Closing summary
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it’s “extremely hard to believe” that Islamic State would have had the capacity to launch the attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 140 people last Friday. Russian officials have repeatedly cast doubt on western intelligence assertions that IS was responsible for the attack and have instead suggested that Ukraine and western countries played a role in it, without providing any evidence.
In another move that showed Russia was not ready to accept that IS carried our the attack, state investigators said they will study a request from parliament to investigate what they called the “organisation, financing, and conduct of terrorist acts” against Russia by the United States and other Western countries. This comes despite IS claiming responsibility for the attack and repeated denials by Ukraine that it had any involvement.
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko said the Moscow attackers attempted to flee to Belarus. His comments further undermine Moscow’s narrative that Ukraine was involved in the attack and the terrorists tried to flee there.
Russian strikes killed three and injured dozens more across three regions of Ukraine– Kherson, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk. “This is another act of bloody terror against Ukrainians,” Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba renewed his calls for urgent deliveries of air defence systems. in the wake of the strikes. “The peculiarity of the current Russian attacks is the intensive use of ballistic missiles that can reach targets at extremely high speeds, leaving little time for people to take cover and causing significant destruction,” Kuleba told a briefing.
Ukraine’s air force chief said that Russia launched 13 Shahed drones at Ukraine overnight. It said 10 of them were downed in the Kharkiv, Sumy and Kyiv regions.
Ukraine has staged further air attacks on Belgorod, just over the border inside Russia. The regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported damage on the ground and claimed air defence engaged 18 incoming targets.
Ukraine’s SBU security service detained two agents of Russia’s intelligence agency accused of passing the location of sensitive military targets to enemy forces. “As a result of a special operation, two FSB agents were detained in Kyiv and Odesa,” the SBU said in a statement.
Updated
Latvia is open to various funding options to boost the European Union’s military capabilities in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Evika Silina said at a news conference in the German capital with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Latvia will definitely will be open to many different opportunities how we can finance it. Either it will be European budget or it will be some bonds or some guarantees, but we really have to do it now,” Reuters reports the prime minister saying.
