Foreign Office ‘unapologetic’ after diplomats expelled
The Foreign Office has just released a statement after Russia expelled six British diplomats on accusations of spying.
“The accusations made today by the FSB against our staff are completely baseless,” a spokesman said.
“The Russian authorities revoked the diplomatic accreditation of six UK diplomats in Russia last month, following action taken by the UK government in response to Russian state directed activity across Europe and in the UK.
“We are unapologetic about protecting our national interests.”
Top Moscow official meets Kim Jong Un on North Korea visit – Russian state media
Reports of cooperation between Russia and North Korea have steadily increased since the invasion of Ukraine, and Russian news agencies are today reporting the latest example of the strengthening alliance.
They say top Moscow security official Sergei Shoigu held talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a visit to Pyongyang today.
The reported visit took place at a critical juncture in the war in Ukraine, for which the US says North Korea has supplied ammunition and ballistic missiles to Russia.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied arms transfers but have promised to boost military ties.
Mr Shoigu was Russian defence minister until May, and is now secretary of the Security Council which brings together Vladimir Putin, his military and intelligence chiefs and other senior figures.
“As part of the ongoing strategic dialogue between our countries, a substantive exchange of views took place with Korean colleagues on a wide range of issues on the bilateral and international agenda,” state news agency RIA quoted the Security Council as saying.
It said the meetings took place in an “exceptionally trusting, friendly atmosphere” and would make an important contribution to the implementation of agreements reached between Mr Putin and Mr Kim at their summit three months ago.
Analysis: Diplomat explusion is way for Kremlin to punish UK
By Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor
The very public expulsion by Russia of six British diplomats in Moscow, accused of involvement in spying and sabotage, is a way for the Kremlin to punish London.
Revoking the accreditation of diplomats is a tool that all countries can use to attack each other or send signals of anger.
The UK expelled almost two dozen Russia officials in London, accused of spying, in the wake of the Novichok nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia in 2018. This triggered a tit-for tat rejection of some British officials at the embassy in Moscow.
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been further expulsions by the UK and – in much greater numbers – other European allies.
In May of this year, Britain announced it was expelling Russia’s defence attache, accusing him of being an “undeclared military intelligence officer” amid concerns about what the UK described as a campaign of “malign activity” by Moscow across the UK and Europe.
The Kremlin retaliated by expelling the British defence attache from Moscow.
The most recent expulsions of UK diplomats are thought to be linked to these escalating tensions, as opposed to having anything to do with the UK support for Ukraine.
However, the timing of the publication of the decision by Russian state media on Friday is interesting.
It comesas the UK and the US are weighing up whether to allow Ukraine to use their long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia – a move that President Vladimir Putin has said would be regarded as western allies directly joining the war against Russia.
Sir Keir Starmer and Joe Biden are due to meeting in Washington on Friday with a decision of green-lighting the use of UK-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles thought to be imminent.
New details emerge on Russia’s expulsion of British diplomats
By Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor
The ejection by Russia of six British diplomats from Moscow took place in August as part of a wave of tit-for-tat expulsions, a Whitehall source has said.
“They are already out,” the source said about the UK officials.
The source strongly rejected the characterisation by the Russian security services that the individuals had been involved in spying and sabotage.
The expulsions are thought to be part of a series of ejections and counter-ejections of British and Russian diplomats by London and Moscow as tensions between the two countries mount.
It began when the UK expelled almost two dozen Russian officials from the embassy in London in the wake of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia with a Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018 – blamed on Moscow.
Relations between the two countries chilled further following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine followed by a rise in suspected Russian cyber and sabotage attacks in the UK and across Europe.
In May of this year, Britain announced it was expelling Russia’s defence attache, accusing him of being an “undeclared military intelligence officer”.
Moscow retaliated by expelling the British defence attache from Moscow.
The Whitehall source said the most recent expulsions of six UK diplomats are thought to be linked to these tit-for-tat expulsions as opposed to having anything to do with the UK support for Ukraine. The source noted that Britain had recently tightened up rules around the length of time Russian diplomats can be accredited to stay in the UK, meaning anyone who had been here for longer than five years would have to leave – something which did not please Moscow.
Ukraine says it has shot down 24 of 26 Russian drones overnight
Ukraine’s air force said this morning it had shot down 24 of 26 drones launched from Russia overnight over four regions.
A statement issued by regional governor Oleh Kiper said falling debris in the southern Odesa region injured one person and damaged 20 homes and four garages.
Drone debris in the southern region of Mykolaiv caused a fire at a food enterprise that was put out, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said.
The governor of the westerly Ivano-Frankivsk region, Svitlana Onyshchuk, said authorities were dealing with the attack’s aftermath, but did not disclose details, except to say no one had been injured.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said Russia had attacked energy infrastructure in six regions over the past day, and damaged industrial infrastructure in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
The governor of the central Khmelnytskyi region reported no damage following the attack.
The air force revised an earlier statement to exclude a reference to air defences being activated in the Kherson region, in the south.
Putin ally adds to Kremlin statements threatening West
After the threatening comments issued by Vladimir Putin and a Russian minister overnight (see 6.18 and 6.32 posts), another ally of the president has added to what appears to be a coordinated series of statements from senior Kremlin figures.
The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, this morning accused NATO of being a party to military action in Ukraine, suggesting it was already heavily involved in military decision-making.
Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of Mr Putin, accused the US-led military alliance of helping Ukraine choose which Russian cities to target, of agreeing specific military action, and of giving Kyiv orders.
“They are waging war with our country,” Mr Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel.
‘I hope they won’t reach us’: Russian fears grow over long-range missile strikes
By Ivor Bennett, Moscow correspondent
The last time war came to Oryol was 1941. It came under Nazi occupation, before becoming one of the first major cities to be liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
More than 80 years on, fighting is not far away once again.
Ukraine’s incursion into the neighbouring Kursk region is little more than 100 miles south, and if the West does allow Kyiv to strike deeper inside Russia, Oryol would be in range.
“I am worried, of course I am,” Olga told Sky News, near Lenin Square, in the centre of the city.
“But I hope they won’t reach us. I really hope so.”
Not everyone was happy to speak to us.
“Great Britain is our enemy,” Mikhail said, when we told him we were from the UK.
But after initially declining to give his opinion, he elaborated: “[The West] will give permission now and the missile hits where we stand. And where will we be? In the cemetery.”
If the West does give Kyiv the green light to use their long-range missiles, civilians won’t be the target though.
Read the rest of Ivor’s eyewitness below:
Sabre-rattling Putin ‘wants to remove threat of retaliation’, UK minister says
As we’ve been covering this morning, there has been a fresh escalation in rhetoric overnight, with Vladimir Putin leading Kremlin figures in issuing threats to the West over the prospect of Ukraine using long-range weapons from NATO countries to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Peter Kyle, the UK secretary for science, innovation and technology, was asked during an appearance on Sky News a few minutes ago about how worried we should be over the Russian leader’s warnings.
“Well, President Putin has continually made threats, but the bottom line has never changed in this,” he said.
“If this war could end quickly, it could do so because of President Putin, who could decide to end this war straight away.
“He started the war, he did so in an illegal way, he did so in an unprovoked way.
“He could end the war by just turning off the aggression that he’s shown consistently since the very beginning, and return this continent to peace. I urge him to do so.
“President Putin wants to remove the threat of retaliation from Ukraine and President Zelenskyy in response to his aggression. He can do so straight away by ending the war. He has the power to do so.
“We urge him to do so. It is the swiftest way to bring this to a conclusion.”
Russia expels six British diplomats and claims they were spying
Russia’s FSB security service has said this morning it had revoked the accreditation of six British diplomats in Moscow, claiming their activity indicated they were involved in spying and sabotage work.
Britain’s embassy in Moscow has not yet commented on the claims.
The FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, said it had documents showing that a British foreign office department in London responsible for Eastern Europe and Central Asia was coordinating what it called “the escalation of the political and military situation” and was tasked with ensuring Russia’s strategic defeat in its war against Ukraine.
“Thus, the facts revealed give grounds to consider the activities of British diplomats sent to Moscow by the directorate as threatening the security of the Russian Federation,” the FSB said in a statement.
“In this connection, on the basis of documents provided by the Federal Security Service of Russia and as a response to the numerous unfriendly steps taken by London, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, in co-operation with the agencies concerned, has terminated the accreditation of six members of the political department of the British Embassy in Moscow in whose actions signs of spying and sabotage were found,” it said.
The six diplomats were named on Russian state TV, which also showed photographs of them.
“The English did not take our hints about the need to stop this practice (of carrying out intelligence activities inside Russia) so we decided to expel these six to begin with,” an FSB employee told the Rossiya-24 state TV channel.
The FSB said Russia would ask other British diplomats to go home early if they were found to be engaged in similar activity.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was cited by the state TASS news agency as saying the activities of the British embassy in Moscow had gone well beyond diplomatic convention and accusing it of carrying out deliberate activity designed to harm the Russian people.
Three killed and nine injured in Russian attacks on Kharkiv
A little more detail now on a story we mention in our round-up post earlier, when we reported the Russian shelling in a village in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Regional prosecutors say the attacks killed three people and injured nine.
A statement said one person died of his injuries in hospital after the attack on the village of Borova, southeast of Kharkiv – which is Ukraine’s second largest city and a frequent target of Russian strikes.
The Interior Ministry had earlier reported emergency services were working at the site of the initial attack on Thursday when Moscow’s troops shelled it again. Three rescuers were among the injured.
Meanwhile, prosecutors also reported that five people were injured in a Russian airstrike on the city of Kharkiv’s Kyivskyi district.
Officials in the adjacent border region of Sumy said Russian forces had pounded border areas 57 times throughout the day, with an attack by glide bombs killing one person near the town of Yampil.
Sumy region lies opposite southern Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces are engaged in an incursion launched last month.