The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has revoked a plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases, according to a memo sent to Susan Escallier, who is overseeing the war court proceedings.

The short-lived deal came 16 years after prosecution of the three men began.

On Wednesday, Escallier announced that she signed a deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. Defense lawyers had requested that the men receive life sentences in exchange for the guilty pleas.

In Friday’s memo, Austin argued that due to the “significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority”.

For some victims’ families, the deal Escallier entered into destroyed any chance of a full trial that could have ended in death sentences and given people the opportunity to address the men accused of killing their loved ones, according to the Washington Post.

“I would have liked a trial of men who hadn’t been tortured, but we got handed a really poor opportunity for justice, and this is a way to verdicts and finality,” Terry Kay Rockefeller, 74, whose sister Laura was killed on 9/11, told the Post.

News of the original plea deal elicited sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers, including Mitch McConnell and JD Vance, who decried the deal, and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who accused the Biden-Harris administration of betraying the American people.

J Wells Dixon, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantánamo Bay as well as other detainees there who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, had welcomed the plea bargains as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally fraught 9/11 cases.

Dixon accused Austin on Friday of “bowing to political pressure and pushing some victim family members over an emotional cliff” by rescinding the plea deals.

Lawyers for the two sides have been exploring a negotiated resolution to the case for over a year. President Joe Biden blocked a proposed plea bargain in the case last year, when he refused to offer requested presidential guarantees that the men would be spared solitary confinement and provided trauma care for the torture they underwent while in CIA custody.

A senior Pentagon official told the New York Times that the president and vice-president had no involvement in Austin’s decision to rescind the controversial deal.

Mohammed and the other defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.

Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into what would become a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.

The US military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the 9/11 attacks have been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has slowed the cases and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.

Associated Press contributed to this report

• Russian assaults are raising pressure on the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, Ukraine says, as waves of guided bombs and infantry lead to some of Moscow’s largest territorial gains since the spring. The push is fuelling a surge in civilians fleeing, with requests for evacuation in the area increasing about tenfold over the past two weeks, according to a volunteer helping people leave. Russia’s gains of about 57 sq km (22 sq miles) in the space of a week are the third-largest recorded since April after they made only modest gains in June, Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with the Black Bird Group, told Reuters.

• Russian forces are using warplanes and artillery fire to support waves of infantry assaults in the area near Pokrovsk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s National Guard said in televised remarks. “These assaults are not always supported by armoured vehicles, often it is infantry assaults,” Ruslan Muzychuk said on Friday, flagging the bombing by Russian warplanes as a particular problem. “It’s a significant threat … because the Pokrovsk and Toretsk fronts are taking a large share of the daily aviation strikes carried out on the positions of Ukrainian defenders.” Russian forces have been steadily inching forward on several fronts in the eastern Donetsk region, staging particularly fierce attacks near Pokrovsk, with Kyiv’s troops stretched thin.

• Russia’s defence minister said its forces had captured five settlements in the Donetsk region in the past week. Russia’s use of warplanes to fire guided bombs was crucial for Moscow’s battlefield tactics, said Valeriy Romanenko, a Kyiv-based aviation expert, who compared it to a “conveyor belt”. “The Russians are not piercing our defence, they are pushing it back. They are advancing 100, 150, 200 metres every day using this tactic: dropping guided bombs, then a ‘meat assault’, [and if those are] repelled, dropping guided bombs again, a ‘meat assault’ again.” He said the supply of US F-16 fighters to Ukraine could disrupt that dynamic if the jets were able to threaten Russian warplanes, but that such operations were unlikely for now given the risk it would present for the new pilots operating expensive jets.

• Ukraine said on Friday it had received the bodies of 250 killed soldiers in one of the largest exchanges of remains since Russia invaded in February 2022. Kyiv said it handed over the remains of 38 Russian soldiers in the deal, which was mediated by International Red Cross. DNA analysis will be used to identify the bodies before releasing them into the custody of the families for funeral ceremonies and burials.

• Ilya Yashin, a Russian activist jailed for supporting the war in Ukraine, said he had not given his consent to being deported from Russia in a prisoner exchange and warned that the move would encourage president Vladimir Putin to take more “political prisoners”. “What happened on August 1 is not an exchange,” he told reporters in Bonn. “This is my expulsion from Russia against my will. My first wish in Ankara was to buy a ticket and go back to Russia.” Yashin’s comments came as Russian dissidents freed as part of Thursday’s historic prisoner swap between Moscow and the west shared their mixed feelings about the deal and vowed to continue their political activity from abroad.

• Ukraine’s central bank has predicted emigration levels this year will be far higher than previously forecast, largely due to power cuts caused by Russian attacks on energy facilities. “The worsening of the energy situation and slow normalisation of the economic conditions will lead to a larger outflow of migrants abroad in 2024 and 2025 than previously expected,” the National Bank of Ukraine said in a report. It predicted there would be a net outflow of 400,000 people this year, while next year’s outflow would be 300,000. The bank predicted a net return of 400,000 people in 2026 but said the process would be “gradual”.

• The US rating agency S&P cut Ukraine’s credit rating to “selective default” on Friday, citing the country’s failure to make a coupon payment on an existing bond. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a law allowing Ukraine to suspend foreign debt payments until 1 October, paving the way for a moratorium to be called that would formally mark a sovereign default.

Eight people have been arrested in Sunderland for offences including violent disorder and burglary after another night of rioting and disorder in parts of the UK.

Three police officers were taken to hospital after being injured, Northumbria police added.

At least one building was reportedly set on fire, and a car was also overturned and set alight as police struggled to control a crowd of several hundred protesters.

Some of the protesters wore balaclavas and some were draped in the England flag, with police officers being hit with beer cans and stones in the city centre and a nearby mosque on St Mark’s Road.

Posting on social media about the building on fire, Nick Lowles, from the organisation Hope Not Hate, said: “A far right and racist protest has culminated in this. Shame on all those who continue to excuse these protests.”

It was initially reported that a police building had been set on fire but later reports suggested an adjacent building was instead set alight.

An overturned car was set on fire and rioters set off fire extinguishers against officers.

The protests, promoted by far-right activists on social media, had started at the newly refurbished Keel Square. Footage posted on social media showed young men throwing stones at police and shouting: “whose streets? Our streets” as well as Islamophobic chants.

The Sunderland protest was among several planned across the UK this weekend after the knife attack in Southport on Monday, fuelled by misinformation on social media about the background and religion of the 17-year-old suspect.

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “Criminals attacking the police and stoking disorder on our streets will pay the price for their violence and thuggery.

“The police have the full backing of government to take the strongest possible action and ensure they face the full force of the law.

“They do not represent Britain.”

Extra prosecutors were called in to work the weekend as police forces around the country brace for further disorder.

Stephen Parkinson, director of public prosecutions, said: “We take the recent incidents of violent disorder extremely seriously and we are ready to respond rapidly if there is a fresh outbreak.

“We have deployed dozens of extra prosecutors who are working round the clock this weekend, supporting the police, and ready to make immediate charging decisions so that justice is swiftly delivered.”

North East mayor Kim McGuinness wrote on X: “I’m appalled by the scenes from Sunderland. Make no mistake, if your response to tragedy is to use it to commit violence, to abuse others, attack the police and damage property you stand for nothing except thuggery. It’s not protest.

“It’s crime and disorder. You don’t speak for Sunderland. You don’t speak for this region. Those grieving in Southport will take no comfort from this.

“We believe that the community here in Southport, and the country as a whole, must now come together to challenge hatred based on people’s identities. In particular, the rising levels of Islamophobia must not be allowed to fester in our society.”

Sunderland Central MP Lewis Atkinson said he was “appalled” by disorder in the city centre.

He wrote on X: “Our city is not represented by a tiny minority causing trouble.

“(Northumbria police) have my full support as they respond to criminal thuggery and work to protect all the communities of our city.

“Tomorrow the people of Sunderland will come together and continue to build the bright future that we have – a future where every community of our city feels safe and prospers.”

Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus said it was asked by police to close Sunderland Rail Station at about 10.15pm and bus company Go North East said it would stop its services short of Sunderland overnight except for one which would terminate at Barnes.

A cinema in the city, Omniplex Sunderland, was also forced to close “in the interest of public and staff safety”.

The education secretary and Sunderland MP Bridget Phillipson described unrest in the city as “unforgiveable violence and thuggery”.

She said: “The scenes in our city centre tonight are shocking. We have seen unforgiveable violence and thuggery.

“The criminals involved in this appalling disorder must be identified, prosecuted, and punished with the full force of the law.

“Sunderland is better than this and these thugs do not represent our city.”

In Liverpool, the far right were outnumbered several fold by anti-fascist groups. Minor scuffles early in the evening were quickly stopped by police and by 9pm only a handful of far-right protesters remained, standing under trees across the road from Abdullah Quilliam society mosque trying not to get rained on.

A group of men standing opposite the anti-fascists did not quite have the confidence to admit they were far right, telling the Guardian they had only “come for a look”, with balaclavas on.

Hope Not Hate said up to 35 protests were due to take place across the UK this weekend “under a broad anti-multiculturalism, anti-Muslim and anti-government agenda”.

They include Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Bristol, Cardiff, Doncaster, Glasgow, Hanley, High Wycombe, Hull, Liverpool, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Preston, St Helens, Stoke-on-Trent, Swindon, Wrexham.

Riot police will be on standby in every force in England and Wales to tackle planned far-right protests across the country this weekend, as religious leaders condemned “shameful” attempts to sow hatred after the Southport murders.

Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Christian leaders were among those calling for calm at any demonstrations, amid warnings of potential escalation of violent disorder.

Far-right unrest has spread to London, Hartlepool and Manchester, after three girls were murdered and two adults and eight children seriously injured at a Taylor Swift-themed dance club.

Social media postings wrongly alleged the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker, with a mosque targeted in Southport earlier in the week. A 17-year-old born in Cardiff, Axel Rudakubana, has now been charged with murder and attempted murder.

Police forces are said to have intelligence of 25 planned far-right gatherings, while the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate said it believed at least 35 far-right demos were planned across the UK in the coming days. About 25 Stand Up to Racism counter-demonstrations are also expected.

David Hanson, a Home Office minister, warned demonstrators: “We are watching you,” and cautioned them it was a criminal offence to organise a riot.

His warning came as:

Hundreds of extra officers and constables trained in handling riots were to be put on duty in England and Wales, with extra prosecutors also on standby, even in places where there were no planned demonstrations.

Zara Mohammed of the Muslim Council of Britain said there was “unprecedented aggression” against Muslims and that mosques were receiving threatening messages, with a “strong surge of anti-migrant and Islamophobic feeling coming together”.

The Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, faced further criticism for stoking unrest by challenging Keir Starmer’s claim the far right were to blame for violent disorder. Farage said the violence was “a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people”.

A group of more than a dozen imams coordinated by the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (Minab) joined forces with Christian and Jewish faith leaders in a show of solidarity outside the Southport mosque that was attacked earlier this week.

Qari Asim, Minab’s chair, said: “This is a time when we must stand firmly against opportunistic and shameful attempts to sow the seeds of division and hatred in our communities.”

The archbishop of Canterbury added to the calls for an end to violence, saying it was “completely unacceptable that Muslim and asylum-seeker communities are feeling so unsafe and I encourage people to reach out and support them”.

Protests by the far right this weekend are expected to range in size. One demonstration in Dover on Friday fizzled out with low attendance.

Gavin Stephens, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: “Police will not stand by and let criminals carry out unnecessary violence in our communities.

“Our message to anyone thinking of getting involved in this type of criminality is clear: if you cause violence, you will face the full force of the law and we have the full backing of our criminal justice partners.”

Starmer held a meeting of police chiefs on Friday to increase coordination and call for rioters to be treated like football hooligans. The prime minister visited Southport for a second time, where he set out a package of measures to support the community including mental health and psychological services.

However, his words were challenged by Farage, who released a video criticising Starmer’s conclusion that it was “all the far right”.

“As if they’re causing all of the problems. No, the far right are a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people.”

He added that he did not support “street violence” or “thuggery in any way at all”.

Farage continued: “I am worried not just about the events in Southport but about societal decline that is happening in our country. Law and order, folks, on our streets is breaking down. This prime minister hasn’t got an earthly clue how to deal with it.”

Brendan Cox, the widower of the murdered MP Jo Cox, said Farage’s new video showed he had “gone full far-right apologist”.

However, the former home secretary Jack Straw warned against turning the Reform leader “into a hero or a martyr” among those who sympathise with him, and that the government should not “overreact”.

“He knows what he’s doing and his allegedly innocent questions that he’s raising are skilful efforts to stir up trouble.

“I think Farage has just got to be managed, and after a while I think … people who voted Reform … will very quickly be disabused about the nature of this man.”

Margaret Hodge, the former Labour minister who helped drive the British National party out of Barking, also warned against focusing on Farage, and said tackling the underlying issues around migration would be key.

“Telling a positive story about migration, controlling the borders, and listening to what people are really saying when they say they ‘hate the immigrants’ – it is crucial the government do that because if not, then we will end with a more racist, populist politics in the UK … If you just call Farage a racist, where do you get by doing that?,” she asked.

Peter Hain, a former Labour cabinet minister and anti-apartheid activist, said he thought Starmer’s response had been “spot on” and that it was a “significant advance” to have police chiefs involved in calling out the far right.

But he also said he thought Farage’s rhetoric “needs calling out”, adding: “A Tory response, which didn’t work for them in the election, was to ignore Reform, but I don’t think you can ignore them.

“This is a battle for public opinion and there’s quite a head of steam behind Farage’s populism and his anti-immigrant rhetoric. I don’t think you can keep your head low on it.”

Umesh Sharma, the chair of the Hindu Council UK, said: “Whether it is mosques, mandirs or gurdwaras or churches – they should be left alone. Whatever anger, whatever frustration they have, it should not be shown on these buildings. These are places where we pray for all.

“If you want to protest, there are avenues, you can go protest at Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square, outside parliament.”

The Kremlin has admitted that Vadim Krasikov, the assassin freed by Germany in a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), essentially an acknowledgment that his 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin was a state-ordered hit.

It also hinted that he was linked to Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.

“Krasikov is an FSB employee,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters, adding that he had “served with some of the people working in the president’s security detail”.

Krasikov was one of eight Russians released from jails in the west and returned to Moscow on Thursday as part of a complex exchange deal in which 16 people were freed from Russian custody, including the US reporter Evan Gershkovich and several Russian opposition politicians.

Those involved in the negotiations have said that for Putin, Krasikov had always been the most important part of the puzzle, with the Kremlin insisting he would have to be part of any exchange.

Putin was described as “maniacal” about returning Krasikov from Germany by one source in Moscow with knowledge of the negotiations – and Friday’s admission goes some way to explaining why.

It is the first time the Kremlin has admitted one of its serving operatives is behind a murder on foreign soil. Previously, Moscow has always denied involvement in cases such as the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the 2018 attempted murder of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, or numerous hits on Chechen exiles in Istanbul, however implausible.

When Krasikov killed the Chechen exile Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019, the Kremlin denied all responsibility. “I categorically reject any link between this incident, this murder and official Russia,” Peskov said at the time. However, in an interview earlier this year, Putin referred to Krasikov as a “patriot” who had “liquidated a bandit”.

Krasikov and the other seven returnees to Russia – a mix of spies and those serving time on criminal charges – were given a hero’s welcome in Moscow after the exchange in Ankara, with a red carpet, a guard of honour and Putin arriving in person to offer embraces and bouquets of flowers as they stepped off the plane.

Peskov confirmed that Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who had been posing as an Argentine couple in Slovenia, were in fact Russian “illegals” – deep-cover spies who can spend decades abroad pretending to be foreigners. The couple’s two children, who had been taken into foster care when their parents were arrested in late 2022, travelled to Russia with them.

“The children of the illegals who arrived yesterday only found out they were Russian on the plane from Ankara. They do not speak Russian,” Peskov said. Putin greeted them in Spanish with the words “buenas noches” when they disembarked the plane.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who personally gave Joe Biden the green light for Berlin’s end of the deal, defended the prisoner swap as justified by a “duty to protect lives”, as Germany agonised over the high price of releasing Krasikov.

While during the cold war there were countless secret agent swaps across the Glienicke “Bridge of Spies”, the grand bargain pulled off on Thursday required Germany to open the prison gates for a man a Berlin court found had committed a “state-ordered killing” on German soil.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British citizen who was also freed by Moscow in the swap, acknowledged how difficult it had been for Germany to agree to release Krasikov but said the deal had saved “16 human lives”.

He also speculated that opposition leader Alexei Navalny might still be alive had the west agreed the swap with the Kremlin sooner.

“It’s hard for me not to think that, maybe if these processes had somehow moved quicker – if there had been less resistance – that the Scholz government had to overcome in terms of freeing Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would have been here and free,” he told reporters.

Another opposition activist, Ilya Yashin, described the deal as a “difficult dilemma for western governments”.

“It encourages Putin to take more hostages,” said Yashin, who was imprisoned for denouncing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Yashin had previously said he did not want to be exchanged, arguing that the voice of a Kremlin critic was more powerful in Russia than outside. But on Friday he vowed to continue his activism from abroad.

“I don’t know how to do Russian politics outside of Russia, but I will try to learn,” he said.

The prisoners’ liberation was greeted with joy and relief throughout Germany, but also hand-wringing by rights groups and outrage from the murder victim’s family.

Scholz, who broke off his holiday to greet 13 of the former detainees as they emerged from a private plane in Cologne, said he had no choice, given that the lives of at least some of the hostages had been at stake.

“No one took this decision lightly to expel a convicted murderer sentenced to life in prison after only a few years in custody,” he said.

After a “moving” meeting with those released, Scholz said speaking with them “now, in freedom, removed any doubt” over whether it had been the right thing to do.

Michael Roth, an MP in Scholz’s Social Democrats, said sometimes it was necessary “on humanitarian grounds to make a deal with the devil”.

The justice minister, Marco Buschmann, of the libertarian Free Democratic party, said the government had been required to make a “painful concession” in the form of Krasikov’s release order, a first, and one he personally had to sign.

Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, welcomed the exchange but warned of the precedent it could set.

“The Russian government could feel emboldened for further political arrests and human rights violations without having to fear consequences,” the deputy general secretary of the group’s German chapter, Christian Mihr, said.

Khangoshvili’s family reacted angrily to the swap, saying they had not been informed in advance. “It was devastating news for us relatives,” the family said in a statement through their lawyer, Inga Schulz.

“On the one hand, we are happy that someone’s life has been saved. At the same time, we are very disappointed that there is apparently no law in the world, not even in the countries in which the law is meant to be the highest authority.”

Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP in the opposition Christian Democrats and a former Bundeswehr [German armed forces] officer, said the “danger of sabotage or terrorism by Russia could now rise” because Putin had shown that his henchmen had no consequences to fear.

The news magazine Der Spiegel said Putin had apparently calculated it would have been much harder to win Krasikov’s release if Donald Trump won the US election in November, given the former president’s frosty relationship with Berlin.

“Putin should have no problem finding helpers to hunt down undesirable people in the west,” it said. “They know: the boss will always get them home.”

Trump on Friday asserted that the swap was a “win for Putin” and that he as president would have been able to bring the Americans home without having to agree to an exchange.

“As usual, it was a win for Putin or any other country that deals with us, but we got somebody back, so I’m never going to be challenging that,” he told Fox. “We wouldn’t have had to pay anything. We wouldn’t have had to let some of the great killers of the world go, because that’s what’s happened, as you know.”

He hinted without evidence that the US had provided more than prisoners to Russia in the exchange.

“When you start paying money … when you start doing that, and all of a sudden you have a lot of hostages taken prisoner, so to speak, and you’ll have a lot of things happening,” Trump said. “It’s very bad. It’s a very bad precedent.”

Talks on a release of western inmates and Navalny in a swap for Krasikov had been held as early as 2022, soon after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

But, at the time Berlin resisted, with the hawkish foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, leading opposition against a more amenable Scholz.

Baerbock, in particular, raised concerns that if Navalny were exchanged for Krasikov, Putin’s nemesis would probably soon return to Russia and be arrested again, leaving the west empty-handed, Die Zeit reported.

However, Scholz finally agreed to a major prisoner swap in February, telling Biden, “For you, I will do this.”

But by the end of that month Navalny was dead in a Russian penal colony. His fate was widely seen in the west as a warning for the other inmates in Russia, leading German diplomats and intelligence officials to redouble efforts to make a deal.

The Kremlin has admitted that Vadim Krasikov, the assassin freed by Germany in a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), essentially an acknowledgment that his 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin was a state-ordered hit.

It also hinted that he was linked to Vladimir Putin’s personal guard.

“Krasikov is an FSB employee,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters, adding that he had “served with some of the people working in the president’s security detail”.

Krasikov was one of eight Russians released from jails in the west and returned to Moscow on Thursday as part of a complex exchange deal in which 16 people were freed from Russian custody, including the US reporter Evan Gershkovich and several Russian opposition politicians.

Those involved in the negotiations have said that for Putin, Krasikov had always been the most important part of the puzzle, with the Kremlin insisting he would have to be part of any exchange.

Putin was described as “maniacal” about returning Krasikov from Germany by one source in Moscow with knowledge of the negotiations – and Friday’s admission goes some way to explaining why.

It is the first time the Kremlin has admitted one of its serving operatives is behind a murder on foreign soil. Previously, Moscow has always denied involvement in cases such as the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the 2018 attempted murder of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, or numerous hits on Chechen exiles in Istanbul, however implausible.

When Krasikov killed the Chechen exile Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019, the Kremlin denied all responsibility. “I categorically reject any link between this incident, this murder and official Russia,” Peskov said at the time. However, in an interview earlier this year, Putin referred to Krasikov as a “patriot” who had “liquidated a bandit”.

Krasikov and the other seven returnees to Russia – a mix of spies and those serving time on criminal charges – were given a hero’s welcome in Moscow after the exchange in Ankara, with a red carpet, a guard of honour and Putin arriving in person to offer embraces and bouquets of flowers as they stepped off the plane.

Peskov confirmed that Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who had been posing as an Argentine couple in Slovenia, were in fact Russian “illegals” – deep-cover spies who can spend decades abroad pretending to be foreigners. The couple’s two children, who had been taken into foster care when their parents were arrested in late 2022, travelled to Russia with them.

“The children of the illegals who arrived yesterday only found out they were Russian on the plane from Ankara. They do not speak Russian,” Peskov said. Putin greeted them in Spanish with the words “buenas noches” when they disembarked the plane.

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who personally gave Joe Biden the green light for Berlin’s end of the deal, defended the prisoner swap as justified by a “duty to protect lives”, as Germany agonised over the high price of releasing Krasikov.

While during the cold war there were countless secret agent swaps across the Glienicke “Bridge of Spies”, the grand bargain pulled off on Thursday required Germany to open the prison gates for a man a Berlin court found had committed a “state-ordered killing” on German soil.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British citizen who was also freed by Moscow in the swap, acknowledged how difficult it had been for Germany to agree to release Krasikov but said the deal had saved “16 human lives”.

He also speculated that opposition leader Alexei Navalny might still be alive had the west agreed the swap with the Kremlin sooner.

“It’s hard for me not to think that, maybe if these processes had somehow moved quicker – if there had been less resistance – that the Scholz government had to overcome in terms of freeing Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would have been here and free,” he told reporters.

Another opposition activist, Ilya Yashin, described the deal as a “difficult dilemma for western governments”.

“It encourages Putin to take more hostages,” said Yashin, who was imprisoned for denouncing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Yashin had previously said he did not want to be exchanged, arguing that the voice of a Kremlin critic was more powerful in Russia than outside. But on Friday he vowed to continue his activism from abroad.

“I don’t know how to do Russian politics outside of Russia, but I will try to learn,” he said.

The prisoners’ liberation was greeted with joy and relief throughout Germany, but also hand-wringing by rights groups and outrage from the murder victim’s family.

Scholz, who broke off his holiday to greet 13 of the former detainees as they emerged from a private plane in Cologne, said he had no choice, given that the lives of at least some of the hostages had been at stake.

“No one took this decision lightly to expel a convicted murderer sentenced to life in prison after only a few years in custody,” he said.

After a “moving” meeting with those released, Scholz said speaking with them “now, in freedom, removed any doubt” over whether it had been the right thing to do.

Michael Roth, an MP in Scholz’s Social Democrats, said sometimes it was necessary “on humanitarian grounds to make a deal with the devil”.

The justice minister, Marco Buschmann, of the libertarian Free Democratic party, said the government had been required to make a “painful concession” in the form of Krasikov’s release order, a first, and one he personally had to sign.

Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, welcomed the exchange but warned of the precedent it could set.

“The Russian government could feel emboldened for further political arrests and human rights violations without having to fear consequences,” the deputy general secretary of the group’s German chapter, Christian Mihr, said.

Khangoshvili’s family reacted angrily to the swap, saying they had not been informed in advance. “It was devastating news for us relatives,” the family said in a statement through their lawyer, Inga Schulz.

“On the one hand, we are happy that someone’s life has been saved. At the same time, we are very disappointed that there is apparently no law in the world, not even in the countries in which the law is meant to be the highest authority.”

Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP in the opposition Christian Democrats and a former Bundeswehr [German armed forces] officer, said the “danger of sabotage or terrorism by Russia could now rise” because Putin had shown that his henchmen had no consequences to fear.

The news magazine Der Spiegel said Putin had apparently calculated it would have been much harder to win Krasikov’s release if Donald Trump won the US election in November, given the former president’s frosty relationship with Berlin.

“Putin should have no problem finding helpers to hunt down undesirable people in the west,” it said. “They know: the boss will always get them home.”

Trump on Friday asserted that the swap was a “win for Putin” and that he as president would have been able to bring the Americans home without having to agree to an exchange.

“As usual, it was a win for Putin or any other country that deals with us, but we got somebody back, so I’m never going to be challenging that,” he told Fox. “We wouldn’t have had to pay anything. We wouldn’t have had to let some of the great killers of the world go, because that’s what’s happened, as you know.”

He hinted without evidence that the US had provided more than prisoners to Russia in the exchange.

“When you start paying money … when you start doing that, and all of a sudden you have a lot of hostages taken prisoner, so to speak, and you’ll have a lot of things happening,” Trump said. “It’s very bad. It’s a very bad precedent.”

Talks on a release of western inmates and Navalny in a swap for Krasikov had been held as early as 2022, soon after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

But, at the time Berlin resisted, with the hawkish foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, leading opposition against a more amenable Scholz.

Baerbock, in particular, raised concerns that if Navalny were exchanged for Krasikov, Putin’s nemesis would probably soon return to Russia and be arrested again, leaving the west empty-handed, Die Zeit reported.

However, Scholz finally agreed to a major prisoner swap in February, telling Biden, “For you, I will do this.”

But by the end of that month Navalny was dead in a Russian penal colony. His fate was widely seen in the west as a warning for the other inmates in Russia, leading German diplomats and intelligence officials to redouble efforts to make a deal.

Kamala Harris on Friday said she was “honored” to have secured enough votes from delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.

Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates’ votes to become the party’s nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote.

“I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee,” Harris said during an online meeting of supporters that was broadcast live. Her ascent from running mate to party nominee caps a volatile few weeks in US politics that saw the party’s presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, end his bid for re-election following a disastrous debate performance that ignited a storm of calls from elected Democrats, donors and activists to step aside.

“With the support of more than 50% of all delegates just one day into voting, Vice-President Harris has the overwhelming backing of the Democratic party and will lead us united in our mission to defeat Donald Trump in November,” Harrison said in a statement. “But I want to be clear – there is still time for delegates to cast their ballots. I encourage every single delegate across the country to meet this moment and cast their ballot so that we head into our convention in Chicago with a show of force as a united Democratic party.”

In the video call, Harrison said the speed at which the party had coalesced around Harris was “unprecedented” and vowed the party would “rally around Vice-President Kamala Harris and demonstrate the strength of our party” at its convention in Chicago.

Before Biden dropped out, the party had opted to hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate him before the convention due to concerns about meeting a ballot deadline in Ohio. Harris will formally accept the nomination in person at the party’s convention, held from 19 to 22 August.

Republicans formally nominated Trump to be their presidential nominee for a third consecutive time at the party’s convention in Milwaukee last month, just days after the former president survived an assassination attempt. At the convention he unveiled his choice for running mate, the hard-right Ohio senator JD Vance.

Harris is expected to announce her running mate next week, after a lightning-fast vetting process. The vice-president is expected to interview a list of potential contenders over the weekend. Among the leading Democrats are the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, the Arizona senator Mark Kelly and the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg.

Earlier on Friday, Harris’s campaign announced that it had raised $310m last month, a stunning amount that was fueled in part by a surge in donations from women and young voters. The campaign said two-thirds of the haul came from first-time donors. It raised more than $200m during Harris’s first week as a presidential candidate, meaning most of the haul came after her elevation to the top of the ticket.

In a tweet on Friday, Biden said he “couldn’t be prouder” of Harris, whose selection as his vice-president he called “one of the best decisions I’ve made”.

“Let’s win,” he wrote.

The US military will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington braces for Iran and its regional allies to make good on a promise to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

After the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut the evening before, international diplomats have scrambled to head off a full-fledged regional war. Rising tensions have spurred a growing list of major airlines into cancelling flights to Tel Aviv or Beirut, including Lufthansa, Delta and Air India.

On Friday France urged its citizens to leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans to support a large-scale evacuation from the region if the war expands. The island nation helped tens of thousands of people leave during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, approved sending the additional Navy cruisers and destroyers – which can shoot down ballistic missiles – to the Middle East and Europe on Friday and the US will also send an additional squadron of fighter jets to the Middle East.

“Austin has ordered adjustments to US military posture designed to improve US force protection, to increase support for the defence of Israel and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The US military previously intensified deployments prior to 13 April, when Iran launched an attack on Israeli territory with drones and missiles. Israel successfully knocked down almost all of the roughly 300 drones and missiles with the help of the US and other allies.

It is thought that the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon could present unique challenges to any efforts by the US to intercept drones and missiles given the group’s vast arsenal and immediate proximity to Israel.

On Friday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the country was “in a state of very high readiness for any scenario”. The government had given ministers satellite phones in case Iran’s retaliation takes down communications, Israeli media reported.

Israel killed Shukr – Hezbollah’s second-in-command – in Beirut on Tuesday, a move it said was a response to deadly rocket fire last week on the annexed Golan Heights. Hours later, Haniyeh was killed in Tehran. Haniyeh’s death has not been officially claimed by Israel but it has been widely celebrated inside the country, including by top politicians and former security chiefs.

Iran and Hamas have both accused Israel of carrying out the killing and have pledged to retaliate. On Friday crowds gathered in Qatar’s capital, Doha, to bury Haniyeh, a day after a prayer ceremony in Tehran for the Hamas leader, who was the group’s chief negotiator in efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

The US president, Joe Biden, who has pushed hard for a ceasefire in recent months, said the killing was “not helpful”, in comments to journalists at a US airbase late on Thursday.

Biden added that he had a “very direct” conversation with Netanyahu about the need to reach a deal. “We have the basis for a ceasefire. He should move on it and they should move on it now.”

On Friday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the US did not believe escalation was inevitable.

“I think we are being very direct in our messaging that certainly we don’t want to see heightened tensions and we do believe there is an offramp here, and that is that ceasefire deal,” Singh said.

An Israeli delegation will travel to Cairo in coming days for negotiations to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, Netanyahu’s office said on Friday.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri commented on the announcement, telling Reuters: “Netanyahu does not want to stop the war and is using these empty statements to cover up his crimes and evade their consequences.”

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

One more final, one more gold, and one more Olympic record for Léon Marchand. This one was in the 200m individual medley, and when it was all over, in 1min 54.06sec, the roars carried far and wide across the city, even delaying the track races six miles away at the Stade de France because the cheering for him there was so loud. Back at the swimming, Marchand was all of a sudden so tired he could hardly raise an arm to celebrate. He hung on the lane divider, smiling, then finally hauled himself out of the pool to salute the crowd.

It was Marchand’s 11th race in six days, his fourth gold, and his fourth record. Great Britain’s Duncan Scott was closest to him, but truth be told that wasn’t very close at all. Scott won the silver in 1min 55.31sec. It was his eighth Olympic medal. Only Jason Kenny has won more for Great Britain.

Scott’s was Britain’s second silver of the night, after Ben Proud won one in the 50m freestyle. It was a sweet relief for him. Proud, 29, had won two world titles, but had finished fourth and fifth in his last two Olympic finals. In Paris, he was 0.05sec behind Australia’s Cam McEvoy, and if he felt a little regret immediately afterwards – “Maybe I’ll look back at the footage and kick myself a little bit because I could have been faster” – it soon gave way to satisfaction that he had won a medal at last. “It’s not gold but hey ho, I’m super happy.”

Scott was pretty phlegmatic, too. It was his second-fastest time. But Marchand was just that much faster. “I’d like to think I went head to head with Leon for a little bit of the race,” he said, “but the guy is the best 200m breaststroker in the world, the best 200 fly swimmer in the world, the best 200 medley swimmer in the world, and the best 400 medley swimmer in the world. It’s a real honour to be able to race him in this environment as well. The crowd were nuts. It was sensational to be a part of.”

Scott had finished second in Tokyo three years ago, too, and painful as it was for him to come runner-up again, it was some small consolation that he lost to one of the greatest to ever do it, and some small consolation, too, that he at least beat the man who had come in front of him last time, China’s Wang Shun. Wang, who finished third, is one of the 11 Chinese swimmers competing here in Paris who had previously tested positive for a trace amount of the banned performance-enhancer TMZ and been allowed to compete on the basis the authorities were satisfied it was caused by food contamination.

For the briefest moment, it looked as though Wang might beat Marchand. He was ahead of him after the butterfly leg, and right behind after the backstroke, but Marchand pulled away from him, and everyone else, during the breaststroke. By the time those 50m were over, he was so far in front that there was no way anyone was going to catch him on the freestyle. Marchand’s breaststroke is one of the great sights of the Games. he has a lovely, long, languid stroke, which somehow makes it look like he’s moving slower than everyone else even while he’s racing out in front of them. It’s as irresistible as the tide.

The 200m medley was the one gold Marchand wanted most of the four this week. His mother, Céline, swam the 200m medley at Barcelona in 1992, and finished 14th, and so did his father, Xavier, at Atlanta in 1996, when he was eighth, and Sydney in 2000, when he was seventh. Emmanuel Macron came along to watch the kid do what his parents never could, and he was shouting and roaring along with the thousands of other French fans in the arena. Whatever happens next, Marchand is one of the single biggest reasons why these Games will be remembered as a success in France.

That said, his victory may not even have been the most popular medal the country won last night. Twenty minutes earlier, Florent Manaudou won the bronze in the 50m free, behind Proud and McEvoy. Manaudou, 33, is the oldest male swimmer competing here, and, though he’s just about to lose the title, the most beloved too. He won gold in this event in London, then the silver behind Anthony Ervin in Rio. Then he quit the sport in an existential funk and spent the next two years playing handball in the French second division, which is the sort of eccentric move that can endear you to the French public.

He was back for Tokyo, where he came second again, and after that of course he had to hang on for these Games here in Paris. “Honestly, the highlight for me was sharing the podium with Florent Manaudou,” said Proud. “This is the fourth time he’s made the podium, he’s completed the set, so when I saw his name up there I just thought ‘Jesus Christ, that’s amazing’.” Swimming has so often been overshadowed by athletics at the Olympics, but here in Paris, Marchand, Manaudou and the French have raised it to a level that has not been seen since Beijing in 2008, when Michael Phelps won those eight gold medals.

And fittingly enough, it was, of course, Phelps’ old Olympic record from those very same Games that Marchand beat here. The king is dead, long live the king.

Donald Trump’s criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election was set to resume on Friday with narrowed charges, after the US supreme court ruling that gave former presidents broad immunity took effect and the case returned to the control of the presiding trial judge.

The formal transfer of jurisdiction back to the US district judge Tanya Chutkan means she can issue a scheduling order for how she intends to proceed – including whether she will hold public hearings to determine how to apply the immunity decision.

The nation’s highest court issued its ruling on Trump’s immunity claim last month. But the case has only now returned to Chutkan’s control because of the 25-day waiting period for any rehearing requests and an additional week for the judgment to be formally sent down.

How Chutkan proceeds could have far-reaching ramifications on the scope of the case, and the presidential election in November.

Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, including two counts of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, conspiring to defraud the government and conspiring to disenfranchise voters.

The alleged illegal conduct includes Trump pressing US justice department officials to open sham investigations, Trump obstructing Congress from certifying the election, including by trying to co-opt his vice president, Trump helping prompt the Capitol attack, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors.

But the supreme court decided that criminal accountability for presidents has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.

Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that Chutkan can decide whether the conduct is immune based on legal arguments alone, negating the need for witnesses or multiple evidentiary hearings, the Guardian first reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue the maximalist position that they considered all of the charged conduct was Trump acting in his official capacity as president and therefore presumptively immune – and incumbent on prosecutors to prove otherwise, the people said.

And Trump’s lawyers are expected to suggest that even though the supreme court appeared to contemplate evidentiary hearings to sort through the conduct – it referenced “fact-finding” – any disputes can be resolved purely on legal arguments, the people said.

In doing so, Trump will try to foreclose witness testimony that could be politically damaging, because it would cause evidence about his efforts to subvert the 2020 election that has polled poorly to be suppressed, and legally damaging because it could cause Chutkan to rule against Trump.

Trump’s lawyers have privately suggested they expect at least some evidentiary hearings to take place, but they are also intent on challenging testimony from people such as Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and other high-profile White House officials.

For instance, if prosecutors try to call Pence or his chief of staff, Marc Short, to testify about meetings where Trump discussed stopping the January 6 certification, Trump would try to block that testimony by asserting executive privilege and having Pence assert the speech or debate clause protection.

Trump has already been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, principally by convincing the supreme court to take the immunity appeal in the 2020 election subversion case, which was frozen while the court considered the matter.

The delay strategy thus far has been aimed at pushing the cases until after the November election, in the hope that Trump would be re-elected and then appoint as attorney general a loyalist who would drop the charges.

But now, even if Trump loses, his lawyers have coalesced on a legal strategy that could take months to resolve depending on how prosecutors choose to approach evidentiary hearings, adding to additional months of anticipated appeals over what Chutkan determines are official acts.

A spokesperson for Donald Trump blamed “Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors” for a bombshell report on Friday about a secret criminal investigation into whether Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the authoritarian ruler of Egypt, sought to give the former president $10m during his victorious 2016 White House run.

“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” Steven Cheung told the Washington Post, which published the report on Friday.

“None of the allegations or insinuations being reported on have any basis in fact. The Washington Post is consistently played for suckers by Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors peddling hoaxes and shams.”

The deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent, shadow government of agents, operatives and bureaucrats exists to thwart Trump. One of the theory’s chief propagators, Steve Bannon, has said it is “for nut cases”. Nonetheless, it remains popular on the US right and among Trump’s aides.

Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016. According to the Post, five days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, an organisation linked to Egyptian intelligence services withdrew $10m from a Cairo bank.

“Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt,” the Post said, “employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags.”

Four men “carried away the bags, which US officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of US currency”.

According to the Post, US federal investigators learned of the withdrawal in 2019, by which time they had spent two years investigating CIA intelligence that indicated Sisi sought to give Trump $10m.

Such a contribution would potentially have violated federal law regarding foreign donations.

This year, in a New York state case concerning hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, Trump was convicted on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records.

According to the Post, US investigators who discovered the $10m Cairo withdrawal “also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House to inject his campaign with $10m of his own money”.

Eight years on, with Trump running for president again, the Post report landed in the aftermath of the bribery conviction of Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey who took gold bars and cash from Egyptian sources.

Menendez faces a maximum sentence of 222 years.

While in office, Trump repeatedly praised Sisi, over objections from US politicians concerned about the Egyptian’s authoritarian rule.

As described by the Post, the US investigation which uncovered the Cairo withdrawal was questioned by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Ultimately, a prosecutor appointed by Barr closed the inquiry without criminal charges being filed.

Later, as the 2020 election approached, CNN reported that a mysterious DC courthouse hearing in 2018 – involving prosecutors working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election – concerned an Egyptian bank.

A Trump spokesperson, Jason Miller, said then: “President Trump has never received a penny from Egypt.”

On Friday, Cheung, Trump’s current spokesperson, called the Post report “textbook fake news”.

The justice department, the US attorney in Washington DC and the FBI declined to answer questions, the Post said.

The prosecutor who closed the case, Michael Sherwin, said he stood by his decision.

An Egyptian government spokesperson declined to answer the Post’s questions.

An anonymous government source told the Post: “Every American should be concerned about how this case ended. The justice department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads – it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.”