Category Archives: Europe

US rightwing figures in step with Kremlin over Ukraine disinformation, experts say

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False narratives pushed by Tucker Carlson and key Republicans in Congress have been embraced and recycled by Moscow

False and conspiratorial narratives pushed by some American conservative politicians and media figures about Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine have bolstered and created synergies with the Kremlin’s legendary disinformation machine, experts on information manipulation say.

But even though Russia has embraced and promoted American disinformation, as well as the Kremlin’s own much larger stock of Ukraine war falsehoods, both brands have been widely debunked by experts and most media outlets, underscoring Moscow’s setbacks in the information war.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says mass graves are a ‘blatantly untruthful provocation’

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In Zelenskiy’s signature late-night national address he addressed Russian soldiers and military officers.

“Nowadays people are not executed,” Zelenskiy began. “But all skabeevas, evening loudmouths, frontline liars and their bosses in Moscow should remember: the end of your life will be behind bars. At best.”

Everything to punish them. This will be a joint work of our state with the European Union and international institutions, in particular with the International Criminal Court.

All crimes of the occupiers are documented. The necessary procedural basis is provided for bringing the guilty Russian military to justice for every crime they commit...

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Ukrainian man accuses Russians and Chechen troops of mock executions and days of torture

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Petro Titenko was beaten, suffocated, shot at and left lying in a pit for hours after being captured

Fresh allegations of atrocities by occupying troops have emerged as a Ukrainian man described three days and nights of torture, mock executions and the disappearance of fellow prisoners during his captivity by Russian forces in the town of Borodyanka.

Petro Titenko, 45, told the Guardian of his three nights of hell at the hands of Russian and Chechen soldiers after he was picked up for breaking curfew, during which he was beaten, forced to kneel in what he was told was his grave and had bullets shot at his head and feet.

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EU allies expel 200 Russian diplomats in two days after Bucha killings

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More than 325 diplomats and embassy workers now expelled since Moscow invaded Ukraine

Almost two hundred Russian diplomatic staff have been expelled from European countries this week in a direct expression of governments’ outrage at the killings of Ukrainian civilians revealed as Moscow’s military forces left.

In what amounts to one of the biggest diplomatic breakdowns of recent years, 206 Russian diplomats and embassy staff have been told since Monday they are no longer welcome to stay by governments in Italy, France, Germany and elsewhere, in addition to more than 100 reported to have already been thrown out since the beginning of Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

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‘It’s a dream’: exoskeleton allows boy with cerebral palsy to walk and play

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Boy, 12, takes Marsi Bionics-designed kit into Madrid school for first time

Given the day’s importance and the many long months he and his family had dreamed of it, Jorge would probably have preferred a special guest appearance by Tony Stark, Dr Bruce Banner or Marshall the fire pup from Paw Patrol. Or, better still, all three.

But in the end he had to make do with a surprise visit from Pedro Sánchez. At 12.45pm on Tuesday, surrounded by friends and teachers – and Spain’s prime minister – Jorge fulfilled the biggest ambition of his 12 years by standing up, walking over to his classmates, and playing with them.

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Ukraine war to slow growth and drive up poverty in Asia, World Bank warns

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Conflict adds strain to developing economies in east Asia and Pacific already struggling with Covid and inflation

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further dampened the economic prospects for developing countries in east Asia and the Pacific, meaning lower economic growth and higher poverty in the region this year, the World Bank has warned.

The Ukraine factor came on top of the existing risks that the region – home to 2.1 billion people and stretching from China to Papua New Guinea – has been facing in recent years. They included the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the financial tightening in the US, and the pandemic resurgence amid China’s zero-Covid policies.

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Priti Patel’s immigration bill suffers multiple defeats in Lords

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Peers find fault with many aspects of nationality and borders bill, in particular proposal to divide refugees into classes

Priti Patel’s nationality and borders bill has been ripped apart for a second time by the House of Lords as the government suffered more than 10 defeats over controversial proposals to tighten immigration rules.

Peers supported proposals to ensure that the bill complied with the 1951 Refugee Convention and challenged the government’s plan to redefine refugees into two classes based on how they arrived in the UK.

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The bodies of Bucha have set a difficult test for the west

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Analysis: From Ukraine’s point of view, this has to be the time to pile pressure on Germany in particular

Sometimes a war crime is so egregious, and so fully reported, that it cannot but stir the conscience of the west. The My Lai massacre in 1968, Srebrenica in 1995, the British suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the Disappeared of Argentina under the junta in the 1980s or even the dispatches about bodies piled high in Bulgarian town squares by the US war reporter Januarius MacGahan in 1876 were all moments when the defence of ignorance has to be abandoned.

Even then the truth is more complicated and the west did not always act. Bill Clinton regretted he did not respond to the murders of Tutsis in 1994, saying he did not “fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which [Rwandans] were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror”. Srebrenica was arguably only the culmination of ethnic cleansing that had been going on for three years. My Lai, revealed two years after the event, only provided further momentum to a pre-existing US anti-war movement. The scale of the British repression of the Mau Mau rebellion was only truly documented decades afterwards by a Harvard historian Caroline Elkins in her book Britain’s Gulag.

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Sanctions on Russia must stay till all troops leave Ukraine, says Liz Truss

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Foreign secretary in discussions with Ukrainian foreign minister about intensifying sanctions after atrocities in Bucha

The West must not lift sanctions against Russia until all its troops have left Ukraine and Vladimir Putin is unable to mount such an offensive again, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said.

She was speaking alongside the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, in Warsaw, where the two discussed how to step up sanctions against Russia to the maximum in the wake of the alleged war crimes revealed in Bucha.

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Routing of Russian forces from Kyiv area will be hard to repeat in eastern Ukraine

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Analysis: while Ukrainian troops have strong defensive positions in Donbas they lack the capability to force out the invaders

Russia’s withdrawal from around Kyiv and the north and north-east of Ukraine appears more comprehensive than most onlookers had anticipated. It will be a little while before the picture becomes definitive, but Moscow’s forces are now fast retreating out of the country from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy districts, Ukrainian regional officials say.

It is impossible to describe this as anything other than a serious reverse. Such is the haste of the exit that some units are being left behind to be mopped up by the Ukrainians. Sumy, a little over 30km from the Russian border, did not fall to the invaders, while the road to Chernihiv, which was at risk of encirclement, is now open to the capital to the south-west.

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Biden calls for Putin to face war crimes trial over civilian killings in Ukraine

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Western leaders prepare fresh round of sanctions against Moscow amid outrage over reports of killings in town of Bucha, near Kyiv

Joe Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes as western leaders prepared a fresh round of economic sanctions against Moscow amid mounting global outrage over claims of civilian killings by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

The US president was responding to harrowing images broadcast around the world after the discovery over the weekend of a mass grave and bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands bound, in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Biden calls for Putin war crimes trial; Borodyanka worse than Bucha, says Ukrainian prosecutor

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US president says Russian president is war criminal; Ukraine’s prosecutor general says Borodyanka will be worst-hit by Russian invasion in Kyiv region

Before I hand this liveblog over to my colleague, Martin Belam, here is a quick refresher of where the situation currently stands.

In the light of heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha Russia requested a meeting of UN Security Council on Monday April 4.”

Russian Federation requested a meeting of the UN Security Council in connection with the provocation of the Ukrainian military and radicals in the city of Bucha.

The idea behind the next crime of the ‘Kyiv’s regime’ is the disruption of peace negotiations and the escalation of violence.”

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Russia now synonymous with Bucha killings, says Zelenskiy

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Ukraine president says worse atrocities may yet be found elsewhere as satellite images show mass grave near church in Bucha

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Russia’s public image is now one of torture and execution after the retreat of Russian forces in the town of Bucha led to the discovery of the killing of hundreds of civilians.

Calling Russian soldiers “murderers”, “butchers” and “rapists”, Zelenskiy said late on Sunday: “your culture and human appearance perished together with the Ukrainian men and women”. He warned that “even worse things” may be found in other occupied regions.

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The rise and rise of France’s far-right Marine Le Pen

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National Rally leader is closing gap on Emmanuel Macron in polls for this month’s presidential election

From her housing estate in northern Marseille, Elisabeth, 68, who once voted for the left, will return a ballot for the far-right Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election this month. “People used to think Marine was nasty,” she said. “Now they realise she’s not. Other politicians are taking her ideas. They all talk like her now.”

Elisabeth left school at 16 and worked at a shoemaker’s, in factories and as a housekeeper, but her €800 pension barely covers bills and food. “I live on credit, overdrawn by the middle of the month,” she said. “I make a weak stew and it lasts me three days. But Le Pen will cut taxes and put money in our pockets.” She agrees with Le Pen’s anti-immigration stance. She feels “Europeans” are becoming outnumbered in multi-ethnic northern Marseille and worries about crime. “I’ve been mugged twice, once for a necklace, once for a cigarette,” she said. Society is tense and divided, she feels, but Le Pen will “calm things down”.

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‘Massacre of innocents’: how the papers covered Russia’s atrocities in Bucha

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Accusations of war crimes and calls for tougher sanctions feature on Monday’s front pages amid horror at civilian killings by Russian troops

  • Warning: this story contains images some readers may find distressing

Revulsion at the atrocities committed by Russian forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha dominates today’s front pages, as politicians lined up around the world to condemn the massacre of hundreds of civilians.

The Mirror says simply “Genocide” in its headline under the bleak strapline: “Putin’s latest atrocities”. It quotes Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s use of the term but the page is given over to a heartbreaking image from Bucha, just near Ukraine’s capital, where the bodies of civilians were abandoned in the street. Hundreds of civilians have been found in mass graves, it reports, and some had been tied up.

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Blinken: growing evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine a ‘punch to the gut’

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Secretary of state promises US will join allies in documenting atrocities and hold perpetrators accountable

Growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine are “a punch to the gut”, the US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Sunday, promising that America would join its allies in documenting the atrocities to hold the perpetrators accountable.

A retreat of Russian forces around Kyiv has revealed evidence of atrocities against civilians as Ukrainian troops and journalists have moved back into a broad swathe of suburbs and towns around the capital.

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Killing of civilians in Bucha and Kyiv condemned as ‘terrible war crime’

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Europe pledges further sanctions against Russia after reports of killing of scores of unarmed Ukrainians

Russia stands accused of “terrible” war crimes, as western leaders condemned the killings of unarmed civilians in Bucha and the surrounding areas of Kyiv in alleged atrocities that prompted fresh demands for tougher action against Moscow.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country amounted to genocide, after local officials reported scores of civilians had been killed in the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital following the withdrawal of Russian forces.

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Russian missiles strike fuel depot in key Ukraine port of Odesa

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Officials say no casualties reported after attack, while evidence of war crimes around Kyiv mounts in wake of Russian withdrawal

Russian airstrikes have hit “critical infrastructure” in the Ukrainian city of Odesa as evidence of horrific war crimes in areas around Kyiv where Russian troops have pulled back continued to mount.

Odesa, an important port on the Black Sea coast and the main base for Ukraine’s navy, had largely been spared violence in the five-week-old conflict until the attacks early on Sunday.

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