Kyiv, Ukraine/Moscow, Russia
Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has met his commanders in two regions of Ukraine that Moscow claims to have annexed, while Russian forces stepped up heavy artillery bombardments and air strikes on Tuesday on the devastated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, visited troops in the eastern town of Avdiivka, about 70 kilometres south-west of Bakhmut, and was briefed on the battlefield situation, his office said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin disembarks a helicopter as he visits the headquarters of the “Dnieper” army group in the Kherson Region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, in this still image taken from handout video released on 18th April, 2023. PICTURE: Kremlin.ru/Handout via Reuters.
The Kremlin said Putin on Monday had attended a military command meeting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region and visited a national guard headquarters in eastern Luhansk.
Putin heard reports from commanders of the airborne forces and the Dnieper army group as well as other senior officers who briefed him on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south.
Neither Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu nor Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov joined Putin on his trip as a security precaution, the Kremlin said.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in March while on a reporting trip and charged with espionage, stands behind a glass wall of an enclosure for defendants, while US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy and lawyers Tatyana Nozhkina and Maria Korchagina appear in a courtroom before a hearing to consider an appeal against Gershkovich’s detention, in Moscow, Russia, on 18th April, 2023. PICTUR: Reuters/Yulia Morozova
RUSSIAN COURT REJECTS US REPORTER GERSHKOVICH’S DETENTION APPEAL
A Moscow court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from US journalist Evan Gershkovich to be freed from pre-trial detention, meaning he will stay in a former KGB prison until at least 29th May while a spying case against him is investigated.
Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, denies the espionage charges. He looked calm and smiled as he stood in a glass and metal cage before the appeal ruling, wearing a checked shirt with his arms folded in front of him.
His legal team suggested he be freed on bail of 50 million roubles ($614,000) or placed under house arrest, Tatiana Nozhkina, his lawyer, was quoted as saying by Russia’s RIA news agency. She said the court had rejected both suggestions.
Before the hearing got underway, Gershkovich turned around when one of the Russian reporters in the courtroom told him to “Stay Strong!” and relayed to him that everyone said “Hi”. US Ambassador Lynne Tracy stood nearby.
When asked by the judge if he needed translation, Gershkovich said no and that he understood everything.
Russia’s FSB security service arrested Gershkovich on 29th March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on espionage charges that carry a possible 20-year prison sentence for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex.
The Kremlin has said Gershkovich, the first US journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War, was caught “red-handed”.
The United States has deemed him “wrongfully detained,” his employer and colleagues have said he is innocent, and President Joe Biden has called his detention illegal.
His lawyer Nozhkina told reporters he was reading Russian literature, adding: “He’s in a combative mood, denies he is guilty, and is ready to prove it.”
Tuesday’s hearing was procedural, covering how Gershkovich should be detained, not the substance of the charges against him as investigators are still working on the details of the case.
Gershkovich, the son of Soviet emigres, is being held at the Lefortovo prison, which in Soviet times was run by the KGB but is now operated by the Federal Penitentiary Service.
Traditionally it has been used to hold those suspected of spying and other grave crimes.
US ambassador Tracy said on Monday she had made her first visit to Gershkovich.
“He feels well and is holding up. We reiterate our call for Evan’s immediate release,” Tracy said in a statement.
The White House said it hopes to secure regular consular access to Gershkovich.
Washington last week designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained”, in effect saying that the spy charges were bogus and the case was political.
The US hostage envoy has pledged to do “whatever it takes” to bring home Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, an American ex-Marine who was convicted of espionage in 2020 and has also been designated by Washington as wrongfully detained.
– GUY FAULCONBRIDGE and ANDREW OSBORN, Moscow, Russia/Reuters
A senior Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, took to Twitter to mock Putin’s trip as a “‘special tour’ of the mass murders author in the occupied and ruined territories to enjoy the crimes of his minions for the last time”.
Kyiv and the West accuse Russian forces of committing war crimes in occupied Ukrainian territory, which Moscow denies.
Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are the four regions that Putin proclaimed annexed last September following what Ukraine said were sham referendums. Russian forces only partly control the four regions.
Russian troops retreated from Kherson city, the regional capital, last November, and have been reinforcing their positions on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River in anticipation of a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
While numerous Western leaders have made their way to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since Russian forces invaded 14 months ago, Putin has rarely visited parts of Ukraine under Russian control.
Last month, he visited Crimea – annexed by Russia in 2014 – and the south-eastern city of Mariupol in Donetsk region.
A Russian winter offensive failed to make much progress and its troops have been bogged down in a series of battles in the east and south, where advances have been incremental and come at a huge cost to both sides.
Heavy artillery
Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut in Donetsk region for months, with Ukrainian forces holding out despite regular claims by Russia to have taken the mining city.
“Currently, the enemy is increasing the activity of heavy artillery and the number of air strikes, turning the city into ruins,” the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Bakhmut’s capture could provide a stepping stone for Russia to advance on two bigger cities it has long coveted in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The head of the Wagner mercenary group, which has spearheaded Russia’s attempt to take Bakhmut, said this month that its fighters controlled more than 80 per cent of the city. Ukraine’s military has denied this.
Russia says its “special military operation” in Ukraine, launched on 24th February last year was necessary to protect its security against what it sees as a hostile and aggressive West.
Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is waging an unprovoked war aimed at grabbing territory.
On his visit to Avdiivka on Tuesday, Zelenskiy’s office said he had handed out awards to his troops, telling them: “I have the honour to be here today, to thank you for your service, for defending our land, Ukraine, our families.”
“Irresponsible”
A meeting of Group of Seven foreign ministers in Japan condemned on Tuesday a Russian plan to station shorter-range, so-called tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a Moscow ally which borders Ukraine.
It was the first time Russia had said it would station nuclear weapons on the territory of another country since the end of the Cold War three decades ago.
In a communique at the end of a three-day meeting in Japan, G7 foreign ministers said: “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and its threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are unacceptable.”
“Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences,” they said.
The G7 groups the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada, which have all imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of people, levelled cities, forced millions from their homes and shaken up the global security order, including by prompting Russia to strengthen ties with non-Western actors such as China.
Russia’s Defence Minister Shoigu told his Chinese counterpart Li Shangu during talks in Moscow on Tuesday that their countries’ military cooperation was a “stabilising” force in the world and helped to reduce the chances of conflict.
Li said his trip aimed to show the world that China firmly intends to strengthen its strategic cooperation with Russia, the TASS news agency reported.
Beijing has refrained from criticising Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Japanese defence ministry said it had scrambled a jet fighter in response to what it said were Russian aircraft gathering information over seas near Japan. Earlier, Russia said two of its strategic bombers – which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads – had conducted patrol flights over the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea in Russia’s Far East.
– With reporting by Reuters bureaux
