Polish counterintelligence services ABW reported on Thursday an ongoing operation targeting a Russian spy network. “ABW is acting as part of an investigation into espionage activities carried out on behalf of Russia against states and institutions of the European Union,” Polish special services spokesperson Jacek Dobrzynski wrote on X .
During the operation, ABW carried out searches in Warsaw and Tychy (South) on Wednesday and “interrogated people”. The operation is the result of cooperation between the ABW and several European services, notably Czech, Prague having announced a similar operation on Wednesday. The objective of the network targeted by the operation was “to achieve the foreign policy objectives of the Kremlin, in particular to weaken Poland’s position on the international scene, to discredit Ukraine and the image of the institutions of the European Union,” writes ABW in a press release.
During the night, the police arrested Ekaterina Anikievitch from the media SOTAvision and Konstantin Jarov from RusNews, reported the NGO OVD-Info, which specializes in monitoring repression in Russia. Konstantin Jarov was beaten and threatened with sexual violence by the police, according to a witness to the scene cited by this organization.
“They hit me with their feet, put a foot on my head, twisted my fingers, laughed at me when I tried to get up,” said Konstantin Jarov, quoted by his media outlet RusNews. He said he had a head injury, abrasions, dislocated fingers and sprains. According to him, this violence was caused by filming carried out near the home of another journalist, Antonina Favorskaïa of SOTAvision, who was arrested on Wednesday evening immediately after being released after 10 days of administrative detention for disobedience to the police.
This journalist’s apartment was searched Wednesday evening, as was that of her parents, said her lawyer Mikhail Birioukov, cited by SOTAvision.
Two other journalists, Alexandra Astakhova and Anastassia Moussatova, who had come to meet their colleague after he was released from detention, were also arrested and taken to be questioned by investigators, according to the same source.
According to the news website Mediazona, which specializes in monitoring legal cases, the case against Antonina Favorskaya is linked to the activities of the movement of opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison in February. Its organizations are classified as “extremist” by Russian justice. Antonina Favorskaya has been covering the trials involving Alexeï Navalny for years. It was she who shot the last video showing the opponent still alive, on February 15 during a court hearing.
“The enemy launched […] 28 attack drones of type “Shahed-136/131” in the night from the Russian region of Kursk and Cape Chaouda, in the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, reported the commander of the army of Ukrainian air, Mykola Oleshchouk, in a Telegram message published Thursday morning.
“Twenty-six” of these drones were “destroyed” in the regions of Odessa (south), Kharkiv (east), Dnipropetrovsk (east) and Zaporizhia (south), added Mykola Oleshchuk, without mentioning any injuries or deaths. damage. Moscow also directed three Kh-22 cruise missiles, an Kh-31P anti-radar missile and an S-300 surface-to-air missile against Ukraine during the night, according to the same source which did not communicated further on this subject.
Russia’s intelligence chief traveled to Pyongyang earlier this week to discuss security cooperation, North Korea’s KCNA news agency said Thursday, weeks after Seoul accused the North of sending thousands of weapons containers to Moscow to support its invasion of Ukraine.
Sergei Naryshkin met with North Korean Minister of State Security Ri Chang Dae during his visit from Monday to Wednesday. The officials discussed strengthening cooperation “to confront growing espionage and plots by hostile forces,” KCNA reported.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday again urged Ukraine’s allies to “accelerate the delivery” of F-16 fighter jets and transfer additional Patriot batteries. “There is no rational justification for why Patriots, of which there are many around the world, still do not cover the skies of Kharkiv and other cities and towns attacked by Russian terrorists,” he added.
A little earlier, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kouleba, had relayed the same message. The powerful and expensive Patriot system was first supplied to Ukraine in the spring of 2023.
Hello everyone. Like every day, the editorial staff of 20 minutes is mobilized this Thursday to give you all the information on the conflict. Yesterday, Russian bombings continued on Ukraine. Several strikes left at least four dead and around thirty injured, particularly in Kharkiv. The region of this city, the second largest in the country, borders the northern border with Russia and therefore regularly finds itself under fire from Russian troops.