The head of Germany’s national cybersecurity agency has been dismissed following reports of possible ties to Russian intelligence, the Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday. His dismissal came as several regions of Ukraine and the capital Kyiv were experiencing power cuts after multiple Russian air strikes targeted energy facilities across the country. Read FRANCE 24’s liveblog for the latest developments. All are in Paris time (GMT+2).
Arne Schoenbohm, the head of Germany‘s national cybersecurity agency, the BSI, has been dismissed following reports of possible ties to Russian intelligence, the Interior Ministry has said.
Schoenbohm co-founded a cybersecurity group a decade ago that brings together experts from public institutions and the private sector. German media have reported that one of its members is a company founded by a former Russian intelligence agent.
The German government said over a week ago that it was investigating the reports comprehensively.
There is growing concern in Germany that the country’s critical infrastructure might be targeted by Russia because of Berlin’s support for Ukraine.
Estonian lawmakers have condemned Moscow’s annexation of Ukrainian territory and declared Russia a “terrorist regime” in a statement adopted by 88 votes in favour in the country’s 101-seat legislature.
The parliament “declares Russia a terrorist regime and the Russian Federation a country that supports terrorism”, the statement said. “Putin’s regime, with its threats of nuclear attack, has turned Russia into the biggest danger to peace both in Europe and in the whole world.”
The parliament in Estonia’s neighbour, Latvia, declared Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” in August, accusing Moscow of “targeted genocide against the Ukrainian people”.
But US President Joe Biden’s administration last month said it would not use the terminology, calling this “not the most effective or strongest path forward”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky will address this week’s Frankfurt book fair, with organisers offering emphatic support to the country’s literary scene in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Ukrainian authors led by “punk poet” Sergiy Zhadan will feature prominently at the world’s biggest publishing event.
Zelensky will make his speech Thursday via video link at the five-day annual fair, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors from around the world and hundreds of exhibitors.
His wife, Olena Zelenska, is also due to speak at a side event.
Sviatohirsk was once so picturesque it was nicknamed ‘the Switzerland’ of the Donbas but today it lies in ruins. The city was destroyed by artillery battles and then occupied until Ukraine’s forces pushed out Russian troops. The remaining inhabitant’s loyalties are divided between the Russian and Ukrainian sides. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent reports.
The Russian military on Tuesday said it had recaptured territory in the eastern Kharkiv region of Ukraine, the first gains in that place since Moscow’s forces were pushed back in a sweeping counter-offensive.
“Units of the Russian army during offensive operations captured the village of Gorobiivka in the Kharkiv region,” the defence ministry said, claiming to have inflicted a “significant defeat” on Ukrainian troops in the village.
President Vladimir Putin does not plan to end a military mobilisation in Russia “yet” but some of the country’s regions completed the process, the Kremlin said Tuesday.
“For the moment, there is no presidential decree (on ending mobilisation),” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He spoke a day after Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced an end to the mobilisation in the capital, closing the city’s draft offices.
Putin announced a nationwide military call-up to prop up Moscow’s forces in Ukraine on September 21, in a move that has led to an exodus of men and some discontent.
Last week the Russian leader said he aimed to end the drive “within about two weeks”.
The situation in Ukraine is “critical” following waves of Russian strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter, Ukraine’s presidency said Tuesday.
“The situation is critical now across the country because our regions are dependent on one another… it’s necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, told Ukrainian television.
Russian strikes that targeted an energy facility in Kyiv left at least two people dead, officials said Tuesday, in a wave of bombardments that knocked out electricity in several cities across the country.
“On October 18, 2022, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, using means of warfare prohibited by international law, launched a missile attack on an energy supply facility on the left bank of the capital. Preliminarily, two people were killed and one was injured,” the regional prosecutor’s office said.
The Kremlin said Tuesday it had “no information” of its forces using Iranian drones in Ukraine after Kyiv and the West said Moscow used Tehran’s weapons in its deadly strikes.
“No, we have no information on this. Russian tech is used,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked whether Russia was using Iranian drones during a briefing, referring any further questions on the issue to the defence ministry.
Russia on Tuesday said a “technical malfunction” probably caused a military jet to crash into a block of flats in Yeysk, near Ukraine, killing at least 13 people including three children.
Investigators said they were questioning the pilots of the Sukhoi Su-34, who managed to parachute out of the plane before it crashed on Monday evening into the nine-storey building, engulfing it in flames.
Nineteen people were injured, four of them critically.
The crash was probably caused by “a technical malfunction”, Russia’s investigative committee, which probes serious crimes, said.
It said it had launched a criminal inquiry into possible violations of flight rules, and had “seized fuel samples at the departure aerodrome” and “flight recorders at the site of the crash”.
At least 50 metres of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been destroyed or buried under the seafloor, following an explosion assumed to be from sabotage, underwater images published Tuesday showed.
Danish police meanwhile said their inspections of the pipelines 1 and 2 in the Danish economic zone of the Baltic Sea confirmed the damage was “caused by powerful explosions”.
In videos published by Swedish newspaper Expressen, a massive tear and twisted metal can be seen on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline 80 metres down in the Baltic Sea.
Expressen said the videos, filmed on Monday, show how over 50 metres (165 feet) of the pipeline is either missing or buried under the seabed, and long tears can be observed on the seabed leading up to the burst pipe.
“It is only an extreme force that can bend metal that thick in the way we are seeing,” Trond Larsen, drone operator with the Norwegian company Blueye Robotics, told Expressen.
Larsen, who piloted the submersible drone which captured the video, also said you could also see “a very large impact on the seabed around the pipe.”
Several regions of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, were experiencing power cuts after multiple strikes targeted energy facilities, local officials and agencies said Tuesday.
Many settlements in Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv, and parts of Dnipro city in central Ukraine were without electricity, while power was restored to the southern city of Mykolaiv after strikes overnight.
Russian air strikes have destroyed 30% of Ukraine’s power stations since October 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.
He wrote on Twitter that the attacks had caused massive blackouts across Ukraine and that there was “no space left for negotiations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine said Tuesday three strikes had hit a “power facility” in Kyiv, a day after deadly Russian drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
“Preliminarily, three hits on a power supply facility on the left bank of Kyiv,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, on social media.
Reporting from the city of Zaporizhzhia, FRANCE 24 correspondent Catherine Norris Trent says that strikes there are a nightly occurrence and notes “how important the energy infrastructure is” in the Zaporizhzhia region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power station and a huge hydroelectric dam.
Ukraine’s state nuclear energy agency on Tuesday accused Russia of detaining two senior employees at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
In a statement on social media, Energoatom said Russian forces on Monday “kidnapped” the head of information technology Oleg Kostyukov and the plant’s assistant general director Oleg Osheka and “took them to an unknown destination”.
At least 13 people, including three children, were killed after a Russian military plane crashed into a residential area of Yeysk, a town in southwest Russia near the border with Ukraine, Moscow authorities said Tuesday as search operations ended.
The ministry of emergency situations said in a statement that rescuers had completed the search of the rubble, and discovered “10 more bodies”, after earlier announcing three deaths.
“In total, 13 people died, including three children, while 19 people were injured,” according to the ministry, as quoted by Russian news agencies.
Moscow on Monday stepped up attacks across Ukraine, cutting electricity and killing eight people, including in kamikaze drone strikes on the capital, as a Russian warplane crashed near the border.
Moscow is thought to be trying to counter battlefield losses in its eight-month war in Ukraine by waging a punitive policy of striking energy facilities before winter in a move President Vladimir Putin hopes will weaken resistance.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said Russia launched five strikes in Kyiv and against energy facilities in Sumy and the central Dnipropetrovsk regions, knocking out electricity to hundreds of towns and villages.
Ukraine said four people were killed in Kyiv, including a married couple expecting a baby, and another four in the northeast region of Sumy.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)
Originally published on France24
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