‘A hunting ground for foreign regimes’: why violent attacks on dissidents are on the rise in Britain
Iran and China among those accused of targeting critics living in the UK, as arson attack on prime minister Keir Starmer’s properties linked to RussiaAs Pouria Zeraati was crossing the street between his Wimbledon home and his car in south London in March 2024, he was confronted by two men. One held him firmly as the other stabbed him three times in the leg before they both fled.It was later said to be a targeted attack on behalf of the Iranian regime in Tehran. A punishment for Zeraati’s work as a journalist covering Iran. He survived, but the ambush is one of dozens of violent incidents in recent years linked to foreign states.
Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Iran have all been blamed for targeting critics and dissidents living in the UK in the past decade, and linked to incidents involving physical assaults, attempted kidnap, stabbings and an acid attack. Continue reading...
Ukraine war briefing: Drones strike Russia’s Tyumen oil refinery 2,000km away, says Zelenskyy
Reports from Siberia confirm attack, while Ukrainian president says new weapon has 3,000km range; occupied Crimea under attack. What we know on day 1,579Volodymyr Zelenskiy has confirmed that Ukrainian drones attacked an oil refinery in Russia’s Tyumen region in western Siberia, more than 2,000 km (1,200 miles) from Ukraine. He said Ukrainian company Fire Point had developed new long-range drones capable of travelling more than 3,000km and they had been “successfully deployed”. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy thanked the Ukrainian military for special operations that “have reached Tyumen Region in Russia, including an oil refining facility. More than 2,000km from our state border. This is effective work.”Unverified videos posted online showed smoke and flame rising over what was said to be the burning Tyumen refinery, also known as the Antipinsky refinery. The Tyumen governor, Alexander Moor, claimed emergency services were working at the site of “fallen [drone] debris” – a phrasing often used by Russian officials to play down successful Ukrainian attacks.Ukraine’s forces struck an oil terminal at Kerch in occupied Crimea over Saturday night, according to Ukrainian media and online accounts monitoring the war. Nasa satellite monitoring showed a fire at the Kerch seaport where the terminal is located. In what appeared to be a broader wave of strikes against Russian-held targets in Crimea, an electrical substation at Bilohorsk was reportedly on fire, and there were other attacks at Yevpatoria and the main city of Sevastopol.Russian attacks killed three people in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions in eastern Ukraine, local authorities said on Sunday. A woman aged 70 was killed in Nikopol and nine were wounded in other districts of Dnipropetrovsk, said Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the regional military administration. Vitali Dyakivnych, head of the Poltava regional military administration, said a Russian strike on Saturday evening killed two people and wounded 13, including six children.Russian forces struck the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with glide bombs on Saturday, killing five people and injuring 10, said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor. Fedorov said there had been nine strikes in the city. He said residents could be trapped in the rubble of damaged buildings.Near the Russian border, a bomb attack killed one person on the outskirts of the city of Sumy, local officials said. In the southern Kherson region, the regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said one person had died in a drone attack on a village north of the region’s main city, also called Kherson.Russian bombs struck an apartment building on Saturday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing at least one person and wounding nine including a six-year-old child, authorities said. Continue reading...
