Category: US

Allies of Alexei Navalny say three of his lawyers have had their home searched by police in what they believe to be an attempt to leave the jailed critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin without any legal defense and representation.

CNBC could not independently verify the reports. Russia’s foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.

“Three of Navalny’s lawyers were searched this morning, one was detained. The reason is “participation in an extremist community”. It is clear why this is being done: it is another step towards isolating Alexey @navalny and essentially banning him from receiving legal assistance,” Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, said Friday in post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Navalny aide Maria Pevchikh shared a similar message on X, saying it was not possible to get hold of two of the detained lawyers. “Navalny is now left without any legal defence and representation,” she added.

Russia’s most prominent opposition leader has been in prison since being arrested in 2021 on his return from Germany. His detention came after spending nearly half a year in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in August 2020.

Navalny lost an appeal against a 19-year prison term last month, which was added to an existing 11-and-a-half-year sentence. Navalny says the charges against him are politically motivated.

— Sam Meredith

The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said Friday that Ukrainian forces are holding ground in the strategically important city of Avdiivka as Russian forces launch a major military offensive.

Referring specifically to Avdiivka, Ukraine’s Andriy Yermak said: “Our land. The Russians threw a lot of forces in this direction. They are betting on quantity.”

“Our army is holding positions in heavy fighting. The war lingers on,” Yermak said in a post via X, formerly known as Twitter. “Our strength is in quality and unity.”

Fighting has intensified through the week as Russia seeks to capture the key industrial hub, regarded as a gateway to Donetsk.

— Sam Meredith

Russia may find itself in a position to benefit from the escalating crisis in the Middle East, analysts told CNBC.

They cited how the Israel-Hamas war may help to distract from the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, boost Russia’s oil-exporting status and provide Moscow with an opportunity to mediate between disparate regional parties.

However, one geopolitical analyst warned it is also a “very, very nervous moment for Moscow,” particularly if the Israel-Hamas conflict spills over and Russia sees its influence, interests and assets damaged in the Middle East.

Read the full story from CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt.

— Sam Meredith

Ukraine’s state emergency services said Friday morning that one person was killed and 12 others were injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s eastern city of Pokrovsk.

The emergency services said via Telegram that two administrative buildings were partially destroyed and three people had been rescued from the rubble.

The update was based on preliminary information as of 10 a.m. local time (8 a.m. London time).

— Sam Meredith

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday is scheduled to meet with world leaders at a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an international grouping of former Soviet republics.

The one-day event is held in the Kyrgyzstan capital of Bishkek. It comes as part of Putin’s first foreign visit this year, Russian news agencies said, and his first trip abroad since he was issued with an arrest warrant in March by the International Criminal Court.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said earlier this week that he would not take part in the CIS summit.

Pashinyan’s absence is thought to underscore a growing rift between Yerevan and Moscow in the wake of Azerbaijan’s lightning military operation to take full control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

— Sam Meredith

Ukrainian military officials described scenes of devastation after Russia launched a major offensive effort in and around the strategically important city of Avdiivka.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that he was “grateful to every warrior and every unit for their resilience” as battles raged near Avdiivka. The Ukrainian city is regarded as a gateway to Donetsk, the capital of the eastern Donbas region.

Russia forces launched an ongoing major offensive on Avdiivka earlier this week but have not yet secured any major breakthroughs and are unlikely to cut off Ukrainian forces in the city, according to analysis published Thursday by the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank.

A video posted on Telegram on Thursday by Ukrainian military commander Maksym Zhorin showed black smoke billowing out of abandoned and obliterated apartment buildings.

“If the city is in a war zone, there is a high probability that nothing remains of it. That’s how [Russian forces] destroyed Bakhmut, that’s how they are now destroying Avdiivka,” Zhorin said.

— Sam Meredith

Russian Air Force Long Range Aviation (LRA) aircraft are likely preserving stocks of AS-23 missiles for the winter, Britain’s Defense Ministry said, noting that the LRA has not conducted a strike against Ukraine since Sept. 21 — a period of 21 days.

“While such breaks have not been unusual, the last similar break in strikes occurred between 9 March and 28 April 2023, a period of 51 days,” the ministry said in an intelligence update posted via X, formerly known as Twitter.

“In that instance it was likely that LRA had almost depleted its stocks of capable AS-23 missile munitions following its winter campaign against Ukrainian critical national infrastructure,” the ministry added.

“This time, it is likely that Russian LRA are preserving existing stocks of AS-23 missiles as well as using this pause to increase useable stocks in anticipation of further heavy strikes against Ukraine over the winter.”

— Sam Meredith

The International Olympic Committee, or IOC, suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for breaching the Olympic Charter by violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

“The Russian Olympic Committee is suspended with immediate effect until further notice,” the group wrote in a statement.

Additionally, the IOC wrote that it “reserves the right to decide about the participation of individual neutral athletes with a Russian passport” who are looking to compete in the Olympic Summer Games in Paris next year and the Olympic Winter Games in Milan in 2026.

— Amanda Macias

Police have finished identifying bodies, finding that 59 people were killed last week in a series of attacks in Hroza in the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said.

In a Google-translated Telegram post, Home Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote that all the victims were local residents and included the elderly, doctors, farmers, teachers and entrepreneurs.

Forensics teams spent six days piecing together the profiles of each person, using the DNA of surviving relatives and personal items from the homes of those who died.

A village cafe was hit by a rocket on Oct. 5.

“It was important for us to establish the name of each dead person, preserve their memory and record all the victims of the Russian attack,” Klymenko wrote.

— Hannah Ward-Glenton

Putin makes first known trip abroad since arrest warrant issued; Kyiv’s counteroffensive off schedule

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel on Friday, to “demonstrate that America’s support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” he said on social media.

He will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense counterpart Yoav Gallant over the course of the day to discuss defense needs.

His trip follows the Thursday visit to Tel Aviv of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who reassured Netanyahu of Washington’s solidarity and ongoing assistance. Blinken has since left for Jordan.

U.S. President Joe Biden has already pledged to provide “surging additional military assistance, including ammunition, and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome” to Israel, following the terrorist offensive of Palestinian militant group Hamas over the weekend.

The Israeli Defense Forces on Thursday said that the first plane carrying U.S. arms landed in southern Israel.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed unit of Palestinian militant group Hamas, said that 13 of its hostages were killed in the past 24 hours in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The toll includes foreigners, al-Qassam said in a Telegram post translated by NBC News.

CNBC could not independently verify the reports.

Hamas took civilian captives during a multi-pronged attack carried out over the weekend, which has sparked retaliatory offensives from Israel. Analysts have noted that holding hostages gives Hamas a significant bargaining chip in the event of an Israeli incursion into Gaza.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Russia may find itself in a position to benefit from the escalating crisis in the Middle East, analysts told CNBC.

They cited how the Israel-Hamas war may help to distract from the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, boost Russia’s oil-exporting status and provide Moscow with an opportunity to mediate between disparate regional parties.

However, one geopolitical analyst warned it is also a “very, very nervous moment for Moscow,” particularly if the Israel-Hamas conflict spills over and Russia sees its influence, interests and assets damaged in the Middle East.

Read the full story from CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt.

— Sam Meredith

The aim of the Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip is to “take all of Hamas’ military abilities and strip them away” to avoid further Israeli civilian casualties, Jonathan Conricus, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, said in a video update released early Friday.

“That is the purpose of what we are doing now inside the Gaza Strip. That is why the Israeli air force has been delivering significant amounts of ordinance of bombs on the Gaza Strip. And that is what we will continue to do as this war unfolds and as we will deal a decisive blow to Hamas,” he added.

Hours prior, the IDF told roughly 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate southwards of the Wadi Gaza wetlands.

“This evacuation is for your own safety. You will be able to return to Gaza City only when another announcement permitting it is made,” the IDF said in the message it distributed on Telegram, which it said it communicated to the civilians of Gaza City. The instruction to evacuate has bolstered concerns that Israel, which has amassed forces on the border with Gaza, is preparing a ground incursion.

The Telegram post did not reference a 24-hour deadline — a timeframe that the U.N. said the IDF supplied them for the operation.

“We understand that this will take time,” Conricus said in the video update. “It’s not an easy process.”

— Ruxandra Iordache

The U.N. Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has relocated its central operations in Gaza to the south of the territory as it continues with its local humanitarian work.

In a post update on the X social media platform, previously known as Twitter, it urged Israeli authorities to protect all civilians who take cover in its shelters, including schools.

Earlier in the week, the U.N. said that schools and premises of the UNRWA were among the sites hit in Israeli retaliatory air strikes that followed a terrorist attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas at the weekend. Twelve UNRWA staff members have been killed since the start of the conflict, the agency said Thursday.

Its operational relocation south takes place as the U.N. said Israel has supplied a 24-hour deadline for the roughly 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate south.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians in danger as it exposes them to severe and long-lasting injuries, Human Rights Watch warned.

“White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects, has a significant incendiary effect,” the non-governmental organization said, noting it can burn people and objects, as well as set on fire structures and fields in the vicinity.

Human Rights Watch said the rights group witnessed videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza this week that showed a number of airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorous over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Using the substance violates international humanitarian law which prohibits putting civilians at unnecessary risk, HRW said.

“Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

— Charmaine Jacob

Israel Defense Forces confirmed it has ordered civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate south “for their own safety.”

“Gaza City is an area where military operations are taking place,” IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“This evacuation is for your own safety,” he said, adding that residents will only be able to return when another announcement permitting them to do so is made.

He repeatedly warned that they should not approach the border with Israel.

“Hamas terrorists are hiding in Gaza City, inside tunnels, underneath houses and inside buildings populated with innocent Gaza civilians,” Conricus said, calling on Palestinians to distance themselves from the militants who are using them as human shields.

— Joanna Tan

The latest figures show further increases in the total number of people killed following Palestinian militant group Hamas’ multi-pronged attack last Saturday and Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

At least 1,300 people have been killed in Israel since the hostilities, according to official figures, with another 3,300 wounded.

A combined 1,568 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over the same period, official figures show.

It should be noted that there can be discrepancies between the figures reported by various official sources, as events continue to develop on the ground.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Israel has called for the evacuation of 1.1 million residents in north Gaza to move south in the next 24 hours, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, confirmed with NBC News.

“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” the statement said.

The move suggests that Israel could be moving to proceed with its ground offensive into the Palestinian enclave to pursue Hamas militants that the Jewish nation has pledged to wipe out.

The entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza was ordered to relocate to southern Gaza “within the next 24 hours,” the Israeli military informed the UN and the Department of Safety and Security in Gaza  before midnight local time.

That’s 1.1 million people — about half the size of Gaza Strip’s population.

The same order was given to all of UN’s staff and those taking refuge in UN facilities, such as schools, medical centers and clinics.

— Joanna Tan

The White House said there was no “direct evidence” that Iran was a participant in the surprise terror attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel.

“We’re still looking into this but again, no direct evidence that Iran was a participant in these attacks,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House.

“But again, we’re still we’re still monitoring it,” Kirby added.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden warned Iran to “be careful” as tensions in the region soar.

— Amanda Macias

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that while the U.S. will continue to evolve its strategic planning around the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, there are no plans to put American servicemembers on the ground in Israel.

“There are no intentions, no plans to put American troops on the ground in combat,” Kirby told reporters at the White House during a press briefing. “There is no interest from the Israelis,” he added.

A senior Defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity per ground rules established by the Pentagon, echoed Kirby’s remarks in a separate briefing with reporters.

“We are consistently and continuously consulting with them on their needs. What they have asked of us is to expedite security systems so that they are able to defend themselves,” the official said.

— Amanda Macias

Israel calls for evacuation of 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza; at least 27 Americans killed.