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An F-16 fighter jet crashed on a frontline mission with its pilot ejecting safely, Ukraine’s air force announced on Wednesday. The aircraft was on duty intercepting Russian airborne targets when it malfunctioned. The pilot was found safe and taken for medical treatment. Experts were examining the crash site. Ukraine has received F-16s from Nato countries including the Netherlands and Denmark.
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The director and founder of a Russian drone manufacturer was shot and wounded early on Wednesday in what prosecutors described as an “attempted murder”. Andrei Cherezov is head of the Russian Air Transport Laboratory, most famous for developing the “Ovod” family of combat drones. Cherezov was returning home from work at about 1am when he was attacked by an unknown assailant in Tula, about 150km (90 miles) south of Moscow, Russia’s Izvestia newspaper reported.
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Ukrainian forces hit two of Russia’s biggest oil refineries over Tuesday night: a Lukoil refinery in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,500km (900 miles) from Ukraine, and a refinery in Ryazan, about 400km (180 miles) from the border. Ukraine’s security service and military general staff announced the strikes. The refineries have a combined annual production capacity of around 220m barrels of oil, according to Ukraine. The Russian online retailer Wildberries, which Ukraine has targeted in recent days, said it evacuated employees from a facility in Ryazan.
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Russia’s largest lender, Sberbank, is scrambling to restructure loans and cover lending losses because of Ukrainian drone attacks on the e-commerce company. Sberbank said the credit quality of online retailers and vendors had deteriorated following the attacks, with about 300 companies seeking to restructure loans. Sberbank lends to both Wildberries and rival Ozon, whose facilities have not been targeted. The Russian rouble weakened by another 1.9% against the US dollar on Wednesday to its lowest since 3 April, market data showed. It has fallen by 14% against the dollar since 20 May, and has also fallen against the Chinese yuan, Russia’s most traded foreign currency.
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Ukrainian units have struck 201 Russian vessels over the past three weeks in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, which border both countries, a senior military official said. The tally does not include vessels hit by Ukraine’s security service and other military groups. Ukrainian forces also struck a naval base used by Russia’s Black Sea, according to the military general staff. It reported other strikes on a radar station in Russia’s Bryansk region on the border and on a drone launch site and a road bridge in the occupied part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
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Russian glide bombs struck the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and 17 other places in the region of the same name over the previous 24 hours, wounding 11 people, said the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, on Wednesday. In Ukraine’s Kherson a man was killed and another three people injured in a Russian drone attack, local authorities said.
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Russian officials have charged Pavel Durov, the founder and chief executive of the messaging app Telegram, with aiding terrorism. The 41-year-old Russian-born billionaire, who lives in the UAE, has proven adept at resisting Kremlin efforts to bring the internet and digital communications under its control. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accuses Telegram of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by Ukrainian agencies and organisations against Russia.
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Russian journalist Darya Shipacheva pleaded guilty to treason at a Moscow court and was sentenced on Wednesday to 12 years in a penal colony, the Interfax news agency reported. The charges stemmed from an alleged money transfer to Ukraine, Interfax said. According to Mediazona, Shipacheva specialised in science and medical journalism and worked for several prominent Russian media organisations. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 29 journalists are imprisoned in Russia in connection with their work.
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France has ordered Russian media commentator Xenia Fedorova to leave the country, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, accusing her of churning out Kremlin propaganda. Fedorova was placed under house arrest, according to a source close to the case. Fedorova used to run the French arm of the Kremlin propaganda channel RT, now banned in France. She appears on the CNews television channel and Europe 1 radio, and writes for Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, spreading Kremlin talking points about Ukraine and the West.
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The French newspaper Liberation cited the expulsion order as accusing Fedorova of acting “as a conduit for disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the Russian authorities” with the aim of “destabilising public order” in France. Fedorova’s lawyer Emmanuel Piwnica told AFP on Wednesday that his client would “immediately” file an appeal. In a joint statement, Canal+, owner of CNews, and Lagardere, which owns Europe 1, said diversity of opinion was important for democratic debate. Members of the centrist Renew group in the European parliament have called on the European Union to impose sanctions on Fedorova, describing her as a “well-known Russian propagandist”.
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Ukraine said it had appealed against the International Olympic Committee’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian athletes, arguing the move is premature and violated the Olympic Charter. The IOC lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee earlier this month, while simultaneously scrapping a range of restrictions on Russian athletes introduced over Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
