Admiral Viktor Sokolov was killed in an attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet on Friday, Ukrainian special forces have said. Got a question on the Ukraine war? Submit it below and one of our correspondents and military analysts will answer a selection.
Monday 25 September 2023 21:35, UK
Russian air defence units shot down seven Ukrainian drones over southern Belgorod region on Monday, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
According to Mr Gladkov, there were no casualties.
Russia’s Defence Ministry later said Russian forces had destroyed two drones over Kursk region.
No details of the attack were provided.
Both the Belgorod and Kursk regions border Ukraine.
The air raid alert over Sevastopol has been lifted after Russian forces repelled an attack on the Crimean port of downing one missile, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, has said on Telegram.
Mr Razvozhayev, citing preliminary data, said Russian air defence units downed a missile near the Belbek military airfield.
Traffic on the main bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, had been stopped but is now running again, according to reports.
The Kremlin says it is closely monitoring what it called a “potentially dangerous” situation in Kosovo, after ethnic Serb gunmen stormed a village at the weekend, battling police and barricading themselves into a monastery.
Russia does not recognise Kosovo, which has a majority ethnic Albanian population, as an independent country and traditionally supports Serbia, with which it has close religious and cultural ties.
“The situation is extremely difficult. On Kosovo, we see a traditionally biased attitude towards the Serbs… The situation is very, very tense and potentially dangerous, we are monitoring it very closely,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Kosovo police units retook the monastery late on Sunday after three attackers and one police officer were killed.
They were securing the village in northern Kosovo on Monday. Ethnic Albanians form the vast majority of the 1.8 million population of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia.
But some 50,000 Serbs in the north have never accepted Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and still see Belgrade as their capital.
Justin Trudeau has described the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a former member of the Waffen SS as “extremely upsetting”.
“This is something that is deeply embarrassing to the Parliament of Canada and by extension to all Canadians,” the prime minister told reporters today.
The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, Anthony Rota, had introduced Yaroslav Hunka as “a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” and “a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero”.
During the Second World War, when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, some Ukrainian nationalists joined Nazi units because they saw the Germans as liberators from Soviet oppression.
Now 98, Hunka served as a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, according to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.
The Russian-installed governor of Crimea’s Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, has announced an air alert in the city.
Traffic on the main bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has been temporarily suspended, the operator of the bridge said.
Mr Razvozhayev later said the Russian military was repelling a missile attack on the port city.
“According to preliminary data, the air defence forces shot down one missile near the Belbek airfield,” he wrote on Telegram.
On Friday, at least one Ukrainian missile struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea navy in Sevastopol in an attack that is believed to have claimed the life of the fleet’s commander, Admiral Viktor Sokolov.
Sergei Lavrov has accused NATO of engaging in “dangerous expansionism” by creating “mini alliances” in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Russian foreign minister said attempts to “extend NATO’s area of responsibility to the entire Eastern Hemisphere under the pernicious slogan of ‘indivisible security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific region’ has become a new dangerous manifestation of the bloc’s expansionism.”
He added: “To this end, Washington is creating subordinate military-political mini alliances such as AUKUS, the US-Japan-Korea trilateral summit, and the Tokyo-Seoul-Canberra-Wellington Quartet, pushing their members into practical cooperation with NATO.
“It is obvious that these efforts are targeting Russia & China, as well as the collapse of the inclusive regional architecture of ASEAN, and generate risks for a new hotbed of geopolitical tension.”
Security and defence analyst Professor Michael Clarke explains the toll the war has taken on Russia’s Black Sea fleet after reports its commander has been killed in a Ukrainian attack…
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Ukrainian troops would need around three months to learn how to operate Germany’s Taurus long-range missiles, according to the weapons manufacturer MBDA.
The German government has so far refused to provide Kyiv with the projectiles, which have a range of more than 300 miles, despite requests from Ukraine and politicians in Germany.
Any potential transfer of these missiles to Kyiv would be further delayed by the necessity to program their targeting on Ukrainian territory, Bild reports.
Since Berlin is unlikely to send its own personnel to Ukraine for political reasons, it makes the speedy delivery of Taurus missiles even less likely, the paper claimed.
Ramzan Kadyrov says he’s proud of his teenage son for beating up a prisoner accused of burning the Koran.
Kadyrov posted the comments on Telegram, accompanied by a clip in which a young man in khaki clothing is seen punching and kicking another man before wrestling him to the floor and slapping him on the head.
The Chechen leader, and close ally of Vladimir Putin, said he was releasing the video to settle any doubts about whether the incident, first reported last month, had really taken place.
“He beat him, and he did the right thing,” Kadyrov said.
“Without exaggeration, yes, I am proud of Adam’s action,” he said, adding that he respected the boy for acquiring “adult ideals of honour, dignity and defence of his religion”.
The prisoner, Nikita Zhuravel, had complained about the attack to Russia’s human rights ombudswoman, who said last month she had referred the issue to her counterpart in Chechnya.
Kadyrov, 46, has ruled Chechnya since 2007, following in the footsteps of his father Akhmat who was killed in a bomb blast in 2004.
He has been giving increasing publicity to his three teenage sons, whom he said last year he was sending off to fight for Russia in the Ukraine war.
The extent of their actual involvement in any combat action is not clear.
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