Daily Archives: April 30, 2023

28 April 2023

Image source, Sasha Bondarenko/Facebook

Friends and colleagues have paid tribute to Sasha Bondarenko's humour, intelligence and big heart

Former BBC News Ukraine journalist Oleksandr Bondarenko has been killed on duty on the front line in Ukraine.

He volunteered for Ukraine's territorial defence at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, working as a communications expert and media trainer and then becoming part of the military.

Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known.

Close friends said only that "death caught up with him in a battle".

Friends, former BBC colleagues and Ukraine's wider media community paid tributes to a talented journalist who went on to be a successful communications professional.

Known as Sasha or Sashko, Bondarenko was originally from Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

He worked for the BBC's Ukrainian Service from 2007 to 2011 as a news reporter, presenter and editor of radio programmes broadcast from Kyiv. He left the BBC to work for other media organisations.

At the start of the war Sasha Bondarenko worked as a communications expert and media trainer.

At the start of the war he was in charge of special projects for leading Ukrainian communications agency, RMA, whose staff paid tribute to his intelligence, humour and voice.

He was one of many thousands of Ukrainians who have left their civilian jobs across all walks of life to defend their country from the Russian invasion.

Among well-known Ukrainians who enlisted were members of one of Ukraine's top rock bands, Antytila, who became army medics, and broadcasters Pavlo Kazarin and Yurii Matsarskyi.

A number of journalists have lost their lives reporting on the war too. A Ukrainian fixer working with an Italian reporter was killed this week as they came under fire near the southern city Kherson.

Vasyl Samokhvalov of RMA paid tribute to Sasha Bondarenko as a man who volunteered on day one: "A human with a will of steel. A human with the clearest motivation. A human with the best music playlist."

The former head of the BBC's Ukrainian Service, Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski, said the corporation was extremely lucky to have him on the Kyiv team: "It was always new challenges with this extraordinary man. Including the last, heroic one, to defend his country from aggression."

Bondarenko graduated from Luhansk teacher-training college and started his career in journalism at a local radio station in the east of Ukraine, before working for leading Ukrainian TV channels and and then the BBC's Ukrainian Service.

BBC Ukraine's editor-in-chief Marta Shokalo (R) paid tribute to her former colleague

"I look at our photos together and can't stop crying even though I can only remember our carefree days in the Kyiv office and how we laughed together," said Marta Shokalo, BBC Ukraine's editor-in-chief.

He went on to work as a TV reporter, covering the mass Maidan anti-government protests in Kyiv in 2013-14 and later Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.

As a native of eastern Ukraine his insight of the complexities of Ukraine's relationship with Russia was seen as especially valuable.

A keen athlete, he achieved a long-held ambition of swimming the Bosphorus. His last photo published on Facebook was captioned: "Somewhere in the Kharkiv woods."

Image source, Sasha Bondarenko/Facebook

Colleagues described an unpretentious but highly knowledgeable journalist who seemed "brilliant at everything"

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Ukraine war: Ex-BBC journalist Bondarenko killed on front line - BBC

Ukraine

Visually striking and politically strident, a new subgenre of magazines in Kyiv and Russia is sharing images and stories of the invasion to challenge the Putin myth

Steven Watson

Thu 27 Apr 2023 03.00 EDT

When 26-year-old documentary photographer Sebastian Wells travelled from Berlin to Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, he wasnt entirely sure what he was going to do. Many of my colleagues went directly to the frontline, he explains from a sunny cafe in Kyiv. I knew that wouldnt be my role, but I didnt know what else I should do. I spent two weeks in Kyiv getting frustrated and feeling like some kind of war tourist, and thats when I started trying to find young creative people in the city.

His first meeting was with 22-year-old fashion photographer Vsevolod Kazarin, and together the pair set about taking pictures of young people on the streets of Kyiv. Sharing a camera and an SD card, they assembled a series of street-style images, with their subjects photographed alongside sandbags, concrete barricades and anti-tank obstacles.

They thought they could maybe use their images to create propaganda posters that they could send to friends in European cities, building bridges with young people across the EU and encouraging them to donate to Ukraine.

But then they came across illustrations by the 18-year-old artist Sonya Marian that rework Soviet-era Russian paintings to explore the origins of Russian aggression. They read the text that Andrii Ushytskyi, 22, posted to his Instagram account, reflecting on his personal experiences of the war and as the texts and imagery came together, they realised they had something much more substantial than a series of posters.

The first issue of Solomiya was published in August 2022 as a big, beautiful and defiant piece of print, with the second issue printed last month. It has come a long way from the early idea of posters but the mission has stayed the same. Reading Solomiya gives an intimate account of what life is like for young people in Kyiv. It also makes it easy for readers to send support the magazine gives details of charities and organisations run by young Ukrainians alongside QR codes for donating to them.

Another magazine on its second issue is Telegraf, which was first published in May 2021 as a journal for the Ukrainian design community. The second issue was initially focused on Ukrainian digital product design and was nearing completion when Russia invaded. Priorities suddenly shifted.

From the first days of the full-scale invasion we have seen a huge surge of activity by designers, illustrators, artists and all other creatives, says editor-in-chief Anna Karnauh. These artworks have become a huge inspiration for many Ukrainians. We realised that we simply had to collect them and to tell the real story of how creatives lived and worked during this war.

Now on its third print run, Telegrafs war issue is a remarkable object, with each cover customised by hand and slogans printed on the fore-edges of the pages so that either Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine) or Heroiam Slava (Glory to the heroes) appears on the edge of the magazine depending on which way its held. It is only available in Ukrainian so far, but an English version will be published in the coming months, and Karnauh and her team hope to reach a wider audience with it.

The war has inspired magazine-makers on the Russian side, too BL8D (pronounced blood) is published by a group of Russian artists and creatives who oppose Vladimir Putins regime, and, like Telegraf, it resulted from a sudden change of plan. Originally intended as a trendbook that searched for the essence of Russian culture, the project was ready to print when Russia invaded. The team responded by scrapping their PDFs and setting to work on an anti-military manifesto, condemning the war and looking forward to a day after Putins regime has been toppled.

The magazine is based on two long interviews probing deep into Russian identity one with art historian Tata Gutmacher and one with museum researcher Denis Danilov. The interviews are presented alongside photography and illustration that create a stark and striking picture of Russianness and argue that a different reality is possible.

The entire Putin regime rests on the myth that Europe hates Russia and nothing good awaits a person outside, says creative director and editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva. We decided to create our own weapon an art book about the imminent death of the Putin myth.

Solomiya If we were to describe life in times of war, we would use the word but, because it evokes a feeling of discomfort and ambiguity that emerges when discussing something that is far beyond our control. Ukrainians have to keep living, but must also remember that death may come at any second. Taken from editors letter.

BL8D[The magazine is] our voice against the war. It is our anger and our rage towards those who started this war, and those who still support it It is our fears and an attempt to look at ourselves in the mirror to understand how this could have happened to all of us. Taken from editors letter.

Telegraf We have collected iconic images that arose during the full-scale war, says editor Anna Karnauh, together with personal stories of people who lived in and fled out of the occupation, who instead of working in the office or sipping oat lattes on the way to design meetups, are now defending their country on the frontline.

Steven Watson is the founder of stackmagazines.com

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We created our own weapon: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine - The Guardian

Ukraine

Strangers stopped to listen in the street when the windows were open and the girls from refugee family were practising

Sat 29 Apr 2023 07.37 EDT

When a Northumberland couple opened up their village home to a Ukrainian mother and her two daughters last year, they were responding to the plight of refugees escaping the Russian invasion. Having been told no more than that this was a musical family, Sheilagh Matheson and Chris Roberts offered two bedrooms and a honky-tonk piano.

Soon they found themselves arranging the loan of a Steinway upright after discovering that these children had an extraordinary musical talent one that made passersby stop to listen at an open window.

Both girls have now received scholarships to two of the UKs foremost music schools, less than a year after fleeing their home near Kyiv to start new lives in Corbridge, not far from Newcastle.

Khrystyna Mykhailichenko, 17, has been awarded a full bursary for four years to study piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her 12-year-old sister, Sasha, a violinist, has a scholarship to become a weekly boarder at the Yehudi Menuhin School near Leatherhead in Surrey.

Both feel that classical music helped them to face the trauma of abandoning their home with their mother, Nataliia. They lived in Poland for three months before arriving in Corbridge last June as part of the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

Matheson, a semi-retired broadcast journalist, lives with her husband, a national director of the Skills Funding Agency, in an end-of-terrace five-bedroomed house.

She told the Observer that they themselves are not musical, but that the Ukrainians music-making in their home has been absolutely unbelievable: You run out of superlatives. When the windows are open, you see people walking by and they just stand there.

Joking that their honky-tonk piano is worthy of a smoke-filled room with men drinking pints and singing Roll Out the Barrel, Matheson said: All we knew before they arrived was that they were a musical family. A few days before, I was sent a film of Khrystyna playing Tchaikovskys Piano Concerto No 1 [aged just 14]. I thought, ah, right, were in a different league here.

So I scuttled around trying to find access to a grand piano she could practise on. The musical fraternity in Northumberland, of which I am not part, were incredibly helpful. A couple contacted us and said, weve got a Steinway upright that you can have. That was duly delivered.

The girls and their older brother, Danylo, 25, were born in Simferopol in Crimea, from where the family fled in 2014, when the Russians took control. They moved to Irpin, near Kyiv, only to lose their father, Gennady, a professor of Ukrainian literature, in a fishing accident a year later.

Irpin was laid waste to by Russian forces. Danylo is still in the family home, without running water and limited electricity, and his mother and sisters fear for him.

Matheson said: Nataliia has a friend who was shot and injured trying to escape, and another friends husband died in the war. Now theres a probability of conscription. One friends son hasnt left the house for six months because hes terrified of being swept up.

Khrystyna began learning the piano aged four, and her parents soon realised she had an extraordinary gift. Within a few years, she was winning international competitions and giving concerts.

She said: When I was in Ukraine, I used to imagine going to the Royal Academy, because of its worldwide reputation, and we knew all about the Yehudi Menuhin School. But we never, ever thought our dreams of studying in those places would become a reality.

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, the Royal Academys principal, said: Khrystyna Mykhailichenko is an extraordinary talent of rare maturity for her age. She came and played the Chopin Ballade No 1 to me recently and revealed what a serious artist she is, almost as if the burdens of a hard life were being channelled through her playing. This was well beyond the carefree virtuosity one hears in this piece so often. It also had real grip and originality.

Ashley Wass, the Menuhin Schools director of music, said: Sasha is a wonderfully talented and high-achieving musician, which is inspirational, especially given the challenges she has faced.

The Mykhailichenko family now hope that someone will open up their home in the Leatherhead area,so that mother and daughters can be reunited on weekends and in holidays.

Nataliia has two university degrees but she is prepared to take any job. She currently volunteers at a food bank and for a charity for adults with special needs.

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Ukrainian sisters lodging in Northumberland turn out to be musical prodigies - The Guardian

27 April 2023

The teacher had claimed that Ukraine's capital had not been subjected to a Russian war

A Czech primary school teacher is due to face trial for spreading Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine to her pupils.

Martina Bednarova, who until last year taught Czech at a school in Prague, told children last April there was "no war" in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

On the contrary, she claimed, Ukrainian soldiers were murdering the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Donbas.

A state prosecutor has filed charges against her, Czech daily Pravo reports.

Ms Bednarova is accused of the criminal offence of denying, questioning, approving or justifying genocide. She faces between six months and three years in prison if convicted.

She told her class of 13- and 14-year-old pupils in early April 2022 that she had seen webcam images from Kyiv that showed the city was peaceful, with no fighting.

When some of the children challenged her remarks, saying they had seen footage of Kyiv burning on the country's public TV network Czech Television, she explained they should seek out alternative sources.

She falsely claimed that Czech TV belonged to a stable of media outlets tied to US billionaire philanthropist George Soros, adding that "we all know to whom he is beholden". Mr Soros has for years been the focus of hard-right conspiracy theories because of his funding of liberal, democratic causes.

Ms Bednarova also made further unfounded claims that openly neo-Nazi Ukrainian forces were skinning and burning alive Russian-speakers, including children. She alleged Ukraine had been running a murderous campaign of terror in Donbas since 2014, a regular theme of Russian propaganda.

Her remarks were covertly recorded by one of the pupils who played it to his parents, who then approached the school. She was later dismissed for gross misconduct. She challenged her dismissal in court, but lost.

According to Pravo, Ms Bednarova denies the criminal charges against her, arguing she was merely presenting the children with facts. The 18-minute recording was part of a 45-minute discussion, and the comments were taken out of context, she argues.

Her prosecution is one of several high-profile cases, as Russia's war against Ukraine tests the limits of freedom of expression in the Czech Republic.

Earlier this month a Czech man received a six-month suspended sentence for wearing symbols of Russia's war to an anti-government demonstration. He was fined and banned from entering Prague for a year for wearing Russia's notorious pro-war "Z" symbol as well as a patch of the Wagner mercenary group.

The man was sentenced for the same offence as Ms Bednarova.

The Czech government is a firm backer of Ukraine's effort to defend itself from Russia, and the public is broadly supportive. However, some Czechs - including the new president Petr Pavel - have warned such support will inevitably wane over time.

President Pavel, former second in command at Nato, told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita last month that he believed Ukraine had "one shot" at a major counter-offensive.

He said it would be "extremely difficult" for the West to maintain the currently level of support - both military and moral - beyond next winter, and Kyiv's window of opportunity was this year.

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Czech teacher on trial over Ukraine war misinformation - BBC

26 April 2023

Image source, La Repubblica

Italian reporter Corrado Zunino was wounded

A Ukrainian journalist working as a fixer for Italy's La Repubblica newspaper has been shot dead by snipers in Ukraine.

Bogdan Bitik was working with Italian reporter Corrado Zunino, who was wounded, when they were ambushed by suspected Russian snipers in the Kherson region, the newspaper said.

Both were wearing bulletproof vests with "Press" written on them, it added.

Russia says it has annexed Kherson despite only controlling some of it.

The reporters were targeted near the Antonivskyi bridge across the Dnipro river near the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson, which sits on the river's west bank.

Russian troops destroyed the bridge when they withdrew across the river from the city in November. Ukrainian forces are now reported to have set up positions on the eastern bank nearby.

The reporters had passed three checkpoints and the Ukrainian military had let them through "without problem", Zunino said in a telephone conversation with his newspaper.

He then heard a "hiss" and saw his colleague lifeless on the ground.

"We were hit. I saw Bogdan on the ground, he wasn't moving," he said

"I crawled until I got out of the line of fire. I ran until I came across a civilian's car. I was covered in blood. I tried several times to call Bogdan, he didn't answer."

Zunino is being treated in hospital in Kherson.

Bitik "unfortunately did not make it", the newspaper wrote, adding that he leaves behind his wife and a son.

"He was a great friend of mine, the pain is excruciating," Zunino said.

The newspaper said it was proving difficult to recover Bitik's body because of Russian snipers.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Italian media that the Russians were responsible for the killing.

"Russians don't care if you're Russian, Italian or Ukrainian, they just shoot," he said.

Moscow did not immediately comment.

Before this death was announced, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said eight reporters had been killed and 19 injured in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion last year.

Crossing the Dnipro river could be significant in future offensives. Ukraine's military has for some time publicly spoken about preparations for a major counter-offensive, without specifying where and when it could be launched.

Until now, all of the Kherson region on the east bank of the Dnipro has been under Russian control, with the wide river serving as a natural barrier.

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Ukraine war: Sniper kills fixer and wounds Italian reporter in Ukraine - BBC

13.50EDTSummary

As the time approaches 9pm in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, here is a round-up of todays news.

Russia said its patience should not be tested over nuclear weapons in another repeat of hardline rhetoric over their use. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia will do everything to prevent the development of events according to the worst scenario but not at the cost of infringing on our vital interests. Vladimir Putin has previously made comments saying he wants to avoid nuclear war, but his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told a UN hearing on Monday that the world was possibly more dangerous than during the cold war.

The Kremlin said that relations with European countries are at their lowest possible level amid more expulsions of diplomats.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it welcomed anything that could hasten the end of the Ukraine conflict when asked about Wednesdays phone call between the Chinese and Ukrainian leaders.

Natos secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also welcomed the discussion between president Xi and president Zelenskiy and repeated the possibility of the war ending at the negotiating table.

Stoltenberg said 98% of promised combat vehicles have now been delivered to Ukraine. This comprises 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks. This equates to nine new Ukrainian brigades.

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide, at a session on Thursday.

A resolution on deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied: create conditions for their safe return, stop these crimes and punish the perpetrators passed with 87 votes in favour, meaning an overwhelming majority. One representative voted against and another abstained.

Russias defence ministry has claimed that its forces had taken four blocks in north-western, western and south-western Bakhmut, Russia state-owned news agency RIA reported.

Russias foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May. It said the measure was taken in response to Washingtons failure to process visas for representatives from the journalistic pool of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.

The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine during a visit to the Vatican. He asked the pontiff for help to return children from the east of Ukraine who have been forcibly taken to Russia by Kremlin forces.

Andrij Melnyk, Ukraines former ambassador to Berlin has said Germany was still failing to provide the support it should. The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should, he told Die Zeit in an interview in Kyiv.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russias Wagner, has said he was joking when he said the mercenary group would suspend fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.

At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraines presidential office has said, including one person killed and 23 wounded including a child when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv.

Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and included a gush of manpower. The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.

Britains opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.

Thats all for today. Thanks for following along. Well be back tomorrow.

Updated at 13.50EDT

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide, at a session on Thursday.

A resolution on deportations and forcible transfers of Ukrainian children and other civilians to Russian Federation or to Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied: create conditions for their safe return, stop these crimes and punish the perpetrators passed with 87 votes in favour, meaning an overwhelming majority. One representative voted against and another abstained.

In its resolution, the assembly called for immediate and urgent action to be taken to halt the practices of unlawful forcible transfer and deportation currently being carried out by the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian population, and especially its policy and practices relating to the removal of children from their families and homes and their subsequent absorption into Russian citizenship, identity and culture.

It added: The assembly highlights the need for the recording and monitoring of individual cases, both in order to permit mechanisms for rapid redress, and to collect evidence of accountability in order to bring the perpetrators, at all levels of responsibility, to justice.

The assembly called for the practice to stop immediately and unconditionally. It also demanded Russia give access to NGOs and charities, as well as information about where the children now are.

The international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March in relation to the unlawful deportation of minors. One was also issued for Russias childrens rights commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova who is believed to have 18 adopted children, including a teenager from Mariupol.

The resolution claims that Russia began moving children from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk before its invasion on 24 February last year. In a report earlier this month, the Ukrainian government said it had collected reports of more than 19,000 children who had been deported.

Updated at 13.19EDT

The Ukrainian security service has given details of eight men of military age who had tried to leave Ukraine to avoid serving in the armed forces.

It said that a group was charging up to $7,000 (5,600) to help people illegally cross the border, including with false documents. Ten have been arrested in total across Ukraine.

One was a taxman in the Poltava oblast who sold fake medical certificates, and another in Kharkiv is suspected of helping people evade military service by posing as business travellers for defence firms.

Other schemes to smuggle people out include disguising them as truck drivers, the SBU reports.

Updated at 12.48EDT

Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and included a gush of manpower.

The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.

The Russian defensive wall runs from Kherson, in Ukraines south, to the north-east of the country, spanning more than 500 miles. An autumn counterattack saw Ukrainian forces sweep across the south-east, retaking half of Kherson city.

These defensive lines consist of layered fortifications and trenches, said Brady Africk at US thinktank American Enterprise Institute.

They include anti-tank ditches, raised barriers, lines of pre-fabricated defences known as dragons teeth, landmines and trenches for personnel, he told AFP.

The Russian objective is to maintain control over occupied territory and to attempt to limit Ukraines ability to conduct a counteroffensive, he said.

Moscows strategy is to be able to absorb any attack, said Pierre Razoux at the Mediterranean Foundation of Strategic Studies, a French research body.

The attackers are likely to get stuck by the time they reach the second layer, and even if they get past it, the third is going to be very hard to breach, he said.

Russia will employ the time-honoured strategy of channelling attacking enemy troops onto ground of their choosing, said Andrew Galer at British strategy thinktank Janes.

But Ukraine meanwhile gets to decide where to attack Russian lines, he said, adding that Kyiv may not have made its choice yet.

Ukraine could well try to mislead Russia with a small-scale attack to pull defending forces there, and then direct the main attack elsewhere, he said.

Vassily Kashin, at the HSE university in Moscow, said Ukraine could pick the region of Bakhmut where battles have raged for 10 months for its attack, but acknowledged that the data we have are very limited.

Kashin said the balance of forces at the front is changing in favour of Russia. Ukraine can try to change this with a last desperate blow, he said.

Updated at 12.15EDT

More from Vladimir Putins speech at the launch of a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey on Thursday.

Putin praised the leadership of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan ahead of an election where Erdoan is running to be re-elected.

Erdoan, 69, suspended all campaigning for Turkeys pivotal presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 May after falling ill while conducting a live TV interview on Tuesday.

While a member of Nato and sending arms to Ukraine, Turkey has maintained ties to Russia during the war and has hosted discussions between both sides.

The Russian president spoke virtually at the launch of a Russian-built nuclear plant in Turkey, using the opportunity to heap praise on Erdoan, saying Moscow was ready to extend the hand of friendship.

Putin said the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkeys first, was a convincing example of how much you, President Erdoan, are doing for your country, for the growth of its economy, for all Turkish citizens.

I want to say it straight: you know how to set ambitious goals and are confidently moving towards their implementation, he added.

Putin stressed that Russia was one of the first countries to send rescue teams and medical personnel to Turkey in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in February.

We are always ready to extend the hand of friendship to our Turkish partners, Putin added.

Updated at 11.51EDT

Russia has destroyed a bridge in Chernihiv, according to the north-eastern oblasts governor.

Viacheslav Chaus told a telethon that Russian shelling had destroyed the crossing over the Sudost River. It connected the villages of Muravyi and Gremyach near Novgorod-Siversky.

Serhii Serhienko, the head of the Novgorod-Siversky district military administration said: For several weeks, the bridges over the rivers of the Novgorod-Siversk community have been shelled. This makes it impossible to provide services to the population in a normal format: to provide food and other things. And it limits movement to the central self-government bodies.

Updated at 10.21EDT

A former commander of Russias Wagner group who is seeking asylum in Norway has been convicted of carrying an air gun and being involved in a bar fight.

Andrei Medvedev was given a two-week sentence which has been suspended for two years. He was acquitted of violence against the police, Reuters reports.

I want to thank the court for a fair ruling, Medvedev told Reuters, adding he was looking to the future. I am studying Norwegian and I hope I will get asylum.

He crossed the Russian-Norwegian border in January and has spoken out about his time fighting in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to fighting outside an Oslo bar in February and preventing a police officer from doing his or her duty. He also pleaded guilty to carrying an air gun in public on a separate occasion on 14 March.

But Medvedev had pleaded not guilty to a fourth charge of committing violence against a police officer. He was acquitted on Thursday.

Separately, Medvedev will continue to speak with Norwegian police about his time with Wagner. Russia denies accusations of war crimes in the conflict.

Now he can avoid jail and focus on what he came [to Norway] for: explain [about his time] in the war in Ukraine, his lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, told Reuters.

Updated at 10.11EDT

At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraines presidential office has said, including one person killed and 23 wounded including a child when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv (see 05.49).

The governor of Mykolaiv province, Vitalii Kim, said 22 multi-storey buildings, 12 private houses and other residential buildings were damaged in the attack, Associated Press reports.

Defence officials said the Kalibr missiles were fired from somewhere in the Black Sea.

Updated at 10.07EDT

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russias Wagner, has said he was joking when he said the mercenary group would suspend fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.

Prigozhin said in an audio message on Thursday: A decision has been taken to suspend artillery fire so that American journalists can safely film Bakhmut and go home.

In a later audio message, however, he said: Guys, this is military humour. Humour, and nothing more ... It was a joke, Reuters reported.

Wagner has been leading Russias assault on Bakhmut since the summer in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, but Ukrainian forces have so far thwarted its attempts to take full control of the city.

Updated at 09.24EDT

Andrij Melnyk, Ukraines former ambassador to Berlin who was deeply critical of what he saw as Germanys hesitancy over providing material support to Ukraine from the start of Russias invasion has said Germany was still failing to provide the support it should.

The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should, he told Die Zeit in an interview in Kyiv.

Melnyk, who returned to Ukraine in October as deputy foreign minister, was perceived as something of a thorn in the side of the government of Olaf Scholz for his frequent interventions in debates on Ukraine, which he himself describes as often undiplomatic.

He said he regretted he was no longer able to use his influence on Berlin. A year ago we were powerful participants in the debate, and even steering it. But my successor does it differently, he said.

Now were simply swimming with the current, letting ourselves go with the flow.... Our offensive is going to happen, and the Germans think: Weve delivered 18 Leopards (tanks), ticked that off the list, finito. As if the war had been won with these tanks. The coalition government has convinced the German public that regarding military help, everything is sorted. Which is not true.

Instead of continuing to bang the drum, his successor, Oleksiy Makeev, was repeating mantra-like, Thankyou Germany, Melnyk said, adding that he was hardly in touch with Makeev, due to their very different points of view.

He denied his return to Ukraine where his particular responsibility is relations with Latin America - was an attempt to rein him in. My post there was long enough and it was a miracle that I was able to stay there when the war started, he said. But he admitted he had not wanted to leave.

It is no secret that I left Berlin against my will. I would have liked to have continued, because I had the feeling that I could have achieved a lot more for Ukraine despite the strong headwinds I faced.

Here in Kjiv the opposition was stronger still, because many didnt understand why I was often acting in this very unconventional, often undiplomatic way in order to pull the government out of its lethargy.

Updated at 11.16EDT

Heres some analysis of President Xi and President Zelenskiys call on Wednesday by our correspondent Helen Davidson in Taipei, and why it may have been hastened by problematic comments about sovereignty by a Chinese ambassador.

A long-awaited phone call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been cautiously welcomed, but China analysts say the timing suggests it could be partly an act of damage control after controversial comments by Chinas ambassador to France.

Ambassador Lu Shaye, one of Chinas wolf warrior diplomats with a history of fiery remarks, caused outrage across Europe this week when he denied the sovereignty of former Soviet states, saying they did not have effective status. The comments were roundly condemned, with several European nations summoning Chinese envoys for rebuke, and politicians suggesting it demonstrated Chinas untrustworthiness as a neutral party in the Ukraine war.

Beijing, which counts Russia as its closest major ally, has sought to present itself as neutral and a potential peacemaker and there have been signs that Xi was unhappy with Russias actions, but in practice China has largely supported Russias stance.

At a time when there is already significant concern about Russian ambitions and PRC [Peoples Republic of China] support for them, Lus comments seemed to suggest that Beijing is open to continued, perhaps even expanded, Russian aggression, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

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Russias foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May.

It said the measure was taken in response to Washingtons failure to process visas for representatives from the journalistic pool of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.

Lavrov led a session of the UN security council on multilateralism, in which he said the world was at its most dangerous since the cold war. He had requested to bring journalists with him from Russia, but they were barred from entering the US.

It was particularly emphasised [to the US diplomat] that such sabotage, intended to prevent normal journalistic work, would not go unanswered, the foreign ministry said in its statement.

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Forced deportation of children from Ukraine by Moscow is genocide, Council of Europe says as it happened - The Guardian

SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine is working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and American companies to collect evidence of war crimes by Russians, such as geolocation and cellphone information, senior officials said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian authorities are collecting digital information from battlefields and Ukrainian towns ravaged by the war since Russia invaded the country last February, said Alex Kobzanets, a FBI special agent who previously worked as a legal attache for the agency in Ukraine.

"Collection of that data, analysis of that data, working through that data is something the FBI has experience working through," Kobzanets said at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

That work includes looking into cellphone information, forensic analyses of DNA samples, as well as analysis of body parts collected off battlefields, he said.

"The next step is working with national U.S. service providers, and transferring that information...obtaining subscriber information, obtaining geolocation information, where possible," Kobzanets added.

The work reflects deepening collaboration between the U.S. and Ukraine on the cyber front, where Russia has been a common adversary for both nations.

The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agent added that the U.S. FBI had for the past year and a half been working on helping Ukraine to also identify Russian collaborators and spies operating in Ukraine and the Russian forces that were operating outside of Kiev as the invasion was happening.

U.S. security companies and officials have been a major partner of Ukraine in its efforts to fend off Russian cyberattacks, which it has battled since at least 2015.

Illia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine, said that while the number of Russian attacks against Ukraine has grown in the last few years, in recent months they have become more targetted.

"Its very difficult to prove in a criminal case, who is responsible," said Vitiuk. "Its very important for us to get as much information about Russian cybercriminals...because we collect all this information and put it into our criminal cases."

We do believe that this case about cyber war crimes is something new, he added. This is where we have seen the first full scale cyber war.

Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in San Francisco; Editing by Michael Perry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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FBI working with US companies to collect war crime evidence in ... - Reuters

If this is a Russian nest of spies, as Ukraine's government is suggesting, there could not be a more magnificent and grandiose place for alleged agents to hide.

Within the walls of this extraordinary 1,000-year-oldcomplex, which includesa monastery, crypts, chapels and alabyrinth of subterranean caves, a brutal political game is playing out.

The Pechersk Lavra in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv often referred to simply as the Lavra is at the centre of a bitter political dispute running parallel to the nation's war with Russia.

The fight over the Lavra reflects deepening tensions across Ukraine.

Ukraine's church was under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate for three centuries.

But a schism developedwithin the Ukrainian churchbetween those loyal to Russia and those who wanted to be independent.

In 2019, they were allowed to split, and the names the churches gave themselves were subtly different but their allegiances are not.

The Ukrainians refer to their church as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (UOC), whereas the Russian part calls itself the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).

These factions of the broader Orthodox church co-existed, sometimes uneasily, on this compound.

But due to the tensions unleashed by the war between Russia and Ukraine, often-subterranean tensions at one of Europe's oldest and most famous churches have broken into the open.

For years, one of the Russian-linked leaders at the Lavra, the Metropolitan Pavel, has held a prominent position, even though Ukrainian intelligence, in recent times at least, has made allegations against him.

The country'sintelligence agency, the SBU, insists some members of UOC-MP, including Metropolitan Pavel,have maintained close ties with Moscow.

Authorities claimhe has glorified Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

They have now placed the Metropolitan Pavel under house arrest, attaching an electronic tag to his leg.

"I haven't done anything. I believe this is a political order," the religious leader told reporters after the ruling.

He also complained that the living conditions at his homewere not fit for him to be under house arrest for 60 days.

"There is nothing to sleep on, no heat and no light. There is no kitchen, no spoon. But it's OK, I'll endure it all," he said.

He has also been banned from recording addresses to his followers.

His arrest follows a raid on the Lavra last year by SBU agentswho said they were investigating reports the site was used "to hide sabotage and intelligence groups, foreign citizens, [and store]weapons".

And last week, Kyiv exchanged a priest accused of collaborating with Russia for 28Ukrainiansoldiers.

The prisoner swap is a public indication of the value that Russia places on these priests in Ukraine.

"A lot of priests became collaborators," saidAndrii Kovalov, a leading academic on the Lavra who joined the Ukrainian army last year.

"They have actively supported the Russian army by informing Russian artillery and aviation.

"That's why the [Ukrainian]government has started to act against Russian saboteurs dressed as priests."

While many of these tensions have been below the surface, they are now being spoken about openly.

"Russia is our bad daughter," Mr Kovalov said.

"And now our bad daughter is trying to fight its mother."

Mr Kovalov did his PhD on the relationship between religion and security in Ukraine and has been working as a political and religious analyst since 2010.

He argued that Russia hadbeen using religion as "a soft power" to influence and infiltrate Ukraine.

That was why Ukraine came to the point, he said, of realising that it needed to have an independent church and hence the recent crackdown against alleged Russian influences.

The war, he said, hadbeen a catalyst for these tensions coming to the surface.

"Before, the Russian church was masked under the cover of the Ukrainian church," he said.

"But the war made the differences very clearand explained to the average Ukrainian who was not interested in politics that the [UOC]is the only legal church which cares about the Ukrainian people and prays for the Ukraine nation and soldiers."

It was obvious, he argued, that there hadbeen people at a senior level of the Lavra who hadbeen supporting Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.

He said that in a time of war, it was unsustainable for there to be people at the head of a venerable religious institution supporting the invasion of the country in which they were being hosted.

He stressedthat not all Russian priests at the Lavra were Kremlin sympathisers, but in such a sensitive time of war, one supporteror "collaborator" wastoo many.

He arguedthat when Ukraine was fighting for its existence, no such support could be tolerated.

"The Russian Federation [for] thousands of years was trying to absorb Ukraine," he said.

"Russia has stolen our history, our traditions, and Russia never imagined its history and civilisation without Ukraine.

"When [Vladimir]Putin says that Russia and Ukraine are the one nation, he's in fact crossing out the right of Ukraine to exist."

Tensions between the Russian and Ukrainian elements of the Orthodox Church have existed for centuries the Lavra itself reflects the two streams of the church.

Paintings or images of Ukrainian heroes sit nearby a portrait of Metropolitan Pavel.

"The Lavra for centuries was like a major historical and religious site for [the] orthodox church in Ukraine," Ukraine's Minister for Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko told the ABC.

"It's one of the biggest monasteries, which by origin comes fromthe 12th or 11th century its importance from a historical and religious point of view is huge."

Mr Tkachenko said the UOC-MPhadbeen behaving inappropriately during the war including a refusal by some in that branch to recognise the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

He said the accusations against theMetropolitan Pavel were now a matter of the courts.

"Each of these cases needs to be proven by the secret service or police," he said.

"There are a lot of cases that are now under investigation,with accusations of collaboration, with accusations of not recognising the territorial integrity of [the] Ukrainian state by representatives of the Russian church."

Mr Tkachenko said photographs of such a senior church figure as the Metropolitan with an electronic tag around his leg would have been confronting to many people.

But he did not express sympathy for his claims of hardship.

"He was, for many years, moving, not with this thing [around his ankle], but in a Mercedes car. So he used to know how to live a lucrative life," he said.

Asked about the view of some Ukrainians that the church hadbecome a nest of spies, Mr Tkachenko said there was evidence of collaboration and misinformation.

"Unfortunately during the war, many cases happened where representatives of the [UOC-MP]were directly collaborative with Russian troops, or were provoking their believers and spreading disinformation," he said.

"So as a machine of mass media, the Kremlin is using [the church] asa propagandistic machine tool in the war."

Mr Tkachenko said the question of loyalty within Ukraine's churches was not about freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

"This is a question to Russia, not for Ukraine," Mr Tkachenko said.

"In Ukraine there are a lot of different representatives of religiousorganisations Jewish, Muslim, Protestants, Greek Catholics and so on. It was always a sort of dialogue between them, a sort of consensus onhow to act."

And so while a political battleof sorts rages inside the Lavra, the rest of Ukraine continues its war with Russia.

"If you ask ordinary Ukrainians, 95 or 97 per cent of them will respond that they believe this war should be finished as soon as possible, but with only one caveat: victory for Ukraine," he said.

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How Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine may have turned Kyiv's ancient monastery into a 'nest of spies' - ABC News

The leak of classified documents on the gaming and chat platform Discord continues to be a treasure trove of information about Americas proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

Earlier revelations from the Discord leak suggested Ukraine is a cornered animal. The latest shows it might lash out like one. The Washington Post reported Monday that documents in the leak claimed that the United States had to force Ukraine to back down from a direct attack on Moscow. Time and time again, the United States has had to rein in or express serious concern internally about Ukraines plans to fight Russia, not just in Ukraine or even within Russias borders, but in the Middle East and North Africa as well.

A classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) claimed that Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, who heads the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) for Ukraines defense ministry, instructed one of his officers on February 13 to get ready for mass strikes on 24 February. Ukraine was to strike with everything the HUR had. The NSA report also said Ukrainian officials joked about using TNT to strike Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port city east of the Crimean Peninsula. The Post asserted such an operation would be largely symbolic, but would nevertheless demonstrate Ukraines ability to hit deep inside enemy territory.

Budanov has a reputation for being a loose cannon. Previously, he claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was terminally ill and employed body doubles for public appearances. He is apparently convinced that Ukraine will overwhelm and repel the Russian invasion, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, sometime this summer. Which is why it appears the U.S. intelligence apparatus has taken up monitoring Budanovs moves and communications. And Budanov appears to know it. The Post added that, when it has interviewed Budanov on occasion since the outbreak of the war, reporters have heard white noise or music in the background of the major generals office.

This time, however, it appears the United States prevented the loose cannon from going off. On February 22, the CIA internally circulated a classified report that the HUR had agreed, at Washingtons request, to postpone strikes on Moscow. Nevertheless, the CIA also said there is no indication that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had agreed to postpone its own plans to attack Moscow around the same date.

The SBU also apparently held off any plans it may have had for striking deep into Russian territory on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion. The United Statess efforts to discourage Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory only lasted so long, however. About a week after the anniversary of the Russian invasion, the Kremlin accused Ukrainian drones of striking infrastructure relatively close to Moscow.

Such drone attacks are par for the course in Ukraines recent military operations inside Russian territory. Last October, Russia accused Ukraine of drone strikes against its Black Sea fleet in Crimea. Though the authenticity has not been confirmed, video footage shows a drone heading towards a ship as what appears to be gunfire hits the water around the Russian vessel. The Kremlin claimed a minesweeper was damaged in the attack. Then in December, Ukrainian drones reportedly struck Engels-2, a military air-base about 400 miles inside Russian territory. Drones also struck two other military airfields and an oil facility in the Kursk province.

Ukraine appears to now be reaching further into Russian territory and is less ambiguous about its involvement in these attacks. Earlier on in the conflict, Ukraine often denied playing a role in attacks on Russian installations and infrastructure within its borders, such as the car-bombing incident in August 2022 that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian nationalist and staunch supporter of Russias invasion. Despite repeated Ukrainian denials, the U.S. intelligence community believes Ukraine was behind the attack.

In an interview with the Post in January, however, Budanov simultaneously denied Ukraines involvement in many of these attacks and claimed that they would continue. Such attacks shattered their illusions of safety, Budanov reportedly claimed. There are people who plant explosives. There are drones. Until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored, there will be problems inside Russia.

Other revelations from the Discord-leaked documents: Ukraine wants to expand the scope of the conflict beyond that of continental Europe and take the Russians to task in the Middle East and North Africa. The NSA report claimed that Budanovs HUR planned to attack the Wagner Groupa Russian military contractor with a reputation for brutality whose members have assisted in the Ukraine offensivein the African country of Mali. The Wagner Groups services are retained by the government of Mali for security and training their own military forces.

The NSA document said, It is unknown what stage the operations [in Mali] were currently in and whether the HUR has received approval to execute its plans, according to the Post.

At the same time, the HUR was developing plans to strike Russian forces in Syria by partnering with the Kurds. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly put the kibosh on the special operations offensive in the Middle East, but at least one of the documents reviewed by the Post claimed that efforts to attack Russian assets in Syria that avoid Ukrainian culpability may still be on the table for the Ukrainian government.

Are these not plans for a world war? Would the United States not be responsible if the Ukrainian government, which both militarily and financially would be defunct without nearly $100 billion in U.S. aid, decided to go forward with such plans?

The Biden administration would deny any culpability in starting World War III, of course. It would point to the fact that the U.S. prohibits using the military aid it gives Ukraine to strike Russia. Thus, the United States retains much say over Ukraines battle plans and has successfully thwarted grand Ukrainian plans to strike Moscow and several other core Russian targets on separate occasions.

Ukrainian officials have admitted this in private, too. Oftentimes, if Ukraine wants to use a rocket system provided by the United States to strike a target, U.S. military personnel in Europe either have to confirm the coordinates or provide the coordinates themselves.

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The Biden administration and the foreign policy blob that supports the United States involvement in Ukraine might think this makes our involvement sound all the better. It doesnt. It reveals who is really waging this war against Russia. Ukraine, which has been a money-laundering operation for the well-connected in the West for the last decade (see Hunter Biden), continues to be just that. Ukraine is the American liberal empires proxy in the truest sense.

The weapons systems, ammunition, and military equipment the United States provides Ukraine maintains a certain level of fungibilityand aid dollars more so than the physical equipment. Providing military aid, even with the current strings attached, expands Ukraines pool of resources, meaning they can devote what is theirs to operations and theaters that suit their fancy.

Restraining Ukraine is becoming increasingly difficult, and funding Ukraines military efforts increasingly risky. That much is clear from Americas own assessment of Ukraines war plans revealed in the Discord leak. Heads should roll at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House for blindly walking into a conflict that Ukraine wants to go global.

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Ukraine Plans for World War III - The American Conservative