Putin censors protest by wives of mobilised troops – Ukraine live

The death toll from what Russia said was a Ukrainian attack on Lysychansk – a city in the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian region of Luhansk – has risen to 28, including a child, Russia’s emergencies ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry said 10 people were rescued from under the rubble following what it said was a Ukrainian attack on a building housing a bakery in Lysychansk.

“The search and rescue operation continues,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Russian-controlled Luhansk Information Centre said on its Telegram the shelling by U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) occurred on Saturday afternoon.

Two Ukrainian attack drones struck the largest oil refinery in southern Russia on Saturday, a source in Kyiv told Reuters, detailing the latest in a series of long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities.

Local authorities in Russia said earlier that a fire had been extinguished at the Volgograd refinery following a drone attack. Oil producer Lukoil, which owns the refinery, later said the plant was working as normal.

The Kyiv source said the operation by the SBU security service struck the primary processing facility, without which the refinery could lose significant production capacity.

Ukrainian officials seldom take responsibility publicly for deep strike attacks on Russian territory.

The Volgograd refinery is the latest in a series of facilities to be targeted by drones. Kyiv sees such infrastructure as important for the Kremlin’s war effort.

The source told Reuters such drone attacks would continue.

“By hitting oil refineries working for the Russian military-industrial complex, we not only cut off the logistics of fuel supplies for enemy equipment, but also reduce funds into the Russian budget,” the source said.

The distance between the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv near the Russian border and the southern Russian city of Volgograd is more than 600km.

Russia has been conducting regular long-range missile strikes on targets in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, prompting Kyiv to scramble for ways to close the gap on Moscow’s more advanced military technology.

It is clear that the country’s president would like to replace his most popular commander but that is proving more difficult than it looks, writes Askold Krushelnycky. With key Western allies still unable to agree to fresh aid and Russia stepping up both air and ground attacks, the clash has boiled over at a bad time

Read the in depth premium analysis here…

The Russian Justice Ministry designated Oleg Orlov, one of the leaders of the Memorial human rights group, a “foreign agent”.

The designation requires people and entities who allegedly receive “support” from abroad to place a disclaimer in all of their publishing and mandates strict financial reporting. It is broadly seen as a means to repress domestic opposition.

According to the Russian Justice Ministry, Orlov “opposed the special military operation in Ukraine (the Kremlin’s official name for its full-scale invasion), disseminated false information about decisions by official bodies of the Russian Federation, and participated in the creation of materials for foreign agents.”

A Russian-installed health official in the occupied region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine said 8 people were killed and 10 injured after Ukraine shelled a two-storey building housing a bakery on Saturday.

“According to operational data, as a result of the shelling of the Lysychansk bakery, 8 people were killed, 10 were injured with varying degrees of severity,” Natalya Pashchenko, the Luhansk health minister, said on her Telegram channel.

Previously Russia’s emergencies ministry said the bodies of five people had been pulled from the rubble and six people were rescued.

Telegram channels of Russian-installed officials posted video of a crushed car being hoisted out of the rubble around a ruined building. Reuters could not immediately independently verify any details of the report coming out of an area Russian said it annexed in 2022.

Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident.

The Russian-controlled Luhansk Information Centre said Ukraine shelled the bakery using the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

A Russian-installed health official in the occupied region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine said 8 people were killed and 10 injured after Ukraine shelled a two-storey building housing a bakery on Saturday.

“According to operational data, as a result of the shelling of the Lysychansk bakery, 8 people were killed, 10 were injured with varying degrees of severity,” Natalya Pashchenko, the Luhansk health minister, said on her Telegram channel.

Previously Russia’s emergencies ministry said the bodies of five people had been pulled from the rubble and six people were rescued.

Telegram channels of Russian-installed officials posted video of a crushed car being hoisted out of the rubble around a ruined building. Reuters could not immediately independently verify any details of the report coming out of an area Russian said it annexed in 2022.

Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident.

The Russian-controlled Luhansk Information Centre said Ukraine shelled the bakery using the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

EU leaders on Thursday sealed a deal to provide Ukraine with 50 billion euros ($54 million) to shore up its war-ravaged economy after Hungary dropped weeks of threats to veto the measure.

The aid package — about two-thirds loans and one-third grants to be paid out over a four-year period — is not intended to fund arms and ammunition, which fall under a separate EU plan.

Instead, it aims to stabilize Ukraine’s economy after nearly two years of fighting, pay for rebuilding, and set the country up for future EU membership.

The package will help Kyiv plug budget gaps while avoiding the skyrocketing inflation seen in the first months after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine lost a third of its economic output to wartime destruction and occupation by Moscow, which took over the main heavy industry hubs in the east.

So what will it be spent on?

1. Paying state salaries and pensions – this means compensation for teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants and other public-sector employees.

2. Ensuring smooth power and water supplies, and keeping other public services running. The Ukrainian government needs to maintain domestic support for the war and has tried to shield civilians from disruption, including in the face of mass Russian airstrikes last winter that led to widespread power outages.

3. Supporting the currency. Bohdan Yeremenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and former diplomat, told Ukrainian media on Thursday that he expected the government to use some of the funds to ease downward pressure on the hryvnia, saying it was important for macroeconomic stability

4. Safety net for foreign investments in Ukraine. Yevheniia Kravchuk, another deputy from Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle Friday that Kyiv will use some of the aid to provide insurance and stable financing for foreign investments, including plants that produce arms and ammunition.

Russia’s emergencies ministry said the bodies of five people were pulled from the rubble of a bakery in the Russian-occupied region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Saturday following what Russian-installed officials said was a Ukrainian attack.

“In Lysychansk, employees of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations rescued six people from under the rubble. The bodies of five victims were also recovered,” the ministry said on its Telegram channel.

Russia’s state-run TASS news agency quoted a spokesperson for Russian-installed operational services in the region as saying seven civilians had been killed. Previously Russian media quoted military police as saying two people were killed.

The emergencies ministry posted video of a crushed car being hoisted out of the rubble of a two-story building. Reuters could not immediately independently verify any details of the report coming out of an area Russian said it annexed in 2022.

Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident.

“We have decided to part ways with Miloš Biković and the role will be recast,” a HBO spokesperson told The Independent on Friday (2 February). Details of his role in the series were not disclosed.

In a statement of his own, Biković said he was the victim of a “targeted campaign”. You can read his statement in full below.

On 24 January, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared a montage of clips appearing to show Biković receiving an award from Putin. In 2018, the actor received the Pushkin Medal for his contributions to Russian culture and in 2021 received Russian citizenship by presidential decree.

The actor and producer revealed in 2019 that he had been banned from Ukraine for national security reasons.

To his supporters, Alejandro Mayorkas is a thoughtful, driven secretary who brings a prosecutor’s tenacity and his personal understanding of the immigrant experience in America to running his sprawling agency. To his detractors, he personifies everything that has gone wrong at the U.S.-Mexico border and is responsible for allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States illegally in a burgeoning crisis.

Mayorkas, often referred to as Ali, is the first Latino and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security, one of the government’s biggest agencies with 260,000 employees. And if House Republicans get their way, he’ll also be the first Cabinet member impeached in nearly 150 years.

The agency was forged in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to bring together 22 various agencies and departments. Tom Warrick, a former top counterterrorism official at the agency who is now at the Atlantic Council, says it’s the second-toughest job in Washington.