Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow using ‘fear’ to rule occupied Ukraine, says UN human rights report

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Russia jails woman for writing 'no to war' on ballot paper

A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a St Petersburg woman to eight days in jail for writing “no to war” on a ballot paper during the country’s presidential election in protest at president Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine campaign, reports AFP

The three-day vote over the weekend saw Putin running unchallenged for a fifth Kremlin term, which would extend his rule until at least 2030.

The election was marred by ballot spoiling, with Putin warning in his victory speech that Russians who did so “have to be dealt with”.

According to AFP, St Petersburg’s Dzerzhinsky district court said it ordered Alexandra Chiryatyeva to be jailed for eight days and fined 40,000 rubles (€399/$433/£341). It said she was guilty of hooliganism and “discrediting the Russian armed forces”.

“Chiryatyeva took a voting ballot and with a red marker wrote ‘no to war’ at the back of it before placing it in the ballot box,” the court said. “In this way, Chiryatyeva damaged state property and discredited the Russian armed forces,” it added.

The court said Chiryatyeva had done so on the final day of the three-day vote, when Russia’s opposition groups called for protests against an election where Putin’s win was inevitable.

Russia using 'fear' to rule occupied Ukraine, says UN human rights report

Russia has tortured and arbitrarily detained people in occupied Ukraine, creating a “climate of fear” and suppressing Ukrainian identity, a UN report said on Wednesday, reports AFP.

The report, which the UN human rights office said was based on more than 2,300 interviews, accused Moscow of “committing widespread violations” of human rights law.

Since invading in February 2022, Moscow has seized large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine.

Russia has imposed its “language, citizenship, laws, court system, and education curricula on the occupied areas,” while suppressing a Ukrainian identity, the UN office said in a release accompanying the report.

“From the onset, Russian armed forces, acting with generalised impunity, committed widespread violations, including arbitrary detention of civilians, often accompanied by torture and ill-treatment,” it said.

Russia had tried to suppress Ukrainian identity among children, replacing the curriculum in schools with a Russian one which sought to “justify” Moscow’s invasion, the report added.

Peaceful protests have been meet with “force” from the Russian army, which has restricted free expression and pillaged homes and businesses, it said.

The report said Moscow has blocked access to Ukrainian media and phone networks in the regions in an effort to control information.

“The actions of the Russian Federation have ruptured the social fabric of communities and left individuals isolated, with profound and long-lasting consequences for Ukrainian society as a whole,” the release quoted UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk as saying.

Ukraine has accused Moscow of widespread war crimes in its occupied regions. The Kremlin denies any wrongdoing, calling its takeover of the regions a “liberation.”

Reuters have some further details on the news that the US Treasury department issued new Russia-related sanctions on Wednesday (see 14:20 GMT).

According to the news agency, the US Treasury said in a statement that it had imposed sanctions on the two people and two entities for providing services to Russia’s government in connection with a foreign malign influence campaign, including attempting to impersonate legitimate media outlets.

The Treasury said those targeted implemented a network of more than 60 websites that impersonated legitimate news websites and that used misleading social media accounts.

Reuters reports that those targeted are: Moscow-based Social Design Agency, its founder Ilya Andreevich Gambashidze, Russia-based Company Group Structura LLC and its CEO and owner Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tupikin.

“The US, along with our allies and partners, remains steadfast in defending our democratic principles and the credibility of our elections.”

A state department spokesperson said: “The Kremlin’s ultimate goal in waging these influence campaigns is to undermine democracies. Efforts like these are meant to sow distrust in a free and independent press, and to drown out legitimate criticism with a flood of false information.”

Two people killed in Russia's Belgorod region, says its governor

Two people were killed and two more were injured when Ukraine attacked Russia’s Belgorod region with multiple-launch rocket systems, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

Earlier, Gladkov had said one person had been killed in separate shelling of the regional capital, and two others injured.

Russia and Ukraine each said they had repelled numerous air attacks late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, with intensified pounding of border regions forcing evacuations of civilians on both sides.

According to Reuters, the US issued new Russia-related sanctions on Wednesday targeting several individuals and entities, the Treasury department’s website showed.

On Wednesday, the EU reached provisional agreement to extend Ukrainian food producers’ tariff-free access to its markets until June 2025 – albeit with new limits on grain imports, reports Reuters.

Polish protest leaders said they were not happy with the latest deal as it included the last few years as a reference for import limits. They want quotas based on figures from well before the war in Ukraine began, when imports were much lower.

“We demand quotas and that they be calculated for the period from 2000, and not as Ukraine wants 2022-2023, because that was when the [import] levels were the highest. This does not fully satisfy us, because it is not a good solution,” Slawomir Izdebski, leader of the OPZZ farmers’ union, told Reuters.

According to the news agency, Polish police said they knew of more than 580 protests planned for Wednesday, with an estimated participation of 70,000 people.

Last Friday, the European Commission also offered concessions to farmers as it proposed an easing of rules on leaving land fallow or rotating crops.

Farmers in the Czech Republic held similar protests. They drove an estimated 1,600 tractors and other agricultural machinery on to the streets, Barbora Pankova, a spokesperson for the Czech Agrarian Chamber, told Czech Television.

Ukraine says it could make 2m drones a year with financial help from west

Ukraine could make 2m drones a year – double the existing rate of production – with extra financial support from the US, other western governments and private citizens, the country’s minister for digital transformation has claimed.

Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview that Ukraine’s government was “contracting much less than our manufacturers are capable of” because it did not have enough funds on hand. He pressed for further donations to help the war effort.

The 33-year-old digital minister, who is responsible for drone production, said Ukraine was on track to produce “more than a million” drones in 2024, which would exceed a 1m target for manufacture set by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, late last year, but could make even more.

“We’ve been able to scale the market so much that we can manufacture more than one or even two million drones,” he said, arguing that there was potential to increase production of all types of drones further.

You can read Dan Sabbagh’s full piece here:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held separate phone calls on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy and discussed strengthening ties with both, ahead of a visit by the Ukrainian foreign minister to New Delhi.

Reuters reports:

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will visit India next week as Kyiv looks to build support for its peace plan, two Indian officials aware of the matter said, the first visit by a top Ukrainian official since Russia’s invasion.

Modi phoned Putin to congratulate him on his victory in Russia’s weekend presidential election, and the two leaders also discussed Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The Indian government said in its own statement that Modi had reiterated India’s “consistent position in favour of dialogue and diplomacy as the way forward” in the Ukraine crisis and also that the leaders agreed to deepen bilateral ties.

Modi later said in a post on social media platform X that he also spoke to Zelenskiy on strengthening ties between India and Ukraine and conveyed “India’s consistent support for all efforts for peace and bringing an early end to the ongoing conflict”.

Kuleba’s visit comes at the invitation of his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, after a phone call between Modi and Zelenskiy at the start of the year, said one of the officials.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Apart from talks with Indian officials, Kuleba is also set to “review the India-Ukraine inter-governmental commission”, one of the officials said, referring to a panel charged with keeping up the two nations’ economic, cultural and technological ties.

India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

One of the officials said a formal announcement of the visit was expected next week. Indian media first reported it on Tuesday.

Foreign soldiers captured by Ukraine say they travelled to escape poverty from homes in Asia, the Caribbean and Africa but were tricked into fighting for Russia on the front lines.

AFP reports:

Speaking at a recent press event organised by Ukrainian officials, eight prisoners of war from Cuba, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Somalia said they were lured with promises of high wages, non-frontline roles or simply tricked.

Organisers defined the men as “mercenaries” from the “global South” and said they were treating them the same as Russian POWs.

While the men said they spoke of their own free will, they were escorted by masked guards who listened as they spoke to journalists.

The Geneva Convention says POWs should be protected from “public curiosity”.

A 35-year-old Cuban man with dreadlocks said he had responded to a Facebook post offering construction work in Russia.

He said:

I didn’t think I was coming to the war.

A man from Sierra Leone wiped away tears, saying he had paid a recruiter and flown to Russia for a “good job” to support his large family but had not wanted to join the military.

The security guard said he only realised after signing Russian-language paperwork that he had joined the army.

Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for a Ukrainian office responsible for prisoners of war, said Russia was seeking to recruit from very low-income countries.

When the Russians offer such people $2,000 a month and say that they will actually be used as bodyguards or on the third line from the front, they are very tempted.

Russia has turned to foreign fighters after running low on mercenaries from the Wagner group and ex-prisoners, Yatsenko said.

“The percentage of mercenaries is growing” as “Russia’s mobilisation resource is declining”, he said.

Some of the prisoners in Kyiv said they willingly joined the army but did not expect to be sent to the front. Some said they were told they would be “helpers” for first aid and logistics.

A young Somalian man with cropped hair said he had joined up to give his family a “good future”.

I didn’t know that I would be in the first line.

I was just dropped there without... knowing the language.

A 32-year-old man from Nepal said he had watched TikTok videos about Nepalis joining the army, saying his motivation was “of course about the money”.

One man said he was paid 250,000 rubles ($2,720) a month, while another said his promised salary was $2,000.

AFP reporters in India and Nepal have investigated such recruitment, finding it is often done through informal intermediaries and promotional videos posted on social media. Applicants lacking military experience are initially told they will receive non-combatant roles and the option of permanent residence.

But in reality they receive basic weapons training and are deployed to the front line.

Nepal has said five of its citizens are prisoners of war in Ukraine and at least 12 have been killed. It has banned citizens from working in Russia or Ukraine and asked Russia to return recruits.

The only prisoner in Kyiv to speak basic Russian was a 24-year-old Nepali with hands so scarred by war-inflicted burns that he struggled to hold a pen.

He said he was studying and working in Russia when he spotted recruitment posters, expecting to become a “security guard or something like that”.

I don’t know what to do, how to shoot.

Yatsenko urged countries to act to stop such people being “duped by recruiters who promise them mountains of gold”.

Ukraine is currently holding foreigners in the same detention centres and treating them the same as Russian POWs.

Yatsenko said:

They were captured on the front line... in military uniform, with weapons. And whether they are mercenaries will be decided by the court.

We are interested to pass them to their homelands.

EU proposes to transfer Ukraine €4bn from frozen Russian assets

The European Commission has proposed transferring to Ukraine profits of €2.5-3bn a year generated by Russian central bank assets frozen in Europe.

Reuters reports;

Ninety percent will be channelled through the European Peace Facility fund to buy weapons for Ukraine. The rest will be used for recovery and reconstruction.

The exact amount available for Kyiv each year will depend on global interest rates as the profits are the returns on €210bn of Russian central bank assets held in various currencies in the 27-nation EU.

On top of these profits, Ukraine will also receive every year the 25% tax that the Belgian government puts on the profits. For 2024, this is expected to amount to €1.7bn, of which €1.5bn will be paid this year.

The total financial contribution for Ukraine from frozen Russian assets in the EU will therefore total €4-4.5bn this year.

Once the Commission proposal is approved by EU governments the profits are set aside for Ukraine twice a year, with a first tranche already in July.

The Russian assets are held by EU central securities depositories, mainly Belgium’s Euroclear, which will keep 3% for operational expenses and temporarily retain 10% of the profits as a safeguard against legal action by Russia.

The amount temporarily retained might be raised if needed, the Commission said. After the war, all the money, unless used to cover legal claims by Moscow, will be passed to Ukraine.

European Commission Executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said Russia was being held to account for the massive damage it had caused.

He said:

Our proposal will redirect substantial windfall revenues from frozen Russian state assets for the benefit of Ukraine and its people, to the tune of up to 3 billion euros a year.

Dombrovskis said the EU had coordinated its move with the G7 countries – the US, Canada, Britain and Japan.

The EU proposal does not envisage, for now, the confiscation of the capital of the Russian assets, only the use of the profits they generate.

Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal said Kyiv expected the EU and G7 countries, which together hold the equivalent of €260bn of frozen Russian assets, to take a further step and to confiscate the capital itself.

We insist on the full confiscation or other use of all frozen assets … Europe and the world need an effective precedent for making the aggressor pay a heavy price for the destruction it has caused in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, AFP is reporting on a warning from the Kremlin that the EU would be committing an “unprecedented violation” of international law if it used frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said:

The Europeans are well aware of the damage such decisions could do to their economy, their image, their reputations as reliable guarantors.

They will become the target of prosecution for many decades.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Wednesday warned Moscow would inevitably respond to what she called “direct banditry and theft”.

Russia is illegally consolidating its control over occupied Ukrainian territory by creating a “climate of fear” with practices such as arbitrary detention, killings and torture, the head of a UN reporting mission in Ukraine has told Reuters.

Speaking before the release of a comprehensive UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) report on the territories Russia occupied in its full-scale invasion since 2022, the mission’s head, Danielle Bell, said Russia’s breaches of rights there were used to terrify local residents into co-operating.

She said:

These combined actions of censorship, surveillance, political oppression, repression of free speech, movement restrictions ... created a climate of fear in which the Russian Federation could systematically dismantle the Ukrainian systems of government and administration.

In Moscow, Russian authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the main points of the UN report.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities or deliberately attacked civilians during the invasion, which it says is a “special military operation”.

The UN monitors did not have access to occupied territory, but instead based their findings on more than 2,300 interviews with people who were living in occupied territories, had left occupied territory, or lived in liberated areas.

Bell said there had been an initial phase of rights violations, including killings, torture and arbitrary detention of those perceived to be linked to Ukrainian security forces or those believed to be supporting Ukraine.

That was followed by campaigns against freedoms of movement, assembly and expression, she said. These were followed by a push to change all major state institutions into Russian ones, something Bell said violated international humanitarian law.

That effort saw schools forced to switch to the Russian language and curriculum, and the justice system jailing people in Russian prisons. Civil servants had been forced to comply with these new systems, she said.

Bell gave the example of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where she said workers were forced to continue to work even if they did not want to.

When they resisted, they faced threats, intimidation harassment, threats against their families, and some even faced arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and in some cases... death.

Bell said Russia aggressively pushed people to take Russian citizenship: people could obtain services such as healthcare, social security or rented housing only with a Russian passport.

Bell said residents in occupied areas were encouraged to spy on each other, and online services had been created for this.

Bell also said Russia had sought to cut communication links between Ukrainians in occupied areas and those in territories controlled by Kyiv. Combined with families not being allowed to travel back and forth to see loved ones, this kept relatives “cut off from each other”, she said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has said that its forces have cleared the Russian border village of Kozinka in Belgorod region of Ukrainian forces, state news agency RIA reported.

Ukrainian forces have made several attacks on Kozinka and nearby frontier settlements in recent weeks.