Closing summary
It’s 10.20pm in Moscow, 7.20pm in London and 2.20pm in New York, and we’re closing our Ukraine live blog coverage now. Thanks for joining us.
Here’s what we were following today:
Joe Biden says the United States will unveil on Friday a major package of sanctions against Russia to hold it accountable for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The US president’s national security adviser said the measures will target Russia’s “defense industrial base and sources of revenue for the economy”.
The European Union summoned the summoned the Russian charge d’affaires in Brussels Kirill Logvinov to demand an independent and transparent investigation into Navalny’s death. Also on Tuesday, Italy, Poland and Slovenia summoned Russia’s ambassadors, following similar moves on Monday by numerous other European countries.
Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, has demanded that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, hand over her son’s body. “Vladimir Putin … let me finally see my son,” Navalnaya said in a video message.
The safety account for the social media platform X said that the account of Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, was suspended earlier today after its “platform’s defence mechanism against manipulation and spam” mistakenly flagged it as being in violation of its rules.
EU demands transparency on Navalny death from chief Russian diplomat
The European Union said on Tuesday it had summoned the Russian charge d’affaires in Brussels over the death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Separately, three more countries announce they were also summoning Russia’s ambassadors: Italy, Poland and Slovenia.
The EU’s managing director for Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, Michael Siebert, called for an independent and transparent investigation into the death of Navalny during his meeting with Kirill Logvinov, chief diplomat of Russia’s mission to the EU, according to a statement issued by the union:
The EU side conveyed EU’s outrage over the death of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, for which the ultimate responsibility lies with President Putin and the Russian authorities.
[We urge] Russia to release his body to his family without further delay and allow the family to organize a funeral.
On Monday, France, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands said they had summoned diplomats from Russian embassies.
