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Ukraine war: Kyiv military adviser Gennadiy Chastiakov killed by birthday bomb; Russia exits Cold-War arms treaty

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A close adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army was killed when a grenade among his birthday gifts exploded on Monday, officials said.

“Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” General Valery Zaluzhny said on Telegram, saying that an “unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts”.

Chastiakov was showing his son a box with grenades inside that he had received as a gift, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said in a statement on Telegram.

“At first, the son took the munition in his hands and began to turn the ring. Then the serviceman took the grenade away from the child and pulled the ring, causing a tragic explosion,” Klymenko said.

Police have identified a fellow soldier who gave the fatal gift, he said, and seized two similar grenades.

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Ukraine says Russian strike killed over 50 in one of the deadliest attacks of the war

Ukraine says Russian strike killed over 50 in one of the deadliest attacks of the war

An investigation is under way.

Chastiakov leaves a wife and four children, Zaluzhny said.

He added that since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Chastiakov had been “fully devoting his life to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the fight against Russian aggression”.
Attacks targeting Ukrainian leaders have been relatively rare since Moscow invaded, but there have been several attacks on nationalists which Russia has blamed on Ukraine.

In April, a blast from a statuette rigged with explosives killed 40-year-old pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

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The Kremlin said the attack had been orchestrated by Ukraine with the help of supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

But observers said the bombing attack could be used to justify a further crackdown on critics.

And last August, Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultranationalist intellectual, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow, which Russia blamed on Ukraine.

Kyiv denied the charges.

Russia says destroys 17 Ukraine-launched drones

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed and intercepted 17 Ukraine-launched drones early on Tuesday over the Black Sea and the Crimean Peninsula territory, the Russian defence ministry said.

Nine drones were destroyed by air defence systems and eight were intercepted by electronic warfare, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

Earlier, the Russian-installed governor of the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said that falling debris fell on the roof of a private house in the village of Andriivka, in Sevastopol’s suburbs, setting it briefly on fire,

There was no information about potential casualties.

Shot, a Russian news outlet that often reports credible security information, said that at around 4:10am local time, loud explosions were heard near the towns of Novofedorivka and Saky. Saky is home to a Russian airbase.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, but Kyiv has increased its attacks in recent months on Russian military infrastructure in Crimea, a peninsula which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

A Ukrainian soldier launches a Shark drone, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

Moscow withdraws from key post-Cold War treaty

Russia formally withdrew on Tuesday from a key post-Cold War security treaty designed to de-escalate potential East-West conflicts, in a latest sign of rising tensions between Russia and Nato.

“At 00:00 on November 7, 2023, the procedure of Russia’s withdrawal from the CFE (Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe), was completed,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on its website. “Thus, the international legal document, the validity of which was suspended by our country back in 2007, has finally become history for us.”

The 1990 treaty, negotiated and concluded at the end of the Cold War and signed a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, placed limits on the deployment of military equipment to maintain military balance between Nato and the then-Warsaw Pact countries.

Russia suspended its participation in the treaty in 2007 and halted active participation in 2015.

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In May 2023, well into the war in Ukraine that Russia launched in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree denouncing the pact, drawing condemnation from Nato for “undermining Euro-Atlantic security”.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the depths the Cold War, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying over the weekend that relations with the United States were below zero.

“The CFE Treaty was concluded at the end of the Cold War, when the formation of a new architecture of global and European security based on cooperation seemed possible, and appropriate attempts were made,” the Russian foreign ministry said.

The actions of the United States to expand Nato led to alliance countries “openly circumventing” the group restrictions, however, the ministry added. “Thus, the CFE Treaty in its original form lost touch with reality.”

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