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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Telegraph
14 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The IDF are supreme in warfare, so their enemies wage lawfare instead
Belgium this week detained and interrogated two Israelis at the Tomorrowland music festival. Perhaps the fictional Belgian detective Tintin would have been better tasked with handling the case, but it was apparently taken seriously by the equally cartoonish Belgian authorities. The allegations from anti-Israel campaigners were that the two Israelis served in the Israeli Defence Forces, arguably the most effective military in the world and, contrary to anti-Semitic histrionics, the most successful in avoiding civilian casualties. Statistically they are far better in their ratio of civilian to military deaths in conflict than either British or American forces, according to John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point Military Academy, who has spent a career analysing these things. It's curious, isn't it, that the hardline activists pursuing Israelis aren't targeting the 100,000 Druze or the several thousand Muslim and Bedouin Israelis who proudly serve in the IDF alongside their Jewish neighbours. But the IDF are predominantly Jewish and therefore treated differently. They can't be beaten on the battlefield so there are attempts to beat them on the field of lawfare. The seasoned legal antiheroes of the lawfare minefields, wounded occasionally by vicious papercuts and exploding judges, take no prisoners in their courtroom battles against Jews – as the International Criminal Court has shown. You might think the Belgians would be a little more cognisant of their own history before picking on any more minorities. The story of the Belgian Congo would have made Cecil Rhodes blush. The Second World War saw 28,000 Belgian Jews murdered during the Holocaust, from a total of just 66,000 living there in 1940. In Antwerp, in 1941, the Belgian authorities helped organise the conscription of Jews for forced labour in France and aided in the rounding up of Jews for the Nazis in 1942. But these lessons of the past are going unheeded. Won't anyone think of the hypocrisy? Quite a few Belgians join the French Foreign Legion. Has anyone ever prosecuted those soldiers? After all, the Legion's conduct in the Algerian Coup attempt of 1961 is hardly edifying. The UK of course is a world leader in lawfare. We have 147,000 serving military personnel but 177,000 practising lawyers! Our battalions of bewigged barristers vastly outnumber our bedevilled bearskins. The UK certainly isn't immune to this offensive targeting of Israel through the courts. A few months ago, British lawyers attempted to persuade Scotland Yard to prosecute some British Jews who have joined the Israeli armed forces. These are presumably young British Jews wanting to help protect fellow Jews from certain annihilation if no such force existed. Has anyone ever prosecuted Brits who joined the French Foreign Legion? Or those fighting for Ukraine today? Did anyone prosecute idealistic youths who went to participate in the Spanish Civil War? Of course not. Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy's posturing in the Commons this week demanding Israel adopt a ceasefire despite it being Hamas that has rejected multiple ceasefires, was itself akin to a pound-shop Lord Palmerston. Ironically of course Palmerston's reputation for 'gunboat diplomacy' originated in large part because he wanted to protect a Jewish British subject – Don Pacifico – from an anti-Semitic mob in 1850s Athens. Nowadays, by contrast, the only time the Foreign Office ever adopts an imperialist air is when it is disproportionately attacking the world's only Jewish state. Perhaps the Belgians should stick to making chocolates, although to be frank, if the originally Parisian Bond Street chocolatier Charbonnel et Walker are anything to go by, the French are better at that anyway.
Daily Mail
42 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Elon Musk 'ordered his Starlink satellites in Ukraine to be shut down' as defenders launched attack on Putin troops
Elon Musk allegedly ordered Starlink to cut internet services in parts of Ukraine as its troops mounted a crucial counteroffensive just months after the Russian invasion began. Musk gave an order that led to a communications blackout, causing the attack to fail, as Ukrainian troops attempted to regain Kherson in September 2022, according to Reuters, who spoke with three people familiar with the command. The order severely diminished Kyiv 's trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service Musk provided early in the war to help Ukraine's military maintain connection in the battlefield. Staff at the American tech firm are said to have deactivated at least 100 Starlink terminals after receiving instructions from the billionaire, who told a senior engineer at California offices of SpaceX, the Musk venture that controls Starlink, to cut coverage. It shocked Starlink employees because it allowed Musk to 'take the outcome of a war into his own hands', one of the sources familiar with the command said. The blackout also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk. Although Ukraine reclaimed Kherson in November 2022, Musk's order directly contributed to their failure when they launched their earlier mission. Ukrainian troops suddenly faced a communications blackout, causing soldiers to panic. Drones surveilling Russian forces went dark, and long-range artillery units, reliant on Starlink to aim their fire, struggled to hit targets, according to a Ukrainian military official, an advisor to the armed forces, and two others who experienced Starlink failure near the front lines. Troops therefore failed to surround a Russian position in the town of Beryslav, east of Kherson. The encirclement stalled entirely, said the military official in an interview. 'It failed.' It is the first known instance of the billionaire actively shutting off Starlink coverage over a battlefield during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The decision to cut the network is thought to have come from Musk's fears that advances by Ukraine might have provoked a Russian nuclear retaliation. A spokesman for SpaceX, the aerospace company that owns Starlink, told Reuters the account of the incident is 'inaccurate'. The Ukrainian ministry of defence has been approached for comment. The account contravenes Musk's narrative of how he has handled Starlink services during the war. In March, in a post on X, the American wrote: 'We would never do such a thing.' 'To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals,' he added. Musk did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment. Starlink continues to provide service to Ukraine, and its military relies on it for some connectivity. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy publicly expressed gratitude to Musk for Starlink earlier this year. It also provides customers with internet access in remote and unreliable locations across the world. Zelensky uses the network to transmit broadcasts to the nation and it is also used to allow Ukrainians to speak to relatives. Musk has previously boasted of Starlink's importance to Kyiv. 'My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army,' he wrote on X in March. 'Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off. It is the world's largest satellite operator with 8,000 in orbit and gives Musk enormous geopolitical power with political leaders, governments and militaries worldwide. Some Western militaries, including Britain's armed forces, are using Starlink. Britain began using it for 'welfare purposes', including for personal communications for troops, in 2022. The Ministry of Defence said it has fewer than 1,000 Starlink terminals and doesn't employ them for sensitive military communications. Spain's navy is also using Starlink, but only for recreation and leisure of troops. Musk was previously accused of switching off the network in Ukraine, in the biography of billionaire author Walter Isaacson. Musk believed a planned Ukrainian attack on Russian vessels in the Crimean port of Sevastopol could prompt nuclear retaliation, Isaacson wrote. The American billionaire denied a shutdown and Isaacson later admitted his account was inaccurate. As of April 2025, Kyiv has more than 50,000 Starlink terminals circling the globe. The accusations also raise questions about the unchecked influence of Musk, an unelected billionaire, on global politics. Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho said Musk's 'current global dominance exemplifies the dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains', in a debate in the House of Lords earlier this year. Meanwhile, Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, wrote on X that 'if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers'. Poland pays for much of Ukraine's Starlink connectivity alongside the US and Germany. SpaceX is the first company to establish an extensive network of communication satellites in low-Earth orbit, a region of space that is closer to the planet than areas where satellites have historically resided.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Lone protester slams Donald Trump at golf course with brutal Scottish insult
Matt Halliday from Stranraer said he was disappointed more people hadn't shown up to Trump's golf course - while hundreds protested in Edinburgh and Aberdeen A lone protester braved the massive police presence at Donald Trump's golf course to protest against his visit to Scotland. Trump enjoyed a morning round of golf with the protection of thousands of British police officers - while protests against his trip to Scotland raged elsewhere. The US President is staying at Turnberry until Monday before heading off to his other golf resort in Aberdeen. Tomorrow he'll hold a meeting with EU chief Ursula Von Der Leyen, before sitting down with Keir Starmer on Monday. During the meeting, they're expected to discuss the fine points of the trade deal Mr Starmer agreed with President Trump in May. But while it's expected to be an informal session, they'll also discuss heavier topics - including work to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine. Trump was seen playing golf on Saturday morning, and was shuttled around the course in a 15-strong motorcade of golf buggies. He wore a white USA baseball cap, and waved at photographers gathered outside the course's fence. The sole protester at Turnberry - Matt Halliday, 55, from Stranraer - came to Turnberry today bearing two placards. One featured a picture of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, and another of a set of bagpipes. The message read: "TRUMP GO HOME: The only "blowhard" pumped up windbags that we want to listen to are these bad boys". The second placard was much less family friendly. "I'm here to show my displeasure at Trump being here," he told the Mirror. "I just find him morally repugnant. I see what he's doing in the states, rolling back civil rights for women and minorities, folk getting lifted from their houses, medicaid getting taken away - and he comes here and thinks he's got the authority to pontificate to us. "Because he wants us to do the same, and he'll try and bully us through tariffs and trade - similar to Canada which he wants to make the 51st state. "That's what's coming for us if we don't stand up to him." Protests raged in Edinburgh and Aberdeen today, with thousands expressing their displeasure at Trump's arrival. In Aberdeen, the group that gathered in the city centre were seen waving banners with anti-Trump slogans - with one demonstrator even dressed as the president with a large papier mache head. As speeches ended at the rally, chants of "Trump Trump Trump, out out out" could be heard, along with "Donald, Donald, hear us shout, all of Scotland wants you out". But the winding roads and windswept beaches of South Ayrshire, where Turnberry sits, remained calm and quiet. Mr Halliday suggested people had been put off by the enormous operation Police Scotland have put in place to protect President Trump - complete with a no-fly zone, a ground exclusion zone stretching for miles around the resort, snipers and as many as 5,000 officers reported to be policing the area. And the operation is much bigger than locals have seen during previous visits. "It's supposedly a private visit, and I've seen figures from £5 million to £14 million for Police Scotland, Mr Halliday said. "That's coming out of their budget. If you saw the convoy of 27 cars last night, there were even Scottish Ambulances at the back. And folk can't get them. It's madness." Get Donald Trump updates straight to your WhatsApp! As the world attempts to keep up with Trump's antics, the Mirror has launched its very own US Politics WhatsApp community where you'll get all the latest news from across the pond. We'll send you the latest breaking updates and exclusives all directly to your phone. Users must download or already have WhatsApp on their phones to join in. All you have to do to join is click on this link, select 'Join Chat' and you're in! We may also send you stories from other titles across the Reach group. We will also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose Exit group. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Mr Halliday said he was "very" disappointed to have arrived in Turnberry to find no other protesters - but he said he thought most people had gone to Edinburgh instead. Mr Halliday said he was "very" disappointed to have arrived in Turnberry to find no other protesters - but he said he thought most people had gone to the Edinburgh rally instead. Another man from Glasgow, who did not want to be named, said they were surprised people had not come to protest in Turnberry itself - and were dismayed that the huge police presence had been used to put people off. 'Especially since it's - apart from a couple of meetings - it's a holiday, it's a private visit,' he said. 'The resources that have been diverted from other places to protect him. It's mad.' One participant joined the Edinburgh rally against Donald Trump while wearing a Handmaid costume from the Margaret Atwood novel. Louise Brown, a healthcare worker, said she had travelled from Newcastle to the Scottish capital to protest the President's visit. She said: "He's a convicted felon - eroding women's rights, trans rights, gay right, immigration rights. There's too much to list. "I know he loves Scotland because of his mother. He doesn't normally care about protests but maybe he might care a little bit about one in Scotland, I don't know." She said there was more anger towards Trump following his first inauguration in 2017, but added: "Especially after those immigration ICE raids, I think the anger has now come back. "Because he's even worse than he was the first time."
