Ukraine Russia claims Instagram account hacked with anti-putin message
RUSSIA said its Scottish Instagram account was hacked to oppose Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
A post appeared on the official Instagram account of Consul General Andrei Yakovlev yesterday afternoon categorically condemning the Kremlin’s so-called “special operation”.
It disappeared after about an hour. If genuine, this would have marked the biggest sign of dissent within Russia’s Foreign Ministry since Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February.
But even a hack of an official mouthpiece would be embarrassing for the Kremlin, whose social media accounts have been cheerleading for war. The statement accompanied a photograph of two young women holding a placard saying, in English, “I support Ukraine”. Russian opposition leaders latched on to the post.
The team of jailed former political candidate Andrei Pivovarov posted a screenshot of the remarks on Twitter, saying there was a “mutiny on the ship”. However, the Russian Consulate later issued a tweet saying its Instagram account had been hijacked.
The consulate said a hack had resulted in the posting of “false information.”
AN international effort was under way last night to rescue more civilians from the tunnels beneath a besieged steel plant in Mariupol and from the Ukrainian city itself, as fighters holed up in the sprawling complex made their last stand against Russian troops.
The fight in the last Ukrainian stronghold of the strategic port that has been reduced to ruins in the Russian onslaught appeared increasingly desperate.
There is also growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to finish the battle for Mariupol so he can present a triumph to the Russian people in time for Monday’s Victory Day, Russia’s biggest patriotic holiday.
Some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters, by Russia’s most recent estimate, are holed up in a vast maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath the Azovstal steelworks and they have repeatedly refused to surrender.
Ukraine said a few hundred civilians were also trapped there and as the battle has ramped up in recent days, fears for their safety have only grown.
UN officials announced on Thursday they were launching a third effort to evacuate citizens from the plant and the city.
However, the UN did not divulge any new details yesterday of the operation; they have been similarly quiet about previous operations while they were continuing.
“We conducted another stage of a complex operation to evacuate people from Mariupol and Azovstal,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said yesterday on the Telegram messaging app. “I can say we managed to take out almost
500 civilians.”
Two previous evacuations by the United Nations and the Red Cross brought out roughly 500 people from the steel plant and elsewhere in Mariupol. It was not clear if Mr Yermak was saying more people have since been rescued.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has promised the UN will continue to “do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes”.
Fighters defending the plant said on Telegram that Russian troops fired on an evacuation vehicle that was moving through the plant’s grounds.
“This car was moving towards civilians to evacuate them from the territory of the plant. As a result of the shelling, one soldier was killed and six wounded,” the message from the Azov Regiment said.
Moscow, which has denied storming the facility, did not acknowledge renewed fighting there yesterday.
People escaping Mariupol typically have to pass through contested areas and many checkpoints, sometimes taking days to reach the relative safety of the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles to the north-west.
Ahead of Russia’s planned Victory Day celebrations municipal workers and volunteers cleaned up what remains of Mariupol, which is now under Russia’s control, apart from the steel plant. Bulldozers scooped up debris and people swept streets amid a backdrop of buildings hollowed out by shelling.
Workers repaired a model of a warship and Russian flags were hoisted on utility poles.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is now its chief objective.
Its capture also holds symbolic value since the city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war and surprisingly fierce resistance.
While they pounded away at the plant, Russian forces struggled to make significant gains elsewhere, 10 weeks into a devastating war that has killed thousands of people, forced millions to flee the country and flattened large swathes of cities.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said yesterday that its forces have repelled 11 attacks in the Donbas and destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles, further frustrating Mr Putin’s ambitions after his abortive attempt to seize Kyiv.
Russia gave no immediate acknowledgement of those losses.
On Thursday, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukrainian Chief of Defence, said a counter-offensive could be undertaken to push Russian forces away from Kharkiv and Izyum, two cities key to the Russian campaign in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
Already, Ukrainian fighters have driven Russian forces some 25 miles east of Kharkiv in recent days.
The extended stand-off at the Mariupol steel plant was helping to hinder Russia’s plans for the Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence said yesterday.
The fighting at the plant “has come at personnel, equipment and munitions cost to Russia”, it said. “Whilst Ukrainian resistance continues in Azovstal, Russian losses will continue to build and frustrate their operational plans in southern Donbas.”
We conducted another stage of an operation to evacuate people from Mariupol and Azovstal