Ukraine war: Drone attack on Putin’s forces after boats forced from Crimea port

Ukraine‘s parliament voted on Tuesday to scrap taxes and duties on imports of energy equipment as the country battles a severe energy crisis due to Russian bombardments.

Over the past three months, Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities have left millions facing extended blackouts as well as a lack of water and air conditioning during the summer heat.

The parliament approved two laws to cancel customs duties and value-added tax on imports of equipment for electric generators, wind and solar generation, and powerful accumulators, said Danyo Hetmantsev, a senior lawmaker.

Russia has stepped up its aerial attacks on the Ukrainian power sector since March, knocking out the bulk of thermal and hydropower generation. Ukraine has since lost about half of its available generation capacity.

Another lawmaker, Dmytro Razumkov, hailed the move as “the right step” and urged his colleagues to consider more legislative changes to extend preferential import rules to generators, inverters, power banks, and other equipment until June 2026.

“It is no longer possible to imagine life and work without generators and charging stations,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.

“In autumn and winter, demand for them will only increase, along with prices. So we have to act now.”

On some evenings, Ukrainian mother Margaryta Zakharchuk wanders around her neighbourhood in the sweltering heat waiting for the electricity to come back on so she can take the lift to her 12th-floor apartment.

“We walk around outside until 10 o’clock so we don’t need to climb up with two kids,” she said.

Zakharchuk, 43, is among the millions of Ukrainians struggling amid a record heat wave compounded by regular power cuts that make household appliances like air conditioning units and refrigerators useless.

Over the past decade, Russia has seen a sharp increase in treason and espionage cases.

Lawyers and experts say prosecutions for these high crimes started to grow after 2014 – the year when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. That’s also when Moscow backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

The number of these cases in Russia spiked significantly after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, urged the security services to “harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services [and] promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs”. The crackdown has ensnared scientists and journalists, as well as ordinary citizens.

Treason cases were rare in Russia 30 years ago, with only a handful brought annually. In the past decade and especially since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, the number has soared, along with espionage prosecutions.

They are ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike. Recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly.

One rights group counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, with probably another 100 that nobody knows about.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s review of Britain’s defences comes as the West faces a “dangerous quartet” of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, according to Nato chief Lord Robertson.

U.S. journalist and author Masha Gessen was convicted in absentia Monday by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times who lives in the U.S., is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an award-winning writer.

Russian police put Gessen on a wanted list in December, and Russian media reported the case was based on statements they made about atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger.

Top EU officials will boycott informal meetings hosted by Hungary while the country has the EU’s rotating presidency, after Hungary’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held a series of rogue meetings with foreign leaders about Ukraine that angered European partners.

The highly unusual decision to have the European Commission president and other top officials of the body boycott the meetings was made ‘’in light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian (EU) presidency,” commission spokesperson Eric Mamer posted Monday on X.

U.S. journalist and author Masha Gessen was convicted in absentia Monday by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times who lives in the U.S., is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an award-winning writer.

Russian police put Gessen on a wanted list in December, and Russian media reported the case was based on statements they made about atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger.

Struggling with manpower, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse.

An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.

China’s defence ministry said that Russian vessels arrived in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, for the “Joint Sea-2024” exercises in the waters and airspace around the city throughout this week.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has increasingly turned towards China for support as the West has ramped up sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.