Russia war LIVE: Putin warns he’ll step-up nuclear strikes as Kremlin STILL supplying gas to Europe via Ukraine

How US spies helped Ukraine slaughter eight Russian generals

US spies have helped Ukraine slaughter eight of Putin’s generals, 36 colonels and 300 officers by providing detailed intelligence about Russia’s moves.

Moscow lost its 35th colonel last week in a major blow to Vladimir Putin’s failed invasion.

Col. Mikhail Nagamov, 41, commander of a sapper regiment of the Western Military District, died in Ukraine on April 13.

Nagamov died “while performing a combat mission in Ukraine”.

Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Combined Arms Army, became the eighth general to be killed in Ukraine earlier this month.

It is estimated the Russian leader’s invasion has already cost the lives of over 20,000 troops.

And now US officials have told NBC News that one of the reasons Ukraine was able to target Putin’s forces was US intelligence.

The officials said the US informed Ukraine of the time and location Russia intended to strike.

A US official said: “From the get-go, we leaned pretty heavily forward in sharing both strategic and actionable intelligence with Ukraine.

“It’s been impactful both at a tactical and strategic level. There are examples where you could tell a pretty clear story that this made a major difference.”

Ex-US marine Trevor Reed jailed in Russia since 2019 is exchanged for Russian pilot

Former US Marine Trevor Reed has been exchanged for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko in a prison swap.

The exchange took place in Turkey on Wednesday, reports say.

Reed was arrested in Moscow in 2019 and accused of intentionally endangering the lives of government officials in the line of duty.

Russian cops said Reed got drunk and allegedly grabbed the arm of an officer as he was being taken to a station – claims that were dismissed by US officials as “preposterous”.

The former Marine was sentenced to nine years in jail.

Meanwhile, Yaroshenko has returned to Russia, according to the TASS news agency.

Russian Ministry sanction hundreds of MP’s

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is sanctioning 287 MPs in the UK Parliament.

The Russian Ministry have accused them of “groundless whipping up of Russophobic hysteria”.

The total is made up of 213 Conservative politicians and 74 from Labour, which will be banned from entering Russia.

The ministry says there could be further “retaliatory counter-measures” after the UK sanctioned 386 Russian parliamentarians in March.

Putin loses 36th colonel as top brass is buried in Omsk

Russia today held the funeral of its 36th colonel known to have been killed in Ukraine in little over two months of war. 

Lt-Col Oleg Yevseev, 43, was buried in the Siberian city of Omsk on what would have been his 44th birthday. 

Russia has given no details of  how and when he was killed except that it was as part of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. 

He is one of 30 servicemen from Omsk region to die in the war.

UK trade deals ‘unaffected’ by China and India’s stance on Ukraine

The UK will not consider India and China’s failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in pursuing post-Brexit trade deals with those countries, the International Trade Secretary has said.

Quizzed about whether India’s neutrality over the conflict has become a negotiating issue in trade talks, Anne-Marie Trevelyan told MPs: “Trade deals aren’t the tool for, sort of, if you like, the broader diplomatic agreement discussion.

“Those continuing discussions around areas of policy difference, whatever they might be, will continue, but all we will continue to do is to encourage everybody to think about how their relationship either with Russia or indeed with Ukraine can be enhanced or reduced in order to bring this war to an end as quickly as we can”.

She said negotiations with India are in “relatively early stages”, and that representatives from the Department for International Trade are in the country this week.

“They have a very clear mandate to continue discussing the broad range of trade issues that we want to see in a trade deal with India,” Ms Trevelyan told the International Trade Committee.

Boris Johnson told negotiators to get a free trade agreement done by Diwali, in October, as he celebrated a “massive push” during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi last week.

Russia claims it has destroyed ‘large batch of Western-supplied weapons’ in Ukraine

Russia claims it has destroyed a large quantity of Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine.

With the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives entering its third month, Ukraine conceded Russian forces had pushed deeper into the country’s east and captured several villages, as Moscow intensifies a renewed offensive to take control of Donbas.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had destroyed the “large batch” of weapons and ammunition supplied by the United States and European countries using long-range missile strikes on southeastern Ukraine.

They targeted hangers at an aluminium plant near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with “high-precision long-range sea-based Kalibr missiles”, the ministry said, without specifying the weapons destroyed.

Kremlin dismisses accusations Russia is using gas as blackmail tool

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed on Wednesday accusations that Moscow has used natural gas supplies as a tool of blackmail after Russian energy giant Gazprom halted gas exports to Poland and Bulgaria.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Gazprom’s announcement was yet another attempt by Russia to use gas as an instrument of blackmail.

Peskov said Russia was a reliable energy supplier and was not engaging in blackmail.

He declined to say how many countries had agreed to switch to paying for gas in roubles in line with a decree issued last month by President Vladimir Putin.

Dominic Raab was non-committal when asked if Liz Truss was right to say that the West should supply warplanes to Ukraine.

The Justice Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I certainly don’t think we should be… avoiding providing support to Ukraine at this critical moment in the war. And the Foreign Secretary is right about that.”

Pressed on whether she was right about providing the planes specifically, he said: “We need to listen very carefully to what the Ukrainians need and help with our allies to provide them with the military support, so that they win and so that (Vladimir) Putin loses, and that’s part of it, so is the sanctions.”

‘My bathroom is the last bit of my flat Putin hasn’t blitzed’

A GRAN trapped near Ukraine’s front line has been forced to sleep on a chair in her bathroom as it is the only room in her bomb-blitzed flat protected from shelling.

Vera Hurovaya and hubby Vladimir Krupenya live in the last block of flats left on the edge of Kharkiv.

Neighbours have fled the Saltivka district, a wasteland due to non-stop Russian bombardments.

But Vera, 73, and Vlad, 83, have nowhere to go. The exhausted pair told The Sun they had slept on wooden stools in the cramped, candlelit bathroom since Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded on February 24.

Their besieged home overlooking no-man’s land is just 2½ miles from Russia’s positions.

They cannot even lie in their bath as they keep it full of water for drinking, cooking and washing as the taps rarely work.

And they are too frail to make the life-or-death dash to an underground shelter as rockets, missiles and tank bombardments crash in day and night.

Their heartwrenching tale came as Russian forces blasted five railway stations in central and western Ukraine hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled by rail to capital Kyiv.

Read the article in full here.

Gazprom halts supplies to Bulgaria and Poland for failing to pay in roubles

Russian energy giant Gazprom on Wednesday halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland for failing to pay for gas in roubles, the Kremlin’s toughest response yet to the crippling sanctions imposed by the West over the conflict in Ukraine.

Poland and Bulgaria are the first countries to have their gas cut off by Europe’s main supplier since Moscow started what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“Gazprom has completely suspended gas supplies to Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) due to absence of payments in roubles,” Gazprom said in a statemnt.

Gazprom also warned that transit via Poland and Bulgaria would be cut if gas was taken illegally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered European countries to pay Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas company, in roubles after what the West froze Russian assets and largely cut Moscow out of the West’s economic system.

Russian threat against Britain is ‘unlawful, warns Dominic Raab

Moscow’s threat of a “proportional response” against Britain for backing Ukrainian strikes behind Russian lines is “unlawful”, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has warned.

He said Vladimir Putin’s regime is only adding to its “pariah status” by threatening other countries, including by shutting off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.

The Kremlin was angered by armed forces minister James Heappey saying it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to strike strategic targets on Russian soil.

Russia’s defence ministry accused the UK of “direct provoking” Ukraine into attacks, warning of a “proportional response” if the country succeeds in landing them, hinting at possible strikes at British sites in Kyiv.

Mr Raab, who is also Justice Secretary, told Sky News: “The Russian statement is unlawful and what we’re doing is lawful, we’re entitled, all states are entitled to provide military support to any state exercising the right of lawful defence against an aggressive invasion.

“Frankly if Russia starts threatening other countries it only adds further to their pariah status and will only further the solidarity and consensus in the international community that they must be stopped.

China launches ‘raging cyber-espionage battle’ on Russia

A Chinese affiliated hacker group is targeting Russians using malware disguised as legitimate documents and downloads.

China’s actions against Russia is another twist in the complex relationship between the two countries.

China and Russia share a 2,600 mile-long border last remarked in the early 2000s – the border has waxed and waned over a centuries of geographical and political evolution.

Presently, China has not condemned Russia’s military actions in Ukraine – but they are altering their cyber position in response to the matter.

The Register quoted a researcher who said “The war in Ukraine has prompted many countries to deploy their cyber capabilities to gain insight about global events, political machinations, and motivations. This desire for situational awareness often extends to collecting intelligence from allies and ‘friends.'”

The two frenemy nations have shared, messy feelings toward the United States as the West races to cripple Russia’s economy and stifle China’s growth.

‘Russia must be pushed out of Donbas’

Russia must be pushed out of the Donbas region, the chairman of the Defence Committee has said.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood told Sky News: “The unanswered question I hope the Foreign Secretary will address is what are we collectively trying to achieve? What is mission success?

“Given the threat is not just to Ukraine but well beyond that this is game-changing, what we’re experiencing here in European security.

“Putin must strategically fail in Ukraine, and if we allow him to survive, he will regroup and attempt to advance his sphere of influence way beyond Ukraine in the future.

“So we need to be very, very clear what our mission is – it must be to push Russia completely out of the Donbas region.”

Help those fleeing conflict with The Sun’s Ukraine Fund

PICTURES of women and children fleeing the horror of Ukraine’s devastated towns and cities have moved Sun readers to tears.

Many of you want to help the five million caught in the chaos — and now you can, by donating to The Sun’s Ukraine Fund.

Give as little as £3 or as much as you can afford and every penny will be donated to the Red Cross on the ground helping women, children, the old, the infirm and the wounded.

Donate here to help The Sun’s fund

Or text to 70141 from UK mobiles

£3 — text SUN£3
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Texts cost your chosen donation amount (e.g. £5) +1 standard message (we receive 100%). For full T&Cs visit redcross.org.uk/mobile

What is Putin’s SC-X-9 Skyfall weapon?

Further beefing up Russia’s stash of superweapons is the SC-X-9 Skyfall, a nuclear-armed cruise missile that has an “unlimited” range.

It can be launched from land or sea and is able to stay aloft for DAYS – making even long-distance attacks lightwork.

Putin claims the nuke, unveiled in 2018, has the ability to evade any air defence systems – meaning no enemy is off limits.

Skyfall is also thought to be more difficult to detect as it is able to fly at low altitudes throughout its journey.

The world’s first nuclear-powered cruise missile was initially designed with the purpose of finding holes in enemy countries defence systems.

The state-of-the-art weapons system can also target prime military sites other weapons can’t reach.

Nuclear world war now a ‘real’ danger

Russia’s foreign minister warned a nuclear world war is now a “real” danger as British and Nato weapons are already “legitimate” targets in Ukraine.

In a chilling message, Sergei Lavrov said the risk of World War 3 is now “considerable” – saying the West is essentially fighting a proxy war against Moscow via its support for Kyiv.

Lavrov accused Nato forces of “pouring oil on the fire” by “pumping weapons into Ukraine”.

In an interview with Russian news agencies, he said: “This is our key position on which we base everything.

“The risks now are considerable.

“I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real, And we must not underestimate it.”

Fighters stuck in Mariupol steelworks ‘only have days of supplies left’

Fighters that are stuck in the steelworks say they are surrounded by the Russian army with no chance of getting out, and only have supplies left for a few more days.

According to the BBC a Ukrainian woman who has friends stuck in the Azovstal steel plant says they have ‘days left’.

Lyuba Shipovich, in Lviv, is in daily contact with her friends who are fighting in the Ukrainian military – but she says time is running out for them.

Talking to the BBC’s Ukrainecast she said the Russian President Vladimir Putin is “the only person who knows the answer” about when they will get out of the plant. 

Fighters from the Azov battalion and the 36th marine brigade are still trying to defend the plant but “it’s impossible to vacate Mariupol so they’re just trying to fight and stay as long as they can”, she says.

Russia sends gas warning

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, has rejected accusations Russia is using natural gas supplies as a tool of blackmail.

Earlier today Russia decided to cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.

The reason for this was because they had refused to pay in the Russian currency.

The spokesman did not say how many countries have agreed to pay for gas in roubles, but said Russia introduced the new rule because of sanctions by “unfriendly countries against us”.

“This need was dictated by the fact that, as you know, a significant amount of our reserves were blocked or – in other words – stolen. Therefore, there is no question of any blackmail,” he said.

He said if other consumers “decline to pay under the new system,” then President Putin’s decree, under which gas supplies can be cut off, “of course will be applied”.