Putin apologises over Azerbaijan Airlines crash as Kremlin says Russian forces were repelling Ukrainian attack at the time – live | Ukraine

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has mentioned he expressed condolences to Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev concerning the Azeri airplane that crashed in Kazakhstan.

He posted on X:

The important thing precedence now’s a radical investigation to supply solutions to all questions on what actually occurred.

Russia should present clear explanations and cease spreading disinformation.

We’re getting extra from Reuters on the dialog between Putin and Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan.

In an announcement, the Kremlin mentioned:

(President) Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and as soon as once more expressed his deep and honest condolences to the households of the victims and wished a speedy restoration to the injured.

It was famous within the dialog that the Azerbaijani passenger plane, which was travelling in keeping with its schedule, repeatedly tried to land at Grozny airport. At the moment, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz have been being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial automobiles, and Russian air protection methods repelled these assaults.

Aliyev instructed Putin the passenger airplane was subjected to extraneous bodily and technical intereference in Russian airspace, fully misplaced management and was diverted to Aktau, Reuters provides.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, for what the Kremlin mentioned was a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the Azerbaijan Airways airplane that crashed in Kazakhstan on 25 December.

The Kremlin mentioned because the plane tried to land in Grozny, Ukrainian drones have been attacking Russia and Russian air defence forces repelled the assaults.

“Throughout this time, Grozny, (the city of) Mozdok and Vladikavkaz have been being attacked by Ukrainian fight drones and Russian air defence was repelling these assaults,” the Kremlin mentioned Putin instructed Aliyev, with out saying that Russian air defence hit the airplane.

Italian police mentioned on Saturday that they have been investigating cyberattacks claimed by a pro-Russian group concentrating on a number of web sites together with Milan’s airports and the international ministry.

The web sites of the ministry, Malpensa and Milan-Linate airport, and the transport methods in Siena and Turin have been hit, in keeping with nationwide cybersecurity police spokesman Marco Valerio Cervellini, Reuters experiences.

The professional-Russian hacker group NoName057(16) claimed duty for the assaults in a Telegram publish, Cervellini mentioned on LinkedIn.

The group is thought for concentrating on public establishments and strategic sectors in Nato nations which have supported Ukraine in its battle in opposition to the Russian invasion.

Ukraine mentioned on Saturday it had struck a storage and upkeep depot for long-range Shahed drones in Russia’s Oryol area, including that this had “considerably lowered” Russia’s capacity to launch mass drone assaults on Ukraine.

Ukraine navy’s basic employees mentioned in an announcement on Telegram the assault passed off on Thursday and was carried out by Ukraine’s air pressure.

The assertion mentioned:

On account of the strike, a depot for storage, upkeep and restore of Shahed kamikaze drones, fabricated from a number of protected concrete constructions, was destroyed.

This navy operation has considerably lowered the enemy’s potential when it comes to conducting air raids of strike drones on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

Moscow has not made any touch upon the assault.

Ukraine’s air pressure mentioned earlier on Saturday it had downed 15 out of 16 drones launched by Russia in a single day, with the opposite one disappearing from radars.

Common flights between Ashgabat and Moscow are to be suspended for a month from 30 December after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed in Kazakhstan, the state-run Tass information company reported on Saturday citing Turkmenistan’s nationwide air service.

A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airways, which had been as a consequence of land in Russia, crashed close to town of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday killing 38 folks.

The airplane was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the Russian metropolis of Grozny in Chechnya when it crashed in a field near Aktau, a whole bunch of miles off its deliberate route. Twenty-nine folks survived.

Germany mentioned on Saturday the suspected sabotage of an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia this week was a “wake-up name” that demanded new EU sanctions in opposition to Russia’s “shadow fleet”, Agence France-Presse experiences.

The Estlink 2 cable that carries electrical energy from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid on Wednesday, simply over a month after two telecommunications cables have been severed in Swedish territorial waters within the Baltic.

In an announcement to the Funke media group, German international minister Annalena Baerbock mentioned:

Virtually each month, ships are damaging main undersea cables within the Baltic Sea.

Crews are leaving anchors within the water, dragging them for kilometres alongside the seafloor for no obvious cause, after which shedding them when pulling them up.

It’s greater than troublesome to nonetheless consider in coincidences. That is an pressing wake-up name for all of us.

Baerbock urged “new European sanctions in opposition to the Russian shadow fleet”, ships that transport Russian crude and oil merchandise regardless of embargoes imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The fleet is “a serious menace to the environment and safety” that’s utilized by Russia “to finance its battle of aggression in Ukraine”, she mentioned.

Finnish authorities mentioned on Thursday they have been investigating the oil tanker, Eagle S, that sailed from a Russian port, as a part of a probe into “aggravated sabotage” of the Estlink cable.

Nato will bolster its navy presence within the Baltic Sea in response, the Western alliance’s secretary basic, Mark Rutte, mentioned on Friday.

Oleksandr Mykhed

Can Europe swap to a ‘wartime mindset’? Take it from us in Ukraine: here’s what which means

Day 1,024 of the invasion. Kyiv, 7am. Friday the thirteenth. In a former life, somebody would have noticed that this can be a day that portends dangerous luck. However in a rustic the place shelling is a each day prevalence, it has develop into irrelevant. I get up to the sound of an app on my cellphone warning me of an elevated missile menace. Whereas my companion and I are hiding within the hall, I learn the information that the Nato chief, Mark Rutte, has known as on members of the US-led transatlantic alliance to “shift to a wartime mindset”.

With the primary bang of the air defence system, a thought strikes me: for individuals who haven’t already been residing with it for practically three years, how would you clarify this mindset? What is that this wartime pondering?

Let’s begin with the fundamentals. Attempt to settle for the thesis that Russia is your enemy. All the pieces Russian is your enemy. I do know that is difficult. However Russia has been utilizing actually every part as an instrument of hybrid warfare: sports activities, ballet, classical music, literature, artwork – these are all platforms for selling its narratives. Even your neatest Russian Orthodox church may conceal Russian intelligence officers, simply ready for the command to place down their incense burners and take up arms. Don’t neglect that for advocates of the political doctrine often called “the Russian world”, this world is probably limitless; it exists wherever the Russian language is spoken and monuments to Pushkin have been plonked down.

Learn the total report here.

Charlotte Higgins

On 8 March 2023, Worldwide Ladies’s Day, Russian troopers have been handing out tulips and boughs of mimosa to ladies and ladies within the metropolis of Melitopol, southern Ukraine – a transfer designed to advertise pleasant relations between the occupiers and the inhabitants.

However the night time earlier than, somebody had been discreetly sticking posters to partitions and lamp-posts. They bore the picture of a younger Ukrainian lady, wearing a standard embroidered shirt, smashing a bouquet over a Russian soldier’s head. “I don’t need flowers,” learn the slogan. “I would like my Ukraine.”

This was one of many earliest acts of a ladies’s resistance motion in Russian-occupied Ukraine that claims a whole bunch of members, from Crimea within the south to the Luhansk area within the east.

The motion known as Zla Mavka, which, when roughly translated, means “depraved forest spirit”. The mavky of Ukrainian mythology are feminine supernatural beings who tempt males to their doom.

Learn the total report here.

Good day and welcome to the Ukraine dwell weblog. We begin with information that Russia’s Federal Safety Service (FSB) says it has foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian battle blogger with a bomb hidden in a transportable music speaker.

In line with the FSB, the principle successor to the Soviet-era KGB, a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukraine’s GUR navy intelligence company by the Telegram messaging app.

On the Ukrainian intelligence officer’s directions the Russian had then retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB claimed. The bomb, equal to 1 1/2 kg of TNT and filled with ball bearings, was hid within the moveable music speaker, the FSB mentioned.

The FSB didn’t identify the officer or the blogger who was the goal. Ukraine’s GUR navy intelligence company couldn’t be instantly reached for remark.

Ukraine says Russia’s battle in opposition to it poses an existential menace to the Ukrainian state and has made clear it regards focused killings – meant to weaken morale and punish these Kyiv regards responsible of battle crimes – as legit.

Russia has mentioned they quantity to unlawful “acts of terrorism”.

In different information:

• Russia’s SVR international intelligence service accused American and British spies of attempting to impress assaults in opposition to Russian navy bases in Syria in a bid to pressure the evacuation of the bases, the state-run RIA information company mentioned on Saturday. The SVR gave no proof for its allegation.

• North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk area are struggling heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they’re combating alongside, in keeping with Ukraine, whereas the US says Russian and North Korean generals see the troopers as “expendable”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned on Friday that mentioned Russian troops have been sending the North Koreans into battle with minimal safety and that the North Koreans have been taking excessive measures to keep away from being taken prisoner. “Their losses are important, very important,” the Ukrainian president mentioned in his nightly video tackle.

• The Biden administration pledged to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine, together with essential air defence methods. John Kirby, the US nationwide safety communications adviser, mentioned the promised US safety help package deal was anticipated to be introduced “within the subsequent couple of days”, although it was unclear how a lot it would embrace.

• Slovakia has confirmed its readiness to host any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, regardless of Kyiv’s accusation that it’s taking part in into the arms of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president on Thursday known as it “acceptable” for the nation to develop into a “platform” for dialogue over the battle. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, mentioned on Fb late on Friday: “If somebody needs to organise peace talks in Slovakia, we will probably be prepared and hospitable.”

• Ukraine has obtained its first batch of liquefied pure gasoline from the US, a deal that Kyiv says will increase Ukrainian and European vitality safety as a serious gasoline transit take care of Russia ends. “Dtek, Ukraine’s largest non-public vitality firm, has right this moment taken supply of its first cargo of liquefied pure gasoline (LNG) from the US,” the corporate mentioned on Friday. The consignment was of about 100m cubic metres of gasoline, it instructed Agence France-Presse.

• A Russian court docket has sentenced a singer who burned his passport in protest in opposition to Moscow’s Ukraine battle to five-and-a-half years in jail. Eduard Sharlot, 26, was discovered responsible of “publicly insulting” the spiritual emotions of believers and “rehabilitating nazism” by a court docket within the Volga metropolis of Samara in a case over movies he printed on-line, the state information company RIA Novosti reported.