March 30, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

The arrest of the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich comes amid a crackdown in Russia on independent journalists and foreign news outlets in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

In March 2022, Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed a censorship bill into law making it impossible for news organizations to accurately report the news in or from Russia.

The law, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, makes it a crime to disseminate “fake” information about the invasion of Ukraine, with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted.

In the wake of the law passing, several major international news outlets including CNN, the BBC and CBS News, announced they would initially suspend reporting in Russia.

Western publications and social media sites have been blocked online, forcing Russians seeking alternatives to the official propaganda to go underground using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow people to browse the internet freely by encrypting their internet traffic.

Data from Sensortower, an apps market research company, show the top eight VPN apps in Russia were downloaded almost 80 million times in Russia this year, despite the government’s efforts against their use.

A journalist with the Wall Street Journal -- Evan Gershkovich -- has been arrested in Russia on suspicion of espionage, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says.

An FSB statement said: "The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, US citizen Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry, suspected of espionage in the interests of the American government, have been suppressed."

State news agency TASS reported he was detained in Yekaterinburg, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains. 

The FSB statement said Gershkovich was detained "while trying to obtain secret information" relating to "the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex."

According to Gershkovich’s bio page on the Wall Street Journal’s website, he covers Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. He previously worked for news agency Agence France-Presse, the Moscow Times and the New York Times. 

CNN has contacted the Wall Street Journal for comment.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Russia’s presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC) from April 1 is a "bad joke."

Russia takes up the presidency for a month this weekend for the first time since invading Ukraine last year.

As a result of the conflict Russia is economically and diplomatically isolated but it remains one of five permanent members of the Council.

“Russia has usurped its seat; it’s waging a colonial war; its leader is a war criminal wanted by the ICC for kidnapping children. The world can’t be a safe place with Russia at [the] UNSC,” Kuleba tweeted.

Earlier this week, Russia suffered a setback after it failed to gain enough votes at the UNSC for its proposed resolution to investigate attacks on the Nordstream pipeline. 

Olesya Krivtsova thinks it's because she was neither the first, nor the last, to criticize the war in Ukraine that she scared Russian authorities as much as she did.

Her social media posts were neither particularly strident nor unusual, she told CNN, reflecting those of so many other university students across the country. And that, she believes, is where her troubles started: when her fellow students denounced her to authorities in need of an example.

Now in Lithuania and on Moscow's list of most wanted criminals, the softly spoken, slight 20-year-old from Russia's northwestern Arkhangelsk region makes for an unlikely villain. But from the start, Russian authorities seemed to have singled her out for harsh punishment with particular zeal.

According to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights media group, most of the 447 Russians prosecuted for anti-war activity since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year have been charged with "disseminating false information." But Krivtsova was placed under house arrest in January, and banned from using the internet on the far more serious charges of discrediting the Russian army and justifying terrorism. OVD-Info reports 49 people have been charged for discrediting the army and 30 for justifying terrorism.

Those charges relate to an Instagram story she posted about the Crimean bridge blast last October, which also criticized Russia for invading Ukraine, and for making an allegedly critical repost of the war in a student chat on the Russian social network VK.

Her voice should have remained a little one, she said, but for the repression she faced.

Read more here.

Russia's Wagner mercenary group is "suffering an enormous amount of casualties in the Bakhmut area," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told US lawmakers Wednesday, describing the battle for the eastern city as a “slaughter-fest" for the Russians.

Meanwhile, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an audio message Wednesday that the battle for the city "has already practically destroyed the Ukrainian army," but added his troops had "been pretty battered" as well.

Here are the latest developments:

The German federal government has agreed to allocate an additional 12 billion euros ($13 billion) worth of military support to Ukraine over the next decade, it announced Wednesday in a statement.

Around $4.3 billion will go to the German military to replace the military aid Berlin has given to Kyiv since the invasion, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius added.

Earlier this year, Berlin made a historic move to arm Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks.

The whole of Ukraine is traumatized since Russia's invasion last year, according to Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova.

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour from Kyiv, Dzhaparova said she thinks “a long-term process of recovery will be happening after the resolution of war,” but added that “at this stage of the war it’s still an existential matter of survival so we need to survive physically and after that, we can speak about the mental recovery.” 

The deputy minister told CNN she has seen her two daughters, who are abroad, only three times since the invasion. 

The four main battlefields, according to Dzhaparova, are Lyman, Mariinka, Avdiivka and Bakhmut.  

The situation in Bakhmut is “still terrible,” she said.   

Approximately 17% of Ukrainian soil is “still under occupation,” down from what she said was 20% at the beginning of the invasion.  

There are roughly 6,000 Wagner group mercenaries fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told US lawmakers on Wednesday. 

The battle over Bakhmut has turned into a “slaughter-fest" for the Russians, Milley said.

The head of the Russian private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in an audio message earlier Wednesday that the battle for the city "has already practically destroyed the Ukrainian army," but added that Wagner has "been pretty battered" as well.

The situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has not improved, according to director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi.

The plant has been occupied by Russian forces since March of last year and is now run by the Russian atomic agency, ROSATOM. 

Grossi said military activity and the number of troops in the area were increasing, without specifying whether he meant both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian troops are stationed several miles across the reservoir from the plant. 

He said original plans to create a demilitarized zone around the plant had “evolved” toward greater protection of the plant itself and added there should not be heavy military equipment at the plant. Ukraine has accused the Russians of basing rocket systems at the plant, which Moscow has denied.

Grossi said he was trying to formulate “realistic, viable proposals” that would be acceptable to both sides.