A video has circulated on social media reportedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting at least 10 Russians
The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline.
The footage appears to show a group of Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie facedown.
Continue reading...First-hand accounts from Russian prison where US basketball star has been sent paint a grim picture
The US basketball star Brittney Griner will endure harsh conditions inside the remote Mordovian penal colony to which she has been sent this week to serve her nine-year prison sentence, human rights experts and former prisoners of the colony have said.
“Prisons in Mordovia are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards. The prisons there are known for the harsh regimes and human rights violations,” said Olga Zeveleva, a sociologist at the University of Helsinki who specialises in Russian prison conditions as part of the Gulag Echoes project. “It is a place any prisoner wants to avoid,” Zeveleva said.
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The Russian state-owned RIA Novosti news agency has reported that a school was struck by Ukrainian fire in the occupied region of Donetsk, one of the areas of Ukraine that the Russian Federation claims to have annexed.
It quotes the Russian-imposed mayor of Donetsk Aleksey Kulemin saying that 10 shells were fired at the central districts of the city, two of which landed in close proximity to the school. The report states that:
According to local residents, there were about five hits. Due to the fact that the shelling took place during the curfew, there were no casualties. The windows were broken, the walls in the school building were cut with shrapnel.
Continue reading...Swedish prosecutor says ‘complex’ investigation and analysis continue to see if suspects can be identified
Traces of explosives have been found at the sites of September’s multiple leaks from the Nord Stream gas pipelines, confirming that the breaches were the result of sabotage, Sweden’s prosecution authority has said.
“Analysis that has now been carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the objects that were recovered” from the scene in the Baltic Sea, Mats Ljungqvist, the prosecutor leading the investigation, said on Friday.
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Multi-employer bargaining should be limited to low paid sectors – Westacott
The second thing Jennifer Westacott tells Patricia Karvelas the BCA doesn’t like, is that big business could bargain together:
The second thing we’re really concerned about is the kind of expansion of the multi-employer agreement remember at the summit of the jobs and skill set that this was very much about low paid workers.
So our argument is, well, why wouldn’t you just fix up that low paid stream rather than what we’re currently doing, which was more we have to carve the sector out. The issue and this is more complex is than in the current proposal, and we’re very worried about this, that big employers could be forced to bargain together and that is not good for wages.
The first is and the government to be fair, let’s be clear, we are working constructively with the government. We’re working constructively with the crossbench I think everyone wants Australians wages to go up.
I don’t think the legislation in its current form is going to do that and let me give you those three reasons.
Well, we want to see obviously that period longer, but we want to see kind of much clearer kind of restatement of the objects of the act that the single enterprise system is the system that we want people to use. We want it to be much easier for people where they agree they just keep bargaining.
Continue reading...Campaigners hope agreement will change military norms, though it was not endorsed by countries including Russia, Israel and China
Eighty countries led by the US, UK and France have signed a declaration in Dublin pledging to refrain from urban bombing, the first time countries have agreed to curb the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
The international agreement is a product of more than three years of negotiation – predating the war in Ukraine – but was not endorsed by several major military powers, including Russia, China, Israel and India.
Continue reading...Lawyers say US basketball star ‘doing as well as could be expected’ at IK-2 in Mordovia, following visit
Basketball star Brittney Griner has been sent to a remote Russian penal colony to start serving her sentence, her lawyers have said.
“Brittney began serving her sentence at IK-2 in Mordovia,” lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov said in a statement.
Continue reading...Kremlin spokesperson claims ‘Ukrainians do not want any negotiations’; Kyiv and Dnipro air defence systems work to shoot down incoming rockets
Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov has said that the Black Sea grain initiative will be prolonged for 120 days.
Writing in a tweet, he said the deal was agreed between UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres and Ukraine’s president, Volodimir Zelenskiy.
He added that Ukraine had officially appealed to extend the initiative, which was agreed in July and enables Russian and Ukrainian wheat and fertilisers to be exported through the Black Sea, for one year and to include the Mykolaiv port.
His remarks could not immediately be confirmed independently.
The July deal has helped stave off a global food crisis by allowing exports through ports that had been blockaded by Russia.
Germany latest to end peacekeeping mission as operations prove unable to stop Islamic extremist insurgency
Thousands of international troops are withdrawing from Mali amid surging violence, growing Russian influence and an acute humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday Germany became the latest country to end its participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in the unstable west African country. Earlier this week, British officials said that 300 British soldiers sent in 2020 to join the United Nations force would be returning earlier than planned.
Continue reading...Court says Russia had overall control of the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine at the time when the plane was shot down
A Dutch court has found three men guilty of the murder of 298 people onboard flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was flying over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
The court handed down sentences of life imprisonment to the Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy and a Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko, after finding them guilty of bringing down the plane and the murder of everyone onboard. They were ordered to pay “more than €16m” in compensation to the victims. The three men remain at large and it remains unclear if they will ever serve their sentences.
Continue reading...Attack is the sixth since early October and authorities in Kyiv said energy infrastructure was again being targeted
Russia has unleashed another wave of rocket, drone and missile strikes across Ukraine in its sixth mass attack since early October.
Ukraine’s authorities said the attack, like the previous five, was aimed at destroying the country’s energy system.
Strikes on critical infrastructure in Odesa and Dnipro were confirmed by the presidential administration and the regional heads on Thursday morning. Three people were reportedly injured in Odesa region its authorities said, while a another 14 people were injured, including a teenager, in the strike on Dnipro city, according to its mayor, Borys Filatov. The Dnipro regional administration reported that five people were injured.
Poland says no evidence to suggest missile was launched by Russia – but Kyiv insists ‘it was not our rocket’
Ukraine’s air defence was probably responsible for a blast that killed two people in south-eastern Poland, the Polish president has said, while Nato said Russia was ultimately to blame as Moscow had started the war and launched the attack that triggered Kyiv’s defences.
While fears eased of a dangerous escalation in the war, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, insisted on Wednesday he had “no doubt” the missile concerned was not Ukrainian.
Continue reading...French president believes China can help push Russia to de-escalate Ukraine war
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said he intends to visit Beijing in the new year and believes his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, can play a mediating role that prevents a resumption of large-scale land fighting in Ukraine in February.
Speaking at the close of the G20 in Bali, a summit dominated by the Russian attack on Ukraine and its implications for the world economy, he said he believed China could take a mediating role in the conflict.
Continue reading...Ukrainian investigators claim Russian forces took over juvenile detention centre, beating and killing people inside
Ukrainian investigators have uncovered a claimed “torture room“ in Kherson city where dozens of men were allegedly detained, electrocuted, beaten and some of them killed.
Police said Russian soldiers took over the juvenile detention centre
in around mid-March and turned it into a prison for men who refused to collaborate with them or who were accused of partisan activity.
Three neighbours and two local shopkeepers said they started hearing screams about six weeks after they saw Russian soldiers take over the building. The witnesses said they started seeing people being taken in with bags on their heads, and some bodies being removed.
Mykola Ivanovych, whose balcony overlooks the back yard of the
detention centre, said he saw two bodies thrown into the garages behind the centre. The Guardian was with press and prosecutors when they first entered the site, and the bodies had been removed.
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Nato and G7 leaders have condemned Russia’s “barbaric missile attacks” on Ukraine in a statement following the emergency meeting held earlier with members in Bali.
The leaders of Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States met on the margins of the G20 Summit and released the following statement:
We condemn the barbaric missile attacks that Russia perpetrated on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure on Tuesday.
We discussed the explosion that took place in the eastern part of Poland near the border with Ukraine. We offer our full support for and assistance with Poland’s ongoing investigation. We agree to remain in close touch to determine appropriate next steps as the investigation proceeds.
We reaffirm our steadfast support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in the face of ongoing Russian aggression, as well as our continued readiness to hold Russia accountable for its brazen attacks on Ukrainian communities.”
The secretary-general is very concerned by the reports of a missile exploding on Polish territory. It is absolutely essential to avoid escalating the war in Ukraine.
He sends his condolences to the families of the victims. He hopes that a thorough investigation will be conducted.”
US president says trajectory of missile suggests it was not launched by Russian forces waging war in Ukraine but will await results of investigation
Joe Biden has said the missile that landed in Poland, killing two people, was unlikely to have been fired from Russia due to its trajectory.
The US president was speaking at the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, after convening an emergency meeting of western leaders to discuss the explosion on Nato territory that has the potential to take the war in Ukraine into a new even more dangerous dimension.
Continue reading...Two farmers killed near border with Ukraine by what Poland has claimed were Russian-made weapons
Poland’s president Andrzej Duda said he expected his country would call for an emergency meeting of Nato members on Wednesday after “Russian-made” missiles strayed over into the country killing two people.
The incident is the first time that the territory of a Nato country has been struck during the near nine month Ukraine war, and follows an intense 100-missile attack by Russia on Ukraine, which saw millions lose power and supply in neighbouring Moldova also disrupted.
Continue reading...Incident in which two people died probably falls short of threshold needed to prompt collective Nato action against Russia
• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates
If it was a Russian missile that struck a Polish village on Tuesday, killing two people, it would be the first time a Russian weapon has ever come down on Nato territory.
The Soviet Union and the US managed to get through the whole cold war without making such a mistake, because Washington and Moscow were well aware of the risks of going to war by accident or miscalculation.
Continue reading...Poland’s PM convenes urgent national security meeting after stray missiles feared to have crossed into Nato member country
The Ukrainian presidential adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, has published a photo purportedly from the recently liberated city of Kherson to illustrate the lack of power in the region.
“Kherson. Six days without electricity. People charge their phones on the main square from a generator brought by a volunteer,” he tweeted.
Continue reading...Communique unlikely to stretch beyond usual platitudes despite the need for a global plan for recovery
The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, was struck down by Covid, the Argentinian prime minister, Alberto Fernández, had gastroenteritis and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, either did or did not have chest pains that sent him to hospital. Given that Indonesia’s G20 slogan plastered all around Bali says: “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”, it was not an auspicious performance by the world’s leaders.
Unfortunately, there is precious little sign of recovery at the G20, either at a political or economic level.
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