Russia-Ukraine war: attacks on Russian enlistment offices signal dissatisfaction with war, says UK | Ukraine

Robyn Vinter here, taking over the Ukraine blog for a moment.

The beauty giant Avon has been criticised for its Russia links, despite the ongoing war.

At the outset of the conflict, the company said it was stopping investment in Russia, where it has a large worker base, and was ending exports from its Russian factory to other parts of the world.

It said it would not close operations entirely because there were local workers dependent on the jobs.

“We believe restricting their access to products would have an outsize impact on women and children there,” said the company, which is part of the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura & Co.

However, research by the BBC has discovered the company is still recruiting new sales agents in Russia, with recruits offered prizes, cash bonuses and even holidays for hitting targets, the broadcaster reports.

This was criticised heavily by researchers and campaigners, who accused Avon of “moral-washing” in Russia, where it is the number one perfume brand.

Steven Tian, part of a team of researchers at Yale University who track what companies have done in response to the Ukraine war, told the BBC the company should be “ashamed” of continuing to invest in the country.

“There is no excuse for continuing to fund Putin’s war machine … and [there] has been more than enough time to allow for companies to exit in an orderly way,” he said.

An Avon spokesperson said: “Avon Russia supports women in Russia through locally funded activities to support their social selling businesses. We see this as critical support for women whose livelihoods depend on their Avon business.”

• The UK defence ministry believes that the increase in arson attacks on Russian enlistment offices “is highly likely due to a greater sense of dissatisfaction with the war amongst the Russian population”. There have been 220 attacks on Russian military enlistment offices since the start of the war in February 2022, but 113 alone in the last six months.

• Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday. Preliminary information did not show any casualties in the attacks, but Russia and Ukraine have increased their air attacks on each other’s territory in recent months, targeting critical military, energy and transport infrastructure. The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia attacked the central Poltava region with two ballistic missiles fired from the Iskander ballistic missile system, and three surface-to-air missiles over the Donetsk region in the east.

• Defence ministry officials conspired with employees from a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle almost $40m earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells, Ukraine’s security service said. Five people have been charged, with one person detained trying to cross the Ukrainian border. Corruption has been a major roadblock in Kyiv’s bid to joint the European Union and Nato, with officials from both blocs demanding widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.

• The hacking group NoName05716 claims to be preparing to target Ukrainian government with help from other hacking groups 22С, Skillnet, CyberDragon, Federal Legion, People’s Cyber ​​Army and Phoenix.

The hacking group NoName05716 claims to be preparing to target Ukrainian government with help from other hacking groups 22С, Skillnet, CyberDragon, Federal Legion, People’s Cyber ​​Army and Phoenix.

Cyber-attacks have been an area of concern for Ukrainian officials since the start of the war, with the contact group on defence of Ukraine forming an IT coalition of 12 countries.

There have been 220 attacks on Russian military enlistment offices since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the UK defence ministry said in its daily intelligence briefing.

Since July 2023, there have been 113 incidents – a doubling of arson attacks on enlistment offices over the past six months.

While Sergey Naryshkin, the director of the Russian foreign intelligence service, has accused those responsible for the arson attacks as acting on the behest of western officials, the UK defence ministry believes that “the increase in attacks is highly likely due to a greater sense of dissatisfaction with the war amongst the Russian population”.

Some of those accused of perpetrating the attacks have been charged with terrorism and treason.

Defence ministry officials conspired with employees from a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle almost $40m earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells, Ukraine’s security service said.

The Associated Press reports that five people have been charged, with one person detained trying to cross the Ukrainian border. If found guilty, they face up to 12 years in prison.

The investigation dates back to August 2022, when officials signed a contract for artillery shells worth 1.5bn hryvnias ($39.6m) with the arms firm Lviv Arsenal, the security service said.

Company employees were supposed to transfer the funds to a business registered abroad, which would then deliver the ammunition to Ukraine. But the goods were never delivered and the money was instead sent to various accounts in Ukraine and the Balkans, investigators said.

The funds have since been seized and will be returned to the country’s defence budget, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said.

Corruption has been a major roadblock in Kyiv’s bid to joint the European Union and Nato, with officials from both blocs demanding widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected on an anti-corruption platform. His administration has portrayed the recent firings of top officials, notably that of Ivan Bakanov, the former head of the state security service, in July 2022, as proof of their efforts to crack down on graft.

Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday.

Reuters reports it said preliminary information did not show any casualties in the attacks.

Russia and Ukraine have increased their air attacks on each other’s territory in recent months, targeting critical military, energy and transport infrastructure.

The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia attacked the central Poltava region with two ballistic missiles fired from the Iskander ballistic missile system, and three surface-to-air missiles over the Donetsk region in the east.

Filip Pronin, governor of Poltava region, wrote on Telegram that the attack struck an industrial site in the city of Kremenchuk, sparking a fire. Pictures posted on social media showed emergency crews battling a blaze.

Further south-east in the Zaporizhzhia region, the governor, Yuri Malashko, said an infrastructure site had been hit in a drone attack. Emergency crews were at the site, Malashko said, but gave no details of damage or casualties.

Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed four of eight Russia-launched drones overnight, the air force said.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Here is an overview of the latest developments.

Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday.

Preliminary information did not show any casualties, it said.

Russia attacked the central Poltava region with two ballistic missiles, and three surface-to-air missiles over the Donetsk region in the east.

Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed four of eight Russia-launched drones overnight, the air force said.

More on that story soon. In other news:

• A Russian “reconnaissance and sabotage group” shot dead two people – a brother and sister – in a Ukrainian village on Saturday during a cross-border incursion, local officials said. The attack in Andriivka occurred in Ukraine’s Sumy region inside a 5km (three-mile) buffer zone along the border with Russia – an area where Kyiv had asked residents to evacuate. The victims were a 54-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman who were killed while driving in an SUV, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said.

• At least three other civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the east and south of the country, local officials said on Saturday. In Beryslav, in the southern Kherson region, explosives dropped from a drone killed one person, the governor said. Two were killed by Russian artillery shelling in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s national police said.

• Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had uncovered a corruption scheme in the purchase of arms by the country’s military totalling the equivalent of about $40m (£31.5m/€37m). Saturday’s announcement of mass procurement fraud, confirmed by Ukraine’s defence ministry, will have a huge resonance in the country amid Russia’s invasion, with the fight to root out corruption remaining a major issue as Kyiv presses its bid to secure membership in the European Union, reports Reuters.

• Ukrainian counterattacks were holding Russians back from taking full control of Avdiivka, the UK Ministry of Defence said. Russian forces had suffered heavy personnel and armoured vehicle losses, frequently caused by Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle munitions, the ministry outlined in an intelligence update. The forces continued to attempt to bypass Ukrainian fortifications by entering the city edges via service tunnels but “Ukrainian counterattacks are holding Russian forces from progressing further within the city”.

• The Biden administration has announced the approval of a $23bn deal to sell F-16 warplanes to Turkey, after Ankara ratified Sweden’s Nato membership, the US state department said.

• Ukraine has pressed Russia to provide proof that a military plane shot down during the week had been carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, as it claimed. The latest twist in the row over the incident came as Ukrainian officials said a Russian raid had killed two civilians near their border. Ukraine’s spy chief, Kyrylo Budanov, questioned on state TV why Russia had not shown any images of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers that Moscow claims were killed when the plane was shot down. Kyiv has confirmed a prisoner exchange was to take place that day.

• President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine “glorifies” Adolf Hitler’s SS killing squads and vowed to “eradicate Nazism” as he opened a memorial marking 80 years since the end of the siege of Leningrad. The Russian leader has repeatedly invoked the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war to justify the war against Ukraine. His charge that Ukraine is a fascist state that needs “denazifying” has been debunked as false by independent experts.

• Joe Biden will host the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the White House on 9 February to discuss aid to Ukraine. It comes as the US president has been pressing Congress to embrace a bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures with aid for Ukraine. The talks have hit a critical point as Republican opposition mounts.

• The US is planning to station nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years amid a growing threat from Russia, according to a report. Warheads three times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb would be located at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk under the proposals, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported.