Belarusian held in Poland suspected of ordering hammer attack on Navalny ally

Two Polish citizens detained earlier on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov in Lithuania

A Belarusian national has been detained in Poland on suspicion of ordering the attack on a top Russian opposition leader, Leonid Volkov, on Moscow’s behalf, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced.

Volkov, a close aide of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was briefly admitted to hospital last month after he was ambushed and attacked outside his house in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and repeatedly struck him with a hammer, breaking Volkov’s left arm and damaging his left leg before fleeing the scene.

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Vladimir Putin not welcome at French ceremony for 80th anniversary of D-day

France says Russia can be represented but president will not be invited because of war in Ukraine

Russia will be invited to send representatives to an international ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-day – but not Vladimir Putin, the French organisers have announced.

The Élysée is reported to have accepted that the country should be represented but said its leader is not welcome because of Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Nuclear watchdog urges restraint after Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant attack – as it happened

International Atomic Energy Agency warns about safety after Russia says Ukrainian drone detonated at nuclear power plant

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed on Sunday by authorities at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that a drone detonated on site today.

“IAEA experts have been informed by ZNPP that a drone detonated on site today. Such detonation is consistent with IAEA observations,” the nuclear watchdog said in a post on a social media.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine’s top general says Russian forces carrying out offensive operations day and night – as it happened

Oleksandr Syrskyi says all enemy attempts to break through to the settlement have failed

A new Russian strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killed one civilian and injured several more, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Saturday.

“There is information about one death as a result of a strike on a residential area of the city. There are also injuries,” Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: 20 members of Russian airfield personnel killed or injured in drone attack, Kyiv says – as it happened

Ukraine led attack on to military airfield near town of Morozovsk in Rostov region in Russia

The Kremlin has called French President Emmanuel Macron’s assertions that Russia plans to disrupt the Olympics “absolutely unfounded.”

Macron said on Thursday that he had “no doubt” that Russia would target the Paris Olympics this summer.

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Russia demands extradition of Ukraine security chief and others for ‘terrorism’

SBU dismisses demand as pointless and hypocritical, ‘coming from the terrorist state itself’

Russia has demanded that Ukraine extradite a number of people, including the head of the country’s SBU security service, over claims they are connected with “terrorist” acts.

The SBU immediately dismissed the Russian demand as “pointless” and said the Russian foreign ministry had “forgotten” that Vladimir Putin was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

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Russia-Ukraine war: White House says US passed written warning of Moscow attack to Russia – as it happened

US describe Russian’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in attack as ‘nonsense’ and says it passed warning to Russian security services

The Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has restricted access to 11 channels in the Telegram messaging app “with terrorist content” over the past two days, reports Reuters citing an article by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday.

Poland’s prime minister on Thursday hosted his Ukrainian counterpart for long-awaited talks designed to ease friction over Ukrainian farm imports and border blockades by disgruntled Polish farmers, reports news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).

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Russia-Ukraine war: Russian foreign ministry claims it’s ‘extremely hard to believe’ Islamic State could launch Moscow attack – as it happened

Russian officials have repeatedly cast doubt over who was behind attack despite IS claiming responsibility and Western intelligence evidence. This live blog is closed

Here are some of the latest images from Ukraine:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to look at how to organise the production of homegrown gaming consoles, state news agency TASS reports.

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Russian detention of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich extended by three months

Friday will mark one year since the journalist was arrested on espionage charges

A Russian court has extended by three months the pre-trial detention of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter arrested almost a year ago on suspicion of espionage while on a reporting trip in the city of Ekaterinburg.

Gershkovich, 32, became the first US journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the cold war when he was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on 29 March 2023.

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Terrorism and the battle for the truth in Moscow – podcast

Footage of four gunmen appears to support Islamic State’s claim that it masterminded the worst terrorist attack in Russia in two decades. But the Kremlin has put Ukraine in the frame. Andrew Roth reports

The attack on Crocus concert hall near Moscow was the worst act of terrorism carried out in Russia in more than 20 years. More than 130 people were killed after gunmen stormed the venue on Friday night.

Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for the attack and provided additional video footage of the massacre.

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Four suspects in Moscow concert hall terror attack appear in court

Footage of gunmen reinforces Islamic State’s claim to have masterminded worst terror attack on Russia in two decades

Four suspects have appeared in court in Moscow charged over the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall on Friday that left 137 people dead.

The men were officially identified as citizens of Tajikistan, the Tass state news agency said, and were remanded in custody for two months at Sunday’s hearing.

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West condemns ‘undemocratic’ Russian election as results show Putin landslide

UK, US and Germany denounce poll that was said to give president vote share of 87.28% amid crackdown on dissent

Western nations have widely condemned Russia’s presidential election, in which Vladimir Putin claimed a landslide victory that will keep him in power until at least 2030 amid a crackdown on dissent and opposition.

“These Russian elections starkly underline the depth of repression under President Putin’s regime, which seeks to silence any opposition to his illegal war,” said the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, as EU foreign ministers met to approve new sanctions against 30 individuals and organisations in response to the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

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Putin’s vote share nears outer limits but still the only way is up

Observers say Russian leader’s election numbers approaching 90% mark final break with western conventions

Vladimir Putin is approaching the electoral outer limits. Claiming a record landslide on Sunday of 87.28% of the vote on a 77.44% turnout, Putin has launched himself into the stratosphere of post-Soviet election results.

It is a mathematical axiom for any president-for-life: support should never go down, only up; turnout should never go down, only up. And as Putin’s one-man rule extends past a quarter of a century, Russian officials retain straight faces even as they post astronomical numbers that would make many convinced autocrats blush.

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Vladimir Putin claims landslide Russian election victory

Russian president uses victory speech to say war in Ukraine and strengthening military will be his main tasks

Vladimir Putin has claimed a landslide victory in Russia’s presidential vote, as thousands in the country and around the world protested against his deepening dictatorship, the war in Ukraine and a stage-managed election that could have only one winner.

In a vote denounced by the United States as “obviously not free nor fair”, Putin won 87% of the vote, according to exit polling published by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center and the Public Opinion Foundation.

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Putin claims he agreed to prisoner swap involving Navalny before his death

Re-elected Russian president makes first public comment on death of opposition leader, which he calls ‘sad event’

Vladimir Putin has claimed he had agreed to a prisoner swap involving Alexei Navalny before the opposition leader’s sudden death in an Arctic prison last month.

Speaking in central Moscow after early results indicated he had won Russia’s presidential election in a landslide, Putin said unnamed people made an offer to release Navalny in a swap deal with the west a few days before he died.

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‘A farce, not an election’: Russians abroad join ‘Noon against Putin’ protest

Voters turn out at midday from the UK to Latvia and Turkey to Thailand in action Alexei Navalny endorsed before his death

The queue to vote at the Russian embassy stretched for more than half a mile along Kensington Gardens on Sunday as hundreds of Russians arrived at midday as part of a worldwide act of protest to show their opposition to Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.

It took a quarter of an hour to walk to the end of the queue past people bearing signs that read: “These ‘elections’ are fake”, “My president is Alexei Navalny” and “Vladimir Putin, go fuck yourself”.

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Exit polls show Putin winning huge majority in Russian presidential election with only one possible result – as it happened

US says vote was ‘obviously not free, nor fair’ with exit poll suggesting 88% of Russians voted for the incumbent

Investment demand and agricultural exports are two of “several factors” which have driven an increase in Ukraine’s GDP seen during the first two months of this year.

According to Reuters, economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Sunday that Ukraine’s GDP rose 3.6% during this period.

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Russians urged to disrupt final day of Vladimir Putin’s presidential election

Voters told to swamp polling stations all at once and spoil ballots, after two days of dye attacks, fires and Ukrainian cross-border strikes

Critics of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin regime have called for massive protests at Russian polling stations on Sunday, the final day of a presidential election that is guaranteed to cement his hardline rule.

The three-day vote has already been hit by Ukrainian bombardments and a series of incursions into Russian territory by anti-Putin sabotage groups. Early on Sunday, a drone attack caused a fire at a refinery at Slavyansk in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, where officials said one person died of a heart attack, while two people died after drone strikes in the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday, according to officials.

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Russia-Ukraine war: death toll in Odesa attack rises to 21 as two killed in Ukrainian shelling in border town – as it happened

Attack in Belgorod comes day after devastating strike on Ukrainian port city and amid voting in Russia’s election

Ukrainian war briefing

Nexta is reporting that there have been 11 attempts to set fire to polling stations in Russia, along with 19 cases of ballot boxes being spoiled with greenery and paint.

Russia is proposing eight-year prison sentences for those involved.

The death toll in the Russian attack on civilian infrastructure in Odesa has risen to 21 people after an emergency worker succumbed to injuries at a hospital. The Russian ballistic missile strike on Odesa was Moscow’s deadliest attack in weeks, wounding more than 75.

A man and a woman died in a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Belgorod oblast and three other people were wounded. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday that Russia’s air defence systems destroyed two additional Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the Belgorod oblast in what is the latest in a series of raids reported in recent days.

Ukrainian drones struck two Rosneft oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, leaving one facility on fire on Saturday, the region’s governor said. The Volga river region’s Syzran refinery was on fire, Dmitry Azarov said on Telegram. His comments also confirmed an attack on the Novokubyshev refinery. Workers at both plants had been evacuated and there were no casualties, Azarov claimed.

Two men were injured in a Russian unmanned aerial attack on the Kharkiv oblast, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Over the past day, about 20 settlements in the Kharkiv oblast were hit by enemy artillery and mortar attacks.

There has been a record growth in the number of Russian men ages 31 to 59 with disabilities, the UK defence ministry said in its daily intelligence briefing. “The increase in the number of men with disabilities was most likely due to the growth in military invalids,” the UK defence ministry said. “This is almost certainly the case. A significant majority of the over 355,000 casualties that the Russian armed forces have suffered as a result of the conflict in Ukraine have been wounded personnel.”

Voters in Russia headed to the polls across the country’s 11 time zones on Friday in a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule until at least 2030. Putin is running against Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, Leonid Slutsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov of the New People party. Two anti-war candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova were barred from running by the electoral commission.

Voting is also taking place in the four occupied regions of Ukraine which Russia claims to have annexed despite its forces only partially controlling the territory. Ukraine has said the election there is illegal. Speaking at a meeting of Russia’s security council, Putin accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt the voting process and people in the border regions with “a number of criminal armed actions”. Putin said the attempts to break into Russia did not succeed. He said the acts would not go unpunished.

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Vladimir Putin’s victory all but certain as Russians head to the polls

Longtime Russian leader faces no meaningful opposition after death in Arctic penal colony of Alexei Navalny

Voters in Russia headed to the polls across the country’s 11 time zones on Friday in a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule until at least 2030.

The longtime Russian leader is facing no meaningful opposition after the Russian authorities barred two candidates who had voiced their opposition to the war in Ukraine from running. Three other politicians running in the election do not directly question Putin’s authority and their participation is meant to add a facade of legitimacy to the race.

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