Our final farewell to Alexey
#Navalny
. I shall not look upon his like again. Our TV report from Moscow tonight.
'We will never forgive': Thousands line streets of Moscow for funeral of Alexey Navalny via
@YouTube
To the
#Moscow
of one month ago, you are already a memory, a different era. This city I have loved still looks the same but it is another place. My thoughts from the last few days.
🩰 Prima Ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit the
#Bolshoi
& Russia, saying ‘I never thought that I would be ashamed of Russia, I have always been proud of the talented Russian people, our cultural and sporting achievements. But now the line is drawn on the before and after’
Riot police marching up and down Tverskaya; more arrests. This is what freedom looks like in central Moscow tonight, two hours after
#Navalny
was sentenced to jail for supposedly breaking his parole
Yep. And to claim western journalists don’t interview Putin. It’s because the Kremlin says no to our requests, Tucker, every time. Because they see no benefit in being asked the hard questions. Plus airing it verbatim is a Kremlin pre-requisite, not a sign of press freedom.
Quite something to complain about how not enough American journalists are reporting on the Russian side of Putin's invasion of Ukraine when two of them – Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva – are *in jail right now* for doing just that
Please watch our documentary. For all who ask what the Russian people are thinking. We went to Samara, Ulan-Ude, Belgorod, Krasnodar ... it's a snapshot, patriotism to despair. I have no answers. But I hope you'll watch.
The mood in Moscow is hard to capture, but the police on every corner give a sense of it. The end of McDonalds here marks the end of an era, as sanctions close in on Russia’s future. Three decades set now for reverse. Here’s my report
via
@YouTube
Moscow has emptied of the people I knew. Somehow it feels like the rest are sleep-walking into a new reality. In Soviet times ppl only really talked in the safety of their kitchens. That is again the direction of travel. Our report last night via
@YouTubel
Nukes on Moscow’s streets are always horrifyingly sinister. Is this the new Sarmat missile? Possibly - during rehearsals we don’t get the hardware low down. Particularly hideous in my photo is the fact it’s parked up next to the Ukrainian restaurant, Odessa Mama.
#Navalny
beyond frustrated by hair-splitting from prosecution on the days of the week he was supposed to check in for parole. Prosecution continues in calm monotone re x date - ‘yes or no?’ ‘Are you listening to yourself?’ Navalny says
I am so shocked by what I saw last night. Checkpoints on the streets where I walk every day, police acting as you say like soldiers from a horror movie, I had thought Putin knew better than to repeat what he saw in Belarus here. I was wrong.
When I was 5 or 6 I had this recurring nightmare of finding myself on a street and having to desperately run and hide from gangs of soldiers. No idea where it came from. Too young to have watched films. But I guess it kind of looked like this.
Farewell to Alexey
#Navalny
, one of Russia’s greatest dissidents laid to rest. So many thousands came to say goodbye, a sombre day. ‘Navalny our hero’, ‘We thank the parents for their son’, ‘We do not forgive’ - all chants we heard today. Police kept their distance, for once.
‘Respected dear Lady, Okrestina is not a sanatorium’. That’s what Lukashenko replied when I asked him about torture in
#Belarus
detention centres. He wants to see the evidence. He should be under no doubt that it is being compiled.
#Tsinamouskaya
’s husband confirms he’s in Kiev, fled last night cos staying in Minsk wasn’t safe. Says Kristina’s decision was not pre-planned, he hopes one day they can go back (btw contrary to reports they don’t have a kid)
#Belarus
#Tokyo2020
Sky News correspondent
@DiMagnaySky
is detained along with her Belarusian colleagues Anastasiya Leonova and Vadim Nechayev in
#Minsk
. They are currently being held at Soviet Detention Centre. Please share
#Belarus
‘I’m scared’, was all her sign said. мне страшно. ‘Better that than to live in today’s Russia’, she told me as police carted her away.
#Russia
#Protests
‘Together again’. This photo today at the Nemtsov memorial of Alexey Navalny and Boris Nemtsov. Touched by the girl who just walked by, saw it, grinned with joy taking a photo and nodded her respects. May their souls rest in peace.
Just crossed the bridge outside the Kremlin where Boris Nemtsov was killed in 2015. In six years being in Moscow, I don’t remember ever not seeing flowers, or the memorial to him present in some way. Now there is nothing there. A gut punch somehow. To add to all the others.
#Moscow
protests messy already, 40
mins in. Wonder what the night will bring; car horns beeping in support, Belarus-style; riot police seem to be taking a leaf out of the Belarusian playbook too.
Riot police readying themselves outside Moscow city court for
#Navalny
supporters. Not the first time Russian prison service has asked for Navalny’s host of suspended sentences to be turned into jail terms. This time given street (and Kremlin) pressure, will the judge agree?
Super dramatic stuff from Aktobe Kazakhstan were protestors are trying to break into regional govt HQ. Cries of ‘Old Man Go’ in protests across the country tell you all you need to know about popular frustration over who’s in charge - still ostensibly
#Nazarbayev
Marina
#Ovsyannikova
, the journalist who held up a ‘no war’ sign on state TV, has been arrested after she single picketed outside the Kremlin to protest the slaughter of children in
#Vinnytsia
. Today she wrote she wasn’t scared of arrest. Her lawyer hasn’t been able to reach her.
Well, that was a strange day. Our piece from PMC Wagner’s sparkling new opening in St Petersburg as Putin signs into law the ability to mobilise convicts guilty of the most serious crimes. Laws bent to fit reality in this new 🇷🇺.
@BBCSteveR
@BenHNoble
‘Sometimes it makes me so sad that I cry’. Farewell to Valentina, may the Grandad Oligarch appear in Kursk and thank you
@BBCSteveR
, we will all miss Valentina!
‘I want the world to know that in
#Belarus
, journalism is a crime’. That’s what Katya Andreyeva told her husband to tell us after she & her colleague were sentenced to two years in jail for simply doing their job.
Devastated, sad and angry at the egregious arrest of
@evangershkovich
who could not be a better journalist and liveliest, smiliest, most ebullient of people. Journalism is NOT a crime. Our 💔 are broken and with you, Evan. If only you could see our support.
‘May it provide solace to all of his supporters in exile who could not be there. May it prove some comfort to his wife Yulia and their two children, who for their own safety could not attend their own father’s funeral’.
Still no access for foreigners to worst ever industrial spill in the Arctic, but
#SkyNews
Moscow bureau as Russian citizens could fly to Norilsk. Here’s what they found:
We found ourselves accidentally inside the new, large field camp nr Voronezh as tensions across the border in
#Donbas
ratchet up. But is the military build-up just coercive diplomacy?
#Russia
#Ukraine
She is in Moscow. I just bumped into her voting at the embassy with the kids. She told me she wanted to be with them on this important day. Her husband Valery says she will return to Minsk tonight.
RIA Novosti reporting Veronika Tsepkalo, one of the opposition trio has fled Belarus, fearing arrest. Her husband Valery left for Moscow a few weeks ago. Another of the 3 was briefly arrested last night & the candidate herself is in hiding.
Seems I’m a representative of the British embassy too. With a badge clearly saying PRESS on it. I asked her why she was filming me but she didn’t answer. Great journalism NTV
In
#Russia
in 2018, 8300 women were killed. That works out at 22 a day. We’re a long way from the concept of male allies here. A tougher institutional response might not have saved poor Vera Pekhteleva, but it would help combat this awful plague of domestic violence. My report👇
'If he beats you, he loves you': How Russia's decision to decriminalise domestic violence is continuing to kill.
Read the full report from
@DiMagnaySky
👇
If you liked the Sky/HBO
#Chernobyl
series, then tune in tonight on
#SkyAtlantic
at 9p for our doco on the real-life heroes. AZ-5 and the Chernobyl control room, the cost of lies, the Soviet spirit & the unbelievable sacrifice - it’s all there. ‘If not us, then who?’
#SkyNews
#Russia
: 1,386 arrested across 38 cities. And no - it’s not just because they don’t want mobilisation; they don’t want any of this. Those who don’t call them brave have read nothing on 🇷🇺 this past decade. Our piece from last night
#SkyNews
via
@YouTube
British ballet star Xander Parish quit the Mariinsky last week after 12 years in St P; he was their principal dancer, recipient of an OBE for bettering UK-Russian relations.
A terrible day for press freedoms and deeply sad for our small journalist corps to see a brilliant, fearless journalist and colleague expelled.
@sarahrainsford
, you told this story too well.
Russia’s independent Novaya Gazeta publishes extraordinary video of a guy dressed as a courier spraying sth from his bike tyre (?) at their offices. A chemical attack they say on the day they published two big stories on atrocities in Syria & Chechnya.
В сети появилось видео, как у редакции «Новой газеты» распылили неизвестное вещество. Человек, одетый в форму курьера, пустил его то ли из шины велосипеда (то ли из сумки) и медленно уехал.
Видео: телеграм-канал /moscowmap
Moments like these make me so proud of this network.
@jamesmatthewsky
asking Elon Musk the right questions (even if he got no answers). A doorstep for the history books
@SkyNews
#Ukraine
EXCLUSIVE
@BILD
: We spoke to local dentist Sergey in the village about this horror-photo: „The teeth look like the ones from my cabinet, my house was looted by russians. They come from people that I treated all these years. I took these teeth out.“ Story:
To add to the horrors, the manifold injustices against Alexei
#Navalny
continue with a guilty verdict on ‘massive fraud’ charges which cld add another 13 yrs to his jail term.
Despite numerous arrests, Muscovites are still leaving flowers at the statue of 🇺🇦 poet Lesya Ukrainka in Moscow, in memory of those killed in that hideous missile strike on a residential building in
#Dnipro
9 days ago. Which
#Russia
still denies responsibility for.
After the carnage at
#Soledar
, we visited
#Wagner
’s 🇷🇺 heartland. My piece on
#Prigozhin
’s recent victory streak, its terrible cost and his sledgehammer tradecraft 👇👇👇
All the banners and bandstands ready to go in Red Square for Russia to annex huge chunks of Ukraine it has no legal right to. Friday will be one heck of a performance.
Russia says it will formally annex four regions of Ukraine where occupied areas held Kremlin-orchestrated 'referendums' on joining Russian.
Sky's Diana Magnay has the latest.
Read more:
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
Qudos to my BBC colleagues. For some utterly baffling reason the
#Belarus
state border committee has barred us from entry, whilst allowing CNN and the BBC in. ‘We want to give other media a chance who havn’t been there yet’, they say tho both teams have been there for days.
Brave Ilya Yashin, due to be sentenced today: ‘It is better to spend 10 years behind bars, being an honest man, than silently burning with shame for the blood that your government sheds’. Hearing on hold for now tho due to an apparent bomb threat at the Moscow court.
#Russia
Central Moscow blocked to pedestrian traffic, 7 metro stations closed. Hard to see where protestors will gather but Putin doesn’t want them near the Kremlin. Not scared Mr President? Protests already in cities across
#Russia
#Navalny
#SkyNews
Thrilled to say I’ve finally arrived in Russia as the new Sky News Moscow correspondent.
Big shoes to fill (
@DiMagnaySky
) but supported by a fantastic team (
@katyamotyakina
& co)
And what a week to start - inauguration today, Victory Day Thursday. Please do tune in!
@SkyNews
We went to the huge ‘Russia’ exhibition in Moscow cos you won’t be able to, and spoke to Shaman, just because. A look at how Russia is controlling the narrative in the build-up to next March’s elections via
@YouTube
Pleased, proud and about bloody time! It is a delight and a pain to have you here as my friend and competition
@BBCSteveR
. I shall salute you as editor from now on xx
Love the fact Seibert feels he must clarify that it is not as tho
#Navalny
poisoned himself. Tone laden with irony - ‘one or two examples where this has happened before’.
#Navalny
asks for half an hour to get acquainted with case materials. Judge asks him why he hasn’t already when it’s been going since August. ‘Since August I’ve had a lot to do’
Riot police line Tverskaya, the main avenue down to the Kremlin. It’s clear which side the cars are on. So much for
#Navalny
being insignificant, as Putin likes to suggest.
Thought I’d temporarily hung up my Moscow hat to cover the
#Labour
campaign, only for the PM to compare Corbyn with Stalin on day 1 of the campaign trail. And let’s not forget the tories are still sitting on that Russia report. Who knew Moscow wld be so relevant?!
#GE2019
Striking satellite imagery taken on Monday of the Mariupol Drama Theatre—hit by an air strike today. 1,200 civilians were sheltering in it. The image shows that the word “children” is written in Russian in large white letters in front of & behind the theatre.
(📸:
@Maxar
)
And on the 🩰 theme, this was Novaya Gazeta’s front cover, printed on 9th March, ‘in accordance with all the new laws of the criminal code’. Swan Lake in soviet times was always played on state TV essentially when the lights went out.
10,000 detained, many badly injured; horrific video from the morgue of direct bullet wounds to the head. A return to normality should not mean the authorities get to hide what happened here.
#kazakhstan
#almaty
#Prigozhin
likes to aim high but a Wagner rep as Deputy Defence Minister? Unlikely … A look at the latest contracts spat between
#Wagner
& the MOD and what might be next for Evgeny Prigozhin
Alexei
#Navalny
’s wife, Yulia, has just entered the courtroom for her husband’s appeal in the veteran libel case. First time presumably she’ll have seen him too - if only by video link - since he finished his 3 week hunger strike
‘We can no longer fully rely on the White House’, says German FM as Trump promises an ‘extraordinary relationship’ with Putin. Pretty extraordinary already and exactly why the WH is unreliable.
"We can no longer fully rely on the White House", says Foreign Minister
@HeikoMaas
. In order to recalibrate our partnership with the US we need a united, confident and sovereign Europe!
#EuropeUnited
#Trump
@GermanyintheEU
Sometimes I find
#Russia
’s insistent claims that they’re the ones upholding international law just.too.much. Fellow KCL MA Intl law grads 2016, this one’s for you 💙
@NKuhrt
@samagreene
.
@DiMagnaySky
challenges Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on 'respect for international law' over the country's invasion of Ukraine.
Latest on the war here:
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
За час до закрытия кладбища длина очереди из людей, желающих возложить цветы к могиле Алексея Навального, превысила 500 метров.
Собравшимся сигналят проезжающие мимо автомобили. Многие из машин машут руками. Полиции почти нет, ограждения все сняты
Видео: Медиазона
Dramatic from
#Navalny
: you can’t put the whole country in jail; I insulted the ‘old man in the bunker’ (aka Putin) by surviving; we proved he tried to kill me thro the FSB; he will go down in history as the poisoner; I demand my release. Judge tells him this is not a demo.
Camels in the
#Arctic
, permafrost caves, mammoth bones & billions of mosquitos 🦣 🦟 Stuck in Chersky cos of
#wildfires
but finally back in
#Yakutsk
to cover them. Watch our
#permafrost
report on
#SkyNews
wed for more on the carbon threat below ground & our 🌳 🔥 report Thurs
Hardly even a protest, just a whole lot of people detained. As
#Putin
signs the words ‘wartime’, ‘mobilisation’ and ‘martial law’ into the criminal code
#Moscow
#Russia
Four areas of Eastern Ukraine - controlled by Russia and pro-Moscow forces - are currently holding referendums on becoming part of Russia.
@DiMagnaySky
has the latest from Moscow
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
Ahead of ‘Victory Day’ we went to
#Yekaterinburg
, spoke to die-hard patriots & some exceptionally brave ppl not prepared to sit idly by. Nadezhda who sewed up her mouth in protest; former Mayor Yevgeny Roizman who’s never minced his words. 🙏 watch
To the people of Ukraine: Slava Ukraini.
To the people of Russia: I do not believe this war is in your name.
This crisis, this tragedy, can and must come to an end. Because the world needs a free and sovereign Ukraine.
Will the 🇷🇺 public accept that hitting every 🇺🇦 city, spreading terror across the entire country, is an ok response to a strike on the Kerch Bridge which killed 3? I just don’t know. I wish they wouldn’t; I fear they might, with the requisite TV spin. A heavy day.
Nearly 15,000 British nationals, Afghan staff and others at risk have been evacuated from Kabul since Operation Pitting began - our commitment to the people of Afghanistan will endure.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, from his Siberian jai: ‘If we fall into despondency and despair we give them what they want. We have no right to do that. We owe our late comrades the obligation to continue to fight with even greater strength and realize what they lived and died for’.
This will be excellent. The more
@BethRigby
on our airwaves asking the questions that count, the better. Especially with the backup of the brill
@Mollie_Malone1
PERSONAL NEWS: Very excited to say I’ll be hosting a brand-new big interview show on
@skynews
. More than politics, we’ll be talking to decision-makers from all walks of life in a show that aims to revive the in-depth interview as a tool of journalism 1/
Nazanin’s plane took off from Oman just over half an hour ago and she’s due to arrive in the UK this evening.
Here she is on the plane - the final step in what has been a six year long ordeal.
#NazaninIsFree
A girl was detained outside
#Moscow
’s main cathedral yesterday with a sign ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Takes real guts to do what Marina Ovsyannikova did on Channel 1. A fine so far, but just for her social media video. Nervous days. Our report: via
@YouTube
‘We have truth on our side’. For all the videos of demoralised mobiks & angry wives, the West is still the enemy & they are still patriots. 👇👇our latest on why the 🇷🇺 people are not for turning. Certainly not for now
#SkyNews
#Russia
#Ukraine
‘Mama, I love you but I can’t come over to you. I cannot overcome the feeling of anger, disgust, hatred’: messages from
#Ukraine
to refugees who’ve fled East, to
#Russia
. My written dispatch from Belgorod
Strong protest decor. A reference to the 700 euro loo brush supposedly in Putin’s palace. Oh, I mean - Rotenberg’s hotel.
#Navalny
#MoscowProtests
#skynews
Back in London for a bit, loved chatting with
@skynewsniall
about reporting from
#Russia
for the
#SkyNews
daily podcast. So much I want to say and so much more to be said but hope you enjoy this …
Just crossed the bridge outside the Kremlin where Boris Nemtsov was killed in 2015. In six years being in Moscow, I don’t remember ever not seeing flowers, or the memorial to him present in some way. Now there is nothing there. A gut punch somehow. To add to all the others.
Putin could end this in a heartbeat. But he won’t. Our piece last night on his address to the nation. And me in front of a nuclear missile I happened upon on a weekend stroll.
#onlyinrussia
via
@YouTube