U.S. citizen Gershkovich, 31, was arrested in late March while on a reporting trip. A Moscow court agreed last month to keep him in custody until Aug. 30. Defense lawyers challenged the decision, but the Moscow City Court rejected the appeal on Thursday.

Gershkovich and his employer have denied he spied in Russia. The U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained and demanded his immediate release.

Russia May 23

Russia Extends Detention of US Journalist Evan Gershkovich by 3 Months

Russia Apr 17

US Ambassador Visits Reporter Accused by Russia of Spying

His arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg rattled journalists in Russia, where authorities have not detailed what, if any, evidence they have gathered to support the espionage charges.

Gershkovich is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, which is notorious for its harsh conditions. U.S. Embassy officials were allowed to visit him once, but Russian authorities rejected two other requests to see him.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Thursday that the ministry is considering another visit request from the embassy.

Gilbert’s “The Snow Forest,” set in Siberia during the Soviet era and billed as “a dramatic story of one wild and mysterious girl in a pristine wilderness, and of the mystical connection between humans and the natural world,” had been scheduled to come out next February.

It has received hundreds of one-star reviews on the online reader site Goodreads. Many denounced the novel — which has yet to come out even in advance editions — as insensitive and a whitewash of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“It is not the time for this book to be published,” Gilbert said in a video message posted Monday on social media. “And I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced, and who are continuing to experience, grievous and extreme harm.”

A spokesperson for Gilbert at Riverhead Books confirmed the novel was being postponed indefinitely, but otherwise declined comment.

Since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, the creative community has wrestlied with how to respond. Stephen King and Linwood Barclay are among the writers who have said they would not renew Russian rights to their work, while the prize-winning Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov has said he wants his current book, “Time Shelter,” read in Russian because of its anti-Putin theme.

Books based in Russia have continued to be published, whether or not they’re issued in Russia. A mystery novel published last week, Paul Goldberg’s “The Dissident,” is set in Moscow in the 1970s.

Gilbert’s action is unusual because she went beyond boycotting Russia and withdrew the book altogether.

PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel issued a statement Monday saying Gilbert’s decision was “well-intended,” but also “wrongheaded.”

“The timing of the uproar, right after Gilbert announced the forthcoming publication, makes clear that those objecting have not yet had a chance to read or judge the work itself,” Nossel said. “The publication of a novel set in Russia should not be cast as an act exacerbating oppression. Fiction and culture are essential to supporting mutual understanding and unleashing empathy. The choice of whether to read Gilbert’s book lies with readers themselves, and those who are troubled by it must be free to voice their views.”

Gilbert, best known for her million-selling memoir “Eat, Pray Love,” said in announcing the new book recently that it was inspired by the spread of the coronavirus. In a video posted last week, she said she had lived in isolation during the pandemic and came to love it and “crave even deeper silence.” Trying to imagine how far one could remove herself from the modern world, she remembered a magazine article about a family that hid in the Siberian wilderness for half a century.

“The Snow Forest” tells of a girl of “great spiritual and creative talent raised far, far, far from everything that we call normal,” Gilbert said.

The reports said Michael Travis Leake is suspected of selling mephedrone, whose effects are similar to those of cocaine and MDMA. A Moscow court ordered him to be held for two months in pre-trial detention, the reports said.

He faces charges of production or distribution of drugs, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

An Instagram page under the name Travis Leake Instagram identifies him as the singer for the band Lovi Noch (Seize the Night). News reports said Leake is a former paratrooper with the U.S. military and has lived in Moscow since 2010.

Russian drug laws are strict. WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested in February 2022 after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage at a Moscow airport. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, but was released in December in an exchange for U.S.-imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

The U.S. State Department said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that it was aware of the reports that a U.S. citizen had recently been arrested in Moscow. It said when a U.S. citizen is detained overseas, the department “pursues consular access as soon as possible and works to provide all appropriate consular assistance.”

The department said it would have no further comment due to privacy considerations.

The plane, carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew members, landed safely at Russia’s Magadan airport in the country’s far east on Tuesday, Air India said in a statement.

The flight “developed a technical issue with one of its engines,” the statement said, adding that the aircraft was undergoing safety checks and the passengers were being provided support on the ground.

Vedant Patel, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said that American citizens were likely on the flight but could not immediately confirm how many. He said his understanding was that Air India would be sending a replacement aircraft to Russia so the passengers could continue their travel to the U.S.

“We are continuing to monitor the situation,” Patel said.

The airline said a plane from Mumbai, flight AI195, was expected to arrive in Magadan at 6:30 a.m. Thursday local time.

Girvaan Kaahma, 16, was traveling on the flight with his uncle and brother. He said they are barred from leaving the hostel where they are staying in Magadan and can’t use their credit cards to buy items from the vending machine because of sanctions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Richa Verma of River Islands said her parents were among the passengers. They told her they were being housed at a Russian school and sleeping on cots.

“They made arrangements for mattresses and blankets,” Verma told NBC Bay Area in a phone interview. “Made them comfortable and they are having food, tea, and yeah, they are safe.”

Some families said they worried their loved ones could get tangled up in Russia’s war with Ukraine. But when they saw that the flight path of the diversion took them far from the Ukraine border on the west, to the eastern corner of Russia, there was some relief. There was also concern that Russia could try to hold passengers with U.S. citizenship due to worsening relations between Washington and Moscow.

Mike McCarron, a spokesman for San Francisco International Airport spokesman and aviation expert, said families shouldn’t be too worried about Russia interfering with the passengers’ safe return because the airline is based out of India, one of Russia’s largest trading partners right now.

“They probably want to lay low and let the plane go on and divert as normal, and let it go on as soon as it can, because they don’t want lose a trading partner right now that is as viable as India,” said McCarron.

The U.S. State Department has also been monitoring Russia’s response and Air India’s efforts to get the passengers back to San Francisco.

———

Associated Press Writer Jerome Minerva contributed from the U.S and Krutika Pathi from New Delhi.

He won’t be able to see or talk to any of his loved ones. Phone calls and visits are banned for those in “punishment isolation” cells, a 2-by-3-meter (6 1/2-by-10-foot) space. Guards usually blast patriotic songs and speeches by President Vladimir Putin at him.

“Guess who is the champion of listening to Putin’s speeches? Who listens to them for hours and falls asleep to them?” Navalny said recently in a typically sardonic social media post via his attorneys from Penal Colony No. 6 in the Vladimir region east of Moscow.

He is serving a nine-year term due to end in 2030 on charges widely seen as trumped up, and is facing another trial on new charges that could keep him locked up for another two decades. Rallies have been called for Sunday in Russia to support him.

Navalny has become Russia’s most famous political prisoner — and not just because of his prominence as Putin’s fiercest political foe, his poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and his being the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary.

He has chronicled his arbitrary placement in isolation, where he has spent almost six months. He’s on a meager prison diet, restricted on how much time he can spend writing letters and forced at times to live with a cellmate with poor personal hygiene, making life even more miserable.

Most of the attention goes to Navalny and other high-profile figures like Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced last month to 25 years on treason charges. But there’s a growing number of less-famous prisoners who are serving time in similarly harsh conditions.

Memorial, Russia’s oldest and most prominent human rights organization and a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, counted 558 political prisoners in the country as of April — more than three times the figure than in 2018, when it listed 183.

The Soviet Union’s far-flung gulag system of prison camps provided inmate labor to develop industries such as mining and logging. While conditions vary among modern-day penal colonies, Russian law still permits prisoners to work on jobs like sewing uniforms for soldiers.

In a 2021 report, the U.S. State Department said conditions in Russian prisons and detention centers “were often harsh and life threatening. Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”

Andrei Pivovarov, an opposition figure sentenced last year to four years in prison, has been in isolation at Penal Colony No. 7 in northern Russia’s Karelia region since January and is likely to stay there the rest of this year, said his partner, Tatyana Usmanova. The institution is notorious for its harsh conditions and reports of torture.

The 41-year-old former head of the pro-democracy group Open Russia spends his days alone in a small cell in a “strict detention” unit, and is not allowed any calls or visits from anyone but his lawyers, Usmanova told The Associated Press. He can get one book from the prison library, can write letters for several hours a day and is permitted 90 minutes outdoors, she said.

Other inmates are prohibited from making eye contact with Pivovarov in the corridors, contributing to his “maximum isolation,” she said.

“It wasn’t enough to sentence him to a real prison term. They are also trying to ruin his life there,” Usmanova added.

Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound flight just before takeoff from St. Petersburg in May 2021 and taken to the southern city of Krasnodar. Authorities accused him of engaging with an “undesirable” organization -– a crime since 2015.

Several days before his arrest, Open Russia had disbanded after getting the “undesirable” label.

After his trial in Krasnodar, the St. Petersburg native was convicted and sentenced in July, when Russia’s war in Ukraine and Putin’s sweeping crackdown on dissent were in full swing.

He told AP in a letter from Krasnodar in December that authorities moved him there “to hide me farther away” from his hometown and Moscow. That interview was one of the last Pivovarov was able to give, describing prison life there as “boring and depressing,” with his only diversion being an hour-long walk in a small yard. “Lucky” inmates with cash in their accounts can shop at a prison store once a week for 10 minutes but otherwise must stay in their cells, he wrote.

Letters from supporters lift his spirits, he said. Many people wrote that they used to be uninterested in Russian politics, according to Pivovarov, and “only now are starting to see clearly.”

Now, any letters take weeks to arrive, Usmanova said.

Conditions are easier for some less-famous political prisoners like Alexei Gorinov, a former member of a Moscow municipal council. He was was convicted of “spreading false information” about the army in July over antiwar remarks he made at a council session.

Criticism of the invasion was criminalized a few months earlier, and Gorinov, 61, became the first Russian sent to prison for it, receiving seven years.

He is housed in barracks with about 50 others in his unit at Penal Colony No. 2 in the Vladimir region, Gorinov said in written answers passed to AP in March.

The long sentence for a low-profile activist shocked many, and Gorinov said “authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure.”

Inmates in his unit can watch TV, and play chess, backgammon or table tennis. There’s a small kitchen to brew tea or coffee between meals, and they can have food from personal supplies.

But Gorinov said prison officials still carry out “enhanced control” of the unit, and he and two other inmates get special checks every two hours, since they’ve been labeled “prone to escape.”

There is little medical help, he said.

“Right now, I’m not feeling all that well, as I can’t recover from bronchitis,” he said, adding that he needed treatment for pneumonia last winter at another prison’s hospital ward, because at Penal Colony No. 2, the most they can do is “break a fever.”

Also suffering health problems is artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who is detained amid her ongoing trial following her April 2022 arrest in St. Petersburg, also on charges of spreading false information about the army. Her crime was replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans in protest.

Skochilenko has a congenital heart defect and celiac disease, requiring a gluten-free diet. She gets food parcels weekly, but there is a weight limit, and the 32-year-old can’t eat “half the things they give her there,” said her partner, Sophia Subbotina.

There’s a stark difference between detention facilities for women and men, and Skochilenko has it easier in some ways than male prisoners, Subbotina said.

“Oddly enough, the staff are mostly nice. Mostly they are women, they are quite friendly, they will give helpful tips and they have a very good attitude toward Sasha,” Subbotina told AP by phone.

“Often they support Sasha, they tell her: ‘You will definitely get out of here soon, this is so unfair here.’ They know about our relationship and they are fine with it. They’re very humane,” she said.

There’s no political propaganda in the jail and dance music blares from a radio. Cooking shows play on TV. Skochilenko “wouldn’t watch them in normal life, but in jail, it’s a distraction,” Subbotina said.

She recently arranged for an outside cardiologist to examine Skochilneko and since March has been allowed to visit her twice a month.

Subbotina gets emotional when she recalled their first visit.

“It is a complex and weird feeling when you’ve been living with a person. Sasha and I have been together for over six years — waking up with them, falling asleep with them — then not being able to see them for a year,” she said. “I was nervous when I went to visit her. I didn’t know what I would say to Sasha, but in the end, it went really well.”

Still, Subbotina said a year behind bars has been hard on Skochilenko. The trial is moving slowly, unlike usually swift proceedings for high-profile political activists, with guilty verdicts almost a certainty.

Skochilenko faces up to 10 years if convicted.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will make clear the Biden administration’s desire for talks on building a new framework during an address to the Arms Control Association on Friday, according to two senior administration officials who previewed the address on the condition of anonymity.

Putin announced in February he was suspending Russia’s cooperation with the New START Treaty’s provisions for nuclear warhead and missile inspections amid deep tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia, however, said it would respect the treaty’s caps on nuclear weapons.

The officials said that Sullivan would underscore that the U.S. remains committed to adhering to the treaty if Russia does but will also “signal that we are open to dialogue” about building a new framework for managing nuclear risks once the treaty expires in February 2026.

The officials said that the Biden administration is willing to stick to the warhead caps until the treaty expires. Figuring out details about a post-2026 framework will be complicated by U.S.-Russia tension and the growing nuclear strength of China.

China now has about 410 nuclear warheads, according to an annual survey from the Federation of American Scientists. The Pentagon in November estimated China’s warhead count could grow to 1,000 by the end of the decade and to 1,500 by around 2035.

The size of China’s arsenal and whether Beijing is willing to engage in substantive dialogue will impact the United States’ future force posture and Washington’s ability to come to any agreement with the Russians, the officials said.

U.S.-Chinese relations have been strained by the U.S. shooting down a Chinese spy balloon earlier this year after it crossed the continental U.S.; tensions about the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own; U.S. export controls aimed at limiting China’s advanced semiconductor equipment; and other friction.

The White House push on Moscow on nuclear arms control comes the day after the administration announced new countermeasures over Russia suspending participation in the treaty.

The State Department announced Thursday it would no longer notify Russia of any updates on the status or location of “treaty-accountable items” like missiles and launchers, would revoke U.S. visas issued to Russian treaty inspectors and aircrew members and would cease providing telemetric information on test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The United States and Russia earlier this year stopped sharing biannual nuclear weapons data required by the treaty.

The treaty, which then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed in 2010, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers and provides for on-site inspections to verify compliance.

The inspections have been dormant since 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussions on resuming them were supposed to have taken place in November 2022, but Russia abruptly called them off, citing U.S. support for Ukraine.

Drones hit several buildings in Moscow early Tuesday morning, city officials reported, causing “minor” damage and two injuries but no deaths. Emergency services were at the scene, the Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Moscow’s airports remained open.

It is not clear where the drones came from, but Russia’s Defense Ministry blames the attack on Ukraine, calling it a “terrorist” act. A Ukrainian presidential advisor said Kyiv had “nothing directly to do with this,” while adding that “of course we are pleased to watch and predict an increase” in such types of attacks.

The drone attacks follow three heavy Russian missile and drone bombardments of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the span of 24 hours. The attacks began Sunday, on Kyiv Day, which is a holiday celebrating the city’s founding.

The typical street festivals, concerts and parade that would normally take place on Kyiv Day were either canceled or significantly scaled back, with tens of thousands of people instead spending much of the days and nights since Sunday sheltering in the Kyiv metro.

Russia issues arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham over Ukraine comments

Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following recent comments about the fighting in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office released an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Graham, who said “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”

Graham appeared to have made the comments in different parts of the conversation and the short video by Ukraine’s presidential office put them next to each other, causing outrage in Russia, according to the AP.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation agency, moved to open a criminal inquiry against Graham, and the Interior Ministry issued a warrant for his arrest, the AP reported.

Graham commented on Twitter, saying that “to know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy.”

“I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory,” he tweeted. “I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor.”

— Melodie Warner

Russia says it reserves right to take ‘severe measures’ after Moscow drone attack

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it has the right to implement the most “severe measures” after Tuesday morning’s drone attack on Moscow that it blames on Kyiv.

“Assurances by NATO officials that the Kyiv regime will not launch strikes deep into Russian territory prove to be completely hypocritical,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Russia reserves the right to take the harshest possible measures in response to the terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime,” it added.

A Ukrainian presidential advisor denied the government’s involvement in the strikes, but said that “we are pleased to watch and predict an increase in the number of attacks.” The drone strikes caused “minor damage” and two injuries but no deaths, Moscow authorities said.

The drone attacks followed three heavy Russian missile and drone bombardments of Kyiv in a 24-hour period that began Sunday, which killed at least one person, according to the city’s officials.

— Natasha Turak

Russia says it will target Western weapons supply routes in Ukraine

Russia will target and strike any Western weapons supply routes it detects ahead of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying by state media outlet TASS.

Shoigu noted that Ukraine’s Western allies are boosting arms deliveries to Kyiv prior to what he described as an upcoming “large-scale” Ukrainian offensive.

The defense chief said Moscow was imposing “effective fire damage on the enemy” and that Ukraine’s Western-supplied arms would not change the result of his country’s “special military operation,” which is the term the Kremlin uses for its full-scale war in Ukraine that began in February 2022.

— Natasha Turak

‘Let your houses burn’: Wagner chief slams Moscow elites

Reported drones attacks on Moscow in the early morning hit some of the city’s prestigious areas and high-end residential streets, including a part of western Moscow where Russian elite, including President Vladimir Putin, have homes.

The chief of Russian private military firm Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was quick to slam Russia’s wealthy senior military officials, saying the attacks were their fault.

“Why the f— are you allowing these drones to fly to Moscow? Who gives a s— that they are flying to your homes on Rublyovka! Let your houses burn,” Prigozhin wrote on his Telegram account.

The suburb of Rublyovka is home to many of Moscow’s wealthiest figures in business, politics and culture. Prigozhin has long been a vocal critic of Russia’s top military brass and senior officials, who he accuses of corruption and of neglecting ordinary Russians, particularly those fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.

Wagner Group spearheaded some of the deadliest fighting in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the bloody battles for the city of Bakhmut, suffering heavy casualties.

— Natasha Turak

Ukrainian presidential advisor: We are ‘pleased’ to watch drone strike on Moscow, but ‘have nothing’ to do with attack

A Ukrainian presidential advisor denied Kyiv’s involvement in a drone attack on several buildings in Moscow on Tuesday morning, but admitted that his government was happy to see it take place.

“Regarding the attacks, of course we are pleased to watch and predict an increase in the number of attacks. But of course we have nothing directly to do with this,” the advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office Mykhailo Podolyak told YouTube channel the “Breakfast Show,” according to Reuters.

Russia’s defense ministry called the drone strikes a “terrorist attack” and blamed Kyiv, saying that the offensive involved eight drones that were all shot down. Moscow authorities say there were no casualties and minimal damage was sustained, while some residential buildings were evacuated. CNBC has not been able to independently verify the information.

The strikes on Moscow followed an intense period of three separate heavy Russian drone and missile bombardments of Ukrainian capital Kyiv within 24 hours. The round of hostilities began on Sunday, May 28— Kyiv Day, an annual celebration of the city’s official founding.

Attacks on Moscow are rare. On May 3, two drones were intercepted by Russian defenses above the Kremlin in what Russia’s government says was a Ukrainian assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin, even though the Russian president was not there at the time. Kyiv has denied involvement.

— Natasha Turak

Finland hosts NATO exercises for the first time since becoming alliance member

Finland is hosting NATO exercises for the first time as an official member of the alliance, along with Norway and partner country Sweden.

It kicked off the event on Monday. NATO’s Arctic Challenge Exercise, which this year is planned and directed by the Finnish Air Force, runs from May 29 to June 9 and has taken place every other year since 2013.

“The Arctic Challenge Exercises is part of the NORDEFCO cooperation between Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Their Air Forces regularly carry out combined air combat-related Cross Border Training operated from their home bases,” a description of the event on NATO’s website read.

“The purpose was for the three Nordic nations to practice together and across their countries’ borders,” it continued. “Since then, the exercise has grown to include even more allied nations. It is a unique opportunity for nations to be practicing across larger training areas and with other aircraft.”

— Natasha Turak

Russian defense ministry blames Kyiv for ‘terrorist’ drone attack on Moscow; Kyiv official denies involvement

Russia’s Ministry of Defense accused the Ukrainian government of being behind a drone attack on Moscow that it said was intercepted, and caused no casualties but left minor damage.

The ministry wrote in a post on its Telegram channel:

“This morning, the Kyiv regime has launched a terrorist drone attack on the city of Moscow. Eight aircraft-type drones were employed in the attack. All enemy drones were downed. Three of them were suppressed by electronic warfare, lost control, and deviated from the intended targets. Five more UAVs were shot down by the Pantsir-S SAM system in Moscow region.”

While the ministry said eight drones were involved in the attack, some Russian media sources say the number of drones was as high as 30.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview Tuesday morning that Kyiv “has nothing directly to do with this.”

— Natasha Turak

Moscow buildings hit by drones, city’s mayor says

Several buildings in Moscow were hit by drones, the city’s mayor reported early Tuesday morning.

“All emergency services of the city are at the scene of incidents,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement, adding that the drones caused “minor” damage and no deaths.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says the attack was carried out by eight drones and that all were shot down. The ministry accused Kyiv of being behind the attack. CNBC has not been able to independently verify the information, and Kyiv has not responded to the charge.

Russian state news agency RIA reported that some residents of a building in a southern Moscow street were evacuated.

— Natasha Turak

Kyiv endures third Russian attack in 24 hours, at least one dead

Ukrainian capital Kyiv faced a series of intense bombardments by Russia, including a rare daytime assault, totaling three separate attacks by drones and missiles in the span of 24 hours.

At least one person is dead after a fire caused by falling debris from an intercepted drone, Kyiv authorities said.

The Russian strikes sent people running for shelter. Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska posted a video on her Twitter account showing children screaming and running for cover amid the sound of explosions.

The latest round of attacks began on May 28, which is Kyiv Day, marking the anniversary of the city’s official founding. Sunday’s bombardment lasted five hours and Ukrainian officials say 52 of 54 lethal drones launched by Russia were shot down by air defenses.

— Natasha Turak

Zelenskyy congratulates Erdogan on winning election

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to Twitter on Monday to congratulate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his win in Turkey’s 2023 presidential election.

Erdogan’s government has played a critical role during the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, specifically mediating the Black Sea grain deal, which unlocks Ukrainian produce exports blocked by Russia’s invasion.

“In a phone call, I congratulated [President Erdogan] on winning the elections,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter. “I noted the personal role of President in continuing the grain initiative, which is an important component of global food security. The cooperation between and is important and effectively contributes to the prosperity of our peoples and international stability. We will continue its further development and joint work to strengthen the security of the region, Europe and the world!”

Russian President Vladimir Putin also congratulated Erdogan, who is now entering his third decade in power, earlier in the day.

— Gili Malinsky

Belarus’ Lukashenko says there can be ‘nuclear weapons for everyone’

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that if any other country wanted to join a Russia-Belarus union there could be “nuclear weapons for everyone”.

Russia moved ahead last week with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such warheads outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, spurring concerns in the West.

In an interview on Russia’s state television late on Sunday, Lukashenko, President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest ally among Russia’s neighbors, said that it must be “strategically understood” that Minsk and Moscow have a unique chance to unite.

He added that it was his own view – not the view of Russia.

Russia and Belarus are formally part of a Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics.

— Reuters

Read CNBC’s previous live coverage here:

Russia ramps up Kyiv bombardment; Putin and Zelenskyy congratulate Erdogan on reelection

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At least 20 Shahed explosive drones were destroyed by air defense forces in Kyiv’s airspace in Russia’s third attack on the capital in the past 24 hours, according to early information from the Kyiv Military Administration. Overall, Ukraine shot down 29 of 31 drones fired into the country, most in the Kyiv area, the air force later added.

Before daylight, the buzzing of drones could be heard over the city, followed by loud explosions as they were taken down by air defense systems.

In Moscow, residents reported hearing explosions and Mayor Sergei Sobyanin later confirmed there had been a drone attack.

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Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that the attack caused “insignificant damage” to several buildings. Two people received medical attention for unspecified injuries but did not need hospitalization, he said.

Residents of two buildings damaged in the attack were evacuated, Sobyanin said.

Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the wider Moscow region, later said several drones were “shot down on the approach to Moscow.”

There was no immediate comment on the attacks from Ukrainian officials.

It was the second reported an attack on Moscow, after authorities said two drones targeted the Kremlin earlier this month in what was labeled an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life.

In the attacks overnight on Kyiv, one person died and three were injured when a high-rise building in the Holosiiv district caught fire. It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze but frequently the falling debris from drones being hit and the interceptor missiles have caused damage on the ground.

The building’s upper two floors were destroyed, and there may be people under the rubble, the Kyiv Military Administration said. More than 20 people were evacuated.

Resident Valeriya Oreshko told The Associated Press in the aftermath that even though the immediate threat was over, the attacks had everyone on edge.

“You are happy that you are alive, but think about what will happen next,” the 39-year-old said.

Oksana, who only gave her first name, said the whole building shook when it was hit.

“Go to shelters, because you really do not know where it (the drone) will fly,” she advised others. “We hold on.”

Elsewhere in the capital, falling debris caused a fire in a private house in the Darnytskyi district and three cars were set alight in the Pechersky district, according to the military administration.

The series of attacks that began Sunday included a rare daylight attack Monday that left puffs of white smoke in the blue skies.

On that day, Russian forces fired 11 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv at about 11:30 a.m., according to Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. All of them were shot down, he said.

Debris from the intercepted missiles fell in Kyiv’s central and northern districts during the morning, landing in the middle of traffic on a city road and also starting a fire on the roof of a building, the Kyiv military administration said. At least one civilian was reported hurt.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it launched a series of strikes early Monday targeting Ukrainian air bases with precision long-range air-launched missiles. The strikes destroyed command posts, radars, aircraft and ammunition stockpiles, it claimed. It didn’t say anything about hitting cities or other civilian areas.

___

Associated Press writer Vasilisa Stepanenko in Kyiv, Ukraine, and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Gershkovich, an American citizen, was ordered held until Aug. 30. He had been arrested in March on espionage charges on a reporting trip in Russia. He, his employer and the U.S. government have denied the charges.

Tuesday’s court hearing wasn’t announced in advance, and the entire case has been wrapped in secrecy.

Russian authorities haven’t detailed what — if any — evidence they have gathered to support the espionage charges. Various legal proceedings have been closed to the media, and no details immediately emerged about whether Gershkovich or U.S. Embassy representatives attended Tuesday’s hearing or what was said. Tass said the session was closed because the reporter was accused of possession of “secret materials.”

Gershkovich is the first U.S. correspondent since the Cold War to be detained in Russia on spying charges, and his arrest rattled journalists in the country and drew outrage in the West.

The U.S. government has declared Gershkovich to be “wrongfully detained” and demanded his immediate release. He’s being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. U.S. Embassy officials were allowed at least one prison visit to Gershkovich since his arrest in Yekaterinburg on March 29, but Russian authorities have denied permission for other visits.

That’s because she’s been detained five times in the past year, thanks to the system’s pervasive security cameras with facial recognition. She says police would tell her the cameras “reacted” to her — although they often seemed not to understand why, and would let her go after a few hours.

“It seems like I’m in some kind of a database,” says Maksimova, who was previously arrested twice: in 2019 after taking part in a demonstration in Moscow and in 2020 over her environmental activism.

For many Russians like her, it has become increasingly hard to evade the scrutiny of the authorities, with the government actively monitoring social media accounts and using surveillance cameras against activists.

Even an online platform once praised by users for easily navigating bureaucratic tasks is being used as a tool of control: Authorities plan to use it to serve military summonses, thus thwarting a popular tactic by draft evaders of avoiding being handed the military recruitment paperwork in person.

Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a “cyber gulag” — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times.

It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.

“The Kremlin has indeed become the beneficiary of digitalization and is using all opportunities for state propaganda, for surveilling people, for de-anonymizing internet users,” said Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal practice at Roskomsvoboda, a Russian internet freedom group the Kremlin deems a “foreign agent.”

Rising Online Censorship and Prosecutions

The Kremlin’s seeming indifference about digital monitoring appeared to change after 2011-12 mass protests were coordinated online, prompting authorities to tighten internet controls.

Some regulations allowed them to block websites; others mandated that cellphone operators and internet providers store call records and messages, sharing the information with security services if needed. Authorities pressured companies like Google, Apple and Facebook to store user data on Russian servers, to no avail, and announced plans to build a “sovereign internet” that could be cut off from the rest of the world.

Many experts initially dismissed these efforts as futile, and some still seem ineffective. Russia’s measures might amount to a picket fence compared to China’s Great Firewall, but the Kremlin online crackdown has gained momentum.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, online censorship and prosecutions for social media posts and comments spiked so much that it broke all existing records.

According to Net Freedoms, a prominent internet rights group, more than 610,000 web pages were blocked or removed by authorities in 2022 -– the highest annual total in 15 years — and 779 people faced criminal charges over online comments and posts, also a record.

A major factor was a law, adopted a week after the invasion, that effectively criminalizes antiwar sentiment, said Net Freedoms head Damir Gainutdinov. It outlaws “spreading false information” about or “discrediting” the army.

Human Rights Watch cited another 2022 law allowing authorities “to extrajudicially close mass media outlets and block online content for disseminating ‘false information’ about the conduct of Russian Armed Forces or other state bodies abroad or for disseminating calls for sanctions on Russia.”

Social Media Users ‘Shouldn’t Feel Safe’

Harsher anti-extremism laws adopted in 2014 targeted social media users and online speech, leading to hundreds of criminal cases over posts, likes and shares. Most involved users of the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte, which reportedly cooperates with authorities.

As the crackdown widened, authorities also targeted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram. About a week after the invasion, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were blocked in Russia, but users of the platforms were still prosecuted.

Marina Novikova, 65, was convicted this month in the Siberian city of Seversk of “spreading false information” about the army for antiwar Telegram posts, fining her the equivalent of over $12,400. A Moscow court last week sentenced opposition activist Mikhail Kriger to seven years in prison for Facebook comments in which he expressed a desire “to hang” Putin. Famous blogger Nika Belotserkovskaya, who lives in France, received a nine-year prison term in absentia for Instagram posts about the war that the authorities claimed spread “fakes” about the army.

“Users of any social media platform shouldn’t feel safe,” Gainutdinov said.

Rights advocates worry that online censorship is about to expand drastically via artificial intelligence systems to monitor social media and websites for content deemed illicit.

In February, the government’s media regulator Roskomnadzor said it was launching Oculus — an AI system that looks for banned content in online photos and videos, and can analyze more than 200,000 images a day, compared with about 200 a day by humans. Two other AI systems in the works will search text materials.

In February, the newspaper Vedomosti quoted an unidentified Roskomnadzor official as lamenting the “unprecedented amounts and speed of spreading of fakes” about the war. The official also cited extremist remarks, calls for protests and “LGBT propaganda” to be among banned content the new systems will identify.

Activists say it’s hard to know if the new systems are operating and their effectiveness. Darbinyan, of the internet freedom group, describes it as “horrible stuff,” leading to “more censorship,” amid a total lack of transparency as to how the systems would work and be regulated.

Authorities could also be working on a system of bots that collect information from social media pages, messenger apps and closed online communities, according to the Belarusian hacktivist group Cyberpartisans, which obtained documents of a subsidiary of Roskomnadzor.

Cyberpartisans coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told AP the bots are expected to infiltrate Russian-language social media groups for surveillance and propaganda.

“Now it’s common to laugh at the Russians, to say that they have old weapons and don’t know how to fight, but the Kremlin is great at disinformation campaigns and there are high-class IT experts who create extremely effective and very dangerous products,” she said.

Government regulator Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment.

Eyes on — and Under — the Streets

In 2017-18, Moscow authorities rolled out street cameras enabled by facial recognition technology.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities were able to trace and fine those violating lockdowns.

Vedomosti reported in 2020 that schools would get cameras linked to a facial recognition system dubbed “Orwell,” for the British writer of the dystopian novel “1984,” with his all-seeing character, “Big Brother.”

When protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny erupted in 2021, the system was used to find and detain those attending demonstrations, sometimes weeks later. After Putin announced a partial mobilization for Ukraine last year, it apparently helped officials round up draft evaders.

A man who was stopped on the Moscow subway after failing to comply with a mobilization summons said police told him the facial recognition system tracked him down, according to his wife, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation.

In 2022, “Russian authorities expanded their control over people’s biometric data, including by collecting such data from banks, and using facial recognition technology to surveil and persecute activists,” Human Rights Watch reported this year.

Maksimova, the activist who repeatedly gets stopped on the subway, filed a lawsuit contesting the detentions, but lost. Authorities argued that because she had prior arrests, police had the right to detain her for a “cautionary conversation” — in which officers explain a citizen’s “moral and legal responsibilities.”

Maksimova says officials refused to explain why she was in their surveillance databases, calling it a state secret. She and her lawyer are appealing the court ruling.

There are 250,000 surveillance cameras in Moscow enabled by the software — at entrances to residential buildings, in public transportation and on the streets, Darbinyan said. Similar systems are in St. Petersburg and other large cities, like Novosibirsk and Kazan, he said.

He believed the authorities want to build “a web of cameras around the entire country. It sounds like a daunting task, but there are possibilities and funds there to do it.”

‘Total Digital Surveillance’

Russia’s efforts often draw comparisons with China, where authorities use digital surveillance on a vast scale. Chinese cities are blanketed by millions of cameras that recognize faces, body shapes and how people walk to identify them. Sensitive individuals are routinely tracked, either by cameras or via their cellphones, email and social media accounts to stifle any dissent.

The Kremlin seems to want to pursue a similar path. In November, Putin ordered the government to create an online register of those eligible for military service after efforts to mobilize 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine revealed that enlistment records were in serious disarray.

The register, promised to be ready by fall, will collect all kinds of data, “from outpatient clinics to courts to tax offices and election commissions,” political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

That will let authorities serve draft summonses electronically via a government website used to apply for official documents, like passports or deeds. Once a summons appears online, recipients cannot leave Russia. Other restrictions -– like suspension of a driver’s license or a ban on buying and selling property -– are imposed if they don’t comply with the summons within 20 days, whether they saw it or not.

Stanovaya believes these restrictions could spread to other aspects of Russian life, with the government “building a state system of total digital surveillance, coercion and punishment.” A December law mandates that taxi companies share their databases with the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, giving it access to travelers’ dates, destinations and payment.

“The cyber gulag, which was actively talked about during the pandemic, is now taking its real shape,” Stanovaya wrote.

___

Associated Press writers Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed.

The report Monday from special counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation that Trump and allies had claimed would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham’s investigation delivered underwhelming results, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.

The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham says were a series of missteps by the FBI and Justice Department as investigators undertook a politically explosive probe in the heat of the 2016 election into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to tip the outcome. It criticized the FBI for opening a full-fledged investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” saying the speed at which it did so was a departure from the norm. And it said investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward.

“Again, the FBI’s failure to critically analyze information that ran counter to the narrative of a Trump/Russia collusive relationship exhibited throughout Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troublesome,” the report said. “Crossfire Hurricane” was the FBI code name for its investigation.

The impact of Durham’s report, though harshly critical of the FBI, is likely blunted by Durham’s spotty prosecution record and by the fact that many of the seven-year-old episodes it cites were already examined in depth by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The FBI has also long since announced dozens of corrective actions. Still, Durham’s findings are likely to amplify scrutiny of the FBI at a time when Trump is again seeking the White House as well as offer fresh fodder for congressional Republicans who have launched their own investigation into the purported “weaponization” of the FBI and Justice Department.

The FBI released a letter to Durham outlining changes it has made, including steps to ensure the accuracy of secretive surveillance applications to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies. It also stressed that the report focused on prior leadership.

“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect,” the FBI said in a statement.

Durham, the former U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, soon after special counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to move the outcome of the election in his favor.

The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates, and concluded that Russia intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf and that the campaign welcomed the help. But Mueller’s team did not find that they actually conspired to sway the election, creating an opening for critics of the probe — including Barr himself — to complain that it had been launched without a proper basis.

The original Russia investigation was opened in July 2016 after the FBI learned from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign associate named George Papadopoulos had claimed to know of “dirt” that the Russians had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked emails.

But revelations over the following months laid bare flaws with the investigation, including errors and omissions in Justice Department applications to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, as well as the reliance by the FBI on a dossier of uncorroborated or discredited information compiled by an British ex-spy, Christopher Steele.

Durham’s team delved deep into those mistakes, finding that investigators did not corroborate a “single substantive allegation” in the so-called Steele dossier and ignored or rationalized what it asserts was exculpatory information that Trump associates had provided to FBI confidential informants.

Durham’s mandate was to scrutinize government decisions, and identify possible misconduct, in the early days of the Trump-Russia probe. His appointment was cheered by Trump, who in a 2019 interview with Fox News said Durham was “supposed to be the smartest and the best.” He and his supporters hoped it would expose a “deep state” conspiracy within the top echelons of the FBI and other agencies to derail Trump’s presidency and candidacy.

Durham and his team cast a broad net, interviewing top officials at the FBI, Justice Department and CIA. In his first year on the job, he traveled with Barr to Italy to meet with government officials as Trump himself asked the Australian prime minister and other leaders to help with the probe. Weeks before his December 2020 resignation as attorney general, Barr appointed Durham as a Justice Department special counsel to ensure that he would continue his work in a Democratic administration.

The slow pace of the probe irked Trump, who berated Barr before he left office about the whereabouts of a report that would not be released for several more years. By the end of the Trump administration, only one criminal case had been brought, while the abrupt departure of Durham’s top deputy in the final months of Trump’s tenure raised questions about whether the team was in sync.

Despite expectations that Durham might charge senior government officials, his team produced only three prosecutions. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the FBI relied on in applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. Two other defendants — a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and a Russian-American think tank analyst — were both acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI.

_____

Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

The International Olympic Committee recommends letting competitors from Russia and Belarus compete as neutral athletes without national symbols after the invasion of Ukraine, but still excluding those employed by the military or security services, or those who have publicly backed the war.

Two-time gold medalist Yana Egorian and all three of the gold medalists in women’s team saber from the Tokyo Olympics — Sofya Velikaya, Olga Nikitina and Sofia Pozdniakova — were refused after vetting from the International Fencing Federation, Russian Fencing Federation president Ilgar Mamedov told state news agencies.

Pozdniakova is the daughter of Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pozdnyakov.

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Some lesser-known fencers were approved to compete, Mamedov said. But he didn’t say why the other fencers were refused and there was no immediate confirmation from the International Fencing Federation, known as the FIE.

All three of the women’s team saber gold medalists were identified as being affiliated with the Central Sports Club of the Army, known as CSKA, in a 2021 statement on the Russian Defense Ministry website following the Tokyo Olympics. It listed Velikaya with the rank of captain and Nikitina as a sergeant. They and Egorian are all listed in profiles on the FIE website with the term “armed forces athlete.”

The FIE decisions showed IOC criteria for the return of Russian and Belarusian athletes to be a “farce” and a “thinly veiled suspension” which amounted to discrimination, Pozdnyakov wrote in posts on the Telegram app.

“The International Olympic Committee is imposing such criteria that the participation of the overwhelming majority of our athletes and practically all of the leaders of the national teams in Olympic qualifying and other competitions is in practice unrealistic,” he added.

Pozdnyakov said he had spoken with the Russian fencing team and indicated that they supported boycotting competitions under the current conditions.

“The position is unanimous, our fencers will take part only if there are equal rights with athletes of other countries, without contrived or wrongful parameters and other artificial obstacle courses,” Pozdnyakov said.

There was also criticism from the Kremlin. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Russia opposes restrictions on its athletes.

“We consider it absolutely wrong to try to apply conditions of some political requirements to athletes and their participation in international competitions,” Peskov said. “We do not agree with such recommendations.”

Fencing has a central place in Olympic politics because it is the sport of IOC president Thomas Bach, who was a gold medalist at the 1976 Montreal Games. Pozdnyakov himself won four Olympic gold medals in fencing, and his daughter won both the individual and team saber gold medals in Tokyo.

A Russian boycott could smooth the way for Ukraine’s fencers to keep competing. The Ukrainian government and fencing team have a policy of not entering any events where Russian or Belarusian competitors are allowed.

The FIE’s earlier moves toward readmitting Russians and Belarusians led to a protest petition from top fencers from around the world against the plan. At least four competitions on the FIE’s World Cup circuit have also been called off by organizers unwilling to host Russian and Belarusian competitors.

Putin’s remarks came just hours after Moscow fired its latest barrage of cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than 14 months ago. Ukrainian authorities said air defenses destroyed 23 of 25 missiles launched.

The Russian leader has repeatedly sought to paint his invasion of Ukraine as necessary to defend against a Western threat. Kyiv and its Western allies say they pose no such threat and that Moscow’s war is meant to deter Western influence in a country that Russia considers part of its sphere of influence.

“Today civilization is once again at a decisive turning point,” Putin said at the annual commemorations celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. “A real war has been unleashed against our motherland.”

Putin has often used patriotic rhetoric that harkens back to the earlier war in an effort to rally his citizens and forces — and May 9 is one of the most important dates in the Russian political calendar. But this year’s celebrations were markedly smaller, at least partially because of security concerns after several drone attacks have been reported inside Russia.

Some 8,000 troops took part in the parade in Moscow’s Red Square on Tuesday — the lowest number since 2008. Even the procession in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, featured some 13,000 soldiers, and last year, 11,000 troops took part. There was no fly-over of military jets, and the event lasted less than the usual hour.

“This is weak. There are no tanks,” said Yelena Orlova, watching the vehicles rumble down Moscow’s Novy Arbat avenue after leaving Red Square. “We’re upset, but that’s all right; it will be better in the future.”

The Kremlin’s forces deployed in Ukraine are defending a front line stretching more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), presumably thinning the ranks of troops available for such displays.

“This is supposed to be a showpiece for Russian military might. But so much of that military might has already been mauled in Ukraine that Russia has very little to show on its parade in Red Square,” said Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London’s Chatham House think tank.

As a display of military hardware it was “very underwhelming,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor of war studies at King’s College London, noting that the T-34, the iconic World War II tank, was the only tank on display. “Normally they show off all the really modern stuff, and they didn’t have any of those. Nor did they seem to have armored fighting vehicles. … So there was nothing new on display.”

Meanwhile, the traditional Immortal Regiment processions, in which crowds take to the streets holding portraits of relatives who died or served in World War II — a pillar of the holiday — were canceled in multiple cities.

“That seems to be for fear that those people who have lost their relatives in this current war on Ukraine might actually join the processions and show just the scale of the casualties that Russia has suffered in its current war,” Giles said.

Russian media counted 24 cities that also scrapped military parades — another staple of the celebrations — for the first time in years. Regional officials blamed unspecified “security concerns” or vaguely referred to “the current situation” for the restrictions and cancelations. It wasn’t clear whether their decisions were taken in coordination with the Kremlin.

Last week, Russia claimed it foiled an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Kremlin that it called an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied involvement.

There was no independent verification of the purported attack, which Russia authorities said occurred overnight but presented no evidence to support it.

On a tribune in Red Square, Putin praised soldiers taking part in the war in Ukraine and urged Russians to stand together.

“Our heroic ancestors proved that there is nothing stronger, more powerful and more reliable than our unity. There is nothing in the world stronger than our love for the motherland,” Putin said.

The guest list was also light amid Putin’s broad diplomatic isolation over the war. Initially, only one foreign leader was expected to attend this year’s parade — Kyrgyz President Sadyr Zhaparov. That was one more foreign guest than last year, when no leaders went.

At the last minute on Monday, officials announced that the leaders of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan would head to Moscow as well.

As the celebrations unfolded, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner, said his fighters had yet to receive ammunition promised to them by the military — but that they would continue to fight in the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut despite earlier threatening to withdraw them.

In a video published on Telegram, Prigozhin claimed that Russian army units had fled their positions in the city due to the “stupidity of their leadership” — a reference to the Defense Ministry — and that it threatened to charge Wagner troops with treason if they, too, pulled out.

Prigozhin’s allegations could not be independently verified, and the Russian military has not commented on them.

The threat of departure marked another flare-up in Prigozhin’s long-running dispute with Russia’s military brass over credit and tactics in the war.

On Tuesday, he contrasted the pomp of the May 9 celebrations, broadcast across Russia, with the reality on the ground.

“Victory Day marks the victory of our grandfathers; we did not deserve a single bit of this victory. The counteroffensive will be on the ground, not on television,” Prigozhin warned, adding that the Russian state is “unable to defend the country.”

Prigozhin has become known for such inflammatory, headline-grabbing statements, particularly at key moments when attention is focused elsewhere — but issuing them on Victory Day was remarkably bold.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said in a Telegram post that eight Kalibr cruise missiles were fired from carriers in the Black Sea toward the east and 17 from strategic aircraft.

The missiles came hours before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union’s executive branch, arrived in Kyiv.

Von der Leyen urged EU member nations to take measures to prevent countries from helping Russia to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions. The EU has noticed that certain products that have been banned to undermine Russia’s war effort are still getting through, she said.

Von der Leyen did not name the countries.

Ukraine is keen to join the EU, but membership is still a long way off. Ukraine is also hoping to join NATO, after moving close to the Western military alliance during the war.

In the latest help from a NATO member, the U.S. was expected to announce Tuesday that it will provide $1.2 billion more in long-term military aid to Ukraine to further bolster its air defenses.

Later in the day, Zelenskyy used his nightly address to mark Europe Day, having decreed Monday that Ukraine will celebrate Europe Day on May 9, and join the rest of Europe in celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 8.

In the address, he drew parallels between “the brutal aggressions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

“It is only a matter of time before the current aggressor loses, like the aggressor who lost 78 years ago, before Russian revanchism is crushed by the bravery of our warriors and the joint power of the free world,” he said.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Speculation is mounting that Russia staged the drone attack on the Kremlin that it blamed on Ukraine, with political analysts saying there are a number of reasons why the alleged strike — which Russia called a “planned terrorist attack” — just doesn’t add up.

Russia accused Ukraine of attempting to attack the Kremlin Wednesday, saying the government in Kyiv had tried to strike at the heart of Russia’s government in Moscow using two unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was not injured, the Kremlin said in a statement, in what it characterized as an assassination attempt (in fact, Putin had not been in the Kremlin at the time of the alleged incident) but did not provide any evidence that Ukraine had carried out the attack.

Ukraine denied any involvement in the incident, with officials saying it more likely signaled that Russia was planning a large-scale terrorist attack against Ukraine in the coming days.

Russia has often been accused of plotting “false flag” attacks that it can blame on Ukraine, and use to justify or escalate its own military aggression against the country as the war drags on into its 15th month.

“Of course, Ukraine has nothing to do with drone attacks on the Kremlin. We do not attack the Kremlin because, first of all, it does not resolve any military tasks,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an Ukrainian presidential advisor, noted.

The Kremlin went further in its accusations on Thursday, claiming that Washington had helped Ukraine to plot and orchestrate the drone attack. Again, it did not provide any evidence for its claim.

‘Staged’ attack?

Defense and political analysts and officials are also viewing the incident with skepticism, saying it’s highly possible that Russia carried out the “attack” itself for a number of reasons, including a possible need to prepare Russian society for a firmer war footing.

“Russia likely staged this attack in an attempt to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said in analysis Wednesday evening.

Several indicators suggest that the strike was internally conducted and purposefully staged, the ISW noted, not least of all because Russia has recently taken steps to increase Russian domestic air defense capabilities, including within Moscow itself.

As such, the ISW noted, it was therefore “extremely unlikely” that two drones could have “penetrated multiple layers of air defense and detonated or been shot down just over the heart of the Kremlin in a way that provided spectacular imagery caught nicely on camera.”

In addition, the Kremlin’s “immediate, coherent, and coordinated response” to the incident also raised suspicion, suggesting that the attack was “internally prepared in such a way that its intended political effects outweigh its embarrassment,” the think tank noted.

Had the attack been a surprise, the ISW believed, “it is very likely that the official Russian response would initially have been much more disorganized as Russian officials scrambled to generate a coherent narrative and offset the rhetorical implications of a clear informational embarrassment.”

CNBC contacted the Kremlin for a response to claims that it was likely behind the drone attack itself. It has not yet responded.

Doubts over the footage

Doubts about the authenticity of the attack quickly started to arise as video footage began to circulate on social media purportedly showing the drone attacks.

Videos showed smoke rising above the Kremlin and wreckage on fire on the domed building of the Senate Palace within the Kremlin’s walls. Another video showed a drone exploding above the domed building of the Senate. Beady-eyed viewers were quick to say two unidentified figures could be seen climbing on the domed roof when the drone detonated.

Questions have also been asked as to why the Kremlin waited so long, hours after the incident purportedly took place, to announce it and just why Russian social media channels, usually a-flutter with talk about the war with Ukraine, Russian military strategy and leadership, had been silent about an incident that allegedly took place in full sight (albeit at night) in central Moscow.

Why, too, did videos of the “attack” only appear after the incident and, indeed, who captured the footage — and what prompted them to start filming it just moments before the drones were shown above the Kremlin?

Western officials were also quick to cast doubt over Russia’s claim that Ukraine had made an attempt on the Russian president’s life. For one, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. could not validate Russia’s accusation and that the claim should be taken with a “very large shaker of salt.”

Analysts also note that, were the incident an assassination attempt, it would reflect a poor understanding of the highest security being operated by the Kremlin, or of Putin’s habits.

“People should really stop talking about this as an attempted assassination attempts against Putin,” Mark Galeotti, a political analyst, academic and author of a number of books on Russia, said soon after the alleged incident emerged, saying this was “just playing to Kremlin talking points.”

“He notoriously rarely goes to the Kremlin, let alone stays there overnight, and there were no scheduled early morning meetings or the like there which might make one assume he might be in his (palatial) flat there,” Galeotti noted on Twitter.

“Besides, that is, I understand, quite well protected. Not quite a bunker, but something that would be hard to hit by anything unable to make some sharp turns, which would make it vulnerable,” Galeotti added.

He added that were we to presume Ukraine was indeed behind the “attack” it should be considered more of a “performative strike, a demonstration of capability and a declaration of intent” along the lines of “don’t think Moscow is safe.”

Why do it?

Analysts are careful to state that it’s impossible to know precisely who launched the drones. What matters instead, they note, is the implications of the “attack” and how Russia will use it at a domestic or international level.

The timing of the purported attack, coming just days ahead of the May 9 Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, has not gone un-noticed — nor was it meant to, analysts said.

The Kremlin said the drone attack had taken place “on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9th Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned.”

It added that “the Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit” also suggesting the attack could be used to justify an escalation of its aggression against Ukraine.

Moscow likely hoped that the incident would bolster its attempts to portray Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, analysts said, particularly ahead of this year’s Victory Day parade, a slimmed-down affair this year with Russian officials citing “security considerations” and concerns over possible attacks.

“I don’t care who launched these drones, where they came from, and whether they were capable of killing Putin. I don’t care because I cannot know,” Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, noted on Twitter Wednesday.

“What I do care about is what happens next, and that includes how this plays domestically in Russia, and whether it induces significant new escalation from the Russian side,” Greene, also a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, noted.

By calling the incident a “terrorist” act and an attempt on Putin’s life, the Kremlin was “very clearly stoking the fires of [a] public demand for revenge” he said, with pro-Kremlin figures like former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev calling for “the physical elimination” of the Ukrainian government.

So far, Greene said, “the public seems to be responding the way the Kremlin likely wants it to. A quick dive into Kremlin-friendly Telegram chats suggests that public responses are, if anything, even more strident than those of the politicians.”

Nonetheless, the Kremlin faced risks in this approach, he said, noting that if the government’s response is deemed to be “weak or non-existent … people will notice.”

Speaking to reporters for the first time since a nearly 10-month detainment in Russia on drug-related charges, the WNBA star had to take a moment to compose herself after being asked about her resiliency through the ordeal.

“I’m no stranger to hard times,” Griner said Thursday from the lobby of the Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Mercury and the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. “Just digging deep. You’re going to be faced with adversities in life. This was a pretty big one. I just relied on my hard work to get through it.”

Griner’s first news conference drew more than 100 people, including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, members of the Mercury organization and her wife, Cherelle.

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Griner was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

After nearly 10 months of strained negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Griner was exchanged in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on Dec. 8.

Griner kept a low profile following her return to the U.S. while adjusting to life back at home, outside of appearances at the Super Bowl, the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open and an MLK Day event in Phoenix.

WASHINGTON —  The Biden administration on Thursday announced a first round of sanctions targeting Russia and Iran for engaging in hostage-taking and the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens abroad.

The U.S. sanctions take aim at Russia’s Federal Security Service, often known as the FSB, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization, or IRGC-IO, for “being responsible for or complicit in, directly or indirectly engaged in or responsible for ordering, controlling or otherwise directing the wrongful detention of a U.S. national abroad.”

Two senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity per ground rules established by the White House, said Thursday’s sanctions were underway before Russian authorities detained American citizen Evan Gershkovich last month.

Gershkovich, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was arrested in late March on allegations of espionage. The State Department has formally moved to declare Gershkovich’s detention a wrongful one, which opens up additional resources to secure his release.

The Biden administration and leadership at The Wall Street Journal have denied Russian claims that Gershkovich is a spy.

The administration has identified at least two American citizens who are wrongfully detained in Russia and three in Iran, along with one legal permanent U.S. resident.

One administration official said relevant families were briefed on the new sanctions ahead of Thursday’s announcement.

The Department of Treasury also announced sanctions on the following individuals in Iran:

• Ruhollah Bazghandi, an IRGC-IO counterintelligence official, has been involved in the detention of foreign prisoners held in Iran. The department says his work for the IRGC-IO includes assassination plots against journalists, Israeli citizens and others deemed enemies of Iran.
• Mohammad Kazemi, commander of the IRGC-IO, oversees operations suppressing civil society in Iran, including the regime’s crackdown against protests across the country in response to the killing of Mahsa Amini, according to the department. He was previously designated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in October.
• Mohamad Mehdi Sayyari, co-deputy chief of the IRGC-IO, has been directly involved in arranging logistics for prisoners in Iran.
• Mohammad Hasan Mohagheghi, co-deputy chief of the IRGC-IO, serves as a liaison between senior IRGC officials and IRGC-IO officials on counterespionage operations in Syria, the department said.

“Our action is a warning to those around the world who would wrongfully detain U.S. nationals, the potential consequences of their actions,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters.

“These actors in Russia and Iran have tried to use Americans for political leverage or to seek concessions from the United States. These actions threaten the stability and integrity of the international political system. It also threatens the safety of U.S. nationals and other persons abroad,” the person added.

“Sanctions are meant to change behavior and to incentivize better behavior and we hope that these can contribute to doing that now and into the future,” the second official said.

‘I no longer know what my brother looks like’

Russia has detained several American citizens in high-profile incidents in recent years.

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was arrested by Russian authorities in 2018 on charges of acting as a spy for the United States. At the time he was arrested, Whelan was visiting Moscow to attend a wedding, according to his brother, David Whelan. 

Paul Whelan was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years of hard labor in a Russian camp in the remote province of Mordovia.

During opening remarks before Monday’s U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke directly to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the immediate release of Gershkovich and Whelan, who are both detained in Russia.

Thomas-Greenfield invited Elizabeth Whelan, the sister of Paul Whelan, to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting.

“I want minister Lavrov to look into her eyes and see her suffering,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “I want you to see what it’s like to miss your brother for four years. To know he is locked up, in a Russian penal colony, simply because you want to use him for your own ends.”

“I no longer know what my brother looks like. The images that we see on television and in the news? That’s Paul Whelan in the life he was living before he was taken captive. No one has been allowed to take a photo of him since his trial almost three years ago,” Elizabeth Whelan told reporters at the United Nations.

She drew several similarities between her brother and Gershkovich, including the espionage charges levied against them and their subsequent detainments at Lefortovo prison.

“This Russian playbook is so lazy that even Evan has the same investigator, a man who harassed and interrogated my brother until Paul’s sham trial in June of 2020,” she added.

In December, President Joe Biden signed off on a prisoner swap that would release WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for a Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death” because he was considered one of the world’s largest illicit arms dealers, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in 2012.

The negotiations for Griner’s release originally included Whelan as well.

“I’m proud that today we have made one more family whole,” Biden said at the time, adding that he would continue to work to free Whelan. “We’ll keep negotiating for Paul’s relief. I guarantee it.”

Griner, who played professional basketball in Russia during the WNBA offseason, was arrested in February 2022 at a Russian airport on accusations that she was smuggling vape cartridges with cannabis oil. The two-time Olympic gold medalist was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony before her release.

Last April, Russia agreed to release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed in a prisoner exchange with the United States.

Reed was accused of assaulting a Russian officer and detained by authorities there in 2019. He was later sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison. Reed and his family have maintained his innocence, and the U.S. government has described him as unjustly imprisoned.

For Reed’s release, Biden agreed to free Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

At the time, Reed’s family thanked Biden and also said they would continue to advocate on behalf of Whelan.

Biden, who did not specifically mention the prisoner exchange in a statement, said his administration would not “stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”

Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia’s current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.

The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.

It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined avenue flanked by apartment blocks, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third person was later hospitalized with hypertension, authorities said.

Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers were abuzz with theories about what weapon Ukraine had used for the attack. Many of them called for strong retribution.

But about an hour later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that a weapon accidentally released by one of its own Su-34 bombers caused the blast. The ministry did not provide any further details, but military experts said the weapon likely was a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.

Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been set to explode with a small delay after impact that would allow it to hit underground facilities.

Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said local authorities decided to temporarily resettle residents of a nine-story apartment building while it was inspected to make sure it hadn’t suffered structural damage that rendered it unsafe to live in.

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In an editorial gaffe, an anchor on Russian state television followed the news about the local authorities dealing with the explosion’s aftermath by declaring that “modern weapons allow Russian units to eliminate extremists in the area of the special military operation from a minimal distance.” The anchor looked visibly puzzled by the text that he had just read.

Russian commentators questioned why the warplane flew over Belgorod and urged the military to avoid such risky overflights in the future.

Some alleged that the bomb that was accidentally dropped on Belgorod could be one of a batch of modified munitions equipped with wings and GPS-guided targeting system that allows them to glide to targets dozens of kilometers (miles) away. The Russian air force has started using such gliding bombs only recently, and some experts say that they could be prone to glitches.

In October, a Russian warplane crashed next to a residential building in the port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov, killing 15 people. Yeysk hosts a big Russian air base with warplanes that fly missions over Ukraine.

Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights have increased sharply during the fighting, so have crashes and misfires.

In another deadly incident in the Belgorod region, two volunteer soldiers fired at Russian troops at a military firing range, killing 11 and wounding 15 others before being shot dead.

The decision was widely expected since FIBA has suspended Russia’s teams from international play since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine last year. The International Olympic Committee favors allowing individual athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to compete as neutrals, but not as national teams, like in basketball.

Russia’s world ranking was high enough for it to play Olympic pre-qualifying tournaments this year, but that place will be given to Bulgaria as the next-highest-ranked team from Europe, FIBA said in a statement citing the IOC’s recommendations.

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The Russian women’s team already missed out on qualification when it was suspended from the World Cup and EuroBasket qualification last year. Belarus cannot qualify men’s or women’s teams.

There was no information Tuesday from FIBA about 3-on-3 basketball, which is also an Olympic event.

The Wall Street Journal reporter is the first U.S. correspondent since the Cold War to be detained in Russia on spying allegations and his arrest rattled journalists in the country and elicited outrage in the West. Dozens of journalists crowded into the courtroom to catch a glimpse of Gershkovich, who looked calm as he stood inside a glass cage to appeal his detention.

Russia’s Federal Security Service detained the 31-year-old in Yekaterinburg on March 29 and accused him of trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory.

Gershkovich, his employer and the U. S. government all deny he was involved in spying and have demanded his release.

“Evan is a member of the free press who right up until he was arrested was engaged in newsgathering. Any suggestions otherwise are false,” the Journal has said in a statement.

Last week, the U.S. officially declared that Gershkovich was “wrongfully detained.”

Gershkovich could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Russian lawyers have said past investigations into espionage cases took a year to 18 months, during which time he could have little contact with the outside world.

He has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, which dates from the czarist era and has been a terrifying symbol of repression since Soviet times.

The arrest comes at a moment of bitter tensions between the West and Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine and as the Kremlin intensifies a crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and civil society groups.

The sweeping campaign of repression is unprecedented since the Soviet era. Activists say it often means the very profession of journalism is criminalized, along with the activities of ordinary Russians who oppose the war.

Last month, a Russian court convicted a father over social media posts critical of the war and sentenced him to two years in prison. On Monday, a Russian court convicted top opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. of treason for publicly denouncing the war and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

The U.S. has pressed Moscow to grant consular access to Gershkovich. U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who attended Tuesday’s hearing, said a day earlier that she had visited Gershkovich in prison. She said on Twitter that “he is in good health and remains strong,” reiterating a U.S. call for his immediate release.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to Greshkovich’s parents last week and again condemned his detention.

“We’re making it real clear that it’s totally illegal what’s happening, and we declared it so,” he said.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested. Daniloff was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s United Nations mission who was arrested by the FBI, also on spying charges.

A top Russian diplomat said last week that Russia might be willing to discuss a potential prisoner swap with the U.S. involving Gershkovich after his trial. That means any exchange is unlikely to happen any time soon.

In December, American basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout following her trial and conviction on drug possession charges. She had been sentenced to nine years in prison and ended up spending 10 months behind bars.

Another American, Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges, which his family and the U.S. government have called baseless.

Ambassador Lynne Tracy said that she visited Evan Gershkovich in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, notorious for harsh conditions, and “he is in good health and remains strong.”

It was “the first time we’ve been permitted access to him since his wrongful detention more than two weeks ago,” she said on Twitter. “We reiterate our call for his immediate release.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. wants to have “regular, routine” consular access to the jailed journalist.

Gershkovich, 31, his employer and the U.S. government all deny he was involved in spying.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said last week that a possible prisoner exchange for Gershkovich could take place, but only after his trial is completed. No date has been set for that.

It’s not clear how long the investigation could last, but other espionage cases have lasted for a year or more.

In December, American basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout following her trial and conviction on drug possession charges. She had been sentenced to nine years in prison and ended up spending 10 months behind bars.

Another American, Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have called baseless.

Gershkovich could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Russia’s Federal Security Service arrested Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, on March 29. He is the first U.S. correspondent since the Cold War to be detained in Russia for alleged spying.

The service accuses Gershkovich of trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory.

Speaking on behalf of dozens of countries at the United Nations in New York on Monday, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that “we protest Russian efforts to limit and intimidate the media.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr., a prominent opposition activist who twice survived poisonings he blamed on the Kremlin, has been behind bars since his arrest a year ago. He has rejected the charges against him as political and likened the judicial proceedings against him to the show trials during the rule of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The charges against Kara-Murza stem from his March 15 speech to the Arizona House of Representatives in which he denounced Russia’s military action in Ukraine. Investigators added the treason charges while he was in custody.

Russia adopted a law criminalizing spreading “false information” about its military shortly after it sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Authorities have used the law to stifle criticism of what the Kremlin calls “a special military operation.”

The decree published by the Ministry of Youth and Sports follows opposition from Ukraine to efforts by the International Olympic Committee to reintegrate Russian and Belarusian competitors into events as neutrals without national symbols.

It could pressure global sports bodies to choose between admitting Russians and Belarusians or risking a Ukrainian boycott.

After Ukraine signaled last month it would seek to block its athletes from competing against Russians and Belarusians, the IOC said any such move would “hurt only the Ukrainian athlete community.” The IOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The decree only refers to national team delegations and it was not clear if it would affect individual Ukrainian players on the men’s and women’s tennis tours, where Russian and Belarusian players have continued playing as neutrals.

It was also unclear how the measure might affect men’s soccer amid ongoing qualification for next year’s European Championship. European soccer body UEFA allows Belarus to compete, but not Russia. Ukraine and Belarus are playing in different qualifying groups and cannot be drawn together in the playoffs.

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The government decision drew criticism from Vladyslav Heraskevych, a skeleton racer who competed at last year’s Winter Olympics. “If the Ukrainian representatives are absent at the competitions, this means we completely abandon international sports platforms and allow Russia/Belarus to promote their narratives and propaganda. This is a ‘white flag’ from the Ukrainian sports community,” he wrote on Twitter.

The IOC initially recommended that sports bodies exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes on safety grounds last year, but now advocates reintegrating them as neutrals, arguing that a blanket ban is discriminatory. The IOC still recommends blocking Russians and Belarusians with ties to the military, and its recommendation only covers individual, not team, competitions.

International sports federations are not obliged to implement the IOC’s recommendations and only some have set a deadline to admit neutral athletes from Russia or Belarus. The IOC is also yet to announce a decision about the Paris Olympics.

Ukraine boycotted an Olympic judo qualifier last year when the sport’s governing body allowed Russians, including several from the country’s military, to take part as neutral athletes. Ukrainian officials have previously not ruled out boycotting the Paris Olympics rather than competing against Russians.

The ash cloud is from Shiveluch Volcano, the airline said. By mid-day Thursday, 28 flights to, from and within Alaska were canceled.

“We continue to monitor the ash cloud, and depending on its location, movement and timing, we might need to cancel additional flights,” the airline said in a statement. It encouraged travelers to check the status of their flights online.

Among those affected was U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, whose overnight flight from Honolulu to Anchorage was canceled, Dillingham, Alaska, radio station KDLG reported. A spokesperson for Peltola, an Alaska Democrat, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The ash cloud drifted over Alaska air space in the last few days, the Alaska Volcano Observatory said in a statement. “Although this cloud poses a potential hazard to aviation and has disrupted some flights, no ashfall is expected on Alaska communities,” it said.

Shiveluch, one of Kamchatka Peninsula’s most active volcanoes, started erupting early Tuesday, spewing ash more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) northwest. Several Russian villages were covered in grey volcanic dust in the largest fallout in nearly 60 years.

On Wednesday, the eruption sent an ash cloud more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the air. The volcano is located about 1,772 miles (2,772 kilometers) west of Anchorage.

Volcanic ash is angular and sharp and has been used as an industrial abrasive. The powdered rock can cause a jet engine to shut down.

Anna Veduta, a Washington, DC-based vice president of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, told The Associated Press the 46-year-old Navalny fell ill last Friday when he was let out of the punishment cell and put in a conventional cell. He had lost about 18 pounds over the past 15 days. On Monday, Navalny wrote on Twitter, he was put back in a punishment cell for another 15-day term.

An ambulance was called early Saturday because of acute stomach pains but Navalny received no diagnosis, one of his lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, wrote on Twitter after visiting him in prison.

“We believe he is slowly being administered low doses of poison” in pills he is given without identification, Veduta said.

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A video documentary about Navalny won an Oscar last month. The documentary portrays Navalny’s career of fighting official corruption, his near-fatal poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 that he blames on the Kremlin, his five-month recuperation in Germany and his 2021 return to Moscow, where he was taken into custody. He was later sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and last year was convicted of other charges and given another nine-year term.

Navalny has faced unrelenting pressure from Russian authorities, and has been in and out of isolation in a tiny punishment cell. He is allowed to write letters or have his lawyers visit occasionally.

German government spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said Wednesday that Germany took note of reports about Navalny’s worsening health “with great concern.” She added that Berlin wants “the inhuman treatment that he is apparently suffering in prison to be lifted,” and wants Russian authorities to ensure he gets access to medical treatment and is released.

The video spread quickly online and drew outrage from officials in Kyiv, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as international organizations. The Kremlin called the footage “horrible” but said it needed to be verified.

The Associated Press and NBC News was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the video or the circumstances of where and when it was shot.

Meanwhile, a Russian defense official claimed that fighters from Russia’s paramilitary Wagner group have seized three districts of Bakhmut, the embattled city that for months has been the focus of Moscow’s grinding campaign in the east.

The video circulating online appears to show a man in green fatigues wearing a yellow armband, typically donned by Ukrainian fighters. His screams are heard before another man in camouflage uses a knife to decapitate him.

A third man holds up a flak jacket apparently belonging to the man being beheaded. All three men speak in Russian.

Since Russia’s forces invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, they have committed widespread abuses and alleged war crimes, according to the United Nations, rights groups and reporting by The Associated Press. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of targeting apartment buildings and other civilian structures and equipment in its strikes, and images of hundreds of dead civilians in the streets and in mass graves in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew from the city have horrified the world.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.

The Kremlin denies it has committed war crimes or that it has targeted civilians.

Ukrainian troops have also been accused of abuses, and last year Kyiv said it would investigate video circulating online that Moscow alleged showed Ukrainian forces killing Russian troops who may have been trying to surrender.

Zelenksyy said the violence in the latest video would not be forgotten, and that Russian forces would be held responsible.

“Everyone must react, every leader. Do not expect that it will be forgotten, that time will pass,” he said in a video.

In it, he used strong language to describe Russian soldiers, calling them “beasts.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the video was “horrible” but must be verified.

“In the world of fakes we live in, the authenticity of the footage must be checked,” he said in a conference call with reporters.

Ukraine’s state security service opened an investigation, according to a statement from Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the agency, known as the SBU. Officials are studying the video to identify those responsible, as well as the victim, according to Hanna Maliar, the deputy head of the Defense Ministry.

Posters on pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram channels, while not confirming the video’s authenticity, did not dispute it. Some sought to justify it by saying combat has hardened Russian troops.

Andrei Medvedev, a Russian state TV journalist and a member of the Moscow city legislature, speculated that the video’s release was “fairly opportune” for the Ukrainian army, saying it could help “fire up personnel ideologically” ahead of a planned major counteroffensive.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, also linked the video’s release to the expected offensive but said it was meant to “demoralize the public mood or at least change the psychological perception of the war right now.”

Ukraine’s human rights chief said he will request that the U.N. Human Rights Committee investigate. Dmytro Lubinets said he has also written to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the U.N. secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He wrote on Telegram that “a public execution of a captive is yet another indication of a breach of Geneva Convention norms, international humanitarian law, a breach of the fundamental right to life.”

The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said it had previously documented “serious violations of international humanitarian law, including those committed against prisoners of war,” adding that “the latest incidents must also be properly investigated and the perpetrators must be held accountable.”

The video provoked an outcry among Ukrainians.

“This is horrifying,” said Mykola Drobot, 44, of Kyiv. “Such things cannot happen without the consent — silent or not — of the military and political leadership.”

Another Kyiv resident, Yuliia Sievierina, 40, speculated the video was meant as “moral pressure on us to consider ourselves even more oppressed and emotionally torn.”

“It doesn’t work,” she told the AP. “It only creates more anger and thirst for resistance.”

The war’s front lines have been largely frozen for months, with much of the fighting focused around the city of Bakhmut.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Wagner forces had made progress there. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment, but Zelenskyy has said before that his troops could pull out if they face a threat of encirclement.

Konashenkov did not specify which neighborhoods of Bakhmut are under Russian control, or how much of the city remains in Ukrainian hands.

Elsewhere, at least four civilians were wounded as Russian forces shelled a Ukrainian-held town near the shut-down Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, said regional Gov. Serhii Lysak.

He said in a Telegram post that “people are being pulled out from under the rubble” after Russian shelling destroyed 13 houses and cars in Nikopol, across the Dnieper River from the plant.

Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko alleged Russian forces attacked a town in the eastern Donetsk province with cluster munitions — banned by an international treaty — wounding one person. An AP and Frontline database called War Crimes Watch Ukraine has cataloged how Russia has used cluster bombs.

Shiveluch, one of Kamchatka’s most active volcanoes, started erupting early Tuesday, spewing dust over 500 kilometers (more than 300 miles) northwest and engulfing several villages in grey volcanic dust in the largest fallout in nearly 60 years.

The Kamchatka branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Geophysical Survey said the eruption continued Wednesday, spewing clouds of dust 10 kilometers (more than 6 miles) into the sky.

Since the start of the eruption, the area has been closed to aircraft and residents have been advised to stay indoors.

The villages located about 50 kilometers (some 30 miles) from the volcano, were covered by a 20-centimeter (nearly 8-inch) layer of dust. Residents posted videos showing the ash cloud plunging the area into darkness.

Shiveluch has two parts — the 3,283-meter (10,771-foot) Old Shiveluch, and the smaller, highly active Young Shiveluch.

The Kamchatka Peninsula, which extends into the Pacific Ocean about 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow, is one of the world’s most concentrated area of geothermal activity, with about 30 active volcanoes.

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Griner was arrested last year at the airport in Moscow on drug-related charges and detained for nearly 10 months, much of that time in prison. Her plight unfolded at the same time Russia invaded Ukraine and further heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., ending only after she was freed in exchange for the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

A WNBA All-Star with the Phoenix Mercury, Griner had flown to Moscow in February 2022 to rejoin UMMC Ekaterinburg, a Russian women’s team she has played for in the off-season since 2014.

“That day (in February) was the beginning of an unfathomable period in my life which only now am I ready to share,” Griner said in a statement released Tuesday by Alfred A. Knopf.

“The primary reason I traveled back to Russia for work that day was because I wanted to make my wife, family, and teammates proud. After an incredibly challenging 10 months in detainment, I am grateful to have been rescued and to be home. Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world.”

Griner added that she also hoped her book would raise awareness of other Americans detained overseas, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia last month and accused of espionage; businessman Kai Li, serving a 10-year sentence in China on charges of revealing state secrets to the FBI; and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive imprisoned in Russia on spying charges. Around the time Griner was released, Whelan criticized the U.S. government for not doing enough to help him.

Russia has been a popular playing destination for top WNBA athletes in the offseason, with some earning salaries over $1 million — nearly quadruple what they can make as a base WNBA salary. Despite pleading guilty to possessing canisters with cannabis oil, a result of what she said was hasty packing, Griner still faced trial under Russian law.

Griner’s memoir is currently untitled and will eventually be published in a young adult edition. Financial terms were not disclosed.

In Tuesday’s press statement, Knopf said that the book would be “intimate and moving” and that Griner would disclose “in vivid detail her harrowing experience of her wrongful detainment (as classified by the State Department) and the difficulty of navigating the byzantine Russian legal system in a language she did not speak.”

“Griner also describes her stark and surreal time living in a foreign prison and the terrifying aspects of day-to-day life in a women’s penal colony,” the announcement reads. “At the heart of the book, Griner highlights the personal turmoil she experienced during the near ten-month ordeal and the resilience that carried her through to the day of her return to the United States last December.”

Griner, 32, is a 6-foot-9 two-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time All-American at Baylor University, a prominent advocate for pay equity for women athletes and the first openly gay athlete to reach an endorsement deal with Nike. She is the author of one previous book, “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” published in 2014.

In February, she re-signed with the Mercury and will play in its upcoming season, which runs from May through September.

The designation elevates the case of Evan Gershkovich in the U.S. government hierarchy and means that a dedicated State Department office will take the lead on securing his release.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the determination on Monday, saying he condemned the arrest and Russia’s repression of independent media.

“Today, Secretary Blinken made a determination that Evan Gershkovich is wrongfully detained by Russia,” the department said in a statement. “Journalism is not a crime. We condemn the Kremlin’s continued repression of independent voices in Russia, and its ongoing war against the truth.”

Russian authorities arrested Gershkovich, 31, in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, on March 29. He is the first U.S. correspondent since the Cold War to be detained for alleged spying.

The Federal Security Service specifically accused Gershkovich of trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory. The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations.

The State Department said the U.S. government will provide all appropriate support to Gershkovich and his family and again called for Russia to release him as well as another detained American citizen, Paul Whelan.

The state news agency Tass and the Interfax news agency said a law enforcement source informed them that Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, had officially charged the American journalist.

The news outlets didn’t say in what form Gershkovich was formally charged or when it happened, but generally suspects are presented a paper outlining the accusations.

In the Russian legal system, the filing of charges and a response from the accused represent the formal start of a criminal probe, initiating what could be a long and secretive Russian judicial process.

Tass quoted its source as saying: “The FSB investigation charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of his country. He categorically denied all accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia.”

The source declined further comment because the case is considered secret.

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Blinken Urges Russia to Free Wall Street Journal Reporter, Second Detained American

Russian authorities arrested Gershkovich, 31, in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, on March 29. He is the first U.S. correspondent since the Cold War to be detained for alleged spying.

The FSB specifically accused Gershkovich of trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory. The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations.

The case has caused an international uproar.

In a rare U.S. bipartisan statement, the Senate’s top two leaders demanded Friday that Russia immediately release Gershkovich. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. declared that “journalism is not a crime” and praised Gershkovich as an “internationally known and respected independent journalist.”

On Thursday, the U.S ambassador to Russia and a top Russian diplomat met to discuss the case.

In the meeting with U.S. Ambassador Lynne T. Tracy, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stressed “the serious nature of the charges” against Gershkovich, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

The statement repeated earlier Russian claims that the reporter “was caught red-handed while trying to obtain secret information, using his journalistic status as a cover for illegal actions.”

Lawyers representing Gershkovich met with him Tuesday for the first time since his detention, according to Wall Street Journal. Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker.

Tucker said the reporter is in good health and “is grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world. We continue to call for his immediate release.”

Gershkovich was ordered held behind bars for two months in Russia pending an investigation. A Moscow court said Monday that it had received a defense appeal of his arrest; the appeal is scheduled to be heard on April 18, Russian news agencies reported.

However, Blinken said a formal determination of Evan Gershkovich’s wrongful detention has not yet been made, something that would elevate the priority of his case within the U.S. government. Blinken said the legal process for such a determination would be completed soon.

“In Evan’s case, we are working through the determination on wrongful detention and there’s a process to do that and it’s something that we’re working through very deliberately, but expeditiously as well,” he said. “And I’ll let that process play out.”

“In my own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia and that’s exactly what I said to Foreign Minister (Sergey) Lavrov when I spoke to him over the weekend and insisted that Evan be released immediately,” Blinken told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “But I want to make sure, as always, because there is a formal process that we go through it and we will and I expect that to be completed soon.”

In what was a rare call with Lavrov since Russia invaded Ukraine early last year, Blinken also urged him to immediately release another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, who had already been determined to have been wrongfully detained.

When the U.S. government formally designates an American as wrongfully detained, it shifts supervision of the person’s case to a specialized State Department section — the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs — that is focused on negotiating for the release of captives.

The designation empowers the government to use a variety of tools, including diplomacy, to secure the release of a captured American rather than simply waiting for a criminal case to make its way through the system.

“From my perspective, from the department’s perspective there is no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens around the world,” Blinken said Wednesday.

Lawyers for Gershkovich, the son of immigrants from the Soviet Union who grew up speaking Russian at home in Princeton, New Jersey, have appealed his arrest. The Journal has adamantly denied the allegations and demanded his release. U.S. officials have also called on Russia to free him, with President Joe Biden telling reporters on Friday that his message to Russia was: “Let him go.”

The FSB, Russia’s top security agency and a successor to the KGB, said Gershkovich was trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory. He is the first U.S. correspondent to be held on spying accusations since the Cold War.

In its summary of Sunday’s phone call, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Lavrov “drew Blinken’s attention to the need to respect the decisions of the Russian authorities” about Gershkovich, who Moscow claims, without evidence, “was caught red-handed.”

The Kremlin said Lavrov also told Blinken it was unacceptable for U.S. officials and Western news media to continue “whipping up excitement” and politicizing the journalist’s detention. “His further fate will be determined by the court,” Lavrov said.

Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, said it was “gratifying” and “reassuring” to learn of Blinken’s call with Lavrov because it shows the U.S. government is taking the case “right up to the top.”

U.S. consular officials have requested a visit with Gershkovich and said they were hopeful consular access could be arranged soon. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday the request is being considered and a decision will be made “taking into account existing consular practice and Russian legislation.” She gave no indication of when a decision would be made.

Lawyers for Gershkovich met with him in a Moscow prison on Tuesday for the first time since his detention. They said “his health is good,” according to The Journal.

Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, noted on Sunday that the government has advised U.S. citizens to leave Russia. “This is not unexpected, in that Russia is acting as an illegal state at this point. There are no laws or rules or no international norms that they are following,” Turner, R-Ohio, told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

In alleging that U.S. officials and news media are hyping Gershkovich’s detention, Russian officials are reprising a theme they used in the apprehensions of basketball star Brittney Griner and other U.S. citizens.

The Kremlin has said it prefers to resolve such cases quietly and has emphasized the need to follow Russia’s judicial process. Often, that means the chance of progress in U.S. efforts to free its detained citizens isn’t likely until formal charges are filed, a trial is held, a conviction is obtained and sentencing and appeals are completed.

Griner, who plays for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was detained in February 2022 but was not classified as wrongfully held by the State Department until early that May. She was released in December in a prisoner swap.

More than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates have written the Russian ambassador in the United States to express concern Russia is sending the message that reporting inside the country is criminalized.

Interactions between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats have been rare since Russia began its war in Ukraine in February 2022, though they did have a brief conversation last month on the sidelines of the Group of 20 conference of foreign ministers in India. It was the highest-level in-person talk between the two countries since the war began.

That interaction was their first contact since last summer, when Blinken talked to Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Griner and Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive. Though Whelan was not included in the one-for-one swap that resulted in the release of Griner, U.S. officials said they remained committed to bringing him home.

Russia has already warned that it would bolster defenses along its border with NATO if the alliance deploys any additional troops or equipment to its new member.

“There will be no NATO troops in Finland without the consent of Finland,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels a few hours before the country joins.

But he refused to rule out the possibility of holding more military exercises there and said that NATO would not allow Russia’s demands to dictate the organization’s decisions.

“We are constantly assessing our posture, our presence. We have more exercises, we have more presence, also in the Nordic area,” he said.

Finland officially became the 31st member of NATO and takes its place among the ranks of the world’s biggest security alliance.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto completed the process by handing over an official document to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at NATO headquarters in Brussels. 

Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Finland applied to join in May, setting aside years of military non-alignment to seek protection under the organization’s security umbrella. Neighboring Sweden also applied, but its accession process may take a few months longer.

Finland shares a 1,340 kilometer (832 mile) border with Russia, so its entry will more than double the size of NATO’s border with Russia. The move is a strategic and political blow to President Vladimir Putin, who has long complained about NATO’s expansion toward Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Finland’s membership reflects the alliance’s anti-Russian course and warned that Moscow will respond depending on what weapons NATO allies place there.

“We will closely monitor what will be going on in Finland and how NATO will use the territory of Finland for the deployment of weapons, equipment and infrastructure next to our border that would potentially threaten us. Measures will be taken dependent on that,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.

But Peskov also sought to play down the impact, noting that Russia has no territorial disputes with Finland.

It’s not clear what additional military resources Russia could send to the Finnish border. Moscow has deployed the bulk of its most capable military units to Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said that once it joins, Finland will benefit from NATO’s “iron-clad security guarantee,” under which all member countries vow to come to the defense of any ally that comes under attack.

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“By (Finland) become a full-fledged member, we are removing the room for miscalculation in Moscow about NATO’s readiness to protect Finland, and that makes Finland safer and stronger, and all of us safer,” Stoltenberg said.

Finland’s entry, to be marked with a flag-raising ceremony at NATO headquarters, falls on the organization’s very own birthday, the 74th anniversary of the signing of its founding Washington Treaty on April 4, 1949. It also coincides with a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers.

Finland’s president, foreign and defense ministers will take part in the ceremony.

Turkey became the last NATO member country to ratify Finland’s membership protocol on Thursday. It will hand over the document officially enshrining that decision to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken before the ceremony.

Finland’s membership becomes official when its own foreign minister hands over documents completing its accession process to Blinken. The U.S. State Department is the repository of NATO texts concerning membership.

Russian officials said Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, was killed Sunday as he was leading a discussion at a cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of St. Petersburg. Over 30 people were wounded by the blast, and 10 of them remain in grave condition, according to the authorities.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee, a state structure that coordinates counterterrorism operations, said that the “terrorist act” against Tatarsky was “planned by Ukrainian special services” with the involvement of people who have cooperated with an anti-corruption foundation created by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. It noted that the arrested suspect was an “active supporter” of Navalny’s group.

Shortly before the announcement, Russia’s Investigative Committee, the top state criminal investigation agency, reported the arrest of Darya Tryopova, a 26-year-old St. Petersburg resident suspected of involvement in the attack. Tryopova had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies.

Investigators believe that the bomb was hidden in a bust of the blogger that the suspect had given to him as a gift just before the explosion.

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According to Russian media reports, Tryopova told investigators that she was used as a carrier to deliver the explosive device, but didn’t know that it was hidden in the bust.

Witnesses said that the suspect asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky during the discussion. One witness said the woman told Tatarsky that she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. They joked and laughed, and then she went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky.

A video showed Tatarsky making jokes about the bust and putting it on the table next to him just before the explosion.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state’s top criminal investigation agency, opened a probe on charges of murder.

No one publicly claimed responsibility, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately blamed Ukraine for the attack and compared the bombing to last August’s assassination of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.

Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.

Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.

Reacting to Tatarsky’s death, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said late Sunday his activities “have won him the hatred of the Kyiv regime” and noted that he and other Russian military bloggers have long faced Ukrainian threats.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian millionaire owner of the Wagner Group military contractor spearheading Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the cafe and handed it over to a patriotic group for meetings. He said he doubts the Ukrainian authorities’ involvement in the bombing, saying the attack was likely launched by a “group of radicals” unrelated to the government in Kyiv.

Since the fighting in Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainian authorities have refrained from claiming responsibility for various fires, explosions and apparent assassinations in Russia. At the same time, officials in Kyiv have jubilantly greeted such events and insisted on Ukraine’s right to launch attacks in Russia.

A top Ukrainian government official cast the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal turmoil.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English on Twitter late Sunday. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

Born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Then he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

Russian officials said Vladlen Tatarsky was killed as he was leading a discussion at the cafe on the bank of the Neva River in the historic heart of St. Petersburg. Some 30 people were wounded in the blast, Russia’s Health Ministry reported.

Russian media and military bloggers said Tatarsky was meeting with members of the public when a woman presented him with a box containing a bust of him that apparently blew up. A patriotic Russian group that organized the event said it had taken security precautions but acknowledged that those measures “proved insufficient.”

In remarks recorded on video, a witness said that a woman who identified herself as Nastya asked questions and exchanged remarks with Tatarsky during the discussion.

The witness, Alisa Smotrova, quoted Nastya as saying she had made a bust of the blogger but that guards asked her to leave it at the door, suspecting it could be a bomb. Nastya and Tatarsky joked and laughed. She then went to the door, grabbed the bust and presented it to Tatarsky.

He reportedly put the bust on a nearby table, and the explosion followed. Smotrova described people running in panic, some hurt by shattered glass and covered in blood.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that a St. Petersburg woman, Darya Tryopova, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the bombing. It said that she had been previously detained for taking part in anti-war rallies.

A video posted on Russian messaging app channels showed the cafe after the explosion. Tables and chairs were broken and stained by blood, and shards of glass littered the floor.

Russian media said investigators were looking at the bust as the possible source of the blast but have not ruled out the possibility that an explosive device was planted in the cafe before the event.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state’s top criminal investigation agency, opened a probe on charges of murder.

No one publicly claimed responsibility, but military bloggers and patriotic commentators immediately pointed a finger at Ukraine and compared the bombing to the killing last August of Darya Dugina, a nationalist TV commentator. She was killed when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.

Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.

Reacting to the latest incident, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tatarsky’s activities “have won him the hatred of the Kyiv regime” and noted that he and other Russian military bloggers long have faced Ukrainian threats.

Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and political theorist who strongly supports the invasion of Ukraine, hailed Tatarsky as an “immortal” hero who died to save the Russian people.

“There must be no talks with the terrorists other than about their unconditional surrender,” Dugin said. “A victory parade must take place in Kyiv.”

Since the fighting in Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainian authorities have refrained from claiming responsibility for various fires, explosions and apparent assassinations in Russia. At the same time, officials in Kyiv have jubilantly greeted such events and insisted on Ukraine’s right to launch attacks in Russia.

A top Ukrainian government official cast the explosion that killed Tatarsky as part of internal turmoil.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote in English on Twitter. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin, who had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

Born in the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Tatarsky worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison. He fled from custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Then he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

Tatarsky was known for his blustery pronouncements and ardent pro-war rhetoric.

After the Kremlin’s annexation of four regions of Ukraine last year that most of the world rejected as illegal, Tatarsky posted a video in which he vowed: “That’s it. We’ll defeat everybody, kill everybody, rob everybody we need to. It will all be the way we like it. God be with you.”

Military bloggers have played an increasingly prominent and influential role in the flow of information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have almost universally championed the goals of the campaign but at times criticize Russian military strategy and tactical decisions.

At the same time, the Kremlin has squelched alternative voices opposing the war by shutting down news outlets, limiting the public’s access to information and jailing critics.

In the call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Blinken conveyed “grave concern” over the Kremlin’s detention of journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage allegations, according to a State Department summary of the call. Blinken called for his immediate release.

Blinken also sought the immediate release of Whelan, whom the statement said was wrongfully detained.

Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless. He is serving a 16-year sentence.

Blinken and Lavrov also discussed “the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work,” according to the State Department.

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The FSB, Russia’s top security agency and successor to the KGB, said Gershkovich was collecting information on an enterprise of the military-industrial complex. Russian authorities detained him last week, the first time a U.S. correspondent has been held on spying accusations since the Cold War.

The Journal has adamantly denied the allegations and demanded his release. U.S. officials have also called on Russia to let him go, with President Joe Biden telling reporters on Friday that his message to the country was “Let him go.”

More than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates have written the Russian ambassador in the United States to express concern Russia is sending the message that reporting inside the country is criminalized.

And on Saturday night, basketball star Brittney Griner, who was detained for 10 months by Russian authorities before being released in a prisoner swap for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, issued a statement with her wife, Cherelle, calling for the release of the 31-year-old Gershkovich.

“Every American who is taken is ours to fight for and every American returned is a win for us all,” the couple said in a statement posted on Instagram.

The players must sign declarations of neutrality and comply with “appropriate conditions,” including not expressing support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This was an incredibly difficult decision, not taken lightly or without a great deal of consideration for those who will be impacted,” All England Club chairman Ian Hewitt said in a statement.

The players cannot receive funding from the Russian or Belarusian states, including sponsorship from companies operated or controlled by the states.

Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Russian players Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev are among the players who can return.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba condemned the reversal as “immoral.”

“Has Russia ceased its aggression or atrocities? No, it’s just that Wimbledon decided to accommodate two accomplices in crime. I call on the UK government to deny visas to their players,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

Other tennis tournaments have allowed Russian and Belarusian players to compete as neutral athletes — their nationalities are not listed in the brackets, official results or graphics on TV broadcasts of matches. But, as in some other team sports, Russia and Belarus were not permitted to participate in the Billie Jean King Cup or Davis Cup by the International Tennis Federation.

“We also consider alignment between the Grand Slams to be increasingly important in the current tennis environment,” the All England Club said.

The same conditions will apply for Lawn Tennis Association tournaments used by players as grass-court warmups for the sport’s oldest Grand Slam tournament.

The women’s and men’s professional tennis tours last year imposed heavy fines on the LTA and threatened to pull its tournaments. The effect of being expelled from the tours, the LTA said, “would be very damaging and far reaching for the game in our country.”

The ATP and WTA had also responded to last year’s ban by not awarding ranking points for Wimbledon — an unprecedented move against the prestigious event.

“There was a strong and very disappointing reaction from some governing bodies in tennis to the position taken by the All England Club and the LTA last year with consequences which, if continued, would be damaging to the interests of players, fans, The Championships and British tennis,” the club said.

This year’s Wimbledon tournament will start on July 3. The women’s final is scheduled for July 15 and the men’s final on July 16.

The All England Club said the conditions were developed through talks with the British government, the LTA and “international stakeholder bodies in tennis.”

The club’s statement described “personal player declarations” but didn’t provide details. The LTA said the players and support staff “will be required to sign neutrality declarations” similar to those used in other sports.

In a joint statement, the ATP and WTA said they were satisfied with the outcome.

“It has taken a collaborative effort across the sport to arrive at a workable solution, which protects the fairness of the game,” the tours said. “This remains an extremely difficult situation, and we would like to thank Wimbledon and the LTA for their efforts in reaching this outcome, while reiterating our unequivocal condemnation of Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

It’s the latest accusation that Russia, desperate for weaponry and restricted by sanctions and export controls, is turning to “rogue” nations to help it continue to prosecute the 13-month-old war.

“As part of this proposed deal, Russia would receive over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions from Pyongyang,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We also understand that Russia is seeking to send a delegation to North Korea and that Russia is offering North Korea food in exchange for munitions.”

The administration has previously declassified intelligence to present evidence that Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia over the summer and that the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has taken delivery of arms from North Korea to help bolster its forces as they fight side-by-side with Russian troops in Ukraine.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that U.S. intelligence suggested China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia, though White House officials have said they have yet to see evidence of Beijing following through with weapons delivery.

The publicizing of Russia’s efforts to get weapons from North Korea is just the latest example of the Biden administration loosening restrictions on intelligence findings and making them public over the course of the grinding war in Ukraine.

The administration has said it has sought to disseminate the intelligence findings so allies and the public remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent and Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks twice about his actions.

Earlier Thursday, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against a Slovakian national, Ashot Mkrtychev, alleging he attempted to facilitate arms deals between Russia and North Korea.

Kirby said Mkrtychev is at the center of the new North Korea-Russia deal, which has yet to be consummated. He added that the U.S. does not have evidence that Mkrtychev was involved in the earlier transfer of weapons to Russia’s Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have been in the center of a monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Between the end of 2022 and early 2023, Treasury said Mkrtychev worked with North Korean officials to obtain over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions for Russia in exchange for commercial aircraft, raw materials and commodities to be sent to North Korea.

Mkrtychev worked with a Russian citizen to find commercial aircraft to delivers goods to North Korea in the exchange.

“Russia has lost over 9,000 pieces of heavy military equipment since the start of the war, and thanks in part to multilateral sanctions and export controls, Putin has become increasingly desperate to replace them,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Schemes like the arms deal pursued by this individual show that Putin is turning to suppliers of last resort like Iran and the DPRK.”

North Korea, an outlier on the global stage, has sought to enhance relations with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine brought an avalanche of sanctions from the West and broad international condemnation.

Any arms deal with Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban North Korea from exporting to or importing weapons from other countries.

North Korea is the only nation aside from Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of Russia-backed separatist territories, Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine.

Evan Gershkovich, 31, was detained in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, about 1,035 miles east of Moscow. Russia’s Federal Security Service accused him of trying to obtain classified information.

Known by the acronym FSB, the service is the top domestic security agency and main successor to the Soviet-era KGB. It alleged that Gershkovich “was acting on instructions from the American side to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex that constitutes a state secret.”

The Journal “vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the newspaper said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”

The arrest comes at a moment of bitter tensions between the West and Moscow over its war in Ukraine and as the Kremlin intensifies a crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and civil society groups.

The sweeping campaign of repression is unprecedented since the Soviet era. Activists say it often means the very profession of journalism is criminalized, along with the activities of ordinary Russians who oppose the war.

Earlier this week, a Russian court convicted a father over social media posts critical of the war and sentenced him to two years in prison. His 13-year-old daughter was sent to an orphanage.

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Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. Daniloff was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s United Nations mission who was arrested by the FBI, also on spying charges.

At a hearing Thursday, a Moscow court quickly ruled that Gershkovich would be kept behind bars pending the investigation.

While previous American detainees have been freed in prisoner swaps, a top Russian official said it was too early to talk about any such deal.

In Washington, the Biden administration said it had spoken with the Journal and Gershkovich’s family. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the arrest “in the strongest terms” and urged Americans to heed government warnings not to travel to Russia.

The State Department was in direct touch with the Russian government and seeking access to Gershkovich, Jean-Pierre said. The administration has no “specific indication” that journalists in Russia are being targeted, she said.

Gershkovich, who covers Russia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations as a correspondent in the Journal’s Moscow bureau, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage. Prominent lawyers noted that past investigations into espionage cases took a year to 18 months, during which time he may have little contact with the outside world.

The FSB noted that Gershkovich had accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist, but ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged that Gershkovich was using his credentials as cover for “activities that have nothing to do with journalism.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It is not about a suspicion, it is about the fact that he was caught red-handed.”

Gershkovich speaks fluent Russian and had previously worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse and The New York Times. He was a 2014 graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, where he was a philosophy major who cooperated with local papers and championed a free press, according to Clayton Rose, the college’s president.

His last report from Moscow, published earlier this week, focused on the Russian economy’s slowdown amid Western sanctions imposed after Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year.

Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian defense attorney who has worked on many espionage and treason cases, said Gershkovich’s case is the first criminal espionage charge against a foreign journalist in post-Soviet Russia.

“That unwritten rule not to touch accredited foreign journalists, has stopped working,” said Pavlov, a member of the First Department legal aid group.

Pavlov said the case against Gershkovich was built to give Russia “trump cards” for a future prisoner exchange and will likely be resolved “not by the means of the law, but by political, diplomatic means.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov ruled out any quick swap.

“I wouldn’t even consider this issue now because people who were previously swapped had already served their sentences,” Ryabkov said, according to Russian news agencies.

In December, WNBA star Brittney Griner was freed after 10 months behind bars in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Another American, Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless.

“Our family is sorry to hear that another American family will have to experience the same trauma that we have had to endure for the past 1,553 days,” Whelan’s brother David said in an emailed statement. “It sounds as though the frame-up of Mr. Gershkovich was the same as it was in Paul’s case.”

Jeanne Cavelier, of the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, said Gershkovich’s arrest “looks like a retaliation measure of Russia against the United States.”

“We are very alarmed because it is probably a way to intimidate all Western journalists that are trying to investigate aspects of the war on the ground in Russia,” said Cavelier, head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at the Paris-based group.

Another prominent lawyer with the First Department group, Yevgeny Smirnov, said that those arrested on espionage and treason charges are usually held at the FSB’s Lefortovo prison, where they are usually placed in total isolation, without phone calls, visitors or even access to newspapers. At most, they can receive letters, often delayed by weeks. Smirnov called these conditions “tools of suppression.”

Smirnov and Pavlov both said that any trial would be held behind closed doors. According to Pavlov, there have been no acquittals in treason and espionage cases in Russia since 1999.

Vadym Guttsait, who is Ukraine’s sports minister and leads the national Olympic committee, was sharply critical of the IOC’s push to reintegrate Russia and its ally Belarus into world sports. Any return, Guttsait said, would highlight the inequality caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“We do not have normal conditions for training and preparation for the Olympic Games. At the same time, the Russians have all the essentials to train and perform inside their country. They sleep at night, but we don’t sleep at night,” he told reporters.

The IOC is expected to set out criteria for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete next week as qualifying events for the Paris Olympics ramp up. The IOC recommended excluding Russia and Belarus on safety grounds soon after the invasion last year but now argues for letting the two countries’ athletes compete as neutrals without national symbols. The IOC says a continued exclusion amounts to discrimination on the basis of citizenship.

IOC president Thomas Bach said Wednesday that it would resist political influence in sports and indicated that next week’s meeting could discuss issues including Russian athletes’ military links. The IOC has said it would seek to bar athletes who have “actively supported” the war but hasn’t said how exactly that process would work. Ukraine is especially concerned about the many Russian athletes who are serving members of the armed forces or who represent military-run sports clubs.

“If there will be very weak criteria, then what was the point of suspending Russia (a year ago), to bring it back now, in the run-up to the Olympic Games?” Guttsait said.

Guttsait reiterated Ukraine’s earlier vow that it could consider boycotting the Paris Olympics in protest, but only as a “last resort” if lobbying efforts fail.

“We want to participate in the Olympic Games, but without Russians and Belarusians,” he said. “Regarding whether we will participate or not, it will be, you know, not going to the Olympic Games that will be considered as a last resort by all our federations and all our athletes. But, of course, we will definitely need to hear the opinion of each of our athletes and each of our federations and make this decision together.”

Guttsait won an Olympic gold medal in fencing — Bach’s old sport — at the 1992 Olympics, where he was a teammate with Stanislav Pozdnyakov, now the Russian Olympic Committee president.

Russia has welcomed efforts to readmit its athletes but has demanded they are allowed to compete under their own flag and national anthem.

The IOC is leaving final decisions on whether to readmit Russians and Belarusians to the federations which govern individual sports. Despite calls from Bach for a unified approach, there is a growing split.

Fencing and judo have both allowed Russians and Belarusians to resume competing this year — though neither country has done so. There were cases last year of Ukrainian athletes boycotting events rather than facing Russians in fencing and judo.

Track and field kept its ban in place for the “foreseeable future” on Thursday. The IOC said in an emailed statement Friday it has “taken note” of that decision and that it was under the “sole authority” of track’s governing body, World Athletics. Ice hockey has barred Russia and Belarus from the 2024 world championships citing security concerns.

Other sports take different approaches.

In tennis, the men’s and women’s tours allow individual Russians and Belarusians to keep playing as neutrals but bar them from national team events like the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup. Ukrainian player Marta Kostyuk has refused to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian opponents and sobbed after beating Russian Varvara Gracheva for a title in Austin this month.

Soccer authorities excluded Russia from qualifying for the men’s and women’s World Cups and from qualifying for the men’s European Championship, which began this week, but allow Belarus to compete at neutral venues without crowds.

The IIHF cited security concerns for players, competition staff and fans — because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to extend the exclusion that will stretch beyond two years when the 2023-24 season is over.

“It is too soon,” IIHF president Luc Tardif said about letting Russia return. “Too many risks.”

The women’s worlds is set to be played in U.S. cities in March or April next year and the men’s event in the Czech Republic is scheduled next May.

Ice hockey is a favorite sport played by both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

The Russian Hockey Federation dismissed the IIHF’s security concerns as a “contrived reason” to keep its teams out of competition.

“It is a decision which is neither constructive, nor beneficial for world hockey,” the federation said in a statement.

The IIHF has followed guidance given by the International Olympic Committee within days of Russia starting the war in February last year to remove Russian teams from international competitions and to find new hosts for events the country was to stage.

However, the IOC is now pushing Olympic sports governing bodies to find ways to include Russian and Belarusian athletes as neutrals in qualifying events for the 2024 Paris Games. The international governing bodies for judo and fencing have said this year that they are prepared to readmit Russian and Belarusian athletes.

The IOC executive board is due to discuss the Russian issue at a meeting next Tuesday in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Tardif, speaking after a decision by the ruling council he chairs, said the IIHF must decide in the next year if Russia and Belarus can take part in the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games.

But it wasn’t a snub.

Russia’s standard protocol for visiting dignitaries calls for them to be welcomed at the airport by a lower-ranking Cabinet official.

Many observers argue that the fighting in Ukraine has made Russia increasingly dependent on China for support as the country becomes isolated from the West.

But Putin didn’t deviate from the script, and the start of Xi’s trip was like that of any visiting leader.

Putin sent Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko to the Russian capital’s Vnukovo airport to meet Xi after he stepped off his Boeing 747.

The Russian president, meanwhile, was far away in central Moscow busy with other commitments before his high-stakes dinner with Xi in the evening.

Putin began his day by making an appearance at a meeting of the Interior Ministry’s top officials. He also addressed a parliamentary conference involving lawmakers from African nations.

Back at the airport, Xi listened as a Russian military band played the national anthems of China and Russia. He then walked past a line of honorary guards accompanied by Chernyshenko.

While Putin didn’t break protocol and pamper Xi with a surprise appearance at the airport, the Russian leader showered his Chinese guest with praise when he greeted him inside the Kremlin before a private dinner.

Facing the Chinese leader across a small table after they shook hands, Putin hailed what he described as China’s “colossal leap forward“ under Xi’s leadership, adding that he feels a bit of envy — a remark that drew a thin smile from Xi.

Xi responded in kind, saying he was sure that Putin would receive strong support in the presidential election next year, even though the Russian leader hasn’t yet declared his intention to run.

They spent about 4 1/2 hours over a seven-course dinner, which included such offerings as a Pacific seafood platter, a sterlet — or small sturgeon — soup, quail and mushroom pancakes and venison roasted in cherry sauce. Putin got out to see Xi off and they shook hands again.

Before the meeting began, Putin described Xi’s visit as a “landmark event” in an article published in China’s top People’s Daily newspaper, saying it offers a “great opportunity for me to meet with my good old friend with whom we enjoy the warmest relationship.” He also wrote in detail about their first meeting in 2010, adding that he and Xi met about 40 times and citing a line from Chinese philosopher Confucius that said: ”Is it not a joy to have friends coming from afar!“

Xi’s visit offers an important political boost to Putin just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader on charges of alleged involvement in abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.

Moscow, which doesn’t recognize the court’s jurisdiction, dismissed the move as “legally null and void,” but it further ramped up the pressure on the Russian leader.

After Monday’s private dinner, Putin and Xi will hold official talks on Tuesday that will also be attended by top officials from both countries. They are expected to issue conclusive statements after the negotiations.

Analysts say that Western sanctions have made Russia increasingly reliant on China.

“This relationship is increasingly asymmetrical — China has much more leverage,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has long studied Russia-China ties.

Gabuev noted that Xi could be expected to maintain strong support for Putin amid mounting Western pressure.

“The reality is that China sees absolutely no upsides in dumping Vladimir Putin, because there will be no incentives or no points earned in the relationship with the U.S.,” he said.

While most observers say that Beijing will be unlikely to offer Moscow military assistance as the U.S. and other Western allies fear, the alliance with Beijing would allow the Russian leader to pursue his course in Ukraine.

“This helps Russia stay defiant against Western sanctions,” tweeted Chris Weafer, CEO and Russian economy analyst at the consulting firm Macro-Advisory. “So long as Russia can trade with China, and other Asian states, it is no danger of running out of money or being forced to concede on the battlefield.”

Xi’s trip — his first abroad since his re-election earlier this month — showed off Beijing’s new diplomatic swagger and gave a political lift to Putin just days after an international arrest warrant was issued for the Kremlin leader on war crimes charges related to Ukraine.

The two major powers have described Xi’s three-day trip as an opportunity to deepen their “no-limits friendship.” China looks to Russia as a source of oil and gas for its energy-hungry economy, and as a partner in standing up to what both see as U.S. aggression, domination of global affairs and unfair punishment for their human rights records.

The two countries, among the five U.N. Security Council’s permanent members, also have held joint military drills, and U.S. officials have picked up indications China is considering supplying Russia with weapons for its fight in Ukraine but have seen no evidence they’ve actually done so.

They smiled and shook hands before sitting down and making brief statements at the start of their meeting in the Kremlin, calling each other “dear friend” and exchanging compliments. Putin congratulated Xi on his re-election and voiced hope for building even stronger ties.

“China has made a colossal leap ahead in its development in recent years,” Putin said, adding that “it’s causing genuine interest all around the world, and we even feel a bit envious,” as Xi smiled.

He welcomed China’s proposals for a political settlement in Ukraine and noted Russia is open for talks.

“We will discuss all those issues, including your initiative that we highly respect,” Putin said. “Our cooperation in the international arena undoubtedly helps strengthen the basic principles of the global order and multipolarity.”

Moscow and Beijing share a cause: Both countries have accused Washington of trying to isolate them and hold back their development as they challenge it for regional and global leadership.

In an increasingly multipolar world, the U.S. and its allies have been unable to build a broad front against Putin. While 141 countries condemned Moscow in a United Nations vote marking the first anniversary of Russian troops rolling into Ukraine, several members of the G-20 — including India, China and South Africa — abstained. As well, many African nations have refrained from openly criticizing Russia.

“We hope that the strategic partnership between China and Russia will on the one hand uphold international fairness and justice, and on the other hand promote the common prosperity and development of our countries,” Xi said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that over dinner, Putin will likely offer Xi a “detailed explanation” of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Broader talks involving both countries’ officials on a range of subjects are scheduled Tuesday, he added.

For Putin, Xi’s presence is a prestigious, diplomatic boost to show partnership in the face of Western efforts to isolate Russia over Ukraine.

In an article published in the Chinese People’s Daily newspaper, Putin described Xi’s visit as a “landmark event” that “reaffirms the special nature of the Russia-China partnership.”

Putin also specifically said the meeting sent a message to Washington that the two countries aren’t prepared to accept attempts to weaken them.

“The U.S. policy of simultaneously deterring Russia and China, as well as all those who do not bend to the American diktat, is getting ever fiercer and more aggressive,” he wrote.

Xi’s trip came after the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced Friday it wants to put Putin on trial for the abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.

China portrays Xi’s visit as part of normal diplomatic exchanges and has offered little detail about what the trip aims to accomplish, though Ukraine cast a long shadow on the talks.

At a daily briefing in Beijing on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China “will uphold its objective and fair position on the Ukrainian crisis and play a constructive role in promoting peace talks,” he said. Xi didn’t directly mention the Ukraine fighting or his peace plan when he sat down for the talks with Putin on Monday.

Beijing’s leap into Ukraine issues follows its recent success in brokering talks between Iran and its chief Middle Eastern rival, Saudi Arabia, which agreed to restore their diplomatic ties after years of tensions.

Following that success, Xi called for China to play a bigger role in managing global affairs.

Although they boast of a “no-limits” partnership, Beijing has conducted a China First policy. It has shrunk from supplying Russia’s military — a move that could worsen relations with Washington and turn important European trade partners against Beijing. On the other hand, it has refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression and criticized Western sanctions against Moscow, while accusing NATO and the United States of provoking Putin’s military action.

Western pressure has made Russia increasingly reliant on Beijing, observers said.

Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, noted that Beijing is aiming at “getting Russia as a junior partner deeper into China pocket.”

Dmitry Oreshkin, professor at Free University in Riga, observed that Beijing stands to benefit from tensions between Moscow and the West by getting cheap Russian energy resources. “It’s very convenient for China, which couldn’t get such a discount before,” he said.

China last month called for a cease-fire and peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautiously welcomed Beijing’s involvement, but the overture fizzled.

The Kremlin has welcomed China’s peace plan, while U,S, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that any proposal that left Russian forces in place in Ukraine would merely let Moscow re-equip and otherwise regain strength to resume its offensive.

“Calling for a cease-fire that does not include the removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory would effectively be supporting the ratification of Russian conquest,” he told reporters in Washington. “The world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war on its own terms.”

Kyiv officials say they won’t bend in their terms for a peace accord.

“The first and main point is the capitulation or withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops from the territory of Ukraine in accordance with the norms of international law and the UN Charter,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted on Monday.

That means restoring “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” he wrote.

Ukraine’s allies, meanwhile, are stepping up their support. The State Department announced Monday that the U.S. will send Ukraine $350 million in weapons and equipment. The latest package of aid includes ammunition, such as rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, fuel tanker trucks and riverine boats.

The Kremlin doesn’t recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court and has rejected its move against Putin as “legally null and void.” China, the U.S. and Ukraine also don’t recognize the ICC, but the court’s announcement tarnished Putin’s international standing.

China’s Foreign Ministry called on the ICC to “respect the jurisdictional immunity” of a head of state and “avoid politicization and double standards.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee said Monday it is opening a criminal case against a prosecutor and three judges of the ICC over the arrest warrants issued for Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The committee called the ICC’s prosecution “unlawful” because it was, among other things, a “criminal prosecution of a knowingly innocent person.”

Mariupol became a worldwide symbol of defiance after outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces held out in a steel mill there for nearly three months before Moscow finally took control of it in May.

Earlier, on Saturday, Putin traveled to Crimea, a short distance southwest of Mariupol, to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine.

The visits came days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader accusing him of war crimes.

Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter and then drove himself around the city’s “memorial sites,” concert hall and coastline, the Russian reports said, without specifying exactly when the visit took place. They said Putin also met with local residents in the city’s Nevskyi district.

Speaking to the state RIA agency Sunday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnulin made clear that Russia was in Mariupol to stay. He said the government hoped to finish the reconstruction of its blasted downtown by the end of the year.

“People have started to return. When they saw that reconstruction is under way, people started actively returning,” Khusnulin told RIA.

When Moscow fully captured the city in May, an estimated 100,000 people remained out of a prewar population of 450,000. Many were trapped without food, water, heat or electricity. Relentless bombardment left rows upon rows of shattered or hollowed-out buildings.

Mariupol’s plight first came into focus with a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9 last year, less than two weeks after Russian troops moved into Ukraine. A week later, about 300 people were reported killed in the bombing of a theater that was serving as the city’s largest bomb shelter. Evidence obtained by the AP last spring suggested that the real death toll could be closer to 600.

A small group of Ukrainian fighters held out for 83 days in the sprawling Azovstal steel works in eastern Mariupol before surrendering, their dogged defense tying down Russian forces and coming to symbolize Ukrainian tenacity in the face of Moscow’s aggression.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal, and moved on last September to officially claim four regions in Ukraine’s south and east as Russian territory, following referendums that Kyiv and the West described as a sham.

Ukraine was attacked by 16 Russian drones on Friday night, the Ukrainian Air Force said in the early hours of Saturday. Writing on Telegram, the air force command said that 11 out of 16 drones were shot down “in the central, western and eastern regions.” Among areas targeted were the capital, Kyiv, and the western Lviv province.

The head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down all drones heading for the Ukrainian capital, while Lviv regional Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said Saturday that three of six drones were shot down, with the other three hitting a district bordering Poland. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the attacks were carried out from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov and Russia’s Bryansk province, which borders Ukraine.

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The Ukrainian military additionally said in its regular update Saturday morning that Russian forces over the previous 24 hours launched 34 airstrikes, one missile strike and 57 rounds of anti-aircraft fire. The Facebook update said that falling debris hit the southern Kherson province, damaging seven houses and a kindergarten.

According to the Ukrainian statement, Russia is continuing to concentrate its efforts on offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks on Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka and Shakhtarsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province. Pavlo Kyrylenko, regional Gov. of the Donetsk province, said one person was killed and three wounded when 11 towns and villages in the province were shelled on Friday.

Further west, Russian rockets hit a residential area overnight Friday in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital of the partially occupied province of the same name. No casualties were reported, but houses were damaged and a catering establishment destroyed, Anatoliy Kurtev of the Zaporizhzhia City Council said.

The International Criminal Court said Friday that it has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine, together with Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

It is the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The move was immediately dismissed by Moscow — and welcomed by Ukraine as a major breakthrough.

Its practical implications, however, could be limited as the chances of Putin facing trial at the ICC are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.

U.K. military officials said Saturday that Russia is likely to widen conscription. In its latest intelligence update, the U.K. defense ministry said that deputies in the Russian Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, introduced a bill Monday to change the conscription age for men to 21-30, from the current 18-27.

The ministry said that, at the moment, many men aged 18-21 claim exemption from military service because they are in higher education. The change would mean that they would eventually still have to serve. It said the law will likely be passed and come into force in January 2024.

The U.S. military said it ditched the Air Force MQ-9 Reaper in the Black Sea on Tuesday after a pair of Russian fighter jets dumped fuel on the surveillance drone and then one of them struck its propeller while it was flying in international airspace. Moscow has denied that its warplanes hit the drone, alleging that it crashed while making a sharp maneuver. It said that its warplanes reacted to a violation of a no-flight zone Russia has established in the area near Crimea amid the fighting in Ukraine.

On Friday, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu lauded the pilots for preventing the drone from flying into the area that Moscow has banned for flights. The Defense Ministry said the ban was “in line with international norms.”

Moscow’s announcement comes a day after the U.S. military released a declassified 42-second color footage showing a Russian Su-27 fighter jet approaching the back of the U.S. drone and releasing fuel as it passes in what appeared to be aimed at blinding the drone’s optical instruments to drive it from the area.

On a second approach, either the same jet or another Russian Su-27 that had been shadowing the MQ-9 struck the drone’s propeller, damaging a blade, according to the U.S. military, which said it then ditched the aircraft in the sea. The video excerpt does not show the collision, although it does show the damage to the propeller.

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The top U.S. and Russian defense and military leaders spoke Wednesday about the destruction of the drone, underscoring the event’s seriousness. The calls between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russian General Staff, were the first since October.

While calling out Russia for “reckless” action, the White House also tried to avoid exacerbating tensions. U.S. officials emphasized that they have not been able to determine whether the Russian pilot intentionally struck the American drone and stressed that lines of communication with Moscow remain open.

Russian officials also emphasized the need to maintain lines of communication, but they harshly denounced the U.S. action as arrogant disregard of Moscow’s no-flight zone.

“This is a clear sign that Russia will keep downing the American drones,” pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov wrote in a commentary on the award announcement. “This decision will receive strong support from the Russian society that wants the government to toughen its policy.”

Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about U.S. intelligence flights close to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 amid strong international condemnation. The Kremlin has charged the U.S. and its allies of effectively becoming engaged in the conflict by providing weapons and sharing intelligence with Kyiv.

Some Russian officials charged that the U.S. surveillance flights helped gather intelligence that allowed Ukraine to strike Russian targets.

The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, on similar allegations.

The court’s president, Piotr Hofmanski, said in a video statement that while the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them. The court has no police force of its own to enforce warrants.

“The ICC is doing its part of work as a court of law. The judges issued arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation.”

A possible trial of any Russians at the ICC remains a long way off, as Moscow does recognize the court’s jurisdiction — a position reaffirmed earlier this week by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov — and does not extradite its nationals.

Ukraine also is not a member of the court, but it has granted the ICC jurisdiction over its territory and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited four times since opening an investigation a year ago.

The ICC said that its pre-trial chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.”

The court statement said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts.”

On Thursday, a U.N.-backed inquiry cited Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, among potential issues that amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The sweeping investigation also found crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who were prevented from reuniting with their families, a “filtration” system aimed at singling out Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions.

But on Friday, the ICC put the face of Putin on the child abduction allegations.

___

Casert reported from Brussels.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is expected to dominate Putin and Xi’s discussions. China has refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression and sought to project itself as neutral in the conflict even while Beijing declared last year that it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia.

Both China and Russia announced Xi’s trip to Moscow on Friday. The visit offers a diplomatic shot in the arm for Putin as Western leaders have sought to isolate him over the war, which is now in its 13th month.

China’s refusal to condemn Russia while denouncing Western sanctions and accusing NATO and the United States of provoking Putin’s military action has irked Washington as it competes with Beijing for influence.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin and Xi would have a one-on-one meeting over an informal dinner Monday. Broader talks involving officials from both countries are scheduled for Tuesday. Peskov would not provide details about the discussions.

During the war in Ukraine, China has said the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected. However, it remains unclear whether its position is intended to position China as a neutral peacemaker or suggests Beijing sympathizes with Moscow’s claims to seized Ukrainian territory.

On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang reached out to his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, telling him that Beijing was concerned about the war spinning out of control and urging talks on a political solution with Moscow.

China has “always upheld an objective and fair stance on the Ukraine issue, has committed itself to promoting peace and advancing negotiations and calls on the international community to create conditions for peace talks,” Qin said.

Kuleba later tweeted that he and Qin “discussed the significance of the principle of territorial integrity.” Ukraine has listed Russia’s withdrawal from the occupied areas as the main condition for peace, and China has its own territorial integrity issues with Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary.

“I underscored the importance of (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s)’s peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” wrote Kuleba, who spoke the same day with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Beijing’s apparent deeper dive into Ukraine issues follows its success last week in brokering talks between Iran and its chief Middle Eastern rival, Saudi Arabia. Those two countries agreed to restore their diplomatic ties after years of tensions.

The agreement cast China in a leading role in Middle Eastern politics, a part previously reserved for longtime global heavyweights like the U.S.

On the back of that, Xi called for China to play a bigger role in managing global affairs.

Washington has marshaled Western military and diplomatic efforts against Putin, but the Russian leader has showed no signs of softening his belligerent stance.

The destruction of a U.S. drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday following an encounter with Russian fighter jets further escalated U.S.-Russia tensions, although it also prompted the first conversations between the countries’ defense and military chiefs since October.

China last month called for a Ukraine cease-fire and peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow. Zelenskyy cautiously welcomed Beijing’s involvement but the overture appeared to go no further.

Putin invited Xi to visit Russia during a video conference call the two held in late December. The visit, Putin said, could “demonstrate to the whole world the strength of the Russian-Chinese ties” and “become the main political event of the year in bilateral relations.”

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday that Xi “will have an in-depth exchange of views with President Putin on bilateral relations and major international and regional issues of common concern, promote strategic cooperation and practical cooperation between the two countries, and inject new impetus into the development of bilateral relations.”

“Currently, the world is entering a new period of turbulences and reform with the accelerated evolution of changes of the century. As permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and important major countries, the significance and impact of the China-Russia relations go far beyond the bilateral sphere,” he added.

The Kremlin on Friday also announced Xi’s visit, saying it would take place “at the invitation of Vladimir Putin.”

Xi and Putin will discuss “issues of further development of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China,” as well as exchange views “in the context of deepening Russian-Chinese cooperation in the international arena,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

The two leaders will also sign “important bilateral documents,” the statement read.

The 42-second video shows a Russian Su-27 approaching the back of the MQ-9 Reaper drone and beginning to release fuel as it passes, the Pentagon said. Dumping the fuel appeared to be aimed at blinding its optical instruments and driving it out of the area.’

On a second approach, either the same jet or another Russian fighter that had been shadowing the MQ-9 struck the drone’s propeller, damaging one blade, according to the U.S. military. The U.S. military said it ditched the MQ-9 Reaper in the sea Tuesday.

The video excerpt released by the Pentagon does not show events before or after the apparent fuel-dumping confrontation and does not show the Russian warplane striking the drone.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said the Russian jets flew around and in front of the drone several times for 30 to 40 minutes, before colliding with the unmanned aerial vehicle. They said Thursday’s declassified video had been edited for length, “however, the events are depicted in sequential order.”

Russia said its fighters didn’t strike the drone and claimed the unmanned aerial vehicle went down after making a sharp maneuver.

Asked Thursday if Russia would try to recover the drone debris, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the decision was up to the military. “If they consider it necessary to do so in the Black Sea for the benefit of our interests and our security, they will do it,” he said. Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said Wednesday that an attempt would be made.

U.S. officials have expressed confidence that nothing of military value would remain from the drone even if Russia managed to retrieve the wreckage. They left open the possibility of trying to recover portions of the downed $32 million aircraft, which they said crashed into waters that were 4,000 to 5,000 feet (1,200 to 1,500 meters) deep, although the U.S. does not have any ships in the area.

Russia and NATO member countries routinely intercept each other’s warplanes, but the drone incident marked the first time since the Cold War that a U.S. aircraft went down during such a confrontation, raising concerns it could bring the United States and Russia closer to a direct conflict.

Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about U.S. intelligence flights near the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 and illegally annexed.

The top U.S. and Russian defense and military leaders spoke Wednesday about the destruction of the drone, underscoring the event’s seriousness.

The calls between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, as well as between Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russian General Staff, were the first since October.

Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence tell NBC News the aggressive actions by the Russian military fighter jets were approved at the highest levels of the Kremlin.

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Russian Warplane Hits American Drone Over Black Sea, US Says

The Russian Defense Ministry said in its report of the call with Austin that Shoigu accused the U.S. of provoking the incident by ignoring flight restrictions the Kremlin had imposed because of its military operations in Ukraine.

The Kremlin argues that by providing weapons to Ukraine and sharing intelligence information with Kyiv, the U.S. and its allies have effectively become engaged in the war, now in its 13th month.

Such U.S. actions “are fraught with escalation of the situation in the Black Sea area,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, warning that Moscow “will respond in kind to all provocations.”

The MQ-9, which has a 66-foot (20-meter) wingspan, includes a ground control station and satellite equipment. It is capable of carrying munitions, but Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, would not say whether the ditched drone had been armed.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the incident occurred at 7:03 a.m. Central European time (0603 GMT; 2:03 a.m. EST) over international waters, and well clear of Ukraine, after the Russian jets had flown in the vicinity of the drone for 30 to 40 minutes.

There did not appear to be any communications between the aircraft before the collision, Ryder added.

The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities. 

It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.

For more on this story, go to NBC News

U.S. and Russian officials had conflicting accounts of the collision between the MQ-9 Reaper drone and the Russian Su-27 fighter jet — each blaming the other. But a Pentagon spokesman raised the possibility that the Defense Department could eventually declassify and release video it has of the collision.

Defense officials said the drone has not been recovered. But the Pentagon declined to say whether any effort was underway to gather debris or pieces of the Reaper.

Here’s what’s known — and uncertain — about the crash.

What the US Says Happened

The Pentagon and U.S. European Command said that two Russian Su-27 aircraft dumped fuel on the MQ-9, which was conducting a routine surveillance mission over the Black Sea in international airspace. They said the Russian jets flew around and in front of the drone several times for 30 to 40 minutes, and then one of the Russian aircraft “struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters.”

Air Force Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Africa, said that the Russian jet’s actions “nearly caused both aircraft to crash.” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the collision likely also damaged the Russian fighter jet, but the Su-27 was able to land. He would not say where it landed.

The Pentagon said the drone was “well clear” of any Ukrainian territory, but did not provide details. A U.S. defense official said it was operating west of Crimea over the Black Sea. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide mission details.

It’s not clear if the collision was an accident or intentional, but both sides agree the Russian aircraft were trying to intercept the drone.

What Russia Says Happened

The Russian Defense Ministry said the U.S. drone was flying near the Russian border and intruded in an area that was declared off limits by Russian authorities. It said that the Russian military scrambled fighters to intercept the U.S. drone. It claimed that “as a result of sharp maneuver, the U.S. drone went into uncontrollable flight with a loss of altitude and collided with water surface.”

Russia has declared broad areas near Crimea off limits to flights. Ever since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and long before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Moscow has charged that U.S. surveillance planes were flying too close to its borders while ignoring the notices issued by Russia.

Nations routinely operate in international airspace and waters, and no country can claim limits on territory outside of its own border.

The ministry said the Russian aircraft were scrambled to intercept the drone but did not use weapons on it or impact it.

What Is an MQ-9 Reaper?

The MQ-9 Reaper is a large unmanned Air Force aircraft that is remotely operated by a two-person team. It includes a ground control station and satellite equipment and has a 66-foot wingspan. The team includes a rated pilot who is responsible for flying the aircraft and an enlisted aircrew member who is charged with operating the sensors and guiding weapons.

Used routinely during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for surveillance and airstrikes, the Reaper can be either armed or unarmed. It can carry up to eight laser-guided missiles, including Hellfire missiles and other sophisticated munitions, and can loiter over targets for about 24 hours. It is about 36 feet long, 12 feet high, and weighs about 4,900 pounds. It can fly at an altitude of up to 50,000 feet and has a range of about 1,400 nautical miles.

The Reaper, which first began operating in 2007, replaced the Air Force’s smaller Predator drones. Each Reaper costs about $32 million.

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Diplomatic Dust-Up

The collision triggered a diplomatic protest.

The U.S. State Department summoned Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to a meeting Tuesday with Karen Donfried, the assistant secretary of state for Europe.

“We are engaging directly with the Russians, again at senior levels, to convey our strong objections to this unsafe, unprofessional intercept, which caused the downing of the unmanned U.S. aircraft,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.

And White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. will be “expressing our concerns over this unsafe and unprofessional intercept.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had not talked to his Russian counterpart regarding the incident, Ryder said.

Has It Happened Before?

It’s not the first time Russian aircraft have flown so close to U.S. aircraft in the Black Sea that it’s prompted the Pentagon to publicly condemn the incident for putting the crews at risk. In 2020, Russian jets crossed in front of a B-52 bomber that was flying over the Black Sea, and flew as close as 100 feet in front of the bomber’s nose, causing turbulence.

Russian jets have also buzzed U.S. warships during exercises in the Black Sea. In 2021, Russian warplanes buzzed the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, which had been taking part in a major exercise. Until Russia’s invasion last year of Ukraine, U.S. warships had established more frequent deployments to the Black Sea in response to Russia’s 2014 attack on Crimea.

The Homeland Security Department said the extension is for certain Ukrainian nationals and their immediate family members who were let into the U.S. before the Uniting for Ukraine program started.

Ukrainians who came in under the Uniting for Ukraine program generally got two years of humanitarian “parole” in the U.S. whereas those who arrived before them generally got permission to stay only for one year.

Thousands of Ukrainians came to America last year fleeing the war.

The U.S. government used a program called humanitarian parole to admit them into the country. That program is a way to allow people from other countries to enter the United States on an emergency basis due to an urgent humanitarian situation. But it is usually for a finite amount of time, like a year or two years, and must be renewed for people to stay longer.

In recent years, humanitarian parole has been employed as a quick fix to deal with the fallout from the many world crises that have occurred as the U.S. refugee system that was dismantled by the previous administration was being built back up.

Now numerous groups are seeing their permission to remain in the United States expiring in coming months, including tens of thousands of Afghans.

That has led to intense anxiety for thousands of people who fled war in their homeland and don’t know whether they’ll be kicked out of the U.S. when their humanitarian parole status expires. The uncertainty can also be difficult for the businesses that employ them and need to make sure their employees are properly authorized to remain in the country.

Ukraine and immigration have both been hot button topics among Republican politicians who aren’t enthusiastic about continuing aid to the war and have accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to control migration at the southern border. But even in that toxic political environment, there’s been little movement to force Ukrainians to return home, reflecting widespread acceptance that it’s still too dangerous for them there.