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The FBI wants to question a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard in connection with the leak of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war, according to a report. The guardsman has been identified by the New York Times as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who reportedly oversaw an online group where about 20 to 30 people shared their love of guns, racist memes and video games.

Ukraines armed forces have said Russian troops are attempting to surround the embattled city of Bakhmut from the north and the south. Every day in Bakhmut area, the enemy makes 40 to 50 offensive and assault attempts, launches more than 500 strikes using the entire range of available weapons, said Brig Gen Oleksiy Hromov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian armed forces general staffs main operational department.

Russias defence ministry claimed its troops had already surrounded Bakhmut, but Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russias Wagner mercenary group, said it was too early to say. Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded much of the fighting for the embattled city, was responding to a statement by the Russian defence ministry that said Moscows forces were blocking Ukrainian forces from getting in or out of Bakhmut.

Germany has approved a request by Poland to export five old German MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, officials in Berlin have said.

The Kremlin has denied a report that Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia. According to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources, the Russian president had personally endorsed Gershkovichs arrest for espionage. Russias deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has suggested Moscow may be willing to discuss a potential prisoner swap for Gershkovich after his trial.

Ukraines foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said his country would not change its demand that Russia must withdraw its forces from all of Ukraine including Crimea. Kyiv categorically disagrees with the idea that Crimea is somehow special and should not be returned to Ukraine, as any other part of our territory, Kuleba said in an address to the Black Sea security conference.

Two civilians have been killed and two others were wounded by Russian artillery and aerial attacks in Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.

Norways foreign ministry has said it has decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials in Oslo. The Russians declared persona non grata are not regular diplomats, but intelligence officers under diplomatic cover. Their activities are a threat to Norwegian interests, Norwegian foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt said. Russias foreign ministry said it would respond to Norways expulsion of its 15 diplomats.

Swedish prosecutors said they had charged a 52-year-old man with illegally possessing and spreading secret and sensitive information about a large number of military installations. I consider this a gross crime as it concerns a large number of installations that are significant for Swedens ability to defend itself in the case of war, senior prosecutor Lars Hedvall said in a statement.

Serbia never sold weapons or ammunition to Ukraine or Russia, president Aleksandar Vui has insisted, following a leaked secret Pentagon report that said Serbia had pledged to send arms to Kyiv or had sent them already. Vui said he was quite certain that Serbian ammunition would appear on one side or the other in the battlefield in Ukraine, after having been exported to Turkey, Spain or the Czech Republic.

Russias prosecutor general said it had opened an investigation into a video showing Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on the ground. It comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged international leaders to act, saying the world could not ignore the evil footage, which circulated on Telegram, Twitter and other social media channels, causing revulsion among Ukrainians.

Authorities are working to identify the identity of a Ukrainian prisoner of war whose beheading video emerged on Wednesday, Ukraines deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said. The Guardian has not independently verified the origins and veracity of the two videos, but Ukrainian authorities are treating them as genuine.

Energoatom, Ukraines nuclear power company, has claimed that a Russian mine exploded near one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP). Europes largest nuclear power station has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, with both Ukraine and Russia claiming that the other side has shelled the plant, risking a nuclear incident.

Alexei Navalny, Russias most prominent opposition leader, has a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow-acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, has said. We do not exclude that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention, Yarmysh said in a post on Twitter. He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help, she said.

Key members of a Ukrainian state orchestra were refused visas to play a series of concerts in the UK this month in a catastrophe that the promoter says cost it more than 100,000 (88,000).

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Russia-Ukraine war live: US air national guardsman suspected of leaking secret documents to be arrested - The Guardian