Ukraine Russia war latest: Putin ‘may use sea mines to attack civilian ships and blame Kyiv’

Fifa is set to approve the reintegration of Russian youth teams into under-17 competitions and ease a total international ban on the country amid the war in Ukraine.

The Fifa Council, which is chaired by president Gianni Infantino, was set to hold an online meeting on Wednesday afternoon at which the Russian issue would be discussed, people involved in the meeting told The Associated Press.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because Fifa has not published any details about the meeting.

No news conference is scheduled to explain any decisions. Setting bid rules for potential hosts of the men’s World Cup in 2030 and also potentially the 2034 edition should also be discussed. Saudi Arabia has been targeting the 2034 tournament.

FIFA’s 37-member ruling body, including nine from UEFA, will be meeting eight days after the European football body provoked a rare split among its own executive committee and member federations by welcoming back Russian national teams for boys and girls into its competitions.

Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation has unveiled a cloak which he claims could render soldiers invisible to thermal imaging cameras and drones, which is reportedly being used in Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

”The cloak blocks the radiation of heat and makes the fighters invisible to the enemy. For example, to snipers or Special Operations Forces groups that perform combat tasks,” Mykhailo Fedorov was quoted as saying by Ukrainska Pravda.

The cloaks have been in development since 2015 and are manufactured by Brave1, a defence technology project sponsored by Kyiv.

Russia may use sea mines to target non-military ships and blame Ukraine for any attacks, the UK Government has said.

Declassified intelligence warned last month that the Russian military had attempted a missile strike against a cargo ship in the Black Sea.

The UK believes Russia could continue targeting civilian shipping, including by laying explosive devices in the approach to Ukrainian ports.

However, Vladimir Putin’s army wants to openly avoid sinking ships in order to blame Ukraine for attacks, the Government said.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “Russia’s pernicious targeting of civilian shipping in the Black Sea demonstrates Putin’s total disregard for civilian lives and the needs of the world’s most vulnerable.

“The world is watching – and we see right through Russia’s cynical attempts to lay blame on Ukraine for their attacks. We and our allies stand united against Putin and his attempts to harm Ukraine, and thus harm the rest of the world.”

Russian reporter Marina Ovsyannikova – who famously protested live on-air against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – has been sentenced by a Moscow court in absentia to eight-and-a-half years in prison, the BBC reports.

Having staged a walk out in front of studio cameras during an evening news broadcast on the flagship Channel One, wielding a DIY-placard that read, “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you”, the journalist was convicted of “spreading knowingly false information” about Russia’s armed forces.

Moscow made it illegal to describe its military action against Ukraine as a “war” or an “invasion”, shortly after invading.

The 45-year-old journalist – who describes the charges as “absurd” – was put under house arrest, but fled Russia with her daughter last year.

Shortly before hard-right Republicans made history by ousting Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Ukraine’s western allies, including the UK, the European Union and Nato, received a phone call from President Joe Biden.

Congress may be frozen but support for Ukraine is “ongoing”, Mr Biden told those on the line.

It was intended as a message of reassurance but, devoid of any detail, it spoke to an impending issue largely outside of the president’s control.

My colleague Tom Watling takes a look at how the resulting situation for Ukraine in this report:

Officials from the International Monetary Fund say they expect the United States will continue playing its key role in amassing multinational support, which has helped keep Ukraine’s economy afloat during Russia’s invasion.

That is despite the US Congress recently passing a short-term funding package that averted a US government shutdown but dropped $6bn in aid to Ukraine. It’s not clear if, when or how that aid installment might be restored.

The US has already sent or committed $69.5b in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, according to the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel, Germany.

“ President Biden has made an announcement … that he is fully committed to supporting Ukraine,” Uma Ramakrishnan, IMF European department deputy director, told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday. ”And so from our standpoint, the baseline assumption remains that the US remains committed.”

She added that “it is premature for us to comment on what will materialise or not, because we have to wait for the process to play out”.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky is widely expected to travel to Spain’s Alhambra Palace to attend the third meeting this year of the European Political Community, as he seeks to drum up more support and money from Western allies.

European leaders will gather on Thursday in Granada in an attempt to find ways to soothe tensions on the continent, at a rare occasion where leaders of rival nations such as Serbia and Kosovo will be gathered in one plenary room. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus were not invited.

“Crises are everywhere,” said European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on the eve of the gathering.

President Aliyev of Azerbaijan has pulled out of the gathering at the last moment, when expectations had risen that a possible summit-within-the summit would unite key players and go-betweens in his country’s crisis with neighbouring Armenia, after the former’s rapid military assault in Nagorno-Karabakh sparked the humanitarian tragedy of some 100,000 Armenians fleeing the disputed enclave.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose nation was shaken by a suicide bombing close to the parliament on Sunday in the Turkish capital, Ankara, is another no-show.

Joe Biden has expressed concern that Republican infighting in Congress could hurt Ukraine aid, funding for Kyiv was left out of a stopgap bill.

Asked if he was concerned that the United States would not be able to deliver the aid that it has promised to Ukraine because of the disarray on Capitol Hill, the US president told reporters: “It does worry me … but I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties who have said that they support funding Ukraine.”

Mr Biden indicated that there was another avenue that the US could use to fund Ukraine, which he would be setting out in a “major” speech.

Germany currently has no plans to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles because they are not comparable to missiles provided by France and Britain – despite UK officials seeking to persuade Berlin to do so, the Bild newspaper has reported.

Berlin is also concerned that the missiles could be used to target the Kerch Bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula seized and annexed by Moscow in 2014, the paper said.

Kyiv has been pushing Berlin to supply the Taurus missiles, which could give Ukraine the ability to cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory. Berlin has repeatedly said it will only act in concert with Washington on arms deliveries to Ukraine.

In an internal meeting last week, Bild said, chancellor Olaf Scholz told the parliament’s foreign affairs committee that Taurus missiles were not comparable to France’s Scalp or Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missiles, as those countries contribute geodata on targets directly themselves and are involved with their own personnel.

A spokesperson for the chancellery told Reuters there were no new updates regarding the issue of Taurus cruise missiles for Ukraine.