6:47am: Russia’s media watchdog blocks Novaya Gazeta website
Russia’s media watchdog blocked access to the website of independent news site Novaya Gazeta on Thursday.
Novaya Gazeta suspended publication on its website, social media and in print in March in response to strict new censorship laws introduced by Russia.
In July, the Roskomnadzor media regulator also blocked a new Novaya Gazeta website that was launched in Europe by staff affiliated with the newspaper, and in September a court revoked Novaya Gazeta’s media license.
6:32am: Biden disputes Zelensky’s statement that missile that landed in Poland wasn’t Ukrainian
US President Joe Biden on Thursday disputed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that a missile that landed in Poland on Tuesday, killing two people, was not of Ukrainian origin.
“That’s not the evidence,” Biden told reporters at the White House upon returning from a trip to Asia.
6:01am: Ukrainian investigators find bodies with signs of torture in Kherson
Investigators in Ukraine‘s southern Kherson region have uncovered 63 bodies with signs of torture after Russian forces left the area, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky was quoted as saying early on Thursday.
“Now, 63 bodies have been discovered in Kherson region, but we must understand that the search has only just started so many more dungeons and burial places will be uncovered,” Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted Monastyrsky as telling national television.
Monastyrsky said law enforcement bodies had uncovered 436 instances of war crimes during Russia’s occupation. Eleven places of detention had been discovered, including four where torture had been practiced.
“Investigators are currently examining them and setting down every instance of torture. Exhumations are also taking place of the bodies of those who were killed,” Monastyrsky told national television, according to Interfax.
Andriy Kovalenko, a prosecutor in the Kherson regional prosecutor’s office, told the New York Times that testimony had been gathered on 800 detentions by Russians in the region. He said that the most common types of abuse inflicted on detainees were electric shocks, beatings with plastic or rubber nightsticks, and suffocation by pinching the breathing hose on a gas mask placed over a prisoner’s head.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, REUTERS and AFP)
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