Ukraine updates: Putin will succeed if we halt aid, US says

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Russia will be successful in his bid to seize Ukrainian territory  unless the United States' support for Kyiv continues.

"I can guarantee that without our support (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will be successful," Austin said during a Senate hearing on President Joe Biden's request for $106 billion (€100 billion) to fund ambitious plans for Ukraine, Israel and US border security.

"If we pull the rug out from under them now, Putin will only get stronger and he will be successful in doing what he wants to do in acquiring his neighbor's sovereign territory," Austin added, sitting next to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Meanwhile, Blinken accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to use the Israel-Hamas war in a bid to reduce Western support for Ukraine.

"Putin is very much trying to take advantage of the Hamas attack on Israel in the hopes that it will distract us... and that it will result in the United States pulling back its resources" from Ukraine, Blinken told a Senate hearing.

A Dutch court convicted a Russian businessman of exporting computer chips and other electronic products to Russia's arms and defense industries in violation of European Union sanctions.

The man, whose identity was not released in line with Dutch court rules, exported "dual-use" products that can have both civil and military applications to companies linked to the arms industry in Russia for a period of more than seven months.

The businessman was sentenced to 18 months in prison and his company was fined €200,000 ($212,000) for its role in the scheme.

Rotterdam District Court said in a statement that the man turned sanctions evasion into a "revenue model." The court ruled that he faked invoices for the exports and sent them to Russia via a company in the Maldives.

Calling him an "essential link" in the scheme, the court said he "knowingly and deliberately circumvented" EU sanctions.

Russia said it had arrested a man involved in an assassination attempt on a prominent pro-Moscow separatist leader.

Oleg Tsaryov, a former Ukrainian lawmaker and Moscow-backed separatist, was shot at his home in Crimea last week. Crimea is the southern Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.

Russia's security service, the FSB, said it had arrested a 46-year-old Russian citizen who coordinated the attack "on the instructions of the Ukrainian security service."

The FSB also said he got a job at the sanatorium where Tsaryov lived in order to scope him out ahead of the attack. Tsaryov's condition was stable following the shooting, security service added. 

Several high-profile backers of Russia's assault on Ukraine have been assassinated in Russia or Russian-controlled territory since the start of the conflict. 

The Kremlin said there would be no "free exit" for Western companies selling their Russian assets and they would have to abide with strict rules dictated by Moscow.

The Russian government has tightened restrictions on foreign companies trying to sell their Russian subsidiaries, placing de facto caps and deadlines on transactions, the Financial Times reported, citing people involved in recent deals.

A special Russian government commission must approve all large-scale deals involving companies from countries it labels "unfriendly" — those that have hit Moscow with sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin must personally approve deals in the sensitive energy and finance sectors and departing companies must sell at a mandatory 50% discount and pay an exit tax worth 15% of the company's market value.

"Of course, there can't be any free exit at the moment," Kremlin speaker Dmitry Peskov said.

Hundreds of Western companies have left Russia in the 20 months since Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine, with many taking steep discounts or writing off assets entirely.

The United Nations human rights office has found "reasonable grounds" to conclude that Russian forces launched a missile attack that killed 59 people in a cafe in the Ukrainian village of Hroza.

"Today, we are publishing a report into the events of October 5 that concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe that the missile was launched by Russian armed forces," Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.

She added that "there was no indication of military personnel or any other legitimate military targets at or adjacent to the cafe at the time of the attack."

Ukraine said a Russian missile hit a cafe in the village in the Kharkiv region this month as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Moscow denies targeting civilians in its invasion, a position it repeated in relation to the strike on Hroza.

Russian invasion forces in Ukraine have come under increased pressure in the southern Kherson region on the Dnipro River, according to the intelligence update released by the UK Ministry of Defence. 

According to the update, the deputy commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, has personally taken command of the Dnipro River military group.

Teplinsky was responsible for the relatively successful Russian withdrawal to the east bank of the Dnipro in November 2022. There has been increased fighting there in recent weeks due to Ukrainian attempts to wrest control from the Russians, the update added.

"Teplinsky’s appointment is likely an indication of increased pressure on Russian forces defending the area," according to the intelligence update. 

Repulsing Ukrainian attacks across the Dnipro and holding the occupied territory remains a high priority for Russian forces, the update concluded. 

French police detained Russian billionaire Alexei Kuzmichev, a co-founder of the Alfa Group targeted by EU sanctions, in connection with alleged tax evasion and money laundering and for violating international sanctions, the French Financial Prosecutors’ office said.

Kuzmichev was arrested in the Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez, a source who asked not to be named told AFP. Police raided several locations linked to the tycoon, including his Paris home.

Kuzmichev was still being detained on Tuesday but has not yet been charged in the case.

The European Union put Kuzmichev on a list of Russian nationals to be sanctioned in March 2022, following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Alfa Bank — in which Kuzmichev has a large stake — is one of Russia's biggest taxpayers, according to the EU, and the businessman himself is among the "most influential people in Russia" with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Monday he was confident that the US House of Representatives, which has been in turmoil for weeks over the speaker's job, would support a request for additional funds for Ukraine's military.

"At the moment we have every reason to believe that there are votes in the US House of Representatives for the bill providing Ukraine with additional support," he said.

The US House of Representatives last week elected Republican Mike Johnson, a conservative with little leadership experience, as the speaker. 

Johnson said last week that funding to support Ukraine and Israel should be handled separately, suggesting he would not back President Joe Biden's $106 billion aid package for both countries.

Russian investigators in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow said that they had detained two soldiers on suspicion of killing a family of nine, including two children.

The statement said the soldiers were from a region in Russia's Far East and that the reason for the killings appeared to be some kind of personal conflict.

The killings took place in Volnovakha, an industrial town between Donetsk and Melitopol.

The Ukrainian prosecutor's office said in a statement that it had also opened an investigation into the crime.

dh/rc (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)