The U.S. says Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed about how poorly his troops are performing in Ukraine.

According to US intelligence officials who released newly declassified intelligence on Wednesday, March 30,  there is tension between the Russian leader and his Ministry of Defense.

Details emerged on day 35 of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, where the main Russian advances have been stalled for weeks. 

But Putin has been oblivious that his armed forces were using and losing conscripts, according to the new intelligence report.

‘We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,’ said White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, confirming an earlier briefing by an unnamed official.

‘We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.’    

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also confirmed the findings. 

‘We would concur with the conclusion that that Mr. Putin has not been fully informed by his ministry of defence at every turn over the last month,’ he told reporters.

‘Now, I want to caveat that we don’t have access to every bit of information that he’s been given or every conversation that he’s had.’

But it was ‘disconcerting’ to think that Putin was not being kept in the loop.

‘It’s his military. It’s his war. He chose it,’ he said.

‘And so the fact that he may not have all the context, that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that’s a little discomforting.’

‘If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring?’

Russian soldiers have been disobeying orders and accidentally shot down one of their own aircraft, the head of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency has claimed.

Vladimir Putin’s advisers are “afraid to tell him the truth” about the war in Ukraine, according to Sir Jeremy Fleming, who will say in a speech on Thursday that the Russian president made a “strategic miscalculation” in deciding to invade.

“We’ve seen Russian soldiers – short of weapons and morale – refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” the spy chief will say in a rare public address during a visit to Australia.

“And even though we believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what’s going on and the extent of these misjudgments must be crystal clear to the regime.

“It all adds up to the strategic miscalculation that western leaders warned Putin it would be. It’s become his personal war, with the cost being paid by innocent people in Ukraine and, increasingly, by ordinary Russians too.”

No evidence has been disclosed for the claim Russian troops shot down their own aircraft.

On Wednesday US officials also said Mr Putin is being misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how badly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging western sanctions have been.

“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told reporters during a press briefing.

“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth,” she said.

Russian forces bombarded areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv just hours after pledging to scale back operations in those zones to promote trust between the two sides, Ukrainian authorities said.

Russian shelling hit homes, shops, libraries, and other civilian areas, they added.

An eighth Russian colonel has been killed in Ukraine in another devastating blow to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

In a statement, Kyiv said it had ‘eliminated’ Colonel Denis Kurilo, commander of the 200th separate motorised rifle brigade, in fighting near Kharkiv.

The brigade had suffered massive losses in the fierce battle, the Ukrainian army’s press office said.

Two battalion groups in the 200th brigade were destroyed, with a staggering loss of 1,500 servicemen, Ukraine has claimed. 

The colonel is the latest in a long list of slain Russian military leaders, which experts say betray the Kremlin’s tactics in the brutal invasion.

Kurilo follows seven colonels and seven generals who have been killed by defiant Ukrainian forces in the month-long war.

Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko, chief of the Western Military District engineer troops, was killed in an ambush that left a total of 18 Russians dead by a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River.

Colonel Alexei Sharov, commander of the 810th Guards Separate Order of Zhukov Brigade in the Russian Marines, was killed in Mariupol last week. 

Colonel Sergei Sukharev, of the 331st Guards Parachute Assault Regiment from Kostroma, was ‘liquidated’ according to Ukraine in fighting earlier this month. 

‘Commander of the Kostroma Airborne Regiment, Colonel Sergei Sukharev… got lost in the “[military] exercises”, but returned home the right way,’ said the Ukrainian statement.

His deputy Major Sergei Krylov was killed alongside him, said the report.

Colonel Andrei Zakharov was killed in an ambush near Kyiv in the opening days of the war, while Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky who led air assault troops died in the south of Ukraine.

Russian brigade commander Colonel Yuri Medvedev was even run down with a tank by his own mutinous troops.

A Western official claimed the commander had been killed by his own troops, ‘as a consequence of the scale of losses that had been taken by his brigade’.

‘We believe he was killed by his own troops deliberately,’ the official said, noting he was ‘run over’.

He added it was a further sign of ‘morale challenges that Russian forces are having’.

‘They really have found themselves in a hornet’s nest and they’re suffering really badly,’ the official said.

Colonel Sergei Porokhyna is another high-profile casualty among Putin’s forces. 

Last week, Russian Army Commander General Vlaislav Yershov, of the 6th Combined Arms Army, was sacked by Putin due to the heavy losses and strategic failures. 

The latest to die, Lieutenant General Yakov Rezanstev, was a commander of Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army in its southern military district, the official disclosed.  

Vladimir Putin has failed in his plan to capture Kyiv, with Moscow on Tuesday pledging to withdraw forces from the Ukrainian capital.

Russia claimed the withdrawal from Kyiv and the city of Chernihiv was to build trust in “constructive” peace negotiations.

Talks in Istanbul broke up on Tuesday after Ukraine offered to make itself permanently neutral if the UK, other Western powers and China provided military protection from future Russian aggression. But hours later, heavy shelling resumed in Kyiv.

Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator, claimed Moscow did not want to “put Kyiv at military risk” because people whose decisions could bring peace, such as Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, were there.

But he said “de-escalation does not mean a ceasefire” and warned that there was still “a long way to go” before a deal could be signed.

Mr Zelensky on Tuesday night urged the world not to trust any Russian promises as fresh explosions rocked the capital.

“Of course, we see all the risks. Of course, we don’t have a reason to trust the words of representatives of a country that wages war against us,” he said. “Ukrainians are not naive.”

Boris Johnson said Putin could still seek to “twist the knife” despite Russia’s faltering invasion as the Cabinet decided to step up military aid to Ukraine.

After a call with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy, Joe Biden, the US president, said the West would “keep strong the sanctions” while following Moscow’s next moves.

Washington believes the withdrawal of troops from near Kyiv is merely a redeployment after the Russian invasion became bogged down in the north of the country.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said Russia’s “brutalisation” of Ukraine “continues as we speak”.

US officials warned that the world should be prepared for more major offensives elsewhere.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Russia had “failed in its objective of capturing Kyiv” but cautioned that the capital remained surrounded.

Putin’s close ally General Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, said the army’s priority was now the “liberation” of the Donbas in the east of the country, where two Russian-backed rebel regions broke away from Ukraine in 2014.

A Western official said the Russians were reinforcing the Donbas with battalion tactical groups to “envelop” Ukrainian forces in the area.

Denis Pushilin, a separatist leader, said the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic would consider joining Russia once it controlled the whole Donetsk region.

Ukrainian forces have recently appeared to make significant territorial gains around Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson. They pushed Russian forces back from around Kyiv, including in the nearby town of Irpin, an important gateway to the capital.

“Our men crushed them and forced them to get back, so we will celebrate,” said Volkov Kostiantyn, a Kyiv resident. “But no alcohol until the war ends. Just coffee.”

Stage one of the German government’s emergency gas plan has been triggered after Berlin rejected Moscow’s demand to pay for supplies in rubles amidst concerns Russia will cut off deliveries.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck insists the country’s supply is guaranteed with no supply issues at present, but added the plan’s further escalation levels are possible, which could include gas rationing.

The move comes as the German Council of Economic Experts claimed their forecasts see a GDP expansion of just 1.8%, down from earlier predictions of 4.6%.

Ukraine’s president, Volodimir Zelensky has demanded that Western nations hand over military hardware that was ‘gathering dust’ in stockpiles, saying NATO nations don’t want to support Ukraine with jets and tanks because they were being intimidated by Russia .

Since the War between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, NATO nations have so far given Ukraine anti-tank and anti-craft missiles as well as small arms and protective equipment, but have not offered any heavy armour like tanks or fighter planes.

Zelensky accused the West of holding back on supplies because they were frightened of Russia and suggested Moscow is in charge of NATO.

In a late-night address on Saturday, March 26, Zelensky said;

‘We need more ammunition. We’ve already been waiting 31 days. What is NATO doing? 

‘Who is in charge of the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it really still Moscow, because of intimidation? We are only asking for one per cent of what NATO has, nothing more.’   

Zelensky also angrily warned Moscow that it is sowing a deep hatred for Russia among his people, as constant artillery barrages and aerial bombings are reducing cities to rubble, killing civilians and driving others into hiding. 

‘You are doing everything so that our people themselves leave the Russian language, because the Russian language will now be associated only with you, with your explosions and murders, your crimes,’ Zelenskyy said.

His comments came after anuclear research facility in the besieged city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border, came under fire on Saturday.

Chinese authorities have revealed that all 132 victims of the passenger jet that crashed in South-West China last week Monday, have been identified via DNA testing.

This was disclosed during an official news conference on Monday.

Sequel to the accident, public security authorities across the 20 provincial-level regions were mobilised to identify the victims by collecting DNA samples of those on board and their relatives, said an official with the Ministry of Public Security, Liu Kaihui.

He said that 20 DNA experts had conducted DNA testing and analysis of the samples, and the identity of the final victim was confirmed on Monday morning.

The Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming in Yunnan Province for Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, crashed in Tengxian County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on March 21.

It was also learnt that China, hitherto, had enjoyed an enviable air safety record in recent years in a country crisscrossed by newly built airports and serviced by new airlines established to match the country’s breakneck growth over the last few decades.

A Henan Airlines flight crashed in North-Eastern Heilongjiang province in 2010, killing at least 42 out of 92 people on board although the final toll was never confirmed, and it was the last Chinese commercial passenger flight crash that caused civilian casualties.

The deadliest Chinese commercials flight crash was a China North-West Airlines crash in 1994 which killed all 160 onboard.

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US President has finally signed legislation criminalizing lynching, after 100 years and 200 failed attempts by US  lawmakers.

Lynching is murder by a mob with no due process or rule of law. Across the US, thousands of people, mainly African Americans, were lynched by white mobs, often by hanging or torture, in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

About 4,400 African Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Those who participated in lynchings were often celebrated and acted with impunity.

Joe Biden on Tuesday, March 29  signed legislation that designates lynching as a federal hate crime.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is named for the black teenager whose brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement against lynching.

Perpetrators of a lynching – death or injury resulting from a hate crime – will now face up to 30 years in jail.

After signing the law, Biden said: “Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up.

“Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone, belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”

He added: “Racial hate isn’t an old problem – it’s a persistent problem. Hate never goes away. It only hides.”

The bill was passed unanimously in the Senate earlier in March. The House had voted overwhelmingly in support of the legislation last month. Three Republicans voted no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia. They argued that it was already a hate crime to lynch people in the US.

Many racial justice advocates have described the death of Floyd, as well as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery – who was hunted down and shot by three white men in Georgia in 2020 – as modern-day lynchings, and following the passing of the anti-lynching bill, both deaths have been credited as modern day influences

A new ‘evidence’ has emerged that Vladimir Putin and his highest-ranking commanders are operating the Ukraine war from top-secret nuclear bunkers. 

Movements of planes used by top Kremlin officials show Putin may be in a hideaway near Surgut in western Siberia, it is claimed.

His defence minister Sergei Shoigu, is believed to be in a bunker near Ufa in the Urals, 725 miles east of Moscow, according to investigative journalist Christo Grozev.

This theory is backed by his daughter Ksenia Shoigu, 31, who visited Ufa, where she was pictured for an estimated three days from March 22, as speculation was rife that the defence minister had suffered heart problems.

She also abruptly barred public access to her Instagram where she had posed with her baby in the blue and yellow colours of Ukraine.

The use of the high-security bunkers – if confirmed – is alarming as it suggests Putin may be preparing to deploy nuclear weapons, a move that would lead to inevitable reprisal.

Grozev – who has links to British investigative outlet Bellingcat – said: ‘I am absolutely sure that Shoigu is in a bunker.

‘Tracking the movement of his plane, we see very frequent flights to Ufa.

‘Knowing that there are also protected bunkers in this region, this gives an obvious answer about his place of residence.’

In an interview with Ukraine-24 channel, he told TV anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov: ‘This is our very justified version.

‘I believe in it, and I consider it to be a purely analytical conclusion. There can’t be any other conclusion.

‘If the Kremlin’s war strategy assumes a nuclear strike – and it does – as [Dmitry] Peskov [Putin’s spokesman] himself said on CNN a couple of days ago, then there cannot be any other version.

‘If there is a decision of a potential nuclear strike, they can’t hide the military leadership afterwards.

‘They have to be hidden beforehand.

‘I am absolutely certain he is in a so-called bunker, and by trailing the plane he usually flies, we see very frequent, almost daily flights to Ufa.

‘Knowing this region has those very protected bunkers this leads us to the obvious conclusion. ‘

He believes Putin has another bunker elsewhere.

‘Most likely he is elsewhere, because we are seeing other flights, and they are more classified than the flight that goes to Ufa.

‘These are state planes, and they switch off their transponders somewhere around Surgut.’

This is Russia’s oil capital and is some 1,800 miles northeast of Moscow.

‘It looks like the final phase is quite secretive, and most likely there is a more elite bunker there, with the elite of the government.’

Previously there have been claims Putin had moved his close relatives to a bunker in the Altai Mountains, some 1,100 miles southeast of Surgut and 2,360 miles east of Moscow.

Grozev also suggested that Russia’s Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, is operating from a bunker.

Coincidentally, the defence minister’s daughter Ksenia Shoigu seems to have been in Ufa between March 22 and 25.

‘Today we are in Ufa, on a working visit,’ she posted on her Telegram channel on March 22.

Local newspapers reported that the financier was visiting ‘at the personal invitation of the head of region on March 24 and 25’.

The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility after two Israeli police officers were shot dead in an attack in the northern Israeli city of Hadera.

Israeli Police said the gunmen were Israeli Arab citizens who stacked the policemen.

Four other people were taken to hospital after the attack in Hadera, and two others were treated at the site of the shooting.

Police in a statement said counterterrorism officers happened to be in a restaurant near the shooting and brought the attack to an end.

“Our officers managed to neutralise the assailants and prevent a bigger terrorist attack,” national police spokesman Eli Levy told Israeli TV.

However, the Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attack in a statement released by the Amaq propaganda site.

“Two members of the Jewish (state’s) police force were killed and others were injured in an immersive commando attack,” IS said in a rare claim for an attack inside Israel.

The attack comes days after an attacker identified as an IS supporter killed four Israelis in the southern city of Beersheba.

Intelligence group, SITE, said it was the first time IS had taken credit for an attack in Israel since 2017.

Hebrew media widely identified the two terrorists as Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah, cousins whom police said were residents of the central Arab city of Umm al-Fahm. Israel Police said the two arrived at the scene with 1,100 bullets, as well as at least three handguns and six knives.

The two terrorists opened fire at police along Samuel Herbert road in Hadera on Sunday night, Israel Police said. Two people were killed and several others were wounded before officers gunned down both Ighbariahs, according to police and medics.

Ibrahim, 31, was arrested in 2016 by Turkish police after trying to join the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria. He was later apprehended by Israeli security forces and served a year and a half in prison for membership in a terror group.

Sunday’s incident occurred as Israel hosts an historic summit with three Arab League states – Egypt, Bahrain and Jordan after they normalized toes during the Trump administration.

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a law restricting the dissemination of military information during the current state of emergency, with violators facing up to 12 years in prison.

According to the document, filming the movements of Ukrainian military personnel, sites of shelling, street names, transport stops, shops, factories, and other civilian and military facilities is now prohibited.

The law, signed by the president over the weekend, also forbids the publication of data on the movement of foreign military aid received by Ukraine.

The law bans “unauthorized dissemination of information about the direction, movement of international military assistance to Ukraine, the movement or deployment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or other military formations of Ukraine, committed in a state of martial law or a state of emergency,” Ukrinform says.

The ban on the dissemination of information does not apply to the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff.

The move comes after people were reportedly posting sensitive information on Ukraine’s army online.

On March 21, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained a person who it says posted a video on TikTok with the positions of the armed forces in Kyiv. Soon afterward, Russia launched a missile attack on a site nearby, killing eight people.

The SBU is investigating whether the person, who remains in detention, was purposely trying to reveal classified information to Russia.

A senior Russian commander was rumoured to have died in hospital after his own troops ran over him with a tank, causing fatal wounds to his legs.

Sky News reporter Deborah Haynes gave the name of the commander as Colonel Yuri Medvedev, commander of 37 Motor Rifle Brigade.

In an initial report, she said her source, who she names as a western official, told her that the Colonel was set upon by his disheartened men as a reaction to the severe losses the unit had suffered in Ukraine.

Deborah initially reported that the commander died in hospital but in a recent tweet, she said she is getting reports that he survived but remains in critical condition in a hospital in Belarus.

Footage emerged from the incident on Wednesday, March 23, with the colonel rushed to the hospital after suffering severe wounds to his legs.

Ukraine has reclaimed several villages and towns from Russian forces in a series of counterattacks from Friday to Sunday, March 27 according to reports.

 The counter attacks by the Ukranian military took place from the east of Kharkiv to the northwest of Mariupol with the last counter attack taking place after Russian missiles struck the western city of Lviv on Saturday.

 Kharkiv’s regional administrator said a number of villages around Malaya Rogan were retaken by Ukrainian forces. 

Reports by Reuters say Ukrainian troops are nkw in control of Vilkhivka, one of the settlements roughly 20 miles from the Russian border. 

The success of Ukrainian forces goes further north, near the city of Sumy, where Ukrainian troops have liberated a number of settlements in Mariupol too, according to the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration.

Also on Saturday, US President said Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” during a speech in Poland. 

The White House then followed up with its own statement saying that it was not a direct call for regime change..

Ukraine’s military intelligence has said Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to carve Ukraine into two – like North and South Korea. 

Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency, said Russia’s operations around Kyiv to remove the government had failed and it was now impossible for the Russian army to overthrow the Ukrainian government of Volodimir Zelensky saying the war is now focused on the south and the east of the country, he said. 

“There is reason to believe that he is considering a ‘Korean’ scenario for Ukraine. That is, [Russian forces] will try to impose a dividing line between the unoccupied and occupied regions of our country. In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine.” 

Budanov said Russia wanted to establish a land corridor from the Russian border to Crimea, and that he expected to see an attempt to unite Russian-occupied territories (Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea) into a single entity. 

“We are already seeing attempts to create “parallel” authorities in the occupied territories and to force people to give up [the Ukrainian] currency,” Budanov said, adding that he expects Ukrainians to resist Russia’s political efforts. 

A Russian soldier has reportedly handed himself and his tank over to Ukrainian troops for a reward of $10,000 (£7,500) and Ukrainian citizenship.

According to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Victor Andrusiv, Misha (not real names) was one of President Vladimir Putin’s invading soldiers, but he has now surrendered a T-72B3 main battle tank after his two other crewmates escaped home and his commanding officer threatened to shoot him.

Andrusiv said Misha had contacted Ukraine‘s national police by phone and arranged a place to meet but Ukraine had to be careful and send in a drone with camera to meet the soldier just to be sure it wasn’t an ambush.

He said: ‘For a few weeks in the National Police we have identified the phones used by Russians.

‘On these phones, we regularly send SMS about how to surrender and hand over the equipment.

‘A few days ago, Misha called us.

‘We handed over the information about him to the GUR MO [Ukrainian military intelligence].

‘He didn’t see the point of war.

Special forces then detained Misha, who lay face-down with his hand up as he surrendered.

The seized T-72B3 tank has the capacity for a three-person crew and is fitted with a 125 mm smoothbore main gun as well as a machine gun and an anti-tank guided missile. It is a relatively new Russian upgrade of their old T-72B tanks used by Ukraine.

Andrusiv added the Russian soldier will spend the remainder of the war as a prisoner in ‘comfortable conditions with a TV, phone, kitchen and shower’.

The surrender by the Russian soldier comes days after Ukrainian state arms manufacturer Ukroboronprom offered $1million for the capture of battle-ready Russian aircraft.

Ukroboronprom said: ‘To the pilots of the Russian Federation ready to participate in the programme, we guarantee the issuance of citizenship of a free country!’

The arms manufacturer also added it would give $500,000 for every combat helicopter seized from the Russians that could still be used.

The chief of the Russian army has stated that Russia will focus its main war effort on the “complete liberation” of the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region, a change from its previous mission of trying to invade the whole country, decapitate the Kyiv government and change leadership.

On Friday, March 24, the defence ministry said Russia had been considering two options for its “special military operation” – one covering the whole of Ukraine and one focusing on the Donbas.

The comments come as Russian forces have met strong resistance in the north of Ukraine and around Kyiv.

Sergey Rudskoy, head of the main operational department of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said 93% of Luhansk oblast and 54% of Donetsk oblast was under Russian control.

He said Russia had destroyed the vast majority of Ukraine’s air force and navy, and this marked the successful end of the first phase of the conflict, he added.

However, the defence ministry said Russia would react immediately to any move to close airspace over Ukraine – something Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky has repeatedly urged.

Russia has lost another of its generals in the war in Ukraine, Kyiv military sources said.

Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev, 48, commander of the army’s 49th combined arms division, became the fifth general to be killed after being taken out in a strike by the Ukrainian armed forces, sources in Kyiv said.

The news means, the Russian army has now lost a staggering 16 military commanders in a month, as Putin’s invading forces suffer heavy losses at the hands of  Ukrainian defenders.

Rezantsev, who bragged on just the fourth day of the war that it would be over in a matter of hours, was apparently killed after the Ukrainian army destroyed the commanding post of the 49th Russian Army in southern Ukraine. 

A soldier claimed Rezantsev told them on the fourth day of their deployment: ‘It’s no secret to anyone that there are only a few hours until this special operation is over.’

‘And now those hours are still going.’

A senior NATO military officer said the alliance estimates that Russia has suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 battlefield casualties in Ukraine through the first month of the war, including between 7,000 and 15,000 killed.  

Rezantsev is the fifth Russian general that Ukraine claims to have killed since Russia invaded their country.

Major-General Oleg Mityaev, 47, commander of the army’s 150th motorised rifle division, died fighting in the besieged city of Mariupol while Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, 45, was killed on March 7 outside the eastern city of Kharkiv.

U.S. President, Joe Biden has stated that the United States will respond if Russia were to use chemical weapons in its invasion of Ukraine.

Accordingly to Biden,  who attended a NATO, EU and G7 summit in Brussels on Thursday, March 24, the US’ response would depend on the kind of weapons of mass destruction, Russian president, Vladimir Putin will deploy.

“So you’ve warned about the real threat of chemical weapons being used. Have you gathered specific intelligence that suggests that President Putin is deploying these weapons, moving them into position or considering their use? And would the US or NATO respond with military action if he did use chemical weapons?” the Associated Press asked the US President during his news conference.

Biden responded that he could not provide information on intelligence, but added on the issue of chemical weapons;

 “We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of use.”

Also earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance will reinforce its chemical, biological and nuclear defense systems on fears Russia is planning to use such weapons against the people of Ukraine.

 Biden said “we’re determined to sustain” efforts outlined during the emergency NATO meeting right after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “to build on them.” 

“The United States is committed to provide over $2 billion in military equipment to Ukraine since I became president. Anti-air systems, anti-armor systems, , ammunition and our weapons are flowing into Ukraine as I speak. And today, I am announcing the United States is prepared to commit more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to help get relief to millions of Ukrainians affected by the war in Ukraine,” Biden said.

Biden said the US is ready to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees in to the country. 

Biden also said Putin thought he could catch NATO off guard, but said his actions in Ukraine only tightened the alliance .

“NATO has never, never been more united than it is today. Putin is getting exactly the opposite what he intended to have as a consequence of going into Ukraine,” he said.

International hacking collective, Anonymous has claimed it has hacked into Russia’s Central Bank – and is threatening to release 35,000 files which include ‘secret agreements’ in the next 48 hours.

The bank is responsible for protecting and ensuring the safety of the ruble, the Russian currency which has plummeted in value since the invasion of Ukraine began last month.

In a post on Twitter, Anonymous revealed its latest hack with brief details. 

Alongside an image of a smiling mask,  the group wrote: ‘JUST IN: The #Anonymous collective has hacked the Central Bank of Russia. More than 35.000 files will be released within 48 hours with secret agreements. #OpRussia’.

It comes as speculation has mounted in recent days over the future of central bank head, Elvira Nabiullina.

Elvira was recently pictured looking dejected at a Kremlin meeting and posted a cryptic video, in which she admitted that the Russian economy was in an ‘extreme’ situation and said, ‘We all very much would have liked this not to have happened.’

While Western powers say they cannot enforce a no-fly zone, they are sending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lethal weaponry to Ukraine.

Watch video here..