Putin ‘used PoWs as human shields’ on crashed plane says Ukraine – Latest updates

Ukraine’s foreign ministry has called out HBO’s The White Lotus for casting Serbian-Russian actor Miloš Biković, who is said to have supported Russia since its full-scale invasion.

Ukraine’s war with Russia “is our fight” too, a UK minister of state has said.

The Earl of Minto, a minister in the defence department, was speaking during a House of Lords debate on Ukraine.

Watch more of his comments here:

As Russia and Ukraine trade accusations over this week’s crash of a Russian military transport plane, one thing is clear: families’ fears that future prisoner exchanges may be in danger and loved ones could stay imprisoned.

Even the basic facts are being debated. Russian officials accused Kyiv of shooting down the plane Wednesday and claimed that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war were on board as they headed for a prisoner swap. The Ukrainian side said it had no evidence of POWs and that Russia is just playing with Ukrainians’ psyche. It did say, however, that an exchange had been due to take place on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Russian military plane that crashed near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday was shot down by Ukrainian air defences, whether on purpose or by mistake.

Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region and killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers en route to be swapped for Russian PoWs. It has not presented proof.

A Russian military transport plane has crashed in a region bordering Ukraine, with Russian officials saying that all 74 people on board – including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war – were killed.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the Ilyushin Il-76 was taking part in a prisoner exchange. The ministry added there were also six crew and three Russian servicemen on the flight.

The Defence Ministry sought to blame Kyiv for the crash, claiming that two missiles had been detected by Russian radar before the plane went down.

Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it hit the plane but said Moscow had created a “deliberate threat to the life and safety” of its PoWs by failing to warn Kyiv to deconflict the airspace before the swap. Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have “reliable and comprehensive” information about who or what was onboard.

Tom Watling has the full story…

The chief of the general staff and head of the army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has given a valedictory address in which he describes the current population of the UK as a “pre-war generation”, and one that must now get ready to take “preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing”.

A “national mobilisation” against Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the sort of language that would have been unthinkable, if not alarmist or satirical, only a few years ago, but the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a consistently bellicose stance from the Kremlin has suddenly made such notions mainstream.

As the head of Britain’s army says the nation must prepare for conflict on a global scale, Sean O’Grady asks if he is right…

A Russian woman has been jailed for 27 years for delivering a bomb that exploded in the hands of a pro-war military blogger, killing him on the spot.

Darya Trepova, 26, was convicted by a St Petersburg court of charges including terrorism in connection with the death of blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, last April. Trepova, 26, denied the charges, saying she thought the statuette contained a listening device and claiming that she had acted on the orders of a Ukrainian contact, and was set up.

Tatarsky was killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette in his likeness that Trepova had presented to him as a gift during a talk he was giving in a St Petersburg cafe.

It comes as a prominent Russian ultranationalist was sentenced in Moscow to four years in a penal colony for inciting extremism after he accused the Kremlin of not going far enough in its war against Ukraine.

Read the full story by Tom Watling here…

House Speaker Mike Johnson took a strong stand Friday against a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with Ukraine aid, sending a letter to colleagues that aligns him with hardline conservatives determined to sink the compromise on border and immigration policy.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said that the legislation would have been “dead on arrival in the House” if leaked reports about the legislation were true. While the core group of senators negotiating the deal have not yet released text of the bill, it has nevertheless come under fire from Republicans, including Donald Trump, the likely presidential nominee, who eviscerated the deal this week as a political “gift” to Democrats.

Johnson in the letter said, “Rather than accept accountability, President Biden is now trying to blame Congress for what HE himself intentionally created.”

The message added to the headwinds facing the border and Ukraine deal, closing a week in which Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged to his colleagues that the legislation faced tough opposition from Trump that could force them to pursue Ukraine aid another way. He later clarified that he was still supportive of pairing border measures with Ukraine aid — an arrangement that Senate Republicans initially demanded to gain their votes for funding Ukraine‘s war.

The diminishing prospects for a deal leave congressional leaders with no clear path to approving a $110 billion White House request for emergency funding for Ukraine, Israel, immigration enforcement and other national security needs. President Joe Biden has made it a top priority to bolster Kyiv’s defense against Russia, but his administration has run out of money to send ammunition and missiles. Ukraine supporters warn that the impasse in Congress is already being felt on battlefields and leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned.

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the lead GOP negotiator in the border talks, has repeatedly urged lawmakers to refrain from passing final judgment on the bill until they receive legislative text and said some of the reports of its contents in conservative media are not accurate depictions of the bill. Negotiators were hoping to release text next week, but have struggled to finalize the package.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Russian military plane that crashed near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday was shot down by Ukrainian air defences, whether on purpose or by mistake.

Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region, killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers en route to be swapped for Russian PoWs. Ukraine has not confirmed or denied whether it shot down the plane and has challenged Moscow’s account of what happened and who was on the plane.

Putin said the results of Russia’s investigation would be published in two to three days, but preliminary results suggested the missiles that downed the plane were American or French.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will travel to Washington to meet with United States President Joe Biden in the second week of February in a bid to rally support for additional assistance for Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.