no combat-effective Ukrainian air force. They need new aircraft for future air defense tasks,” he said.
Transitioning to a Western-made fleet now makes sense, he said.
But the war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending soon, and the current F-16 pilot doesn’t see the planes hastening the end of it.
“Getting the Ukranians F-16s will be a morale boost and add some limited combat capability, that’s all,” the pilot said.
“It might do a couple of strikes over the next year and have some wins, but no one airplane will change the course of the war.”
Following the downing of his hypersonic missiles by Ukraine, Vladimir Putin “will likely turn to nuclear weapons,” according to an ex-US Army official.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s air defence system forced the Kremlin to ground its most intense aerial attack to date against Kyiv.
According to the US Centre for Strategic International Studies, Russian Kinzhal missiles—which translate as “dagger” in Russian—are some of the most advanced nuclear-capable weapons in the country’s arsenal.
Kevin Ryan, an associate fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. said Ukraine stopping Putin’s ‘unstoppable’ rockets has humiliated him.
‘Putin is running out of ways to escalate the war in a way that would force Ukraine – and the West – to back down,’ he told the MailOnline.
‘His massive invasion and frequent bombing campaigns have failed to give him a decisive victory.
‘If he cannot force a victory with conventional weapons, he will probably turn to nuclear weapons.’
The shot-down missiles are the latest embarrassing blow to Vladimir Putin (Picture: Reuters)
According to UAwar, citing Ukrainian ministry data, Russia has lost nearly 179,000 soldiers, 3600 tanks and 2,750 artillery systems in the year-long conflict.
‘Russia’s conventional (non-nuclear) forces are already showing themselves not up to the task in Ukraine,’ Ryan added.
‘That is why Putin has relied so heavily on nuclear threats.
‘If it’s proven that the Kinzhal has not lived up to expectations, the effectiveness of the whole spectrum of Russia’s strategic weapons, nuclear and nonnuclear, are put in doubt.’
The Russian president has long made often vague threats about using nuclear weapons in the war.
From Putin threatening the use of ‘all available means’ to massive missiles being carted around in front of cameras, the Kremlin has made its stockpile clear.
The attack against Kyiv was one of the Kremlin’s largest in the year-long war (Picture: Reuters)
Experts have been conflicted about whether Putin could actually push the button.
The Heritage Foundation, a US think-tank, said in March that Putin’s ‘martyr complex’ could push him either way as his dreams of victory ‘collapse’.
Though, other analysts have said what could put Putin off from using nuclear arms is the wind, as it could blow radiation straight into Russian territory.
In 2020, the Kremlin said it has four reasons why it would ever resort to nuclear weapons, such as a pre-emptive strike or in response to a nuclear strike against it.
The executive order added that the only other two reasons for long-range nukes would be responding to a threat that would limit its control over its nuclear arms, such as a cyberattack, or when the ‘existence’ of Russia itself is threatened.
‘Russian doctrine has long accepted the use of shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield and it is much more cautious about long-range strategic nuclear weapons designed to hit the enemy’s homeland,’ the Heritage Foundation added.
Hypersonic missiles can travel at least five times faster than the speed of sound (about a mile a second) and can swerve most defence systems.
After Tuesday’s barrage, US officials confirmed an American-made Patriot system – a top-of-the-line ground-based air defence system – had been damaged.
In a Telegram statement, Ukraine’s air force did not specify whether the Patriot system was involved in the shooting down of Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
‘Let’s keep the sky!’ the statement added.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky struck a similarly triumphant tone in a video speech to the Council of Europe, a major human rights organisation.
‘At 3 o’clock in the morning, our people woke up to explosions,’ he said, ‘eighteen Russian missiles of different types were in our skies, in particular, ballistic ones, which the terrorist state has boasted about.
‘We were told such missiles would bring a guaranteed death because they are supposedly impossible to shoot down.
‘But all lives were protected. All missiles were shot down, including ballistic ones – 100%.
‘Russia needs to know that we and other countries remain steadfast in our resolve to support Ukraine, not just in the here and now with the resources it needs to protect itself, but for the long term as well.’
He added to ITV News: ‘They can’t just outlast us in this conflict.
‘One of the common topics of conversation I’ll be having and have been having with my fellow leaders is about the longer-term security agreements that we put in place in Ukraine, to deter future Russian aggression.’
As part of its new sanctions the UK will ban imports of Russian diamonds, copper, aluminium and nickel.
The diamond export industry was previously worth more than £3 billion to Russia.
New individual sanctions are also being placed by the UK on 86 people and companies.
There has been uncertainty whether the EU will also ban Russian diamonds, as the trade is particularly lucrative for Belgium.
Mr Sunak told the BBC: ‘I’m hopeful and confident that our partner countries will follow as they have done when we’ve done this previously, that will make the sanctions more effective, ensure that Russia pays a price for its illegal activity.’
The UK PM yesterday signed a new defence and security pact with Tokyo – and received a nice new pair of bright red socks – over dinner with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida.
The three-day G7 summit will see the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy discuss military and economic support for Ukraine, as well as the security of Taiwan following aggression from China.
Mr Sunak’s official spokesperson said: ‘Guarding against economic coercion is something that the prime minister is pushing for.’
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to attend the summit in person as a guest on Sunday, as is Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
Mr Modi has previously remained neutral on the Russian invasion, due to his links with Mr Putin.
But Mr Sunak said he has seen ‘positive’ steps from India in its stance on the war.
He told reporters on a plane to Japan: ‘One thing we have to keep doing is talking to countries like India and also Brazil, that is going to be in that second part of the summit which is a good thing.’
In the upcoming months, Ukraine will get hundreds of air defence missiles as well as additional long-range attack drones, according to Rishi Sunak.
Since February 2022, when Russia began an all-out land, air, and sea assault of its neighbour, Britain has made a number of pledges.
Multiple ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles with a range of more than 155 miles have been pledged to the country, according to defence secretary Ben Wallace, who made the announcement on Friday.
This will be the first long-range cruise missile in its arsenal and will be critical in helping the country defend against attacks on national infrastructure.
A ‘Storm Shadow’ missile was reportedly used on a building in the occupied city of Luhansk that was used by Russian forces (Picture: e2w)Fragments of the missile found near the site of the explosion (Picture: e2w)
Weapons have made its way to Ukraine as Western leaders are racing against time ahead of ‘the first important steps’ of a highly-anticipated spring counteroffensive against the Russian forces.
Latest London news
But Volodymyr Zelensky is making sure this support does not dry up by personally visiting European capitals over the last week, and meeting with his counterparts.
His first stop was Rome, then Berlin, then Paris, and today the Ukrainian president has arrived in London for a meeting with Mr Sunak.
Mr Zelensky will hold talks with the PM at Chequers, becoming the very first world leader he has hosted at the Buckinghamshire residence.
A statement from Downing Street said: ‘Today the prime minister will confirm the further UK provision of hundreds of air defence missiles and further unmanned aerial systems including hundreds of new long-range attack drones with a range of over 200km.
‘These will all be delivered over the coming months as Ukraine prepares to intensify its resistance to the ongoing Russian invasion.
‘This equipment will support Ukraine over the coming months in their anticipated military surge to counter Russian forces.
‘During their meeting today the prime minister will discuss with president Zelensky what support Ukraine needs from the international community, both in terms of immediate military equipment and long-term defences.’
The announcement comes just hours after a former aviation school, believed to be used by Russian forces, was reportedly targeted with the ‘Storm Shadow’ long-range missiles.
Two explosions sounded at 8am local time at the suspected barracks in the city of Luhansk.
Footage showed a burning building and thick smoke rising into the sky after the strikes.
In addition, the missiles were used on Friday on the former academy of the internal affairs ministry and the Polipak Machine Building Plant 100 in Luhansk.
Prime Minister of UK, Rishi Sunak has promised to deliver Ukraine hundreds more missiles and attack drones in an effort to shift the pattern of the war.
Zelenskyy landed by helicopter at Chequers, the British leader’s official country retreat, where he was greeted by Rishi Sunak with a handshake and a hug. It’s Zelenskyy’s second trip to the U.K. since Russia invadedUkrainein February 2022.
"Your country's bravery and fortitude is an inspiration to us all", PM Rishi Sunak tells Ukrainian President Zelenskyy as they meet at Chequers.
"We are thankful and privileged to be here," Zelenskyy responds.https://t.co/RaneCGCSkd
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/1PbH58KEQm
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 15, 2023
Zelenskyy thanked Britain for its support so far, and said the war was a matter of “security not only for Ukraine, it is important for all of Europe.”
Sunak told Zelenskyy that “your leadership, your country’s bravery and fortitude are an inspiration to us all.”
This is the fourth European country Zelenskky has visited in the past few days, after France, Germany and Italy. He is seeking more aid as Ukraine prepares a long-anticipated spring offensive to retake territory seized by Russia.
The Kremlin said it took London’s promise to supply Ukraine with more weapons “extremely negatively,” but at the same time believed the supplies wouldn’t drastically change the course of the war, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
“Britain aspires to be at the forefront among countries that continue to pump weapons into Ukraine,” Peskov said. “We repeat once again, it cannot yield any drastic and fundamental influence on the way the special military operation (in Ukraine) is unfolding. But, definitely, it leads to further destruction, further action. … It makes this whole story for Ukraine much more complicated.”
Sunak responded by pledging the U.K.’s long-term support for Ukraine.
The U.K. has become one of Ukraine’s major military allies, sending Kyiv short-range missiles and Challenger tanks and training 15,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil. Last week, Britain announced it had sent Ukraine Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which have a range of more than 250 kilometers (150 miles) — the first known shipment of the weaponry that Kyiv has long sought from its allies.
Sunak’s office said that on Monday Britain would confirm it was giving Ukraine hundreds more air defense missiles, as well as “long-range attack drones” with a range of more than 200 kilometers (120 miles).
“This is a crucial moment in Ukraine’s resistance to a terrible war of aggression they did not choose or provoke,” Sunak said. “They need the sustained support of the international community to defend against the barrage of unrelenting and indiscriminate attacks that have been their daily reality for over a year.
“We must not let them down.”
Zelenskyy said more work was needed to have allies build a “fighter jet coalition” to provide Ukraine with vital air defenses.
While Sunak’s spokesman said no planes would be provided, the prime minister said the U.K. would be a key part of the coalition and would begin training Ukrainian fighter pilots as soon as this summer.
Sunak will also push allies to deliver more support to Ukraine at a meeting of Group of Seven leaders in Japan later this week, Downing Street said.
As Zelenskyy visited European capitals, Russia stepped up attacks across Ukraine with drones and missiles. On Sunday, Russia shelled two communities in the northern border region of Sumy, regional officials said on Telegram. They said 109 explosions were recorded.
Zelenskyy’s office said Monday that the shelling had killed nine civilians and injured 19 in the past day. Six of the deaths were in the Kherson region. Two civilians were killed in Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region and one in Prymorsk, which is on the Azov Sea coast about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Russian-occupied Berdyansk.
The presidential office also reported that Marhanets, which lies across the river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, was shelled.
Zelenskyy’s stop in London followed a previously unannounced visit to Paris on Sunday evening, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron. French President Emmanuel Macron, right, welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Elysee palace in Paris, on May 14, 2023. French President Emmanuel Macron, right, welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Elysee palace in Paris, on May 14, 2023.
Michel Euler via Associated Press
Macron’s office said France would supply dozens of light tanks, armored vehicles and more air defense systems “in the weeks ahead,” without giving specific numbers.
About 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers would also receive training in France this year and nearly 4,000 others in Poland as part of a wider European effort, Macron’s office said.
France had dispatched a plane to pick up Zelenskyy in Germany, where he met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier Sunday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, shake hands during the award ceremony of the Charlemagne Prize in Aachen, Germany, on May 14, 2023. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, shake hands during the award ceremony of the Charlemagne Prize in Aachen, Germany, on May 14, 2023.
Ina Fassbender/Pool via Associated Press
It was his first visit to Berlin since the start of the invasion and came a day after the German government announced a new package of military aid for Ukraine worth more than 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion), including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.
After initially hesitating to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, Germany has become one of the biggest suppliers of arms to Ukraine, including Leopard 1 and 2 battle tanks, and the sophisticated IRIS-T SLM air defense system. Modern Western hardware is considered crucial if Ukraine is to succeed in its planned counteroffensive.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy met Pope Francis and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in Rome. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni shake hands during a press conference after their meeting at Chigi Palace, Government’s office, in Rome, on May 13, 2023. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni shake hands during a press conference after their meeting at Chigi Palace, Government’s office, in Rome, on May 13, 2023.
Alessandra Tarantino via Associated Press
During his European trip, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would aim to liberate Russian-occupied areas within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, and not attack Russian territory.
The Washington Post cited previously undisclosed documents from a trove of U.S. intelligence leaks suggesting that Zelenskyy had considered trying to capture areas in Russia proper for possible use as bargaining chips in peace negotiations to end the war launched by Moscow.
This would put him at odds with Western governments that have insisted that weapons they provide must not be used to attack targets in Russia.
Asked about the report, Zelenskyy said: “We don’t attack Russian territory, we liberate our own legitimate territory.”
“We have neither the time nor the strength (to attack Russia),” he said, according to an official interpreter. “And we also don’t have weapons to spare with which we could do this.
“We are preparing a counterattack for the illegally occupied areas based on our constitutionally defined legitimate borders, which are recognized internationally,” Zelenskyy said.
Among areas still occupied by Russia are the Crimean peninsula and parts of eastern Ukraine with mainly Russian-speaking populations.
One of the worst days for the Russian air force since the start of the Ukraine War may have just passed. Unverified sources state that four of its planes were downed on Russian soil, which would be a major victory for Ukraine.
There are different reports regarding the number of aeroplanes and helicopters that may have crashed inside the Russian area of Bryansk, but one Russian media site claims that at least two combat aircraft, a Su-34 and a Su-35, as well as two Mi-8 helicopters, went down.
Although the reported downing of the Russian aircraft on Saturday has not been confirmed by Ukraine, the country does claim that the plane “ran into some trouble.”
Bryansk is on the border with Ukraine and has seen previous attacks blamed on Kyiv.
Multiple crashes within Russian territory at the same time would be unprecedented. Some analysts believe Ukrainian air defenses may have been pushed forward as the Russian air force uses more “glide munitions” that can fire at targets from distance.
The Ukrainian air force spokesman, Yuriy Ihnat, said Sunday that a Russian “strike air group attacked Ukraine from the north, from Bryansk Oblast. They do this almost every day. They carry out strikes with guided bombs.”
In this instance, he said, “they ran into some trouble. They wanted to bomb our civilians, our peaceful people.” He went on to call it a “black day” for Russian aviation.
Social media videos geolocated by CNN show at least one helicopter crashing near the town of Klintsy in Bryansk, which is 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Aleksandr Bogomaz, the Governor of Bryansk, confirmed that a helicopter had crashed, injuring one civilian, but gave no details on the cause.
Another video, showing an aircraft coming down and a column of black smoke, has been geolocated to a village in Bryansk some 25 kilometers from Klintsy.
The official Russian news agency TASS published video of one helicopter exploding in mid-air and confirmed that an Su-34 fighter had crashed, without indicating the cause.
There’s been no word from the Russian Defense Ministry on the incident, but one unofficial Russian Telegram channel described it as the worst day for Russian military aviation since March last year.
The Russian newspaper Kommersant said that “a group of two Mi-8 helicopters and Su-34 and Su-35 fighters crashed in the Bryansk Oblast,” and suggested more helicopters might have been hit.
It added: “The attackers are being sought on the ground and in the air.”
Kommersant reported that the “fighters were to carry out a missile-bombing strike on targets in the Chernihiv Region of Ukraine, while the helicopters were to back them up, including to pick up the Su crews if they were shot down by enemy fire. All four machines did not return to the airfield. Their pilots were killed.”
The Kommersant report cannot be independently verified. But other Russian sources have begun discussing the incident, with one popular Telegram channel that posts about the conflict saying: “We are talking about a carefully planned [Ukrainian] operation here.”
Andrei Medvedev, a deputy on Moscow city council, said Saturday four aircraft had been lost and added: “Luhansk yesterday [a reference to missile strikes on the city], a strike on our air force today. Probing the defenses. Where it breaks. And strikes on the rear, infrastructure, and aviation.”
Another Russian Telegram channel that posts daily about the conflict claimed the Ukrainians were “launching rockets from the Chernihiv region, coming almost to the very border.”
Daniil Bezsonov, a Russian military blogger, posted Saturday that “The enemy most likely acted from an ambush by its air defense forces, which had moved into the border zone in advance, from which the distance would allow our air group to be hit. So the enemy most likely knew the route and time of our air group’s departure.”
There was also consternation among Russian bloggers that one Mi-8 helcopter shot down had advanced jamming equipment.
One Russian Telegram account said it was “complete idiocy” to send such a helicopter so close to Ukrainian defenses, saying “you had to be completely detached from reality” to send the specially-equipped Mi-8s into such a zone.
Military analysts assess that Ukraine may have pushed its air defenses forward to the border in regions such as Chernihiv to combat the Russians’ growing use of bombs that can be launched from distance, almost acting as a missile.
Ihnat said last month that the Russian military was converting FAB-500 high-explosive aerial bombs into cruise missiles. They are using these bombs “from a distance that is unreachable for Ukrainian air defense,” he said.
Mykola Oleshchuk, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, has also suggested that the nature of the threat has changed.
“The planes of the Russians do not enter the zone of damage of our air defenses, striking remotely at the front line and near-frontline cities,” he said on Telegram in April.
Saturday’s events in Bryansk suggest that zone may now have been expanded into Russian territory.
It also suggests – as a number of unofficial Russian sources have pointed out – that Ukraine in this case possessed detailed intelligence about the planned Russian mission. That may be as of much concern in Russia as the loss of four aircraft over Russian territory
Russian missiles reportedly attacked the Ukrainian act’s hometown just before they took the stage in Liverpool, according to officials.
The head of Ternopil regional state administration, Volodymyr Trush, confirmed two people had been injured.
Ternopil mayor Serhiy Nadal said warehouses were damaged.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Russia of attacking Kyiv and Ternopil regions before and during Tvorchi’s Eurovision performance.
Ten minutes before taking to the stage at the Liverpool Arena, Tvorchi posted on Instagram citing reports of Ternopil in western Ukraine being attacked.
After performing, they added: “Ternopil is the name of our hometown, which was bombed by Russia while we sang on the Eurovision stage about our steel hearts, indomitability and will.
“This is a message for all cities of Ukraine that are shelled every day. Kharkiv, Dnipro, Khmelnytsky, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Uman, Sumy, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Kherson and all others.
“Europe, unite against evil for the sake of peace!”
Image caption,Tvorchi posted on Instagram saying Russia was bombing their native city of Ternopil
Tvorchi, made up of producer Andrii Hutsuliak and Nigeria-born vocalist Jeffery Kenny, hoped to defend the Eurovision title after Kalush Orchestra won last year in Turin.
They performed “Heart of Steel” – a song about troops who led an ultimately unsuccessful resistance against Russian forces at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.
Liverpool is hosting the contest on behalf of Ukraine due to the ongoing conflict.
At the end of their performance, Tvorchi held their fists in the air as acts from other nations were also seen waving the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine.
Image caption,Tvorchi are made up of producer Andrii Hutsuliak and Nigeria-raised vocalist Jeffery Kenny
The UK’s ambassador to Ukraine Dame Melinda Simmons described Tvorchi’s Eurovision performance as “poignant”.
Writing on Twitter, she added: “Reminder that the reason why Ukraine could not host this event is because Russia continues to invade and the people of Ukraine live in continuing danger.”
Though Swedish act Loreen took the Eurovision crown after a nail-biting finish, there was praise for Tvorchi from Ternopil’s mayor who thanked the band for supporting the city during their performance.
Posting on Facebook in Ukrainian, Mayor Nadal wrote: “It was at this time that our city was attacked by Russian missiles.
“Thank you, because your speech has become a symbol of not only the unity of the country, but of the whole world.”
He told the BBC the fire at the warehouse in Ternopil had been brought under control.
“Firefighters worked all night and continue to work,” he said, adding that the two people who were wounded suffered minor injuries and were in hospital.
Russia has not yet made any official comment.
Earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Pope Francis at the Vatican and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome.
He has since flown to Germany, arriving in Berlin just before 01:00 local time.
The US ambassador to South Africa has “unreservedly apologized,” according to South Africa’s foreign ministry, for saying that the nation sold weapons to Russia.
On Thursday Reuben Brigety alleged a Russian ship was loaded with ammunition and weapons in Cape Town last December.
South Africa says it has no record of an arms sale and President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an inquiry.
On Friday the White House national security spokesman would not be drawn on details of the allegations.
But John Kirby said it was a “serious issue” and the US had consistently urged countries not to provide support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Writing on social media after meeting the foreign ministry, Mr Brigety said he was “grateful for the opportunity to… correct any misimpressions left by my public remarks”.
He said in the conversation he “re-affirmed the strong partnership between our two countries and the important agenda our presidents have given us”.
Meanwhile a South African cabinet minister hit out at such “megaphone diplomacy”, saying South Africa could not be “bullied by the US”.
“It is the US which has sanctions against Russia… they must not drag us into their issues with Russia,” Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in the presidency, told public broadcaster SABC.
Her bullish comments followed a Kremlin statement saying President Vladmir Putin had spoken to his South African counterpart by phone and the two had agreed to deepen “mutually beneficial ties”.
There is no dispute that a Russian ship, known as Lady R, docked at a naval base near Cape Town last December – prompting questions from local politicians at the time. Whether the ship was supplied with arms before returning to Russia still needs to be established.
If the accusations are true, South Africa will have violated its own Arms Control Act, which commits to “not trade in conventional arms with states engaged in repression, aggression or terrorism”.
In the same act, South Africa describes itself as a “responsible member of the international community”.
South Africa is one of a handful of countries that has abstained from a number of UN votes on the conflict and has refused to publicly condemn Russia, insisting it is non-aligned on the matter.
For months the regional superpower has been saying it instead supports a mediated settlement to the conflict.
Supplying arms while claiming to be neutral would not only rubbish that stance but would leave South Africa with a lot to answer both to its citizens and the international community.
Some in the governing African National Congress (ANC) appear to have a lingering affection for Russia because of the then-USSR’s support for their fight against white-minority rule. But in present-day South Africa, many have been asking questions about whether this love affair truly serves South Africa’s interests.
Experts say the country has more in common and a much bigger trade relationship with the West. Some are worried about a possible economic impact if ties with the US strain further.
The country’s currency, the rand, which has been struggling for weeks as a result of months of rolling power cuts, weakened even further following the US ambassador’s accusations.
It is an additional problem that South African citizens can scarcely afford.
As reported by Ukraine, thousands of Russian soldiers have left their positions in Bakhmut, the Kremlin’s primary target during its unsuccessful winter onslaught.
Russian units in some areas of the town, according to Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, had withdrawn by up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) as a result of counterattacks.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the renowned mercenary group’s leader, claimed on Tuesday that a Russian battalion had fled, “pissing away” a large area of territory.
The oligarch has been a vociferous critic of the military top brass, saying his fighters have only been supplied 10% of the shells they need to seize control of the town.
His latest expletive-ridden rant appears to contain a thinly veiled – but explosive – reference to Vladimir Putin.
Without naming names, Prigozhin said a ‘happy grandfather’ was convinced that all was going well with Russia’s campaign.
He then added: ‘If he turns out to be right, God bless everyone. But what should the country do . . . if it turns out that this grandfather is a complete asshole?’
Prigozhin has previously poured scorn on Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, but has avoided all personal criticism of Putin.
But the Russian president has often been dismissed as the ‘grandfather in the bunker’ by Kremlin critics, and opposition figure Olga Romanova remarked ‘there aren’t that many alternative’ targets.
Prigozhin’s Wagner units have led a months-long Russian assault on the eastern city – scene of the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two – suffering heavy losses.
And Ukrainian forces say the offensive is stalling.
In a statement, Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade said: ‘It’s official. Prigozhin’s report about the flight of Russia’s 72nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade from near Bakhmut and the “500 corpses” of Russians left behind is true.’
A Russian brigade is typically formed of several thousand troops.
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named the Third Brigade and noted its report ‘about the flight of Russia’s 72nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade from near Bakhmut’.
The Kremlin said it was in no doubt that Bakhmut ‘will be captured and will be kept under control’.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the Tass news agency as saying: ‘The special military operation continues. This is a very difficult operation, and, of course, certain goals have been achieved in a year.
‘We managed to beat up the Ukrainian military machine quite a bit. This work will continue.’
He said progress had been slow because Russia is not ‘waging war’ in Ukraine.
‘Waging war is a completely different matter – it means complete destruction of infrastucture, it means complete destruction of cities,’ he said.
‘We are not doing this. We are trying to preserve infrastructure and preserve human lives.’
Peskov’s comments did not address the claims about the 72nd Separate Motor-rifle Brigade abandoning their positions.
The frontlines of Ukraine are about to receive an armoured medical station with makeshift vehicles that can protect casualties from hostile fire.
The mobile field hospital being finished up in Kyiv is protected by bulletproof armour, and it has been compared to dystopian movies like Mad Max and Terminator.
The fleet consists of a bus that has been converted into a SWAT vehicle and an extraction vehicle known as “The Beast.”
The steel-clad complex is due to head to Ukraine’s eastern frontline through a private initiative crowdfunded by Radu Hossu, a prolific Romanian supporter of the country who has joined forces with two Ukrainians, a soldier and a paramedic.
Radu named the ingenious project in honour of Oleg Gubal, a respected soldier he made friends with on the frontline who died resisting Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
The Romanian, originally from Brasov, Transylvania, wants others in the line of Russian fire to receive a faster life-saving response than the man he regards as a ‘true hero’.
Radu Hossu at the workshop where the angular vehicles are being readied for deployment on Ukraine’s frontline (Picture: Radu Hossu)
Cloaked in NATO-standard armour, the three main vehicles can withstand mine blasts and are accompanied by a high speed boat to bring casualties across water if necessary.
Radu told Metro.co.uk: ‘It is important to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians because we, the collective West, believe that every life counts.
‘Ukrainians did not ask for this war, Oleg’s family did not ask for this war.
‘They are from Uzhhorod in the extreme west of Ukraine, five minutes away from Slovakia, and Oleg died two kilometres away from the Russian border in the extreme east of Ukraine.
A bus from Poland was sourced and repurposed into a battlefield emergency department (Picture: Sergei Supinsky, AFP via Getty Images)
‘It’s important to save as many lives as we can so people can be whole again. Behind each death, there are real-life stories with real-life people.
‘Most of them are normal people, with regular jobs before the war.
‘It is important to save their lives.’
Radu was working as a political consultant in Romania when he began writing nightly summaries of the war on Facebook after the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24 last year.
In July, a Ukrainian-Romanian soldier with the callsign ‘Rum’ told him how much he respected the updates and the two became friends.
Radu, 36, began crowdfunding for Ukrainian causes from his growing number of Facebook followers and he visited the country for the first time last September as an accredited war correspondent.
The country’s biggest private Romanian donor has since provided around 130,000 euros (£113,000) for the mobile hospital fund and expects to raise another 150,000 euros before it closes this week or next.
Overall, he has raised 573,000 euros for Ukraine since August 2022.
Radu witnessed the vital need for such support first-hand when Rum took him to the frontline in the northern Kharkiv region and introduced him to Oleg, a father of two respected for his sound judgement.
‘We lived together under daily shelling, eating from the same plate, living in the same trench, in the same room when in the safe house,’ he said.
‘He was like a guardian angel to me. I was always oversleeping when the Russians started to bomb us, and Oleg always woke me up and told me to take shelter and to go and eat, saying I was too skinny.
‘He was a special guy, with a great sense of humour.
‘He had worked in the judicial system before volunteering to fight in the war and he has a nice family who mourns him.
‘Since he was older and wise, everybody listened to him.
‘At the same time, he respected the chain of command.’
Oleg died in eastern Ukraine after a pick-up truck he was travelling in crossed an anti-personnel mine installed on top of an anti-tank mine, which is illegal under the Geneva Convention.
The nearest hospital not damaged by Russian forces was 1.5 miles away and he did not make it in time.
As far as Radu is aware, his friend would only have had a slim chance of surviving even if there had been a fully functioning hospital nearby at the time of the blast last November.
Oleg’s son, then aged 8, sent letters to Father Christmas after the family found out about his death, asking him to bring his dad home.
He wrote almost every day up until Christmas Day as his teenage sister and mum were overcome with grief.
While it is too late for Oleg, Radu now wants to make sure other Ukrainian soldiers receive help from medics in blast-proof vehicles in the crucial minutes after they are wounded.
‘I wanted to make this kid realize that his father, who meant so much to me in those hard times under constant shelling, was a true hero,’ he said.
‘I wanted to transform a tragedy into something that would save lives.
‘That’s when I told Rum to call Angel, the callsign of a paramedic who had the concept in his head for a mobile medical bus, and told him I would fund his project with Romanian money donated to my personal account on one condition — it had to be named Oleg Gubal.’
The mobile stabilisation point has three main vehicles armoured to NATO standards, including a bus sourced from Poland which will be used as a life-saving emergency medical room by surgeons.
The idea is that the steel and Kevlar-clad vehicle will be sited between 15 and 20km from the frontline, with volunteer medics from Ukraine and Poland who specialise in combat trauma working shifts around the clock.
Another component has been adapted from an American Peterbilt unit, similar to the type of truck used in Terminator 2, to house four beds for doctors to rest and two more in the driver’s cabin.
The logistics machine also houses a kitchen, shower and storage space for generators, a spare fuel tank, a refrigerated blood bank and a room for sanitising medical equipment.
An extraction vehicle nicknamed ‘The Beast’ has been fashioned from an eight-cylinder Ford-150 mounted on the chassis of a Soviet GAZ truck with modified suspension and giant wheels for hard terrain.
The triple-armoured ‘Frankenstein’ machine is designed to evacuate casualties from the contact area and transport them to the stabilisation point. Three ambulances in the complex will then drive the wounded to the nearest hospital for further care.
The emergency department on wheels is nearing completion at a custom car company in Kyiv, which has only charged for labour costs.
‘The extraction vehicle will go exactly to the spot,’ Radu said.
‘That means 50 metres away from the combat area.
‘Zero meters away if needed.’
Radu joked that Angel is Q in the story while Rum is James Bond, as he manages the project through his Autorota charity.
‘So in this story, that would make me the UK government which funds Q’s ideas while Bond gets to work,’ he said.
‘I would like to thank the Romanians whose donations have made this unique project possible and to Rum for managing the project.
‘He has sacrificed his family time away from the frontline to make sure the hospital is finished as soon as possible to save Ukrainian lives.’
The Oleg Gubal Mobile Hospital is 95% complete and due to leave Kyiv this week or next with the most likely destination being eastern Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin oversaw a very understated Victory Day ceremony in Moscow, which featured just one tank and no aircraft soaring in the sky.
The tyrant typically deploys tanks, missiles, and other ominous weaponry systems to flaunt the vast array of military force at his disposal.
It was a noticeably diminished performance today in front of the Kremlin due to the considerable soldier and armor casualties suffered by Russian forces in Ukraine.
A total of 77 aircraft and helicopters participated in the airshow from 131 different units the previous year.
More than 125 units of different weapons and equipment were expected to be on show at this year’s parade, according to defence minister Sergei Shoigu.
Yet when the parade began, only one ancient T-34 tank from World War II led the mechanised column.
Armoured vehicles were also on display but the numbers were visibly lower than previous years and the usual flypast over the city was nowhere to be seen.
Addressing the rows of soldiers in dress uniform, Putin claimed a ‘war has been unleashed’ against Russia in a fiery 10-minute speech.
The president lashed out against ‘Western global elites’ and said the world is at ‘a decisive turning point’.
He also once again falsely likened his invasion of Ukraine to the struggle against Nazism, claiming that Russia is defending its sovereignty.
Putin made the claims despite the fact he ordered what the West calls an unprovoked invasion, destroying cities and killing thousands of civilians.
Russia even continued to fire missiles at Kyiv as troops paraded across Red Square for its annual celebration of victory in World War II.
Ukraine said its air defences had shot down 23 of 25 Russian cruise missiles fired mainly at the capital city overnight, and there were no reported casualties.
It was the second night in a row of major Russian air strikes and fifth so far this month.
On a visit to Kyiv today, EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen underlined how the war has isolated Russia from most of Europe and pushed Ukraine closer to the West.
She told a press conference: ‘Kyiv, as the capital of Ukraine, is the beating heart of today’s European values.
‘Courageously, Ukraine is fighting for the ideals of Europe that we celebrate today.’
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said: ‘Our efforts for a united Europe, for security and peace, need to be as strong as Russia’s desire to destroy our security, our freedom, our Europe.’
The Victory Day parade in Red Square this year provided an opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to carry on his fight against history. He merely succeeded in emphasizing his alienation from geopolitics.
Putin made a clear connection between the sacrifices made during World War II and his invasion of Ukraine in an address to the gathered troops. The Russian president presented himself as the savior and defender of an impoverished Russia that the West’s “globalist elites” had targeted. He was flanked by living veterans of the conflict that Russia still refers to as the Great Patriotic War.
According to Putin, “civilization is once more on the verge of collapse.” “Once more, a real war has broken out against our motherland,”
While Russia sees “no unfriendly nations in the West or in the East,” Putin suggested darker forces are conspiring against Moscow.
“Western globalist elites still talk about their exceptionalism, pitting people against each other and splitting society, provoking bloody conflicts and coups, sowing hatred, Russophobia, [and] aggressive nationalism,” he said. “The Ukrainian nation has become hostage to a coup which led to a criminal regime led by its Western masters. It has become a pawn to their cruel and selfish plans.”
It’s worth unpacking this for a moment. It’s Putin’s longstanding view that Ukraine is not a legitimate nation — Ukrainians and Russians, in his view, are “one people” and the Ukrainian state is an artificial construct. In his conspiratorial view of the world, states like Ukraine are merely vassals, and Washington calls the shots. And if a shadowy global cabal is pulling the strings in Kyiv, that belief justifies what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Let’s remember that it was a genuine popular revolt — not, say, the CIA or George Soros — that brought people onto Kyiv’s Maidan Square to support Ukraine’s aspirations for joining the European Union, leading to the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014. And that Russian-speaking Ukrainians — and even some Russian nationals — are also fighting and dying on the side of Ukraine.
But Putin is immune from fact-checking exercises here. Collective remembrance of World War II is the closest thing Russia has to a state religion, and May 9 — when Russians commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 — marks the holiest of days. For a domestic audience, the Victory Day parade provides a visual parallel between the veterans of the war that ended 78 years ago and the participants of Russia’s war on Ukraine today.
According to state media, over 500 participants of Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine took part in the parade on Red Square Tuesday. And in his speech, Putin cast them as the heirs of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians are pushing back against such historical gaslighting.
In video remarks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada — Ukraine’s parliament to change official victory day celebrations from May 9 to May 8, and compared Russia’s aggression to that of Hitler’s Germany.
“It is on May 8 that most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis,” Zelensky said. “We will not allow the joint victory of the nations of the anti-Hitler coalition to be appropriated and we will not allow lies as if the victory could have taken place without the participation of any country or nation.”
Zelensky also played host to an important visitor in Kyiv on the same day as Putin’s Victory Day parade: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who arrived bearing promises of continued support from Europe for Ukraine.
“Ukraine is on the front line of the defense of everything we Europeans cherish: our liberty, our democracy, our freedom of thought and speech,” von der Leyen said. “Courageously Ukraine is fighting for the ideals of Europe that we celebrate today. In Russia, Putin and his regime have destroyed these values. And now they are attempting to destroy them here in Ukraine because they are afraid of the success you represent and the example you show, and they are afraid of your path to the European Union.”
And in his joint press conference with von der Leyen, Zelensky was able to rain a little on Putin’s Victory Day parade, noting Russia’s costly and incremental progress on the battlefield.
“They [the Russians] were not able to capture Bakhmut,” he said, referring to the embattled and extensively damaged eastern Ukrainian city. “This was the last important military operation that they wanted to complete by the ninth of May. And unfortunately, the city does not exist anymore. Everything is fully destroyed. … So, they need some information to present it as a victory they need to conquer something — some city — [but] they have not managed to do that.”
The annual Victory Day celebrations in Russia are supposed to be grand public spectacle married with an advertisement for state power. This year’s parade showcased some of Russia’s military might — featuring its S-400 air defense system and Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, part of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal — but a massive procession of modern tanks, the pride of Russia’s army, was conspicuously absent.
And von der Leyen’s visit to Kyiv highlighted Putin’s isolation from Europe and the West. Among the most high-profile visitors featured at Putin’s Victory Day celebrations were an EU-sanctioned president (Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus), a Central Asian strongman (Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan) and the dynastic leader of a petro-state (Serdar Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan).
On the battlefields of Ukraine, the setbacks being dealt to Russian forces in the meat grinder of Bakhmut could not be a sharper contrast to the pomp and circumstance on Red Square.
That fact was brought home by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary outfit Wagner, who railed on social media against Russia’s military leadership.
“Today they [Ukrainians] are tearing up the flanks in the Artemovsk [the Russian name for Bakhmut] direction, regrouping at Zaporizhzhia. And a counteroffensive is about to begin,” he said on social media Tuesday. “They absolutely clearly say that the counteroffensive will be on the ground, not on TV.”
Victory Day, Prigozhin added, belonged to a past generation.
“Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers,” he said. “We haven’t earned that victory one millimeter.”
As Ukraine prepares to launch a counteroffensive against Russian soldiers, the US on Tuesday unveiled a $1.2 billion security support package for Ukraine.
Along with 155 mm artillery rounds, more air defense systems, munitions, and drone ammo, the package also includes tools to “integrate Western air defense launchers, missiles, and radars” with Ukraine’s current systems.
On Monday, CNN reported that the announcement was anticipated.
The package, which was first reported by the Associated Press, will be covered under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which means it won’t be taken directly from Defense Department supplies during a drawdown but rather would be contracted and bought from manufacturers. The purpose of USAI packages is not to provide Ukraine with the weaponry it urgently requires, but to establish a medium- and long-term supply for Ukraine.
With the new package announcement, the US marks $37.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $36.9 billion since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
Even after the Ukrainian counteroffensive begins, the US will continue to send military aid to Ukraine, according to a US military official, both to sustain Ukraine’s military force against dug-in Russian troops and to provide new equipment.
During a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to resist Vladimir Putin’s “show of force” and to remain unafraid.
“Putin is currently stationing his troops, tanks, and missiles in Moscow, 2,200 kilometers (more than 1300 miles) northeast of here. Let us resist being deterred by such a display of force, Scholz remarked in reference to Russia’s Victory Day parade.
Scholz reiterated his support for Ukraine by saying that the “delusion of their powerful neighboring state” was something that Ukrainians were “paying with their lives” for.
“Let us be steadfast in our support of Ukraine for as long as it is necessary,“ Scholz said.
Scholz also warned in a news conference with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, Europe’s next round of sanctions on Russia will “not be the last” and that the bloc will be on track to discuss further improvements.
A Russian woman is suspected of hiring an assassin to kill her children in order to take their inheritance.
The 67-year-old was detained by police last week in Krasnoyarsk, the second-largest city in Siberia.
Three plain-clothes officers are seen holding the elderly outside of her home in video published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Telegram.
‘Do you understand why you were detained?’ one of them asks her on the street while cuffing her.
Surprised, the woman replies: ‘No.’
It was alleged she ordered the murder of her son and two daughters, so she could become the sole owner of a family property.
She shared her plan with her friend who helped her find a hitman, who was later paid ₽80,000, or a little more than £810 to do the job.
Her alleged deviousness was exposed on the day when the hired killer was supposed to take one of her daughters out.
Pictures shared by police show the pile of cash that she had allegedly taken out to make the payment.
A ministry statement said: ‘Employees of the criminal investigation department of the Krasnoyarskoye Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia detained a suspect in organising the murder of her children.
‘Operatives received information that a resident of the regional center, born in 1956, wishing to remain the sole owner of real estate, ordered the murder of her son, born in 1978, and daughters born in 1974.’
During a speech in Moscow’s Red Square, Vladimir Putin asserted that “war is being waged against Russia.”
Victory Day, the biggest secular holiday in Russia, is being celebrated today with military parades and other festivities in Moscow and other Russian towns. However, this year’s celebrations have been greatly overshadowed by the conflict in Ukraine.
The Russian president compared the situation to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union during his speech, saying it had brought the world community “to a breaking point.”
‘Today, civilization is again at a decisive turning point. A real war has been unleashed against our homeland. We have repulsed international terrorism, we will protect the inhabitants of Donbas, we will ensure our security,’ he said.
Victory Day is one of the most important holidays in the Russian calendar, but celebrations were muted this year (Picture: Reuters)
In a 10-minute speech on Red Square, Putin repeated familiar messages he has delivered many times in the nearly 15 months of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin claimed Russia wants to see a ‘peaceful future’, and accused Western elites of sowing the seeds of ‘hatred and Russophobia’.
He said ‘Western globalist elites’ were sowing Russophobia and aggressive nationalism, while the Ukrainian people had become ‘hostages to a state coup’ and to the ambitions of the West.
He did not address the challenges facing Russia as its forces prepare for an expected major counter-offensive by Ukraine, or outline any path to victory.
The speech, followed by a huge military parade across Red Square, was taking place following a wave of strikes inside Russia this month – including a purported drone attack on the Kremlin citadel itself less than a week ago.
Putin concluded the address by welcoming the soldiers fighting in Ukraine who were present at the parade. ‘To Russia! To our brave armed forces! To Victory!’ he said.
He was joined onstage by WW2 vets and a number of allied foreign leaders, including Belarusian President Lukashenko (Centre) (Picture: Getty)
At least 21 Russian towns and cities have cancelled the traditional parades for the first time in years, which are meant to honour the country’s victory over Germany in World War II.
Regional officials blamed unspecified ‘security concerns’ for the cancellations.
Some speculated, however, that the reason the marches were cancelled was the fact that Russians might bring portraits of relatives who died in Ukraine to those processions, illustrating the scale of Russia’s losses in the drawn-out conflict.
Meanwhile, Kremlin forces launched 25 missiles overnight in a wave of attacks across Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that air defense had successfully destroyed 23 of them.
In a Telegram post, the air force said eight Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from carriers in the Black Sea toward the east and 17 from strategic aircraft.
Joining Putin on stage were a number of leaders from former Soviet nations currently allied with Russia.
Initially, only one of them — Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov — was expected to attend, but at the last minute on Monday officials confirmed that leaders of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were heading to Moscow as well.
President Vladimir Putin while addressing the Victory Day parade in Moscow stated that the world is at a “turning point,” as various events throughout the country are being canceled due to security concerns.
The yearly military parade honors the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany during WWII.
Putin attempted to link Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the fight against Nazism once more, stating that Russia was preserving its sovereignty.
Addressing the crowds in Red Square, President Putin said “Today civilisation is again at a decisive turning point.”
“A real war has again been unleashed against our Motherland but we have countered international terrorism, we will protect the inhabitants of the Donbas and we will protect our country.”
He noted Russia wants to see a “peaceful future”, but said the Western elites are sowing the seeds of “hatred and Russophobia”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was joined by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in Moscow Credit: Reuters
Victory Day marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
Germany officially signed its surrender late on 8 May, which was already 9 May Moscow time.
The Soviet Union had lost around 27 million citizens during World War Two, far more than any other country involved in the conflict; it is often said that every Soviet family lost at least one immediate or distant relative in the war.
On Sunday night, Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, like the rest of Europe, is commemorating Europe Day, which aims to promote peace on the continent.
In light of the continuing conflict in Ukraine, Jamie Oliver has shared one of his nice actions.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s invasion last year, thousands of residents were compelled to leave their homes in search of safety.
Jamie was one of the many families in the UK that took in immigrants.
When the 47-year-old famous chef made an appearance as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia, he revealed that he continues to live with two Ukrainian families.
In fact, he and his wife Jools, 48, have been living with the families for seven months, Jamie told his fellow judges.
The cookbook author was tucking in to a Russian and Ukrainian dish called borscht and pampushka, made by contesant Larissa.
Jamie and his wife Jools have been living with two Ukrainian families for seven months (Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage)
‘With things going on in the world at the moment, it’s kind of profound you’re here this year with both a Russian and Ukrainian dish,’ Jamie said.
‘Can I give you a little secret that no one really knows?’, he confessed.
‘I have had two Ukrainian families living with me for the, like, the last seven months.
‘We have done fundraisers with top chefs from Ukraine, so I have had my fair share of borscht.’
The cookbook author has been eating a lot of Ukrainian and Russian food (Picture: Neil Mockford/GC Images)
‘This is absolutely fabulous,’ he praised the dish.
By early November, according to the UNHCR, the number of Ukrainian refugees recorded across Europe was around 7.8million.
The countries receiving the largest numbers of refugees were Russia, Poland, and Germany, while the United Kingdom took in just over 200,000.
Jamie’s episode was the season premiere of the Australian version of the cookery show, which was filmed before the shock death of Jock Zonfrillo.
Zonfrillo death was confirmed last week as his family released a statement.
The chef appeared on MasterChef Australia’s premiere, which was filmed before the shock death of Jock Zonfrillo (Picture: Instagram)
‘With completely shattered hearts and without knowing how we can possibly move through life without him, we are devastated to share that Jock passed away yesterday,’ they said.
Police later confirmed that his death was not being treated as suspicious, while Channel Ten in Australia postponed the premiere of the new season of MasterChef Australia as tributes poured in for the TV personality.
He was also honoured in a special episode of Australian show The Project on Sunday.
Several notable figures within the culinary entertainment industry paid homage to Zonfrillo’s memory, including Gordon Ramsay, who was brought to tears.
As Russia gets ready to commemorate the anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany, Putin has launched a number of attacks on the capital of Ukraine.
At least five persons were hurt by rocket attacks on Monday morning, according to officials in Kiev; similar explosions were also reported in a number of other areas.
Three people were hurt in Solomyanskyi, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, while two more were hurt in the west of the city’s Sviatoshyn neighborhood.
Drone wreckage is also reported to have fallen on the runway at Zhuliany airport in the southwest, and to have hit a two-storey building in the central Shevchkivskyi area.
In the southern port city of Odessa, officials have posted footage of a food warehouse on fire, seemingly the result of a Russian attack.
Further blasts are reported in the southern Kherson region, the Zaporizhia region to the southeast, and eight locations in the Sumy region to the northeast.
Strikes against Russian targets in Ukraine have also increased in recent weeks, many of them targeting Crimea, a southern peninsula in the Black Sea held by Russia since the partial invasion of 2014.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed their forces’ role in those attacks, but have stressed destroying key enemy infrastructure, such as those found in Crimea, represents crucial preparation for their forthcoming large-scale counteroffensive.
This morning’s wave of strikes come as the Putin regime prepares for Victory Day, a military parade scheduled to take place in Moscow tomorrow commemorating Russia’s defeat of Germany in the Second World War.
The symbolism of the event is of especial significance this year, given the president’s efforts to equate the leadership in Kyiv with Nazism as a justification for his so-called ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.
Putin’s war has lasted fifteen months, seen thousands killed and millions displaced. He presently faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.
Meanwhile, his stranglehold over dissent and free expression in Russia has continued to intensify, most recently with the sentencing of opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza and detention of US journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Under the brisk spring sun, a tanker train carries cargo along the track. A female voice can be heard saying, “Wow,” while pointing her camera phone at the convoy. This is the second train; there was one similar to it earlier.
An outdated Soviet tank is seen being transported in the footage, which was apparently shot in late March. These items are different from the older weapons that Moscow has been known to retrieve from storage to aid in the conduct of the conflict in Ukraine.
The tanks are T-55s, a design that was initially ordered by the Red Army of the Soviet Union in 1948, just after World War II came to a close.
You can find them at museums because they are so old.
“This was the first main battle tank used by the Soviet Union in the Cold War era,” said historian John Delaney, a senior curator at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in Duxford, Cambridge, as he shows one to CNN.
“Up until that point, you’d had three very distinctive types of tanks, light, medium and heavy, which had different roles on the battlefield,” Delaney said. “From the mid-50s onwards, there was this concept that tried to come up with a tank that could do a bit of everything and that became known as the main battle tank.”
For the Red Army, that was the T-55 and its many variants, which later became the most widely produced tank in the world, with more than 100,000 units built. Cheap, reliable, easy to use and easy to maintain, it was a military mainstay from Egypt to China to Sudan, where they are still in use.
In Eastern Europe, they were used to quash uprisings in the former Warsaw Pact countries, rolling through the streets of Hungary in 1956, and then Prague, capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1968.
But in following decades, when deployed against Western-built tanks – in some Arab-Israeli conflicts, and then in the Gulf War – they were no match.
“In the first Gulf War, in 1991 for example, the American and British tanks were knocking out Iraqi T-55s from 23 kilometers,” Delaney said.
The version inside the IWM’s Land Warfare hall was built in the 1960s and belonged to the East German army. It was snapped up by the museum after German reunification, with Berlin favoring NATO-standard versions, such as the Leopard 1 and then Leopard 2 — which it has recently sent to Ukraine — and side-lining outdated Soviet equipment.
By the time Russia began decommissioning its own T-55s in the 1980s, there were still upwards of 28,000 of them, Delaney said, adding that they were mothballed rather than scrapped.
“The Soviets never threw anything away,” he explained. “There’s probably a significant number of them sitting in sheds waiting to be reconfigured.”
Russia seems willing to do exactly that.
Satellite imagery indicates Russia has been taking dozens of tanks out of storage at a base in Arsenyev, in Russia’s far East. Publicly available photos show one of the tanks being stored at the base is the T-55.
“They’ll have been sitting there for a decade or more,” Delaney says. “They’ll need a considerable amount of work to get them back into good running order.”
After the footage of a trainload of tanks surfaced on social media in late March, the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a team group of volunteers using open source intelligence to investigate conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, was the first to report these that T-54/55s were being brought out of storage at Arsenyev.
Western officials then told CNN in April they had seen the elderly tank pop up close to the frontline.
Russia hasn’t confirmed it is deploying the T-55 to the front line and the Ministry of Defense in Moscow did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. But, in recent weeks, well-connected pro-Kremlin bloggers have shared photographs showing these tanks, reportedly in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.
The Netherlands-based open-source intelligence website Oryx says it has visual evidence Russia has lost more than 1,900 tanks since the beginning of the invasion, nearly two-thirds of an initial fleet of around 3,000. Beyond quantity, a big issue is the speed at which Russian armor is being taken down.
“Overall Russia has lost a lot of equipment, it’s hard to build new equipment,” said Robert Lee, a former US Marine and senior fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“They are producing some new tanks — they are still producing T-90s — but, at the scale (required), they need more equipment than they can produce so they’re relying on older and older tanks to compensate,” Lee added.
Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industries and Society Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, says Western sanctions are also slowing down Russia’s weapons production.
“We’ve got multiple pieces of evidence that Russian industry, which had been given access to Western technology in the 90s, is really suffering from the restrictions,” Taylor said. “We’re hearing about them taking chips out of washing machines. And when you’re doing that, then you’re really obviously in quite a bit of difficulty.”
Lee has been following the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the start, using open-source technology to gather information on the fighting in Ukraine. He has since visited the frontlines in Eastern Ukraine and, as Russia goes on the defensive, tank-on-tank battles have so far been rare and he believes the T-55s’ usage will be limited in scope.
“Some of those systems are probably going to be used in a rear area initially,” he said. “So, not necessarily tanks going forward, but more kind of firing into a long distance.”
If that is to be their purpose, Delaney believes the T-55 may still prove useful.
“One of the things you can obviously use this [tank] for if you’re trying to avoid a tank versus tank engagement is to dig them in, in defensive positions, sit the tank in the pit so you can only see the turret and then that can be used to defend a front line against the counterattack,” he said. “If you’ve been the aggressor in a war and you’re suddenly about to be on the defensive, this would be effective for static defensive positions.”
As Russian forces prepare to take the brunt of a widely anticipated, NATO-equipped Ukrainian offensive, they’re having to rely on a conscript army, less prepared than that of their opponent.
And for under-trained soldiers, the T-55 provides something modern tanks don’t: ease of use.
“If you’ve got a lot of conscripts coming into your army, which you have at the moment with the Russian forces, it’s going to be easier, quicker to train people to use these than it is to use a more modern model of battle tank,” Delaney said.
“It’s really easy to maintain and with a conscript army, that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking for the ability to keep these things operational.”
Ukraine, in fact, also has a version of the T-55 in its arsenal – 28 highly-modernized M-55s supplied by Slovenia.
As Ukraine gears up for its expected spring counteroffensive, Russia has dug in. Satellite imagery has revealed the extensive defensive lines built by Moscow’s forces across the regions they continue to occupy.
Lee believes a successful counteroffensive will come down to Ukrainian intelligence finding the perfect location to push through.
“It’s not impossible but a lot of it comes down to Ukraine finding weak points in a line and trying to narrowly penetrate,” he said.
And that’s where modern, more advanced NATO equipment, with better armor, longer ranges and more maneuverability, could come into its own, especially when facing much older Soviet hardware.
“I think faced with Western weapons, the Russians must expect very heavy casualties if they expect to move forward using the T-55 system,” Taylor said. “It’s a move of desperation to be using weapons of that vintage.”
And though tank battles have been rare, Ukraine has an advantage if they do occur.
“If you’ve got a big open country and you’re fighting a big, armored tank engagement over vast expanses of land, then this is at a very distinct disadvantage,” Delaney said of the Russians’ T-55s.
“(Against a Leopard or a Challenger), if it’s a one-on-one tank engagement, this will lose every time.”
Russia has accused numerous Western countries and the “Kyiv regime” of being responsible for the Saturday vehicle explosion that killed military blogger Zakhar Prilepin.
A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry made the allegation, but she offered no supporting evidence.
As a result, the Security Service of Ukraine informed the online publication Ukrainian Pravda that it could “neither confirm nor deny” that it was involved “in this or that explosion that happens to the occupiers and their accomplices.”
Prilepin, whose Telegram channel has more than 300,000 subscribers, was hospitalized with a leg injury after the blast in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 250 miles east of Moscow. His driver was killed.
The incident follows the death of another Russian military blogger last month. Russian also blamed Ukraine for that death, but Kyiv has previously denied any involvement.
The Russian Investigative Committee called the latest incident “a terrorist act” and said it plans to investigate the blast as such.
The committee also reported a suspect in the car bombing had been detained and during the interrogation testified “that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services.”
The suspect “planted an explosive device on the road along the route of Zakhar Prilepin’s car, which he set off remotely,” the committee alleged. “After that, he fled the scene, but was detained by law enforcement officers when he left the forest in another settlement.”
The committee published what they claimed was a video confession of the suspect but it was not clear under what circumstances he was interviewed or whether he was under duress in the video.
Russian pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia reported that Prilepin had surgery earlier on Saturday and is at the hospital in stable condition.
At least three drone strikes from Ukraine were thwarted in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, according to the Russian-appointed authorities in Crimea, who confirmed this on Sunday.
“More than ten drones” were sent to Crimea and Sevastopol overnight, according to the city’s pro-Russian governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev. In a statement posted on Telegram, he claimed that “the air defence forces and electronic warfare units prevented another attack on Sevastopol.”
He also mentioned that one of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) crashed into a forest after losing control.
The wreckage was recovered by Interior Ministry and Emergencies Ministry personnel, Razvozhaev said, adding that there was no damage done to any structures in the city.
Two others were shot down over the sea – one near Cape Chersonese and the other from “the side of the north breakwater.”
Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, and is internationally recognized as being part of Ukraine.
An important port and a major naval base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol city has been the site of multiple suspected Ukrainian attacks.
Last week saw reports of a suspected drone strike which sparked a huge fire at a fuel storage facility in Sevastopol. Razvozhaev said on that occasion that four fuel tanks were hit but no one was injured.
Earlier on Saturday, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed governor of Crimea, said there had been no damage or injuries after air defense forces shot down a ballistic missile launched from Ukrainian Operational Tactical Missile System Hrim-2.
In the conflict, now in its 15th month, Ukraine claims that a US Patriot defence battery destroyed one of Russia’s most advanced ballistic missiles.
The Kinzhal, or Kh-47, is a modernised missile that the Russian military and President Vladimir Putin have praised as an example of their armament, stating that its hypersonic speed makes it very difficult to intercept.
The Kh-47 is an air-launched ballistic missile with an approximate range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles), allowing it to be launched far from the battleground. A missile Russia claimed was unstoppable was allegedly halted by Ukraine.
It travels at about 10 times the speed of sound and is derived from the shorter-range Iskander ballistic missile, which is ground launched. It carries a warhead of nearly 500 kilograms.
Ukrainian intelligence believes Russia has only a few dozen Kinzhal missiles in its arsenal – a claim which couldn’t be independently verified.
Several Kinzhal missiles were launched at Ukrainian targets in March, but it’s not clear what damage they did or whether they all reached their targets. In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Patriot systems had arrived from the US, Germany and the Netherlands.
If one of those systems has now destroyed a Kh-47, as the Ukrainians say, it calls into question the capabilities of one of Russia’s new generation of weapons.
After the Kinzhal was first tested, Putin told Russia’s Federal Council in 2018: “The unique flight characteristics of the high-speed carrier aircraft allow the missile to be delivered to the point of discharge within minutes.”
He also said that its hypersonic speed would allow it to “overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems, delivering nuclear and conventional warheads in a range of over 2,000 kilometers.”
Russia has made ambitious claims for several of its newer military systems, but their prowess is unproven.
Though deployed in small numbers, the Russians’ newest main battle tank, the T-90M, has appeared vulnerable to unsophisticated munitions, and the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, was sunk early in the conflict.
Analysts have questioned the Kinzhal’s capabilities during the final phase of its flight, suggesting it may not be as maneuverable or as fast as it approaches a target.
The deployment of the Patriot represents a sea change in Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, which have been highly reliant on Soviet-era S-300 air defenses – for which munitions now appear in short supply.
The Patriots provide a modern dimension to Ukraine’s air defense layers, as does the German IRIS-T system. But it’s also much more complex, requiring about 100 personnel to operate.
Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Inhat said Saturday that the Russians “were saying that the Patriot is an outdated American weapon, and Russian weapons are the best in the world.”
“Well, there is confirmation that it effectively works against even a super hypersonic missile.” Ihnat said, adding that intercepting the Kinzhal is “a slap in the face for Russia.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has called on Russia to account for tens of thousands of “crimes of aggression.”
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest order for Russian President Vladimir Putin, received an unexpected visit from the leader of Ukraine.
President Zelensky said in a speech that Russia committed 6,139 war crimes in April alone, killing 207 civilians in Ukraine, including 11 children.
He also called for the creation of a war crimes tribunal that could see Putin himself forced to explain atrocities carried out at the hands of the Kremlin.
‘We all want to see a different Vladimir here in the Hague, the one who deserves to be sanctioned for his criminal actions here, in the capital of international law’, President Zelensky continued.
He added that war would eventually be won by ‘force of arms’ and thanked the Netherlands for weapons supplied to Ukraine so far.
In his speech, President Zelensky also paid tribute to the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down in Russian forces in 2014.
There had been 196 Dutch nationals on the flight.
Volodymyr Zelensky enters the plenary hall for a meeting with members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the Hague (Picture: Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock)He gave a speech titled ‘No Peace Without Justice for Ukraine’ (Picture: Reuters)
A minute of silence was then held for all those who have died as a result of Russian ‘terror’.
Dressed in his standard khaki-coloured jumper, President Zelensky said: ‘We cannot stop wars of aggression, but can defeat aggression as a criminal idea that originates in the mindset of someone who is used to impunity.
‘If you look at any war of aggression, they all have one thing in common – the perpetrator of the war did not believe they would have to stand to answer for what they did.’
His visit to The Hague, which hosts the ICC and the United Nations’ top judicial organ, the International Court of Justice, came a day after he denied that Ukrainian forces were responsible for what the Kremlin called an attempt to assassinate Putin in a drone attack.
On a visit to Helsinki on Wednesday, Zelensky told reporters: ‘We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to (the) tribunal.’
While the leader’s visit to the ICC was not officially confirmed, the court’s staff on Thursday raised a Ukrainian flag next to its own flag outside the building.
Judges announced last month announced they found ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights were responsible for the unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.
Prosecutor Karim Khan has made repeated visits to Ukraine and is setting up an office in Kyiv to facilitate his ongoing investigations in the country.
The Netherlands has been a strong supporter of the Ukrainian war effort since Russia’s invasion last year.
Among military equipment Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government has promised are 14 modern Leopard 2 tanks it is buying together with Denmark.
They are expected to be delivered next year.
Among other military hardware, it also sent two Patriot air defense missile systems and promised two naval minehunter ships as well as sending military forensic experts to assist war crime investigations.
The municipal elections, which have 8,000 seats, can sound frightening, but here’s what you need to know
Updates on the local elections in England have been coming in since the polls closed at 10 p.m. last night, starting in the early morning hours.
With the typical excitement of every democratic vote in the UK come large gains—some unexpected, others predicted.
This year, the local elections were set against the backdrop of the cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine and the lingering impact of the Covid pandemic.
But what were the key takeaways?
Blue Wall loses several bricks
Labour stormed through Tory heartland to make gains described as ‘hugely significant’ by Sir Keir.
Medway was among the local authority areas painted red, with Labour set to run the Kent council for the first time since 1998.
The party also gained East Staffordshire, where four years ago the Tories picked up a mighty 25 seats, when Labour was left with just 10.
Sir Keir told said ‘road to a better Britain’ begins now and will be ‘paved with Labour wins’.
He added: ‘We all know there’s no place for letting up. Let’s never mistake confidence for complacency.
‘But we are going to bottle this feeling we have today and then we’re going to turn it into a general election win next year.’
The Conservatives suffered huge losses in what has been Rishi Sunak’s first electoral test since being handed the keys to No 10.
They lost control of the likes of Welwyn Hatfield – in Energy Secretary Grant Shapps’ constituency – where both the Lib Dems and Labour made gains.
But the Prime Minister maintained that ‘progress’ is still being made for his party.
He told Sky News: ‘‘It’s always disappointing to lose hard-working Conservative councillors, they’re friends, they’re colleagues and I’m so grateful to them for everything they’ve done.
‘In terms of the results, it’s still early, we’ve just had a quarter of the results in, but what I am going to carry on doing is delivering on the people’s priorities – halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting waiting lists and stopping the boats. ‘That’s what people want us to do, that’s what I’m going to keep hard at doing.’
No ID, no vote
Last night, the elections watchdog said ‘regrettably’ some people were turned away from polling stations.
The local elections were the first of its kind to be carried out under new rules which required voters to carry photographic ID.
Critics say the move could discourage young people and disenfranchise minority voters, both of which are likely to be Labour voters.
Gillian Long, 42, said ID requirements are ‘a load of rubbish’ after she was stopped from voting by an administration error between her ID and the registration system in East Riding, Yorkshire.
Ms Long said her address ‘wasn’t down right on their system’ and fumed ‘If you want people to vote, you should make it as easy as possible, and they’ve added a barrier.’
Green history
The Green Party has secured sole control of an English council for the very first time.
They currently have the 18 seats on Mid Suffolk District Council needed for majority on the 34-seat authority, with four wards yet to declare.
Previously, the local authority was run by a 16-seat minority Conservative administration.
Andy Mellen, leader of the Green Party in Mid Suffolk, said: ‘We are looking forward to getting to work.’
The Green Party’s co-leader in England and Wales, Adrian Ramsay, said the party had seen ‘fantastic results’ in both rural and urban areas, winning seats from Labour as well as the Conservatives.
He added the victory in Mid Suffolk would ‘pave the way for electing the first Green MP in the area as well to really represent people on a national stage as well as locally’.
What about Scotland?
While Scotland is dealing with ample political drama of its own, it did not host any local elections yesterday.
But party members north of the border still kept a close eye on today’s unfolding proceedings.
Some results suggest, based of current results, Labour will win the next general election, but without an overall majority.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said this shows Scots should vote SNP so Scotland can ‘pull the strings’ of a minority UK government.
In a statement he said: ‘It’s increasingly clear that the SNP can hold the balance of power after the next general election – putting Scotland in prime position to pull the strings of a minority UK government.
‘Voting SNP is the best way to beat the Tories in Scotland – and every vote for the SNP will be crucial to ensure Scotland wields real power and influence.’
But the rise of Labour’s popularity in England could sway voters away from the SNP, which has been tarnished by the ongoing investigation into the party’s finances.
Young minds of the future
A teenager only just able to vote has become of the country’s youngest councillors – and stolen the seat of his town’s mayor in the process. Labour in Redditch picked up six seats – including in Church Hill, where 18-year-old James Fardoe claimed the scalp of Tory Ann Isherwood.
His brother Jack wrote on Twitter: ‘Well done to my brother James Fardoe, who was elected in Church Hill in Redditch. Not only did he beat the incumbent mayor, but he is only 18.’
Reacting to his victory on Facebook, James wrote: ‘I would like to thank my opponent, Ann Isherwood, for all her work over the past four years, it was an honour to run against you and once again thank you for your hard work. I would also like to thank all of the Redditch Labour Party and all the volunteers that helped me in Church Hill, I appreciate all the support everyone gave me in this election.
‘I would lastly like to thank everyone who went out to vote yesterday, not just for Labour but all the other parties, who put their trust in democracy and the candidates.’
The newly-elected councillor campaigned for more parking spaces, more youth facilities and more support for local businesses.
Are the Tories really doomed at the next general election? Or could Keir’s lack of star power undermine his party’s efforts?
Republican wave
King Charles may have missed the majority of local election updates, as he is slightly busy with Coronation preparations today.
But there have been interest results in the ward of Highgrove House, the family residence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, which lies in the Cotswold District Council ward.
Liberal Democrat Chris Twells believes the country should follow the Irish model of a republic, has been elected to represent the Tetbury with Upton ward.
But he has faced calls to quit his seat in north-west England after winning a second election 160 miles away in Gloucestershire.
Mr Twells beat the Conservatives by 60 votes to secure the Tetbury with Upton ward a mere 12 months after he defeated Labour to gain the Ordsall ward for the Lib Dems at Salford City Council, Greater Manchester.
He is expected to stand down from the latte role
Dogs out in full force
While newshounds have stayed up all night to cover the results of the election, during the day it was an army of dogs who helped encourage people to vote.
As is British tradition, voters snap pics of their pups outside polling stations.
Many were shared to Twitter with the hashtag #DogsAtPollingStations.
Regardless of your politics, I’m sure we can all agree that there were a great selection of very good boys out in full force.
In a dispute over ammunition, the leader of the Russian Wagner Group has threatened to pull his forces out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Wednesday.
He made his remark after beseeching Russia’s defense minister for more supplies while strolling among the bodies of fallen warriors in a social media video.
“They are dying so that you can gambol in your redwood cabinets,” he said while addressing the government.
“Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the… ammunition?… They came here as volunteers and die for you to fatten yourselves in your mahogany offices,” he added.
His troops will leave on 10 May.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov have often been the focus for Prigozhin’s anger.
Prigozhin is a publicity seeker, and his influence has seemingly waned in recent months. He has previously made threats he has not followed through with – subsequently dismissing them as jokes and military humour.
Only last week he told a Russian pro-war blogger that Wagner fighters in Bakhmut were down to their last days of supplies of bullets, and needed thousands of rounds of ammunition.
If shortages were not tackled then his mercenaries would be forced either to retreat or remain and die, he warned: “Then, no matter what our bureaucrats want, everything else will crumble.”
Prigozhin said that his forces had agreed to stay in Bakhmut until 10 May to allow Russia to mark Tuesday’s Victory Day celebrations.
In February, he posted another image of his dead troops and blamed army chiefs for their deaths. Although the military denied deliberately starving his Wagner group of shells, at the time they did respond by increasing supplies to the front line.
In his announcement, standing in front of his men, he said on 10 May they would be “obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds”.
The battle for Bakhmut has dragged for months and is thought to have claimed thousands of lives. Ukraine’s armed forces decided to defend the city at all costs in an apparent attempt to focus Russian military resources on one place of relatively little significance.
US-based military analyst Rob Lee argues that Wagner’s latest complaint of shortages likely reflects Russia’s defence ministry rationing ammunition ahead of Ukraine’s long anticipated counter-offensive. The ministry has to defend the whole front, but Prigozhin’s sole concern lies in taking Bakhmut, he wrote on Twitter.
Prigozhin has himself predicted that Ukraine’s counter-offensive will begin by 15 May, as tanks and artillery will be able to advance in dry weather, after the last spring rain.
In a separate move, Prigozhin appears to have hired an army general who was recently dismissed as logistics chief.
Col-Gen Mikhail Mizintsev was dubbed the butcher of Mariupol for his role in last year’s bombardment of Ukraine’s southern port city, captured by Russian forces a year ago.
Videos posted online show in at a Wagner training camp and then visiting positions in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin said earlier he had offered him the post of deputy to a Wagner commander, pointing out that the general had done his best to help supply mercenaries with ammunition and had co-operated with the group’s efforts to recruit convicted prisoners to its ranks.
Col-Gen Mizintsev was only put in charge of army logistics last September, shortly after Prigozhin was filmed inside a Russian prison telling inmates they would be freed from jail if they served with his men in Ukraine.
A new $300 million security assistance package for Ukraine was disclosed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday.
“This most recent package will assist Ukraine as it heroically defends itself against Russia’s harsh, unjustifiable, and unprovoked aggression. Russia’s conflict could be over today. The United States and our allies and partners will support Ukraine until Russia acts, for however long it takes, Blinken added.
It is the 37th reduction in US weapons and equipment for Ukraine, according to the top US diplomat.
Testing and diagnostic equipment to support vehicle maintenance and repair
Spare parts and other field equipment
Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the package comes after “extensive work by the US government over the past few months to fulfill Ukraine’s requests ahead of its planned counteroffensive and ensure they have the weapons and equipment they need.”
The White House said it will continue to work with allies to support Ukraine.
Previewing this aid package earlier this week, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby suggested the new package would be “very much focused on ammunition and clearing capabilities” to give Ukraine “what they need to break through Russian defenses.”
According to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the Netherlands on Wednesday in preparation for a speech he will give on Thursday at The Hague.
The title of Zelensky’s speech is “No Peace Without Justice.”
He will go to the International Criminal Court in The Hague later on Thursday, where war crimes from the invasion of Ukraine are being looked into, according to NOS.
Zelensky left Finland for the Netherlands, where he had a meeting with his Nordic colleagues on Wednesday.
In a statement ahead of that meeting, the Finnish president said the prime ministers of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland planned to discuss the war in Ukraine and Kyiv’s “initiative for a just peace.”
According to the Ukrainian military, messages aboard Russian drones that were launched towards Odesa overnight read “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin,” which are ostensibly references to an alleged murder attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The words on the drones’ two tails can be seen in photos published by Ukraine’s Southern Command, which the command claimed demonstrated the apparent “reason for the attack.”
15 Shahed-131/136 drones were fired at Odesa, according to the Southern Command, and 12 of them were shot down by mobile fire units and air defense forces. The other three impacted student housing at a university.
Ukraine has denied any involvement in what Russia says was a drone attack on the Kremlin and an assassination attempt against Putin early Wednesday morning.
Video on social media shows a bright flash and a puff of smoke over a part of the Kremlin, the official residence of the Russian president and the most potent symbol of power in Moscow. Putin was not in the building at the time, said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied the accusations, saying during a news conference: “We don’t attack Putin or Moscow.”
US officials said they were still assessing the incident, and had no information about who might have been responsible.
Meanwhile, A former Russian lawmaker linked with militant groups in the country told CNN the alleged attack was the work of Russian partisans, not the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to speak at The Hague as part of an unexpected visit to the Netherlands.
He is expected to also visit the International Criminal Court, which is investigating alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Explosions have been heard in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, a day after Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a drone attack on the Kremlin.
Attacks were also reported in Zaporizhzhia and Odesa in the south.
Russia has accused Ukraine of attempting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, but Mr Zelensky denied that his country carried out the attack.
On Wednesday, he said: “We don’t attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We are defending our villages and cities.”
Mr Zelensky was speaking in Finland, where he made a surprise visit and met his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto and the leaders of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
During his visit to the Netherlands, Mr Zelensky is expected to meet Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Dutch media said that the two were likely to discuss Mr Zelensky’s demands for more military support – namely long-range weapons and fighter jets.
Last January, Mr Rutte said that supplying fighter jets was not taboo, although such a move would be “a really big next step”.
Following the alleged drone attacks, Russia threatened to retaliate when and where it considered necessary.
On Wednesday, Russian strikes on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region killed 21 people. Officials said that the victims included supermarket customers and employees of an energy company who were performing repairs.
And in the early hours of Thursday morning, air raid sirens rang out across many Ukrainian regions. Loud blasts were reported in Kyiv and Odesa.
At the same time, a drone hit an oil refinery in southern Russia, setting part of it on fire – the latest in a series of explosions, fires and drone attacks that have occurred in Russia in recent weeks.
Some commentators have argued that the alleged drone strike on the Kremlin was internally conducted and purposefully staged by Russia.
The Institute for the Study of War said it is “extremely unlikely that two drones could have penetrated multiple layers of air defence and detonated or been shot down just over the heart of the Kremlin in a way that provided spectacular imagery caught nicely on camera”.
It said that “Russia likely staged this attack in an attempt to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilisation”.
Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said he thought Russia had staged the attack on the Kremlin to try to “show some kind of escalation on the part of Ukraine”.
But other commentators disagreed, saying that Russia would have little interest in making itself look “weak” by staging an attack that makes the Kremlin look vulnerable.
It would also lead to questions about how well-protected Mr Putin is – and about the effectiveness of Russian air defences.
Ukrainehas been accused by Russia of a thwarted conspiracy to assassinate its President, Vladimir Putin, in a nighttime drone strike on the Kremlin.
Moscow claimed Ukrainian forces targeted Russia’s parliament with two unmanned drones, but said these had been taken out by the military.
The Kremlin said the alleged attack, which it branded a “terrorist act”, did not cause any damage or casualties.
A statement said that Mr Putin was not inside the Kremlin at the time of the alleged attack. He is safe and continues to work with his schedule, it added.
The Kremlin did not present any evidence of the alleged attack and its statement included few details.
The state-owned Tass news agency quoted the statement as saying that the Kremlin considered the development to be a deliberate attempt on Mr Putin’s life ahead of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on 9 May.
The statement said: “Two unmanned aerialvehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the devices were put out of action.
“We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the president’s life, carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned.
“The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit.”
A senior Ukraine President’s Office official denied Kyiv had anything to do with the attack.
Officials said two drones were aimed at Kremlin, Russia’s parliament (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Officials said two drones were aimed at Kremlin, Russia’s parliament (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
It comes amid tit-for-tat attacks between the two sides as Ukraine prepares for an expected counter-offensive that analysts predict could be launched within weeks.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russia said a massive blaze broke out at an oil depot near a key bridge in the annexed Crimea region.
The oil depot erupted in flames in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, located east of the Russian-held Crimean Peninsula, according to Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratyev.
He did not say what caused the fire, which was described as extremely difficult to put out. But some Russian media outlets said it was likely caused by a Ukrainian drone attack overnight. There was no official comment on that possibility.
Local residents heard an explosion shortly before the fire erupted, Russian news site Baza said.
Explosions were heard in Kyiv and elsewhere during the night as Ukrainian air defences shot down 21 of the Russian drones, Ukraine’s Air Force Command said.
No damage or casualties were reported in the third attempt in six days by the Kremlin’s forces to hit Kyiv.
Both sides reportedly have experienced ammunition shortages after a winter of long-range shelling and missile strikes as the conflict became bogged down in a war of attrition.
Analysts believe Ukraine is targeting supply lines in the Russian rear as Kyiv gears up for its counteroffensive amid improving weather conditions and as it receives large amounts of weapons and ammunition from its Western allies.
According to reports, a fresh volley of Russian missiles launched into the Caspian Sea after experiencing “technical malfunctioning.”
Three rockets were fired towards Ukraine from a Tu-95MS, one of Vladimir Putin’s Soviet nuclear bombers.
According to the Crimean Wind Telegram channel, which cited a military source in Moscow, the purported error might have caused them to strike Russian residential buildings.
’It was very lucky that they fell right away,’ said the Russian general staff source.
Russia’s Tu-95MS strategic bomber landing during exercises held by the country’s strategic nuclear forces (Picture: Reuters)
‘They could have flown a little further and fallen on residential buildings, killing a lot of people.
’If we don’t figure out the reasons for the fall of the missiles, then such a tragedy is a matter of time.’
Russia has been regularly firing cruise missiles at Ukraine from over the Caspian Sea, killing civilians in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa.
There has already been much speculation about the malfunction, which caused further embarrassment to Putin’s army.
The source claimed the cause of the failure may be Western sanctions, forcing makers to use inferior components.
Other causes could be ‘negligence in the assembly’ or theft of components to flock on the black market.
This incident comes after two bombs unleashed from a Russian Su-34 mistakenly slammed into Belgorod city, close to the Ukrainian border.
Iurii Ihnat, spokesperson for the Air Force Command of the Ukraine, said recently that Russia is firing its missiles from the Caspian Sea because of their unreliability.
The ‘freelance descent of aviation munitions’ in Belgorod last week was not the first.
An explosion in such a large city was impossible to hide, so Russia had to admit the mistake, he stressed.
‘Why are they allowed to launch from the Caspian Sea?’ Mr Ihnat added. ‘Because a rocket fired from a war plane does not always start and fly to its target.
‘It just falls. It’s easier when it falls into the Caspian Sea than somewhere in Russia, on the head of Russians.’
A Russian freight train that was allegedly transporting oil and building supplies to the battle lines in Ukraine was derailed by an explosive device.
Several carriages are seen on fire and running off the tracks in the Bryansk region of Russia, less than 40 miles from the border, in video footage that was apparently taken shortly after the attack at around 10.20am local time today.
Later footage depicts the fire being put out and the carriages being nearly completely destroyed.
Military supplies have already been sent to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine using this method.
Local governor Alexander Bogomaz said there had been no injuries.
Russian authorities claim the border region, between Belarus to the west and Ukraine to the south, has witnessed repeated attacks since February of last year.
The explosion also comes as Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Leningrad Oblast, claimed on Telegram that a separate act of sabotage had destroyed key power lines outside of St Petersburg.
Mr Drozdenko added in his statement that the FSB, Russia’s federal security service, were investigating the incident.
He did not say which group authorities believe to have been responsible.
More than 14 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine is preparing to stage a significant counteroffensive against Putin’s forces with the aid of munitions, armoured vehicles and tanks supplied by Western allies.
Intelligence chief Major-General Kyrylo Budanov recently hinted Ukraine had been directly behind many of the acts of sabotage on Russian soil.
He said: ‘Much of this is no accident. Something is constantly on fire [in Russia]. Signalling equipment on railways, it lights up several times a day, on various highways constantly for two to three hours, sometimes five to six hours, traffic gets suspended.
‘Clearly it doesn’t just happen like this… I would put it this way: money works wonders.’
The US believes that since December, fighting in Ukraine has claimed the lives of around 20,000 Russian servicemen.
A further 80,000 have been wounded, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, citing newly declassified intelligence.
Half of the dead are from the Wagner mercenary company, who have been attacking the eastern Bakhmut city.
Russia has been trying to take the small city since last year in a grinding war of attrition.
Moscow currently holds most of Bakhmut, but Ukrainian troops are still control a small portion of the city in the west. The fierce battle has taken on huge symbolic importance for both sides.
Ukrainian officials have also said they are using the battle to kill as many of Russia’s troops as possible and wear down its reserves.
“Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the Donbas [region] largely through Bakhmut has failed,” Mr Kirby told reporters. “Russia has been unable to seize any real strategic and significant territory.
“We estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action,” he added.
The toll in Bakhmut accounts for losses since the start of December, according to the US figures.
“The bottom line is that Russia’s attempted offensive has backfired after months of fighting and extraordinary losses,” Mr Kirby said.
He added he was not giving estimates of Ukrainian casualties because “they are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor”.
The BBC is unable to independently verify the figures given and Moscow has not commented.
Image caption,A local resident pushes his bicycle down a street in Bakhmut in January
The capture of the city would bring Russia slightly closer to its goal of controlling the whole of Donetsk region, one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine annexed by Russia last September following referendums widely condemned outside Russia as a sham.
Analysts say Bakhmut has little strategic value, but has become a focal point for Russian commanders, who have struggled to deliver any positive news to the Kremlin.
The Wagner mercenary group – which widely uses convicts and has become notorious for its often inhumane methods – has taken centre stage in the Russian assault on Bakhmut.
Its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has staked his reputation, and that of his private army, on seizing the city.
But he recently threatened to pull his troops out of Bakhmut.
In a rare in-depth interview to a prominent Russian war blogger, he vowed to withdraw Wagner fighters if they were not provided with much-needed ammunition by the Russian defence ministry.
Wagner fighters could be redeployed to Mali, he warned.
He has often clashed with Russia’s defence ministry during the war, accusing officials of not providing his fighters with enough support.
Mr Prigozhin also called upon the Russian media and military leadership to “stop lying to the Russian population” ahead of an expected Ukrainian spring counteroffensive.
“We need to stop lying to the Russian population, telling them everything is all right,” he said.
He praised the Ukrainian military’s “good, correct military operations” and command.
A top Ukrainian general said on Monday that counterattacks had ousted Russian forces from some positions in Bakhmut, but the situation remained “difficult”.
New Russian units, including paratroopers and fighters from Wagner, are being “constantly thrown into battle” despite taking heavy losses, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said on Telegram.
“But the enemy is unable to take control of the city,” he said.
The US believes that since December, fighting in Ukraine has claimed the lives of around 20,000 Russian servicemen.
According to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, who was using recently released intelligence, an additional 80,000 people have been hurt.
The Wagner mercenary company, which has been targeting the eastern Bakhmut city, is responsible for half of the fatalities.
In a grueling war of attrition, Russia has been attempting to conquer the little city since last year.
Most of Bakhmut is currently under the hands of Moscow, while a tiny area to the west of the city is still under the control of Ukrainian forces. For both sides, the intense conflict has acquired a great deal of symbolic significance.
Ukrainian officials have also said they are using the battle to kill as many of Russia’s troops as possible and wear down its reserves.
“Russia’s attempt at an offensive in the Donbas [region] largely through Bakhmut has failed,” Mr Kirby told reporters. “Russia has been unable to seize any real strategic and significant territory.
“We estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action,” he added.
The toll in Bakhmut accounts for losses since the start of December, according to the US figures.
“The bottom line is that Russia’s attempted offensive has backfired after months of fighting and extraordinary losses,” Mr Kirby said.
He added he was not giving estimates of Ukrainian casualties because “they are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor”.
The BBC is unable to independently verify the figures given and Moscow has not commented.
Image caption,A local resident pushes his bicycle down a street in Bakhmut in January
The capture of the city would bring Russia slightly closer to its goal of controlling the whole of Donetsk region, one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine annexed by Russia last September following referendums widely condemned outside Russia as a sham.
Analysts say Bakhmut has little strategic value, but has become a focal point for Russian commanders, who have struggled to deliver any positive news to the Kremlin.
The Wagner mercenary group – which widely uses convicts and has become notorious for its often inhumane methods – has taken centre stage in the Russian assault on Bakhmut.
Its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has staked his reputation, and that of his private army, on seizing the city.
But he recently threatened to pull his troops out of Bakhmut.
In a rare in-depth interview to a prominent Russian war blogger, he vowed to withdraw Wagner fighters if they were not provided with much-needed ammunition by the Russian defence ministry.
Wagner fighters could be redeployed to Mali, he warned.
He has often clashed with Russia’s defence ministry during the war, accusing officials of not providing his fighters with enough support.
Mr Prigozhin also called upon the Russian media and military leadership to “stop lying to the Russian population” ahead of an expected Ukrainian spring counteroffensive.
“We need to stop lying to the Russian population, telling them everything is all right,” he said.
He praised the Ukrainian military’s “good, correct military operations” and command.
A top Ukrainian general said on Monday that counterattacks had ousted Russian forces from some positions in Bakhmut, but the situation remained “difficult”.
New Russian units, including paratroopers and fighters from Wagner, are being “constantly thrown into battle” despite taking heavy losses, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said on Telegram.
“But the enemy is unable to take control of the city,” he said.
Russia has attacked Ukraine with a barrage of missile and artillery fire, the second early-morning assault in three days.
One person died in Kherson region and 25 people – including three children – were injured in Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukraine’s armed forces said 15 of 18 missiles fired were intercepted by the country’s air defence.
One of the main targets was the city of Pavlohrad near Dnipro – a Russian-installed official said resources for a Ukrainian offensive were hit.
Writing on Telegram with a thumbs-up gesture, Vladimir Rogov said missiles targeted railway infrastructure and fuel depots.
Nineteen high-rise apartment blocks, 25 private houses, six schools and kindergartens and five shops were also damaged.
Pavlohrad is in Ukrainian-held territory, around 70 miles (110km) from the frontline.
Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk military administration described it as a “tragic night and morning”.
In Kyiv, the air raid alert sounded at around 04:00 local time (02:00 GMT) and lasted for about three hours. The military administration said all missiles and drones directed at the capital were destroyed.
In the Kherson region – which is still partly controlled by Russia – Ukrainian regional authorities said Russia had carried out 39 shellings.
They came from ground-based weapons, as well as drones and planes, the authorities said.
Recent days have seen an increase in attacks in Ukraine, with places away from the front lines being targeted. On Friday, 23 people were killed in the central city of Usman.
Ukraine says it is finishing plans for a long-awaited offensive against Russian forces, supported by Western-supplied weapons and military equipment.
Russia, meanwhile, is also preparing for a Ukrainian push, and has fortified its positions in occupied territory.
In the latest change at the country’s military leadership, Cl Gen Mikhail Mizintsev – the Russian deputy defence minister who oversaw armed forces logistics – has been sacked, after being appointed to the role only last September.
There have been longstanding complaints that front line troops are not getting sufficient military equipment, and suffer shortages of food and uniforms.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian official on Monday said the army had ousted Russian forces from some positions in Bakhmut, an eastern city that has been under siege for months.
General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of ground forces, said on Telegram the situation remained “quite difficult” – but “the enemy is unable to take control of the city”.
Officials in the eastern Ukraine province of Donetsk, which is seized by Russia, report that two people have died and 12 have been injured as a result of shelling.
“Twelve civilians were wounded to varying degrees of severity in the Petrovsky and Leninsky districts of Donetsk, Yasinovataya,” the Donetsk People’s Republic said in a statement.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian territories that Moscow unlawfully annexed last year and has been held by separatists with Russian support for eight years.
This past weekend, there were a flurry of purported Ukrainian strikes. The local governor reported that two civilians were murdered in a village in the Bryansk area of Russia as a result of Ukrainian shelling.
Meanwhile, two civilians have died in a village in Russia’s Bryansk region following Ukrainian shelling, the local governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
One residential building had been completely destroyed and another two houses were partially damaged, he said.
The Bryansk region shares a border to its south with Ukraine and to its west with Belarus.
⚡️The Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled the village of Suzemka in the Bryansk region, Russia. pic.twitter.com/xQkqvuevHl
On Saturday, officials in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine reported attacks. A suspected drone triggered a fire in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol while the southern Ukrainian town of Nova Kakhovka came under “severe artillery fire.”
The news comes amid warnings from Ukraine that its preparations are almost complete for a spring counter-offensive that many experts believe could mark a pivotal moment in the conflict.
The newest Russian tanks have been introduced to the Ukrainian battlefield by Vladimir Putin.
According to the state news agency RIA, Russian forces have begun firing on Ukrainian positions with the T-14 Armata but have not yet “participated in direct assault operations.”
The ‘invisible tank’ moniker comes from the developers who boasted about the armored vehicle’s high speed of 50 mph and claimed it could avoid hostile radar detection.
It is claimed to be outfitted with cutting-edge technology, as well as an autonomous turret and additional protection on its flanks. It is regarded as Russia’s most dreaded tank.
Crews control its weapons remotely from ‘an isolated armoured capsule located in the front of the hull’ and RIA said the tanks underwent ‘combat coordination’ at training grounds in Ukraine before they were deployed.
But it’s taken some time for the war machine to be called into action since they were first unveiled by Putin at Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow in 2015, and they’ve been highly criticised by the British military as ‘untrustworthy’.
The T-14 was among the new vehicles on show for the first time that day – but it broke down on its debut outing in the rehearsal, leading to an awkward recovery effort.
The Armata T-14 tank is considered to be Russian’s most feared (Picture: Getty Images)
British military intelligence reported in January that Russian forces in Ukraine were reluctant to accept the first batch of the tanks because of their ‘poor condition’.
It also said any deployment of the T-14 would likely be ‘a high-risk decision’ for Russia and one taken mainly to serve propaganda purposes.
The British military said: ‘Production is probably only in the low tens while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat.
‘11 years in development, the programme has been dogged with delays, reduction in planned fleet size, and reports of manufacturing problems.’
Russia’s T-14 Armata tank
Cost: £5.6 million
Main weapon: 125mm smoothbore cannon
Secondary weapons: 12.7mm Kord machine gun, 7.62 mm PKTM machine gun
Armour: 44S-sv-Sh steel
Engine: 12Н360 diesel double turbocharger
Top speed: 50mph
Weight: 55 tonnes
Length: 35ft
Width: 11ft
Height: 11ft
Crew: 3
According to Russian media reports, the Kremlin ordered 2,300 of the tanks to be manufactured by 2020, but the date was later pushed back to 2025.
In December 2021, the Interfax news agency reported state conglomerate Rostec had started production of 40 tanks and anticipated they’d be ready by this year.
Nato has already been equipping the Ukrainian army with dozens of state-of-the-art battle tanks, which could soon come face-to-face with the T-14.
Among its many new systems, T-14 developers UralVagonZavod claimed one of its most advanced capabilities was being able to screen itself from enemy radar and infrared heat-seeking target finders.
A cloaking device is reportedly buried deep behind a shield inside the heavily armoured body, which disrupts the infrared signature that would pinpoint its location for enemy forces.
The manufacturer’s head of special equipment Vyacheslav Khalitov said: ‘We essentially made the invisible tank.’
This week, Ukrainian forces crossed the Dnipro River for the first time since the invasion last year in preparation for a counter attack.
Speculation has been growing over when the Ukrainian army would launch its counter offensive to try and push back Russian troops.
