Closing summary
This blog is closing for the day. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Ukraine announced it had detained two Ukrainian security officials who they claim were involved in a plot coordinated by Russia to assassinate senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The Security Service of Ukraine said in a statement that it had exposed a network of agents run by Russia’s Federal Security Service whose aim was to assassinate Zelenskiy and other senior Ukrainian political and military officials.
Belarus has begun checks on the readiness of its army to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, simultaneously with a drill being carried out by Russia. Russia said on Monday it would practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the US.
During his inauguration, where he sworn in for another term as Russian President, Vladimir Putin did not rule out dialogue with the West but said it needed to be on equal terms. In a short speech, Putin also said that Russia was open to developing relations with other countries he described as “the world’s majority”.
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other at the global chemical weapons watchdog in The Hague of using banned toxins on the battlefield, the organisation said on Tuesday. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that the accusations were “insufficiently substantiated” but added that “the situation remains volatile and extremely concerning regarding the possible re-emergence of use of toxic chemicals as weapons.”
The EU plans to sanction Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian politician and businessman accused of high treason by Kyiv, who was released to Russia in a prisoner exchange in 2022. In addition, the bloc is seeking to ban four more Russian media outlets from the airwaves and internet in its latest round of measures against Russia.
Reuters reports that Britain, the US and Australia have sanctioned a senior Russian leader of the cybercrime gang LockBit, the British government said on Tuesday.
Dmitry Khoroshev will face asset freezes and travel bans after being identified as one of the leaders of LockBit, the ransomware group which has extorted over $1bn from victims globally, Britain said.
“In sanctioning one of the leaders of LockBit we are taking direct action against those who continue to threaten global security, while simultaneously exposing the malicious cybercriminal activity emanating from Russia,” the British minister for the Indo-Pacific, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, said in a statement.
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