Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
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Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS

A 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father died when debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on the house they were living in near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
A 13-year-old child was among the injured in the attack in the Brovary district, in the Kyiv region just northeast of the capital's metropolitan area, Ukraine's emergency services said on the Telegram messaging app.

Meanwhile, Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday Russian air defense units destroyed 14 Ukraine-launched drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine.

Sixteen drones were downed over the Voronezh region, several hundred kilometers south of Moscow, and three drones over the border Belgorod region, it said. One drone each was destroyed over the Bryansk and Orlov regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Kursk, as the border region's authorities rushed to evacuate civilians from areas at risk.

Moscow's forces are in their sixth day of intense battles against Kyiv's largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday, while Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to restore justice after Russia launched a full-scale aggression on its smaller neighbour in February 2022.
"Today, I received several reports from commander-in-chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor's territory," he said.
"Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor."
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the Ukrainian attack - which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard - as a major provocation.

Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday the attacks had been halted, but Russia has thus far failed to push the Ukrainian forces back over the border.
Russian military bloggers say the situation had stabilized after Russia's reinforcements, though they said Ukraine was swiftly building up forces.

Early on Sunday, Kursk officials said that 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukraine-launched missile fell onto a nine-story residential building.
Alexei Smirnov, Kursk's acting governor, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in areas at risk. On Saturday, Russia's TASS state news agency reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.



Russia Hits Back with Multi-billion Penalty on Austrian Bank

The logo of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is seen at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 14, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File
The logo of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is seen at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 14, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File
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Russia Hits Back with Multi-billion Penalty on Austrian Bank

The logo of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is seen at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 14, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File
The logo of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is seen at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 14, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File

A Russian court's order for Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International to pay 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in damages for a collapsed deal shows Moscow's determination to strike back at the West, with companies bearing the brunt of the fallout.

Monday's ruling, delivered to a courtroom where armed men in balaclavas sat among those involved in the case, is a blow to the biggest Western bank in Russia, which has made billions of profits there during nearly three years of conflict with Ukraine.

It marks a watershed for the bank that has provided a payments bridge for Russia's middle class and companies into the West, requiring Raiffeisen to set aside a substantial amount for the loss even as it seeks to challenge the ruling, Reuters reported.

The judgement, made as Donald Trump was being sworn in as US president, serves as a warning to others, and prompted accusations by Raiffeisen's lawyer that the court was biased and that the masked men were there to intimidate.

The Russian lawyers taking the action against Raiffeisen said the men in the courtroom were bailiffs there to ensure order, accusing their opponents of "bombarding the court with unfounded petitions".

The penalty, issued by a court in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, follows the collapse of a deal involving Raiffeisen to release a Russian-owned stake in an Austrian builder, which unravelled under pressure from Washington. Now Raiffeisen has been lumbered with the bill.

"This is a final warning to all Western companies that you cannot do business with Putin's Russia," said Helmut Brandstaetter, a liberal Austrian lawmaker in the European Parliament.

The move also coincides with a deterioration in relations between Russia and Austria, long close to Moscow but which has gradually been unwinding its ties, abandoning a multibillion-dollar deal in recent weeks to buy Russian gas.

"Raiffeisen was long enough warned to pull out," said Brandstaetter. "It also shows that any continued bond between Austria and Russia will lead to disaster."

INEVITABLE RETALIATION

The ruling adds to worries for Western firms still operating in Russia, which include the likes of food companies PepsiCo , Procter & Gamble and Mondelez, and Italian bank UniCredit.

Ian Massey of risk consultancy S-RM said it was part of "pressure tactics, including increasingly punitive exit terms, asset seizures, and now ... huge fines."

"In the context of Russia's increasing diplomatic and economic isolation, retaliation against Western corporate symbols was nigh-on inevitable."

Monday's decision sees Russia follow through on previous threats to target privately-owned assets.

Last May, Moscow said it would identify US property that could be used for compensation over losses from the seizure of frozen Russian assets in the United States.

Moscow has already seized some assets and forced through sales to hand-picked buyers, as was the case for French yoghurt maker Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg.

The Kremlin controls which companies are allowed to sell up and demands a heavy discount on the sale price.

Almost three years after Russia sent troops into Ukraine, Raiffeisen's continued presence in Russia underlines the lingering ties between Moscow and Vienna - with Vienna having served as a hub for cash from Russia and former Soviet states.

That bond put Raiffeisen and Austria on the front line of a global push by the United States to isolate Russia.

The court dispute followed the failure of a deal that Raiffeisen hoped would allow it to unlock some of its frozen billions in Russia.

The case was centred on a claim by Russian investment company Rasperia against builder Strabag, its Austrian shareholders and the Russian arm of Raiffeisen.

Raiffeisen had sought to buy a stake in Vienna-based Strabag from Rasperia, which Strabag had linked to Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

Washington identified Rasperia as part of a group of Russian companies still controlled by Deripaska, when it imposed sanctions on some of those involved, scuppering the deal.

A spokesperson for Deripaska reiterated that he had no links with the company at the heart of the dispute with Raiffeisen.

Raiffeisen has around 6 billion euros in Russia, earned from international payments and from billions of euros of Russian deposits, a person with knowledge of the matter has told Reuters.