Russia-Ukraine war: Putin ‘playing with lives’ in plane crash as Moscow blames Kyiv

Russia’s top diplomat accused the United States, South Korea and Japan on Wednesday of preparing for war with North Korea.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a UN news conference that this new military bloc brought together by the United States is building up military activity and conducting large-scale exercises. The United States, South Korea and Japan have described their combined military drills as defensive in nature and necessary to cope with growing North Korean nuclear threats.

All of a sudden South Korea’s rhetoric “became even more hostile towards Pyongyang,” Lavrov said. “In Japan as well, we hear aggressive rhetoric” and it is seriously talking about setting up NATO infrastructure with US assistance.

Edith M. Lederer reports:

Investigators searching the site where a Russian military transport plane crashed in a border region near Ukraine reportedly have found the plane’s flight recorders, a day after Moscow accused Kyiv of shooting down the aircraft and Ukraine’s president demanded an international investigation.

The Il-76 fell from the sky and crashed in a huge ball of flame in a rural area of Russia on Wednesday, killing all 74 people on board, Russian authorities said, as the war nears its two-year mark.

Russian officials accused Kyiv of shooting down the plane with two missiles, claiming that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war were on board as they headed for a prisoner swap. They offered no evidence for their claim.

Nepal has asked Russia to send back hundreds of Nepali nationals who were recruited to fight against Ukraine and repatriate the bodies of those who died in the conflict, Nepal’s top diplomat said Thursday.

The Russian army is estimated to have recruited more than 200 Nepali nationals to fight in Ukraine and at least 14 of them have died there, Nepal’s Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We have asked Russia to immediately stop the recruitment of Nepali nationals in their army, immediately return those who are already serving in the army, repatriate the bodies of those killed, and treat and return those who were wounded in the fighting,” Saud said.

Binaj Gurubacharya reports:

The Moscow City Court on Thursday convicted a former Ukraine rebel leader who called President Vladimir Putin cowardly of extremism and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Igor Girkin, who used the surname alias of Strelkov (shooter), was the most prominent leader of Russian-backed separatist fighters in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in 2014, when rebellion arose after the ouster of Ukraine’s Russia-allied president.

He returned to Russia and became a nationalist commentator and activist. He supported launching Russia’s war in Ukraine, but sharply criticized authorities for being inept and indecisive in carrying out the fight.

Several major Ukrainian state organisations on Thursday reported cyber attacks on their systems, in the latest wave that a source close to the government blamed on Russian intelligence.

Ukraine’s state-run energy company Naftogaz said one of the data centres had been hit by a “large-scale cyberattack”. It said on the Telegram messaging app: “Our websites and call centre are currently down.”

Ukrainian national postal service Ukrposhta reported a “significant technical failure” in its IT systems. “Last night there was an attack on the information infrastructure of our partners,” Ukrposhta head Ihor Smeliansky said on Telegram. The company said its specialists were working to fix the problem and restore full operations.

Ukrtransbezpeka, a state transport safety agency, which maintains the border crossing system for Ukrainian drivers, also reported problems with its data centre.

Interfax Ukraine news agency later quoted CERT-UA, the state body responsible for countering cyber attacks, as saying its specialists were working to resolve problems.

A convention centre and the ticket sales system for Ukrainian state railways also reported suspected cyber attacks.

A source close to the Ukrainian government said there were other “victims,” mainly in the finance and banking sector, but that government policy was to disclose only those whose services go down.

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.

Russia and Ukraine traded accusations Thursday over the crash of a military transport plane that Moscow said was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war and was shot down by Kyiv’s forces, another heated episode in the information war that has been a feature of the conflict.

Though investigators reportedly found the flight recorders a day after Wednesday’s crash, there was little hope that the circumstances would be clarified in a war where both sides have often used accusations to sway opinion at home and abroad.

The Il-76 crashed in a huge ball of fire in a rural area of Russia, and authorities there said all 74 people on board, including 65 POWs, six crew members and three Russian servicemen, were killed.

The crash triggered a spate of claims and counterclaims, but neither side offered evidence for their accusations, and The Associated Press could not independently confirm who was aboard or how the plane was downed.

Russia alleged that Kyiv shot down the plane with two missiles and said the prisoners of war were headed for an exchange. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described it as “a totally monstrous act.” Russia’s top investigative agency, known as the Investigative Committee, opened a criminal probe Thursday on charges that the crash was a terrorist act.

Ukraine responded by casting doubt on the fact that POWs were aboard and putting forward their own theories, including implying that the plane may have posed a threat.