Ukraine-Russia war – live: Kyiv ‘uncovers mass weapons fraud worth £32m’

A father crying over the body of his 16-year-old son, who was hit by a Russian missile in Mariupol while playing football with his friends. Frightened and wounded pregnant women being pulled out of a maternity ward, minutes after the building was hit in an airstrike. The first sighting of a Russian tank – the letter “Z” plastered on its side – turning its turret toward the top floor of a hospital as Moscow’s forces took over the southern Ukrainian city.

These are all harrowing scenes documented by journalists Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko before they were forced into using the humanitarian corridor out of the besieged city as the Russians were closing it. Those left behind have been living under Russian rule ever since, for nearly two years.

20 Days in Mariupol, the Chernov-directed documentary covering the first few weeks of Russia’s advance into the southern city, has just been nominated for an Academy Award.

In a new investigation, the BBC discovered the UK based company is not only actively recruiting new sales agents in Russia but operating a significant production operation in Moscow.

In March 2022, at the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine it had announced that it would be suspending all investments in Russia and would “stop exporting products from the Russian factory to all other markets”.

Under the proposals, warheads three times as strong as the bomb which devastated Hiroshima would be based at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, according to Pentagon documents seen by The Daily Telegraph.

They set out plans for a “nuclear mission” to take place “imminently” at the base.

Officials in Ukraine said Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that their own forces shot down a military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.

The Ukrainian agency that deals with prisoner exchanges said late Friday that Russian officials had “with great delay” provided it with a list of the 65 Ukrainians who Moscow said had died in the Wednesday plane crash in Russia’s Belgorod region.

The Russian city of St. Petersburg on Saturday marked the 80th anniversary of the end of a devastating World War II siege by Nazi forces with a series of memorial events attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and close allies.

The Kremlin leader laid flowers at a monument to fallen Soviet defenders of the city, then called Leningrad, on the banks of the Neva River, and then at Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried.

Employees from a Ukrainian arms firm conspired with defense ministry officials to embezzle almost $40 million earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells for the war with Russia, Ukraine’s security service reported.

The SBU said late Saturday that five people have been charged, with one person detained while trying to cross the Ukrainian border. If found guilty, they face up to 12 years in prison.

The investigation comes as Kyiv attempts to clamp down on corruption in a bid to speed up its membership in the European Union and NATO. Officials from both blocs have demanded widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.

Ukraine could win the war against Russia much faster if it was allowed to use western weapons to strike military targets across the border, the head of Ukraine’s navy has claimed.

Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa called on Kyiv’s western backers to stop restricting Ukraine from firing on military targets inside Russia after the recent success of long-range attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea.

While the US, UK and France have supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine – albeit after 15 months of Russia’s full-scale invasion – Kyiv’s forces are still not allowed to use those weapons outside of its own territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made public his income over a two-year period as part of a drive to promote transparency and root out endemic corruption.

In a post on the presidential website, Mr Zelensky noted that his income had declined in 2021 and further in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February. It was the first time he publicly declared his income.

In 2021, the year before the invasion, Mr Zelensky and his family reported income of 10.8 million hryvnias (£225,000), down 12 million hryvnias from the previous year. The 2021 figure included income from the sale of $142,000 (£112,000) of government bonds.

In 2022, the Zelensky family’s income fell further to 3.7 million hryvnias as he earned less rental income from real estate he owned because of the outbreak of the war.

Mr Zelensky has called for public officials to disclose their incomes as part of efforts to increase transparency and eliminate corruption as Ukraine tries to meet the stringent requirements for its bid to join the European Union.

Western allies providing weaponry and financial assistance as well as international bodies like the International Monetary Fund have also sought assurances on efforts to eliminate corruption.

Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention, one of several bodies devoted to exposing and eliminating graft, last month reopened to public scrutiny a register on declared income.

A Russian missile struck an industrial site in the central Ukrainian district of Kremenchuk on Sunday for a second day, the regional governor said.

“For the second day in a row, the enemy is attacking Poltava region,” Poltava Regional Governor Filip Pronin wrote on the Telegram messaging app, noting that the target was in Kremenchuk district. He gave no further details.

A missile attack on Saturday hit an industrial site in the same area, triggering a fire but causing no casualties.

Pope Francis has urged urged respect for civilians in conflict areas and said people were tired of wars, which he called a “disaster for the peoples and a defeat for humanity”.

After his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s square, the pope said humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow in Myanmar and said the population must be respected also in the Middle East, hit by the war between Israel and Hamas. He also mentioned the suffering of people in Ukraine.

The Myanmar military, which overthrew an elected government in 2021, has been battling an alliance of ethnic minority armies fighting to end its control of their regions since late October.

Francis also said he learned “with relief” that a group of people including six nuns, had been freed in Haiti after nearly a week in captivity. Last week, he had called for their release.