An anti-Kremlin activist jailed for social media posts criticising the invasion of Ukraine has told Sky News that “Russia is not Putin”.
Dmitry Ivanov, who founded an opposition Telegram channel run for students at his university, was convicted in a Moscow court of spreading misinformation about the army.
Mr Ivanov, a 23-year-old Russian blogger, will now spend more than eight years in prison.
Last year, the Kremlin passed a law making it illegal to publish what it says is false information about its war in Ukraine.
The legislation has been used to prosecute individuals who veer away from the government’s official line that it is “a special military operation”.
Speaking before he was sentenced, Mr Ivanov told Sky News: “You must understand that Russia is not Putin.
“We didn’t vote for him and he did not ask us about starting this war with our closest neighbours.
“I know that tens of millions of people here in Russia are against this criminal war. Lots of us have friends and relatives in Ukraine and we feel their pain.”
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Mr Ivanov said the war was a “great tragedy for the Ukrainian people” but was also a “tragedy for Russians”.
He called for peace, hitting out at the “suffering under dictatorship”, and said today was a “dark moment of our history but the darkest moment is always the first sunrise”.
Mr Ivanov was charged over a number of social media posts on his Telegram channel that called Russia’s campaign in Ukraine a “war” and talked about Russian forces attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Image: A building damaged by a Russian military strike in Bakhmut
The posts also accused Russia of committing war crimes in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, and targeting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Most were reposts from other sources.
Mr Ivanov, a former student from Lomonosov Moscow State University, will also be unable to have any presence on the internet for four years after his release.
Amnesty International reported he had also posted a video message from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and called for protests in Russia.
Images and videos on Telegram show Mr Ivanov shrugging his shoulders as the sentence is read out, as well as smiling and laughing.
He had maintained his innocence and stood by his original comments.
In his final address to the court last week, Mr Ivanov rejected the charges against him as “looking absurd” and said the crime he was prosecuted for “shouldn’t exist at all”.
“Discrediting” the army publicly in Russia can draw a punishment of up to 15 years in prison.
Countries attending COP30, the biggest climate meeting of the year, have agreed steps to help speed up climate action, according to a draft deal.
The meeting of leaders in the Brazilian city of Belem also saw them agree to reviewing related trade barriers and triple the money given to developing countries to help them withstand extreme weather events, according to the draft.
However, the summit’s president Correa do Lago said “roadmaps” on fossil fuels and forests would be published as there was no consensus on these issues.
The annual United Nations conference brings together world leaders, scientists, campaigners, and negotiators from across the globe, who agree on collective next steps for tackling climate change.
The two-week conference in the Amazon city of Belem was due to end at 6pm local time (9pm UK time) on Friday, but it dragged into overtime.
The standoff was between the EU, which pressed for language on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and the Arab Group of nations, including major oil exporter Saudi Arabia, which opposed it.
The impasse was resolved following all-night negotiations led by Brazil, negotiators said.
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The European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, said on Saturday that the proposed accord was acceptable, even though the bloc would have liked more.
“We should support it because at least it is going in the right direction,” he said.
The Brazilian presidency scheduled a closing plenary session.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and about 80 countries, including the UK and coal-rich Colombia, had been pushing for a plan on how to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
This is a pledge all countries agreed to two years ago at COP28 – then did very little about since.
But scores of countries – including major oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia – see this push as too prescriptive or a threat to their economies.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Israel says it has begun striking Hamas targets in Gaza, reportedly killing at least nine people, after what it called a “blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.
Local health authorities in Gaza said there had been three separate airstrikes, one hit a car in the densely populated Rimal neighbourhood, killing five people and wounding several others.
Shortly after the attack on the car, the Israeli air force hit two more targets in the central Gaza Strip, medics said.
They said at least four people died when two houses were struck in Deir Al-Balah city and Nuseirat camp.
The Israeli military said there had been a “blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.
It claimed a gunman had crossed into Israeli-held territory after exploiting “the humanitarian road in the area through which humanitarian aid enters southern Gaza”.
A Hamas official rejected the Israeli military’s allegations as baseless, calling them an “excuse to kill”, adding the Palestinian group was committed to the ceasefire agreement.
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The Israeli airstrikes are a further test of a fragile ceasefire with Hamas, which has held since 10 October following the two-year Gaza war.
Israel pulled back its troops, and the flow of aid into the territory has increased. But violence has not completely halted.
Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 316 people in strikes on Gaza since the truce.
Meanwhile, Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began and it has attacked scores of militants.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
The fast-moving developments on Trump’s Ukraine peace deal are dominating the G20 summit in South Africa, as European leaders scramble to put together a counter-proposal to the US-Russia 28-point plan and reinsert Ukraine into these discussions.
European countries are now working up proposals to put to President Trump ahead of his deadline of Thursday to agree a deal.
Ukraine is in a tight spot. It cannot reject Washington outright – it relies on US military support to continue this war – but neither can it accept the terms of a deal that is acutely favourable to Russia, requiring Ukraine to give up territory not even occupied by Moscow and reducing its army.
Overnight, the UK government has reiterated its position that any deal must deliver a “just and lasting peace”.
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Keir Starmer calls for growth plan at G20
The prime minister, who spoke with E3 allies President Macron of France, Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on the phone on Friday, is having more conversations today with key partners as they work out how to handle Trump and improve this deal for Ukraine.
One diplomatic source told me allies are being very careful not to criticise Trump or his approach for fear of exacerbating an already delicate situation.
Instead, the prime minister is directing his attacks at Russia.
Image: Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a plenary session on the first day of the G20 Leaders’ Summit. Pic: Reuters
“There is only one country around the G20 table that is not calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and one country that is deploying a barrage of drones and missiles to destroy livelihoods and murder innocent civilians,” he said on Friday evening.
“Time and again, Russia pretends to be serious about peace, but its actions never live up to its words.”
Image: Pic: AP
On the Trump plan, the prime minister said allies are meetin on Saturday “to discuss the current proposalon the table, and in support of Trump’s push for peace, look at how we can strengthen this plan for the next phase of negotiations”.
Strengthening the plan really means that they want to rebalance it towards Ukraine’s position and make it tougher on Russia.
“Ukraine has been ready to negotiate for months, while Russia has stalled and continued its murderous rampage. That is why we must all work together with both the US and Ukraine, to secure a just and lasting peace once and for all,” said the prime minister.
“We will continue to coordinate closely with Washington and Kyiv to achieve that. However, we cannot simply wait for peace.
“We must strain every sinew to secure it. We must cut off Putin’s finance flows by ending our reliance on Russian gas. It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Image: Pic: AP
Europeans hadn’t even seen this deal earlier in the week, in a sign that the US is cutting other allies out of negotiations – for now at least.
Starmer and other European leaders want to get to a position where Ukraine and Europe are at least at the table.
There is some discussion about whether European leaders such as Macron and Meloni might travel to Washington to speak to Trump early next week in order to persuade him of the European and Ukrainian perspective, as leaders did last August following the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
But Sky News understands there are no discussions about the PM travelling to Washington next week ahead of the budget.