Top story: Russian claims against US ‘simply not true’
Hello, Warren Murray with you again; here are the stories that matter right now.
Russia’s false accusation that Ukraine has biological and chemical weapons shows Vladimir Putin has his “back is against the wall” and is considering using them himself, Joe Biden has said. Biden said it was “simply not true, I guarantee you” that the US possessed such weapons in Europe. He said the Kremlin was making similar accusations against Ukraine: “[Putin has] already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of what’s about to come.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has again urged direct talks with Putin: “Without this meeting it is impossible to fully understand what they are ready for in order to stop the war.” He also said his country would never bow to ultimatums from Russia; cities directly under attack, including the capital, Kyiv, and Mariupol and Kharkiv would not accept Russian occupation.
Almost 10,000 Russian soldiers may have already been killed in the war in Ukraine, and more than 16,000 wounded, according to purported Russian defence ministry figures posted by a pro-Kremlin tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. The paper later took down the figures and said it had been hacked. Russia’s invasion has largely stalled, failing to capture any major city, but causing massive destruction to residential areas: a total of 925 civilians have been killed and 1,496 injured, according to the UN Human Rights office. Keep up with further developments at our live blog.
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Ex-minister takes second job – The Conservative MP and former social care minister Caroline Dinenage has signed up for a second job as a director for a care home developer, just months after Boris Johnson promised a crackdown on outside earnings. Dinenage asked for formal approval for a non-executive job at LNT Group, owned by the Tory donor Lawrence Tomlinson. The government has quietly dropped support for capping outside hours and earnings by MPs.
Despite the lack of formal new rules, many MPs have cut back their work for private companies. At least 20 Conservative MPs have lobbied the standards committee with many saying they strongly disagreed with time limits on outside work. Dinenage has been contacted for comment.
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Russian asset tracker – More than $17bn (£13bn) of global assets – including offshore bank accounts, yachts, private jets and luxury properties in London, Tuscany and the French Riviera – have been linked to 35 oligarchs and Russian officials alleged to have close ties to Vladimir Putin. The Guardian, working in partnership with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and other international news organisations, is unveiling the initial research in an ongoing project to track the wealth of Russia’s most powerful operators.
The Russian asset tracker project will start by focusing on a list of 35 men and women named last year as Putin’s alleged enablers by the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. It will record assets outside Russia where the reporting partners have seen evidence connecting them to these individuals. The tracker has identified UK properties or plots of land – collectively worth more than half a billion dollars – that are linked through companies, trusts or relatives to four leading figures on Navalny’s list: Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov, Oleg Deripaska and Igor Shuvalov. The Guardian is reporting further on these findings over the coming days.
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Ethnic bias in car cover? – Hundreds of thousands of people of colour may be paying an “ethnicity penalty” of at least £280 and up to £950 a year in car insurance costs, Citizens Advice has claimed. An investigation carried out 649 insurance mystery shops, comparing areas with a high white population with those with a high proportion of people of colour. It also analysed 18,000 car insurance bills from users of its debt help service. In some areas “the difference in price was more than 100%” and risk factors such as crime rates and deprivation levels could not account for this. James Dalton from the Association of British Insurers said its members complied with the Equality Act. “There are many different risk-related factors that are used to calculate the price … but ethnicity is not one of them.”
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‘Not a ransom, a debt owed’ – The UK government knew for years that if it paid a £400m debt to Iran it was likely to lead to the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the former Foreign Office minister, Alistair Burt, has said. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, at a press conference on Monday asked why it had taken five foreign secretaries and six years to secure her release.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: “We all know … how I came home. It should have happened exactly six years ago. I should not have been in prison for six years.” She urged an end to the detention of other dual nationals still held in Iran, saying that without their release “the meaning of freedom is never going to be complete”.
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Eat less crap – Gordon Ramsay has said the Covid-19 pandemic wiped the slate clean of “crap” restaurants. In a Radio Times interview, the celebrity chef said he meant “shitholes in a prime position and taking advantage because they’re in a great location, and they’ve got the footfall.” As well as independent businesses, hundreds of restaurant chains have closed branches including Carluccio’s, Byron Burger, Frankie & Benny’s, Pizza Express and more. Ramsay said: “Customers have got so much smarter in the last two years. They know a lot more about food than they ever have done and have been making their own sourdough … It’s wiped the arrogance from the industry.”
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Bird’s eye on history – Historic England is launching an aerial photography tool that allows users to explore images of England over the past century. The bird’s eye views range from second world war defences and nuclear power stations to the remains of neolithic monuments, Roman farmsteads and medieval villages.
More than 400,000 photographs from 1919 to the present day, covering 30% of England, will be available to search and view online for the first time.
Today in Focus podcast: Can China make Putin stop?
They’re longtime strategic partners but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is testing the strength of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s relationship, Tania Branigan explains.
Lunchtime read: Caught in the crypto currents
“I can’t explain exactly how I ended up on cryptocurrency Twitter (or CT, as it’s known in the cryptosphere) and in the crypto-focused Telegram and Discord groups I started lurking in late last summer. At first I felt a little dirty, a little shameful. Everyone is in these spaces for one reason: to make money.
“Soon, though, my shame started to interest me. I thumbed through channels on the subway or in bed late at night …” Not all cryptocurrency investors fit the cliches. Many are people looking to somehow claw their way out of a life of constant struggle, writes Sarah Resnick.
Sport
England’s batters are in good nick on their tour of the West Indies, but their bowlers will need something better to work on if the series is to be won with victory in the final Test in Grenada. The Raine Group, the US Bank handling the sale of Chelsea, could be in a position to take its preferred bidder to the government for approval by the end of this week. The Rugby Football Union has been accused of dishonesty after claims that England have made progress under Eddie Jones during the Six Nations. Phil Mickelson is to miss the Masters for the first time in 28 years after being removed from the list of competitors for next month’s tournament.
Captain Meg Lanning guided Australia to a sixth-straight Women’s World Cup win, making an unbeaten 135 in a successful chase of South Africa’s 271-5. Sebastian Coe has claimed that the “integrity and future of women’s sport” is at stake after the American swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship last week. Liverpool and Manchester City fans have united in their condemnation of the “shambolic” travel arrangements for their FA Cup semi-final at Wembley next month. The Russian chess grandmaster Sergey Karjakin has been banned from competition for six months because of his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And in an interview with the Guardian, Arsenal midfielder Lia Wälti explains the difficulty of facing Wolfsburg in the Champions League and the symbolism of playing home games at the Emirates.
Business
Gains in banks, energy and mining stocks have lifted Asian equities a little higher as investors brace for aggressive US rate hikes and war disrupting oil supplies. Oil futures rose nearly 3% to a two-week high in Asia in morning trading today. The FTSE looks like opening flat while the pound is worth $1.313 and €1.195 at time of writing.
The papers
The Guardian splashes today with our joint Russia asset tracker investigation: “Revealed: $17bn of global assets linked to Russians with alleged ties to Putin”. The Times has “Putin threatens civilians to break Mariupol’s spirit” while the Metro leads with “Escape from Mariupol” as it carries the story of how two Associated Press journalists made it out while being hunted by Russian troops.
The Telegraph has “Putin’s superyacht faces seizure” – it’s docked in Italy. “Russian troops turn on protesters” – the i has on its front page a scene from Kherson where it says the invaders shot at a peaceful demonstration. “Twisted MP killer plotted attacks for years” – that’s the Daily Mail which along with the Mirror and the Sun splashes on the trial, for the murder of Sir David Amess, of Ali Harbi Ali, who prosecutors allege wanted to kill Michael Gove.
“It’s time to raise state pensions, Mr Sunak” – the Express is more formal with the chancellor today though it calls him “Rishi” elsewhere in its furniture. The Financial Times says “Powell signals more aggressive tightening of US monetary policy” and its front-page picture story is the bombing of the Retroville shopping mall in suburban Kyiv.
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