This blog is closing. You can find a summary of what we know about Jack Teixeira’s arrest here.
Here, meanwhile, is the other Ukraine-related news over the last day:
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that “we are living on borrowed time” following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe’s largest atomic power station.
Ukraine’s armed forces have said Russian troops are attempting to surround the embattled city of Bakhmut from the north and the south. “Every day in Bakhmut area, the enemy makes 40 to 50 offensive and assault attempts, launches more than 500 strikes using the entire range of available weapons,” said Brig Gen Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian armed forces general staff’s main operational department.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its troops had already surrounded Bakhmut, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said it was “too early” to say. Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscow’s forces were “blocking” Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.
Fragmentation of the global economy into rival trading blocs runs the risk of prompting a new cold war, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, said a combination of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and shortcomings with globalisation had led to a potentially dangerous splintering.
Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vučić has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already. Vučić said he was “quite certain” that Serbian ammunition would appear “on one side or the other in the battlefield” in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.
Norway will expel 15 Russian embassy officials who it said were intelligence officers operating under the cover of diplomatic positions.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, is grappling with a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh has said. “We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
The European Union has added Russia’s Wagner group to its sanctions list for “actively participating in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine”. The mercenary group had already been placed on another EU sanctions list in February for violating human rights and “destabilising” countries in Africa.
Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz on Thursday said Russia has been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5bn (£4bn / €4.5bn) in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Crimea, which the Russian Federation claimed to annex in 2014.
All Ukrainian cities and Crimea must be part of Ukraine again and a real peace will come by restoring the country’s borders, foreign minister Dmitro Kuleba has said on Thursday. “There is no difference between...any Ukrainian city, they all must and will be Ukraine again,” he said, speaking via a video link at a Black Sea security conference in Bucharest.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has awarded £650m to manufacturers working on its Tempest fighter jet, in the latest sign that the UK is pushing forward with the aim of producing the aircraft by 2035. The Tempest programme is seen as a key part of the UK’s plans for defence spending and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put pressure on the government to increaseits investment.
ExxonMobil handed its chief executive a 52% pay increase to $35.9m (£28.7m) for 2022 after the oil company reported its highest ever profits amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Darren Woods’ salary rose by 10% to $1.9m last year while his bonus and share awards surged by 80% compared with the year before.
What kind of impact might the leaks have?
The nature of the US assessment of Ukraine’s military readiness is bound to cause friction between Kyiv and Washington, while the detailed picture it presents of the intelligence gathered in Russia is likely to help Moscow take countermeasures to make it more difficult to obtain – with human sources potentially at risk.
There is another problem for the US: the leak appears to show that it spies on some of its allies. That has caused ructions in South Korea and Israel, while CNN reported diplomats from multiple countries saying they planned to raise the matter with Washington.
It may not be surprising that in its public statements, the US is more focused on condemning the leak and identifying its source. Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, has vowed to “turn over every rock” to do so.
There are plenty of tools to do that, from time stamps on documents that appear to show when they were printed to registers of who has viewed the documents. If identified, the culprit could face a lengthy jail sentence. But whatever happens, even the might of the US government has no power to remove the documents from circulation.
The Washington Post has spoken to a friend of Teixeira’s, who had this to say:
Teixeira was a ‘pretty normal guy’ outside the server, said the friend, who eventually met Teixeira in person. He had a ‘slight temper’ and was ‘more of a mentor than a leader.’
Sharing the classified documents was meant ‘to educate people who he thought were his friends and could be trusted’ free from the propaganda swirling outside, the friend said.
…
‘I was of the opinion that some of these kids were prone to run their mouths because they spent too much time online, but I was ignored,’ said the friend, who added that he tried to stay out of such discussions. ‘It was pretty obnoxious to see kids who grew up in the suburbs argue about a conflict an ocean away.’
…
‘He loved America but simply didn’t feel confident in its future,’ the friend said. ‘At the end of the day he would side with this country over any other.’
Other members of Teixeira’s server have showed The Post video of Teixeira shouting racist and antisemitic slurs before firing a rifle and said he referenced government raids at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and in Waco, Tex. – events with deep resonance among right-wing, anti-government extremists. The name of the Discord server itself derives from a meme taken from a gay porn video often used for its shock value and laughs, the members said.
What we know so far
Here are the key developments in the Pentagon leaks story, and Teixeira’s arrest:
The Department of Justice arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a suspect in the recent leaks of US intelligence online, US attorney general Merrick Garland announced on Thursday. The arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into an alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” said Garland.
Teixeira was arrested at his home in the town of North Dighton, Massachusetts by FBI agents. Helicopter news footage showed a young man with shorn dark hair, an olive green T-shirt and red shorts being made to walk backwards towards a team of agents standing by an armoured vehicle dressed in camouflage and body armour, pointing their rifles at him.
During a press briefing on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Patrick Ryder said that the leak of classified information was a “deliberate, criminal act.” He added that the Pentagon had taken measures to review distribution lists and make sure that individuals who receive information had a need to know, the Associated Press reports.
Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. A defense official has told the Associated Press that in that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance – because he would have also been tasked with responsibility for ensuring protection for the networks.
The leak is the most serious security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010. The number of documents leaked is likely to be over 100, Reuters reports.
The likely charges could each carry up to 10 years’ imprisonment, even if the leaker did not intend to cause harm, said Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor.
Among the clues that lead to Teixeira’s arrest was the kitchen countertop and floor tiles in his childhood home – the surfaces appeared in the background of pictures of the leaked documents.
Teixeira is believed to have been the leader of an online chat group where hundreds of photographs of secret and top-secret documents were first uploaded, from late last year to March. The online group called itself Thug Shaker Central, made up of 20 to 30 young men and teenagers brought together by an enthusiasm for guns, military gear and video games. Racist language was a common feature of the group.
Speaking in Ireland, Joe Biden sought to play down the impact of the breach. “I’m not concerned about the leak,” Biden said. “I’m concerned that it happened. But there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that’s of great consequence.”
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sought to cast Teixeira as a right-wing hero, writing on Twitter, “Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.
Meanwhile, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Thursday that his country had not sold arms to Ukraine and would not do so, after a leaked Pentagon report said Belgrade had agreed to provide arms to Kyiv, according to foreign media reports.
“Serbia has not nor it will export weapons to Ukraine,” Vucic told reporters, according to the Beta news agency.
He added that the Balkan nation, a traditional Russian ally, “has not nor will it” send ammunition to either Ukraine or Russia.
“There is no paper that would show something like that,” he added.
Teixeira’s mother, Dawn, confirmed to the New York Times that her son was a member of the air national guard and said that recently he had been working overnight shifts at a base on Cape Cod, and in recent days he had changed his phone number.
A number for Bayberry Farm and Flower Co, a flower business believed to be owned by Jack Teixeira’s mother, went to voicemail. A message said the business is closed this week.
The company is based at the same North Dighton, Massachusetts, address where Teixeira is understood to live. It is owned by Dawn and Tom Dufault – public records show that Dawn Dufault was previously known as Dawn Teixeira.
The company’s Facebook page had mentioned Jack Teixeira in June 2021. “Jack is on his way home today, tech school complete, ready to start his career in the Air National Guard!” a message said, under a photograph of a “Welcome home” balloon.
Here is what we know about Teixeira:
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has posted a tweet painting Teixeira as a hero.
“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime …Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-Nato nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?
Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Mass, the Air National Guard Base where Teixeira is stationed, states that its mission is to “provide world wide precision intelligence and command and control along with trained and experienced Airmen for expeditionary combat support and homeland security”. It hosts the 102nd Intelligence Wing, in which Teixeira worked.
Here is how the arrest happened, according to the New York Times.
Heavily armed FBI agents arrived outside Teixeira’s mother’s home in the town of North Dighton, Massachusetts, and started calling the 21-year-old’s name, according to a neighbour.
Teixeria emerged, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, an was put in a van. Then, “Multiple sport-utility vehicles and an armored vehicle descended on the home, and agents wearing helmets and flak jackets and carrying military-style assault rifles entered the property on foot. Overhead, a twin-engine surveillance plane circled.”
Teixeira will appear in court in Massachusetts on Friday, the Associated Press reports.
Updated
The emergence of Teixeira as a primary suspect raises questions about how such a profound breach could have been caused by a young, low-ranking service member.
“We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age. Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson.
Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs.
A defense official has told the Associated Press that in that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance – because he would have also been tasked with responsibility for ensuring protection for the networks.
Among the ways that Teixeira was identified is through the kitchen countertop and tiles in his childhood home – the surfaces appeared in the background of pictures of the leaked documents.
A breakthrough in our investigation came when the team identified a Steam profile in Airman Teixeira's name that led to an Instagram profile with photos of the exact location where leaked docs were photographed — a kitchen countertop in his childhood home. https://t.co/XQAZf2kNV7 pic.twitter.com/DWlkN8xmqK
— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) April 13, 2023
Leak is most serious since WikiLeaks in 2010
The leak is the most serious security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.
The number of documents leaked is likely to be over 100, Reuters reports.
Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor now with the law firm Morrison Foerster, said the likely charges could carry up to 10 years’ imprisonment, even if the leaker did not intend to cause harm.
Several of Teixeira’s family members serve in the military, the New York Times reports, and the 21-year-old airman joined straight after highschool, in 2021. The paper has painted this portrait of the person suspected of leaking US intelligence documents online:
While talking with friends online, Jack Teixeira…assumed the role of a leader. He guided a group of 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, as they bonded over guns, racist memes, video games and international politics.
…
His friends in the online group, a Discord channel named Thug Shaker Central, said in interviews that it was a place that brought together lonely people during the pandemic. Sometimes, when they played war-themed video games, Airman Teixeira wanted to teach his friends about actual war, they said.
Here is an image of his arrest earlier today:
Updated
Hi, this is Helen Sullivan taking over our live coverage of the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a suspect in the recent leaks of US intelligence online.
If you have questions, comments or see news you may have missed, drop me a line on Twitter here.
Summary
It is slightly past 5:30pm in Washington DC and 12:30pm Kyiv. Here are the day’s key developments so far:
US attorney general Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Department of Justice has arrested 21-year old Jack Teixeira, a suspect in the recent leaks of US intelligence online. The arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into an alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” said Garland.
During a press briefing on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Patrick Ryder said that the leak of classified information was a “deliberate, criminal act.” He added that the Pentagon had taken measures to review distribution lists and make sure that individuals who receive information had a need to know, the Associated Press reports.
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that “we are living on borrowed time” following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe’s largest atomic power station.
Ukraine’s armed forces have said Russian troops are attempting to surround the embattled city of Bakhmut from the north and the south. “Every day in Bakhmut area, the enemy makes 40 to 50 offensive and assault attempts, launches more than 500 strikes using the entire range of available weapons,” said Brig Gen Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian armed forces general staff’s main operational department.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its troops had already surrounded Bakhmut, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said it was “too early” to say. Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscow’s forces were “blocking” Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.
Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vučić has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already. Vučić said he was “quite certain” that Serbian ammunition would appear “on one side or the other in the battlefield” in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power company, has claimed that a Russian mine exploded near one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP). Europe’s largest nuclear power station has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, with both Ukraine and Russia claiming that the other side has shelled the plant, risking a nuclear incident.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, has a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, has said. “We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
A congratulatory post by the 102nd Intelligence Wing about 21-year old Jack Teixeira last July is still currently up on its Facebook page.
“Congratulations to some of the 102nd Intelligence Wing’s most recent promotees! Way to go!!” the post said, with Jack Teixeira’s name included on the post.
The congratulatory post about alleged intelligence leaker 21-year-old Airman Jack Teixeira is still up on the Facebook page for the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Sheesh pic.twitter.com/0hfQE2Wqcx
— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) April 13, 2023
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that “we are living on borrowed time” following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant.
Agence France-Presse reports:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe’s largest atomic power station.
Russian forces took control of the six-reactor plant in embattled southern Ukraine in March last year.
“We are living on borrowed time when it comes to nuclear safety and security at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” Grossi said in a statement.
“Unless we take action to protect the plant, our luck will sooner or later run out, with potentially severe consequences for human health and the environment,” he added.
Two landmine explosions occurred outside the plant’s perimeter fence - the first on 8 April, and another four days later, according to the statement.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts, it said.
Updated
US attorney general confirms DOJ's arrest of 21-year old Jack Teixeira
US attorney general Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Department of Justice has arrested 21-year old Jack Teixeira, a suspect in the recent leaks of US intelligence online.
The arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into an alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information,” said Garland.
“Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard. FBI agents took Teixeira into custody this afternoon without incident. He will have an initial appearance at the US District Court of the district of Massachusetts,” he added, thanking the FBI and the DOJ for their “diligent work on this case.”
Garland said the investigation remains ongoing.
Updated
Pentagon: the leak was a "deliberate, criminal act"
During a press briefing on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Patrick Ryder said that the leak of classified information was a “deliberate, criminal act.”
He added that the Pentagon had taken measures to review distribution lists and make sure that individuals who receive information had a need to know, the Associated Press reports.
Updated
FBI has 'made an arrest' in connection to leaks
The FBI said on Thursday it has “made an arrest and is continuing to conduct authorized law enforcement activity at a residence in North Dighton, Massachusetts,” amid reports that a suspect in the leak of classified information has been identified.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, will make a statement on the situation at 2.30pm, Reuters reports.
Aerial footage released by Sky 5 shows a young man being arrested by a handful of federal agents. The young man can be seen with his hands on his head, clad in a T-shirt and shorts.
BREAKING: Sky 5 was overhead as federal agents swarmed a Mass. home and detained a man amid the probe into leaked classified documents about the Ukraine war. https://t.co/5FCrFgz3QZ pic.twitter.com/cwdp4yWJLK
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) April 13, 2023
Updated
“This is not just about the Department of Defense. This is about the US government…and how we protect and safeguard information,” said Ryder.
“We do have strict protocols in place… Anytime there is an incident…an opportunity to refine it, we are of course going to take advantage of that,” he added.
“We continue to work around the clock along with the inter-agency and intelligence community to understand the scope, scale and impact of these leaks,” Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder said in a press briefing on Thursday regarding the recent leaks of US intelligence online.
“We will be limited in what we can say about the documents themselves … As a matter of longstanding policy, just because classified information may be posted online and elsewhere does not mean it has been declassified by classification authority,” added Ryder.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The FBI wants to question a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in connection with the leak of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war, according to a report. The guardsman has been identified by the New York Times as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who reportedly oversaw an online group where about 20 to 30 people shared their love of guns, racist memes and video games.
Ukraine’s armed forces have said Russian troops are attempting to surround the embattled city of Bakhmut from the north and the south. “Every day in Bakhmut area, the enemy makes 40 to 50 offensive and assault attempts, launches more than 500 strikes using the entire range of available weapons,” said Brig Gen Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian armed forces general staff’s main operational department.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its troops had already surrounded Bakhmut, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said it was “too early” to say. Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscow’s forces were “blocking” Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.
Germany has approved a request by Poland to export five old German MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, officials in Berlin have said.
The Kremlin has denied a report that Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia. According to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources, the Russian president had personally endorsed Gershkovich’s arrest for espionage. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has suggested Moscow may be willing to discuss a potential prisoner swap for Gershkovich after his trial.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said his country would not change its demand that Russia must withdraw its forces from all of Ukraine – including Crimea. Kyiv “categorically disagrees” with the idea that “Crimea is somehow special and should not be returned to Ukraine, as any other part of our territory”, Kuleba said in an address to the Black Sea security conference.
Two civilians have been killed and two others were wounded by Russian artillery and aerial attacks in Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.
Norway’s foreign ministry has said it has decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials in Oslo. The Russians declared persona non grata are “not regular diplomats, but intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. Their activities are a threat to Norwegian interests,” Norwegian foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt said. Russia’s foreign ministry said it would respond to Norway’s expulsion of its 15 diplomats.
Swedish prosecutors said they had charged a 52-year-old man with illegally possessing and spreading secret and sensitive information about a large number of military installations. “I consider this a gross crime as it concerns a large number of installations that are significant for Sweden’s ability to defend itself in the case of war,” senior prosecutor Lars Hedvall said in a statement.
Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vučić has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already. Vučić said he was “quite certain” that Serbian ammunition would appear “on one side or the other in the battlefield” in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.
Authorities are working to identify the identity of a Ukrainian prisoner of war whose beheading video emerged on Wednesday, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said. The Guardian has not independently verified the origins and veracity of the two videos, but Ukrainian authorities are treating them as genuine.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power company, has claimed that a Russian mine exploded near one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP). Europe’s largest nuclear power station has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, with both Ukraine and Russia claiming that the other side has shelled the plant, risking a nuclear incident.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, has a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, has said. “We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
Key members of a Ukrainian state orchestra were refused visas to play a series of concerts in the UK this month in a “catastrophe” that the promoter says cost it more than €100,000 (£88,000).
Romania, Moldova and Ukraine have signed cooperation agreements after a trilateral meeting on ways to strengthen security in their Black Sea region to counter threats posed by Russia’s aggression.
The three neighbouring countries’ foreign and defence ministers, government officials and international partners gathered today in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, for the Black Sea Security Conference. The aim was to address the wide-ranging impact that Moscow’s war in Ukraine on the region, AP reported.
Russia was “the most direct and serious threat” to the Black Sea region and Nato, Romania’s foreign minister, Bogdan Aurescu, said. Calling for a strong Nato presence in the region, he said:
Instead of peace and stability, the Black Sea region has become the primary target of the Russian aggression.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who addressed the conference via videolink, also said the Nato military alliance should play a bigger role in security in the Black Sea, and integrate Ukraine’s air and missile defences with those of Nato members.
Kuleba, referring to Finland’s recent admission to the alliance, said:
It’s time to turn the Black Sea into what the Baltic Sea has become, a sea of Nato.
Updated
Serbian president denies it sold military aid to Ukraine
Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vučić has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already.
Vučić, whose leads one of the most pro-Russian countries in Europe, told reporters:
Serbia has not and will not export weapons to Ukraine.
He added that it equally “has not and will not” export arms or ammunition to Russia, adding: “There’s no document that can prove that.”
The document seen by the Guardian is a roundup of European positions on providing arms and training from early March, titled “Response to Ongoing Russia-Ukraine Conflict”. It gives the “assessed position” of each country with a tick or a cross.
Serbia is assessed to have “provided or committed to provide lethal aid”. It is also reported to have the “military ability” and the “political will” to provide arms in the future.
Vučić said he was “quite certain” that Serbian ammunition would appear “on one side or the other in the battlefield” in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic. He said:
They saw one shell (in Ukraine), one bullet. So what, and where else would they appear? There are several war zones around the world.
Serbia’s defence minister, Miloš Vučević, and foreign minister, Ivica Dačić, have also dismissed the contents of the leaked intelligence as untrue.
Serbia is also the only European country to have opposed all sanctions against Russia. Vučić has sought to maintain ties with Moscow and Beijing while seeking not to alienate the US and EU entirely. His government has voted against Russia several times at the UN general assembly over its invasion of Ukraine.
Authorities are working to identify the identity of a Ukrainian prisoner of war whose beheading video emerged on Wednesday, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said.
The disturbing clip appears to show a member of the Russian army using a knife to cut the head off the soldier. It is unclear when or where the video was shot. The video circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.
The Guardian has not independently verified the origins and veracity of the two videos, but Ukrainian authorities are treating them as genuine.
Maliar, during a briefing today, said:
All cases and videos that appear in the public domain are being investigated, and this is being done by all law enforcement agencies together, who have the technical capabilities and relevant specialists and experts.
US air national guardsman suspected of leaking secret documents to be arrested
A member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard suspected of leaking highly classified US intelligence documents will be arrested today in Massachusetts, Reuters is reporting, citing a source familiar with the situation.
The FBI wants to question a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in connection with the disclosure of classified military documents, AP is citing two people familiar with the matter.
As we reported earlier, the New York Times has named Jack Teixeira, 21, as the leader of the online group where the secret documents were posted.
Updated
Leader of online group where secret documents were leaked is Massachusetts Air National Guardsman - report
The leader of a small online gaming chat group where secret US intelligence documents were leaked is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, the New York Times is reporting, citing interviews and documents it reviewed.
The suspected leaker is Jack Teixeira, 21, who oversaw Thug Shaker Central, an online group where about 20 to 30 people shared their love of guns, racist memes and video games, the Times said.
Updated
Russia trying to surround Bakhmut from north and south, says Ukrainian official
Ukraine’s armed forces have said Russian troops are attempting to surround Bakhmut from the north and the south, while Russia’s defence ministry claimed its troops had already surrounded the embattled city in eastern Ukraine.
The Bakhmut area remains the most difficult as Russian forces continue “offensive actions in the central part of Bakhmut, as well as in the directions of Bohdanivka and Ivanivske to surround the city from the north and south”, Brig Gen Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian armed forces general staff’s main operational department, was quoted by Ukrinform as saying at a briefing on Thursday.
He added:
Every day in Bakhmut area, the enemy makes 40 to 50 offensive and assault attempts, launches more than 500 strikes using the entire range of available weapons.
He said Russian forces had lost nearly 4,500 Wagner fighters and regular Russian armed forces servicemen who had been killed or wounded in the area of Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian update came Moscow claimed Russian troops were preventing Ukrainian forces from entering or leaving Bakhmut. In a statement published on Thursday, the Russian defence ministry said:
Airborne troops are providing support to advancing assault troops, blocking the transfer of Ukrainian army reserves to the city and the possibility of retreat for enemy units.
Wagner assault units “were continuing high-intensity combat operations to oust the enemy from the central quarters” of Bakhmut, the statement continued.
But the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said it was “too early” to say that Bakhmut was surrounded.
Ukraine has also denied the Russian ministry’s claims. Army spokesperson Sergiy Cherevaty said Ukrainian forces in the wartorn city were still able to “deliver provisions, ammunition, and medicines” and evacuate wounded troops in Bakhmut.
Neither side’s claims have been independently verified.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, discussed the Ukraine crisis during a meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, today, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
Qin told Lavrov that there was no “panacea” for resolving the crisis, the ministry said. He added that Beijing will continue to play a constructive role in promoting a political settlement and restarting peace talks, the ministry said.
Updated
Two civilians have been killed and two others were wounded by Russian artillery and aerial attacks in Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.
Prokudin, in a television broadcast, said:
The army of the Russian Federation hit Zmiivka in Kherson region with guided aerial bombs, they hit a school and … one person was killed and another was wounded.
In addition, a man was killed during the shelling of a park inside Kherson city early in the morning and another person was wounded in a village elsewhere in the region, he said.
Updated
Key members of a Ukrainian state orchestra were refused visas to play a series of concerts in the UK this month in a “catastrophe” that the promoter says cost it more than €100,000 (£88,000).
The Khmelnitsky Orchestra was due to tour the UK this month with two shows: The Magical Music of Harry Potter, and The Music From the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit andThe Rings of Power.
The shows had been promoted on the UK government website as an example of British-Ukrainian relations. After the orchestra played the Harry Potter show in Belgium last year, the deputy British ambassador in Brussels, Chloe Louter, hailed it as “an incredible honour to have such an iconic part of British culture being performed by a Ukrainian orchestra”.
The promoter, Star Entertainment, has accused the UK government of hypocrisy. “They made a big deal out of supporting the Ukrainians but when it came to giving them visas to play in the UK, they didn’t want to know,” said its chief executive, Jaka Bizilj, who is known in the UK entertainment industry after working with Richard Curtis on two film projects and with Bob Geldof on the Cinema for Peace Foundation, which evacuated the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny from Siberia to Berlin.
He called on the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, to stand down if artists keep being treated like this, saying the immigration difficulties experienced by an increasing number of foreign artists “damages UK citizens, culture and the relationship to Europe”.
Updated
Earlier we reported that Poland had requested approval from the German government to export five old German MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.
That request has now been approved, Germany’s defence ministry said.
Summary of the day so far
It’s just past 6pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Joe Biden has said that there was a “full-blown” investigation going on with the US intelligence services and the justice department over the leaking of classified Pentagon documents. “We’re getting close,” the US president said. “But I don’t have an answer.” He added that while he was concerned that sensitive government documents had been leaked, “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence”.
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group. MPs have warned that British lives have been put at risk by the leak.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said it was “too early” to say that Russian forces had surrounded the eastern city of Bakhmut. Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscow’s forces were “blocking” Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.
Poland has requested approval from the German government to export five old German MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, officials in Berlin have said. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Berlin would respond on Thursday after consultations between his ministry, the chancellery and other stakeholders.
The Kremlin has denied a report that Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia. According to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources, the Russian president had personally endorsed Gershkovich’s arrest for espionage. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has suggested Moscow may be willing to discuss a potential prisoner swap for Gershkovich after his trial.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said his country would not change its demand that Russia must withdraw its forces from all of Ukraine – including Crimea. Kyiv “categorically disagrees” with the idea that “Crimea is somehow special and should not be returned to Ukraine, as any other part of our territory”, Kuleba said in an address to the Black Sea security conference.
Norway’s foreign ministry has said it has decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials in Oslo. The Russians declared persona non grata are “not regular diplomats, but intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. Their activities are a threat to Norwegian interests,” Norwegian foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt said. Russia’s foreign ministry said it would respond to Norway’s expulsion of its 15 diplomats.
Swedish prosecutors said they had charged a 52-year-old man with illegally possessing and spreading secret and sensitive information about a large number of military installations. “I consider this a gross crime as it concerns a large number of installations that are significant for Sweden’s ability to defend itself in the case of war,” senior prosecutor Lars Hedvall said in a statement.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which has not been verified by the Guardian.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power company, has claimed that a Russian mine exploded near one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP). Europe’s largest nuclear power station has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, with both Ukraine and Russia claiming that the other side has shelled the plant, risking a nuclear incident.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, has a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, has said. “We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
If Ukraine is defeated in its war with Russia, China may decide to invade Taiwan shortly afterwards, the Polish prime minister has said. “I see lots of connectivity, lots of interdependency between the situation in Ukraine and the situation in Taiwan,” Mateusz Morawiecki said in a speech at the Atlantic Council thinktank.
Updated
A Ukrainian man was admitted to hospital this morning with life-threatening injuries after setting himself on fire outside the Ukrainian consulate in Krakow, Polish police said.
The 63-year-old man was “standing in line outside the Ukrainian consulate ... when he started yelling something in Ukrainian, took out a bottle with a flammable substance, doused himself with it and set himself on fire”, a police press officer, Piotr Szpiech, told AFP.
He added:
An officer on patrol and a witness put out the fire. The man was taken to hospital in a serious, life-threatening condition.
Initial media reports suggested the man had been urging fellow citizens to return to Ukraine and fight Russia, AFP said.
Updated
Poland has requested approval from the German government to export five old German MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, officials in Berlin have said.
Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Berlin would respond on Thursday after consultations between his ministry, the chancellery and other stakeholders. He told reporters:
The promise is that a reply to our Polish partners will be forthcoming within the day.
Sweden charges man with spreading information about military installations which 'may hurt national security'
Swedish prosecutors said on Thursday they had charged a 52-year-old man with illegally possessing and spreading secret and sensitive information about a large number of military installations.
“I consider this a gross crime as it concerns a large number of installations that are significant for Sweden’s ability to defend itself in the case of war,” Reuters reports senior prosecutor Lars Hedvall said in a statement.
“The information disclosure may hurt national security,” he added.
Nelly Kronstrand reports for the Swedish news site Aftonbladet that “there is no suspicion that the man is connected to a foreign power”.
Updated
Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, on Thursday warned that the country’s new status as a Nato member “doesn’t solve every problem,” and said Helsinki should not let down its guard on security issues.
“We still bear the main responsibility for our own security. Wherever we detect any gaps or vulnerabilities, they must be fixed,” Niinistö said, in a speech to lawmakers as they gathered for the first time since the 2 April elections.
He added that Finland, which shares a 1,340km (832-mile) border with Russia, had been focused on regional security in the past year, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We must not let this level of alertness drop in the future, either,” Associated Press reports the president said as he formally opened the 200-member Eduskunta legislature. “We should better understand how organically the dangers and tensions we are witnessing here are linked with the increasing geopolitical pressures.”
Updated
If Ukraine is defeated in its war with Russia, China may decide to invade Taiwan shortly afterwards, the Polish prime minister said on Thursday.
“God forbid, if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack Taiwan,” Reuters reports Mateusz Morawiecki said in a speech at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington DC. “I see lots of connectivity, lots of interdependency between the situation in Ukraine and the situation in Taiwan.”
Biden says 'full-blown' investigation of Pentagon leak is 'getting close' to answers
Joe Biden on Thursday said that there was a “full-blown” investigation going on with the US intelligence community and the justice department over the leaking of classified Pentagon documents. “We’re getting close,” he said on answers. “But I don’t have an answer.”
Speaking in Dublin, the US president said that while he was concerned that sensitive government documents had been leaked, “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”
It was the first time Biden has commented publicly about the release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites. “I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence,” Associated Press reports Biden said while visiting Irish leaders.
The documents appear to detail US and Nato aid to Ukraine and US intelligence assessments regarding US allies that could strain ties with those nations.
Updated
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, said it was “too early” to say that Russian forces had surrounded the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscow’s forces were “blocking” Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.
The statement by the ministry said:
Airborne troops are providing support to advancing assault troops, blocking the transfer of Ukrainian army reserves to the city and the possibility of retreat for enemy units.
It added that “Wagner assault units were continuing high-intensity combat operations to oust the enemy from the central quarters” of the city in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has suggested Moscow may be willing to discuss a potential prisoner swap for the jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich after his trial.
Ryabkov, speaking to the state-run Tass news agency, said talks about a possible exchange could take place through a dedicated channel for Russian and US security agencies. He said:
We have a working channel that was used in the past to achieve concrete agreements, and these agreements were fulfilled.
He stressed that Russia would negotiate on a possible exchange only after a court delivered its verdict in the espionage charge against Gershkovich.
Updated
Here’s more on Norway’s decision to expel 15 Russian diplomats from the country who they said were suspected of spying while working at the Russian embassy in Oslo.
The Russians declared persona non grata “must leave Norway within a short time”, Norwegian foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt said, adding: “We will not grant visas to intelligence officers who apply for a visa to Norway.”
She said:
We are not talking about regular diplomats, but intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. Their activities are a threat to Norwegian interests.
She declined to say whether the expulsions were in response to a specific incident.
The Norwegian government said the activities of the expelled diplomats were “incompatible with their diplomatic status”. The expulsions amount to a quarter of Russian diplomats currently accredited in Oslo, it said.
After the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow would respond in kind to Norway’s action, Huitfeldt said:
Russia has no reason to respond. We have Norwegian diplomats stationed in Russia, but none of them are undercover intelligence officers.
She stressed, however, that Oslo wants “normal diplomatic relations with Russia, and that Russian diplomats are welcome in Norway”.
Updated
Officials in Moscow’s Odintsovsky district have started printing volunteer military service pamphlets in the Tajik and Uzbek languages, Meduza’s Kevin Rothrock writes.
Officials in Moscow's Odintsovsky District have started printing volunteer military service pamphlets in the Tajik and Uzbek languages. Russia's recruitment efforts continue in all directions. https://t.co/QIKYcaK2JS pic.twitter.com/kMuVazoh1W
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) April 13, 2023
It comes as Russia’s lower and upper houses of parliament approved legislation to tighten its conscription law before a widely anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
The changes in legislation, which will make it significantly harder for Russians to dodge the draft, have fuelled speculation that Russia plans to announce a second wave of mobilisation, something the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.
Updated
A large batch of leaked classified US government information, including top-secret briefings, have been discovered online over the past week, with many relating to perhaps the most sensitive arena of intelligence gathering in the world today: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The most significant parts of the leak concern Kyiv’s level of preparedness for an expected counteroffensive. US intelligence officials were pessimistic in February about Ukraine’s prospects for a new attack in the spring, saying Kyiv could fall “well short” of recapturing territory seized by Russia. There are also details of serious air defence shortages and a risk of running out of anti-aircraft missiles completely by May.
The nature of the US assessment of Ukraine’s military readiness is bound to cause friction between Kyiv and Washington, while the detailed picture it presents of the intelligence gathered in Russia is likely to help Moscow take countermeasures to make it more difficult to obtain – with human sources potentially at risk.
There is another problem for the US: the leak appears to show that it spies on some of its allies. That has caused ructions in South Korea and Israel, while CNN reported diplomats from multiple countries saying they planned to raise the matter with Washington.
It may not be surprising that in its public statements, the US is more focused on condemning the leak and identifying its source. Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, has vowed to “turn over every rock” to do so.
There are plenty of tools to do that, from time stamps on documents that appear to show when they were printed to registers of who has viewed the documents. If identified, the culprit could face a lengthy jail sentence. But whatever happens, even the might of the US government has no power to remove the documents from circulation.
Russia’s prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground.
The disturbing video, which emerged on social media on Wednesday, appeared to show a member of the Russian army using a knife to cut the head off the soldier. A second video appeared to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian servicemen lying next to a destroyed military vehicle.
In a statement posted to Telegram, the Russian general prosecutor’s office said:
In order to assess the credibility of these materials and make an appropriate decision, they have been forwarded to the investigative authorities for verification.
Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters yesterday that the video was “awful” but “first of all, we need to verify the authenticity” of the footage.
Updated
Kremlin denies Putin personally approved arrest of US journalist Evan Gershkovich
The Kremlin has denied a report that Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia.
According to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources, the Russian president had personally endorsed Gershkovich’s arrest for espionage. The initiative came from “hawks among top officials of Russia’s security services”, it said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters:
No, it is not the president’s prerogative, it is the special services who are doing their job. Once again, I would like to remind you that this journalist was caught red-handed.
Gershkovich, 31, was detained on 29 March in the city of Ekaterinburg, and the Russian Security Service, FSB, admitted the following day that it had picked him up on suspicion of spying. He was later formally charged with espionage, which Gershkovich and the Wall Street Journal deny.
On Tuesday, the US state department officially designated Gershkovich as being wrongfully detained, signalling that Washington views the espionage charges against him as bogus and that he is being held as a hostage.
Updated
Here’s more from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who has said his country would not change its demand that Russia must withdraw its forces from all of Ukraine – including Crimea.
Kuleba, addressing the Black Sea security conference via video link, called the war in Ukraine “a bleeding wound in the middle of Europe”. He said:
We are united by UN charter principles and the shared conviction that Crimea is Ukraine and it will return under Ukraine’s control.
Kyiv “categorically disagrees” with the idea that “Crimea is somehow special and should not be returned to Ukraine, as any other part of our territory”, he said.
Updated
Poland is “sceptical” about French attempts to organise talks between Ukraine and Russia, Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, has said.
In a speech to parliament, Rau said:
We do not see any signs that Russia is ready to revise its policy of territorial conquests ... the possible result of such talks cannot be any separate guarantees for Russia, apart from the observance of the norms of international law.
His comments came a week after France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, held talks with Xi Jinping in which he urged the Chinese leader to bring Russia “back to reason” over the war in Ukraine.
After the meeting between Macron and Xi, the French president said his Chinese counterpart had “important words” on Ukraine. He said France and China agreed nuclear weapons should be excluded from the conflict.
But just hours later in Moscow, a Russian government spokesperson said he saw no prospect for China to mediate in the Ukraine conflict and that Russia had “no other way” than to press on with its offensive.
Updated
Norway expels 15 Russian diplomats, accusing them of being intelligence officers
Norway’s foreign ministry has said it has decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials in Oslo, claiming that they were intelligence officers operating under the cover of diplomatic positions.
In a statement, the ministry said:
The government’s decision is in response to the changed security situation in Europe, which has led to an increased intelligence threat from Russia.
The officers concerned “must leave Norway shortly”, it added.
The Norwegian foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, said in a statement:
This is an important step in countering, and reducing the level of, Russian intelligence activity in Norway, and thus in safeguarding our national interests.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it would respond to Norway’s expulsion of its 15 diplomats, state media reported.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group. MPs have warned that British lives have been put at risk by the leak.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, is grappling with a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh has said. “We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz on Thursday said Russia has been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5bn (£4bn / €4.5bn) in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Crimea, which the Russian Federation claimed to annex in 2014.
All Ukrainian cities and Crimea must and would be part of Ukraine again, and a real peace would come by restoring the country’s borders, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Thursday.
Russia’s foreign ministry has issued a press release about the Black Sea grain initiative, in which it states “Russia reaffirms its position that there can be no discussion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative after 18 May without any progress regarding the five systematic problems” which it claims are blocking Russia’s agricultural products from being exported.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been holding talks in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with the foreign minister of China, Qin Gang.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that authorities in Russia have identified another suspect in the explosion that killed the pro-war military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a St Petersburg cafe. It named a citizen of Ukraine, Yuriy Denisov.
The European Games in Poland must be revoked as qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympics because athletes from Russia and Belarus have been barred from competing, amateur boxing’s Russian-led world body said on Thursday.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be here shortly to take you through the next few hours of our live coverage.
Ukraine's Energoatom claims Russian mine exploded at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power company, has claimed in a statement on Telegram that a Russian mine exploded near one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP).
Europe’s largest nuclear power station has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, with both Ukraine and Russia claiming that the other side have shelled the plant, risking a nuclear accident.
In its statement, Energoatom said:
A Russian mine exploded near the control room of the fourth power unit at the ZNPP. The Russian occupiers continue to turn the ZNPP into a military base, mining the perimeter around the plant. And these actions cannot but have consequences.
According to sources, an explosion rang out near the engine room of the fourth power unit. As the nuclear terrorists themselves stated, their mine detonated. The sounds of the explosion were heard by Ukrainian nuclear workers who continue to work at the ZNPP. However, the Russians tried to “pacify” the workers and quickly cover their tracks so that the IAEA experts would not see it.
Europe’s largest nuclear facility continues to suffer from the arbitrariness of the Russian military and their henchmen, while Ukrainian personnel are desperately trying to maintain the nuclear and radiation safety of the entire continent.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Reuters has a quick snap that Russia has fined the Wikimedia Foundation a further 2m roubles ($24,500 / £19,500) for failing to remove what the authorities describe as “fake information” about Russia’s military.
Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz on Thursday said Russia has been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5bn (£4bn / €4.5bn) in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Crimea, which the Russian Federation claimed to annex in 2014.
In a statement, Reuters reports Naftogaz described a ruling on Wednesday by The Hague’s arbitration tribunal at the permanent court of arbitration as a “key victory on the energy front”.
“Despite Russia’s attempts to obstruct justice, the arbitration tribunal ordered Russia to compensate Naftogaz for losses of $5bn,” it said.
Among the property seized by Russia, Suspilne reported, are the energy and gas transportation system as well as the company’s financial assets.
Russia again says no further talks on Black Sea grain deal until 'obstacles' to Russian exports end
Russia’s foreign ministry has issued a press release about the Black Sea grain initiative, in which it states “Russia reaffirms its position that there can be no discussion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative after 18 May without any progress regarding the five systematic problems” which it claims are blocking Russia’s agricultural products from being exported.
The Russian demands are set out as:
reconnecting Rosselkhozbank to the Swift payment service
resuming supplies of agricultural machinery, spare parts and maintenance service
lifting restrictions on insurance and reinsurance, plus unblocking access to ports
restoring the work of the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline
unblocking foreign assets and accounts of Russian companies related to the production and transportation of food and fertilisers
In the press release, Russia’s foreign ministry claims that the latest statements by the UN about the deal “distorts data and facts”, and that “despite all the grandiloquent statements made about global food security and assistance to countries in need, the Black Sea grain initiative has served Kyiv’s commercial exports exclusively in the interests of western countries.”
The European Games in Poland must be revoked as qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympics because athletes from Russia and Belarus have been barred from competing, amateur boxing’s Russian-led world body said on Thursday.
The Games in Krakow start on 21 June and run until 2 July, with 19 sports being held as Olympic qualifiers.
The International Boxing Association (IBA) said the continental qualifier “totally contradicts” Olympic organisers’ recommendation that Russian and Belarusian athletes be allowed to return to international competition.
“For this reason, the European Games 2023 can no longer remain an IOC recognised qualifier for Paris 2024 and must be annulled,” Reuters reports it said.
An air alert has been declared across all of Ukraine.
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that authorities in Russia have identified another suspect in the explosion that killed the pro-war military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a St Petersburg cafe.
Quoting authorities, it writes that the attack was “prepared by a member of the Ukrainian sabotage and terrorist group, a citizen of Ukraine Yuriy Denisov, born in 1987, who, through an express delivery service through an intermediary, transferred to her in Moscow an explosive device camouflaged as a plaster bust of a military commissar.”
Tass added “the procedure for putting him on the international wanted list has been initiated.”
Updated
Message us your views
You may have seen that we are testing a new feature across some of the Guardian’s live blogs, including the Ukraine live blog, which allows you to contact the live blogger directly. This is for people who want to message us, they are not public comments.
If you have something you’ve seen you think we’ve missed, or you have questions or comments about the war or our coverage, or you have spotted one of my regular typos, please do drop me a line.
You should find a button labelled “Send us a message” under our bylines on desktop or mobile web. The feature hasn’t been rolled out to the Guardian app yet while we are testing it.
I can’t promise to answer them all, but I will try to read them all, and if possible, either answer directly or on the blog.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, is grappling with a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh has said.
“We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Reuters reports Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help,” she said.
Updated
The US intelligence leak is also the subject of our First Edition newsletter today. My colleague Archie Bland sums up what we know so far from the leaks about major US allies:
Ukraine: US intelligence officials were pessimistic in February about Ukraine’s prospects for a new attack in the spring, saying that Kyiv could fall “well short” of recapturing territory seized by Russia. There are also details of serious air defence shortages and a risk of running out of anti-aircraft missiles completely by May.
Russia: The leaks suggest that the US has a remarkable level of insight into Russian military operations, with live information about the targets being attacked by Moscow and details of a plan to pay a bonus to soldiers who damage or destroy Nato tanks. Early this morning the New York Times reported (£) that a new batch of 27 pages shows that “the depth of the infighting inside the Russian government appears broader and deeper than previously understood”. There is also information on the Russian mercenary Wagner group’s plan to expand its operations in Haiti, as well as US use of advanced satellite imaging technology to gather intelligence on Russian forces.
UK: One document suggests that 97 special forces operatives were in Ukraine in February and March – and 50 of them were British, Harry Taylor and Manisha Ganguly report. Their purpose there is not specified, but it is suggested that the special forces could form part of a coordinated Nato group.
UN: Some documents seen by the BBC appear to describe private conversations between the UN secretary general António Guterres and his deputy about a deal to secure the export of grain from Ukraine to help tackle a global food crisis. The files reportedly suggest that the US felt Guterres was too sympathetic to Russian interests, saying that he was “undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine”.
South Korea: Documents based in part on intercepted communications show Seoul grappling with US pressure to ship ammunition to Ukraine and concerns that artillery shells requested by Washington for its own use could end up being passed on. South Korea has a longstanding policy of not providing lethal weapons to countries at war.
Israel: Another document says that the Mossad intelligence agency encouraged its staff to take part in protests over Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial plans to weaken the independence of the country’s judiciary. Mossad has denied those claims. There is also an assessment of scenarios in which Israel could be persuaded to provide weapons to Ukraine.
Overnight the Times of London has reported that MPs have warned that British lives have been put at risk by the leak of classified US intelligence documents. It writes:
Tobias Ellwood, [the Conservative MP] who chairs the defence select committee, said the US leaks could “endanger lives”.
“Given our long-established lead in scale and capability when it comes to elite forces it will come as no surprise that our special forces are doing much of the heavy lifting,” he said.
“But this deliberate large-scale disclosure of sensitive material could easily endanger lives and should prompt an urgent review about who has access to sensitive information and how it is shared.”
Dan Jarvis, the [opposition] Labour MP for Barnsley Central and a former special forces commander in Afghanistan, said the operations were “by necessity shrouded in secrecy”.
He added: “Any compromise of secret material regarding their deployment or numerical strength is not only politically embarrassing but also militarily disadvantageous. It risks jeopardising the security and effectiveness of those operations and could put lives at risk.”
All Ukrainian cities and Crimea must and would be part of Ukraine again, and a real peace would come by restoring the country’s borders, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Thursday.
“There is no difference between … any Ukrainian city, they all must and will be Ukraine again,” Reuters reports he said, speaking via a video link at a Black Sea security conference in Bucharest.
Kuleba also said everyone in Ukraine was “devastated” by the “horrific” video that had emerged appearing to show Russian forces beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
Updated
Suspilne, Ukraine's state broadcaster, offers this update on overnight events in Ukraine. It writes:
At night, Russian troops attacked Slovyansk in Donetsk region with S-300 missiles: the school, residential buildings and the city water canal were damaged. In the past day, one person died in the region, and two others were injured.
In the occupied Donetsk region, the Russian military has strengthened local inspections and filtering, increasing the number of checkpoints and patrols in order to hide information about the location of the Russian army, the Ukrainian general staff reported.
46 times from heavy artillery, drones and aviation, the Russian army shelled Kherson oblast yesterday: one person died, two were injured.
AFP have spoken to Vitaliy Sydor, a Ukrainian farmer who has resorted to desperate measures to clear explosives from the land himself so he can plant crops.
“I bought metal detectors and had a bit of a look on the internet,” said Sydor, 28, about his attempts to render the land usable. He had no protective equipment, he admitted, and relies on a friend with army experience.
His village, Novohryhorivka, in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, was within sight of the Russian frontline and heavily bombarded from March to November last year until the Russians retreated.
“Wherever you look there are holes,” said Sydor, indicating the shattered outbuildings and machinery.
International demining organisations and military and police sappers are out in force, but the area is vast and some farmers, needing to recoup huge losses, are taking clearance into their own hands.
“You can wait a long time. No one knows when they will come and demine everything,” said Sydor, adding that he exchanges information online with other farmers on finding munitions.
An estimated half of Mykolaiv region’s agricultural land will go unused this year “due to contamination or fear of contamination”, said Jasmine Dann, regional operations manager for demining charity the Halo Trust, which is working in the region.
Sydor’s do-it-yourself approach carries “very big risks”, she said. “There is not only the risk that something will be missed but also that the mines might be booby trapped,” she warned.“Other explosives can be very unstable and explode if tampered with.”
Updated
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been holding talks in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with the foreign minister of China, Qin Gang, alongside the foreign minister of Iran, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and minister of state for foreign affairs of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar.
Updated
Russia has so far offered a muted response to the document leaks. The deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, suggested on Wednesday that the leak might be a US disinformation ploy. “Since the US is a party to the conflict and is essentially waging a hybrid war against us, it is possible that such techniques are being used to deceive their opponent, the Russian Federation,” Ryabkov told Russian news agencies.
The Ukrainian government is assessing the possible damage from the disclosures. The files give details of 12 newly formed brigades, equipped with western battle tanks and armoured vehicles, which are likely to lead the assault against dug-in Russian positions. “For sure, people are not happy,” one official admitted on Wednesday. “Ukraine was criticised last year for not being a trustworthy partner. At the beginning of the invasion, we weren’t provided with weapons because of this lack of trust. We lost a lot of territory and people as a result. This perception was wrong. And now this leakage happens from the US side.”
It was too early to say whether the leak would affect planning for Ukraine’s counter-offensive, now at an advanced stage, the official indicated. The attack is widely expected to take place in the south of the country, and possibly in the east as well. Ukraine’s goal is to break the land corridor connecting Crimea with Donetsk province and to evict the Russians from the occupied city of Melitopol and the port of Berdiansk.
Updated
World Bank announces $200m for emergency repairs energy infrastructure repairs
The World Bank said on Wednesday it would finance $200m to help fix Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, with partners and others to provide another $300m as the project expands.
The $200m grant will be used to make emergency repairs to Ukraine’s transition transformers, mobile heat boilers and other emergency critical equipment, the World Bank said in a statement.
The World Bank has mobilised more than $23bn in emergency financing for Ukraine, including commitments and pledges from donors. More than $20 billion of this has been disbursed through several projects, it said.
Energy infrastructure has suffered $11bn in damage over the last year and is one of the most critical areas where Ukraine needs urgent support, said Anna Bjerde, World Bank’s managing director of operations, on Wednesday.
During the fall and winter months, more than half of Ukraine’s power infrastructure was damaged, resulting in countrywide power outages that contributed to food, heating and water shortages, the World Bank said.
There is increasing evidence that the intelligence leak was not an intelligence operation by a state actor aiming to discredit the US, but more likely the consequence of a Pentagon policy of granting top secret security clearances to huge numbers of service members, civilians and contractors. The number of employees and contractors in the entire US government with top secret clearance is about 1.25 million.
OG appears to have acted as a leader on a server originally set up in 2020 on the Discord messaging platform by a small group of gun enthusiasts and gamers. The group went by several names, but most often it was known as Thug Shaker Central. Starting last year, OG is reported to have posted the documents on a channel on the server he named “Bear vs Pig”, a reference to the Ukraine war but also a viral video showing pigs fighting off a black bear.
According to the teenage member of the group interviewed by the Post, OG “had a dark view of the government”, portraying the government, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, as a repressive force. He ranted about “government overreach”.
The Post said details were confirmed anonymously by other members of the group, and that it had viewed a total 300 photographs of classified documents, three times the number previously thought to be circulating.
The origins of the leaks on Thug Shaker Central was first reported on Sunday by the Bellingcat investigative journalism group, which also interviewed the same member, who is under 18.
However, the Washington Post said the teen member, who had been in touch with OG “in the past few days” had yet to be interviewed by any federal law enforcement officials by the time of publication on Wednesday night, even though the justice department began a criminal investigation and an FBI manhunt was launched at the beginning of the week. The defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has vowed to “turn over every rock” in pursuit of the leaker.
Pentagon leaker reportedly worked on military base
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group.
The Washington Post interviewed a teenage member of the group, who described the man, referred to by the initials “OG”, from their online correspondence, and shared photographs and videos. The Post also viewed a video of a man identified as OG at a shooting range with a large rifle.
“He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target,” the report said. OG told fellow members of the same internet group that he worked on a military base, which was not named in the report, where his job involved viewing large amounts of classified information.
The leaked documents have laid bare secrets about Ukraine’s preparations for a spring counter-offensive, US spying on allies such as Ukraine, South Korea and Israel, and the tensions between Washington and allied capitals over arming Kyiv.
Updated
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.
Our top story this morning: the person who leaked US classified documents prompting a national security investigation is a gun enthusiast in his 20s who worked on a military base, the Washington Post reports, citing fellow members of an online chat group.
And the World Bank has announced it will finance $200m to make emergency repairs to Ukraine’s transition transformers, mobile heat boilers and other emergency critical equipment.
Here are the other key recent developments:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged international leaders to act after a disturbing video emerged on Wednesday of Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. Ukraine’s president said the world could not ignore the “evil” footage, which has not been verified by the Guardian.
Belarus has extradited a Russian man who was separated from his daughter and sentenced to two years in prison after she drew anti-war pictures at school. Alexei Moskalyov, a 54-year-old single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, fled house arrest last month, hours before a court handed him a two-year sentence for “discrediting” the Russian army.
The EU has pledged to hold those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to account, a spokesperson said, while the UN said it was “appalled by particularly gruesome videos” circulating on social media.
The UK government has imposed sanctions on the “financial fixers” who have allegedly helped Russian oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov hide their assets.
Britain is ready to provide an extra $500 million of loan guarantees to Ukraine, taking the total this year to $1bn, British finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Wednesday. Hunt said the British loan guarantees had been important to underwrite a broader $15.6 billion IMF four-year package of support.
The US also imposed sanctions on more than 120 individuals and entities around the world over their ties to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The sanctions targeted people and entities across more than 20 countries and jurisdictions.
Russia has hit 333 Canadian officials and public figures with sanctions in what it said was a tit-for-tat move in response to Canada’s sanctions against Moscow and support for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military has again rejected claims by Russia that Russian troops have captured more than 80% of the embattled city of Bakhmut. Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for the eastern military command, insisted on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces controlled “considerably” more than 20% of it in the east.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed its forces struck Ukrainian army reserves attempting to break through to Bakhmut. It also claimed that fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary group had captured three more blocks in their attempt to seize control of the city. The claims were not verified.
Russia has tightened its conscription law, including introducing electronic military draft papers, before a widely anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks. The lower and upper houses of parliament rushed through legislation that will make it significantly harder for Russians to dodge the draft while automatically banning registered conscripts from leaving the country.
Russian-installed authorities in annexed Crimea and the city of Sevastopol have cancelled traditional military parades to celebrate Victory Day and May Day, the Russian-appointed leader of Crimea has said, citing security reasons. Sergei Aksyonov’s statement on Wednesday came a day after he said Crimea was on guard and that Russian forces had built “modern, in-depth defences”.
Serbia has agreed to supply arms to Kyiv or has sent them already, according to a classified Pentagon document. Serbia is one of the only countries in Europe that has refused to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
South Korea has reportedly agreed to “lend” the US 500,000 rounds of artillery, 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.
South Africa has said that an international arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war was a “spanner in the works” before a Brics summit in the country in August. The Russian president is due to attend a summit of Brics countries but the host nation is a member of the International Criminal Court and would be expected to make the arrest if Putin steps foot in the country.
The German government is very worried about the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s worsening health condition, a government spokesperson has said. Navalny’s spokesperson on Tuesday said he had lost 8kg in 16 days while in solitary confinement, and that he was not receiving any treatment.
Updated
