Senior administration officials stated the Biden administration sanctioned Russia’s Federal Security Agency (F.S.B.) for illegally imprisoning Americans abroad.
President Joseph Biden’s new sanctions against unjustly imprisoned Americans were announced Thursday.
The F.S.B. is already sanctioned for election involvement, Russia’s military action in Ukraine, and alleged support for terrorism, so the penalties are primarily symbolic.
According to senior administration officials, the penalties were a response to a record of unlawfully detaining Americans. To explain the punishments, officials talked anonymously.
They emphasised that Thursday’s activities were planned before Wall Street Journal writer Evan Gershkovich’s detention in Russia last month, which the U.S.U.S. administration quickly condemned.
“Our move is a reminder to anyone throughout the world who would unlawfully hold U.S.U.S. people of the possible implications of their acts,” a senior administration official told reporters anonymously.
American sanctions on Iranian firms are also reported.
Thursday’s Council of Europe parliamentary assembly decision called Russia’s forcible transfer of Ukrainian children genocide.
“The recorded proof of this behaviour coincides with the international definition of genocide,” the parliament concluded, urging the children’s safe return to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the resolution “essential” for “holding Russia and its authorities to account”.
“Russia’s endeavour to obliterate the identity of our people, to undermine the fundamental core of the Ukrainian people” includes deporting Ukrainian youngsters, he said in his nightly speech.
The I.C.C. issued an arrest order for Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 17 for “unlawful deportation” of minors.
In mid-April, Kyiv reported that over 16,000 Ukrainian children had been “abducted” and brought to Russia since the invasion on February 24. It noted many were in care homes.
“Evidence that deported children had endured a process of ‘russification’ through re-education in Russian language, culture and history” was stated in Thursday’s Council of Europe parliament decision.
The Kremlin website states that President Vladimir Putin has instructed the Russian government to build museums about Moscow’s continuing war in Ukraine.
According to the official document, dated Wednesday but posted on the Kremlin website on Thursday, the new regional and municipal museums should be “dedicated to the events of the extraordinary military operation and the accomplishments of its participants.”
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine is called a “special military operation.”
Putin said the competent authorities should study how to transfer “artefacts associated to the special military operation” to museums.
In a private Vatican audience, Ukraine’s prime minister asked Pope Francis to help return Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters after his 30-minute meeting with Francis that he invited Francis to Ukraine.
“I prayed His Holiness to assist us bring home Ukrainians, Ukrainian children who are imprisoned, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia,” Shmyhal added.
The Vatican’s brief statement to the audience did not discuss the negotiations. After seeing Francis, Shmyhal met with the Holy See’s foreign minister and secretary of state.
The Vatican stated the “cordial conversations, which took place in the Secretariat of State, numerous concerns related to the situation in Ukraine were underlined, with special focus to the humanitarian elements and efforts to restore peace.”
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group’s leader stated he was kidding when he said his soldiers would halt artillery fire in Bakhmut to enable Ukrainian forces on the other side of the battlefield to show American journalists the city.
In the longest and bloodiest struggle of the conflict, Wagner has led Russia’s attack on Bakhmut since last summer, but Ukrainian forces have so far repelled it.
“A decision has been reached to cease artillery fire so that U.S.U.S. journalists can safely film Bakhmut and go home,” Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an audio message released by his press office on Thursday.
In a later audio message, Prigozhin stated, “Hey, this is military humour.” Just humour… It was a prank.
When questioned about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s phone contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a day earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow supported anything that may settle the Ukraine war.
Peskov stated, “We are ready to embrace anything that might speed the conclusion of the crisis in Ukraine and Russia attaining all the goals it has set itself.”
Kyiv has publicly sought such discussions for months, and on Wednesday, the Chinese and Ukrainian presidents met for the first time since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February.
According to NATO head Jens Stoltenberg, NATO allies and partners have sent Ukraine 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks to assemble units and reclaim territory from Russian forces.
Stoltenberg told a press conference that “more than 98 per cent of the combat vehicles pledged to Ukraine” had been delivered since the war began in February last year.
“More than nine new Ukrainian armoured brigades have been trained and equipped.” Ukraine will be well-positioned to continue retaking seized territory.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg “welcomed” a call between China’s President Xi Jinping and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but he noted that Beijing had not criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, satisfying Kyiv’s months-long request.
A police officer was murdered in a bomb in Melitopol, a Moscow-controlled Ukrainian city.
“Today at 5:15 am (0200 GMT), an apartment block in Melitopol exploded. Two officers were hospitalised. The local Russian interior ministry said that one of them perished.
“Oleksandr Mishchenko not only deserted to the side of the enemy but also lured his staff into becoming traitors,” claimed Kyiv-controlled local mayor Ivan Fedorov.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2018, Melitopol, with a pre-war population of 150,000, was captured and is now 65 kilometres (40 miles) behind the frontline.
The chief of Russia’s Wagner mercenary army claimed Ukrainian soldiers were coming in ahead of an “inevitable” counter-offensive as Russian forces pummelled Bakhmut, the months-old focal point of their attempts to take Donbas.
The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Facebook that Bakhmut and adjacent territories were in battle. It stated that Russian soldiers failed to advance on two northwest communities. Russia bombarded at least 12 towns.
According to officials in Mykolayiv, a Russian missile killed one person early Thursday. Over a dozen were wounded.
Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram, “About 1 am, inhabitants of Mykolayiv heard 4 powerful explosions.” One missile impacted a high-rise structure, as previously reported. “A private residence was struck again.” Some city homes lost power, he added.
