Claim from FSB comes two weeks after Ukrainian assassination of senior Russian general Igor Kirillov
On 8 March 2023, International Women’s Day, Russian soldiers were handing out tulips and boughs of mimosa to women and girls in the city of Melitopol, southern Ukraine – a move designed to promote friendly relations between the occupiers and the inhabitants.
But the night before, someone had been discreetly sticking posters to walls and lamp-posts. They bore the image of a young Ukrainian woman, dressed in a traditional embroidered shirt, smashing a bouquet over a Russian soldier’s head. “I don’t want flowers,” read the slogan. “I want my Ukraine.”
Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service accused American and British spies of trying to provoke attacks against Russian military bases in Syria in a bid to force the evacuation of the bases, the state-run RIA news agency said on Saturday. The SVR gave no evidence for its allegation.
North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they are fighting alongside, according to Ukraine, while the US says Russian and North Korean generals see the soldiers as “expendable”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that said Russian troops were sending the North Koreans into battle with minimal protection and that the North Koreans were taking extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner. “Their losses are significant, very significant,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address.
The Biden administration pledged to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine, including crucial air defence systems. John Kirby, the US national security communications adviser, said the promised US security assistance package was expected to be announced “in the next couple of days”, though it was unclear how much it will include.
Slovakia has confirmed its readiness to host any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s accusation that it is playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president on Thursday called it “acceptable” for the country to become a “platform” for dialogue over the conflict. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said on Facebook late on Friday: “If someone wants to organise peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and hospitable.”
Ukraine has received its first batch of liquefied natural gas from the US, a deal that Kyiv says will boost Ukrainian and European energy security as a major gas transit deal with Russia ends. “Dtek, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, has today taken delivery of its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States,” the company said on Friday. The consignment was of about 100m cubic metres of gas, it told Agence France-Presse.
A Russian court has sentenced a singer who burned his passport in protest against Moscow’s Ukraine war to five-and-a-half years in prison. Eduard Sharlot, 26, was found guilty of “publicly insulting” the religious feelings of believers and “rehabilitating nazism” by a court in the Volga city of Samara in a case over videos he published online, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
