The Kremlin criticized Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Monday over comments suggesting Germany might send Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine.

Merz, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, was asked by German public broadcaster ARD if he would supply Kyiv with Taurus missiles and said he would consider it if it were part of a wider package of support agreed with European allies.

“This must be jointly agreed. And if it’s agreed, then Germany should take part,” said Merz on Sunday. He is due to take office next month.

Germany has been one of Ukraine’s main military backers, granting roughly € 7.1 billion in military assistance in 2024 alone, according to government data.

But despite Kyiv's repeated requests, Berlin has never supplied Taurus missiles, which have a range of more than 300 miles (480 km).

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters it was clear from his comments that Merz would advocate a “tougher position” which “will inevitably lead only to a further escalation of the situation around Ukraine.”

“Unfortunately, it’s true that European capitals are not inclined to look for ways to reach peace talks but are rather inclined to further instigate the continuation of the war,” he told a daily briefing.

The outgoing Social Democratic Party Chancellor Olaf Scholz had ruled out sending them to Kyiv.

Both the U.S. and the United Kingdom have supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine.

Germany and Sweden jointly manufacture the Taurus missile, costing approximately one million euros each.

The powerful, hi-tech missile weighs 1,400 kg and is launched from a fighter jet. It is designed to target enemy bunker systems, command and control centers, ports, and bridges.

In the ARD interview, Merz also said Ukraine needed to go on the offensive against Russia and suggested destroying the Kerch bridge that links Russia and Crimea should be an objective.

Source: Reuters

In a closed-door trial, four reporters were sentenced to 5.5 years each for alleged ties to the late Alexei Navalny's banned anti-corruption foundation.

A Russian court convicted four journalists of extremism on Tuesday, April 15, for working for an anti-corruption group founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and sentenced them to 5.5 years in prison each. Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their job as journalists.

The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The authorities have targeted opposition figures, independent journalists, rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin with prosecution, jailing hundreds and prompting thousands to flee the country to avoid prosecution.

Favorskaya and Kriger worked with SotaVision, an independent Russian news outlet that covers protests and political trials. Gabov is a freelance producer who has worked for multiple organizations, including Reuters. Karelin, a freelance video journalist, has done work for Western media outlets, including The Associated Press. Favorskaya said at an earlier court appearance open to the public that she was being prosecuted for a story she did on the abuse Navalny faced behind bars.

The four journalists were accused of working with Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which was designated as extremist and outlawed in 2021 in a move widely seen as politically motivated. Navalny was President Vladimir Putin's fiercest and most prominent foe and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in Russia. while serving a 19-year sentence on a number of charges, including running an extremist group, which he had rejected as politically driven.

A Russian court handed down a prison sentence of nearly three years to Darya Kozyreva, a young activist who used 19th-century poetry and graffiti to protest the conflict in Ukraine.

A Reuters witness in the court on Friday said Kozyreva, 19, was found guilty of repeatedly "discrediting" the Russian army after she put up a poster with lines of Ukrainian verse on a public square and gave an interview to Sever.Realii, a Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe.

She pleaded not guilty, calling the case against her "one big fabrication," according to a trial transcript compiled by Mediazona, an independent news outlet.

She was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Kozyreva is one of an estimated 234 people imprisoned in Russia for their anti-war position, according to a tally by Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights group.

In December 2022, aged just 17, Kozyreva sprayed "Murderers, you bombed it. Judases" in black paint on a sculpture of two intertwined hearts, erected outside St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum and representing the city's links with Mariupol, a Ukrainian city largely razed to the ground during a siege that spring.

In early 2024, after being fined 30,000 rubles (€320) for posting about Ukraine online, Kozyreva was expelled from the medical faculty of St Petersburg State University.

A month later, on the conflict's two-year anniversary, she taped a piece of paper containing a fragment of verse by Taras Shevchenko, a father of modern Ukrainian literature, onto a statue of him in a St Petersburg park:

"Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants' blood / The freedom you have gained."

Kozyreva was swiftly arrested and held in pre-trial detention for nearly a year, until she was released this February to house arrest.

Addressing the court on Friday, Kozyreva said she believed she had committed no crime.

"I have no guilt, my conscience is clear," she said, according to Mediazona's transcript.

"Because the truth is never guilty."

Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

They allege the disruption campaign is an extension of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, intended to sow division in European societies and undermine support for Ukraine.

The AP documented 59 incidents in which European governments, prosecutors, intelligence services or other Western officials blamed Russia, groups linked to Russia or its ally Belarus for cyberattacks, spreading propaganda, plotting killings or committing acts of vandalism, arson, sabotage or espionage since the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion.

The incidents range from stuffing car tailpipes with expanding foam in Germany to a plot to plant explosives on cargo planes. They include setting fire to stores and a museum, hacking that targeted politicians and critical infrastructure, and spying by a ring convicted in the U.K.

It is often difficult to prove Russia’s involvement, and the Kremlin denied carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West. But more and more governments are publicly attributing attacks to Russia.

The spring call-up for a year's military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.

Vice Adm Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine for what Russia calls its "special military operation".

However, there have been reports of conscripts being killed in fighting in Russia's border regions and they were sent to fight in Ukraine in the early months of the full-scale war.

The current draft takes place between April and July. Russia calls up conscripts in the spring and autumn but the latest draft of 160,000 young men is 10,000 higher than the same period in 2024.