A former state TV journalist charged with discrediting Russia’s armed forces by protesting against Moscow’s actions in Ukraine has told a court that the charge against her was absurd.

Marina Ovsyannikova defiantly repeated her protest and said she would not retract her words.

“What’s going on here is absurd,” Ovsyannikova told the court on Thursday. “War is horror, blood and shame.”

Ovsyannikova gained international attention in March after bursting into a studio of Russian state TV, her then employer, to denounce the Ukraine war during a live news bulletin. At the time she was fined for flouting protest laws.

She is now being tried over subsequent social media posts in which she wrote that those responsible for Russia’s actions in Ukraine would find themselves in the dock before an international tribunal.

She faces up to 15 years in jail for discrediting the armed forces under a law passed in March

Ukraine has appointed the experienced investigator Oleksandr Klymenko as the head of its Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, responding to a European Union request as it seeks EU membership.

“The fight against corruption is a priority for our state, as our investment attractiveness and business freedom depend on its success,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskiy’s presidential office, wrote on Telegram.

Klymenko was appointed after a long selection process following his predecessor’s resignation nearly two years ago. He previously worked for the national anti-corruption bureau, another state body that tackles corruption.

Progress in fighting corruption is one of Kyiv’s long-term commitments to its Western partners and its need of financial, political and military support has increased sharply since Russia invaded on Feb 24.

The EU granted Ukraine candidate status earlier this month, putting it on the long road to membership, but said important work still needs to be done including on fighting corruption.

Ukraine stepped up its drive to retake the Russian-controlled south of the country by trying to bomb and isolate Russian troops in hard-to-resupply areas, but said it saw evidence that Moscow was redeploying its forces to defend the territory.

The southern Kherson region, which borders Russian-annexed Crimea, fell to Russian forces soon after they began what Moscow calls “a special military operation” on Feb. 24.

Ukraine, which describes Russia’s actions as an imperial-style war of conquest, said on Thursday its planes had struck five Russian strongholds around the city of Kherson and another city in the area.

British military intelligence, which helps Ukraine, said it was likely that Ukrainian forces had also established a bridgehead south of a river which runs along the wider Kherson region’s northern border.

“Ukraine’s counter-offensive in Kherson is gathering momentum,” it said in a statement.

Ukraine has retaken some small settlements in the north of the region in recent weeks.

Ukraine’s envoy to Turkey on Thursday expressed “sadness” over a chant of “Vladimir Putin” that rang out at a Champions League qualifying round football match in Istanbul involving Dynamo Kyiv.

Images on social media showed a section of Fenerbahce’s packed stadium singing the Russian president’s name in response to Dynamo’s first goal against the Istanbul side on Wednesday.

The Ukrainians won the match 2-1 after drawing 0-0 in the home leg played in Poland because of Russia’s invasion.

“Football is a fair game. Yesterday Dynamo Kyiv were stronger,” Ukraine’s ambassador Vasyl Bodnar tweeted.

“It is very sad to hear the words of support from Fenerbahce’s fans for a Russian murderer and aggressor who bombed our country,” Bodnar wrote.

“I am grateful to the friendly Turkish people for their support of Ukraine and for their consideration of the inappropriate actions of the fans.”

Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor has filed a lawsuit to revoke the registration of the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Thursday.

Novaya Gazeta, a stalwart of Russia’s beleaguered independent media since 1993, suspended operations inside the country in March after receiving warnings from the communications regulator and being forced to remove material from its website on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Part of the paper’s staff have set up a European edition from Riga, Latvia. Novaya Gazeta’s longtime editor in chief, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dmitry Muratov, has remained in Russia despite his vocal opposition to the conflict in Ukraine.

Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces have destroyed six Ukrainian munitions depots in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and in Mikolayiv region.

Negotiations between Moscow and Washington on exchanging prisoners are ongoing, but have not yielded any results yet, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

“A concrete result has not yet been achieved,” Ms Zakharova said in a statement.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday he will speak with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov by phone in the coming days and press him to respond to an offer Washington has made to secure the release of American citizens detained by Moscow.

Further details on the proposed prisoner swap can be found in our post earlier in this blog at 7.34am.

Liz Truss said accusations that the Foreign Office under her leadership lacked expertise on Russia were “completely untrue”.

She told reporters in Leeds: “We have led the world in standing up to Russia. We were the first country to send weapons to Ukraine in Europe, we put the toughest sanctions on Russia of any country, and we’re also making sure that nobody is allowing Ukraine’s sovereign territory to be given up, and we’ve worked with our allies to achieve that.

“I’m proud of our record, but we need to do more, and one of the key areas in bringing down the cost of living is dealing with Russia – making sure they can’t hold the world to ransom over their gas supplies – and I will be tough in standing up to Putin.”

Some 104,000 people had arrived in the UK under Ukraine visa schemes as of Monday, figures published by the Home Office and UK Visas and Immigration show.

This includes 31,300 people under the family scheme, and 72,700 people under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme.

The figures also show that, as of Tuesday, around 198,200 applications have been made for visas, and 166,200 visas have been issued.

These include 55,000 applications under the family scheme, of which 47,200 visas have been granted, and 143,200 applications under the sponsorship scheme, of which 119,000 visas have been granted.

Russian-installed officials in southern Ukraine said that more than 20 “accomplices” of the Ukrainian army and security services have been detained.

The announcement came a day after Kyiv’s artillery struck a key bridge in Moscow-controlled territory in southern Ukraine, damaging an important supply route as Ukrainian forces look to wrest back control of the region of Kherson.

Members of the Russian guard detained 21 “accomplices” of the Ukrainian armed forces and the SBU security service in the Moscow-occupied region of Kherson and the partially controlled region of Zaporizhzhia, the pro-Kremlin regional administration in Kherson said.

Various weapons and ammunition including 53 hand grenades and more than 24 kilos of explosives have been seized.

State news agency RIA Novosti, citing a member of Russian law enforcement, described the detained agents as a group of gun layers – who help adjust the aim of fire against targets – headed by a female coordinator.

They helped aim rocket and artillery fire at the Russian army in the region of Kherson, RIA Novosti said.

Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine’s Donetsk said on Thursday that four civilians had been killed by Ukrainian shelling over the previous day.

According to a message posted on an official separatist Telegram channel, four people were killed and another 11 wounded between 08:00 local time on Wednesday and 08:00 on Thursday.

Donetsk city has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukrainian forces continue to hold positions on the city’s outskirts.

Separatist authorities have accused Ukraine of shelling Donetsk city on multiple occasions, including at a bus stop earlier this month.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he plans to hold a phone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – the first between the two diplomats since before the start of the war.

The call in the coming days would not be “a negotiation about Ukraine,” Mr Blinken said at a news conference, restating Washington’s position that any talks on ending the war must be between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russia has received no formal request from Washington about a phone call between Mr Blinken and Mr Lavrov, TASS news agency reported.

The United States has made “a substantial offer” to Russia for it to release American citizens WNBA star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, Mr Blinken said, without giving details of what the United States was offering in return.

Mr Blinken said he would press Mr Lavrov to respond to the offer.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive in Kherson has gathered momentum, with Ukrainian forces using their new long range weapons to damage at least three bridges, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said. 

The bridges are used to cross the Dnipro River, which Russia relies upon to supply the area under its control. 

“Russia’s 49th Army is stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River and now looks highly vulnerable,” the ministry wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

“Similarly, Kherson city, the most politically significant population centre occupied by Russia, is now virtually cut off from the other occupied territories. Its loss would severely undermine Russia’s attempts to paint the occupation as a success.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the war has only made his marriage stronger, despite the couple’s long periods of separation.

Mr Zelensky, 44, and wife Olena opened up about her family’s forced separation in a series of interviews when Olena visited her husband in the heavily fortified presidential palace.

Mr Zelensky described wife Olena, whom he met 26 years ago when they were still in high school, as his “best friend”. 

“Of course she is my love. But she is my greatest friend,” he told Vogue.

Read the full story by Josie Ensor here

This week, our podcast host David Knowles, and our Defence and Security Editor, Dominic Nicholls, will be in Ukraine, meeting prominent politicians, visiting some significant locations of the war so far, and speaking to those who are experiencing the struggle firsthand to hear their stories.

Russian troops will be “annihilated” unless they retreat from the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine warned on Wednesday after it struck a key bridge with US-supplied rockets.

Kyiv’s strafing of the Antonovsky bridge with precise, long-range Himars rocket launchers marks the opening salvo in Ukraine’s counter-offensive to retake the strategic city, likely to be the site of the next big battle as fighting in the Donbas slows.

The 1000-metre-long bridge, which Russian forces rely on to resupply the occupied city, has been left “completely unusable”, according to a Western official. 

“Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive is now gathering pace,” the official added. “As with so many wars, one central part of the campaign is boiling down to a race to seize and destroy bridges.”

Read the full story here

Russian forces have taken over Ukraine’s second-biggest power plant and are conducting a “massive redeployment” of troops to three southern regions, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said.

There are expectations of a Ukrainian counter-offensive as Russian-backed forces on Wednesday said they had captured the Soviet-era coal-fired Vuhlehirsk power plant.

The capture of the plant in the eastern Donetsk region was Moscow’s first significant gain in more than three weeks.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, described the plant’s capture as only a “tiny tactical advantage” for Russia.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to rebuild all the bridges and crossings destroyed in the war with Russia, after a Himars strike damaged the Antonovsky Bridge in Kherson on Tuesday.

“We are doing everything to ensure that the occupiers do not have any logistical opportunities on our land,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.

“Whatever plans they have, we will disrupt them. And we will liberate our territory with military, diplomatic and all other available means until we reach the legal borders of Ukraine.”

An army is trapped on a riverbank, bridges blown behind them, without hope of rescue or escape. If it sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

The coming battle of Kherson will in many ways be a reversal of May’s struggle for Severodonetsk, where Ukraine found itself trying to maintain an ever-dwindling bridgehead supplied by constantly shelled bridges.

“The way the Ukrainians are going about that is knocking out the bridges over the Dnipro,  thereby limiting the logistical support and therefore the availability of things like artillery on the Western bank,” said Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute.

“What we are seeing in terms of tactical actions are small opportunistic advances along multiple axes to roll the Russians into a tighter and tighter pocket along the river.

“It could work. If the Russians are not able to reinforce, it could bring about a collapse of Russian will to fight in Kherson and achieve retaking the city at some point.”

Read the full analysis by Roland Oliphant here