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Russia is ready to strike French troops if they are sent to to Ukraine to help train Kyiv’s soldiers, the Kremlin has suggested.
Ukraine’s top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said French trainers would come to Ukraine “soon” last week, which was downplayed by both Paris and Kyiv.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “No instructor involved in training the Ukrainian military has immunity. It doesn’t matter whether they’re French or not.”
In February, French president Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Ukraine was “dynamic” and nothing could be ruled out.
It comes as Britain is seeking to send 1,000 first-person view drones to Ukraine as part of an international support coalition.
The appeal, worth £300,000, calls for the procurement of up to 15 batches of 20 “first-person view racing quadcopter style drones”.
Meanwhile, Russian sources claimed that Ukraine fired American weapons at Belgorod for the first time after Washington lifted a ban on Kyiv using its weapons inside Russia.
The Ukrainians reportedly fired the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, at bordering Belgorod city, Russia’s defence ministry and military bloggers said.
Key Points
- Russia prepared to strike French troops in Ukraine, Kremlin suggests
- Russia warns US against 'fatal' miscalculation in Ukraine
- Britain seeking to send 1,000 first-person drones to Ukraine
- Russian soldiers’ wives demand Putin return their men from war
- Zelensky says China pressuring other countries to not attend peace talks
Russian aluminium giant negotiating mining deal in Sierra Leone, minister says
Russian aluminium giant Rusal – the largest outside China – is in negotiations with the government of Sierra Leone on mining for bauxite, the west African country’s mining minister has said, according to Russian state news agency reports.
“We had several meetings during which they [Rusal] showed a lot of interest in opening a bauxite mining concession in Sierra Leone,” Julius Mattai was quoted by RIA as saying on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Negotiations were still underway, RIA cited Mr Mattai as saying. “We are here to resume cooperation, to confirm that we are strengthening Russian-African relations in the field of business, especially in the mining industry,” he added.
Bauxite is converted into alumina, a raw material to make aluminium used by companies in construction and packaging. But Australia’s alumina export ban and a suspension of operations at a refinery in Ukraine have prompted Rusal to seek more alumina in China and other countries.
Andy Gregory5 June 2024 20:55 1717613809Pro-Russian hackers hit Spanish defence contractor with cyberattack
A pro-Russia hacker group has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the website of a Spanish defence contractor which is refurbishing Leopard tanks for delivery to Ukraine.
A spokesperson for General Dynamics confirmed that the Spanish unit of its subsidiary Santa Barbara Systems had been targeted in an attempted cyberattack “that was detected immediately and has not compromised any of the company’s systems”.
They said the company decided to temporarily disconnect its website until an ongoing investigation concluded. “The company’s sensitive data remains well-protected,” the spokesperson added. A spokesperson for General Dynamics in Germany said all of the company’s operations in Europe were running normally.
The NoName hacking group claimed responsibility for the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack via the Telegram messaging service. These types of attacks direct high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers to knock them offline.
“We sent our DDoS-missiles against websites in russophobic Spain,” the group wrote on Telegram on Tuesday. Spain’s National Cybersecurity Institute had warned the company in the past few days about the possibility of such attacks, the General Dynamics spokesperson in Madrid said.
Andy Gregory5 June 2024 19:56 1717610149Ukraine urges China to attend Swiss peace summit
Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister has urged China to send a delegation to the planned summit on Ukraine this month in Switzerland.
Russia has not been invited to participate in the meeting next weeked, and Beijing has so far said it will stay away – describing the attendance of both warring sides as a prerequisite for any substantive peace conference.
“The Ukrainian side expressed hope that China’s participation in the event could be a good opportunity to make a practical contribution to achieving a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said, following a meeting in Beijing between Andriy Sybiha and Chinese vice foreign minister Sun Weidong.
According to Kyiv, more than 100 countries have accepted its invitation to the summit to discuss a peace plan outlined by president Volodymyr Zelensky to the Russian invasion now in its third year. Moscow has ridiculed the idea of a summit without its participation as pointless.
China proclaimed a “no limits” partnership with Russia just days before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but portrays itself as neutral in the conflict and put forward a 12-point paper more than a year ago setting out general principles for ending the war, welcomed by both sides.
Andy Gregory5 June 2024 18:55 1717606669Polish investigation in Russian and Belarusian influence on national security gets under way
A special 12-member commission tasked with investigating Russian and Belarusian influence in Poland – and led by the chief of Warsaw’s military counterintelligence service – has now begun its work, prime minister Donald Tusk has announced.
At a news conference in Warsaw, Mr Tusk and other officials described the commission as a non-partisan body of experts whose aim is to protect national security, and which will investigate Russian and Belarusian influence over the past two decades, having been requested by Mr Tusk in May.
He and other Polish officials say the country is facing intensified hybrid attacks which include alleged acts of sabotage, cyberattacks and growing pressure along the Poland-Belarus border, where the number of attempted border crossings has shot up in recent months from a handful to nearly 400 a day.
Tomasz Siemoniak, who is the interior minister and the head of the secret services, said there are “no doubts” that the situation at the border is the work of Russia and Belarus, and that “explaining all the cases from the last 20 years where traces of Russian or Belarusian activity are visible is very important”.
Andy Gregory5 June 2024 17:57 1717603129Zelensky in Qatar for talks with king
Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky has arrived in Qatar for talks with emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
“Qatar assists Ukraine in returning children abducted by Russia,” said Mr Zelensky. “We will discuss these efforts, which are both ongoing within the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children and will be on the agenda for the Peace Summit.
“Qatar also took an active part in the Peace Summit preparations and should become one of the Middle Eastern voices in support of returning people home, as well as global food, nuclear, and energy security.”
Andy Gregory5 June 2024 16:58 1717599602Sergei Lavrov visits Burkina Faso
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledged additional military supplies to Burkina Faso on Wednesday as he visited the west African country.
Russian state media quoted the official on Wednesday as saying the extra support would be given in an effort to boost the country’s defence capabilities.
Lavrov has made a series of visits to Africa since the start of the war in Ukraine as Russia, hit by Western sanctions, seeks new trade partners and tries to rally developing countries behind its vision of a “multipolar world”.
Ukrainian official discusses cooperation with China
The Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister discussed steps to intensify cooperation with China while on a visit to Beijing.
Ukraine’s Andriy Sybiha met with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong,the Ukrainian ministry said on Wednesday.
It said Sybiha expressed hope for China’s participation in a Ukraine-led peace summit later in June saying it could be “a good opportunity to make a practical contribution to achieving a just and lasting peace”, the ministry added.
Athena Stavrou5 June 2024 15:00 1717593002Spanish firm refurbishing tanks for Ukraine victim of Russian cyberattack
A Spanish firm refurbishing Leopard tanks for Ukraine suffered a cyber attack that took its website down, a pro-Russian hackers group said.
A spokesperson for the firm, General Dynamics, in Germany said the defence contractor was still analysing the cause of the website outage, adding that all of its operations in Europe were running normally.
The NoName hacking group on the Telegram messaging service claimed responsibility for the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
DDoS attacks direct high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers to knock them offline.
“We sent our DDoS-missiles against websites in russophobic Spain,” the group, which often directs such actions against countries which support Ukraine, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday.
NATO said last month that Russia was behind an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks on companies and infrastructure in member states, an accusation Russia dismissed as “misinformation”.
The unit of General dynamics, called Santa Barbara, is based in Spain and assembles heavy vehicles such as Leopard tanks and artillery equipment for the Spanish army. It has been involved in refurbishing Spain’s mothballed Leopard tanks for delivery to the Ukrainian army, according to the Defence Ministry.
Kremlin says US is blackmailing China by threatening sanctions over exports to Russia
The Kremlin on Wednesday described comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that Washington would not tolerate China increasing its exports of “dual-use” goods to Russia, and would respond with sanctions, as “blackmail”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Washington’s tone was completely unacceptable and that Moscow stood in solidarity with Beijing.
“We are well aware that our Chinese comrades do not accept such language, do not accept such messages and such threats, such blackmail,” Peskov told reporters.
The United States says that by providing dual-use goods - which have both civilian and military applications - China is powering Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
“China is the top supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose, which is critical to making munitions and rocket propellants, and other dual-use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its defence industrial base,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Beijing in April.
Athena Stavrou5 June 2024 13:13 1717582427Remote-controlled stretchers put on display
Remote-controlled stretchers may be deployed onto the frontline in Ukraine soon.
The electric stretchers, designed by Dmytro Mamonov, was on display at a Ukrainian manufacturing presentation outside Kyiv last week.
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