The Dutch government made the move to help individual cases brought by victims’ relatives, the foreign minister said in a letter to Parliament.

A Chechen man shot near Vienna last weekend had spoken publicly of giving Austrian and Ukrainian authorities information about contract killings. He also said there was a price on his head.

Russia’s grievances against what it sees as American bullying and expansion into its own zones of influence have been stacking up for decades.

The International Monetary Fund agreed to lend Ukraine $5 billion over 18 months while stressing the importance of central bank independence. Three weeks later, the central banker quit, citing political pressure.

Environmentalists say illegal logging in the Carpathian Mountains is contributing to flooding. Rising waters forced the partial evacuation of a hospital treating Covid-19 patients.

Status-conscious fast-food joints across Eastern Europe have offered their diners disposable gloves for years. The idea may find a wider audience in the pandemic era.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine won an endorsement for his anti-corruption policies with the approval of a $5 billion lending program from the International Monetary Fund.

Eleven foreign couples, previously barred by coronavirus restrictions, have entered the country to meet their newborns. But births are still outpacing pickups.

The plan is a further blow to America’s weakening European alliances and likely to be welcomed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

As she endured a difficult recovery from Covid-19, the grandmaster Irina Krush thrived in competition and found familiar support from others in the game.

Arch-rival China has more golds but there are other ways of declaring success

For most of the world, it has been considered the golden rule. When it comes to calculating a country’s standing on the official Olympics medal table, the number of golds gained rather than the actual amount of medals acquired dictates the ranking.

Related: Tokyo 2020 Olympics: full medal table

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The Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya flew out of Tokyo on Wednesday to begin a life in exile after refusing to return home. Andrew Roth describes a growing threat to internal critics of the regimeWhen the Belarus sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya criticised her coaches for entering her ‘behind [her] back’ in the 4x400m relay event at the Tokyo Olympics, she set off a chain of events that quickly went beyond her control. On Sunday, she was removed from the team and driven to the airport by officials. But Tsimanouskaya refused to board the flight back to Minsk and sought Japanese police protection.The Guardian’s Andrew Roth tells Rachel Humphreys that this sporting disagreement quickly became political and Tsimanouskaya had little option but to seek refuge outside of Belarus. Now she has flown from Tokyo to Vienna after being granted humanitarian assistance by Poland. Her husband, Arseniy Zdanevich, fled Belarus for Ukraine on Sunday. Continue ...

The Belarusian dictator’s unpredictability is unsettling opponents and allies alike. He must be checkedThese have been busy times for the rogue state of Belarus.In recent days, an opposition activist, Vitaly Shyshov, was found dead – hanging from a tree in a park in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv – in what is now officially a murder case. Shyshov headed an NGO that helped Belarusians escape from the ever-increasing repression back home, having himself fled in 2020. The Olympic 200m sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya narrowly escaped being bundled on to a plane back home from Tokyo, and has been granted a humanitarian visa by Poland. And the EU commissioner for home affairs, Sweden’s Ylva Johansson, flew to Lithuania to try to do something about Belarus’s state-organised smuggling of migrants over the border into its neighbour (the government in Minsk has been accused of organising flights from Baghdad to Belarus: migrants are led by guides to the border, and the whole operation is advertised on social media).Andrew Wilson is professor of Ukrainian Studies at UCL and the author of Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship Continue ...

Police open murder investigation after activist discovered in park after failing to return from a run

The head of a Kyiv-based non-profit organisation that helps Belarusians fleeing persecution has been found dead in a park in the Ukrainian capital, police have said, raising suspicion that he may have been murdered.

Vitaly Shishov, the head of Belarusian House in Ukraine (BDU), was reported missing by his partner on Monday after he failed to return from a run and could not be reached on his mobile phone.

Related: The Guardian view on Belarus: an Olympic athlete joins the exodus | Editorial

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• Shooter’s medal hopes ruined by mistake in 50m rifle final
• ‘Who shoots into someone else’s target? Only people like me’

Ukrainian shooter Serhiy Kulish missed out on a medal after committing one of the most extraordinary howlers at the Tokyo Olympics by hitting an opponent’s target.

Kulish, who won silver in the 10m air rifle event at Rio 2016, had sailed into Monday’s men’s 50m rifle final and was pushing for a medal at the Asaka Shooting Range when disaster struck. In fourth place with 30 shots fired, Kulish mistakenly fired at a rival’s target. After receiving zero points for the shot, he was soon eliminated in eighth place.

Related: Tokyo 2020: Hassan takes 5000m gold, GB into hockey semis and more – live!

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Australian court orders husband and wife to pay broadcaster’s legal costs after dropping defamation action over Foreign Correspondent program

A couple who claimed the ABC portrayed them as abandoning their surrogate child with a disability in Ukraine will have to pay the broadcaster’s legal costs after withdrawing their defamation case.

Matthew Etnyre and his wife Irmgard Pagan sued over a 2019 Foreign Correspondent episode titled Motherland and a website article titled Damaged babies and broken hearts: Ukraine’s commercial surrogacy industry leaves a trail of disasters.

Related: ABC's Sabra Lane breaks down on air over child abandoned by surrogate parents

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MBC sorry for ‘inappropriate images and captions’Syria and Haiti summed up by war and unrestA South Korean broadcaster has apologised after using offensive images to depict several countries during the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday.MBC displayed photos and facts about each country as athletes walked out during the parade of nations. Most of them varied from inane to odd: Great Britain’s athletes were accompanied by a photo of the Queen, and El Salvador, where the cryptocurrency is legal tender, was summed up by a bitcoin symbol.South Korean broadcaster MBC used images to "represent" each country during the #Tokyo2020 Opening Ceremony.Italy: pizzaNorway: salmonHaiti: upheavalUkraine: Chernobyl pic.twitter.com/KpUXATuZld Related: Tokyo’s opening ceremony plays it safe in extraordinary circumstances | Justin McCurry Continue ...

Businessman Barry Pring sustained fatal injuries when hit by car in Ukrainian capital in February 2008

There was no conspiracy to kill a British businessman who died in a hit-and-run incident in Ukraine while celebrating his first wedding anniversary, a judge has concluded.

Barry Pring, an IT consultant, sustained fatal injuries when he was hit by a car while waiting for a taxi on a carriageway outside a restaurant in Kyiv on 16 February 2008.

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Julianna Moore, formerly Ganna Ziuzina, told an inquest she did not seek to profit from Barry Pring’s death, as his family alleges

The widow of a wealthy British businessman killed in a hit and run in Ukraine as he celebrated his first wedding anniversary has denied organising his murder, an inquest heard.

Barry Pring, 47, suffered fatal injuries when he was hit by a vehicle using a stolen number plate while waiting for a taxi outside a restaurant in Kiev with his wife, Ganna Ziuzina, on 16 February 2008.

Related: Millionaire's family claims he was killed by Ukrainian bride

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Individual error blamed for security lapse after leak of information about Royal Navy destroyer off Crimea

A Ministry of Defence investigation into how secret military papers about a disputed voyage off Crimea ended up at a Kent bus stop has blamed individual error and found no evidence of foul play.

The rain-sodden papers, which were handed to the BBC last month by an anonymous member of the public, predicted the likely reaction of Russia to the passage of the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender off Crimea days after a dispute with Moscow over the ship’s movements and whether warning shots had been fired.

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Iryna Tsilyk sensitively captures a family caught up in the conflict with Russia who are trying to make a film of their ownThis sensitive and astute Sundance-winning documentary, in which Kyiv-based director and poet Iryna Tsilyk haunts the back alleys of the Russo-Ukrainian war, is the antidote to the warped propaganda-fest the conflict was depicted as in the 2018 film Donbass. It layers fact and fiction as delicately as an onion as it focuses on the Trofymchuk-Gladky family, who are attempting to shoot piecemeal their own fictional work, called 2014, based on their wartime experiences. But, here, artifice and cinema work entirely in the service of good. They are a source of self-expression and spiritual nourishment for Ukrainians beaten down by close to a decade of fighting.Tsilyk mentored budding film-maker Myroslava Trofymchuk at a workshop, and it is the teenager we see here calling the shots for her family as they act in scenes hunkering down in their cellar; echoes of the shock and trauma they are simultaneously living for real, inspecting bomb damage by smartphone light. The whole household – including single mother Anna and her other three children – is clearly deeply invested in the project, squabbling over shot ...

Saturday’s quarter-final has revitalised a sense of community and identity, though some are torn about who to support

Nine-year-old Luca Mullaney was over the moon when Ukraine beat Sweden on Tuesday. The half-Ukrainian boy from Bradford did a series of victory jumps but then stopped dead. “I’ve got a big problem, Grandad,” he said. “Who do I support on Saturday?”

His family are now putting their heads together ahead of the team’s Euro 2020 quarter-final against England. Luca’s mother, Sonia, is thinking she might sew him a top with Ukraine’s colours on one side and England’s on the other. Luca’s cousin has suggested he wear his Ukraine shirt for the first half of the match and his England shirt for the second.

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