Kyiv — Ukraine is implementing “enhanced security measures in the northern regions” near its border with Belarus as Russia holds joint nuclear drills with its close ally, for which Moscow says “nuclear munitions were delivered” to field storage facilities.

Kyiv announced the heightened security posture along its northern border Thursday after warning for weeks of a possible fresh attack coming from Belarus, Russia’s chief regional ally.

Kyiv has sounded the alarm that Russia may use Belarus — which it used as a springboard to launch its ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — to stage a new offensive from the north, including toward the cital Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said its units and the army were “carrying out a comprehensive set of enhanced security measures in the northern regions of our country.”

The measures — including stepped up checks and controls of individuals and properties — “will serve as an effective deterrent to any aggressive actions or operations by the enemy and its ally,” the SBU said in a statement.

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed Ukrainian allegations that it wanted to drag Belarus further into the war as “an attempt at further incitement.”

But on Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that, “as part of the nuclear forces exercise” taking place with Belarus, “nuclear munitions were delivered to the field storage facilities of the [Russian] missile brigade’s position” in the country.

A video posted Thursday on social media by Belarus’ Ministry of Defense, which peared to have been created by the Russian Defense Ministry, showed a truck driving through a forest and unloading an item said to be related to the nuclear munitions.

Russia’s military said the missile brigade in Belarus was carrying out training to receive munitions for mobile Iskander-M tactical missile launch systems, including exercises in loading munitions onto launch vehicles and moving them clandestinely in preparation for a hypothetical launch.

Speaking Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance was monitoring the Russian-Belorussian exercises and warned that it’s reaction to any Russian nuclear attack would be “devastating,” according to the Kyiv Independent.

There has been little significant change in the trajectory of the war, now well into its fifth year, in recent months, though Ukrainian forces — taking advantage of drone warfare technology — have, according to multiple reports, managed to at least slow the rate of Russia’s encroachment.

A Wall Street Journal report published this week argued that Ukraine had in fact “wrestled Russia’s much-larger army almost to a halt in recent months, having gained a tactical and technological edge,” but it cautioned that it was too soon to declare the war had reached “a strategic turning point.”

A Brooklyn woman who drowned her three children in the Atlantic Ocean near Coney Island’s famous boardwalk will spend decades behind bars.

Erin Merdy, 34, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 deaths of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 3-month-old son Oliver.

“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

“We sought the strongest possible accountability in this devastating case, and while nothing can bring these children back, this sentence ensures the defendant will be held responsible for taking their lives,” he added.

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New York Police investigators examine a stretch of beach at Coney Island where three children were found dead in the surf, Sept. 12, 2022, in New York. ( Photo/Joseph Frederick)

Gonzalez said the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”

The children were found the morning of Sept. 12, 2022, after one of Merdy’s relatives called 911 expressing concern the children might be in danger.

Prosecutors said Merdy left the beach around 1:25 a.m. and began walking toward the artment of the father of her youngest child.

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The children of Erin Merdy, 30, were found unconscious near the shoreline of Coney Island Beach during a frantic overnight search early Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via )

Authorities later found Merdy barefoot and soaking wet about two miles from where the children were discovered.

According to prosecutors, Merdy repeatedly said the children were gone and that she was sorry.

The children’s bodies were recovered hours later along the shoreline just steps from the boardwalk.

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A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to decades in prison in connection with the drowning deaths of her three children. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via )

The city medical examiner ruled the deaths homicides caused by drowning.

Prosecutors said surveillance video showed Merdy walking toward the ocean with the children shortly before 1 a.m.

Merdy’s mother told the New York Daily News at the time that her daughter had recently struggled with mental health issues and may have been experiencing postpartum depression.

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“I reached out to her yesterday and she said she was doing laundry and I said I wanted to speak to the kids,” Jacqueline Scott, 56, told the outlet. “I tried to call her twice on the phone after that and there was no answer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A former federal prosecutor was charged this week with emailing herself a report on the Justice Department’s investigation into President Trump that a judge had kept under lock and key.

Carmen Lineberger was indicted Tuesday on two counts of theft of government property, plus counts of concealing and removing a public record and altering a public record. She was arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.

The charges focus on a report penned by former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose team charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegedly mishandling classified documents. The election-related parts of the report were released in mid-January 2025, but a week later, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon blockedformer Attorney General Merrick Garland “or his successor(s)” from releasing the portion on classified documents, known as “Volume II.”

The indictment does not specify what, if anything, Lineberger allegedly planned to do with the documents.

Lineberger’s attorney declined to comment.

The Volume II report at the center of Tuesday’s indictment was compiled after Smith charged Mr. Trump in 2023 with retaining sensitive government documents from his first term and storing them at Mar-a-Lago. The then-former president and two employees were also charged with conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation. Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and cast the investigation — which included an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago — as politically motivated.

Cannon dismissed the indictment in 2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully pointed. Then, one day after Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term, Cannon said the Justice Department cannot release or share Smith’s report on the probe, on the grounds that it could unfairly prejudice the two Trump staffers whose criminal cases remained open.

Cannon did not prevent the Justice Department from releasing Volume I of Smith’s report, which focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing in 2020. The charges against Mr. Trump hit a roadblock in mid-2024 after the Supreme Court ruled the president has immunity for official acts, and the case was dismissed after Mr. Trump won back the presidency. Smith argued in Volume I that Mr. Trump would have been convicted if not for his return to office.

Nearly four decades to the exact date a 22-year-old Virginia woman was murdered, authorities have announced an arrest in the cold case.

Charles Berry, 66, of Newington, Connecticut, was taken into custody Monday in connection with the 1986 re and murder of Roberta Walls, the Newington Police Department said in a statement.

The arrest was made in coordination with the Virginia Beach Police Department (VBPD), which issued an arrest warrant for charges related to the Virginia Beach homicide, police said.

The case began on May 15, 1986, when Walls’ body was discovered in a field behind Old Donation Elementary School, according to VBPD.

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Roberta Walls was murdered in Virginia Beach, Va., on May 15, 1986, according to the Virginia Beach Police Department. (Virginia Beach Police Department)

Authorities previously said 22-year-old Walls was found “with obvious signs of trauma due to a violent assault.”

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She suffered multiple stab wounds and had been red during the attack, WAVY-TV reported.

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Charles Berry, 66, of Newington, Connecticut, was taken into custody Monday in connection with the 1986 re and murder of Roberta Walls, the Newington Police Department said in a statement. (Newington Police Department)

Police previously revealed she was last seen alive at the Bayside Public Library the night before her murder, which is located across the street from where her body was discovered.

COLD CASE BREAKTHROUGH SOLVES TEEN KILLING AFTER SUSPECT LIVED FREE FOR DECADES: ‘BETTER BE AFRAID’

Roberta Walls’ body was discovered in a field behind Old Donation Elementary School, according to the Virginia Beach Police Department. (Google Ms)

Walls reportedly was an employee at the library and was leaving work to meet with friends when she dispeared.

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Following his arrest, Berry was transported to the New Britain Superior Court in Connecticut on Tuesday as he awaits extradition, according to authorities.

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He was subsequently indicted by a grand jury “in connection to Robert Walls’ [murder],” FOX 61 reported. His bail has been set at $2 million by the Connecticut court.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Virginia Beach Police Department for comment.

The assistant principal of a Virginia elementary school where a 6-year-old studentshot his teacher in 2023 “did nothing” about the fact he had a gun, despite receiving repeated warnings from colleagues, a prosecutor said in court Tuesday.

Before the January 2023 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, school employees told Ebony Parker they believed the student had a gun in his backpack, but she dismissed their concerns, said special prosecutor Josh Jenkins. Parker is now facing eight counts of felony child neglect for her role in the incident, which wounded first grade teacher Abby Zwerner.

During the trial’s opening statements, Jenkins said Parker told the employees who proached her about the child’s gun that his mother would be arriving soon to pick him up for the day.

“Does she say ‘search the child’? No,” Jenkins told the jury. “Does she say ‘call the police,’ or does she call the police? No. Does she remove the child from the classroom and separate him? No.

“She didn’t even get up from her desk. She didn’t leave her office. Warning after warning after warning, she did nothing.”

But Parker’s attorney, Curtis Rogers, said teachers should have done something if they believed a gun was present, saying they should have at least separated the child from about 19 other students in the classroom.

“That did not occur,” Rogers said. “Each one of those individuals had the authority to move those classmates.”

Rogers said the prosecution must prove Parker’s actions showed a reckless disregard for human life. Instead, Rogers placed the blame on Zwerner and others who had witnessed the child’s movements long before the shooting.

“What about these other people who had direct contact with this child?” Rogers said.

School policy at the time required crisis situations to be reported to an administrator who is required to take action, Jenkins said. A school counselor even asked for permission to search the child but Parker denied the request because searches could only be conducted by an administrator or a security officer. The school’s security officer was away at another school at the time.

That left Parker and the school’s principal with the authority to act, but the principal knew nothing about the threat because Parker did not tell her about it, Jenkins said.

“There was only one person in the school that day that had both the authority to act and the knowledge of the ongoing crisis, and that person, you will see, was Dr. Parker,” Jenkins said.

Zwerner was the first witness called to testify in the trial. She said the student had slammed her phone to the ground a few days earlier and was in a “violent” mood the day of the shooting.

During recess on the school playground, the student wore an oversized jacket with both of his hands in his pockets the entire time. Zwerner said she sent a text message with that observation to a reading specialist who had been tipped off earlier by students about the gun and reported it to Parker.

The eight counts Parker faces include one for each of the bullets in the gun brought into the classroom, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction.

Criminal charges against school officials after a school shooting are quite rare, experts say. The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

A jury awarded $10 million to Zwerner in a civil trial last November in which Parker, who no longer works at the school, was the only defendant.

The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weons charges.