UN says 75,000 children a day have become refugees – as it happened | World news

Russian prosecutors have asked a court to move jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to a maximum security prison after requesting that he serve 13 years in prison on new fraud charges, AFP reports.

Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic in Russia, was jailed last year after surviving a poison attack he blames on the Kremlin.

Prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies:

I request that Navalny be sentenced to a term of 13 years and a subsequent two years of probation.

It was not immediately clear if the 13 years include the two-and-a-half-year sentence he is serving at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges he says were trumped up.

The prosecutor also requested that Navalny pay a fine of 1.2m roubles (£8,250).

The Russian television producer who staged an extraordinary anti-war protest live on national television on Monday night outlined her plan to a friend the day before, having become increasingly angry about the Russian invasion, Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth report.

Marina Ovsyannikova burst on to the set of Channel One during the national evening news holding a poster that read “Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” She was arrested shortly afterwards and has not been heard from since.

“The anger has been building up with her ever since the war started,” said a friend of Ovsyannikova’s, who asked to stay anonymous. “Two days ago, she told me how she was going to do it.”

The Guardian has seen a number of exchanged messages in which Ovsyannikova informs the friend about her plans. The friend said that Ovsyannikova, who has a Ukrainian parent, had been expressing deep unease over Russia’s actions since the war started.

Ovsyannikova also released a pre-recorded video via the OVD-Info human rights group in which she expressed her shame at working for Channel One. “Regrettably, for a number of years, I worked on Channel One and worked on Kremlin propaganda, I am very ashamed of this right now,” she said in the video.

Lawyers have been unable to find Ovsyannikova since her protest, which was an extraordinary act of defiance given that Russia had tightened its already strict censorship laws when the war began.

Her disappearance in police custody has raised concerns that she could be facing pressure to recant or that authorities could be preparing to slap her with more serious charges.

Talks between Russia and Ukraine have resumed after a pause on Monday, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said.

On Monday, Podolyak said negotiations had taken a “technical pause” until Tuesday for “additional work in the working subgroups and clarification of individual definitions”.

The UK is to impose sanctions on a further 370 Russian individuals, including more than 50 oligarchs and their families with a combined net worth of £100bn, in the latest raft of measures against Vladimir Putin’s regime, Peter Walker and Jessica Elgot report.

More than 1,000 individuals and entities have been targeted with sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine, with fresh measures announced against key Kremlin spokespeople and political allies of the Russian president, including the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, considered a member of Putin’s elite inner circle of advisers known as his siloviki.

Other key political figures placed under sanction include the prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, and former president Dmitry Medvedev, as well as Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, and the foreign affairs spokesperson, Maria Zakharova.

Oligarchs now subject to UK sanctions include Mikhail Fridman, who co-founded Russian conglomerate Alfa-Group with German Khan, also subject to sanctions, as well as the close Putin ally Petr Aven, who was previously head of Russia’s largest commercial bank. The FCO said family members would also be subject to sanctions.

The slew of new sanctions on individual oligarchs and elites, as well as businesses, politicians and organisations, came after the passage of the economic crime bill on Monday night, which is intended to make it swifter and easier to target oligarchs and Russian interests.

About 2,000 cars have been able to leave the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and a further 2,000 are waiting to leave, according to local authorities.

In an online post published today, Mariupol city council said:

As of 14:00 (1200 GMT), it is known that 2,000 cars have left Mariupol.

But deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a convoy with supplies with Mariupol was stuck at nearby Berdyansk.

Vereshchuk accused Russia of lying about fulfilling agreements to help trapped civilians. She added that convoys of private cars were not sufficient to evacuate people from Mariupol and buses needed to be let through.

On Monday, local authorities said more than 160 private cars left Mariupol in what would be the first successful evacuation since the city was encircled by Russian troops more than two weeks ago.

About 300 civilians had by Tuesday morning reached the city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles from Mariupol.

Mariupol city council said earlier today:

As was reported, about 160 cars left Mariupol yesterday. As of 10:00 (0800 GMT) there is information that about 300 Mariupol residents reached Zaporizhzhia.

At least 200,000 people are in urgent need of evacuation from Mariupol, according to official Ukrainian estimates.

Residents in the city have been without heating, electricity and running water for most of the past two weeks, authorities say.

More than 2,500 Mariupol residents have been killed since the Russian invasion on 24 February, a senior official from the Ukrainian President’s Office said in a statement on Monday.

The United Nations has called on Russian authorities to make sure that an anti-war protester who interrupted Russian state television is not punished for exercising her right to free speech.

Earlier today, the Kremlin said the actions of a woman who interrupted a live news bulletin on Russia’s state TV Channel One on Monday night to denounce the war in Ukraine amounted to “hooliganism”.

The protester, in an extraordinary act of dissent, held up a sign behind the studio presenter and shouted slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Ravina Shamdasani, UN human rights spokesperson, told reporters today that Russian authorities should ensure that the woman “does not face any reprisals for exercising her right to freedom of expression”.

The protester was later identified as Maria Ovsyannikova, an employee of Russia Channel One, according to OVD-Info, an independent human rights protest-monitoring group.

A lawyer for Ovsyannikova told CNN today that he has been trying to locate his client since her protest on Monday, and still does not know where she is.

Dmitry Zakhvatov confirmed that Ovsyannikova is the woman seen on air holding the sign and that she is an editor for the channel.

The EU has imposed sanctions on the boss of anti-war protester Marina Ovsyannikova at Russia’s Channel One, along with Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich for his “very good relations with Vladimir Putin”, Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin report.

Konstantin Ernst, the chief executive of the state-controlled TV channel, and Abramovich are among 15 individuals newly targeted by the EU.

Along with the extended list of individuals on whom asset freeze and travel bans are imposed, to be published later on Tuesday, the EU is also banning investments in Russia’s energy sector, as well as exports of finished steel products and most luxury goods, such as precious stones, clothes and carpets, over the value of €300 (£252) and cars worth more than €50,000.

There is also a complete transaction ban with nine Russian state-owned enterprises and the EU has prohibited the rating of the country and its companies by credit rating agencies.

Brussels has made a discernible effort to squeeze individuals and entities that have aided Putin in spreading his message about the invasion of Ukraine.