Finland has become the 31st member of Nato after its foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, signed an accession document and handed it to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, at a ceremony in Brussels. The handover marks the formal accession of Russia’s western neighbour to the world’s largest military alliance, completing an accelerated application process launched last May, when Finland and neighbouring Sweden abandoned decades of military nonalignment to seek security as Nato members after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin had as a declared goal of the invasion of Ukraine to get less Nato,” the alliance’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said shortly before the ceremony. “He is getting exactly the opposite”. Stoltenberg added: “Finland today, and soon also Sweden will become a full-fledged member of the alliance.” Finland’s membership “removes the room for miscalculation in Moscow about Nato’s readiness to protect Finland”, he said.
Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, said the accession of Finland increased the risks of wider conflict. In an address to the leadership of Russia’s armed forces he also said that Belarusian jets are now capable of carrying Russian nuclear missiles, in a move likely to ratchet up tension.
Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who was accused by the international criminal court (ICC) alongside Putin of war crimes in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that the ICC’s allegations were false and unclear. Maria Lvova-Belova also said Russia had accepted more than 5 million refugees from Ukraine’s Donbas region, including 730,000 children, since February 2022. The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Some of those children, the ICC said, had been given up for adoption in Russia. Lvova-Belova insisted her commission was not aware of a single case of a child from eastern Ukraine being separated from their biological relatives and being transferred to a foster home.
Russian investigators on Tuesday formally charged Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old woman, with terrorism offences over the killing of pro-war military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a bomb blast in St Petersburg. Tatarsky, a cheerleader for Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed on Sunday in an explosion in a cafe where he was due to talk. The investigative committee, which probes major crimes, said it had charged Trepova with committing “a terrorist act by an organised group that caused intentional death”. It said she had acted under instructions from people working on behalf of Ukraine.
Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency has reported that the number of people injured in the St Petersburg cafe explosion has risen to 40, with 25 people still in hospital.
A Ukrainian soldier pleaded “partly guilty” on Tuesday at Russia’s first trial for war crimes in connection with its military campaign in Ukraine. Anton Cherednik, a member of Ukraine’s naval infantry, faced charges in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don of trying to seize power by force, of using prohibited methods of warfare and of murdering a civilian in Mariupol in March last year in the conflict’s early days. It was the first time Russia had accused a member of Ukraine’s armed forces of war crimes, according to Russian news outlets and the court’s press service.
Ukrainian defence forces destroyed 14 of 17 Iranian-made Shahed drones Russia launched overnight, Ukraine’s military has said, with 13 drones destroyed over the Odesa region in the country’s south-west. Ukraine’s South military command said one drone hit an enterprise in the Odesa region, causing a fire, which was eliminated by the morning.
Alexei Kulemzin, the mayor of occupied Donetsk, has posted to his Telegram channel to say that a school in the Petrovsky district of the city has been damaged by shelling from Ukrainian forces.
Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, will travel to Moscow on Wednesday for two days of talks with Putin, the Kremlin said.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted on his official Telegram channel about a meeting he held yesterday that included among its guests Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state under President Donald Trump.
Lithuania’s parliament decided on Tuesday to ban non-resident Russian nationals from purchasing real estate in the Baltic country, citing risks to national security.
Polish farmers are threatening to derail a visit to Warsaw by Zelenskiy over claims that Ukrainian grain is flooding their market, in a move that would provide Russia with valuable evidence of a crack in western solidarity. Ukraine’s president is scheduled to visit Poland’s capital on Wednesday to express his gratitude for the country’s solidarity over the war with Russia, but Polish grain producers are warning they could take to the streets to “ruin” the occasion.
