Russia-Ukraine war – live: Russia ‘loses 20 armoured vehicles’ as Kyiv fends off tank assault

Ukrainians can begin filing claims for damages they have suffered in Russia’s invasion at a newly-established register based in The Hague, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has announced.

The register will initially focus on damage to property but should be expanded to also include other kinds of material and other damage, Mr Kuleba said at a conference organised by the Dutch government to discuss legal accountability. Ukraine wants to use frozen Russian assets to pay for war damages and reparations to victims.

“This is the first material step that is being made,” Mr Kuleba said, adding that claims could be filed by anyone from Tuesday. “It is no less important to establish an international compensation mechanism in full and confiscate frozen Russian assets.”

Both Ukrainian citizens and foreigners who suffered damage in Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 can file claims with the register. They can apply via a special app also used to settle legal transactions and keep official documents digitally.

Within hours of opening the register, more than 100 claims were filed, Dutch foreign minister Hanke Bruins Slot said. Ukrainian officials said they expect more than 8 million individual claims to be filed.

The World Bank estimated in February that Kyiv would need $486bn to rebuild the country, which has been devastated by Russia’s invasion. Ukraine has said that amount could double if compensation for the war’s victims is taken into account.

The Register of Damage for Ukraine has been established under the umbrella of the Council of Europe, a rights watchdog, and has 44 members, including most European Union members, Britain, Japan, and the United States.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country is now answering Russian strikes with “longer-range responses” – following a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil refinery 800 miles from its own borders.

In his nightly video address, Mr Zelensky did not refer directly to the attack on the Russian region of Tatarstan, but said such responses were just as important as helping Ukrainians who were suffering from enemy attacks.

“Equally important is that the Russian terrorists are receiving responses to their strikes,” he said. “Each time, longer-range responses.”

French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu said France is to deliver “hundreds” of armored vehicles by the beginning of next year to Ukraine as part of a new package of military aid for the country that just entered its third year of war since the full-scale Russian invasion.

In an interview with the French newspaper La Tribune’s Sunday edition, Lecornu said that “to hold such an extensive front line, the Ukrainian army needs, for example, our armored personnel carriers. It’s absolutely key for troop mobility.”

The French military is currently replacing its old VAB armored personnel carriers, that came into service in 1979, with a new generation of armored vehicles. “This old equipment, still operational, is going directly to Ukraine in large quantities. We’re talking about hundreds (of vehicles) in 2024 and early 2025,” Lecornu said.

Despite India’s economy being one of the fastest growing in the world, rates of unemployment and the quality of the jobs on offer remain a huge concern for millions. Namita Singh reports:

Pat Nibin Maxwell moved from India to Israel at the height of the Gaza conflict in December last year, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a four-year-old daughter. The decision to relocate to another country in search of work was not an easy one, particularly to such a restive region.

It was a choice driven by “financial reasons”, his cousin Jose Dennis tells The Independent. Maxwell was among hundreds of Indian youths taking up blue-collar jobs in dangerous locations, including Russia’s frontline with Ukraine, driven by what an economist describes as “extreme desperation” due to the lack of well-paid employment in India.

Ukrainian drones attacked industrial facilities in the province of Tatarstan, Russian authorities said Tuesday, in what would be Kyiv’s deepest strike inside Russian territory since the war began more than two years ago.

Seven people were injured in the attack on facilities near the cities of Yelabuga and Nizhnekamsk, located some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) east of Ukraine, Russian regional authorities said.

The strike damaged a hostel for students and workers in a free economic zone where a factory manufacturing Iranian-designed drones is reportedly located, other media reports said. Tatarstan is known for its high level of industrialization.

Russia’s top security agency said Monday it has broken up what it called a “terrorist cell” in southern Russia whose members had provided weapons and cash to suspected attackers of the Moscow concert hall.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said that on Sunday it detained four suspected members of the cell in the Russian province of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

The agency alleged that the suspects detained in Dagestan were involved in channeling funds and providing weapons to the gunmen who attacked the concert hall on Moscow’s western edge on March 22, killing 144 people in the deadliest attack on Russian soil in two decades.

A court in Russia on Monday ordered a detained Russian-American journalist to be held in jail for two more months pending investigation and trial, in a further step in the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent and free speech.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service, was taken into custody on Oct. 18 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military. Later, she was also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

A court in Tatarstan Monday ordered her to remain behind bars at least until June 5.

Millions of people from former Soviet republics in Central Asia have flocked to Russia‘s biggest cities over the past few decades, supporting a blossoming 24-hour consumer society by working as taxi drivers, cleaners, barbers or beauticians.

With Russia‘s 147 million population forecast to fall over future decades, migrants play an vital role in the economy, also working in heavy industry and farming.

“It is necessary to ensure the interests and security of the state and society, to conserve and preserve interethnic and interreligious harmony, our cultural and linguistic identity, all that is Russia‘s strength,” Putin said.

At least 277 languages and dialects are spoken in Russia. About 10% to 15% of Russia‘s population are Muslims.

Tajik officials have said they have seen a rise in Tajiks leaving Russia since the attack, and Russian media have reported police raids against unregistered migrants.

A blast ripped through a Central Asian-themed cafe in the southern Russian city of Voronezh in the early hours of Monday, when no one was on the premises.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called for a new approach to migration after Tajiks living in Russia were detained for a deadly attack on a concert hall outside Moscow that killed at least 144 people and wounded 551 more.

Islamic State, the militant group that once sought control over swathes of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the mass shooting. Russia has said it suspects Ukraine was linked to the attack, a claim denied by Kyiv and dismissed by Washington.

At least 12 people – including four accused gunmen – have been detained in Russia in connection with the attack. Most are Tajiks who had lived and worked in Russia.

Putin told police chiefs that the attack was aimed at sowing discord, xenophobia and Islamophobia inside Russia. But he said that migration systems needed improvement, as it was clear that work permits were sometimes being issued to people with serious criminal records.

“We need to deeply and radically update our approaches to migration policy,” Putin said, adding that some people with almost no knowledge of Russian or Russian culture were being allowed to work without proper checks.

“The decisive principle should be that only those who respect our traditions, language, culture, and history can come to live and work in Russia.”