Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has issued a strong statement urging international leaders to act after videos circulated on social media that appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers beheaded by Russian forces. One video being circulated appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle. A voice says: “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off”. A second clip, which may have been filmed in summer last year, judging by the appearance of foliage in the clip, claims to show a member of Russian forces using a knife to cut off the head of a Ukrainian soldier. The Guardian has not independently verified the origins and veracity of the two videos, but Ukrainian authorities are treating them as genuine.
The Kremlin has described a video of Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground as “awful”, but questioned the video’s authenticity.
Serbia, one of the only countries in Europe that has refused to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, agreed to supply arms to Kyiv or has sent them already, according to a classified Pentagon document. The document, a summary of European governments’ responses to Ukraine’s requests for military training and “lethal aid” or weapons, was among dozens of classified documents posted online in recent weeks in what could be the most serious leak of US secrets in years.
The UK government has imposed sanctions on the “financial fixers” who have allegedly helped Russian oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov hide their assets. The new sanctions, unveiled by the Foreign Office on Wednesday, are targeted at what officials describe as “oligarch enablers” whom they accuse of knowingly assisting the billionaire businessmen to shield their wealth.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday said the United States will investigate the leak until the source is found. “We will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it,” Austin said during a press conference at the state department.
US intelligence reportedly warned Ukraine in February that it might fail to amass sufficient troops and weaponry for its planned spring counter-offensive, and might fall “well short” of Kyiv’s goals for recapturing territory seized by Russia, according to a trove of leaked defence documents.
The same leaked US military documents indicate that the UK has deployed as many as 50 special forces to Ukraine. The documents suggest that more than half of the western special forces personnel present in Ukraine between February and March this year may have been British. It is unclear what activities the special forces may have been engaged in or whether the numbers of personnel have been maintained at this level.
The leak of a trove of highly sensitive documents online could be a move by the US to “deceive” Russia, its deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying Wednesday. “It’s probably interesting for someone to look at these documents, if they really are documents or they could be a fake or it could be an intentional leak,” Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies.
Ryabkov also said Russia was currently considering granting US diplomats consular access to Evan Gershkovich, but that the US designation of the Wall Street Journal reporter as “wrongfully detained” meant nothing to Russia and would not change its approach to his case. “We will not tolerate any attempts to pressure us, and it has no significance what status they assign to this person in Washington. We will act in accordance with our own internal needs, norms and laws that apply in this situation, and nothing more,” Tass quoted Ryabkov as saying.
The Kremlin has said the outlook for the Black Sea grain deal was “not so great”, claiming that promises to remove obstacles to Russian exports of agricultural and fertiliser exports had not been fulfilled. On Tuesday no vessels were cleared to travel using the grain initiative, after Russia scrubbed out the names of three ships, submitted by the Ukrainian side, as they returned home. Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister for seaports and maritime, Yurii Vaskov, described the situation as “critical”. If the standoff continues, global food prices are likely to go up by 15%, he said.
South Korea has agreed to “lend” the US 500,000 rounds of artillery, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, as Seoul attempts to minimise the possibility that the ammunition could end up in Ukraine - a move that could spark domestic criticism of President Yoon Suk Yeol. Citing unidentified government sources, the Dong-A Ilbo said South Korea had decided to lend the shells rather than sell them - an approach it believes would lower the likelihood of them eventually being supplied to Kyiv.
Protests by European farmers are political and shipments of Ukrainian grain are not reducing the profitability of their business, Ukrainian food producers’ union UAC claimed on Wednesday. Poland last week said it would temporarily halt Ukrainian grain imports after farmers’ protests led Poland’s agriculture minister to resign, but transit would still be allowed. “The political nature of the European farmers’ strikes is obvious. Ukraine sells some grain to Poland, and this is not a massive amount,” Denys Marchuk, deputy chair of the Ukrainian agrarian council (UAC), said in a statement. “However, certain forces need to demonstrate that this is due to an oversupply of Ukrainian grain,” he said, noting that the country faced elections later this year.
Ukraine has asked India for additional medicines and medical equipment, the South Asian country’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The request came during the three-day visit to India by Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Emine Dzhaparova.
Russia’s upper house of parliament has voted to introduce electronic call-up papers via an online portal for the first time. The Federation Council’s vote came a day after the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, gave its approval to changes in the law. The bill will now go to President Vladimir Putin, who is now expected to sign it into law. Changes to the legislation would mean that once an electronic summons is received, citizens who fail to show up at the military enlistment office are automatically banned from travelling abroad.
