Tag: BLUX

Dutch intelligence tipped CIA on alleged Ukraine plan to attack Nord Stream, broadcaster reports

AMSTERDAM, June 13 (Reuters) – A Dutch intelligence agency tipped off the CIA about an alleged Ukrainian plan in June 2022 to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, Dutch national broadcaster NOS reported on Tuesday.

The NOS report, which was compiled with help from leading German media outlets, did not identify its sources.

It said that the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD had warned the CIA of the existence of such a plan, leading to a warning from Washington to Kyiv not to attack the pipeline.

Unexplained explosions ruptured both Nord Stream 1 and the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carrying gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, in September.

The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. Both countries said the explosions were deliberate, but have yet to determine who was responsible. Those countries and Germany are investigating.

Washington and NATO called the incident “an act of sabotage”. Moscow accused investigators of dragging their feet and trying to conceal who was behind the attack. Ukraine denies responsibility.

The MIVD could not immediately be reached for comment.

Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Conor Humphries

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June 13, 2023
Drones attack Ukrainian capital, Moscow says US behind Kremlin drone
White House, Kyiv deny Russian accusations

Zelenskiy visits The Hague, says Putin must face justice

Diplomats work on extending Black Sea grains deal
KYIV, May 4 (Reuters) – Russian drones attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday evening, the fourth assault in as many days subjecting residents to spasms of gunfire and explosions, and at least one drone was shot down.

City authorities had declared an alert for Kyiv and the surrounding area. Residents who had gone to air raid shelters said the drones arrived more quickly than usual after the alerts were declared. Reuters witnesses heard gunfire and repeated heavier explosions near the city centre.

The attacks started just after 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) and lasted around 20 minutes. Ukraine’s air force said in a statement that it had destroyed one of its own drones after the drone lost control over Kyiv region, probably because of a technical failure. It wasn’t clear how many drones in total were destroyed.

Russia said on Thursday that the United States was behind a purported drone attack on the Kremlin aiming to kill President Vladimir Putin. Washington and Kyiv denied involvement.

Putin will head a scheduled meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Friday and the Kremlin incident could be on the agenda, TASS news agency reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in The Hague after visiting the International Court of Justice, said Putin must be brought to justice over the war and that Kyiv would work to create a new tribunal for this purpose.

In other diplomacy, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on a visit to Brazil that she encouraged the government to include Ukraine in any attempt to negotiate an end to the war. She was referring to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s comments calling on the West to stop arming Ukraine to allow peace talks to start.

There are currently no peace talks to end the war, which has devastated Ukrainian towns and cities, killed thousands of people and driven millions from their homes.

FRONTLINE ACTION

Nearly 50 Russian attacks were repelled along the main sectors of the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Thursday evening. The heaviest fighting is still in Bakhmut and in Maryinka, further south in Donetsk region, it said.

Russian forces also launched 66 air raids and engaged in 33 shelling episodes on Ukrainian positions and on towns and villages, causing casualties and damaging infrastructure, the report said.

Smoke rises over the city after remains of a shot down Russian drone landed on buildings, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine May 4, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer

Reuters was not able to verify the battlefield accounts.

MOSCOW CITES ‘US ORDERS’

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, without providing evidence, said Ukraine had acted on U.S. orders to attack the Kremlin citadel in the early hours of Wednesday.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby dismissed Russian “lies” and said there still was no conclusive evidence as to the authenticity of a video showing the drone at the Kremlin.

“Attempts to disown this (attack on the Kremlin), both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington,” Peskov told reporters.

Peskov said an urgent investigation was under way and that any response would be carefully considered and balanced.

Russia has increasingly accused the United States of being a direct participant in the war, intent on inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Moscow. Washington denies this, saying it is arming Kyiv to defend itself and retake illegally seized land.

KYIV, ODESA TARGETED

Earlier on Thursday, Russia fired two dozen combat drones at Ukraine, hitting Kyiv and also striking a university campus in the Black Sea city of Odesa. There were no reports of casualties. Russia denies targeting civilians in Ukraine.

Diplomats, meanwhile, are still working to keep a package deal for Ukrainian and Russian agricultural exports alive beyond May 18. Technical personnel from Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Nations will meet on Friday to discuss the deal, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said.

Russia has a list of demands it wants met for continuation of the Black Sea grains pact, which the U.N. said helps tackle a global food crisis aggravated by Russian forces invading neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.

Zelenskiy has vowed to drive all invading Russian forces back to the borders set in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He said on Thursday the whole of Ukrainian society was preparing for a counteroffensive, which he said would be successful against what he called a “demotivated” Russia.

Reporting by Kyiv, Moscow and Amsterdam buros
Writing by Gareth Jones
Editing by Nick Macfie

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May 4, 2023
Cash-loving Germans fret over exploding ATMs as cross-border crime wave hits

RATINGEN, Germany, April 14 (Reuters) – In the German town of Ratingen, exploding cash machines are a hot-button topic.

Two got blown up early on the same morning last month, at branches of Santander (SAN.MC) and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) across the street from each other close to the Duesseldorf suburb’s main square.

A year ago, residents of the apartments above Santander unsuccessfully sued to have the machines removed due to concerns they could be raided – a gesture that might in retrospect be deemed prophetic in other countries.

But in Germany, thieves are blowing ATMs up at the rate of more than one a day.

Attacks are up more than 40% since 2019, according to the interior ministry, and investigators say two factors are driving the increase.

Europe’s largest economy has 53,000 ATM machines, a disproportionately high number that reflects Germans’ preference for cash rather than bank cards. The country also boasts an extensive network of highways, or Autobahns, on much of which no speed limit is enforced.

Ratingen lies just 70km (40 miles) from the Dutch border, and investigators say gangs from the Netherlands are the prime culprits for the attacks, which send glass flying, cause building facades to crumble and money cartridges to crack open.

Raiders got away with nearly 20 million euros ($22.1 million) in 2021, when 392 ATM explosions were recorded, a tally that rose to 496 in 2022. Police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Ratingen lies and which has borne the brunt of the attacks, have recorded 47 incidents so far in 2023, up on last year’s rate.

Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

DUTCH RAIDERS

Meanwhile the frequency of ATM attackers is falling in the Netherlands, partly due to security measures such as glue that makes blocks of cash inside ATMs unusable, Dutch police say.

So Dutch cash machine raiders are crossing the border and, German police estimate, have carried out between 70% to 80% of attacks in Germany since 2018.

Dutch police suspect around 500 men are responsible, working in ever-evolving groups as new recruits replace those who get caught. Prosecutors in Frankfurt this week charged six Dutch citizens with causing explosions, theft and property damage.

Reuters Graphics

Ratingen police are investigating a possible Dutch connection in last month’s twin raid too, having identified a small vehicle that sped from the scene to a nearby Autobahn.

On Thursday, nearly a month after the attacks, Santander’s facade remained boarded up. Deutsche Bank’s sign was still damaged, and a sign asked for customers’ understanding that ATMs were out of order while under repair.

In Germany, roughly 60% of everyday purchases are paid in cash, according to a Bundesbank study that found Germans, on average, withdrew more than 6,600 euros annually chiefly from cash machines.

Germany is also working with officials in Belgium and France and at Europol to combat the cash machine crime wave. The partner authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

Noting that ATM raids endangered lives, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser this week urged banks to step up safety measures for ATMs.

Both Santander and Deutsche said they prioritised safety and were continuously improving ATM security, but banks inside Germany are reluctant to adopt blanket measures, instead advocating a case-by-case approach depending on individual security risk.

A spokesperson for Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, a umbrella lobby group for the nation’s financial institutions, said: “Different locations come with different risks. There is currently no one-size-fits-all solution.”

($1 = 0.9044 euros)

Additional reporting by Milan Pavicic; editing by John Stonestreet

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Tom Sims

Thomson Reuters

Covers German finance with a focus on big banks, insurance companies, regulation and financial crime, previous experience at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in Europe and Asia.

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April 14, 2023
Russian charged with war crimes may brief U.N. Security Council

UNITED NATIONS, April 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, is likely to brief an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council this week, according to a note seen by Reuters on Monday.

Russia, which holds the monthly rotating presidency of the 15-member body for April, told council members in a note that it plans to hold an informal meeting on Wednesday on Ukraine, focused on “evacuating children from conflict zone.”

“Participants will hear ‘first hand’ information from the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Russian Federation, as well as from children evacuated from the conflict area,” read the note.

The commissioner is Maria Lvova-Belova. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, as well as the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Moscow invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.

“They cannot invite a credible briefer because they do not have any credibility on this issue,” Britain’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki told Reuters in a statement. “Russian leaders have been charged by the ICC with unlawfully deporting children from Ukraine to Russia. That is a war crime.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Monday that the meeting briefers would be announced shortly. Such meetings are held at U.N. headquarters, but not in the Security Council chamber, and briefings can be done virtually.

‘APRIL FOOL’S JOKE’

Moscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

Nebenzia told reporters last month that the informal meeting of Security Council members to be held on Wednesday had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova.

While a feature of Russia’s presidency, members do not need to be the rotating monthly president to hold such meetings.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to travel to New York to chair formal Security Council meetings later in the month on the Middle East and on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the U.N. Charter.”

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has criticized Russia for violating the founding U.N. Charter by invading its neighbor and called for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in line with the principles of the U.N. Charter.

Given Russia’s Security Council presidency started on April 1, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters on Monday: “It’s like an April Fool’s joke … We expect that they will behave professionally.”

“But we also expect that they will use their seat to spread disinformation and to promote their own agenda as it relates to Ukraine, and we will stand ready to call them out at every single moment that they attempt to do that,” she said.

Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Don Durfee and Bill Berkrot

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April 4, 2023
Putin ally proposing banning ICC in Russia

March 25 (Reuters) – Russia’s parliament speaker on Saturday proposed banning the activities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crimes.

Vyacheslav Volodin, an ally of Putin’s, said that Russian legislation should be amended to prohibit any activity of the ICC in Russia and to punish any who gave “assistance and support” to the ICC.

“It is necessary to work out amendments to legislation prohibiting any activity of the ICC on the territory of our country,” Volodin said in a Telegram post.

Volodin said that the United States had legislated to prevent its citizens ever being tried by the Hague court and that Russia should continue that work.

Any assistance or support for the ICC inside Russia, he said, should be punishable under law.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant earlier this month accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. It said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility.

Russian officials have cautioned that any attempt to arrest Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, would amount to a declaration of war against the world’s largest nuclear power.

In its first warrant for Ukraine, the ICC called for Putin’s arrest on suspicion of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation since Feb. 24, 2022.

The Kremlin says the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.

Big powers such as Russia, the United States and China are not members of the ICC though 123 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, including Britain, France, Germany and some former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan.

Ukraine is not a member of the ICC, although Kyiv granted it jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed on its territory.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Guy Faulconbridge

Thomson Reuters

As Moscow bureau chief, Guy runs coverage of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Before Moscow, Guy ran Brexit coverage as London bureau chief (2012-2022). On the night of Brexit, his team delivered one of Reuters historic wins – reporting news of Brexit first to the world and the financial markets. Guy graduated from the London School of Economics and started his career as an intern at Bloomberg. He has spent over 14 years covering the former Soviet Union. He speaks fluent Russian.
Contact: +447825218698

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March 25, 2023
Russia’s war on Ukraine latest: Ukraine slams Putin’s nuclear weapons plan

March 26 (Reuters) – A top security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russian plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus would destabilise that country, which he said had been taken “hostage” by Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the decision on Saturday, sending a warning to NATO over its military support for Ukraine and escalating a standoff with the West.

DIPLOMACY AND SANCTIONS

* Russia and China are not creating a military alliance and the cooperation between their armed forces is “transparent”, Putin said in comments broadcast on Sunday, days after hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Kremlin.

* Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday he would push for fair peace in the war in Ukraine that included “territorial integrity”, when he visits China next week.

* Putin held a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, the Kremlin said. Erdogan thanked Putin for his “positive attitude” in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the Kremlin said in a statement.

BATTLEFIELD

* Ukrainian forces have managed to blunt Russia’s offensive in and around the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, where the situation is stabilising, commander in chief General Valery Zaluzhniy said on Saturday. Separately, Britain’s defence ministry said the months-long Russian assault on the city had stalled, mainly as a result of heavy troop losses.

* The Ukraine General Staff said on Sunday Ukrainian forces had repelled 85 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours in several parts of the eastern front, including the Bakhmut area.

* U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Saturday he will visit the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine next week to assess the serious situation there.

* More than 5,000 former criminals have been pardoned after finishing their contracts to fight in Russia’s Wagner mercenary group against Ukraine, the founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday.

*Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.

ECONOMY

* Ukraine will no longer resort to “dangerous” monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview.

RECENT IN-DEPTH STORIES

* INSIGHT-Inside Ukraine’s scramble for “game-changer” drone fleet

* Peace plans and pipelines: What came out of the Putin-Xi talks?

* SPECIAL REPORT-Wagner’s convicts tell of horrors of Ukraine war and loyalty to their leader

Compiled by Reuters editors

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March 25, 2023
Exclusive: Ukraine accuses Russian snipers of abusing child, gang raping mother
Soldiers assaulted family soon after invasion, prosecutors say

Ukraine accuses Russian army of widespread sexual assaults

President Vladimir Putin’s government denies atrocities
KYIV, March 14 (Reuters) – Ukraine has accused two Russian soldiers of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father, as part of widespread allegations of abuse during the more than one-year-long invasion.

According to Ukrainian prosecution files seen by Reuters, the incidents were among a spree of sex crimes Russian soldiers of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade committed in four homes of Brovary district near the capital Kyiv in March 2022.

Russia’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Phone numbers listed for the brigade were out of order. Two officials at the Samara Garrison, of which the brigade is a part, said they were unable to give contacts for the unit when contacted by Reuters, with one saying they were classified.

During Moscow’s failed push to capture Kyiv after its Feb. 24 invasion, soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, looting and using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to terrorise the population, the Ukrainian prosecutors said.

“They singled out the women beforehand, coordinated their actions and their roles,” said the prosecutors, whose 2022 documents were based on interviews with witnesses and survivors.

Most of the alleged atrocities took place on March 13, when soldiers “in a state of alcoholic intoxication, broke into the yard of the house where a young family lived,” the prosecutors alleged.

The father was beaten with a metal pot then forced to kneel while his wife was gang raped. One of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl he “will make her a woman” before she was abused, the documents said.

The family survived, though prosecutors said they are investigating additional crimes in the area including murders during the same period.

President Vladimir Putin’s government, which says it is fighting Western-backed “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, has repeatedly denied allegations of atrocities. It has also denied that its military commanders are aware of sexual violence by soldiers.

The soldiers were both snipers, aged 32 and 28, the files said, adding that the former had died while the younger, named as Yevgeniy Chernoknizhniy, returned to Russia.

When Reuters asked for the identities of both soldiers, prosecutors provided only the name of the younger man. When Reuters called a number in online databases for him, a person saying he was Chernoknizhniy’s brother said he was deceased.

“He died. There’s no way you can get hold of him,” said the man, crying. “That’s all that I can say.”

Reuters was unable to independently confirm his assertion.

GROWING ACCUSATIONS

The two snipers were among six suspects accused in the Brovary assaults, which prosecutors say is one of the most extensive investigations of sexual abuse since the invasion.

After the alleged attack on the girl and her parents, the two soldiers entered the house of an elderly couple next door, where they beat them, prosecutors said, also raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl.

At another location where several families lived, the soldiers forced everyone into the kitchen and gang raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother, they said.

All the victims survived, prosecutors said, and were receiving psychological and medical assistance.

A pre-trial investigation is ongoing into the possible role of superior officials in the Brovary attacks, prosecutors said, in a case adding to growing allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Russian soldiers.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office says it is investigating more than 71,000 reports of war crimes received since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops over the border.

Ukrainian investigators know the probability of finding and punishing suspects is low and potential trials would be mainly in absentia, but there are also international efforts to prosecute war crimes including by the International Criminal Court.

While suspects are unlikely to be surrendered by Moscow, anyone convicted in absentia may be placed on international watchlists, which would make it difficult to travel.

Russia has also accused Ukrainian forces of war crimes, including the execution of 10 prisoners of war.

A U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has said that most of the dozens of sexual violence accusations pointed at the Russian military.

So far, Ukrainian prosecutors have convicted 26 Russians of war crimes – some prisoners of war, some in absentia – of which one was for rape.

Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam and Stefaniia Bern in Kyiv;
Additional reporting by Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova;
Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Cawthorne

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March 15, 2023