Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv destroys Russian warplane and glide bombs warehouse in blow for Putin’s forces – UK Times

A Russian pianist and anti-war activist has died in prison after going on hunger strike, his mother said, in what the European Union called a shocking case of political repression.

The death of Pavel Kushnir was first reported by a Russian news site last Friday and confirmed to independent outlet Mediazona yesterday by his mother, Irina Levina.

A Telegram channel with links to Russia’s security services reported in May that Kushnir had been arrested and accused of inciting terrorist activity after posting anti-war material online.

Levina told Mediazona that an investigator from the FSB security service had told her that Kushnir died on 28 July while in pre-trial detention in Birobidzhan in Russia’s far east.

It was not clear how long he had been on hunger strike. Levina said she had been told that he was hooked up to an intravenous drip “but apparently this was not enough” to save him.

Kushnir was an accomplished concert pianist who had studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky conservatory.

EU external affairs spokesperson Peter Stano posted on X that the case was a “shocking reminder of (the) Kremlin’s ongoing repression” and urged Russia to “respect its Constitution, release all prisoners of conscience and stop repression against anti-war protesters”.

An independent Siberian politician, Svetlana Kaverzina, said Kushnir had been left isolated and without support because there was no local network of dissidents, and people had not known about his case.

“We couldn’t chip in and send him a lawyer – we didn’t know. We didn’t write him letters of support – we didn’t know. We didn’t talk him out of sacrificing himself – we didn’t know. He was alone,” she wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine has condemned Mali’s decision to cut diplomatic ties as short-sighted and hasty, saying that no evidence had been provided to show Kyiv had played any role in fighting that killed Malian soldiers and Russian mercenaries last month.

The West African country announced it was immediately severing relations with Kyiv following remarks by Ukraine’s military spy agency about the fighting in northern Mali in late July.

After the fighting, Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military spy agency, said in televised remarks that Malian rebels had received “necessary information – and not only information” to conduct the attack.

During the clashes, Tuareg rebels said they killed at least 84 Russian Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers. The incident appeared to be Wagner’s heaviest defeat since it stepped in two years ago to help Mali’s military authorities fight insurgent groups.

In a statement seen by The Independent, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Kyiv rejected the allegation of Ukrainian support for international terrorism and said it viewed the move to cut relations as unfriendly.

Kyiv issued a statement last night and saying that “regrettably, the Transitional Government of the Republic of Mali decided to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine without conducting a thorough study of the facts and circumstances of the incident in the north of Mali, and without providing any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement in the mentioned event.”

It added: “At the same time, it is ignored that military structures controlled by the Kremlin, including Wagner use terrorist methods and are directly involved in numerous war crimes, killings of civilians and ill-treatment of prisoners of war both in Ukraine and in African countries.”

A Ukrainian strike on Russia’s Morozovsk airfield has likely destroyed an Su-34 fighter-bomber plane, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) said on Telegram, sharing satellite images of the attack.

The General Staff of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces on Saturday had confirmed an aerial strike on the Russian airfield and said an ammunition depot storing glide bombs was hit. Debris from falling Ukrainian drones also damaged two more aircraft, four “technical buildings,” and two hangars at the airfield, it said.

The airfield in Russia’s Rostov oblast is barely 185km (114 miles) from the Ukrainian border in the east.

Satellite photos by Maxar confirmed large-scale damage to the Sukhoi warplane parked at the airfield as the imagery shows a charred plane and significant damage to the warehouse, which Kyiv claims was storing ammunition.

As a result of the attack, at least two other Su-34 were probably damaged by the attack debris, officials from the military’s intelligence agency said.

It added that the strike completely destroyed a Russian aviation weapons depot.

Several explosions rang out in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv late last night, witnesses said, after an air raid siren was sounded by the authorities.

Officials said air defence units successfully intercepted the incoming missiles into the Ukrainian capital.

New explosions were heard a half hour after the original blasts, the witnesses said. Shortly before midnight, a group of Shahed drones was reported on the border of Kyiv and Chernihiv Oblasts, heading for Kyiv.

No damage or casualties was seen on ground, according to the preliminary reports, said Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military authorities.

Ukrainian air defence units were operating in the city and in the surrounding Kyiv region, authorities in Kyiv said.

One person was killed and another three injured in a drone strike on the village of Vyazovoe in Russia’s Belgorod region, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Gladkov said that the drone had attacked a bus belonging to an agricultural enterprise in the village, which is close to the border with Ukraine‘s Sumy region.

Belgorod region has come under regular Ukrainian drone, artillery and ground attacks since Moscow ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.