Ukraine war briefing: International protest over arrests at anti-corruption agency
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said the searches conducted without court orders showed that authorities were exerting 'massive pressure' on Ukraine's corruption fighters. Ambassadors of G7 nations in Kyiv issued a statement saying they had 'serious concerns and intend to discuss these developments with government leaders'. Anti-corruption campaigners have been alarmed since Vitaliy Shabunin, a top anti-corruption activist, was charged earlier this month with fraud and evading military service. Volodymy Zelenskyy's office denies that prosecutions in Ukraine are politically motivated.
Russia and Ukraine will hold new peace talks on Wednesday in Istanbul, said Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president. It is a follow-up to two earlier rounds that made little progress on ending their war. Zelenskyy has offered to hold direct talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Russia has broadcast footage from inside a plant assembling the deadly attack drones it fires at civilian targets in Ukraine on a daily basis. The video was published on Sunday by Zvezda, a TV channel owned by the Russian defence ministry, showing workers with their faces blurred assembling jet-black triangle-shaped attack drones. 'This is the world's largest factory producing unmanned combat aerial vehicles, and the most secretive one,' said plant director Timur Shagivaleev, who has been sanctioned by the US. The plant is near the town of Yelabuga in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. Russia's Geran drones are based on Iranian Shahed drones.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, arrived in Kyiv on Monday for a surprise visit while rescuers were still sifting through the rubble from a massive drone and missile barrage against the Ukrainian capital. Six districts of Kyiv came under attack on Monday, sparking fires at a supermarket, multiple residential buildings and a nursery, authorities said. The entrance to a metro station where civilians were sheltering from the barrage was damaged. 'This inhumane, cynical and cruel violence has no military purpose,' Barrot said.
Barrot visited the Chornobyl power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. In February, Ukraine accused Russia of using an explosive drone to damage the confinement arch protecting the structure – prompting France to pledge €10m to help fix it. Barrot said Russia 'targets energy infrastructure in defiance of international law, security and nuclear safety'.
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Petlinsky's aunt Ekaterina said he had dreamed of a career in medicine and won a place at a medical college in Chelyabinsk, an industrial regional centre in the Urals."But Sasha had another dream," she told a school memorial event. "When the special military operation began, Sasha was 15. And he dreamed of going to the front."In Ukraine, the call-up age is has managed to avoid a national mobilisation by offering lavish sums to men of fighting age - an especially attractive deal for those in poorer regions with few job men had to have at least three months of conscript service under their belts before signing a restriction was quietly dropped in April 2023, despite protests from some MPs, so now any young man who has reached the age of 18 and finished school can sign up to join the education system has ensured they are ready to enlist. Since the full-scale invasion began, teachers have been required by law to hold classes dedicated to the "special military operation", as the war is officially returning from the front visit schools to talk about their experiences, children are taught how to make camouflage nets and trench candles, and even nursery school pupils are encouraged to send letters and drawings to the the start of the last school year on 1 September 2024, a new subject was brought into the a throwback to the Soviet era, senior students are once again being taught how to use Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades as part of a course called "The Basics of Safety and Homeland Defence".In many regions, military recruiters now attend careers lessons in schools and technical colleges, telling young people how to sign up as contract soldiers after they Ivanov grew up in a small village in Siberia and dropped out of college where he was learning to be a got into trouble with police, and when he was accused of robbing a small shop in November 2024, he complained to his mother and girlfriend he had been beaten into giving a confession. His friend Mikhail told the BBC that Vitaly had always planned to do his military service when he turned 18. Then, together, they would go and find work building roads in Kazan, a city about 3,700km (2,300 miles) to the he signed a contract to join the army. His family have not ruled out that it was the police who "persuaded" day before he left he called his mother, Anna, to say he was about to leave."I'm off to the North-Eastern Military District," he other words, he was heading for and Alexander reached the frontline at about the same time in last message home on 5 February was to say he was being sent into combat."This was his first and last combat mission," says enlistment office rang her a month later to say he had died on 11 February. As part of BBC Russian's ongoing project using open sources to count Russia's war dead, we have identified and confirmed 245 names of 18-year-old contract soldiers killed in Ukraine between April 2023 - when the rules for joining up were eased - and July were enlisted as contract servicemen and, judging from published obituaries, most joined the armed forces according to our research, since the start of the full-scale invasion at least 2,812 Russian men aged 18-20 years have been killed in BBC's figures are based on open-source information and because not every death is publicly reported, the real losses are bound to be late July the BBC had established the names of 120,343 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale war. Military experts estimate that makes up 45-65% of the real death toll, which would equate to 185,143 to 267,500 dead. When Alexander Petlinksy turned 18 on 31 January, the first thing he did was to apply to take a year out of college so he could sign a contract with the Defence he had wanted to become a doctor, he also dreamed of going to fight in next month he was already at the front, and on 9 March he died."As a citizen of the Russian Federation, I am proud of my son," his mother, Elena, told the BBC."But as a mother - I can't cope with this loss."She declined to say friend Anastasia says the fact that 18-year-olds are signing contracts to join the army is now a very "painful subject" for her."They're young and naive, and there's so much they don't understand," she says. "They just don't grasp the full responsibility of what they're doing."
