Tag: Live updates: Russia's war in Ukraine

White House National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent allegation that “Western intelligence services” are involved in “terrorist attacks” carried out within Russia, saying Wednesday that the United States does not “enable or encourage Ukrainians to strike outside of Ukraine.”

CNN previously reported that during a meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Wednesday, Putin alleged without evidence that “terrorist attacks are regularly carried out against government officials and law enforcement agencies, journalists, public figures, school and university teachers. … Moreover, neo-Nazis and their accomplices operate not only on the territory of the new subjects of the Federation, but also commit crimes in other regions” – references to the Ukrainian regions Russia claims to have annexed, and the rest of the Russian regions.

“There is reason to believe that the potential of third countries of Western intelligence services is involved in the preparation of such sabotage and terrorist attacks,” Putin added. 

Vladlen Tatarsky, a pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger, was killed by an explosion at a St. Petersburg café on Sunday. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) said Monday that the explosion that killed him involved agents of the Ukrainian special services and associates of the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Kirby underscored that American intelligence involvement has been aimed at helping Ukrainians defend their territory. 

“(F)rom the early days of this war, we have been providing intelligence and information support to the Ukrainian armed forces to enable them to better defend themselves, to conduct operations and to continue to try to claw back territory that the Russians illegally took from them when they invaded – actually, even since 2014. And I won’t get into the details of what that intelligence is or how it’s delivered, but it is very much intended to help … them defend their territory,” Kirby said. 

“We do not enable nor do we encourage the Ukrainians to strike outside of Ukraine. And I really just – I’m going to leave it at that,” he added.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin, without presenting evidence, accused Western intelligence services of being involved in “terrorist attacks” carried out within Russia.

“Terrorist attacks are regularly carried out against government officials and law enforcement agencies, journalists, public figures, school and university teachers,” Putin said on Wednesday during a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, adding that “accomplices” also operate in Ukrainian regions claimed to be annexed by Russia.

“There is reason to believe that the potential of third countries of Western intelligence services is involved in the preparation of such sabotage and terrorist attacks,” he said.

Death of Russian military blogger: Vladlen Tatarsky, a pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger, was killed by an explosion at a St. Petersburg café on Sunday.

Within Russia, suspicion has fallen on Ukrainian special services, informal Russian opposition groups and associates of the jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, though his supporters have denied having anything to do with the explosion.

Russian authorities have charged Daria Trepova with terrorism offenses over Tatarsky’s death, alleging that Trepova — acting at the behest of Ukraine — brought a “statuette filled with explosives” to the venue and handed it to Tatarsky. Trepova’s husband, Dmitry Rylov, told an independent Russian publication that he is convinced his wife was framed.

Ukraine has said little about the explosion, beyond blaming infighting in Russia. 

Pledge to prevent “sabotage:” The Russian government also said Wednesday that it would step up efforts to stymie sabotage and enemy intelligence operations in the four declared annexed Ukrainian regions, according to state media.

“Attention was drawn to preventing recruitment activities by Western intelligence services, to identify agents of influence, to counter the spread of the ideology of neo-Nazism and religious extremism, primarily among children and youth,” Patrushev told reporters following the meeting of the Security Council, as quoted by RIA.

“Attempts to destabilize the socio-political situation and undermine the constitutional order will be severely suppressed in accordance with Russian legislation,” he added.

Russia’s stated plan to place nuclear weapons in Belarus is proof that talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in March failed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.

Though China had appeared to position itself as a peace broker between Russia and Ukraine in the weeks leading up to Xi’s three-day state visit to Moscow, the meetings between the two leaders did not yield a meaningful breakthrough on resolving the conflict.

The Ukrainian president also said Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko has “lost any importance,” claiming he “doesn’t decide anything about what kind of weapons are based in his country.”

Some background: Putin announced last week that Moscow will construct a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, completing it by the start of July. Lukashenko welcomed the move in a national address Friday, adding that Russia could also station strategic nuclear weapons in his country.

The mentioning of strategic nukes, which can decimate entire cities, is an escalation in rhetoric from Lukashenko. Russia has not publicly announced any plans to send strategic nuclear weapons to Belarus.

Global reaction: While there is no guarantee Putin will follow through on his plans for Belarus, any nuclear signaling by Putin causes concern in the West.

Ukraine, NATO and the European Union’s top diplomat have condemned the plan. The US has downplayed the move, saying there are no indications Russia will use nuclear weapons.

The nuclear announcement comes as Putin faces mounting problems elsewhere. Read CNN analysis on the decision here.

CNN’s Andrew Carey, Ivana Kottasová, Lindsay Isaac and Anna Chernova contributed to this report.

Ukraine has decided to boycott Olympic qualifying events in which Russians are competing for the Paris 2024 Games.

It comes after International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach outlined new guidelines on Tuesday that would allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals, paving the way for their participation.

In a televised interview on Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday Oleh Nemchinov, the Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, acknowledged that the decision means some Ukrainian athletes will miss their chance to participate in the Games.

“You know, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” he said, when he asked what will happen to the Ukrainian athletes. He added that while this decision might impact the athletes careers, ultimately “you and your children’s lives will be saved.”

Ukrainian skeleton star and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympian Vladyslav Heraskevych told CNN on Wednesday that the IOC’s decision to allow Russian and Belarussian athletes to participate in international competitions comes as “a slap in the face, not only to Ukrainian athletes but to all Ukraine and all Ukrainians.”

But Heraskevych also told CNN that boycotting Paris 2024 Games should be up to athletes and that “athletes should decide their own road.”

The whole of Ukraine is traumatized since Russia’s invasion last year, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova.

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour from Kyiv, Dzhaparova said she thinks “a long-term process of recovery will be happening after the resolution of war,” but added that “at this stage of the war it’s still an existential matter of survival so we need to survive physically and after that, we can speak about the mental recovery.” 

The deputy minister told CNN she has seen her two daughters, who are abroad, only three times since the invasion. 

The four main battlefields, according to Dzhaparova, are Lyman, Mariinka, Avdiivka and Bakhmut.  

The situation in Bakhmut is “still terrible,” she said.   

Approximately 17% of Ukrainian soil is “still under occupation,” down from what she said was 20% at the beginning of the invasion.  

Olesya Krivtsova thinks it’s because she was neither the first, nor the last, to criticize the war in Ukraine that she scared Russian authorities as much as she did.

Her social media posts were neither particularly strident nor unusual, she told CNN, reflecting those of so many other university students across the country. And that, she believes, is where her troubles started: when her fellow students denounced her to authorities in need of an example.

Now in Lithuania and on Moscow’s list of most wanted criminals, the softly spoken, slight 20-year-old from Russia’s northwestern Arkhangelsk region makes for an unlikely villain. But from the start, Russian authorities seemed to have singled her out for harsh punishment with particular zeal.

According to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights media group, most of the 447 Russians prosecuted for anti-war activity since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year have been charged with “disseminating false information.” But Krivtsova was placed under house arrest in January, and banned from using the internet on the far more serious charges of discrediting the Russian army and justifying terrorism. OVD-Info reports 49 people have been charged for discrediting the army and 30 for justifying terrorism.

Those charges relate to an Instagram story she posted about the Crimean bridge blast last October, which also criticized Russia for invading Ukraine, and for making an allegedly critical repost of the war in a student chat on the Russian social network VK.

Her voice should have remained a little one, she said, but for the repression she faced.

Read more here.

Russia plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, President Vladimir Putin told state television Saturday.

Moscow will complete the construction of a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by the beginning of July, Putin told state broadcaster Russia 1.

The Russian leader said Moscow has already transferred an Iskander short-range missile system – which can be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads – to Belarus.

During the interview, Putin also said Russia has helped Belarus convert 10 aircraft to make them capable of carrying tactical nuclear warheads. Russia will start training pilots to fly the re-configured planes early next month, he added.

Key context: The government in Belarus, which is situated west of Russia on Ukraine’s long northern border, is among Moscow’s closest allies.

Belarus has had no nuclear weapons on its territory since the early 1990s. Shortly after gaining independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it agreed to transfer all Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction stationed there to Russia.

Belarus helped Russia launch its initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, allowing the Kremlin’s troops to enter the country from the north. There have been fears throughout the conflict that Belarus will again be used as a launching ground for an offensive, or that Minsk’s own troops will join the conflict.

Global tensions: Even though there is no guarantee the Russian leader will follow through with his plan to station the weapons in Belarus, any nuclear signaling by Putin will cause concern in the West.

Since invading Ukraine more than a year ago, the Russian leader has used escalating rhetoric on a number of occasions, warning of the “increasing” threat of nuclear war and suggesting Moscow may abandon its “no first use” policy.

The United States has sought to make it clear to Putin the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, even low-yield tactical devices.

Speaking in October, US President Joe Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “It would be irresponsible for me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” in response to nuclear use by Russia.

But Biden hinted at the possibility of a rapid escalation in events. 

“The mistakes get made, the miscalculation could occur, no one could be sure what would happen and it could end in Armageddon,” he said.

CNN’s Peter Wilkinson, Frederik Pletigen, Zahra Ullah, Claudia Otto and Rob Picheta contributed.

The United Nations says it has documented dozens of cases of summary executions of prisoners of war (POWs) carried out by both Russian and Ukrainian forces since February 2022, but admits it is far harder to get information from Russia, or territories under Russian control than it is from Ukrainian authorities.

In a new report, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says it has documented the summary execution of 15 Ukrainian POWs by Russian forces, in addition to the use of Ukrainian POWs as human shields, the death of two wounded POWs due to lack of medical care, as well as torture. 

Among the cases documented in the report is that of an officer of the Ukrainian National Guard tortured and then executed after refusing to hand over a password for entry to a radio station in Mariupol in April 2022. In another case, in September, a wounded Ukrainian serviceman was shot three times in the chest and once in the head after being captured by fighters from the Wagner mercenary group in a village south of Bakhmut. 

The report also highlights the lack of cooperation UN investigators have received from Russian and Russian-occupying authorities, saying it has been unable to gain any access to POWs interned by the Russian Federation, despite repeated such requests. It mentions one occasion only, in August, when a UN team was allowed to meet, but not interview, 13 Ukrainian POWs held in Russian-occupied Luhansk.

On the other side, the report says it has documented – through open-source information, in situ visits and witness interviews – the summary execution of at least 25 Russian POWs being held by Ukrainian forces. 

In one incident in March 2022 in the Luhansk region, the UN report suggests some members of Russian-affiliated armed groups were killed by Ukrainian servicemen after refusing to pronounce their intent to surrender. The UN report says the Russian fighters, some possibly injured or dead, were lying on the ground in the wake of an artillery attack.

In contrast to the lack of cooperation from Russian authorities, the report says UN teams have been given “full and confidential access” to Russian POWs held in official places of internment by Ukraine, “which OHCHR acknowledges with great appreciation.”

Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have kept up their bombardments across the Donetsk region, with more than 200 strikes against the Bakhmut area alone in the past 24 hours — but they claim the Russians are losing hundreds of men a day across the front lines.

The eastern city of Bakhmut remains “the focus of the enemy’s main attack,” according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the armed forces.

Cherevatyi said it was difficult to tell whether the intensity of Russian attacks around Bakhmut was waning because of factors such as weather, the rotation of units or reserves being brought forward by the Russians.

However, he said Russian tactics have remained the same with small tactical groups “trying to deplete our defenses.” He said soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group are near Bakhmut, with Russian troops providing reinforcements where necessary.

Cherevatyi drew a distinction between the battle for Bakhmut and fighting elsewhere. He said further north, Wagner was less in evidence around Lyman and Kupyansk, where regular Russian forces, supported by the Luhansk militia, had made more than 400 attacks over the past day.

“The main task now is to withstand, to deplete the enemy’s forces, while units are being trained both in Ukraine and abroad, equipped with new defense equipment, and coordinated,” Cherevatyi said.

In and around the town of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, intense Russian bombardments and airstrikes continue against Ukrainian defenses.

But he said many of the civilians were unwilling to leave, especially the elderly, and there has been no electricity in the city since May last year.

Dmytrashkivskyi said the Russians were trying to bypass the town “and these attacks are constantly accompanied by shelling. Yesterday the enemy managed 26 attacks and suffered quite significant losses. More than 100 people were killed and more than 240 wounded,” he claimed. “During the day, they attack with the help of aircraft, artillery and manpower. They are suffering heavy losses in manpower and equipment.”

Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have kept up their bombardments across Donetsk region, with more than 200 strikes against the Bakhmut area alone in the past 24 hours — but they claim the Russians are losing hundreds of men a day across the front lines.

The eastern city of Bakhmut remains “the focus of the enemy’s main attack,” according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the armed forces.

Cherevatyi said it was difficult to tell whether the intensity of Russian attacks around Bakhmut was waning because of factors such as weather, the rotation of units or reserves being brought forward by the Russians.

However, he said Russian tactics have remained the same with small tactical groups “trying to deplete our defenses.” He said soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group are near Bakhmut, with Russian troops providing reinforcements where necessary.

Cherevatyi drew a distinction between the battle for Bakhmut and fighting elsewhere. He said further north, Wagner was less in evidence around Lyman and Kupyansk, where regular Russian forces, supported by the Luhansk militia, had made more than 400 attacks over the past day.

“The main task now is to withstand, to deplete the enemy’s forces, while units are being trained both in Ukraine and abroad, equipped with new defense equipment, and coordinated,” Cherevatyi said.

In and around the town of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, intense Russian bombardments and air strikes continue against Ukrainian defenses.

“All the time we were in the city, there were explosions. We did not see a single building that was not damaged. Unfortunately, there are still civilians in Avdiivka. People live in basements,” military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi said.

But he said many of the civilians were unwilling to leave, especially the elderly, and there has been no electricity in the city since May last year.

Dmytrashkivskyi said that the Russians were trying to bypass the town “and these attacks are constantly accompanied by shelling. Yesterday the enemy managed 26 attacks and suffered quite significant losses. More than 100 people were killed and more than 240 wounded,” he claimed. “During the day, they attack with the help of aircraft, artillery and manpower. They are suffering heavy losses in manpower and equipment.”

Russia unleashed a wave of deadly attacks on towns and cities across Ukraine on Wednesday as Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed from Moscow following talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Xi left Russia’s capital pledging to deepen ties with Putin but the meetings��failed to achieve a breakthrough on Ukraine.

As Xi flew back to Beijing, Russia’s military launched a barrage of strikes with Iran-made Shahed drones on Ukraine’s Kyiv region, killing at least eight people, according to Ukrainian authorities. Andrii Niebytov, the Kyiv region’s police chief, said seven others were injured when a drone struck a dormitory building in the town of Rzhyshchiv.

In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, at least one person was killed and 34 injured — including two children — after Russian missiles hit apartment blocks, in what has been described as a “deliberate strike” to “kill civilians,” according to senior Ukrainian official and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

Video of the attack shows an explosion blasting through the side of two nine-story residential buildings.

The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said in a statement at least six missiles hit the city, causing extensive damage.

Xi’s trip fails to create path to peace: Wednesday’s wave of attacks in Ukraine came as Putin wrapped up hosting his Chinese counterpart in Moscow following a three-day state visit billed by Beijing as a peace mission, but which failed to achieve any breakthrough on resolving the conflict.

Both leaders called for the cessation of actions that “increase tensions” and “prolong” the war, according to their joint statement released by China’s Foreign Ministry. The statement did not acknowledge that Russia’s invasion and military assault were the cause of ongoing violence and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Read more here.