Today, Ukraine strikes Moscow. Myanmar's former leader receives a partial pardon, Italy considers withdrawing from China's Belt and Road initiative and the British man avoids a murder charge in Cyprus. From TLDR News, this is your daily briefing for Tuesday 1 August 2023. This week Moscow has been hit by multiple drone attacks, with the Kremlin blaming Ukraine.
These sort of attacks have become more and more common in recent months. For the most part, Russia has been successful in downing the drones, preventing them from hitting their targets. What this has done though, is demonstrate to the Russian public that the war in Ukraine is not some remote war. It's now on their doorstep.
And that's the point. That's why Ukraine is striking Moscow. In a statement about this, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that war was coming to the territory of Russia. Russia hit back hard with the Kremlin saying that this act of desperation had failed and that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had not been successful.
It was reported this morning that Ukraine had conducted another drone attack against Moscow, with the drone this time hitting a skyscraper in the city. This means that Ukrainian drones have hit Russia for the second time in just two days. This comes alongside another drone attack that targeted Russian ships in the Black Sea overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said this morning that during the night Ukrainian armed forces tried without success to attack with three drones, the Sergei Kotov and the Vasily Bykov patrol boats of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
The three naval enemy drones were destroyed. According to the BBC, there have been more than 120 suspected drone attacks carried out in Russia and Russian controlled territory in Ukraine this year. Speaking about Ukrainian drone attacks, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian Prime Minister, claimed that Russia would be prepared to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine was successful in its aims of recapturing what he sees as Russian territory. Specifically, he argued that if Ukraine took away part of their land, then we would have to, following the President's decree on 2nd of the 6th 2020, use the nuclear weapon.
There would simply be no other way out. It should be noted that Medvedev has been outspoken on the war before, with him previously claiming that Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania belong to Russia and that Poland is temporarily occupied. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine or to search for us on your podcast app to listen along. Myanmar's military junta has given a partial pardon to the country's opposed leader, Aung San SUU Kyi, though it remains uncertain whether she will ever be released from prison.
Specifically, 78 year old Su Kyi has been pardoned in five of 19 charges brought against her, meaning her 33 year jail sentence will be reduced by six years. Since overthrowing the democratically elected government in 2021, Myanmar's military has periodically issued pardons, but these are the first to include Su Qi and ousted President Wing Myint, whose jail term will be reduced from 12 years to eight. Su Kyi and My Int have been in detention since the 2021 coup, with Suu Kyi being convicted of charges including incitement, electoral fraud and corruption in trials condemned as a sham by rights groups. More than 7,000 other prisoners received pardons this week to mark a Buddhist holiday, though nearly 20,000 people remain in detention, according to the Assistant association for Political Prisoners, Burma.
In other news from the country, the military officially postponed an election that had been promised by August of this year and extended the state of emergency by a further six months. Its justification for doing so is the ongoing violence in the country, which is effectively in a full on conflict between the military and resistance movements. So that's what's been happening in Myanmar today. Let's move and discuss what's been going on in Italy.
The Italian government is seeking to withdraw from China's Belt and Road Initiative, with Defence Minister Guido Crusetto saying the 2019 decision to join was improvised and atrocious. Speaking to an Italian newspaper, Crusetto said joining the Chinese led infrastructure and investment project had seen Chinese exports to Italy multiply, while the same cannot be said for Italian exports to China. According to Italy's Economic Observatory, Italy's exports to China rose from 13 billion euros in 2019 to 16.4 billion in 2022. Chinese exports to Italy, though, nearly doubled from 31.7 billion to 57.5 billion in the same period.
When Italy pledged to join China's Belt and road initiative in 2019, it was the largest economy to do so and remains the only G7 country to have joined. The challenge for Italy now, according to Prosecco, is how to walk back from the Belt and Road Initiative without damaging relations with Beijing, he added, because it's true that China is a competitor, but it's also a partner. Italy's membership of the initiative is set to automatically renew in 2024 unless the government issues a formal request to withdraw by December this year. David Hunter, a British man who killed his wife in Cyprus, has today been released from prison.
His case is a particularly strange one, as Hunter killed his wife, Janice only after she cried and begged him to. This was because she was suffering from blood cancer. He then tried to kill himself by taking an overdose. However, paramedics arrived and saved him.
In the trial, he argued that he should be given a suspended sentence. His defense lawyer said that his motive was to liberate his wife from all that she was going through due to her health conditions. Hunter added that he would never in a million years have suffocated his wife unless she asked him to. Prosecutors argue that the asphyxiation was not painless or peaceful, and that the fact that Janice worked with the hairdressers every fortnight demonstrated that she was still looking after herself.
Hunter was ultimately found guilty of manslaughter and was released from prison, having spent 19 months in custody awaiting trial. Outside the court, Hunter thanks his family for their support. He added, I'd like to say thank you to all the people who donated to me, and especially my mates and workmates. We're in the main section of the Daily Briefing with some bizarre news from China, where Zhou has denied that its sun bears are actually humans dressed in bear costumes.
Videos and photos show one of the bears standing on two feet, something which they do quite often with narrow legs and folds of fur, prompting rumours to spread a line that these slightly humanoid looking creatures, not the real thing. Posting on social media from the perspective of one of the bears, Hangzhou Zhu said, some people think I stand like a person. It seems you don't understand me very well. A zoo spokesperson also pointed out that the recent 40 degree Celsius summer temperatures would mean a person in a bare suit would not last more than a few minutes before collapsing.
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