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Iran-linked hackers blamed for cyber-attack that shut down UK power plant

Hackers linked to Iran have been blamed for a cyber-attack that caused a British power plant to be temporarily shut down. The incident involved a small-scale energy generator, according to the UK government, which said that at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system. However, it marks an apparent escalation in the threat posed by Iran after the UK said it had given permission for the US to launch “defensive” operations against Tehran from British bases. The power plant was shut down for four days as a result of the attack last month, according to the Sunday Telegraph, which first reported it. A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system. The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards.” The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure, is understood not to have received any reported outages from regulated operators of power stations. The Conservatives said the incident reflected a “new kind of warfare”, which meant Britain needed to prioritise “cheap, reliable energy”. “The world is getting more dangerous, which is why we need to prioritise our energy security,” said Claire Coutinho, the Conservative spokesperson on energy. “Leaving ourselves reliant on imports of gas and electricity and failing to build enough reliable gas or nuclear plants for backup at home, all leaves us more vulnerable.” Hostile states such as Russia, China and Iran are increasingly targeting systems behind the UK’s key services, according to a warning this year from Richard Horne, the NCSC’s chief executive. The government said last month the UK was “ready to defend itself” after Iran’s military warned any bases being used by the US were “legitimate targets”. The UK has allowed the US to launch so-called defensive operations from British bases hosting American planes since the start of its war on Iran but has refused to help in offensive operations. That policy has not been altered by the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, who was notified last week that a decision had been made to extend the agreement with the US. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said last month that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”. Iran has been accused for years of carrying out cyber-attacks on various countries, including in relation to a massive power outage in Turkey in 2015 and several possible breaches of Israeli government websites in 2022. US government security agencies issued a warning earlier this year of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure by hackers linked to the IRGC. The US has alleged that an Iran-affiliated group known as “CyberAv3ngers” carried out a campaign against it in 2023 that compromised at least 75 devices in multiple infrastructure sectors.

Russia withdraws ambassador to UK as Kremlin raises pressure over Ukraine support

Russia has withdrawn its ambassador to the UK, it has emerged, as the Kremlin continues to try to put pressure on Britain over its support for Ukraine. Andrey Kelin left last month after seven years in the diplomatic post, according to the Russian embassy in London. Tensions have since ratcheted up, with a warning by the embassy last week of “consequences” after it emerged Britain was supplying attack drones to Kyiv. Russia’s online list of “senior diplomatic staff” in the UK now includes only Vasily A Tsyganov, chargé d’affaires at the embassy. A gap between ambassadors was not unprecedented, said John Foreman, a former British defence attache in Moscow and Kyiv. But he said in a post on X: “The embassy’s strident ‘consequences’ statement this week and the huge deterioration of bilateral relations since 2018 and especially since the start of the war make me wonder if Moscow will permanently downgrade the relationship this time, by default by not replacing him.” A spokesperson for the embassy said the Kremlin had concluded Kelin’s diplomatic mission on 21 July. “As for the state of Russia-UK relations across all areas, they have deteriorated to an unprecedentedly low level entirely on London’s initiative,” they added. A spokesperson told the Sunday Times Kelin had made efforts to preserve channels of communication with the UK and accused the government of choosing a “path of confrontation” with Russia. “He left Britain in the hope that a more constructive and respectful dialogue could eventually be restored, should the UK reconsider its policies towards our country,” they said, adding that the Kremlin had not yet put forward a replacement candidate. The embassy later issued a statement saying there was nothing in the comments to imply that Russia intended to downgrade diplomatic relations with the UK. A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said: “This is a matter for the Russian ministry of foreign affairs. We have an ambassador and embassy in Moscow to engage and raise concerns with the Russian government. “We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine, which has the right to defend itself against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion.” Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who later fought alongside Ukrainian marines before he was captured and held for a time by Russian forces, said there would be arguments that Kelin’s exit had been a “dangerous erosion” of communication between Britain and Russia but he added that this had not been the case for some time in reality. He said: “If Moscow refuses to meaningfully engage, rebuffs attempts at communication and uses its diplomatic presence primarily to repeat Kremlin narratives, then we shouldn’t pretend we’re witnessing some functioning diplomatic relationship.” Kelin has repeated Kremlin narratives in interviews to British media in recent years. In one on Sky News in June, he said that Russia “cannot lose” the war in Ukraine. He joined the Soviet diplomatic service in 1979. Russia stepped up its rhetoric towards the UK last week after Ministry of Defence sources indicated a report that two drones made by British companies had been used by Ukraine’s military to attack targets inside Russia was true. The Russian embassy, seeking to maximise the impact of its remarks, added in a widely reported statement on Telegram: “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer.”

Stephen Pedley obituary

My friend Stephen Pedley, who has died aged 85, was bishop of Lancaster from 1998 until 2005. A true son of the church, he was the quintessential Catholic – English not Roman – immersed in the worship, history and culture of the Church of England with a joyous appreciation of its richness. His single most memorable characteristic was his laughter, which sprang from his love of life and his delight in people of all shapes and sizes. His empathy with those around him made him an outstanding pastor, guide and friend, while his ready sense of the ridiculous made him great fun, too. At times he could collapse in helpless, almost painful, laughter; uproarious and uncontrollable, heels hammering the floorboards. Born in Coventry, to Geoffrey, a priest, and his wife, Muriel, he went to Marlborough school in Wiltshire, then gained a history degree at Queens’ College, Cambridge, before training for the priesthood at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxfordshire, where he and I met. At the time, Cuddesdon retained the aura of the Oxford Movement that had recalled the Church of England to its Catholic roots, and, under the tutelage of Robert Runcie, Stephen took to the romance of its quasi-monastic common life. After ordination in 1966, he became a curate at Liverpool parish church – one of the most famous and flamboyant city centre churches in England, and a perfect match for his gifts. It was in Liverpool that he met Mary Macdonald, a clergyman’s daughter who was training to be a teacher, and they married in 1970. In 1969 Stephen had left Liverpool for another curacy, at Holy Trinity Coventry, and after two years there he moved to Kitwe in Zambia’s copper belt, where he was a priest from 1971 to 1977. Returning to the north-east of England, Stephen was vicar at Stockton (1977-78), rector at Whickham (1988–93) and then residentiary canon at Durham Cathedral (1993–98), also serving as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II from 1984 until he became bishop of Lancaster in 1998, based in Blackburn. Held in great affection there as “the people’s bishop”, wherever he went he reassured, encouraged and empowered those in his care. He lifted everyone’s spirits, and made sure you knew he was on your side – and that all would be well. He retired as bishop after seven years, after which he became an honorary assistant bishop for the diocese of Newcastle. Throughout their married life, he and Mary provided open and generous hospitality at their various homes, most happily in their recent years of retirement on the terrace of the Blue House, Newbrough, overlooking the upper Tyne valley in Northumberland, where the wine flowed and the laughter echoed. Mary survives him, as do their children, Mark, Andrew and Philippa, and six grandchildren.

Holding election in wartime would risk destroying Ukraine, says Zelenskyy

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said holding elections in Ukraine during wartime would risk splitting the country at a time when Russia is amassing ballistic missiles and considering whether to mobilise an extra 300,000 soldiers. The Ukrainian president, responding for the first time to a demand made by the sacked former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, sharply criticised an idea that he said was impractical given Russia appeared to have no interest in a ceasefire. “I believe that if we want to destroy the country, then during such a war we can move in the selection of elections,” Zelenskyy said in a briefing to selected journalists that was held on Saturday, but details of which were reported on Sunday. “I believe that during such a war, elections in general are big risks. Elections right now are a tsunami for the state that will split Ukraine,” he said, adding that his plan was to end the war and preserve Ukraine as an independent state. Elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was imposed at the start of the full-scale invasion by Russia. Zelenskyy’s five-year term ended in May 2024 but there had until recently been little desire in Ukraine to hold a contest while the war continued. That shifted when Fedorov, a popular minister who had been dismissed by Zelenskyy a month earlier, called for a fresh contest. It was the most open challenge to Zelenskyy’s authority from inside Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy said, according to a transcript from the briefing, that if Ukraine’s allies were to establish “specific conditions” under which elections could be safely, legitimately and democratically held in Ukraine, he would support them. It would require “the participation of the military, in frontline territories, abroad, where millions of our citizens have gone, fleeing the war” and a poll would have to take place safely “without strikes and shelling”, he said. Fedorov, he said, had moved from his post because had had overreached, trying to cover functions belonging to the military. He had been offered four alternative jobs in the government but declined all four, the president added. “I really had and still have a very positive attitude toward Mykhailo,” Zelenskyy said. “We have been through a lot together. But I believe that he himself goes, or is pushed, into the wrong things.” Russia had a stockpile of 600-630 high-speed ballistic missiles, its most potent type of weapon, and was trying to build a little more than 100 more a month in the run-up to winter, Zelenskyy said. Its maximum production capacity was 1,300 a year, he added. Ballistic missiles have been used to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure and warehouses and to attack the capital, causing increased civilian casualties. There is a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors, the only weapon that can effectively counter them. “I wanted to secure 300 Patriot missiles for the winter package. The request from our air force is 360,” Zelenskyy said. He acknowledged this was difficult given that only about 600 of the most capable PAC-3 interceptor missiles were made a year. He said he had reached an agreement with France on at least one SAMP/T air-defence system this year, and with ‌Germany on the supply of about 600 PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors in 2027--28. The US could help by supplying “some small percentage” of its stockpiles – about 5% to 10%, he added. Ukraine was willing to pay and it would mean the country “could get through the winter”, he said, calling on the US to make what would be “a very significant difference both in protecting lives and diplomatically”. Following a conversation with Zelenskyy on Saturday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he had agreed to strengthen French support for Ukraine, including through the delivery of interceptor missiles, without giving further details. Ukraine’s allies in the so-called coalition of the willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion. Russia is seeking to build up forces for a renewed effort to capture the rest of the eastern Donetsk province it does not control by the end of the year, though Zelenskyy said he was confident Moscow would fail to capture the area, comprising principally the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The president said he believed Russia would try to conscript a further 300,000 soldiers after the Russian parliamentary elections in September. It would be a “peripheral mobilisation” conducted away from Moscow, St Petersburg and other main cities in an effort to regain momentum in the almost deadlocked frontline, he said.

Pine-cone grenades and planet-baking carbon: the French fires 170 years in the making – a visual guide

The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year. The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making. In the 18th century, the coastal wetlands of south-western France were so swampy that shepherds used stilts to cross them in winter. When an 1857 decree from Napoleon III forced landowners to drain the marsh and populate it with maritime pines, the water-logged landscape was converted into Europe’s largest human-made forest. It has since become a regional economic engine running on timber that employs 30,000 people. It is also a firefighter’s nightmare. The pines that make up 90% of the trees in the Landes forest hold resin that burns like petrol, needles that carpet the ground with flammable material and cones that whiz in the wind like grenades, spreading flames across breaks in vegetation that should act as barriers. Without the diversity offered by broad-leafed species, which retain more moisture and have shady canopies that stop vegetation from drying, the dense monoculture can burn with fury when sparks catch. That is what happened in 1949, when a blaze that began in a saw mill burned 50,000 hectares. Gorging on plentiful fuel and with few breaks to impede their spread, the flames killed 82 people, most of them volunteers racing to put out the fire. It remains Europe’s deadliest wildfire. Firefighting capacity has vastly improved since, but the potential for disaster has continued to increase. Humanity has fouled the atmosphere with 1.85tn tonnes of planet-baking carbon since the 1857 decree, warming Europe by 2.4C and increasing the risk of hot and dry extremes that were once unthinkable. A strikingly wet winter in western Europe this year helped plants grow tall, only for relentless heatwaves to later strip them of moisture, creating a large fuel surplus for fires to devour. By mid-July, temperatures across France had reached record highs and soil moisture had fallen to record lows, setting the stage for the Gironde inferno. Not long after noon on 22 July, after three straight weeks of more than 30C heat, smoke rose from the tightly packed pine stands near Saumos, a village 20 miles west of Bordeaux. The source of ignition is under investigation, but workers contracted by Enedis, a utility company that manages France’s electricity distribution, were active in the area and reported having sparked a fire with a faulty machine. The Bordeaux public prosecutor, which has identified the machine as its leading line of inquiry, did not respond to requests for comment. Enedis declined to answer specific questions because of the continuing investigation. Most wildfires are started by humans through actions such as dropping cigarette butts, failing to properly extinguish campfires or dispose of barbecues. Public awareness campaigns to discourage reckless behaviour are thought to have contributed to a fall in the number of fires in southern Europe since the 1980s but preventing arson is much harder. French police have arrested nearly 500 people on suspicion of starting fires since the start of the summer, about 70% of which are thought to have been deliberate. Once a fire has begun, it is weather and geography that dictate whether it will quickly wither or morph into a hellish blaze. Outside Saumos, it was immediately clear that firefighters were facing the latter. The fire engulfed several hundreds of hectares in a matter of hours and reached the outskirts of La Porge, which would lose one in 10 homes to the flames in the days that followed. Within 24 hours of the initial spark, southerly winds had pushed the fire’s southern front to Cap Ferret, an upmarket peninsula known as the Hamptons of France, nine miles away. Helping the fire’s rapid spread was its location in an area that had been flattened by a powerful storm in 1999 and then swiftly replanted, resulting in a uniform tree height that created a continuous fuel load. But the response in those crucial early hours has also been criticised. Local forestry workers told Le Monde that firefighters had rejected their recommendation to quickly set a controlled burn, while residents of La Porge claim resources were taken from their village to protect the wealthier Cap Ferret. The Gironde fire service, which did not respond to requests for comment, has said it had done all it could to stop the fire and rejected allegations that it abandoned La Porge. Bruno Lafon, the head of the regional forest fire prevention service, an association of forestry workers who work with firefighters to prevent blazes, said he could understand that volunteers who saw their livelihoods go up in flames wanted more help to have come. But, he said, the powerful combination of drought, heat and wind made the initial spread extremely hard to stop. “The men on the ground did what they could, though I think it would have taken a greater number of planes from the beginning,” he said. The French government has also been criticised because maintenance work meant only seven of its 12 water-bombing planes were available at the peak of the fire. As the fire torched more land, authorities acted quickly to get people to safety. The first evacuations began on the afternoon of 22 July, when 100 residents of the north-eastern quarter of La Porge were taken to shelter in a community hall. Overnight, that number rose to more than 10,000, and just a few days later it had reached nearly 220,000. Across France and neighbouring Spain, which was also battling extreme wildfires, evacuation orders covered more than 300,000 people, a peacetime displacement unprecedented in Europe. Some residents returned to charred possessions, burnt-out homes and shells of cars, but the evacuations proved hugely successful. Not a single person died as a direct result of the Gironde fire, though four firefighters lost their lives tackling separate blazes across the country last month. Among the evacuees was Hervé Jactel, a forest scientist at INRAE, a public research institute, who was forced to flee twice in two days. Watching Nasa maps with apprehension as the fire drew near, he lost a 20-year experiment investigating the diversity of forest trees as a result of burning biomass that jumped a cornfield. He said the fire had not come as a surprise. “From an ecological and forest management point of view, everything was in place to increase the risk of a very large fire,” he said. “Not only because of the climate, but because of the amount and homogeneity of the fuel.” Scientists suspect those conditions resulted in the extreme levels of energy that generated a firecloud, a powerful chimney of smoke stretching into the atmosphere that creates its own weather system. Known as a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, it can spit lightning, and rain down burning embers that spark new blazes and spread the fire further. Nasa has described them as fire-breathing dragons. The true danger, however, lay not in the apocalyptic fire cloud but in the pollutants that it dispersed. Studies have found wildfire smoke to be responsible for 1.5 million deaths around the world each year, making it one of the deadliest environmental threats to human health. Initially, much of the smoke blew straight out over the Atlantic Ocean, but a shift in wind direction caused it to choke Bordeaux, which was nervously watching the approaching inferno, before drifting over Angoulême and Limoges. It clogged the air with so much soot and ash that daily concentrations of airway-inflaming particles hit highs rarely seen, even in cities as polluted as Delhi. A shift in the weather helped firefighters halt the advance of the blaze at 42,000 hectares of burned area at the end of July. In the days since, they have continued to put out small flare-ups and smouldering “zombie fires” underground that they say could continue to return for months. Scientists fear for the forest’s short-term recovery. Fire can trigger outbreaks of bark beetles, which attack damaged trees and increase the fuel load for the next fire – a vicious cycle already well documented in California. The burned wood also attracts the invasive pine nematode, a microscopic worm that had arrived in south-west France in November. It blocks the flow of sap in trees, causing them to wilt and die within months. The greatest threats to the forest, however, are yet to come. Fire weather is projected to become increasingly severe across Europe as carbon pollution continues to heat the planet. Without action to improve fire management, the burned area in Europe is predicted to rise by 39% even in a best-scenario scenario for cutting pollution. In a worst-case scenario, it could nearly triple. Experts have called for rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and better management of the land, such as breaking up continuous tracts of forest and diversifying tree species.

‘No more!!!’: Trump lashes out after US-Canada talks devolve into trade war

Donald Trump has hit back at Canada after a breakdown in negotiations plunged the two countries into a trade war. In his first public comments since negotiations collapsed on Friday in Washington, the US president wrote on social media: “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” “They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of tariffs,” he added. “No more!!!” His comments came after the US imposed 50% tariffs on $20bn (£14.6bn) worth of Canadian goods, while Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar”. The US tariffs came into force on Saturday, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. Trade experts have predicted that the tariffs could result in some job losses, but the biggest impact is expected to be political, triggering fresh tension between the neighbours. Both sides blamed the other for the breakdown in talks on Friday. Carney told Canadian journalists that the country was “at war” over trade with the US, after Trump “miscalculated” by escalating his tariff attack. “You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” the Canadian prime minister told reporters in Ottawa. “We cannot accept what they’ve offered and we will not give what they’ve asked.” Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, has said the US was compelled to act after a year of retaliatory measures by Canada. He told Fox & Friends Weekend: “We’ve said enough and so we’ve taken countermeasures. Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains.” Carney, who previously served as the governor of the Bank of England, was elected as Canada’s prime minister last year after campaigning to lead a fightback against Trump, who has previously suggested he wants to make Canada a 51st state with “economic force”. Carney’s “dollar for dollar” tariffs are expected to take effect from 8 September, with new levies on steel, dairy, appliances and electronics. The escalation has also called into question the future of the North American trade pact between the US, Canada and Mexico, known as USMCA. The pact, which was signed by Trump during his first term, governs about $2tn annually in goods and services between the three countries. Trump refused to renew the USMCA this summer after Canada and Mexico formally requested for it to be renewed for another 16 years. When asked how the US-Canadian collapse in trade talks would affect the USMCA, Carney said it was “certainly not good news”.

Anger over slow pace of reconstruction in Italian town devastated by earthquake in 2016

As people gather in Amatrice on Monday for a mass to mark the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck the hilltop town and several neighbouring communities, killing 303 and leaving thousands homeless, politicians and other public figures will pay tribute. But for many, their words will offer little comfort: 10 years on, much of Amatrice, whose historic centre was wiped out by the 6.0 magnitude quake, is still being rebuilt and more than half of its roughly 2,100 residents continue to live in temporary housing. “They will make a good show of it, bow their heads and say: ‘We did a lot,’” said Sonia Santarelli, the president of Comitato Civico 3e36, a grassroots initiative established soon after the disaster. “But nobody will put their neck on the line. They will say the reconstruction is going well … but how can that be when so many are in homes that are uninhabitable?” A report published last week by ActionAid Italy highlighted severe delays in rebuilding Amatrice and other areas damaged by the earthquake. According to the findings, as of April 2026, construction on roughly two-thirds of the planned public projects had yet to begin, rising to seven in 10 in the hardest-hit areas. Some €4.85bn (£4.15bn) has been earmarked for the works, the report said. The earthquake struck in the early hours on 24 August 2016, its tremors felt as far as Rome. Santarelli, who owns an agriturismo, or farm stay, in the hamlet of Torrita close to Amatrice, recalled being woken by a loud blast and the sound of buildings collapsing. There was virtually nothing left of the hamlet, she said, but fortunately nobody there died. Santarelli counts her blessings that she was not made homeless either. Comitato Civico 3e36, whose name references the precise time – 3.36am – the earthquake hit, was founded to defend the communities affected and to ensure citizens have a voice in the reconstruction process. Prefabricated housing villages were set up in 41 sites across the affected areas. The wooden homes are cramped and especially stifling in the heat. “The heat and humidity squelch you,” said Santarelli. Furthermore, they are undignified places in which to die, she claimed, owing to limited space restricting the easy movement of coffins. Residents have also complained that the rooms are too small for traditional wakes. Some of those displaced are still paying mortgages on homes that don’t exist any more. “You cannot make people live in these conditions for so long,” said Santarelli. “So much work still needs to be done.” Projects that have been completed in Amatrice include a school and a handful of buildings in the historic centre. Construction of a new hospital is nearing completion and could open in 2027, provided it is fully equipped and staffed. There are many explanations for the sluggish reconstruction. Matteo Renzi, the prime minister at the time of the quake, had pledged to rebuild the towns as they were. Renzi resigned at the end of 2016 after a referendum defeat and since then Italy has had five different governments, each appointing commissioners for the rebuild. As with previous major earthquakes, such as the one that hit L’Aquila in 2009, reconstruction has been mired by bureaucracy, legal disputes and the general complexity of rebuilding historic centres in mountainous areas. Much of the pressure falls on the mayor. Elected in 2021, Giorgio Cortellesi said reconstruction efforts were hampered by the Covid pandemic and then by a government eco-renovation scheme, which was intended to revive the post-pandemic economy but instead pushed up the cost of building materials and lured construction workers away to more profitable jobs in other parts of Italy. Cortellesi, an engineer who was determined to contribute to Amatrice’s revival after miraculously finding his two sons alive during a desperate search through the rubble in the dark, said the reconstruction has gathered pace over the past couple of years. However, there is “a significant housing emergency”, he acknowledged, exacerbated by construction firms renting out homes for their staff, in turn driving up rents for people who live there. He said the council is working to reclaim some of those properties. As for the prefabricated villages, which are nearing the end of their 10-year warranty, they will need to be dismantled and their residents moved into their rebuilt homes. “They will return to their homes, which will be the safest in Italy and the most energy efficient,” Cortellesi said, but without offering a timeline for completion. Amatrice’s population has declined over the past decade, with many choosing to move elsewhere for better prospects. But there is also a resilience among those who have stayed. Sergio Pirozzi, who was mayor at the time of the calamity, is one of them. Within minutes of the earthquake striking, he captured the devastation in a few stark words: “Half of the town is gone.” A football coach, Pirozzi had been at a dinner marking the 50th anniversary of the local team a few hours before. “Of those who I was with that night, 36 died and there were others who lost their wives and children. It is not something I will ever overcome,” he said. And yet, despite also having to live with the delays and frustrations of rebuilding, Pirozzi’s attachment to Amatrice is undiminished: “For me, even today, this is the most beautiful place in the world.”

The ‘ordinary’ woman accused of assassinating a Russian commander in Crimea

It was just after dawn in Sevastopol when a powerful explosion tore through a quiet square in a residential district of the Russian-occupied Crimean port city. Hidden inside a rubbish bin, a bomb containing the equivalent of about 500g of TNT detonated on 13 August as Robert Shageev, the deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in naval uniform. He was killed on the spot. Within hours, investigators had a suspect. Police detained Margarita Reutt, a 32-year-old resident of Sochi, the Russian resort city about 300 miles across the Black Sea from Sevastopol. During a search, investigators said they had found a remote control they believed was used to detonate the bomb that killed Shageev, a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine who switched allegiance to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea. According to the security service, she confessed to the attack and said that a handler linked to Ukrainian intelligence had promised her a large payment in cryptocurrency and documents that would allow her to leave Russia afterwards. The FSB also said Reutt showed no remorse. Those assertions could not be independently verified, and Russian security agencies have previously publicised purported confessions from detainees before their cases have reached court. But several people previously accused by Russia of carrying out similar attacks against military figures were later found by reporters to have been involved in the operations Moscow had accused them of conducting. What exactly drove Reutt to allegedly embark on such an audacious mission remains unclear. As with other cases involving accused Ukrainian intelligence operations, her trial is likely to take place behind closed doors, offering little opportunity for her to give her own account publicly. But interviews with a dozen friends and acquaintances, combined with an examination of years of her social media activity, offer a portrait of a determined and adventurous woman whose attitude towards her country appears to have hardened gradually, with signs of a more striking change emerging in the months leading up to the attack. “Rita believed that the country was going in the wrong direction,” said a longtime friend, using the diminutive form of her name. “But I am still shocked she went so far,” the friend added. Russia quickly accused Reutt of carrying out the attack on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence. Kyiv has not commented on the bombing or Reutt’s alleged role in it. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s intelligence agencies have been linked to a string of assassinations and attempted killings of senior Russian military officers whom Kyiv has accused of involvement in the invasion. Ukrainian officials have occasionally acknowledged involvement in such operations, but more often have remained silent. The attacks have involved an array of methods and recruits, from committed anti-Kremlin saboteurs to Russians promised large sums of money. In other cases, unsuspecting couriers and delivery workers have effectively been used as mules. Usually, little is known about those accused of carrying out such attacks or how they prepared for them. Some have managed to escape, or were never publicly identified by Russian authorities, while others were killed carrying out their operations. The swift capture and naming of Reutt, however, offers a rare opportunity to examine the journey of a Russian citizen accused of turning against her own country. Reutt, born Margarita Yakovleva, grew up in Yaroslavl, a city north-east of Moscow, where she took the surname of the grandmother who largely raised her after her parents divorced. Friends recalled a largely unremarkable childhood, remembering her as warm and sociable, but also unusually drawn to adventure and risk. “Margarita was fearless. She would climb trees, jump off cars, do things most boys were scared of,” recalled one friend from her childhood. That streak followed her to Novosibirsk, thousands of miles to the east, where she studied management and threw herself into university life. Reutt became a regular at a local parachuting club, with photographs showing her jumping from Soviet-era aircraft, often the only woman among groups of men in camouflage gear. She also won prizes in amateur go-karting competitions and took up water polo, becoming goalkeeper for the university team and quickly distinguishing herself despite being new to the sport. “Margarita was so talented and never afraid of the ball,” recalled her water polo coach at the time. There was little then to suggest hostility towards the Kremlin. In Novosibirsk, Reutt became a well-liked member of a patriotic volunteer group that searched for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during the second world war, part of a nationwide movement dedicated to recovering and reburying the war dead. After graduating, Reutt moved south to Sochi, the Black Sea resort that became her home. She briefly tried her hand at running a travel agency before joining Vitauct in the early 2020s, an alternative medicine company specialising in longevity. “She was the most ordinary person,” said Gennadiy Garbuzov, the company’s founder, who struggled to reconcile the woman he knew with the allegations now facing her. “There was nothing to indicate she would do this. She must have fallen under someone’s influence.” On the surface, her online life was similarly unremarkable. She posted frequently about health and animal rights and took to Telegram forums to discuss alternative medicine. Reutt also travelled widely. Leaked records from travel databases seen by the Guardian and photographs posted online show frequent trips abroad, including to Turkey, Thailand and Sri Lanka, where she often shared photographs of herself in bikinis at beach resorts. “Margarita just seemed to be living her life and had lots of plans for the future,” said another colleague at Vitauct. “She was good-looking and popular,” the colleague added. In October 2025, Reutt travelled to Minsk for her sister’s wedding. Photographs from the celebration show her smiling among relatives and catching the bridal bouquet. To one friend she painted an idyllic picture of her life in Sochi, traversing mountains, waterfalls and canyons. “You can explore endlessly here, everything is lush and green,” she wrote to the friend. But beneath that outwardly happy life, another side of Reutt was becoming visible. She increasingly expressed concerns about environmental problems plaguing Sochi, and started to become involved in local volunteer initiatives, friends said. After a large oil spill in the Black Sea in December 2024, when two Russian tankers were wrecked in a storm, Reutt travelled to Anapa to join volunteers cleaning mazut, a heavy fuel oil, from contaminated beaches. Exactly when dissatisfaction with her surroundings hardened into something more political is difficult to establish. Friends described a growing estrangement from Russia that deepened after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “The war came as a shock,” said one friend, who recalled Reutt becoming increasingly outspoken in public about the fighting in Ukraine. “I told her once to keep quiet, otherwise she would get us both into trouble,” the friend said. By July 2025, her anti-war feelings had spilt into public view. While travelling on a Samara-Adler train, Reutt was fined under Russia’s sweeping law against “discrediting” the armed forces after reportedly shouting “Serves you right, Russians!” when news broke of a Ukrainian drone strike on a railway station in the Rostov region. The following February, Reutt posted the results of a genetic test showing she was 98% Russian, adding a hashtag declaring that she was “ashamed to be Russian”. Yet to friends and acquaintances, Reutt appeared to carry on much as before. She picked up occasional jobs, appeared in video clips made by friends and continued to travel. As recently as March, photographs from a trip to Cuba showed her drinking from a coconut. It was only in late spring, several people who knew her said, that her behaviour began to change in ways they struggled to understand at the time. “She became more withdrawn,” recalled one friend. Around the same time, a group of friends began planning a trip together for the autumn. Reutt declined to join them without much explanation – an unusual response from someone friends said could be counted on to say yes to a new adventure. Another friend remembered Reutt suddenly acquiring a second phone. “She bought this second phone in the spring. She explained that she needed it for work, but it didn’t really make sense to me at the time.” “Margarita was hiding something,” the friend added. “I thought maybe she had a new boyfriend.” By the summer, Reutt had begun spending more time in Crimea, the place where she would eventually be arrested. One acquaintance said she explained the trips to Crimea by saying she was scouting possible locations for video shoots, having recently begun appearing more frequently in music clips. What she was actually doing in Crimea – and when, if at all, she came into contact with Ukrainian intelligence – remains unknown. If Russia’s allegations that she was recruited by Ukraine are true, Reutt would join a growing group of Russian citizens accused of being enlisted by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out sabotage and assassinations deep behind the frontlines. Such recruits offer obvious advantages: they can move around Russia more freely, and attract less scrutiny than Ukrainian operatives, and they can reach targets far from the frontline without putting trained agents at risk. Women have featured prominently in several of the most high-profile operations, potentially attracting even less suspicion. For those close to Reutt, there is no easy explanation for how the woman they remember ended up accused of carrying out an assassination. But a friend of two decades recalled a stubborn determination to follow through on whatever she decided to do. “If she had a plan in mind, she would do it,” the friend said. “Even if it was something like this.”