Minggu, 28 Mei 2023

US debt crisis: Joe Biden gets the deal done but at a cost - Financial Times

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2023-05-28 05:06:05Z
2036416149

Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia unleashes major drone attack as Kyiv prepares to celebrate birthday - The Guardian

When Kuenssberg mentions war crimes, including a maternity hospital being attacked in Mariupol and asks why Kelin won’t be honest about what has happened, he replies that the war has been going on since 2014 in the Donbas with crimes being committed on the Ukrainian army side.

He adds: “We want peace. We want no threat from Ukraine to Russia, this is one thing, and second that Russians in Ukraine will be treated like all other nations in the world. Like a French person in Ukraine.

“It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.

“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.

“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.

“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.

“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”

Author Bill Browder, who is on a panel on the BBC One current affairs show, said that the Russian government is “failing miserably”.

Browder has written two books about Russia and his experience in finance there, which covers corruption and money laundering.

He said: “Corruption inside Russia has hollowed out the military. The supposed strong force failed at every step, they lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, they lost huge amounts of equipment.

“As he said Ukraine is a small country compared to Russia and they are being decimated by this small country.

“It is difficult watching that interview because everything he said is a lie. It will be painful when [Ukraine] launch that spring offensive.”

He said it is impossible that Putin is popular, as is claimed, when he has to rely on “totalitarian” measures.

When Kuenssberg mentions war crimes, including a maternity hospital being attacked in Mariupol and asks why Kelin won’t be honest about what has happened, he replies that the war has been going on since 2014 in the Donbas with crimes being committed on the Ukrainian army side.

He adds: “We want peace. We want no threat from Ukraine to Russia, this is one thing, and second that Russians in Ukraine will be treated like all other nations in the world. Like a French person in Ukraine.

“It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.

“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.

“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.

“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.

“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia then is able to ask a question via Kuenssberg’s phone.

She asks why the Russian government needs to use oppression when it says it has support of the people.

Kelin says that Kara-Murza has been treated as a Russian citizenship despite his dual-nationality, which Kelin acknowledges. He said he had not been treated differently from any other prisoner, and it is the court’s judgement.

On the subject of jailed westerners in Russia, Kelin claims that Evan Gerschkovich was arrested as a spy.

The Kremlin’s man in London, Andrei Kelin has spoken to BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday morning about the war in Ukraine.

He said that Yevgeny Prigozhin is a “free man” who is “commenting on what is happening in Bakhmut, and how the battle has gone”.

“I don’t think that he is very much wrong because the threat that existed for us on the eve of the military operation … was really the danger that presented to the existence of our state,” he said, in regards to Prigozhin saying Russia’s existence is at threat.

Kuenssberg challenges him on this, saying it is untrue. Kelin replies with conjecture about the size of the Ukrainian army.

Kelin goes on to say that he doesn’t agree with Prigozhin that there is a chance of “losing Russia”.

In response to a question about the attack on a hospital is justified, he brings up apparent incidents in Luhansk and Donetsk and claims that there has not been any mentions of it in British press.

An interesting piece here from the Kyiv Post on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s speechwriting team and process.

Senior correspondent Maryna Shashkova said that Zelenskiy’s team say that speeches are “80%” him.

“He always knows what he wants to say, and he immediately formulates it in sentences and phrases. He speaks ready-made thoughts, the speechwriter needs to listen, take notes and possibly add what the president did not say,” a source told the Post.

Others involved are Dmytro Lytvyn, a speechwriter, and Yuriy Kostyuk, who worked with Zelenskiy when he was an actor.

“The main task of a speechwriter is to completely turn off your ego and become a reflection of another person. They can do it,” an official in the president’s office said.

A 41-year-old man died during Russia’s mass drone strike on Kyiv on Sunday morning, after being hit by falling debris.

The death was confirmed by mayor Vitali Klitschko. Posting on Telegram he said that the man had been killed, along with a 35-year-old woman who was injured by the fall of a Shahed drone’s wreckage near a petrol station in Solomyanskyi, in the south-west of the city

Fires were also reported in Kyiv, caused by the drones, as well as damaged buildings which had been struck by the UAVs.

Ukrainian officials are calling the raid on Kyiv the largest drone attack on the city since the start of the war.

Ukraine’s air force said it downed 52 out of the 54 Russia-launched drones, calling it a record attack with the Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones. It was not immediately clear how many of the drones were shot over Kyiv.

The air force said on Telegram that Russia had targeted military and critical infrastructure facilities in the central regions of Ukraine, and the Kyiv region in particular.

Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said earlier that preliminary information indicated the air raid was the largest drone attack since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

He added that Russia used the Iranian-made Shahed drones in the attack. Reuters was not able to independently verify that information.

“Today, the enemy decided to ‘congratulate’ the people of Kyiv on Kyiv Day with the help of their deadly UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” Popko said on the Telegram messaging app.

“The attack was carried out in several waves, and the air alert lasted more than five hours.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Iran earlier this week to reconsider the supply of deadly drones to Russia in order to stop their slide into “the dark side of history”. But Iran on Saturday said his comments were really designed to attract more arms and financial aid from the west.

Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is Christine Kearney and here’s an overview of the latest.

Russia carried out a major two-wave overnight air attack on Kyiv that killed at least one person, officials said, calling it the biggest drone attack on the capital yet since the start of the war, as Kyiv prepares to celebrate its birthday on Sunday.

The pre-dawn attacks came on the last Sunday of May when the capital celebrates Kyiv Day, the anniversary of its official founding 1,541 years ago. Ukraine says it shot down more than 40 drones.

More on that story soon. In other news:

  • Preliminary operations have begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said. “It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s an ongoing process of deoccupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines.

  • The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, raised expectations that a major operation could be imminent by declaring on social media: “The time has come to take back what’s ours.” Zaluzhny’s declaration on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday was accompanied by a cinematic video showing heavily armed Ukrainian soldiers preparing for battle.

  • Ukraine’s defence ministry has claimed Russia is planning to simulate a major accident at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station to try to thwart Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive. The plant, in an area of Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, has been repeatedly hit by shelling that each side blames the other for.

  • Russian forces have temporarily eased their attacks on the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to regroup and strengthen their capabilities, a senior Kyiv official said on Saturday. Russia’s Wagner private army began handing over its positions to regular Russian troops this week after declaring full control of Bakhmut after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, Reuters reported. In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said Russian forces have continued attacking but that “overall offensive activity has decreased”.

  • Russian forces have intercepted two long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied to Ukraine by Britain, the RIA news agency cited the defence ministry as saying on Saturday. Reuters reports that the ministry said it had intercepted shorter-range US-built Himars-launched and Harm missiles, and shot down 13 drones in the last 24 hours, RIA reported.

  • Defeat in its war against Ukraine would leave Russia “vindictive” and “brutal” and posing a threat to Nato countries, the outgoing head of the RAF said. Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston told the Telegraph that Russia’s air force, surface navy and submarine force are a threat to Britain and Nato. He warned its threat could even get worse if the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was ousted.

  • A construction worker has been killed near the Russian village of Plekhovo, a few kilometres from the border with Ukraine after shelling from the Ukrainian side, said Roman Starovoyt, the governor of the Kursk region. Works were being carried out not far from Plekhovo on fortifying defensive lines for the state border, the governor said on Telegram.

  • Ukraine struck oil pipeline installations deep inside Russia on Saturday with a series of drone attacks including on a station serving the vast Druzhba oil pipeline that sends western Siberian crude to Europe, according to Russian media. Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia have been growing in intensity in recent weeks, and the New York Times reported that US intelligence believes Ukraine was behind a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month.

  • Ukraine has asked Germany to supply it with Taurus cruise missiles, an air-launched weapon with a range of 500km (310 miles), a spokesperson for the defence ministry in Berlin said on Saturday. Germany received the request several days ago, the spokesperson said, confirming a report by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She declined to provide further details or say how likely it was that Germany would supply the missiles to Ukraine.

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2023-05-28 08:45:51Z
2061729892

Turkey presidential election decides if Erdogan should have five more years - BBC

Supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attend a rally, ahead of the May 28 presidential runoff vote, in Istanbul, Turkey May 27, 2023Reuters

Turks are voting in a momentous presidential run-off to decide whether or not Recep Tayyip Erdogan should remain in power after 20 years.

His challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, backed by a broad opposition alliance, has billed the vote as a referendum on Turkey's future direction.

The president, who is favourite to win, promises a new era uniting the country around a "Turkish century".

But the more pressing issue is rampant inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.

Voters have nine hours to cast their ballots before 17:00 (14:00 GMT) and many were already waiting outside a polling station in central Ankara before the doors opened. One woman of 80 had set her alarm for 05:00 to be sure of arriving on time.

Turnout in the first round was an impressive 88.8%, and Mr Erdogan's lead was 2.5 million votes. That is why both candidates have their eye on the eight million who did not vote - but could this time.

Ahead of the run-off Mr Kilicdaroglu accused his rival of foul play, by blocking his text messages to voters while the president's messages went through.

Opposition parties are deploying an army of some 400,000 volunteers in a bid to ensure no vote-rigging takes place, both at polling stations and later at the election authority. But among the volunteers, they need lawyers such as Sena to accompany the ballot boxes.

Lawyer in Ankara
BBC
My parents say we used to trust the results and we didn't need any volunteers. It's bad that we don't trust the state, but the state can only change if people force it to
Sena
Legal observer in Ankara
1px transparent line

International observers spoke of an uneven playing field after the first round. But there was no suggestion that any irregularities in voting would have changed the result.

Mr Kilicdaroglu promised a very different style of presidency on his final day of campaigning: "I have no interest in living in palaces. I will live like you, modestly... and solve your problems."

It was a swipe at Mr Erdogan's enormous palatial complex on the edge of Ankara which he moved to when he switched from prime minister to president in 2014. After surviving a failed coup in 2016 he took on extensive powers, detained tens of thousands of people and took control of the media.

So it was laden with symbolism when he paid a campaign visit on Saturday to the mausoleum of a prime minister executed by the military after a coup in 1960.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lays carnations on the mausoleum of the 8th President of Turkiye, Turgut Ozal, at Topkapi Cemetery in Istanbul, Turkiye on May 27, 2023
Murat Kula/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

"The era of coups and juntas is over," he declared, linking Turkey's current stability to his own authoritarian rule.

Turkey, however, is deeply polarised, with the president reliant on a support base of religious conservatives and nationalists, while his opposite number's supporters are mainly secular - but many of them are nationalist too.

For days the two men traded insults. Mr Kilicdaroglu accused the president of cowardice and hiding from a fair election; Mr Erdogan said his rival was on the side of "terrorists", referring to Kurdish militants.

But after days of inflammatory rhetoric about sending millions of Syrian refugees home, the opposition candidate returned to Turkey's number-one issue - the economic crisis, and in particular its effect on poorer households.

A 59-year-old woman and her grandson joined him on stage to explain how her monthly salary of 5,000 lira (£200; $250) was now impossible to live on as her rent had shot up to 4,000 lira (£160; $200).

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Turkey's main opposition alliance, poses for a photograph, as he attends the indoor campaign event 'Family Support Insurance Meeting', ahead of the May 28 presidential runoff vote, in Ankara, Turkey, May 27, 2023
REUTERS/Yves Herman Boy

It may have been staged, but this is the story across Turkey, with inflation at almost 44% and salaries and state help failing to keep pace.

Economists say the Erdogan policy of cutting interest rates rather than raising them has only made matters worse.

The Turkish lira has hit record lows, demand for foreign currency has surged and the central bank's net foreign currency reserves are in negative territory for the first time since 2002.

"The central bank has no foreign currency to sell," says Selva Demiralp, professor of economics at Koc University. "There are already some sort of capital controls - we all know it's hard to buy dollars. If they continue with low interest rates, as Erdogan has signalled, the only other option is stricter controls."

East of Ankara, gleaming tower blocks have been springing up in Kirikkale. It looks like boom-time for this city, run by the president's party.

But many people here are struggling.

Fatma has run a hairdresser's for 13 years but for the past two, work has dried up, and the cost of rent and hair products has soared.

She voted for an ultranationalist candidate who came third, and does not trust the two men left in the race.

A few doors up the street, Binnaz is working a sewing machine at a shop for mending clothes.

People cannot afford new dresses so she is earning much more, even if her monthly rent has trebled to to 4,000 lira. Despite Turkey's stricken economy, she is putting her faith in the president.

Binnaz, seamstres
BBC
I believe [Erdogan] can fix it because he's been in power for 21 years and he has all the power. It's his last term [in office] so he'll do all he can for us
Binnaz
Seamstress in Kirikkale
1px transparent line

Outside a supermarket, Emrah Turgut says he is also sticking with Mr Erdogan because he has no faith in the other option, and believes the president's unfounded allegations that the biggest opposition party co-operates with terrorists.

Turkey's second-biggest opposition party, the HDP, denies any link to the militant PKK, but President Erdogan has used their backing for the rival candidate to suggest a link to terrorists.

Whoever wins on Sunday, Turkey's parliament is already firmly in the grip of Mr Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party and its far-right nationalist ally, the MHP.

The AKP also has the youngest MP, who arrived in parliament on the eve of the presidential vote.

Zehranur Aydemir, 24, believes if he wins then he will lay the foundations for a century in which Turkey will become a global power: "Now Turkey has a bigger vision it can dream bigger."

It is another grandiose Erdogan project, but Turkey's economy is likely to prove a more pressing task, whoever wins the run-off.

Zehranur Aydemir

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2023-05-28 05:02:30Z
2029664736

Sabtu, 27 Mei 2023

‘The intensity is increasing’: Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun - The Guardian

Preliminary operations have already begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said.

“It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s an ongoing process of de-occupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines.

“The intensity is increasing, but it will take quite a long period of time,” he added, predicting that as the counteroffensive gathered momentum, there would be more incursions into Russia by Russian rebel groups, such as the raid in Belgorod region earlier this week.

On Saturday the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhny, raised expectations that a major operation could be imminent by declaring on social media: “The time has come to take back what’s ours.”

Zaluzhny’s declaration on the Telegram messaging app was accompanied by a cinematic video showing heavily armed Ukrainian soldiers preparing for battle to a soundtrack of ominous music and a narrator reciting a prayer calling for strength to “annihilate” Ukraine’s enemies.

The secretary of the national security and defence council, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC the much-anticipated counteroffensive could come “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.

Danilov said Kyiv had “no right to make a mistake” on the decision because it was a historic opportunity that “we cannot lose”.

A long spell of dry weather has driven anticipation of the counteroffensive, as has the incursion by Ukrainian-backed Russian rebel groups into Belgorod, possibly intended to draw troops and equipment away from the frontline in Ukraine.

Podolyak denied the Russian groups – the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion – which include far-right extremists in their ranks, were acting on Kyiv’s orders. He said their contracts as part of Ukraine’s foreign legion had ended and they therefore had the status of “citizens of the Russian Federation temporarily on the territory of Ukraine”.

But he said Kyiv had not acted to stop the incursion as “we deeply sympathise with whatever protest movements are in Russia”.

“As an authoritarian regime exists in Russia, how can we prevent its own citizens from doing something about it?” he asked.

“The further Ukraine goes towards liberating its territory, the more such incidents we see within Russian Federation territory,” Podolyak predicted. “It’s an objective consequence of high-intensity war that will demonstrate that Russia cannot carry out the military action in Ukraine, and protect its own borders.

“Since Russia has already lost its conventional war, the consequences of this loss will gradually move into Russian territory, and the federal government will eventually lose control over its territory.”

The prayer that can be heard on the video posted by Zaluzhny, calls for divine blessing on Ukrainian vengeance.

“I go to annihilate the enemies of the motherland, the murderers of my brothers, the rapists of my sisters,” it says as the video shows Ukrainian soldiers standing to attention in battle gear, climbing on to Leopard tanks, and waiting with guns at the ready in a forest.

“Let my hand be firm to kill the enemies. Let my eye be clear to kill the enemies. Let my weapon be trustworthy to kill the enemies. Let my will be steel to kill the enemies.”

“God, our heavenly father,” the prayer concludes, “bless our decisive offensive, our sacred revenge, our holy victory.”

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2023-05-27 13:12:00Z
2060483269

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Ukraine 'ready to launch counter-offensive' - The Telegraph

Ukraine is ready to launch its counter-offensive against Russia, a Ukrainian national security adviser has said.

Speaking to the BBC, Oleksiy Danilov said the assault to regain territory from occupying Russian forces could begin "tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week".

Kyiv has been preparing its counter-offensive for months, hoping to recapture swathes of territory taken by Russia.

"We have to understand that that historic opportunity that is given to us - by God - to our country we cannot lose, so we can truly become an independent, big European country," Mr Danilov said.

He added that it "would be weird" to name a precise date when the assault would begin. 

His comments come as  Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, wrote on Telegram this morning.“The time has come to take back what’s ours."

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2023-05-27 10:10:53Z
2060483269

Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv says forces ready to launch counteroffensive - The Guardian

Ukraine is ready to launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, a senior Ukrainian official has told the BBC.

The broadcaster reported that Oleksiy Danilov would not name a date but said an assault to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin’s occupying forces could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.

He said Kyiv had “no right to make a mistake” on the decision because it was an “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose”.

As secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Danilov is at the heart of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s de facto war cabinet.

Danilov also told the BBC he was “absolutely calm” about Russia beginning to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, saying: “To us, it’s not some kind of news.”

Oleksiy Danilov gestures while talking

Russia has dismissed criticism from the US president, Joe Biden, over Moscow’s plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, saying Washington had for decades deployed just such nuclear weapons in Europe.

Russia said on Thursday it was pushing ahead with the first deployment of such weapons outside its borders since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, and the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said the weapons were already on the move.

Biden said on Friday he had an “extremely negative” reaction to reports that Russia has moved ahead with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Reuters reported. The US state department denounced the Russian nuclear deployment plan.

“It is the sovereign right of Russia and Belarus to ensure their security by means we deem necessary amid of a large-scale hybrid war unleashed by Washington against us,” Russia’s embassy in the United States said in a statement.

“The measures we undertake are fully consistent with our international legal obligations.”

The US has said the world faces the gravest nuclear danger since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis because of remarks by Vladimir Putin during the Ukraine conflict, but Moscow says its position has been misinterpreted.

Tehran on Saturday accused Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy of anti-Iranian propaganda in his call for Iran to halt the supply of drones to Russia, saying his comments were designed to attract more arms and financial aid from the west.

Zelenskiy in a video address on Wednesday called on Iranians to stop their slide into “the dark side of history” by supplying Moscow with drones.

Iran initially denied supplying Shahed drones to Russia but later said it had provided a small number before the conflict began. Ukraine says the drones have played a major role in Russia’s attacks on cities and infrastructure.

“The Ukrainian president’s repeat of delusional claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran is in line with the anti-Iranian propaganda and media war aimed at attracting as many arms and financial aid as possible from western countries,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement carried by Iranian media.

Ukraine, Kanaani said, has been refusing to allow an independent investigation into these claims.

A Belarus court has rejected an appeal by a jailed Polish-Belarusian journalist against his eight-year prison sentence for reporting critically on president Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.

Agence France-Presse reports that Andrzej Poczobut, a correspondent for the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and active member of the Polish minority in Belarus, was sentenced in February.

He had extensively reported on mass protests against Lukashenko and refused to leave the Moscow-allied country after authorities unleashed an historic crackdown on dissent.

Belarus’s supreme court said in a statement that the sentence was “left unchanged”.

The verdict has come into force.

Poczobut, 50, who stood trial in his home city of Grodno, near the Polish border, was found guilty of taking part in “actions harming national security” and “inciting hatred”.

Andrzej Poczobut

Poland, Belarus’s western EU-member neighbour, has condemned the trial and called for his release.

After Poczobut’s appeal was rejected, Warsaw said it would impose new punitive measures against Lukashenko’s regime next week. The Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, said on Twitter:

On Monday, I will announce the decision to add to the sanctions list several hundred representatives of the Lukashenko regime responsible for political repression, including repression against Poles living in Belarus.

Ukraine’s defence ministry has claimed Russia is planning to simulate a major accident at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station to try to thwart Kyiv’s long-planned counter-offensive.

The plant, in an area of Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, has been repeatedly hit by shelling that each side blames the other for.

Reuters reports that the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence directorate said Russian forces would soon shell the plant and then announce a radiation leak. This would force an investigation by international authorities, during which all hostilities would be stopped.

A Russian serviceman stands guard at the Zaporizhzhia plant

The directorate’s statement, posted on Telegram, did not provide any proof. It said Russia had disrupted the planned rotation of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who are based at the plant.

The agency, which frequently posts updates on the plant, has made no mention of any disruption.

Last week witnesses said Russian military forces had been enhancing defensive positions in and around the plant ahead of the counter-offensive.

Ukraine is ready to launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, a senior Ukrainian official has told the BBC.

The broadcaster reported that Oleksiy Danilov would not name a date but said an assault to retake territory from President Vladimir Putin’s occupying forces could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week”.

He said Kyiv had “no right to make a mistake” on the decision because it was an “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose”.

As secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Danilov is at the heart of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s de facto war cabinet.

Danilov also told the BBC he was “absolutely calm” about Russia beginning to deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, saying: “To us, it’s not some kind of news.”

Oleksiy Danilov gestures while talking

The Wagner mercenary group’s forces have probably begun to withdraw from some of their positions around the devastated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and are likely to be used for other offensive operations in the Donbas region, according to British intelligence.

The UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update that Wagner’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had said the withdrawal had begun and positions were being transferred to Russian defence ministry forces. Kyiv corroborated Wagner’s rotation out from the city’s outskirts.

The UK ministry said in its update, posted on Twitter, that forces of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic had probably entered the eastern Ukrainian city since Wednesday to start “clearance operations”.

Bakhmut has been the scene of the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

The ministry said:

Ukrainian forces had taken 20 square kilometres of Bakhmut’s flanks as of 16 May. The rotation out of Wagner forces is likely to continue in controlled phases to prevent collapse in pockets around Bakhmut.

Despite Prigozhin’s ongoing feud with the Russian MOD [ministry of defence], Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces.

US president Joe Biden has said he had an “extremely negative” reaction to reports that Russia has moved ahead with its plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, while the European Union has condemned the plan.

Reuters reports that the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said:

This is a step which will lead to further extremely dangerous escalation.

Russia signed a pact with Belarus on Thursday about the storage of the warheads, at a facility due to be finished in just over a month. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said later that the relocation of some of the weapons had already begun.

Vladimir Putin, left, and Alexander Lukashenko at the Kremlin on Thursday

Borrell said the agreement contravened multiple international agreements.

We call on Russia to abide by these commitments. The Belarusian regime is an accomplice in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.

Borrell said any attempt “to further escalate the situation will be met by a strong and coordinated reaction”.

Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton and here’s an overview of the latest.

The European Union has condemned Russia’s plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus, while US president Joe Biden says he had an “extremely negative” reaction to reports that Russia has already begun moving ahead with the plan.

More on that story soon. In other news:

  • The death toll from a Russian missile attack on an outpatient clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to two, with 30 people wounded, according to media reports. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: “Russian terrorists once again confirm their status of fighters against everything humane and honest.”

Firefighters at work at the medical facility destroyed in the Russian strike on Dnipro
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, plans to visit Finland, Sweden and Norway from this Monday to deepen cooperation on top national security and economic issues, the US state department has said. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland has joined Nato, with Sweden’s bid to join awaiting ratification from Hungary and Turkey.

  • A deal allowing the safe export of grain and fertiliser from Ukrainian Black Sea ports has not yet resumed full operations, the UN said on Friday, having come to a halt before Russia’s decision last week to extend it.

A truck unloads grain at a port in Izmail, Ukraine, in April
  • Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has told China’s special envoy Li Hui there are “serious obstacles” to resuming peace talks, blaming Ukraine and western countries. Meanwhile, Russia’s deputy security council chair, Dmitry Medvedev, has said the conflict in Ukraine could last for decades and negotiations with Ukraine were impossible as long as Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in power.

  • The former UK prime minister Boris Johnson and former US president Donald Trump discussed Ukraine and “the vital importance of Ukrainian victory” on Thursday, a spokesperson for Johnson said.

  • The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said in a phone call with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that Russia is open to dialogue over Ukraine. Lula tweeted that he had reiterated Brazil’s willingness to talk to both sides of the war in Ukraine but declined Putin’s invitation to visit.

  • Russia has blamed Kyiv for dozens of strikes on its southern Belgorod region. Its governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said the Ukrainian military was responsible for artillery, mortar and drone attacks across the region over 24 hours but reported no casualties. In a rare attack on the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, east of Crimea, two drones damaged buildings in the city centre, officials said. In the neighbouring Rostov region, the governor said a Ukrainian missile had been shot down near Morozovsk, where there is a Russian airbase.

  • Canada will donate 43 AIM-9 missiles to Ukraine to help the country “secure its skies”, the national defence has said. “Canada’s support for Ukraine is unwavering,” said Canada’s defence minister, Anita Anand. The country also said it welcomed Ukraine’s application to join the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership (CPTPP).

  • Moscow’s city court will hold a preliminary hearing next Wednesday in a new criminal case against the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on charges including incitement to extremism.

Alexei Navalny is shown on screen via video link from a penal colony during a court hearing in Moscow in April
  • The Russian arms company Kalashnikov, maker of the world’s most widely used assault rifle, is launching a division for the production of kamikaze drones – a key weapon used in the Ukraine war.

  • Ukraine said it shot down 10 missiles and 25 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks on the capital of Kyiv, the city of Dnipro and eastern regions. Several drones and missiles hit targets in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said on Friday. There was no immediate word of any deaths.

  • The city of Donetsk has come under fire from Ukrainian forces, the Russian-imposed leader of the occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, has said. As a result, he said, a young woman died and another was injured.

  • Japan will place additional sanctions on Russia after the Group of Seven (G7) summit the country hosted last week agreed to step up measures to punish Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, has said.

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2023-05-27 08:13:52Z
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