Elon Musk’s SpaceX is to stop giving free satellite internet to Ukraine in what could be a blow to the country’s armed forces as they battle President Putin’s invasion.
Starlink satellite terminals donated by the American entrepreneur have proved vital to Ukrainian military communications. Heavy fighting has severed mobile phone networks in the country and the military uses Starlink receivers to co-ordinate artillery barrages, ground attacks and drone strikes.
However, documents obtained by CNN showed that SpaceX told the Pentagon it could no longer afford the programme unless the US government committed tens of millions of dollars of funding a month.
The decision emerged after Musk’s argument with officials in Kyiv after he proposed a peace plan that involved Ukraine surrendering territory. In response Andrij
At least 28 people have died and dozens remain trapped underground after an explosion in a coal mine in northern Turkey's Bartin province.
Around 110 people were in the mine at the time of the blast on Friday, almost half of them at over 300 metres deep.
Turkey's health minister Fahrettin Koca said 11 people had been rescued and were being treated.
Emergency crews worked through the night, digging through rock to try to reach more survivors.
Video footage shows miners emerging blackened and bleary-eyed accompanied by rescuers at the facility in Amasra, on the Black Sea coast.
The family and friends of the missing could also be seen at the mine, anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.
The explosion is believed to have occurred at around 300m deep. Some 49 people were working in the "risky" zone between 300 and 350m (985 to 1,150ft) underground, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.
"There are those whom we were not able to evacuate from that area," Mr Soylu told reporters at the scene.
The cause of the blast is not yet known, and the local prosecutor's office has begun an investigation.
Turkey's energy minister said there were initial indications that the blast was caused by firedamp, which is methane forming an explosive mixture in coal mines.
"We are facing a truly regretful situation", he said.
There were partial collapses inside the mine, he said, adding that there were no ongoing fires, and that ventilation was working properly.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit the site on Saturday.
Amasra's mayor Recai Cakir said many of those who survived had suffered "serious injuries".
One worker who managed to escape on his own said: "There was dust and smoke and we don't know exactly what happened."
The mine belongs to the state-owned Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises.
Turkey witnessed its deadliest coal mining disaster in 2014, when 301 people died after a blast in the western town of Soma.
Russia’s leader said he has no plans “for now” to launch massive air raids such as those carried out this week, in which more than 100 long-range missiles were fired at targets across Ukraine.
“We do not set ourselves the task of destroying Ukraine. No, of course not,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday at the end of a summit in Kazakhstan.
He added the call-up of reservists would be finished in two weeks, promising an end to the divisive mobilisation that has seen hundreds of thousands of men summoned to fight in Ukraine and huge numbers fleeing the country.
Defending the mobilisation order, Putin told a news conference the front line was too long to defend solely with contract soldiers. He ordered the call-up to bolster the fight along a 1,100-km (684-mile) front line where Ukrainian counteroffensives have inflicted blows to Moscow’s military prestige.
Putin said 222,000 out of an expected 300,000 reservists had already been mobilised. “This work is coming to an end,” he said.
Since the mobilisation order was given, Russian forces have continued to lose ground in eastern Ukraine and also lost a substantial area in the south.
Even some of Putin’s own supporters have criticised the Kremlin’s handling of the war, increasing pressure on him to do more to turn the tide in Russia’s favour.
After attending the summit of regional leaders from Asia and Eastern Europe, Putin said he did not regret sending troops into Ukraine nearly eight months ago.
“What is happening today is unpleasant, to put it mildly,” he said. “But we would have had all this a little later, only under worse conditions for us, that’s all. So my actions are correct and timely.”
‘Do not believe Putin’
The troop mobilisation was troubled from the start with confusion about who was eligible for the draft in a country where almost all men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
Russia’s leader said all activated recruits will receive needed training and he would assign Russia’s Security Council “to conduct an inspection of how mobilised citizens are being trained”.
But reports have indicated recruits deployed to the front lines in Ukraine have received little training and inadequate equipment. Several mobilised reservists were reported to have died in combat in Ukraine this week.
Asked about the possibility of expanded conscription, the Russian president said the defence ministry had not asked him to authorise that. “In the foreseeable future, I don’t see any need. Nothing further is planned.”
But some questioned the veracity of Putin’s comments.
“Do not believe Putin about ‘two weeks.’ Mobilisation can only be canceled by his decree. No decree – no cancellation,” Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer at imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Facebook.
‘Now in suspense’
The war’s momentum has shifted towards Ukraine as its military recaptures cities, towns and villages that Russia took early in the war.
Ukrainian forces reported retaking 75 populated places in the north of the Kherson region in the last month, according to Ukraine’s Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories.
A similar campaign in eastern Ukraine resulted in most of the Kharkiv region returning to Ukrainian control, as well as parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the ministry said.
Konstantin, a Kherson resident who withheld his last name for safety reasons, said columns of military trucks moved around the region’s capital and eventually left. Most government offices reduced working hours, and schools were closed, he said.
“The city is now in suspense. Primarily, the Russian military from the headquarters and the family of collaborators are leaving,” Konstantin said. “Everyone is discussing the imminent arrival of the Ukrainian military and preparing for it.”
‘Myth of invincibility’
Putin repeated the claim that Russia was prepared for peace talks, blaming Kyiv for the lack of negotiations.
“We even reached certain agreements in Istanbul [in the spring],” Putin said, thanking Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his mediation efforts.
“These agreements were actually almost initialled. But as soon as the [Russian] troops withdrew from Kyiv, the Kyiv authorities immediately lost the desire to negotiate.”
Ukraine officially rejected any possibility of negotiating with Putin after he illegally annexed Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory last month following “referendums” that Kyiv and the West denounced as a sham.
Putin has promised to retaliate harshly if Ukraine or its allies attack Russian territory, including the annexed regions of Ukraine. Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine came under attack for a second day Friday.
Ukrainian shelling blew up an ammunition depot in Belgorod on Thursday, killing and wounding an unspecified number of people, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.
“We have buried the myth of the invincibility of the Russian army,” General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said in a video message on Friday, pledging to liberate all Russian-occupied areas.
Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s mobilisation drive to bolster its forces fighting in its faltering invasion of Ukraine will end within two weeks but defended the army from criticism of the draft.
Russia’s president on Friday said about 220,000 men had been drafted into the army since he called up reserves and moved to annex four occupied regions of south-eastern Ukraine. He said this was a sufficient effort to bolster forces on the battlefield.
“Nothing additional is being planned,” Putin said, adding that he did not “see any need” to further strengthen the 1,100km frontline in Ukraine.
Russia’s army continues to flail nearly eight months after Putin first sent troops into Ukraine and his initial plan of a blitzkrieg to capture Kyiv failed.
Western officials say Putin’s mobilisation of men unfit for combat — even if the figures are in the hundreds of thousands — is unlikely to shift momentum in Russia’s favour in the immediate future, as Ukraine presses ahead with its counteroffensive.
The draft has also proved deeply unpopular in Russia, from which more men fled to Kazakhstan in the first two weeks alone following Putin’s decree than joined the army.
Some officials and pro-Kremlin commentators have also criticised widespread reports of “excesses” during the draft despite promises from Putin to only call up a limited force.
In some regions, draft officers and police have press-ganged people off the street to join the army, while several men have died at the front — apparently skipping the basic training Putin promised they would be offered.
But Putin said the training was meant to take between 10 and 25 days, indicating he saw no problems with the reports. He said 33,000 people had joined their combat units and 16,000 of them were taking part in combat operations.
Despite Putin’s threat that he would use nuclear weapons to defend the Ukrainian regions he now considers part of Russia, Kyiv’s forces have continued to advance since he held a ceremony in the Kremlin and a rally on Red Square to celebrate the annexation.
In particular, western officials say Ukraine is close to retaking all of the southern Kherson region up to the Dnipro river as soon as next week. On Thursday Russia-installed officials appealed to Moscow to help evacuate the local population.
On Friday a western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said “it is conceivable” that Ukrainian forces could recapture much of Kherson by the end of next week.
“We think that the Russian position [in Kherson] is extremely fragile,” the official said. “And you would have noticed that in the last 24 hours, the occupation authorities have announced that they are evacuating the civilian population from that area, really underlining how vulnerable they are on that [right] flank, and also demonstrating the absurdity of the claimed annexations of Kherson as well as Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas.”
Moscow on Monday responded to its battlefield setbacks and the bomb attack on the bridge linking the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to Russia with its largest aerial assault since the war’s early days. The response was spearheaded by the Russian forces’ new commander, Sergei Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon”.
Putin said there was “no need” for further strikes on such a scale after he claimed the army hit 22 of the 29 Ukrainian infrastructure targets.
The western official said Ukraine’s allies “do not think that Russia’s mobilisation will affect the battlefield situation” between now and winter.
The new recruits “are already on the battlefield”, the official said. “There is evidence that they have been taking casualties. It is clear that they have been fielded with very, very limited training and very, very poor equipment. It is really unlikely that they have any sort of positive impact in the near term.”
The person added: “We question whether Russia has the resources available to mobilise that number of troops, to equip them and train them properly, and certainly to equip them and train them in a way which makes them fit to conduct operations during the winter.”
A jury in Florida has recommended a sentence of life in prison for school gunman Nikolas Cruz over the 2018 Parkland massacre which left 17 people dead.
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to premeditated murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The expelled student was 18 years old when he used a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill 14 students and three staff members in one of America's worst school shootings.
After three months of testimony and lawyers' arguments, 12 jurors reached their recommendation after seven hours of deliberations over two days.
As the life sentences were announced many of the relatives of the victims could be seen shaking their heads and some cried.
In Florida, a death sentence could only have been handed down if jurors had unanimously recommended Cruz be executed.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will formally issue the sentence at a later date.
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Cruz had said he chose Valentine's Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again.
During the three-month sentencing trial the prosecution had argued Cruz's crime was both premeditated as well as heinous and cruel - details among the criteria Florida law establishes for deciding on a death sentence.
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His defence team had acknowledged the severity of his crimes, but asked jurors to consider mitigating factors, including lifelong mental health disorders resulting from his biological mother's substance abuse during pregnancy.
Cruz had apologised for his crimes and asked to be given a life sentence without the possibility of parole in order to dedicate his life to helping others.
Image:Pic: AP
The sentencing proceedings included testimony from survivors of the shooting as well as mobile phone footage of students crying out for help or whispering as they hid during the shooting.
Lead prosecutor Mike Satz focused on Cruz's eight months of planning and the seven minutes during which he stalked the halls of the school, firing 140 shots from his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle before escaping.
Cruz's lead attorney, Melisa McNeill, and her team did not question the horror of his actions but focused on their belief his birth mother's heavy drinking during pregnancy had left him with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Their experts said his troubling and sometimes violent behaviour, which started at the age of two, was misdiagnosed as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, meaning he never got the right treatment.
Image:A school in mourning - Marjory Stoneman Douglas students days after the deadly attack
Mr Satz and his team contended Cruz did not suffer from foetal alcohol damage but had anti-social personality disorder.
Their witnesses said Cruz faked brain damage during testing and was capable of controlling his actions but chose not to.
Prosecutors also played several videos of Cruz discussing the crime with their mental health experts during which he talked about his planning and motivation.
The defence alleged on cross-examination that Cruz was sexually molested and raped by a 12-year-old neighbour when he was nine.
The massacre led to renewed calls for tighter gun control in the US, which have gained further support this year following the shooting of 19 children and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas and another shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 people dead.
The father-of-three allegedly died from Covid complications (Picture: News Tula/east2west news)
An energy boss has become the latest high profile Russian to die in suspicious circumstances since Putin invaded Ukraine.
Nikolay Petrunin, 47, dubbed the ‘gas wonderkid’, died after allegedly slipping into a month-long coma from Covid.
It follows a series of mysterious deaths in Russia, with critics fearing Putin’s cronies may be behind the alleged killings.
Multi-millionaire Petrunin, who was a father-of-three, was deputy chairman of the powerful energy committee, and he built gas pipelines with links to Gazprom.
He was also fiercely loyal to the Russian president and seen as a ‘political prodigy’.
His wife, Albina Petrunina, is also prominent figure in Russian society, achieving the rank of ‘major’ in the police force and becoming the co-owner of MetaTrendCity company.
Petrunin’s death comes days after leading ‘incorruptible’ judge Sergey Maslov was killed in the Crimean Bridge blast last week.
Petrunin was seen as a ‘political prodigy’ (Picture: News Tula/east2west news)
He was described as an ‘unusually independent-minded’ official who ruled on ‘sensitive’ cases involving big businesses.
Two weeks ago, Putin’s former ally Pavel Pchelnikov was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head on his balcony.
He was the director of communications at Digital Logistics, which was blamed by the Kremlin after servers were hacked from Ukraine.
This led to the delay of critical supplies getting to Russian troops.
Last month oil tycoon Ravil Maganov fell to his death from a sixth floor window of a Moscow hospital, but one report says he was beaten before he was ‘thrown out of a window’.
Maganov’s oil company Lukoil had voiced opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Energy executive Ivan Pecorin, 39, was the next official to wind up dead after falling foul of the Kremin.
He fell to his death from a boat travelling at full speed near Russky Island in the Sea of Japan.
