Russia Ukraine war latest: Joint naval drills in China as Putin’s forces launch 1,000 drones across frontline

Struggling with manpower, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse.

An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.

Defense startups across Ukraine — about 250 according to industry estimates — are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops.

U.S. journalist and author Masha Gessen was convicted in absentia Monday by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times who lives in the U.S., is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an award-winning writer.

Russian police put Gessen on a wanted list in December, and Russian media reported the case was based on statements they made about atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he had set a goal to have all the elements of a peace plan ready so he could hold a follow-up summit on his vision for peace in November.

Zelensky made the remark at a news conference in Kyiv.

Ukraine held a summit in Switzerland last month that was attended by representatives of 92 countries, but not Russia. Kyiv has said it could invite representatives from Russia to the next one.

“For the sake of international justice, cases like the intentional attack on the biggest child hospital in Kyiv (are) worth lifting to the ICC,” he said.

Seeing the military patrol handing out call-up papers on the outskirts of Kyiv, one man slipped into a nearby store. Another refused to even stop for the officers. Others, however, quietly obliged.

“Now, as far as I know, most of the queues [at draft offices] are people who want to obtain some sort of exemption [from fighting],” said the 36-year-old, who was accompanied by Reuters on a recent draft patrol in the Ukrainian capital.

China’s defence ministry said that Russian vessels arrived in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, for the “Joint Sea-2024” exercises in the waters and airspace around the city throughout this week.

Treason cases were rare in Russia 30 years ago, with only a handful brought annually. In the past decade and especially since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, the number has soared, along with espionage prosecutions.

They are ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike. Recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly.

One rights group counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, with probably another 100 that nobody knows about.

An unidentified individual threw a grenade at a military draft office in the western Ukrainian town of Busk overnight, causing an explosion but not hurting anyone, police said on Monday.

The police said in a statement they were investigating the incident, which comes as Ukraine is stepping up its effort to draft civilians into the armed forces more than 28 months since Russia invaded.

Police in the western Lviv region said the explosion damaged the facade of the draft office and its windows. The individual had fled after throwing the grenade, they said.

There have been persistent cases of men fleeing Ukraine to avoid military service throughout the war. In recent months there have also been Ukrainian media reports of violence directed at draft offices and draft officers.

Asked if they were concerned, Ukraine‘s military told Reuters that maintaining public trust was an “important component of the activities of the (armed forces), without which it will be extremely difficult to achieve victory over the enemy.”

When Maksim Kolker’s phone rang at 6 a.m., and the voice on the other end said his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. A day earlier, he had taken his father, prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolker, to the hospital in his native Novosibirsk, when his advanced pancreatic cancer had suddenly worsened.

The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept hanging up until finally his father called to confirm the grim news. The elder Kolker had been charged with treason, the family later learned, a crime that is probed and prosecuted in absolute secrecy in Russia and punished with long prison terms.

Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics.