From the editor
Russia committed a horrific missile strike on a playground in Volodymyr Zelensky’s home town of Kryvyi Rih on Friday evening, killing 19 people, including nine children, and injuring dozens of others. Nine-year-old Herman Tripolets was playing on a swing when he was killed. Two other victims, 15-year-olds Danylo NIkitskyi and Alina Kutsenko, were a young couple buried side by side in matching coffins. The youngest victim was a three-year-old named as Tymofii who was walking home with his grandmother when the missile struck. Arina, seven years old, was killed with her grandfather Serhii. Arina’s four-year-old brother is in critical condition. Her classmate Radyslav was also killed. A nearby restaurant, which Russia claimed was the target of the strike, was damaged by the aftershock. Zelensky visited Kryvyi Rih to pay his respects today.
A makeshift memorial to children killed in a Russian strike on a playground in Kryvyi Rih
As on so many occasions when Russia has killed large numbers of civilians – the downing of MH17 in 2014 and the bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theatre in March 2022 being just two examples – its officials denied responsibility and gave ludicrous explanations for the attack on Kryvyi Rih. At a UN Security Council meeting called by Ukraine to discuss the massacre Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said: “According to the Russian Defence Ministry, as a result of a high-precision strike by a high-explosive missile on the site of a meeting with commanders of units and Western instructors, the enemy’s losses amounted to up to 85 servicemen and officers of foreign countries, as well as up to 20 vehicles. The operation carried out caused undeniable damage to the command staff of both the Ukrainian Armed Forces and a number of NATO armies that had sent their instructors to Ukraine.
While there was no evidence of Ukrainian commanders or Western instructors being killed in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine did publish a video this week of two Chinese soldiers that it said it captured fighting for Russia. “As of now we have precise data on over 150 Chinese citizens who were involved in the war against Ukraine by Russia. We know that the actual number is higher,” Zelensky posted on X. “Ukraine believes that such blatant involvement of Chinese citizens in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine during the war of aggression is a deliberate step towards the expansion of the war, and is yet another indication that Moscow simply needs to drag out the fighting.”
Meanwhile the Associated Press analysed videos made by drones in the southern Ukrainian village of Piatykhatky last month that the outlet confirmed showed Russian troops executing unarmed Ukrainian POWs who had surrendered. The four POWs emerged from a ruined house with Russian troops pointing their weapons at them. The Ukrainians lay down on the grass and the Russians shot them dead. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented 91 extrajudicial killings of Ukrainian POWs since August 2024. In the same period it found a single case of Ukrainian soldiers killing a Russian POW.
Donald Trump expressed mild frustration with Russia after the attack on Kryvyi Rih, saying, “I’m not happy with what’s going on with the bombing, they’re bombing like crazy and I don’t know what’s happening there, that’s not a good situation… I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going on the last week or so. Horrible. It’s a horrible thing.” Nevertheless the United States went ahead with a meeting with Russian officials in Istanbul yesterday to discuss restoring the work of diplomatic missions. A prisoner exchange also took place yesterday in Abu Dhabi, with Russian-American ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina, who was serving a 12-year sentence for treason for a donation of $52 to a charity aiding Ukraine, returned to the United States in exchange for Arthur Petrov, a Russian-German citizen accused of procuring sensitive microelectronics for a Russian company. US-Russian talks are continuing today with another visit by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia, to meet Vladimir Putin again in St. Petersburg.
Trump claimed that Russia was one of the only countries not slapped with his new tariffs because negotiations are ongoing, but that didn’t explain why Ukraine did get a 10 percent tariff. The impression that his administration favours Russia has by no means been dispelled. Condemning the bombing is meaningless without concrete action. And with the United States’ trade war with China now in full swing and threats to bomb Iran being made, stopping Putin will likely remain far on the back burner – if it’s even an item on Trump’s menu of wild foreign policy plans at all.
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Elderly dual citizen in Lithuania sentenced for spying for Russia as GRU “illegal”
A court in Lithuania has sentenced 83-year-old Lithuanian-Russian dual citizen Eduardas Manovas to 8 ½ years in prison for spying for Russia. Manovas, who was arrested in January last year, admitted sending non-classified information to Russia, but said it wasn’t for intelligence agents. He was a long-time member of the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) and served on the council of a local branch of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees. He had a high military rank in the Soviet era and frequently visited relatives in Russia. Authorities said Manovas was paid for collecting and passing information to Russia’s GRU from 2018 about Lithuanian political and economic affairs, party activities, national defence capabilities, NATO consultations, military procurement, and support for Ukraine. While not classified, officials said the information was sensitive and valuable to Russian intelligence. Manovas tried to use poor health as an excuse to avoid conviction.
Lithuanian intelligence services identified Manovas as part of the GRU’s “illegals” programme, in which agents live under deep cover abroad. Posing as a deportee affected by Soviet repression, Manovas embedded himself in exile communities and political circles.
Former governor of Sevastopol convicted of breaching sanctions in UK
In the UK a court has convicted two Russians in the first ever guilty verdicts for breaches of Russian financial sanctions. Dmitri Ovsyannikov, 48, and his brother Alexei Ovsyannikov, 47, were found guilty on eight counts of breaching financial sanctions and two of money laundering. Dmitri was sentenced to 40 months in prison and Alexei was given a suspended sentence. Dmitri Ovsyannikov was a former governor of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea and a deputy minister of industry and trade in Russia. Despite being personally sanctioned by the EU and the UK he was able to acquire a British passport in January 2023 and moved to London.
“Dmitrii Ovsyannikov attended a Mercedes Benz showroom and attempted to buy a Mercedes Benz GLC 300 at the cost of £54,000. Over the next couple of days, Ekaterina transferred a further £75,000 into her husband’s bank account,” the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement about the case. “However, his bank accounts were frozen once it was realised that he was on the UK’s sanctions list. His brother Alexei purchased the car, Dmitrii Ovsyannikov then had use of the vehicle. Later in the year Alexei left his debit card for Dmitrii Ovsyannikov to use in shops around Clapham and Balham after he went on a trip to Vienna. In May 2024 Alexei made funds available to Dmitrii Ovsyannikov to use to pay private school fees for around £17,000 for his children. AO paid school fees on behalf of his brother. All of these financial and attempted transactions are in contravention of the financial sanctions regime created by the UK government.”
More people sentenced for pro-Ukraine activities
A military court in Chita has sentenced ex-soldier Maxim Ivannikov, 38, to 15 years in a maximum-security prison for treason, calls for extremism and participating in a terrorist organisation. Ivannikov’s trial was held in secret but the FSB had accused him of being the administrator of a Telegram group “controlled by Ukraine’s Security Service”. He served in the Russian army until 2019 and after that was unemployed. He was arrested in February last year while allegedly trying to flee abroad to claim asylum in a US embassy.
A court in occupied Kherson Oblast has sentenced 19-year-old Yulia Sokolova to nine years in prison for espionage for allegedly filming Russian military facilities and transmitting the videos via messaging apps. And a military court in St. Petersburg has sentenced 19-year-old Ilya Kholopov from Novgorod Oblast to seven years in a maximum-security prison for planning treason and planning to participate in a terrorist organisation for allegedly attempting to join the Freedom of Russia Legion that fights against Russia in Ukraine. Kholopov was arrested in March last year in a train going from St. Petersburg to Bryansk Oblast, where prosecutors said he planned to cross the border into Ukraine. He reportedly described Russians and Vladimir Putin as fascists at one of his court hearings and said he was ashamed to be Russian. Kholopov suffers from epilepsy.
A military court in Khabarovsk has sentenced 15-year-old Yegor Shaposhnikov to five years in a “rehabilitative” institution for allegedly planning a terrorist attack at a military base. Shaposhnikov was arrested in November 2023. The teenager was accused of starting a Telegram group that called for the overthrow of the government and a takeover by members of his movement, and plotting to throw Molotov cocktails at the military base.
A court in Moscow Oblast has sentenced Shchelkovo resident Roman Mayorov to four years and 10 months in prison for allegedly working with Ukrainian intelligence services. He was accused of communicating with a Ukrainian agent on WhatsApp between December 2023 and January 2024. The alleged agent was blogger Dmytro Karpenko, who posts interviews with Russian POWs on YouTube. Mayorov had been in custody since his arrest in May last year and pled guilty.
A court in Nizhny Novgorod has sentenced two students to 2 ½ years in prison each for “spreading fakes about the army” after the head of their institute, Nina Govorova, informed on them to the police. The pair, who were both born in 2006, were arrested last August over a video they posted in October 2023 about “the actions of the armed forces of the Russian Federation against the civilian population of Ukraine”. In the video the defendants talked about Russian strikes on schools, shopping centres and other civilian targets in Ukraine, and the strike on the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023. The video was made in their kitchen and posted on a Telegram channel with 26 subscribers, as well as via email to fellow students.
Convicted general and man who assaulted partner going to Ukraine to fight
General Ivan Popov, the former commander of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army, who was arrested in May last year on fraud charges, will reportedly go to Ukraine to lead a Storm Z division of ex-prisoners. Prosecutors had asked for Popov, 50, to be stripped of his rank and sentenced to six years in prison. In his previous role as chief of staff of the 11th Army Corps Popov conducted a chaotic retreat from Kharkiv Oblast in 2022 and later claimed he was dismissed from his post for expressing concerns about troops fighting without rest and for criticising battlefield strategy.
Meanwhile Russian influencer Ksenia Dushanova said her ex partner Rashid Aliev, who assaulted her and gouged out her eye with a car key last December after she tried to break up with him, has been released from custody to fight in Ukraine. Aliev had been charged with attempted murder. Dushanova is being treated in a clinic in St. Petersburg and her condition has been deteriorating.
Father of teen whose body was put on display in Chechnya assaulted in Moscow
The father of a teenager who was shot dead after he allegedly stabbed a traffic policeman to death at a checkpoint has been assaulted in Moscow. The body of 17-year-old Eskerkhan Khumashev was placed in a town square in Achkhoy-Martan on Wednesday as retribution and a crowd of people – said to be state employees - gathered around it. His father’s arms, legs and ribs were reportedly broken in the assault. Ramzan Kadyrov had called for the teenager’s relatives to be driven out of Chechnya and their property to be confiscated, and also blamed Ukraine for the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said he didn’t trust reports that Khumashev’s body was put on display. According to the official version of events Khumashev had been insulted by a traffic policeman at the checkpoint and came back the next day with a knife, accidentally stabbing a colleague of the officer who insulted him instead of his intended victim.