Man is charged in fires targeting properties linked to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer

MOSCOW: Former Russian deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov was found guilty of corruption on Tuesday and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Ivanov was arrested in April 2024 on suspicion of taking bribes, and investigators added new embezzlement charges in October.

His case is part of the biggest slew of corruption scandals to hit the Russian defense establishment in years. More than a dozen people, including two other former deputy ministers, have been arrested in a series of investigations.

Ivanov, who had pleaded not guilty, was also stripped of all his state awards. His lawyer said he would appeal.

State media reported that the total sum alleged to have been embezzled by Ivanov and others was 4.1 billion roubles ($48.8 million), mostly in the form of bank transfers to two foreign accounts.

The trial took place behind closed doors on grounds of state secrecy. A former subordinate of Ivanov, Anton Filatov, was sentenced to 12-1/2 years.

Russian media said Ivanov and his wife owned a luxury apartment in central Moscow, a three-story English-style mansion on the outskirts of the capital and an extensive collection of classic cars including a Bentley and an Aston Martin.

Ivanov’s arrest last year was celebrated by Russia’s “Z-bloggers,” an influential group of war correspondents and analysts who support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine but argue that front-line troops have been let down by the military top brass, whom they have frequently portrayed as incompetent, out-of-touch and corrupt.

WARSAW: Poland will introduce temporary controls along borders with Germany and Lithuania on July 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, echoing several other European Union countries in reimposing frontier checks to stem illegal migration.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany itself have also brought back border controls, underlining a public backlash against undocumented migration that has strained the EU’s Schengen passport-free travel zone.

“We consider the temporary reintroduction of controls necessary to reduce the uncontrolled flows of migrants across the Polish-German border to a minimum,” Tusk told a meeting of his cabinet.

Tusk’s liberal government has been accused by nationalist and far-right opposition parties of accepting numerous illegal migrants being sent back from Germany. The government had argued that the numbers were limited.

Debate over migration in Poland has turned increasingly heated in recent weeks, with far-right activists starting to organize patrols along the border with Germany.

Germany said in February that it was extending its own temporary border controls for six months.

Tusk, who has previously called on Berlin to do more to help its neighbors protect the EU’s external border, criticized Germany’s approach to migrants at its own frontier, saying it placed excessive pressure on Poland.

“Poland’s patient position after Germany formally introduced unilateral border controls is wearing out,” Tusk said.

He added that it had become difficult to determine whether migrants being sent from Germany to Poland should really be returned there under EU rules stating that migrants should apply for asylum in the first member state they enter.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday Germany wants to preserve the Schengen system, which allows passport-free movement, but this could only work if it was not abused by criminals who smuggle migrants.

“We know that the Polish government also wants to impose border controls with Lithuania in order to limit illegal border crossings from Lithuania to Poland,” Merz told a news conference. “So, we have a common problem here that we want to solve together.”

Knut Abraham, the German government’s commissioner for Poland, was critical of the tilt toward border restrictions.

“The solution cannot lie in pushing migrants back and forth between Poland and Germany or in cementing border controls on both sides,” he was quoted by Die Welt newspaper as saying.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told a news conference that the Polish government had informed him about its decision, BNS news agency reported.

“(We need to see) what measures should be most effective, while maintaining the expectation that they will not violate our common interest in having free movement of persons, and will also contribute to our goal of firmly and solidly protecting the external border of the EU and NATO,” BNS quoted him as saying.

Poland has been facing what it says is a migrant crisis orchestrated by Belarus and Russia on its eastern border since 2021. Both countries deny encouraging migrants to cross.