Russia is demanding that Ukraine arrest its own security chief and extradite him to Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Vasyl Malyuk of being involved in terrorist acts.
Malyuk said in July 2023 that his agency had destroyed a bridge in Crimea in October 2022.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded on Sunday evening that Ukraine arrest the head of its own security services and extradite him to Russia.
The ministry issued a statement blaming Vasyl Malyuk, the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine, for an explosion at a bridge in Crimea that Russia said killed five people in October 2022.
The statement called the explosion one of several “barbaric bomb attacks,” mentioning them alongside the devastating Moscow concert hall attack in March 2022 that killed at least 140 people.
Russia has accused Kyiv of facilitating the concert hall attack, with leader Vladimir Putin saying that Ukraine’s authorities allowed the gunmen to pass through its borders. No evidence was presented to support this accusation, and the terrorist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the killings.
As for the bridge explosion in Crimea, Malyuk said publicly in July 2023 that his agency was behind the attack.
“It is one of our actions, namely the destruction of the Crimean bridge on October 8 last year,” he told Ukrainian TV, per The Associated Press.
Before this admission, Ukraine was already widely regarded as responsible for the bridge’s destruction.
Russia’s foreign ministry described the bridge attack as a terrorist act, and said it told Kyiv to “immediately arrest and extradite every person implicated.”
Moscow and Kyiv have been engaged in open war since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine’s security service told local media that Russia’s claims of Kyiv-sanctioned terrorism were “especially cynical on the anniversary of the liberation of the town of Bucha and the atrocities committed by the Russians there.”
“So any words by the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry are worthless,” it said in a statement, per Ukrainska Pravda.
The security service added that Putin himself is subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, over accusations of his forces carrying out war crimes against children in Ukraine.
The press team for the Security Service of Ukraine did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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The Kremlin has welcomed statements by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, known to have held close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin while in office, to use the friendship to contribute to ending the war in Ukraine.
Good, constructive relations on a personal level like those between Schröder and Putin could help to solve problems, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Thursday.
It comes after the former German leader told dpa in an interview that he and Putin “have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution, I don’t see any other way.”
Schröder has been friends with Putin since his time as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and continues to work for the majority Russian Nord Stream pipeline companies.. Although he has described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “fatal mistake,” he has not renounced Putin.
The leadership of his Social Democratic Party has marginalized him for this reason, but an expulsion procedure against him failed.
Peskov said Schröder and Putin’s friendship had repeatedly helped “to solve the most difficult questions and ensure the gradual evolution of bilateral developments.”
The Kremlin spokesman added that when it came to those in power in Germany today, he did not see any willingness to end the war in Ukraine, ordered by Russian President Putin in February 2022.
Germany led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, one of Ukraine’s main backers, was massively involved in the war, he claimed, without giving details. The dominant approach in Europe was to “provoke Ukraine into fighting to the last Ukrainian.” Although Moscow was observing varying positions in Europe, it did not see any change in the situation, Peskov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting between President of the New Development Bank Dilma Rousseff and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Konstantinovsky Palace. Alexey Danichev/KREMLIN/dpa
The Kremlin has embraced a challenge in the wake of last week’s deadly terror attack in Moscow: pinning the blame on its enemies.
Russian officials have stepped up their efforts to point the finger at Ukraine and the West — a task made more difficult by a lack of publicly presented evidence, denials by Kyiv matched by claims of responsibility by the Islamic State terrorist group, and contradictions in the narrative put forth by the Kremlin’s hawks.
Although President Vladimir Putin offered early hints of the claim that Ukraine was in some way involved in the concert hall attack, the Russian leader and his propaganda machine have doubled down on those claims in recent days. The head of the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) even suggested Tuesday that it was not just Kyiv but the United States and Britain that were behind the attack, which has now claimed at least 140 lives.
Ukraine and its allies have dismissed the accusations, while the U.S. has said ISIS was solely responsible for the attack.
Four Tajik nationals charged in the attack appeared severely beaten in a Moscow court Sunday, raising questions about how reliable any testimony they give will be. On Monday, Putin admitted for the first time that the attack had been carried out by “radical Islamists,” while again suggesting that Ukraine was involved.
The Russian leader has suggested Ukraine was involved without presenting any evidence.Valery Sharifulin / AFP – Getty Images
FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov took it further Tuesday and said that “primary data” received from the suspects so far points to a “Ukrainian trace” because “the Islamists alone were unable to prepare such an act.” Bortnikov also accused Kyiv of training militants in the Middle East.
His words were echoed by another high-ranking official in Putin’s entourage Tuesday: the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev. “Of course, Ukraine,” Patrushev said, answering a question from a journalist about whether ISIS or Kyiv was to blame for the attack.
But the Kremlin accusations, while increasingly definitive, have lacked any evidence, details or clarity.
“Overall, there’s an odd disconnect. The official line, that Ukrainians recruited jihadists, is being parroted, but often with little conviction,” Mark Galeotti, head of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and an honorary professor at University College London, wrote on X. “Despite talk of consequences, nothing is really emerging, leaving the authorities looking rather weak.”
Russian propaganda has dismissed the ISIS claim of responsibility since the night of the attack, when observers feared that the Kremlin might seek to exploit the situation by blaming its enemies in Ukraine and the West.
That has been borne out in the days since.
On Wednesday, the pro-Kremlin newspaper Argumenty i Fakty splashed across its front page the faces of President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of Germany, France and the United Kingdom against the burning Crocus concert hall in the background, with a tagline that read: “We know the masterminds of the terrorist attack in Crocus. … Let them tell each other the nonsense about ISIS.”
When asked why Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, would be in league with Islamist extremists, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov suggested it was not so far-fetched. The Ukrainian leader is a “peculiar” Jewish person who sympathizes with Nazis, Peskov said Tuesday, resorting to the Kremlin’s baseless trope about Zelenskyy and his government.
Russia’s Investigative Committee also said Wednesday that it would look into an appeal by several lawmakers to investigate how the U.S. and other Western countries are allegedly organizing, financing and carrying out terror acts against Russia.
Pushing that narrative could serve several purposes.
It detracts from any meaningful discussion about the failure of Russia’s own security services, which have been busy cracking down on domestic dissent and seemingly missed an attack that was clearly well planned and that the U.S. had warned about weeks in advance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin.GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
The Kremlin’s spokesperson said Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year.
The elections don’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected,” Dmitry Peskov said.
Putin has maintained a tight grip on power, making his 2024 re-election all but certain.
A spokesperson for the Kremlin said this week that Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year because it’s “obvious” that Vladimir Putin will win.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s chief spokesperson, described Russia’s presidential election as “not really democracy” but “costly bureaucracy” in an interview with The New York Times over the weekend.
“Mr, Putin will be reelected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote,” he added.
After the article was published, Peskov claimed he was misquoted by The Times and tried to clarify his comments, telling Russia’s RBK news outlet that the 2024 election “theoretically” doesn’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected.”
Putin’s reelection in March 2024 is indeed almost certain; but the Russian leader has largely maintained his grip on power by cracking down on the independent press, reportedly approving the assassinations and imprisonment of dissidents and political rivals; and approving a sweeping change to Russia’s constitution that allows him to stay in power until 2036.
Next year’s presidential election — if it happens — will also come amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Putin, who described the invasion as a “special military operation,” has characterized it as being essential to Russia’s survival as a nation, but the war is increasingly unpopular among Russian citizens and even within the Russian military.
One Russian inmate told The New York Times in June that he believed he was signing up to become an army construction worker when a government official recruited him from prison. Instead, he was sent to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine and captured by Ukrainian forces a few days later.
Other Russian soldiers said that they were “fucking fooled like little kids” and had no clue they were being sent to a war zone. In one audio recording previously obtained by The Times, a Russian soldier told his mother during a phone conversation that “no one told us we were going to war. They warned us one day before we left.”
Russia’s Soviet-era car brand unveils Its latest release in Moscow on Aug 3rd – the Moskvich 6, a five-door compact hatchback – Getty Images
Officials in Russia have begun swapping their BMWs and Mercedes for Ladas and other Russian cars after Vladimir Putin said they should support domestic manufacturing.
Within hours of Mr Putin’s edict, Vladislav Davankov, deputy chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament, posted a video of himself driving an electric Moskvich-3e.
“It drives quite well, it seems to me,” he said. “It’s a bit noisy but overall it’s okay.”
Mr. Davankov looked cheerful enough in the black hatchback as he trundled through the Moscow traffic wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses, but he is used to a faster commute to the office.
Russian parliamentary documents showed that the 39-year-old owns a Mercedes S-450 which can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in under 5 seconds and hit a top speed of 155 mph.
By comparison, the Moskvich-3e is described as an “urban crossover” with a top speed of 87 mph.
‘Buy Russian’
On Thursday, Mr Putin told a meeting of Russian industrialists that Russian officials should embrace a “more modest” look and buy domestic car brands.
Cars roll off the assembly line at the Moscow Automobile Factory Moskvich, after the production of vehicles under the Soviet-era brand commenced at the French carmaker Renault’s former plant on November 23, 2022 – Reuters
Last year, the Kremlin brought the Moskvich brand back after a 20-year gap as it tried to ramp up Russian car production to beat Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine, but the rejuvenation of the Soviet marque received less-than-gushing reviews from industry experts, who pointed out that its cars were almost identical to Chinese designs.
Lada, Russia’s biggest car manufacturer, has also been struggling under Western sanctions and was forced to launch last year’s model without a satellite navigation system, airbags, or an anti-locking brake system.
In June, Maxim Sokolov, head of Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ, said that labour shortages caused by the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine were forcing him to employ gangs of prisoners. The iconic and unreliable Lada family car is being produced by amid a shortage of workers caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Still, Mr. Davankov is not the only Russian official to laud Russian cars.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said this week that he commutes to work in a Russian Aurus saloon and drives a Moskvich-3 at the weekend, which he praised as “roomy, economical, and reliable”.
And he ordered other MPs to follow his example.
“Parliamentary deputies will use Moskvich, Lada, and Aurus cars,” he said.
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MELEKHOVO, Russia (AP) — A Russian court convicted imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of extremism and sentenced him to 19 years in prison on Friday. Navalny is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated.
The new charges are related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term — all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.
Russian state news agencies said he would serve this new term concurrently with his current sentence on charges of fraud and contempt of court. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told The Associated Press it’s the most likely scenario but that his team has not seen the text of the verdict yet.
The prosecution had demanded a 20-year prison sentence, and Navalny said beforehand that he expected to receive a lengthy term.
He was also sentenced in 2021 to two and a half years in prison for a parole violation. The extremism trial took place behind closed doors in the penal colony east of Moscow where Navalny is imprisoned.
Navalny appeared in the courtroom wearing prison garb and looking gaunt, but with a defiant smile on his face. As the judge read out the verdict, the politician stood alongside his lawyers and his co-defendant with his arms crossed, listening with a serious expression on his face.
It took the judge less than 10 minutes to announce the verdict and the sentence — something that in Russia usually takes hours and even days. The hearing was broadcast to reporters in a separate room, but the judge’s speech was barely audible.
Navalny commented on the sentence in a social media post, presumably relayed through his team, saying that “the number doesn’t matter.”
“I understand perfectly that, as many political prisoners, I’m serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime,” Navalny said, urging his supporters “not to lose the will to resist” in the wake of his sentence.
Yarmysh confirmed the verdict to the AP, adding that Navalny was also ordered to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles (about $5,200). She said that Navalny feels optimistic despite the harsh sentence, and “absolutely believes in what he’s doing,” adding that “it certainly helps him cope with all that and keep doing what he’s doing.”
The U.S. State Department condemned Navalny’s new sentence as “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial” and called for his immediate release.
“For years, the Kremlin has attempted to silence Navalny and prevent his calls for transparency and accountability from reaching the Russian people,” it said. “By conducting this latest trial in secret and limiting his lawyers’ access to purported evidence, Russian authorities illustrated yet again both the baselessness of their case and the lack of due process afforded to those who dare to criticize the regime.”
The 47-year-old Navalny is President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe and has exposed official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Navalny’s allies said the extremism charges retroactively criminalized all of the anti-corruption foundation’s activities since its creation in 2011. In 2021, Russian authorities outlawed the foundation and the vast network of Navalny’s offices in Russian regions as extremist organizations, exposing anyone involved to possible prosecution.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Navalny’s new sentence “raises renewed serious concerns about judicial harassment and instrumentalisation of the court system for political purposes in Russia” and called for his release.
One of Navalny’s associates, Daniel Kholodny, stood trial alongside him after being relocated from a different prison. His lawyer told the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper that Kholodny was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Navalny rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.
On the eve of the verdict hearing, Navalny released a statement on social media, presumably through his team, in which he said he expected his latest sentence to be “huge … a Stalinist term.” Under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, millions of people were branded “enemies of the state,” jailed and sometimes executed in what became known as the “Great Terror.”
In his statement, Navalny called on Russians to “personally” resist and encouraged them to support political prisoners, distribute flyers or go to a rally. He told Russians that they could choose a safe way to resist, but he added that “there is shame in doing nothing. It’s shameful to let yourself be intimidated.”
The politician is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison — Penal Colony No. 6 in the town of Melekhovo, about 230 kilometers (more than 140 miles) east of Moscow.
He has spent months in a tiny one-person cell, also called a “punishment cell,” for purported disciplinary violations, such as an alleged failure to button his prison clothes properly, introduce himself appropriately to a guard or to wash his face at a specified time.
Yarmysh said that prison officials once again placed Navalny in the punishment cell right after his closing arguments in late July, and that he was released from it only on Friday for the verdict hearing.
On social media, Navalny’s associates urged supporters to come to Melekhovo on Friday to express solidarity with the politician.
About 40 supporters from different Russian cities gathered outside the colony, one of them told the AP in the messaging app Telegram. Yelena, who spoke on condition that her last name was withheld for safety reasons, said the supporters weren’t allowed into the colony, but decided to stay outside until the verdict as announced: “People think it’s important to be nearby at least like that, for moral support. We will be waiting.”
Navalny was ordered to serve the new prison term in a “special regime” penal colony, a term that refers to the Russian prisons with the highest level of security and the harshest inmate restrictions.
It wasn’t immediately clear when he would be transferred to such a colony from the Melekhovo prison. Yarmysh said Navalny’s lawyers will definitely appeal the verdict, so it will not take effect until the appeal is ruled on.
Russian law stipulates that only men given life sentences or “especially dangerous recidivists” are sent to those types of prisons.
The country has many fewer “special regime” colonies compared to other types of adult prisons, according to state penitentiary service data: 35 colonies for “dangerous recidivists” and six for men imprisoned for life. Maximum-security colonies are the most widespread type, with 251 currently in operation.
Still, Navalny is “always in this optimistic spirit,” Yarmysh said. “It seems to me that he is probably the biggest optimist among all of us,” she added. “This happens because Alexei is absolutely convinced in what he’s doing and confident that he is right. This, of course, helps him cope with everything and continue doing what he does.”
___
Associated Press writers Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is facing an even longer stint in jail after being sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media report, a fresh blow to a fierce critic of Russia’s President Putin that comes amid an intensifying crackdown on dissent.
Navalny was accused of creating an extremist community, financing extremist activities and a number of other crimes.
He was found guilty on Friday at the high-security penal colony in which he has been detained.
Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.
He and his supporters claim that his arrest and imprisonment were politically motivated, intended to silence his criticism of Putin.
The trial ended in June and took place behind closed doors at the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, around 155 miles east of Moscow, where Navalny is being held.
Friday’s verdict extends Navalny’s time in prison and raise further concerns about the brutal crackdown on Putin’s opponents that has been accelerated since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European Union was quick to condemn the sentence, saying it reiterated its “deep concern about reports of repeated ill-treatment, unjustified and unlawful disciplinary measures, and harassment amounting to physical and psychological torture by prison authorities against Mr Navalny.”
Navalny has been incarcerated in Russia since his return to the country in January 2021, on charges of violating terms of probation related to a years-old fraud case, which he dismisses as politically motivated.
There have been concerns about his wellbeing: Navalny lost weight and suffered stomach pain earlier this year, leading to fears among his lawyers that he had again been poisoned.
He had previously been taken from Russia to Germany in August 2020, after he was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Navalny arrived comatose at a hospital in Berlin, following a medical evacuation flight from the Siberian city of Omsk.
Navalny has been imprisoned since his return to Russia in 2021. – Reuters
A joint investigation by CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in Navalny’s poisoning, piecing together how an elite unit at the agency had followed Navalny’s team throughout a trip to Siberia, when he fell ill.
The investigation also found that this unit, which included chemical weapons experts, had followed Navalny on more than 30 trips to and from Moscow since 2017.
Russia denies involvement in Navalny’s poisoning. Putin himself said in December 2020 that if Russian security services had wanted to kill Navalny, they “would have finished” the job.
Although the Russian authorities’ targeting of Navalny pre-dates Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has cracked down even more dramatically on internal opposition and free speech since launching the war.
An expanded and intentionally vague law on “foreign agents” came into effect late last year, requiring organizations and individuals engaging in political activity and receiving funding from abroad to adhere to draconian rules and restrictions.
Russia has also restricted access to Facebook, many Western news sites, and independent media in the country. Peaceful protests were quickly shut down and thousands arrested after Moscow’s invasion.
And the government has adopted a law criminalizing the dissemination of what it called “deliberately false” information about the Russian armed forces, with a maximum penalty is 15 years in prison.
Navalny has nonetheless been a vocal critic of the conflict. On the anniversary of the invasion in February, he called it “an unjust war of aggression against Ukraine under ridiculous pretexts.”
CNN’s Niamh Kennedy, Christian Edwards and Radina Gigova contributed reporting
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A Russian court on Friday issued its verdict in a new case against jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, convicting the politician of promoting “extremism” and extending his time in prison by 19 years, according to Russian state media and his own team.
Navalny, who emerged as the most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin’s government before he was imprisoned, is already serving a nine-year term in a high-security prison about 150 miles east of Moscow for parole violations, fraud, and contempt of court.
Navalny and many outside observers have always considered those charges politically motivated retaliation for his criticism of Putin and the Kremlin’s policies, both foreign and domestic.
In the new trial, Navalny was accused of creating an extremist organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. That organization has authored multiple investigations into the riches of the Russian elite. He also founded a network of nearly 40 regional offices that sought to challenge Kremlin-approved local politicians.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny sentenced to 9 years in prison
04:21
Both groups were outlawed as extremist organizations in 2021, a designation that exposed people involved in their operations to criminal prosecution.
Navalny faced a total of seven serious charges in the trial, including participating in and funding extremist activities, creating an NGO that “infringes on the rights of citizens,” involving minors in dangerous acts, and rehabilitating Nazism.
In April, Navalny said a separate proceeding had been launched against him stemming from the extremism case, in which he would stand accused of terrorism and be tried by a military court.
At the time, the politician said he expected the trials to result in life imprisonment.
“The sentence will be a long one,” Navalny said in a statement released by his organization Thursday, before the verdict was announced in the case. “I urge you to think why such a demonstratively huge sentence is necessary. Its main purpose is to intimidate. You, not me. I will even say this: you personally, the one reading these lines.”
The trial was held behind closed doors. Navalny’s parents were denied entry to the court and have not seen their son for over a year.
Daniel Kholodny, who used to work for Navalny’s YouTube channel, was also charged with funding and promoting extremism and was expected to be sentenced Friday.
In a Thursday statement, Navalny said Kholodny was part of his technical production staff, but that investigators had “made him up to be an ‘organizer’ of an extremist community,” and attempted to pressure Kholodny into a deal: freedom in exchange for damning testimony against Navalny and his allies.
Navalny has been put in solitary confinement 17 times at the IK-6 prison, a facility known for its oppressive conditions and violent inmates.
In previous statements, his team described how the prison administration denied him family visits and punished him for transgressions as minor as having an unbuttoned shirt.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 immediately upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin — a claim Russian officials have always denied.
Fiona Hill welcomes “obligatory” new U.S. sanctions on Russia over Navalny poisoning
06:34
Shortly after his arrest, a court sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in prison for violating the parole conditions of a 2014 suspended sentence in a fraud case that Navalny insists was politically motivated.
From that point on, the number of cases and charges against him snowballed, with his allies saying the Kremlin’s goal has always been to keep him locked up for as long as possible.
Following Navalny’s imprisonment, the country’s authorities launched a sweeping crackdown on his associates and supporters. Many have been forced to flee the country, while others have been imprisoned, including the head of his regional office Liliya Chanysheva.
