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SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine is working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and American companies to collect evidence of war crimes by Russians, such as geolocation and cellphone information, senior officials said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian authorities are collecting digital information from battlefields and Ukrainian towns ravaged by the war since Russia invaded the country last February, said Alex Kobzanets, a FBI special agent who previously worked as a legal attache for the agency in Ukraine.

"Collection of that data, analysis of that data, working through that data is something the FBI has experience working through," Kobzanets said at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

That work includes looking into cellphone information, forensic analyses of DNA samples, as well as analysis of body parts collected off battlefields, he said.

"The next step is working with national U.S. service providers, and transferring that information...obtaining subscriber information, obtaining geolocation information, where possible," Kobzanets added.

The work reflects deepening collaboration between the U.S. and Ukraine on the cyber front, where Russia has been a common adversary for both nations.

The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agent added that the U.S. FBI had for the past year and a half been working on helping Ukraine to also identify Russian collaborators and spies operating in Ukraine and the Russian forces that were operating outside of Kiev as the invasion was happening.

U.S. security companies and officials have been a major partner of Ukraine in its efforts to fend off Russian cyberattacks, which it has battled since at least 2015.

Illia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine, said that while the number of Russian attacks against Ukraine has grown in the last few years, in recent months they have become more targetted.

"Its very difficult to prove in a criminal case, who is responsible," said Vitiuk. "Its very important for us to get as much information about Russian cybercriminals...because we collect all this information and put it into our criminal cases."

We do believe that this case about cyber war crimes is something new, he added. This is where we have seen the first full scale cyber war.

Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in San Francisco; Editing by Michael Perry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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BRUSSELS, April 28 (Reuters) - EU governments agreed on Friday to extend by a year the suspension of duties and quotas on imports from Ukraine to help its economy during the war with Russia.

Sweden, which holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, said EU ambassadors had agreed to the extension at a meeting on Friday. The European Union lifted tariffs for an initial 12 months in June 2022.

The suspension of all duties has led to complaints from farming groups, culminating in Poland and Hungary banning some Ukraine grain imports earlier this month.

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine was already benefiting from the elimination of the vast majority of EU tariffs, in some cases with transition periods, under the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement applied since 2016.

However, the EU did retain tariffs and quotas under that agreement on the most sensitive farm products from Ukraine such as meat, dairy, sugar and some cereals.

The European Commission has now proposed paying compensation to farmers in five countries bordering Ukraine as well as allowing those countries to bar domestic sales of certain grains from Ukraine, while allowing their transit for export elsewhere.

The countries became transit routes for Ukrainian grain that could not be exported through its Black Sea ports.

The European Parliament's trade committee overwhelmingly backed suspending import duties for another year on Thursday ahead of a full assembly vote in May.

Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Kirsten Donovan

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EU countries agree to extend import tariff suspension for Ukraine - Reuters

America's new envoy to Russia has warned that Moscow will pay a long-term "price" for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, adding that bilateral relations are at "one of the lowest points" in memory.

Ambassador Lynne Tracy took up her post in January 2023, ending an almost three-year period in which the U.S. did not have a permanent ambassador in Moscow. Those three years have seen a bilateral nadir, in particular due to the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant, Tracy said President Vladimir Putin's decision to expand Moscow's war on Ukrainein progress since the seizure of Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region from 2014has only worsened Russia's security outlook.

"Russia made a miscalculation, judging by the way it decided to enter Ukraine, clearly expecting the Ukrainians to greet the troops that entered, and the Ukrainians did not," Tracy said.

"The Ukrainians responded with resistance, we see this resistance, it is not a product of propaganda. We see that Ukrainians demonstrate the will to fight and defend their country."

The full-scale warnow into its second year with no sign of a peace deal or even a ceasefirehas, Tracy said, "weakened Russia and forced the Russians to pay a price that will only increase over time. Sanctions and export controls have caused billions of dollars in damage to the Russian financial sector and severely slowed down the country's technological progress."

"These are immediate costs, but there are also long-term costs resulting from missed opportunities to invest in Russia's future. Lost opportunities are usually hard to get back, almost impossible. Time cannot be turned back. And again, the main question arises: how will all this help the future of Russia? Her development? The future of her youth, her next generation?"

There appears little hope of a sudden dtente between Moscow and its Western adversaries. Putin and his top allies are doubling down on their Ukrainian gambit, seemingly hoping to outlast Western support for Kyiv and retain the 20 percent or so of the country still occupied by Russian troops.

Russian officials have repeatedly framed their invasion of Ukraine as a pre-emptive defensive conflict against NATO, the expansion of which the Kremlin has repeatedly cited as a key factor in its decision to launch its so-called "special military operation."

Indeed, figures including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have openly said that Russia is now effectively at war with the U.S. and its NATO allies.

Tracy suggested Putin's attack on Ukraine has only exacerbated Moscow's long-held concerns about NATO encroachment and strategic isolation.

"Now Ukrainians are even more determined to join NATO," she said. "And not only Ukrainians, but Finland and Sweden, countries that have been neutral for a long time. Finland has just joined NATO and we expect Sweden to be next."

"When I hear how in Russia all these actions are explained by security considerations, and then I look at the current situation, I can't find an answer to the question: how did all this help to strengthen Russia's security?"

Tracy told Kommersant that the U.S. "does not consider Russians as enemies." But, she added: "Our relationship is at one of the lowest points that can be remembered for a very long time [...] It is sad to see the direction in which Russia is moving: it seems to be moving into the past, in times of repression."

"Russia has the right to prioritize its foreign policy as it sees fit," the envoy added. "Now there is a lot of talk about Russophobia, the abolition of Russia, the abolition of the future of Russia. This is not the goal of the United States. And we certainly do not want to abolish the people of Russia in any way."

"Our differences are with the government of Russia, but not with its people," Tracy said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed Tracy's interview on her Telegram channel, writing: "The people of Russia are being killed on a tip from the United States tip, with United States money, with United States weapons, by the hands of a regime brought to power by the United States as a result of a coup d'tat directed by the United States."

Zakharova was referring to the 2014 Maidan Revolution, a popular uprising by a broad coalition of pro-Western groups that toppled pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych. Protests broke out after Yanukovych suddenly abandoned an agreed cooperation deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia after several months of escalating protests, and after Ukrainian security forces killed more than 100 protesters. The former president is still resident in Russia, and early in the 2022 invasion was touted as a potential puppet leader to be installed by the Kremlin.

Addressing that Russian talking point, Tracy told Kommersant of Yanukovych: "A situation in which a leader who has lost support and is afraid of his own people decides to flee cannot be called a 'coup.'"

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry to request comment.

Simon Smitha former British ambassador to Ukraine now at the Chatham House think tanktold Newsweek Tracy's interview was "what I would expect someone representing the U.S. administration to be staying," given the poor state of bilateral relations.

"Tracy has very skillfully combined the opportunity to say some pretty blunt things about how badly the Putin administration had messed up and its calculations on Ukraine, but also kept in mind the fact that she has a job to do in Russia and that you have to choose your words very carefully," explained Smith, who led the British embassy in Moscow's economic and trade departments from 1998 to 2002 and also served as the director for Russia, the South Caucuses, and Central Asia at the British Foreign Ministry.

Smith said there is little hope for a "return to normal" in Moscow-Western relations while Putinism reigns in Russia.

"While Putin is in powerand whether it's Putin or whether it's some other equally unworkable successorunless there is a fundamental change of strategy, vision, and approach from the Russian administration, I really don't see a basis for going back to the way we used to cooperate. In fact, I see a lot of arguments for a relationship which is pretty much whittled down to a minimalist one."

"I also think Putin has massively miscalculated the Western response," Smith added. "I think he probably doesn't fully grasp what is going on now, which is an accelerated process among many countries who used to have a cooperative relationship with Russia but are now in a process of accelerating their move to living without any dependence on Russia and without any need for Russia."

Smith compared Russia's trajectory to that of North Korea, with which Western powers have extremely limited relations outside of ensuring proper deterrence of Pyongyang's nuclear threats. "I'm not saying that Russia will end up as the next North Korea, but there is a similarity," he said.

"Putin has taken Russia down that path where we will not need Russia's energy exports," Smith added. "He thought that we would be chronically dependent on those for the indefinite future. We will not need industrial cooperation with Russia because the Russian economy will be in a pitiful state."

"We can do without Russia. And I think that is increasingly what is going to be the assumption of many states in the Euro-Atlantic community."

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Russians Will Pay for 'Miscalculation' in Ukraine: New U.S. Envoy to Moscow - Newsweek

WASHINGTON Amnesty Internationals board has sat for months on a report critical of the group after it accused Ukrainian forces of illegally endangering civilians while fighting Russia, according to documents and a person familiar with the matter.

The 18-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, underscores the complexity of applying international law to aspects of the conflict in Ukraine and the continuing sensitivity of a matter that prompted a fierce and swift backlash to the human rights group.

In a lengthy statement on Aug. 4, Amnesty International accused Ukrainian forces of a pattern of illegally putting civilians in harms way by housing soldiers nearby and launching attacks from populated areas. Russia, which has shelled civilian buildings and killed many civilians, portrayed the finding as vindication, but it otherwise incited outrage.

In response, the group expressed deep regret for the distress and anger its statement caused and announced it would conduct an external evaluation to learn what exactly went wrong and why. As part of that, Amnesty Internationals board commissioned an independent legal review of whether the substance of what it had said was legitimate.

A review panel of five international humanitarian law experts received internal emails and interviewed staff members.

In some respects, the report by the review panel absolved Amnesty International, concluding that it was proper to evaluate whether a defender, not just an aggressor, was obeying the laws of war, and saying that Amnestys records made clear that Ukrainian forces were frequently near civilians.

Under international law, it wrote, both sides in any conflict must try to protect civilians, regardless of the rightness of their cause. As a result, it is entirely appropriate for a rights organization to criticize violations by a victim of aggression, provided that there is sufficient evidence of such violations.

But the review panel nevertheless unanimously concluded that Amnesty International had botched its statement in several ways and that its key conclusions that Ukraine violated international law were not sufficiently substantiated by the available evidence.

The overall narrative of the Aug. 4 release was written in language that was ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable, the report found. This is particularly the case with the opening paragraphs, which could be read as implying even though this was not A.I.s intention that, on a systemic or general level, Ukrainian forces were primarily or equally to blame for the death of civilians resulting from attacks by Russia.

An earlier version of the report was harsher, according to the person briefed on the matter. But Amnesty International lobbied the panel to soften its tone, and it did so in some respects like revising its characterization of Amnestys conclusion that Ukrainian forces violated international law from not substantiated to not sufficiently substantiated.

The panel delivered its final revision in early February, the person said, and asked to be consulted if Amnesty Internationals board decided to release only excerpts. But instead, the board decided to merely use it as one of several sources for a lessons-learned document to circulate internally, the person said.

In an email, an Amnesty International spokesperson characterized the independent review as part of an ongoing internal process, and these findings will inform and improve our future work.

The statement did not indicate whether the group agreed with the reports critiques.

The panel consisted of Emanuela-Chiara Gillard of the University of Oxford; Kevin Jon Heller of the University of Copenhagen; Eric Talbot Jensen of Brigham Young University; Marko Milanovic of the University of Reading; and Marco Sassli of the University of Geneva.

Inside Amnesty International, the panel found, some staff members had expressed serious reservations about whether the group had sufficiently sought to consult with the Ukrainian government to understand why it deployed forces where it did and whether it would have been feasible to station them elsewhere.

These reservations should have led to greater reflection and pause before the organization issued its statement, the report said.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces appear to have committed a series of atrocities, indiscriminately shelling and killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. (The International Criminal Court recently accused President Vladimir V. Putin of the war crime of abducting and deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and issued a warrant for his arrest.)

Against that backdrop, Amnesty Internationals denunciation of Ukrainian tactics received a large amount of attention. Proponents of the Kremlin portrayed the findings as essentially showing that Ukraine was to blame for the deaths of Ukrainian civilians at Russias hands.

Russias ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, cited the findings as part of justifying Russias occupation of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

We dont use the tactics Ukrainian armed forces are using using the civilian objects as military cover, I would say, what Amnesty International recently proved in a report, which we were saying all the time in all the meetings with the Security Council, he said.

The statement did not, in fact, accuse Ukraine of using civilians as human shields, only of failing to take precautions to protect them. Still, the backlash was fierce. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused the organization of trying to shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.

Inside Amnesty International, its statement was deeply contentious. Its Ukraine director, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in protest, noting that Russia was accused of atrocities in the towns it occupied and Ukraine was trying to prevent more such places from falling. She accused the group of giving Russia a justification to continue its indiscriminate attacks. The groups branch in Canada issued a statement expressing regret over the magnitude and impact of these failings from an institution of our stature.

While condemning Amnesty Internationals analysis, the review panel agreed that the statement which had lacked much detail was backed in part by fact.

The report said the groups researchers had documented at least 42 specific instances in 19 towns and villages where Ukrainian soldiers were operating near civilians. It also determined that several attacks by Russian forces that appeared to be targeting the Ukrainian military resulted in death or injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

That raised the question of whether the Ukrainian military had violated its legal obligations, under a 1977 expansion of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to take precautions to protect civilians in their areas of operations to the maximum extent feasible.

Essentially, that means if there are two equally good locations for the military to station itself, one closer to civilians and one farther away, combatants should opt for the latter so that any enemy does not kill civilians as collateral damage. If there is no equally good alternative, a military force should try to evacuate civilians to a safer place.

The news release accused Ukraine of a pattern of failing to take either step, while also saying it should have warned civilians. But the report said Amnesty International failed to meaningfully engage with Ukrainian authorities about whether equally good alternative locations, evacuations or warnings were feasible.

The report also said the descriptor pattern was imprudent because it implied that generally, many or most of the civilian victims of the war died as a result of Ukraines decision to locate its forces in the vicinity of civilians, as opposed to Russias willingness to target civilians or civilian objects deliberately or indiscriminately.

Lacking sufficient information, it said, the group should have used more cautious language.

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Amnesty International Sat on a Report Critical of Its Ukraine Concerns - The New York Times

Chinese President Xi Jinping at a signing ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace, on March 21, 2023, in Moscow, Russia. China has been eager to position itself as a peace broker to end the Ukraine war, but has appeared to be allied with Moscow throughout.

Contributor | Getty Images News | Getty Images

After months of apparent reluctance to engage with Kyiv on the same level as Moscow, China said Wednesday that it will send special representativesto Ukraine and hold talks with all parties on reaching an end to the conflict.

Chinese state media said that President Xi Jinping told his Ukrainian counterpart President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call the first that the leaders have held since the war began in February 2022 that Beijing will focus on promoting peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

State media added that Beijing would make efforts for a cease-fire to be reached as soon as possible, in order to end what China called a "crisis" rather than a conflict.

Commenting on the call, which hedescribed as "long and meaningful,"Zelenskyy said he believed it would "give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relation."

The timing of the call and China's decision to send emissaries to Ukraine has raised eyebrows among political and defense analysts, particularly as Ukraine is widely known to be preparing to launch a large-scale counteroffensive against Russian forces in a bid to retake territory in the east and south.

A number of analysts believe China is eager to halt the conflict before there's a massive escalation in the fighting as the spring's muddy season passes, allowing offensive operations to begin again in earnest, and as Ukraine receives more military hardware from its Western allies.

"The spring months are basically coming to an end and it's time for counter attacks to begin so I think China wants to be seen as immediate mediator before that escalation," Max Hess, fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC Thursday.

That's a view shared by Oleksandr Musiyenko, a military expert and head of theCentre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv. He was, however, surprised at the timing of China's call, as he expected it might wait and see how the counteroffensive proceeded before intervening.

"I was confident that China would wait for the results of Ukrainian counteroffensive and would then probably propose something [on a cease-fire and peace talks]," he told CNBC Thursday.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping via phone line, in Kyiv on April 26, 2023.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service | Reuters

"But I think the Russians are afraid of the future Ukrainian counteroffensive, they are afraid that they will lose some territory that they are occupying right now ... so I think that they asked Xi to call Zelenskyy to ask him to stop this counteroffensive," he said.

China has been eager to position itself as a peace broker to end the war, but has appeared to be allied with Moscow throughout, refusing to condemn the invasion, holding frequent calls with Moscow and having no direct diplomatic contact with Ukraine during the war until now.

And when Xi visited Russia in March, he said he would hold a phone call with Kyiv but no arrangements had been forthcoming, making yesterday's announcement even more surprising.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made that point on Thursday when he "welcomed" the call between Xi and Zelenskyy, but he noted it does not change the fact China still hasn't condemned Russia's invasion.

The Kremlin, for its part, said it welcomes anything that could bring the end to the conflict closer, but said that it still needs to achieve the stated aims of its so-called "special military operation," such as the complete takeover of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a welcome ceremony before Russia-China talks in Moscow, Russia, on March 21, 2023. Analysts are generally skeptical about China's positioning of itself as a mediator and its ability to help bring an end to the war, questioning how much sway Beijing has over Moscow.

Mikhail Tereshchenko | Sputnik | via Reuters

Analysts are generally skeptical about China's positioning of itself as a mediator and its ability to help bring an end to the war, questioning how much sway Beijing has over Moscow.

Musiyenko said China doesn't appear to understand the conflict, noting it's "unbelievable" for Beijing "to call the war a political crisis."

He was afraid that any cease-fire or peace agreement deal put forward by China would include Russian-proposed conditions such as territorial boundary changes.

It wasn't lost on analysts that China's call on Wednesday took place just days after a diplomatic gaffe last week, when its ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, told French media that countries that were part of the Soviet Union, like Ukraine, lacked status in international law.

The comment sparked indignation in the EU as well as Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states. China was forced to issue a statement distancing itself from Lu's comments, insisting that "China respects the status of the former Soviet republics as sovereign countries after the Soviet Union's dissolution."

After the incident, Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said the timing of Xi's call to Zelenskyy cannot be overlooked.

"The timing looks very suspicious, coming after that incredible diplomatic faux pas/catastrophe by the Chinese ambassador to Paris, by commenting to the effect that post Soviet states have not right to exist," Ash said in emailed comments.

"These may have been his actual views about Ukraine but in one interview I think he offended all of the 14 non-Russian states that secured independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. And this includes the states in Central Asia and Transcaucasia that China relies on for critical commodities. They must be absolutely furious, as is most of the post Communist space, ex Russia, in Emerging Europe," he noted.

Ash said the gaffe could have caused immeasurable damage to bridge-building with former Soviet states and showed a lack of understanding that could be shared more widely by those in Beijing, though it was only shown by one official.

"This one comment has undermined 30-odd years of oh-so-careful Chinese diplomacy in the region," Ash said, adding that "actually it shows that Chinese officials fundamentally don't understand Europe."

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China just called Ukraine for the first time in the war. The timing wasn't accidental, analysts say - CNBC