President Putin railed against the West as he oversaw a muted Victory Day parade stripped of three essential ingredients: tanks, aircraft and Russian success in Ukraine.
He used the annual address marking the defeat of Nazi Germany to make a series of accusations against western powers, claiming they had provoked conflict, sown hatred and destroyed family values, as he sought to make the case for his faltering war.
Hours after launching a new barrage of cruise missiles at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, Putin accused the West of “unleashing war against Russia” after “forgetting who defeated the Nazis” and “creating a new cult of Nazism” through the destruction of Soviet memorials in eastern Europe.
The parade marks the 78th anniversary of the end of the Second World War
ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/AP
Russians watch a Victory Day parade in Vladivostok
TATIANA MEEL/REUTERS
He accused “globalist elites” of making the Ukrainian people “hostages to
Police in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are asking for the public's help to identify 22 women and girls who they believe have been murdered.
The bodies were discovered across the three European countries between October 1976 and August 2019.
"Most of the 22 victims died violently, and some were also abused or starved before they died," said Carina van Leeuwen and Martin de Wit in a statement by the Netherlands police, which initiated the public appeal.
They added: "Partly because the women are likely from countries other than where they were found, their identities have not yet been established.
"It is possible that their bodies were left in our countries to impede criminal investigations."
Image:This tattoo was found on a woman's left forearm. Her body was discovered in the Groot Schijn River in Antwerp, Belgium, in June 1992. Pic: Interpol
"We want to stress that we are looking for names," said Carolien Opdecam, of the Belgian police force.
"The victim's identity is often the key to unlocking the mysteries of a case."
With some of the murdered women believed to have come from specific regions in Eastern Europe, identifying them may also provide evidence on the perpetrators of these crimes.
Anja Allendorf, of the German police, said: "In similar investigations, establishing the victim's identity ultimately has led to the arrest of a suspect."
The police forces of all three countries have come together to launch Operation Identify Me through Interpol.
Image:A suitcase containing the torso of a female was found in a canal in Amsterdam in September 1992. The victim's hands, legs and other body parts were discovered elsewhere. Pic: Interpol
The international police group has for the first time made public some details of so-called black notices which are used to seek information and intelligence on unidentified bodies and to determine the circumstances surrounding the death.
Black notices are usually circulated internally among Interpol's global network of police forces.
The cold cases include a woman with a flower tattoo who was found in the Groot Schijn River in Antwerp, Belgium; the discovery of a body which had been burned in a forest in Altena-Bergfeld in Germany; and the remains of a female believed to be 16-35 years old which were found in a bag in the IJ River in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Image:The facial reconstruction of a woman whose body was found buried in a forest northwest of Berlin, Germany, in November 1998. She was dressed in men's clothing. Pic: Interpol
Details on each case have been made available on the Interpol website showing facial reconstructions of some of the victims, as well as videos and pictures of items such as jewellery and clothing which were discovered at the various sites where their remains were dumped.
It also includes information such as their estimated age, hair and eye colour and other physical characteristics.
Members of the public, particularly those who remember a missing friend or family member, are being invited to contact their relevant national police team should they have any information.
Image:This bracelet is believed to belong to a victim whose body was found wrapped in plastic in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, in January 1995. Pic: Interpol
"Black Notices allow law enforcement agencies to collaborate and share information across borders, ultimately helping to bring closure to the families of the deceased and bring offenders to justice," said Susan Hitchin, coordinator of Interpol's DNA Unit.
"Advances in technology across the different fields of forensic human identification have been significant in helping solve cold cases."
President Putin railed against the West as he oversaw a muted Victory Day parade stripped of three essential ingredients: tanks, aircraft and Russian success in Ukraine.
He used the annual address marking the defeat of Nazi Germany to make a series of accusations against western powers, claiming they had provoked conflict, sown hatred and destroyed family values, as he sought to make the case for his faltering war.
Hours after launching a new barrage of cruise missiles at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, Putin accused the West of “unleashing war against Russia” after “forgetting who defeated the Nazis” and “creating a new cult of Nazism” through the destruction of Soviet memorials in eastern Europe.
The parade marks the 78th anniversary of the end of the Second World War
ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/AP
Russians watch a Victory Day parade in Vladivostok
TATIANA MEEL/REUTERS
He accused “globalist elites” of making the Ukrainian people “hostages to
Donald Trump sexually abused the magazine writer E Jean Carroll and defamed her, a jury decided on Tuesday night, ordering the former US president to pay her $5 million in damages.
It was another legal setback for the former US president as he seeks the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Responding to the verdict on his Truth Social app, Mr Trump said: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is.”
He said the jury’s ruling was a “disgrace” and called it “the greatest witch hunt of all time”.
Mr Trump later added: "VERY UNFAIR TRIAL!"
Ms Carroll, 79, bowed her head and nodded when the decision was read while holding hands with her lawyer.
The former magazine writer is owed $5m in compensation, the jury ruled
Credit: JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
She did not speak as she left court but smiled broadly, later saying in a statement: “I filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and to get my life back.
“Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed."
The nine-member jury in Manhattan federal court rejected Mr Trump’s denial that he assaulted Ms Carroll and ruled in her favour.
To find him liable, the jury of six men and three women was required to reach a unanimous verdict, which they did in less than three hours.
Mr Trump was ordered to pay $2 million (£1.58 million) in damages for sexual abuse, and $3 million for defamation.
A spokesman for Mr Trump, 76, said he would appeal and would not pay the damages while the appeal was ongoing.
Mr Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said outside the court that his client would appeal the “perplexing and “inconsistent” verdict.
He said: "This was a rape case all along and the jury rejected that."
Mr Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said outside the court that his client would appeal the “perplexing and “inconsistent” verdict
Credit: Edna Leshowitz/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
He said Mr Trump is “firm in his belief, as many people are, that he cannot get a fair trial in New York City, based on the jury pool.
"He's strong, he's ready to move forward, he wants to fight this on appeal.”
Ms Carroll claimed that Mr Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in either 1995 or 1996.
She argued that he damaged her reputation by writing in a post on Truth Social last October that her claims were a “complete con job,” “a hoax” and “a lie”.
E Jean Carroll watches as Donald Trump's video deposition is played in court during the civil trial
Credit: REUTERS
Any one of those findings would have satisfied the claim of battery brought by Ms Carroll.
Before the verdict was read out, Judge Kaplan asked the court to maintain “decorum”, saying there would be no shouting or jumping up and down.
The trial featured evidence from two other women who claimed Mr Trump sexually assaulted them decades ago.
Natasha Stoynoff, a former reporter at People magazine, told jurors that Mr Trump cornered her at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2005 and forcibly kissed her for a “few minutes” until a butler interrupted.
Jessica Leeds testified that Mr Trump kissed her, groped her and put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.
Jurors also heard excerpts from a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Mr Trump made remarks about women.
Mr Trump’s campaign spokesman branded it a “bogus case”, saying it was “a political endeavour targeting President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be once again elected President of the United States.”
Donald Trump in Scotland on May 2, 2023
Credit: Getty Images
Mr Trump falsely claimed he was blocked from “speaking and defending” himself during the case, hours before the jury began deliberations.
Before the verdict was handed down, Mr Trump, 76, wrote: “Waiting for a jury decision on a false accusation where I, despite being a current political candidate and leading all others in both parties, am not allowed to speak or defend myself, even as hard nosed reporters scream questions about this case at me.”
Ms Carroll’s lawyer requested the jury be instructed that Mr Trump had declined the opportunity to testify in the case, to which Judge Kaplan replied: “We are where we are”.
Mr Tacopina previously assured Judge Kaplan he would tell his client to refrain from posting about the case after the former president called the lawsuit “a made up SCAM” and claimed Ms Carroll's lawyer was a “political operative”.
Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist, said: "The folks that are anti-Trump are going to remain that way, the core pro-Trump voters are not going to change.
"And the ambivalent ones I just don’t think are going to be moved by this type of thing."
Asked for his reaction, Joe Biden said: "I'm unaware. I heard that as I've been walking from room to room, I can't comment."
No criminal consequences
Because it was a civil case, Mr Trump will face no criminal consequences. His legal team decided not to present a defence or put Mr Trump himself on the witness stand.
Mr Trump had argued that Ms Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist and a registered Democrat, made up the allegations to hurt him politically and boost sales of her book.
Ms Carroll told the jury she bumped into Mr Trump at Bergdorf's while he was shopping for a gift for another woman.
She told the jury that she agreed to help Mr Trump pick out a gift, and the two looked at lingerie before he coaxed her into a dressing room, slammed her head into a wall and raped her.
Ms Carroll testified she could not remember the precise date or year the alleged rape occurred.
Mr Trump's legal team questioned why she had never reported the matter to police or screamed during the alleged incident.
Two of Ms Carroll's friends said she told them about the incident at the time but swore them to secrecy because she feared that Mr Trump would use his fame and wealth to retaliate against her if she came forward.
The Manhattan jury ordered Mr Trump to pay her about $5m (£4m) in damages.
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Because the trial was in civil court - rather than criminal - Mr Trump will not be required to register as a sex offender.
The jury of six men and three women reached their decision after less than three hours of deliberations on Tuesday.
Mr Trump - who denied the accusations - did not attend the two-week civil trial in the Manhattan federal court.
Ms Carroll held the hands of both her lawyers as the verdict was read in court and smiled as she was awarded damages by the jury.
Mr Trump's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, shook her hand as the trial ended, telling her: "Congratulations and good luck."
Ms Carroll did not stop outside court, but told reporters "we're very happy" before leaving in a car with her attorneys.
After the verdict, Mr Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social in all capital letters: "I have absolutely no idea who this woman is.
"This verdict is a disgrace - a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!"
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The trial saw a tense cross-examination between Ms Carroll and Mr Trump's attorneys.
Her legal team called 11 witnesses to corroborate her claims that Mr Trump had assaulted her in the lingerie department of the luxury store in 1995 or 1996.
They included two women who also say they were sexually assaulted by Mr Trump decades ago, and two long-time friends of hers who said she told them about the encounter with Mr Trump shortly after it occurred.
On the stand, Ms Carroll described in graphic detail what she alleges happened in the store and the trauma she says she has endured as a result.
"I'm here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he lied and said it didn't happen," she told the court.
Mr Trump called no witnesses and appeared only in a video of a deposition that was played for jurors in which he denied rape.
"It's the most ridiculous, disgusting story," Mr Trump said in the footage. "It's just made up."
Ms Carroll's lawsuit argued that Mr Trump had defamed her in an October 2022 post on his social media site in which he called her claims a "complete con job" and "a Hoax and a lie".
Her legal team argued Mr Trump, 76, had acted as a "witness against himself" during the deposition when he doubled down on comments he made in a 2005 recording.
In the audio, known as the Access Hollywood tape and leaked in 2016, Mr Trump suggested women let stars "do anything" to them, including grabbing their genitals.
That's what he did to Ms Carroll, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan argued. Ms Kaplan is not related to the judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan.
This is a breaking news story and will be quickly updated.
Protesters enraged by the arrest of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, on Tuesday broke into the headquarters of the army in an unprecedented show of defiance against the powerful military.
Mr Khan, the legendary cricketer, was arrested in the morning by security forces who stormed the Islamabad High Court before bundling him into an armoured car.
Video footage showed dozens of officers from the paramilitary Rangers Police force shoving and manhandling the 70-year-old, who walks with a limp following an assassination attempt last year.
Furious protesters descended on major cities and military sites across the country as leaders of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) called for a national ‘shutdown’.
Dozens of protesters were filmed breaking into the home of a military commander in Lahore before smashing his furniture and setting the building on fire.
Police fired tear gas at protesters and water cannons at protesters in the capital Islamabad and Karachi, the country’s largest city.
In Peshawar, a mob razed the Chaghi monument - a mountain-shaped sculpture honouring the location of Pakistan’s first nuclear test.
Smoke erupts from objects set on fire by angry supporters of Imran Khan as police fire tear gas to disperse them during a protest in Peshawar
Credit: Muhammad Sajjad/AP
Three people were killed when security forces opened fire in the city of Quetta, while at least eighteen were shot in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Their condition was unclear on Tuesday night.
In Rawalpindi, demonstrators broke through the gate to the army’s headquarters, clubbing a coat-of-arms on their way through.
Cyril Almeida, a respected political columnist, said that the break-in at General Headquarters was “unreal”.
“Either the revolution is here or something terrible is about to unfold,” he wrote on Twitter.
Plainclothes police officers beat a supporter of Imran Khan as they detain him when he with others blocked a road as a protest in Peshawar
Credit: W.K. Yousufzai/AP
Mr Khan has been locked for months in an increasingly tempestuous duel with the military, which he alleges oversaw his ouster in a 2022 no confidence vote.
The military has ruled the nation for almost half of its history and, although it is widely seen as pulling the strings of political affairs, discussing that influence in public has long been deemed taboo.
Mr Khan, who attended Oxford University before becoming Pakistan’s cricket captain, was attending court to face one of 100 charges of corruption filed against him since he left power. He claims the charges are politically fabricated.
It was unclear on Tuesday whether the paramilitary Rangers had the authority to arrest Mr Khan.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Mr Khan had failed to appear before the court despite being issued several notices. “The arrest has been conducted by the National Accountability Bureau for causing losses to the national treasury,” he said.
Allies of the former prime minister called it an “abduction”.
Aamer Farooq, the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court, demanded an explanation from the capital’s police chief and the interior ministry for why the Rangers had burst into the court premises to seize Mr Khan.
Mr Farooq said he would summon prime minister Shahbaz Sharif if he did not receive a satisfactory response.
Later in the evening Mr Farooq ruled that the arrest of Mr Khan was indeed legal.
Supporters of Imran Khan throw stones after police fire tear gas to disperse them after protests against the arrest of the former prime minister in Lahore
Credit: K.M.Chaudary/AP
An eyewitness of the arrest, who did not want to be named, told the Telegraph that Mr Khan was “grabbed by the collar, lifted from his wheelchair” and then “dragged out on the road”.
Gohar Khan, Mr Khan’s lawyer, said his client was beaten over the head and in the leg where he was shot.
Azhar Siddique, a senior lawyer in Pakistan, said the arrest of the former prime minister within the court premises was illegal, unconstitutional and amounted to contempt of the court.
On Saturday, Mr Khan said a major general in the ISI, Faisal Naseer, attempted to assassinate him twice.
“Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)’s Major-General Faisal Naseer tried to kill me twice. He is also involved in the killing of (TV anchor) Arshad Sharif. He also stripped my party Senator Azam Swati naked and inflicted severe torture on him,” Mr Khan said during a public rally in Lahore.
A supporter of Imran Khan throws stones using a slingshot toward police officers during a protest in Lahore
Credit: K.M. Chaudary/AP
His arrest came a day after the military issued a furious denial of his “baseless” allegations.
“The timing of the arrest is striking,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.
“The senior army leadership is uninterested in repairing the rift between itself and Khan, and so with this arrest it’s likely sending a message that the gloves are very much off.”
Mr Khan was arrested by the Rangers amid allegations he, his wife and other party leaders signed off on a property deal that cost the exchequer £190m.
As part of the deal, the case alleges, Mr Khan was given use of land to help form Al-Qadir University. He denies the charges.
He was in court to face separate charges that he profited from the sale of luxury gifts he did not declare during his term as prime minister.
The storm of protests comes as Pakistan faces a severe economic crisis. Mr Khan is calling for early elections against the struggling coalition government.
Yevgeny Prigozhin launches another scathing attack on Russian defence chiefs, saying soldiers are being given ‘criminal’ orders.
The chief of Russia’s Wagner Group has accused a Russian military unit of fleeing positions near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, in his latest scathing attack against Russia’s military leadership.
“Today, everything is being done so that the front line crumbles. Today, one of the defence ministry’s units fled one of our flanks, abandoning their positions. Everyone fled,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had earlier threatened to pull his fighters out of Bakhmut on May 10 if he does not receive badly needed ammunition.
In a video released on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday, Prigozhin said troops were fleeing because of the “stupidity” of Russian army commanders.
“A soldier shouldn’t die because of his leaders’ absolute stupidity,” he said. “The commands they receive from the top are absolutely criminal.”
Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement later in the day that “assault troops” – normally a reference to Wagner units – were “continuing to fight in the western part” of Bakhmut.
The ministry said Russian paratroopers “provided assistance”, but did not mention Prigozhin’s accusation of soldiers abandoning their posts.
Wagner forces have spearheaded Moscow’s fight for the eastern Ukrainian city, which had a pre-war population of about 70,000 people, but in recent weeks, internal divisions have deepened, with Prigozhin repeatedly blaming Russia for failing to send his group enough weapons.
The fight for Bakhmut is the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine war so far, with each side understood to have suffered huge losses with thousands of soldiers killed.
Also on Tuesday, Prigozhin said he and his mercenaries would be seen as traitors if they abandoned their battle positions in the city.
In his messages shared on Russia’s Victory Day – the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II – Prigozhin said that he had received a “combat order” on Monday, saying if Wagner abandoned positions, it would be regarded as “treason against the motherland”.
“That was the message to us,” Prigozhin said.
“[But] if there is no ammunition, then we will leave our positions and be the ones asking who is really betraying the motherland. Apparently, the one [betraying the motherland] is the person who signed [the order to supply too little ammunition],” he added, saying he would keep pleading for more ammunition for a “few more days”.
Despite his rage towards Russia’s military leaders, Prigozhin has never directly criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
An ally of the president known as “Putin’s chef” because of his company’s Kremlin catering contracts, Prigozhin has been sanctioned by the West for his role in Wagner.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow had failed to capture Bakhmut despite a self-imposed deadline of May 9 to give Putin a battlefield trophy in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations.
Moscow regards capturing Bakhmut as a stepping stone towards taking other cities in Ukraine’s industrial east, but Western observers say Bakhmut’s fall would not represent a major win for Moscow or change the battlefield.
