After years of the Kremlin repeatedly denying, against all evidence, that it has any Russian troops in Ukraine, a regional court has published a ruling outing Moscow’s presence in the country—only to be quietly deleted. The ruling, published on the website of the Kirov District Court in Rostov, was handed down in a corruption case concerning the delivery of food supplies to Russian troops. “This food was intended to be sent to military units of the Russian Armed Forces stationed on the territory of the DNR and LNR,” the now-deleted verdict read. The Kremlin offered an absurd explanation for the accidental admission. Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, told reporters the mention of DNR and LNR in the verdict—both occupied Ukrainian territories long controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces—was a simple mistake. “We are probably talking about a mistake by the person who wrote that text,” Peskov told reporters. “Because it is impossible. There are no Russian troops on the territories of the self-proclaimed republics.”
