Source tells Reuters incident occurred as Grant Shapps travelled back from Poland. This live blog is closed
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg will shortly be presenting the annual Nato report. You can view it at the video below.
Earlier today, Stoltenberg and Polish president Andrzej Duda met at the Nato headquarters in Brussels.
Continue reading...Move involving companies such as Google, Facebook and X comes after evidence of Russian online interference in polls
The EU is calling on eight major tech companies including Google, Facebook and X to detail how they identify and tackle deepfake material amid concerns about the use of the technology to influence elections.
In a world first, they will be using new laws on artificial intelligence to force companies to root out fake video, imagery and audio.
Continue reading...Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova says war could expand geographically. This live blog is closed
Leonid Volkov told Reuters hours before an assailant attacked him with a hammer and tear gas outside his home in Lithuania that he and other exiles feared for their lives.
Volkov, the top aide to Alexei Navalny, said leaders of the late Russian opposition leader’s organisation knew they were facing “high individual risks” in an interview filmed on Tuesday hours before an unidentified attacker assaulted him outside his home.
Continue reading...Baltic country’s state security says assault on Leonid Volkov was probably to stop Russian opposition influencing election
Lithuania has blamed Moscow for the bloody hammer attack on a longtime aide to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny outside his home in Vilnius.
Leonid Volkov, 43, was in hospital briefly after he was attacked with a hammer by an unknown assailant on Tuesday night in the Lithuanian capital.
Continue reading...Apparent sacking of Adm Nikolai Yevmenov highlights fallout over Kyiv’s ability to sink Russian warships
The Kremlin has fired its top naval commander after a series of spectacular attacks by Ukraine on Russia’s Black Sea fleet, Russian media reports.
Vladimir Putin sacked Adm Nikolai Yevmenov, who has been in command of the navy since 2019, and replaced him with the commander of its northern fleet, Adm Alexander Moiseyev, reported the newspaper Izvestia, owned by one of Putin’s closest confidants.
Continue reading...‘We will not give up,’ Volkov says in video after being discharged from hospital following attack in Lithuania that left him covered in blood
Leonid Volkov, a longtime aide to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has vowed to continue the struggle against Russian President Vladimir Putin after being attacked with a hammer outside his home in Lithuania.
“We will work and we will not give up,” he said in a video clip posted on Telegram early on Wednesday, claiming that the attack that left him with a broken arm was a “characteristic bandit hello” from Putin’s henchmen.
Continue reading...Schools in Kursk switch to online classes after Ukraine-based armed groups claim to have crossed Russian border
French President Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine strategy will be put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house on Tuesday as political tensions rage in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections.
AFP reports:
Continue reading...International organisation under growing pressure as Russian group’s activities appear to defy neutrality principle
The international Red Cross movement is under pressure to take action against the Russian Red Cross (RRC) over close links between the group and the Kremlin’s war and propaganda machine.
The evidence includes the RRC president’s central role in a pro-Putin “patriotic” organisation, senior RRC staff who speak of the impossibility of peace with “Ukrainian Nazis”, and RRC participation in military training for children.
A series of documents leaked from the Russian presidential administration, the most recent of which are dated December 2023, were obtained by Estonia’s Delfi. These documents were shared for joint investigation with the Guardian as well as VSquare and Frontstory.pl (Poland), Expressen (Sweden), Meduza and iStories (independent Russian outlets), Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel and ZDF (Germany), Der Standard (Austria), and Tamedia publications (Switzerland).
Continue reading...Jens Stoltenberg distanced himself from Macron’s suggestion that western allies should not rule out deploying troops in Ukraine
Kyiv said an Oscar awarded to 20 Days in Mariupol was an important success that showed the “truth about Russia’s crimes” to the world.
The film, directed by Ukrainian film-maker Mstyslav Chernov, won the Best Documentary Oscar at a ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Analysis shows link between Copper Technologies and Jonatan Zimenkov, who was later hit with US sanctions over Ukraine invasion
A cryptocurrency firm transferred digital assets worth more than $4.2m to a crypto wallet belonging to a member of an alleged Russian arms-dealing network who was later hit with US sanctions, it can be revealed.
Details of the transactions involving Copper Technologies raise questions about whether UK laws governing crypto have adapted quickly enough to keep pace with a rapidly evolving sector that has come under increasing scrutiny over the level of anonymity it can provide.
Continue reading...Francis’s failure to condemn Moscow as aggressor decried as ‘shameful’ and ‘incomprehensible’
Pope Francis has been criticised after saying Ukraine should have the courage of the “white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia.
Some politicians and commentators in Europe reacted with anger after the pontiff appeared to stay silent on Russia’s crimes as aggressor in the invasion, which has killed tens of thousands, and placed the onus on Ukraine to make peace.
Continue reading...As Russians prepare to give the president another six-year term this week, an ex-rival has gone from protest candidate to grotesque war hawk
Two election cycles ago, in 2012, Sergei Mironov was loudly playing the role of opposition to Russia’s ruling party, wearing the white ribbon of the protest movement in the State Duma and claiming his run against Vladimir Putin was “serious”.
If made president, he said, he would even appoint the now deceased opposition leader Alexei Navalny as the head of Russia’s accounts chamber as an anti-corruption measure.
Continue reading...Former PM apparently met autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro over concerns he may supply weapons to Russia
Boris Johnson flew to Venezuela in February for unofficial talks with its autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, according to reports.
The former prime minister spoke to the Venezuelan president about the war in Ukraine, amid concerns that the socialist republic could supply weapons or military support to Russia, according to the Sunday Times.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Syndicate agreed to lend up to €640m to Allwyn in 2020, two years before contract awarded
The company behind the national lottery was borrowing millions from Kremlin-owned banks when it won the UK’s largest public-sector contract, the Guardian can reveal.
Russia’s two largest lenders, VTB and Sberbank, were part of a syndicate that agreed to lend up to €640m (£545m) to Allwyn in 2020, two years before the pan-European gaming specialist was named the “preferred bidder” for the £6.5bn lottery contract.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps visits Ukraine and urges ‘wake up call for the world’; overnight Russian artillery and mortar attacks kill two women and a man in Kharkiv region
Ukraine’s defence ministry said that “overnight, Ukrainian air defenders shot down 33 our of 37 Russian ‘Shahed’ UAVs.”
Here is footage of a woman pulled from the rubble after Russian missiles hit Kharkiv region.
Continue reading...Drone team has bombed tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and ammunition dumps but still Russians are on the move
At night, Sasha and his drone team go in search of the enemy. They set off in a dirt-covered vehicle towards the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariinka, occupied by Russia since December. They unload a large drone. And then they fly it in darkness across the frontline, above a ghostly landscape of fields and ruined houses, towards the twinkling city of Donetsk. The drone carries a deadly arsenal of six grenades.
Sasha, who uses the call sign “Tourist”, has bombed more than 100 pieces of Russian military equipment. The list includes tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and self-propelled guns, as well as hidden ammunition dumps. Russian howitzers are another key target. Recently his special operations unit forestalled a large-scale attack. It spotted seven Russian tanks massed for a dawn raid and disabled two of them.
Continue reading...Popular national figure given new role after being dismissed by Volodymyr Zelenskiy a month ago
Ukraine’s former commander in chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is to become the country’s next ambassador to the UK, a month after he was fired by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, from his job leading the military.
The decision makes good on Zelenskiy’s promise to keep the popular former general “as part of the team” but it also removes him from Ukraine, where he is seen as the only realistic challenger to the president if there were to be an election.
Continue reading...Slovakian foreign minister criticises ‘double standards’ in the reaction to his meeting with Sergei Lavrov
Slovakia’s foreign minister has defended a controversial decision to meet his Russian counterpart, after the Czech Republic announced it was suspending intergovernmental consultations with Bratislava amid concerns it is shifting away from western policy on supporting Ukraine.
In a statement emailed to the Guardian on Thursday, Juraj Blanár, who recently met Russia’s Sergei Lavrov in Turkey, hit out at “double standards”, noting that some other Nato foreign ministers had also engaged with the Russian minister.
Continue reading...Foreign minister Wang Yi – speaking at the Two Sessions – said it was unacceptable some countries are at the table while others are ‘on the menu’
China’s top foreign affairs official has accused the US of trying to suppress China and has vowed to deepen relations with Russia, as Beijing continues to assert the importance of what it calls a “multipolar” world order.
Foreign minister Wang Yi accused the US of imposing sanctions on Chinese companies to a “bewildering” and “unfathomable” level, referencing Beijing’s opposition to “unilateralism and protectionism”, complaints that have become buzzwords in China’s official statements of late.
Continue reading...Russian forces ‘don’t care’ whether targets are military or civilians, says Zelenskiy; Greek PM describes experience as ‘very intense’
A deadly Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa appeared to land near President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and visiting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who described the moment of the bombardment as “intense”.
The attack on port infrastructure on Wednesday killed five people and left an unspecified number of wounded, according to Ukraine’s navy.
Continue reading...