Latest news with #RussianInvasion
South China Morning Post
7 hours ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
Ukraine says it attacked Crimean Bridge, as Russia halts traffic
Ukraine said it attacked the Crimean Bridge with explosives as Russia closed traffic on the route linking the annexed Black Sea peninsula with the Russian mainland. Agents planted mines on underwater supports and detonated them on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU, said in a statement on Telegram. The SBU said the operation took place over several months and left the bridge in an emergency condition, which could not be independently verified. Russia closed traffic on the bridge for a second time on Tuesday, without explaining the reason for the suspension, the Interfax news agency reported. The bridge was originally closed for more than three hours starting in the morning local time, the report said. Maritime passenger transportation was temporarily suspended in Sevastopol, the city's road and transport infrastructure authority said, also without explaining what prompted the interruption, according to Interfax. The attack comes amid an increase in Kyiv's strikes on Russian military and infrastructure targets, including one of Ukraine's most audacious aerial attacks inside the country. It also comes one day after talks held in Istanbul failed to bring the Kremlin's more-than-three-year-long invasion of Ukraine any closer to an end.
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
Ukraine invited to Nato summit in The Hague this month
Ukraine has received an invitation to the coming Nato summit in The Hague, Netherlands, President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists on Monday. 'We have been invited to the Nato summit. I think that is important,' Zelensky said. The invitation was extended during his meeting with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte in Vilnius, Lithuania. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has been tasked with preparing the meeting. Zelensky did not say whether he would travel to the Netherlands himself. The summit of the member states of the Nato military alliance is expected to take place in The Hague in just under three weeks. Ukraine has been fighting a Russian invasion with Western support for more than three years. Moscow has demanded a ban on Kyiv joining Nato. Preventing Kyiv from joining Nato, which is enshrined in the country's constitution, is one of the Kremlin's main reasons for having launched the assault on its neighbour.
ABC News
6 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Mariupol's new rulers have given residents a choice — get Russian passports, or lose your home
In Mariupol, speaking out can be deadly. Vladimir Putin's forces captured the city on Ukraine's Black Sea coast in the early stages of their full-scale invasion. Life there has changed significantly for the residents who remained. To keep their homes and access to basic services — including healthcare — they've been forced to become Russian citizens. Some Ukrainian men have even been recruited to fight for Moscow's military. Accurate accounts of what life is like inside Mariupol today are scarce, with many people terrified that speaking the truth will draw recriminations from their new Russian overlords. Some have chosen to do it anyway. Larisa spoke to the ABC through a third party. Some details about her life and family, including her last name, have not been included in this story to protect her identity. She said the only way to survive in Mariupol now was to become Russian. "To save our property we have to receive a Russian passport; we cannot receive any medical treatment without it," she said. "We cannot work, have jobs and receive salaries without Russian passports." She described Mariupol as "now part of Russia" and says there are "ears and eyes everywhere" which make it very dangerous to criticise Mr Putin or the Kremlin. "Many new people are coming from Siberia or even [the] Far East; they buy the real estate that once used to be the property of Ukrainians," she said. The siege of Mariupol in the early days of the war is seared into the hearts and minds of Ukrainians and people from around the world. Just days after Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022, the port city was under relentless shelling and found itself surrounded by Kremlin forces. Russia has controlled Mariupol for around three years. Ukrainians still living in the city say they have been cut off from the outside world due to Russia's censored media environment. When Mariupol was under siege, 49-year-old Natalia and her family lived in their basement using fire to cook their food and radiators to source hot water. They escaped in late March 2022 but returned a year and a half later to care for stranded elderly relatives. They took Russian passports in 2023 because without them they couldn't access healthcare, medicine or take possession of their own home. "There are lot of newcomers of different nationalities in Mariupol these days," Natalia told the ABC. Natalia also said Russia was holding "patriotic demonstrations" in the city and that in schools, students were being taught the Russian language and history. "There are lots of events in town meant to bring up patriots. They constantly play adverts on TV on recruiting contract soldiers for the army and schools have many events teaching lessons of historical glory," she said. She said the Young Army Movement — an organisation set up by presidential decree 10 years ago and designed to give Russia's youth military training — was active in the community, working with schools and sporting groups to promote Moscow's messaging. Natalia is trying to sell her apartment but is finding it difficult securing the documents needed to comply with the laws Russia has imposed. "There is no future in Mariupol, I don't see it. If we manage to sell our property, we'll move," she said. "For now, we're still registering our documents, we don't know how long it will take." An estimated 350,000 residents fled Mariupol to escape Russian occupation, leaving their homes and possessions behind. But millions of Ukrainians are still living in territories occupied by Kremlin forces. Far from the frontline, Moscow is fighting a very different skirmish. After destroying villages and cities during its invasion and the battles that followed, it's now using social media influencers to fight its propaganda war from inside occupied territories like Mariupol. This video, posted by a young influencer and liked more than 20,000 times, promotes Russia's rebuilding of Mariupol. The man says, sarcastically: "Oh God, what are Russians doing with Mariupol! Take a look, it's a house being built, not demolished! "Right, aha, they are building houses, look at the builders over there." In his account biography, the man references the Donetsk People's Republic, which was an illegitimate state created by Russian-backed paramilitary groups in south-eastern Ukraine in the years before they were invaded by Mr Putin. Another video on Instagram provides a tour inside a new apartment building in Mariupol, spruiking a new borough Moscow claims to have built in the city. "Amazing flats, wonderful houses, stunning backyards, plenty of playgrounds, sportsgrounds, you have everything you need," the man filming it says. Meanwhile, this post with more than 30,000 likes flicks through pictures showing parts of the city destroyed during Russia's invasion contrasted with images of new construction. Elina Beketova, from the Washington DC-based Centre for European Policy Analysis, has created a database tracking what goes on inside occupied parts of Ukraine including how homes are being seized by Russian authorities. "So how is Moscow doing it? The scheme is simple. They label housing as ownerless and nationalise it," she said. "To prevent this, property owners must first obtain a Russian passport and then confirm ownership of the property in person. "Without this confirmation, the property is transferred to municipal ownership before being auctioned, rented or given to local citizens who are loyal to the occupiers." Ms Beketova has discovered that the scheme offers Russian citizens very cheap loans of 2 per cent to encourage them to populate the captured territories. The scale of the property transfer is believed to be more than 5,000 in Mariupol and some reports suggest it tallies up to hundreds of thousands across all Russian captured territories. Andrii Pazushko and Liudmyla Zavaliei are among the thousands of Ukrainians finding out their home could be seized. The couple fled Mariupol with their two children and dog on March 16, 2022, deciding it was no longer safe to stay. With nothing but a tiny suitcase full of their most valuable treasures, they passed through 21 Russian checkpoints to reach safety. "We witnessed a disaster. We were forced to leave Mariupol. We wouldn't peacefully live with Russians since we were part of the pro-Ukrainian volunteer movement," Liudmyla said. "Our lives would be at risk, that's why we had to leave." Their home was partially destroyed when their neighbourhood came under heavy shelling. Now living in Kyiv, the couple are worried their home could be taken. "After the Russians rushed into Mariupol, they started claiming all the housing as theirs. They started changing ownerships and appropriating the housing," Andrii said. Liudmyla's father is currently living in their home, but she fears it will soon be confiscated. "I can't get the house back, 'legalise it', as Russians say, and prove it as my property despite my father living here right now," she said. She said because her Ukrainian documents aren't accepted, she has to present to a Russian consulate outside her country or return to Mariupol, which she fears would lead to her detention. "It's not just confiscation, it's also theft. They steal people's property, refusing to return and threatening their lives, blackmailing them," Liudmyla said. Moscow is also using various forms of so-called "Russification" to erase Ukrainian culture. "They are militarising education, creating different camps that are very militarised, ideological, propagandist camps … to force teenagers to believe that they are with the Russian world, that their motherland is Russia," Ms Beketova said. She said Moscow had allocated more than $1 billion this year to "patriotic education" in Russia and that much of that is being spent in schools within occupied Ukrainian territories. "They want to control the local population; they want to control teenagers," Ms Beketova said. "They basically take kids and teenagers from occupied territories, they bring them to Moscow and St Petersburg, they show them some local museums, cultural centres. "But it's all done with the aim to erase their Ukrainian identity." Ms Beketova said between 55,000 and 60,000 Ukrainian men from the occupied territories had been "forcibly mobilised" into Russia's military. "At this point, we don't know what the real number is, but I found the data from also National Resistance center that said some of the villages and small towns in the Donetsk Oblast didn't have any men left because they [Russia] conscripted them all," she said. While Ukraine and Russia are in the early stages of ceasefire negotiations, the future of the occupied territories remains a significant point of contention. The idea of Mariupol being returned to Ukraine as part of some sort of peace process appears unlikely. For those who fled the city, an end to the war can't come soon enough, but not at all costs. "This whole concept of the territory being recognised as Russia's is more than just painful, but unacceptable," Andrii said. "Many people admitted that they will perceive this as a defeat and a betrayal by their state."
Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Urgent strategy is required to halt the march of tyranny in Europe
On Victory in Europe Day, 1945, Winston Churchill gave an address to an exhausted but jubilant nation from the balcony of the ministry of health. In it, he reminded the British people that 'we were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny'. Britain's early move to arrest the grotesque ambitions of the Nazi regime rightly remains a source of national pride. Indeed, it partly informs the strong collective UK backing for Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion and atrocities. In his speech at the London Defence Conference on the 80th anniversary of VE day, Sir Keir Starmer drew an explicit line between the 'forces of hatred, tyranny and evil' in the Second World War and the Russian threat to
Irish Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Former Ukrainian politician shot dead outside elite American school in Madrid
An unidentified gunman or gunmen has shot and killed former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov outside a school in a wealthy suburb of Madrid, a source close to the police investigation said. Police received a call about the shooting of a Ukrainian citizen at 9.15am local time on Wednesday outside the elite American School of Madrid, located in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid police said, without identifying the victim. Portnov was a senior aide to Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovich who was ousted in the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been several crimes involving high-profile Russian and Ukrainians in Spain, which has significant expatriate populations from both countries. READ MORE In November and December 2022, six letter bombs were sent to high profile targets around Spain, including to Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, government offices, a European Union satellite company and the US embassy. A 76-year-old retired Spanish civil servant whose social media searches suggested sympathy for Russia was jailed for the offences. In April 2022, a Russian businessman tied to Russia's gas company Novatek was found dead in an apparent suicide together with his wife and daughter who had suffered stab wounds. In February 2024, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with his helicopter was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds in the parking garage of his apartment block near Alicante. - Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
