Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

The X social media account of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, appeared to have been suspended on Tuesday.

The reason for the suspension of her account was not immediately clear.

Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation tagged Elon Musk in a post to ask “exactly which rules were violated” by Navalnaya.

Accounts of Navalny’s allies, such as spokesperson Kira Yarmysh, did not appear to have been affected at the time of writing.

Upon contacting the X press team, CNBC received an automated response of “Busy now, please check back later.”

— Sam Meredith

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin hand over her son, so that she can bury him.

“Behind me is the penal colony IK-3 ‘Polar Wolf’ where my son, Alexey Navalny, died on February 16th. I haven’t been able to see him for five days. I’m not handed over his body and I’m not even told where he is,” Navalnaya said in comments broadcast on the Navalny LIVE YouTube channel, according to an NBC translation.

“I am addressing you, Vladimir Putin — the solution of the issue depends only on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be immediately handed over so that I can bury him humanely,” Navalnaya said.

Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh on Monday said that investigators had told Lyudmila Navalnaya they would not give her his body for another 14 days while a “chemical examination” is carried out. CNBC could not independently confirm the report.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused authorities of holding the activist’s remains to wait for traces of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, with which he was reportedly poisoned in 2020, to leave his body. The Kremlin said Tuesday that these allegations were “unfounded.”

— Sam Meredith

The regional military administration of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday said that five people died as a result of a Russian drone attack on a residential building.

“We express our condolences to the relatives and friends of the deceased,” the regional military administration said via Telegram, according to a Google translation.

CNBC could not independently verify the report.

— Sam Meredith

Yulia Navalnaya asked European Union foreign ministers not to recognize the results of the upcoming Russian Presidential election in a speech on Monday, according to a transcript.

“These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them — for propaganda. He wants the world to believe that everyone in Russia supports him and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.

“Do not recognize these elections. A president who kills his main political opponent is not legitimate by definition.”

The Russian election is due to take place on March 15-17, with Putin widely expected to secure another term amid token opposition.

Navalnaya addressed the EU ministers after her husband, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died last week whilst serving a prison sentence in Russia. The Kremlin has denied any involvement with his death.

— Sophie Kiderlin

A Russian court on Tuesday rejected a complaint by U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich about the extension of his pre-trial detention until March 30 on spying charges which he denies, the court’s press service said.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on March 29 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.

— Reuters

Russia’s spy chief said on Tuesday that a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine and was found shot dead in a garage in Spain last week was a moral corpse when he planned his crimes, Russian news agencies reported.

Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), declined to comment further on Kuzminov, Russian news agencies reported.

Spain’s state news agency EFE reported that a body found on Feb 13 in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain, belonged to pilot Maxim Kuzminov, who had landed in Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter last August.

He had been living in Spain with a Ukrainian passport under a different name, it said.

— Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin will present his “state of the union” address to Russia’s Federal Assembly on Feb. 29, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday.

The annual address to Russian lawmakers, in which the president sets out his assessment of the country and goals for the future to Russia’s parliament, has traditionally taken place around this week in February. But this year, it is set to take place after the second anniversary (on Feb. 24) of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The address is expected to form a key part of Putin’s re-election campaign ahead of the vote on March 15-17.

The presidential elections are coming at a time when Russia has celebrated recent victories on the battlefield in Ukraine, most recently with the capture of the industrial city of Avdiivka in Donetsk, and is looking to profit from Western indecision and uncertainty over continued military support for Ukraine.

The vote will also take place in the shadow of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last week, however. Western leaders have accused Putin of being responsible for the death of his political nemesis. The Kremlin denies any involvement.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia’s Federal Security Service has detained a woman with dual Russian-U.S. citizenship in the Urals mountain city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of treason for raising funds for Ukraine’s armed forces, the TASS news agency reported.

The 33-year-old resident of Los Angeles had been collecting funds for a Ukrainian organization whose ultimate beneficiary was the Ukrainian army, the FSB said, according to TASS.

“The Federal Security Service in Yekaterinburg suppressed the illegal activities of a 33-year-old resident of Los Angeles, who has dual citizenship of Russia and the United States,” TASS quoted the FSB as saying. TASS did not name the woman.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his North Korean ally Kim Jong Un a luxury Russian car this week, the Kremlin confirmed Monday.

Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov confirmed to RIA Novosti that Russia had presented Kim Jong Un with an Aurus, a luxury brand of Russian car that Kim had admired when he met Putin in Russia last fall.

At the time, media footage showed Kim Jong Un taking an interest in the Aurus Senat limousine routinely used by Putin. The Russian president gestured for Kim to take a closer look, with the North Korean leader taking a seat in its spacious interior.

On Sunday, North Korean news agency KCNA reported that Kim received a Russian-made car as a gift. The sister of the North Korean leader, Kim Yo Jong, who’s also a senior official in Pyongyang, as well as Pak Chong Chon, the secretary of the central committee of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, also reportedly received gifts.

Kim Yo Jong was reported as saying that the gifts served as clear evidence of the special friendly relations established between the leaders of Russia and North Korea. She also conveyed her brother’s gratitude to the Kremlin, KCNA said.

Kim Jong Un is believed to have a penchant for luxury cars and has been seen in a number of high-end vehicles despite international sanctions on the supply of luxury goods to North Korea, imposed on the country because of its nuclear weapons program.

Russia and North Korea have become closer in recent years, with Western intelligence officials expressing concerns about Pyongyang’s supplying of arms to Russia, for use in Ukraine, in return for advanced Russian weapons technologies. Both deny that any arms exchanges have taken place.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia launched 23 drones at Ukraine overnight with its air defences destroying all of them, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday.

“As a result of combat operations, all 23 “shaheds” drones were shot down in Kharkiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions,” the military said on Telegram messaging app.

Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian air force’s report. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

— Reuters

After months of requests from Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is working toward providing Ukraine with powerful new long-range ballistic missiles, according to two U.S. officials.

Late last year, the U.S. began to supply Ukraine with Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, but so far it has provided only the older medium-range ATACMS. Now, the U.S. is leaning toward sending the longer-range version of the missile, the officials said, which would allow Ukraine to strike farther inside the Russian-held Crimean Peninsula. 

But U.S. funding for arms shipments to Ukraine remains uncertain because of opposition from former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. Last week the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But it’s not clear whether or when the GOP-controlled House will vote on the measure or whether it would survive the vote.

Read the full story here.

— NBC News

Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Monday addressed the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison colony on Friday.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction,” Trump wrote in a post on social media platform Truth Social.

“Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION,” he added.

Trump had been silent on Navalny’s death until Monday, whilst various other U.S. politicians including President Joe Biden and Trump’s fellow Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley have said Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible.

The Kremlin has rejected these allegations, with the Russian foreign ministry calling the reaction from political leaders “self-exposing,” given that no forensic medical examination has yet been made available.

Haley also reacted to Trump’s post on Monday about Navalny. In a post on social media platform X she said that he could have condemned Putin or praised Navalny, but instead denounced America and compared it to Russia.

— Sophie Kiderlin

The U.S. is considering slapping sanctions on Chinese companies it believes are helping Russia fuel its war in Ukraine, members of Congress told CNBC, marking the first direct apportioning of blame toward Beijing since the start of the war.

Democratic Senator Gerald Connolly, member of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations, on Saturday said that lawmakers were already considering such plans after similar measures were proposed last week by the European Union.

Read the full story here.

— Karen Gilchrist

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday that Ukraine poisoned the Moscow-installed governors of Ukraine’s Kherson and Luhansk regions, though both were still alive.

In a briefing published online, the ministry said Ukraine poisoned Moscow-appointed Luhansk governor Leonid Pasechnik in December 2023, and Kherson head Vladimir Saldo in August 2022.

Kherson and Luhansk regions were among four Ukrainian provinces that Russia declared it had annexed in September 2022, even though it did not fully control any of them.

The briefing said that on Dec. 5 Pasechnik, a former officer in Ukraine’s SBU security service turned pro-Russia separatist, “received severe poisoning with phenolic compounds”. It gave no information about the current state of his health.

It said that Saldo, a former mayor of Kherson city and pro-Russian lawmaker in Ukraine’s parliament, had been hospitalised on Aug. 9, 2022, with symptoms of poisoning.

Russian-installed authorities in Kherson said in August 2022 that Saldo had fallen sick, but did not say that he had been poisoned. Saldo has since returned to public prominence in the Russian-controlled part of Kherson region.

Ukraine has staged a string of attacks against Russian-installed officials in Moscow-held parts of the country since tens of thousands of Russian troops entered the country in February 2022.

Several targets have been killed and more wounded in bombings and shootings that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday confirmed an investigation is underway into the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and insisted that “all due actions are being taken” to determine the circumstances surrounding his demise.

Earlier on Monday, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said that Navalny’s mother and lawyers had been blocked from entering a mortuary where his body could be being kept.

CNBC could not independently verify the report. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in blocking the return of Navalny’s body to his relatives.

Here’s the full story.

— Sam Meredith