Ukraine arrests Chinese father and son on suspicion of spying
The announcement by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) follows assertions by Kyiv in recent months that Beijing, which has sought to project an image of neutrality, is helping the Kremlin's war effort.
Counterintelligence officials arrested a 24-year-old former student in Kyiv after they provided him with 'technical documentation' related to Neptune production, the SBU said in a statement on Wednesday.
They later detained his father, who had aimed to smuggle out the documents to the Chinese special services, the agency said. The father had been living in China but visited Ukraine to 'personally coordinate' his son's work, it added.
A Ukrainian official told Reuters the two men were the first Chinese people arrested for spying since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
China's foreign ministry on Thursday said it was 'still verifying the relevant information'.
'If Chinese citizens are involved, we will safeguard their legitimate rights and interests in accordance with the law,' a ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, told a regular press conference when asked about the arrests.
A lawyer for the men could not immediately be reached.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has accused China of supplying weapons and gunpowder to Russia, and has imposed sanctions against Chinese firms Kyiv believes are aiding Moscow's war machine, including by providing components for drones.
He has also said Ukrainian forces have captured Chinese nationals fighting for Russia on the battlefield.
Sign up to Headlines Europe
A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day
after newsletter promotion
Though Beijing is an ally of Moscow, it has aimed to cast itself as a peacemaker in the war and says it has not armed either party. In May, China's president, Xi Jinping, travelled to Moscow for a pomp-filled visit that included talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine's Neptune missile was used to destroy the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet in the first months of the war. It has since been fired at other targets including Russian oil terminals.
Kyiv is strengthening its domestic defence sector amid mixed signals on future support from the US, its top military backer, and as Europe struggles to ramp up its own production.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Russia pulls out of treaty prohibiting short and medium-range nuclear missiles and issues warning to the West
Putin has dramatically pulled out of a Cold War-era treaty banning short and medium-range nuclear missiles while warning the West to 'expect further steps' as tensions spiral. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev - now deputy head of the country's powerful Security Council - blamed NATO nations for forcing Moscow 's hand. In a fiery post on X, he wrote: 'The Russian foreign ministry's statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries' anti-Russian policy. 'This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps'. Medvedev, who has been exchanging barbs online with US President Donald Trump, gave no details about what those steps entailed. But his warning comes just days after Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to 'appropriate regions' in response to Russian threats. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, eliminated an entire class of ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km. The US withdrew from the deal in 2019, accusing Russia of breaching its terms - a charge Moscow vehemently denied. Since then, Russia had pledged not to deploy such weapons unless Washington did so first. The collapse of the INF Treaty has stoked fears of a replay of a Cold War-era European missile crisis, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent in the 1980s. Such weapons are seen as particularly destabilising because they take less time to reach targets, compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalled last December that Moscow would abandon the moratorium if 'destabilising actions' by the US and NATO continued. Lavrov told Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti in December that Moscow's unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such missiles was 'practically no longer viable and will have to be abandoned'. 'The United States arrogantly ignored warnings from Russia and China and, in practice, moved on to deploying weapons of this class in various regions of the world,' he told the news agency. In a statement yesterday, Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed it no longer considered itself bound by the ban, citing NATO's growing military presence in Europe and Asia-Pacific. It specifically cited US plans to deploy medium-range Typhoon and Dark Eagle missiles in Germany starting next year. 'Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of US-made land-based medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian Foreign Ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,' the statement said. According to its statement, the West is openly stationing short-and medium-range missiles in various parts of the world, while Russia's initiatives on the issue have seen no reciprocity. In its first public reaction to Trump's comments on the repositioning of US submarines, the Kremlin on Monday said it was not looking to get into a public spat with the US president. 'In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that's the first thing,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 'But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way,' he said. 'Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric,' he added. It comes as Russia's missile forces chief declared that the new Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, which Russia first used against Ukraine in November, has a range to reach all of Europe. Oreshnik can carry conventional or nuclear warheads. Putin has praised the Oreshnik's capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds up to Mach 10 are immune to being intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack. The Russian leader has warned the West that Moscow could use it against Ukraine's NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia. But as Russia escalates its nuclear rhetoric, Ukraine continues to face relentless attacks. The move comes amid a deadly wave of missile strikes pounding Ukraine overnight, with one railway worker killed and four others injured after Russian forces targeted a key rail hub in Lozova. The strike on Lozova - described by the city's mayor as 'the most massive attack since the beginning of the war' - injured two children and damaged residential areas. Elsewhere, two more people were wounded in a Russian drone attack on Zaporizhzhia , while Ukraine's air defences reported shooting down 29 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight. The developments come as a deadline set by Trump for Russia to take 'steps to end the war' looms, with his envoy Steve Whitkoff set to visit Moscow this week for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Reuters
31 minutes ago
- Reuters
Sweden, Norway, Denmark give $486 mln to NATO project to send US weapons to Ukraine
HELSINKI, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Sweden, Norway and Denmark will together contribute around 5 billion Norwegian crowns ($486.16 million) to a NATO-led initiative to supply Ukraine with U.S. weapons, the Norwegian government said in a statement on Tuesday. ($1 = 10.2846 Norwegian crowns)
BreakingNews.ie
31 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Putin doubts potency of Trump's ultimatum to end the war, sources say
Russian president Vladimir Putin is unlikely to bow to a sanctions ultimatum expiring this Friday from US president Donald Trump, and retains the goal of capturing four regions of Ukraine in their entirety, sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters. Mr Trump has threatened to hit Russia with new sanctions and impose 100 per cent tariffs on countries that buy its oil - of which the biggest are China and India - unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine. Advertisement Putin's determination to keep going is prompted by his belief that Russia is winning and by scepticism that yet more US sanctions will have much of an impact after successive waves of economic penalties during 3-1/2 years of war, according to three sources familiar with discussions in the Kremlin. The Russian leader does not want to anger Mr Trump, and he realises that he may be spurning a chance to improve relations with Washington and the West, but his war goals take precedence, two of the sources said. Putin's goal is to fully capture the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Russia has claimed as its own, and then to talk about a peace agreement, one of the sources said. "If Putin were able to fully occupy those four regions which he has claimed for Russia he could claim that his war in Ukraine had reached his objectives," said James Rodgers, author of the forthcoming book "The Return of Russia". Advertisement The current talks process, in which Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have met three times since May, was an attempt by Moscow to convince Mr Trump that Putin was not rejecting peace, the first source said, adding that the talks were devoid of real substance apart from discussions on humanitarian exchanges. Russia says it is serious about agreeing a long-term peace in the negotiations but that the process is complicated because the two sides' stances are so far apart. Putin last week described the talks as positive. Nuclear war risks Moscow's stated demands include a full Ukrainian withdrawal from the four regions and acceptance by Kyiv of neutral status and limits on the size of its military – demands rejected by Ukraine. In a sign that there may yet be an opportunity to strike a deal before the deadline, Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Russia this week, following an escalation in rhetoric between Mr Trump and Moscow over risks of nuclear war. "President Trump wants to stop the killing, which is why he is selling American-made weapons to Nato members and threatening Putin with biting tariffs and sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in response to a request for comment. Advertisement The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. All the sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. Mr Trump, who in the past has praised Putin and held out the prospect of lucrative business deals between their two countries, has lately expressed growing impatience with the Russian president. He has complained about what he called Putin's "bullshit" and described Russia's relentless bombing of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities as "disgusting". The Kremlin has said it noted Mr Trump's statements but it has declined to respond to them. Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko last week called on the world to respond with "maximum pressure" after the worst Russian air strike of the year killed 31 people in Kyiv, including five children, in what she called Russia's response to Mr Trump's deadline. Advertisement Forces advance The first source said Putin was privately concerned about the recent deterioration of US ties. Putin still retains the hope that Russia can again befriend America and trade with the West, and "he is worried" about Mr Trump's irritation, this person said. But with Moscow's forces advancing on the battlefield and Ukraine under heavy military pressure, Putin does not believe now is the time to end the war, the source said, adding that neither the Russian people nor the army would understand if he stops now. Mr Rodgers, the author, said Putin has invested his political reputation and legacy in the war in Ukraine. "We know from his previous writings and statements that he sees himself as part of a strong tradition of standing up to the West and the rest of world to defend Russia's interests," he said. The Kremlin leader values the relationship with Mr Trump and does not want to anger him, however, "he simply has a top priority - Putin cannot afford to end the war just because Trump wants it," the second Russian source said. Advertisement A third person familiar with Kremlin thinking also said Russia wanted to take all four regions and did not see the logic in stopping at a time of battlefield gains during Russia's summer offensive. Ukraine has suffered some of its biggest territorial losses of 2025 in the past three months, including 502 square kilometres in July, according to Black Bird Group, a Finland-based military analysis centre. In total, Russia has occupied around a fifth of Ukraine. Russia's military General Staff has told Putin that the Ukrainian front will crumble in two or three months, the first person said. However, Russia's recent gains remain relatively minor in purely territorial terms, with only 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine taken since the start of last year, less than 1 per cent of the country's overall territory, according to a June report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. Ukrainian and Western military sources, acknowledge that Russia is making gains, but only gradually and with heavy casualties. Russian war bloggers say Moscow's forces have been bogged down during its current summer offensive in areas where the terrain and dense urban landscape favoured Ukraine, but assess that other areas should be faster to take. He's made threats before. Mr Trump's sanctions threat was "painful and unpleasant," but not a catastrophe, the second source said. The third source said there was a feeling in Moscow that "there's not much more that they can do to us". It was also not clear if Mr Trump would follow through on his ultimatum, this person said, adding that "he's made threats before" and then not acted, or changed his mind. The source also said it was hard to imagine that China would stop buying Russian oil on instructions from Mr Trump, and that his actions risked backfiring by driving oil prices higher. As a consequence of previous rounds of sanctions, Russian oil and gas exporters have taken big hits to their revenues, and foreign direct investment in the country fell by 63 per cent last year, according to UN trade data. Around $300 billion of central bank assets have been frozen in foreign jurisdictions. Support from China, North Korea World Russia says it will no longer abide by self-impose... Read More But Russia's ability to wage war has been unimpeded, thanks in part to ammunition supplies from North Korea and imports from China of dual-use components that have sustained a massive rise in weapons production. The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Russia has some "immunity" to sanctions. Mr Trump has acknowledged Russia's skill in skirting the measures. "They're wily characters and they're pretty good at avoiding sanctions, so we'll see what happens," he told reporters at the weekend, when asked what his response would be if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire. The first Russian source noted that Putin, in pursuing the conflict, was turning his back on a US offer made in March that Washington, in return for his agreement to a full ceasefire, would remove US sanctions, recognise Russian possession of Crimea - annexed from Ukraine in 2014 - and acknowledge de facto Russian control of the territory captured by its forces since 2022. The source called the offer a "fantastic chance," but said stopping a war was much more difficult than starting it.
