A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security agency levelled criminal charges against him.
A Ukrainian official said the country’s security service carried out the attack. Lt.-Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office.
Kirillov’s assistant also died in the bombing, which was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched and blackened brickwork.
Kirillov was under sanctions from several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.
An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. A similar claim was made by an SBU official to the Reuters news agency.
The SBU official provided footage that they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame.
The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.
Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.
Russia vows immediate revenge
Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.
Russia said it is investigating Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism.
Dmitry Medvedev, ex-Russian president and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian leadership would face imminent revenge for the killing, RIA news agency reported, accusing Ukraine of “cowardly and despicable strikes.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.
The Russian central bank is forecast to raise its benchmark interest rate to 23 per cent this month, with military spending consuming a third of Russia’s overall budget. Andrew Chang explains how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine is causing inflation to skyrocket and what that means for civilians.
Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in St. Petersburg in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party exploded. A Russian woman, who said that she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted in the case and handed a 27-year sentence.
In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.
On the battlefield, RIA reported that Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Hannivka in eastern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report.
The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday it had downed 20 Russia-launched drones.
It said on the Telegram messenger that Russia launched a total of 31 drones and an additional 10 did not reach their targets. One was still in the air.
Published at Tue, 17 Dec 2024 10:08:14 +0000
Judge rejects Trump’s attempt to throw out hush money conviction
A judge on Monday refused to throw out U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the case’s overall future remains unclear.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of the former and future president’s return to office next month. However, Trump’s lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal. It’s unclear when — or whether — a sentencing date might be set.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insist the conviction should stand.
A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 US hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing.
The allegations involved a scheme to hide the payout to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publicizing — and keep voters from hearing — her claim of a sexual encounter with the married then-businessman years earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them.
Supreme Court ruling after verdict
Weeks after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts — things they did in the course of running the country — and that prosecutors can’t cite those actions to bolster a case centred on purely personal, unofficial conduct.
Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the hush money jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.
In Monday’s ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he’d still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung on Monday called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence.”
“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said in a statement.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Merchan’s decision noted that part of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling declared that “not everything the president does is official.” Trump’s social media posts, for example, were personal, Merchan wrote.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has been found guilty in his New York hush-money trial. CBC’s Anya Zoledziowski breaks down the key evidence and witnesses that led the jury to the historic conviction.
He also pointed to a prior federal court ruling that concluded the hush money payment and subsequent reimbursements pertained to Trump’s private life, not official duties.
Trump, 78, takes office on Jan. 20. He’s the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
Push to see conviction, case dismissed
Over the last six months, Trump’s lawyers have made numerous efforts to get the conviction and the overall case dismissed. After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his sentencing — which had been scheduled for late November — so defence lawyers and prosecutors could suggest next steps.
Trump’s defence argued that anything other than immediate dismissal would undermine the transfer of power and cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to the presidency.
Meanwhile, prosecutors proposed several ways to preserve the historic conviction. Among the suggestions: freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029; agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time; or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because he took office.
The last idea is drawn from what some states do when a defendant dies after conviction but before sentencing.
Trump’s lawyers branded the concept “absurd” and took issue with the other suggestions, too.
Published at Tue, 17 Dec 2024 01:11:04 +0000
