Closing summary
The US has claimed that North Korea delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Fighting on the eastern frontline, in Avdiivka, entered a fourth day as Russia seeks to regain the initiative in its biggest offensive in months. Ukraine’s top military command said that it had repelled more than 20 attacks over the past day around the town, while there were claims Ukrainian reservists were being sent in to shore up defences after initial Russian breakthroughs.
Vladimir Putin dismissed the idea that Russia damaged a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia and suggested such claims were made up to divert attention from what he said was a western attack on Nord Stream.
EU leaders meeting later in October will demand “decisive progress” on using Russian assets frozen by sanctions to help Ukraine, according to their draft statement.
Former Olympic champions Yelena Isinbayeva and Shamil Tarpischev – Russia‘s two International Olympic Committee members – have no contractual links to the country’s military and have not supported the invasion of Ukraine, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, said.
No final communique is expected to be released at the end of the International Monetary Fund’s meetings in Marrakech because of a disagreement on how to refer to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a European official said on Friday.
Updated
The White House has said that between 7 September and 1 October, a Russian-flagged ship transported cargo from a North Korean ammunition depot to a Russian port. From there, the cargo was allegedly carried to a Russian military warehouse, the BBC reports.
“We condemn [North Korea’s] supply of this military equipment to Russia,” the US national security adviser, Paul Kirby, told reporters. “We will continue to monitor any new arms supplies to Russia.”
Updated
US claims North Korea supplied military equipment to Russia
The US has claimed that North Korea has delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
Speculation about a possible North Korean plan to refill Russia’s munition stores drained in its protracted war with Ukraine flared last month, when the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un traveled to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin and visit key military sites, AP reports.
The White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said the US believed Kim was seeking sophisticated Russian weapon technologies in return for the munitions to boost North Korea’s nuclear programme.
BREAKING: US says #NorthKorea sent 300 shipping containers full of munitions to #Russiavia rail
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) October 13, 2023
Per US, containers traveled from #Najin, #DPRK to Dunay, #Russia between September 7 & October 1 pic.twitter.com/Q351MZVS7A
It comes after North Korea denounced a US aircraft carrier’s visit to South Korea on Friday, calling it a provocation that could bring “irrevocable, catastrophic circumstances.”
The nuclear-powered Ronald Reagan and its strike group arrived in the South Korean port of Busan on Thursday for a five-day visit, after joint exercises in nearby waters.
Updated
AFP has this dispatch from the town of Chasiv Yar, close to the eastern Ukraine frontline near Bakhmut.
Ukrainian artillery as well as incoming fire from Russians constantly sounded in and around this strategic town. “The hardest thing about our work is risking your life,” said chief inspector Dmytro Kuzmenko, who has the rank of major. “Last year I was wounded near the police station in Bakhmut. I have three shrapnel wounds from shelling.”
There are only 600 people, all adults, still living among the ruins of Chasiv Yar, out of a pre-war population of 12,000. He was glad that “people have shown some common sense and got their children out”, he said. In other places devastated by the war, some families had insisted on staying.
Evacuating children from areas under fire was “painstaking and difficult work”, he said. It involved “complex measures, which luckily proved effective here”, he said. “But that is not the case everywhere.”
Those still living in Chasiv Yar are mainly older people who “have nowhere to go”, said Kemran Azermanov, deputy chief of the Bakhmut district police department. They “know it will be difficult to start everything over in a different city or region at their age”, he added. Yet those who stay face enormous hardships.
“There is no electricity, no phone network, no water,” said Azermanov. “During winter it will be a bit difficult.”
Updated
The fate of anyone who returns to Russia from abroad depends on how they have behaved, Vladimir Putin said when asked about the future of Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman.
Fridman was reported to have returned to Russia this week for the first time since the start of the Ukraine conflict. The Russian senator Dmitry Rogozin has asked investigators to check reportsthat Fridman may have provided funding for Ukraine’s armed forces, reports Reuters. If someone has behaved immorally and returns, “they will feel it”, Putin told reporters.
One of Russia’s most prominent businessmen, Fridman and his partners made $14bn from the sale of the oil company TNK-BP to the state-controlled Rosneft in 2013. He subsequently moved to the UK. His lawyers claim his business has been destroyed by EU sanctions and he regards the war as a tragedy.
The EU says its evidence shows Fridman is a co-founder of Alfa Group, which controls Russia’s largest retailer and private bank, and has close ties to the Russian political regime, we reported earlier this year. It was these connections that allowed him “to acquire state property as a reward from Alfa Group for his loyalty to the political regime”, according to the EU.
Updated
Russia has hit six civilian ships, 150 port and grain facilities and destroyed more than 300,000 tonnes of grain since Moscow quit a deal allowing safe Black Sea exports of Ukrainian grain, the government in Kyiv said on Friday.
It said 21 vessels had already been loaded with grain for export and had used the “humanitarian” grain corridor in the Black Sea announced by Kyiv in August. It said 25 ships had entered Ukrainian ports for loading.
Earlier, Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, vowed to increase the security of the corridor for grain exports during a visit to the port of Odesa.
Vladimir Putin also said Russia would continue to export large quantities of grain next year despite western sanctions, after a record harvest of 158m tons of arable crops last year.
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, have vowed to improve Ukraine’s air defences and increase the security of a “humanitarian corridor” for grain exports during a visit to the Black Sea port of Odesa.
Zelenskiy said Kyiv was working to strengthen its position in the Black Sea so that it continue grain exports, which are vital to ensuring budget revenues after a surge in defence spending as a result of Russia’s invasion last year.
“Today we had a busy day in our beautiful city of Odesa, which was dedicated to global and security issues,” Zelenskiy told a joint press conference with Rutte. “We are working with partners to protect properly these corridors, and strengthen our positions in the Black Sea, and it also applies to the protection of Odesa’s skies and in the region as a whole.”
The Odesa region has came under frequent Russian missile and drone attacks, and Zelenskiy and Rutte visited a damaged port. In August, Ukraine announced a new humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea after Moscow’s withdrawal from a deal allowing the safe export of grain from Ukraine‘s Black Sea ports, reports Reuters.
It has sought safe shipping routes as airstrikes inflicted damage on its port and grain export infrastructure near the Black Sea and on the Danube River.
Zelenskiy described the airstrikes as “vile tactics” and thanked Rutte for a new air defence package which would include missiles for Patriot air defence systems.
Updated
Putin dismisses claims over mystery Baltic pipeline damage
Vladimir Putin has dismissed the idea that Russia damaged a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia as “rubbish” and suggested such claims were made up to divert attention from what he said was a Western attack on Nord Stream.
Helsinki said this week that a subsea gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable connecting Nato members Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea had been damaged in what may have been a deliberate act.
Asked by reporters in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, about claims that Russia could have been involved, Putin said: “That is complete rubbish.” Until recently, Putin said, he had not even known such a pipeline existed as it was so small. He also suggested that it might have somehow been snagged by an anchor, some sort of hook or an earthquake, and suggested that Finland investigate, reports Reuters.
Putin said it was clear that suggestions that Russia was involved were “done only to distract attention from the terrorist attack carried out by the West against Nord Stream”.
Russia says blasts on the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in September 2022 were carried out by the US and Britain, without providing evidence. Washington and London have denied any involvement in what they - along with Sweden, Denmark and Germany - have called an act of sabotage.
Leading US newspapers have reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has denied Ukraine attacked them.
In a February blog post, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh cited an unidentified source as saying that US navy divers had destroyed the pipelines with explosives on the orders of president Joe Biden.
Updated
Huge fiscal spending on the military is fuelling short-term economic growth in Russia, but looking at the longer term picture the outlook is “dim”, the International Monetary Fund’s European director Alfred Kammer has said.
The IMF said this week that significant spending and resilient consumption in a tight labour market would support gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 2.2% this year in Russia, but it lowered its forecast for 2024 growth to just 1.1%.
“We are seeing a considerable fiscal impulse in Russia from ramping up spending related to the war,” Kammer told a press conference at the IMF meeting in Marrakesh. “That is really a short-term impact you are going to see of fuelling growth in the economy.”
“When we look at the longer-term picture on Russia, the outlook is dim because [of)]sanctions, because the reduction of [the] technology transfer will hurt the productive capacity and productivity growth in the medium term.”
Russia is throwing resources at its military, with draft budget plans showing defence spending will account for almost one third of all expenditure next year, as Moscow diverts funds from schools and hospitals to finance its “special military operation” in Ukraine, reports Reuters.
Updated
Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who fell ill in France where she lives in exile after protesting the offensive in Ukraine on Russian state TV, said tests had not revealed poisoning, AFP reports.
Several Kremlin critics have reported being poisoned, and on Thursday French prosecutors opened an investigation into suspected poisoning after Ovsyannikova felt unwell.
She posted on Telegram:
I’m feeling much better now.
Most of the test results are back. There are no toxic substances in the blood. We’re not talking about poisoning.
No white powder had been found, she added, contrary to what was first reported.
Posting from what appeared to be her hospital bed, she said:
The deterioration of my condition was so sudden that the French police decided to investigate.
She said prosecutors opening an investigation was “not surprising, since Putin’s Russia has long been associated with war and the poisoning of politicians and journalists”.
Ovsyannikova, who fled Russia last autumn, had held up a protest placard during the main evening news programme on Russia’s Channel One in March 2022.
In her absence, a Russian court sentenced her to more than eight years in prison this month for a separate protest she made outside the Kremlin four months later.
Several high-profile opposition politicians have said they were poisoned for political reasons, including Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images coming from Ukraine.
EU leaders meeting later in October will demand “decisive progress” on using Russian assets frozen by sanctions to help Ukraine, according to their draft statement.
The US and Britain last month signalled support for an EU plan to tax windfall profits generated by frozen Russian sovereign assets to finance Ukraine as Kyiv battles a full-scale Russian invasion that started in February 2022.
Earlier, we reported the UK government has requested the Bank of England look how Russian sovereign assets could be used to fund Ukraine’s war effort.
Finance ministers of the G7 have estimated $280 billion worth of such assets had been frozen, and expected more work in the coming months to find legally sound ways of using them to aid Ukraine, reports Reuters.
The EU’s own work among its 27 member states on harnessing frozen Russian state assets for Ukraine has been repeatedly delayed due to legal concerns, among others, after the bloc’s sanctions on private Russian wealth were challenged in courts.
Belgium, an EU country but not a G7 member, said earlier this week it would spend 2.3 billion euros on supporting Ukraine that it expects to collect in 2023-24 taxes on Russian central bank assets immobilised on its soil.
A British-led defence alliance of several European countries has invited Ukraine to observe its exercises, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference today.
Along with Britain, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), is comprised of mainly Baltic and Nordic countries including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, and is intended for operations in the Baltic Sea area, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, reports Reuters.
“Ukraine has been offered observer status for all JEF’s exercises during 2024 and 2025, in order to strengthen their capacity and include their experiences,” Kristersson said at a JEF summit on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy took part in the meeting via video link.
Kristersson said JEF member states’ defence ministers will meet to discuss how to protect critical infrastructure, particularly under water. The group said in June it would increase cooperation to detect possible threats to critical undersea and offshore infrastructure.
Finland and Estonia are investigating damage to the Baltic connector gas pipeline and a data cable in the Baltic Sea last week, which Finnish authorities said was probably caused by “outside activity,” raising concerns about the security of energy supply in the wider Nordic region.
Explosions last year to the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic sea between Russia and Germany remain officially unexplained.
The UK government has requested the Bank of England look how Russian sovereign assets could be used to fund Ukraine’s war effort, chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the BBC.
This is an illegal war. We need to do everything we can to make sure that Russia cannot continue to fund it.
Speaking at the IMF’s annual conference in Marrakech, Hunt told the BBC that finance ministers from the G7 had discussed “whether Russian sovereign assets could be used to fund Ukraine’s defence. Anything to make sure that Putin knows in the end he won’t be able to afford this kind of aggression.”
The G7 yesterday said it would explore profits on seized Russian assets could be taxed to support Ukraine “in compliance with applicable laws”. However, there could be possible legal complications in effectively gifting seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
But Hunt said Russia’s war in Ukraine was illegal.
Britain will always act within international law, but the G7 have asked central banks to look at what might be possible because we are absolutely clear this is an illegal war, this war is against international law.
We do have to be honest with people that [the war in Ukraine] is going to take some time, and that’s why in the meantime we need to be very prudent and cautious with the way we manage the British economy.
Russian state news outlet Tass has cited an official who claims Ukrainian forces are sending reserve forces to bolster its troops in Avdiivka
An advisor to the head of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, Yan Gagin, said:
According to our data, the enemy transferred reserve forces from the Artemovsk direction to the Avdeevsk direction. The act is reckless and almost useless. Dragging reserves from direction to direction will not lead to victories, but will only give rise to new losses of personnel.
On Tuesday, Gagin claimed that some positions on the first line of defences had been abandoned by Ukrainian forces in the face of a large-scale, multi-pronged Russian attack.
Ukrainian officials have said dozens of attacks in Avdiivka and nearby areas have been repelled. “They launched their offensive on a wide front,” Serhiy Tsekhovsky, an officer, told the BBC.
“Since the beginning of the invasion, we haven’t dealt with such an intensive attack [in the area near Avdiivka]. They are using multiple rocket launchers, artillery, tanks and infantry - all at the same time.”
The New York Times has the latest on the fourth day of fighting on the eastern frontline, in Avdiivka, as Russia seeks to regain the initiative in its biggest offensive in months.
Ukraine’s top military command said that it had repelled more than 20 attacks over the past day around the town, a linchpin of regional defenses whose capture by Russia would ease the way to the nearby, larger cities of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka.
Local officials described round-the-clock fighting and residential buildings that had been reduced to rubble by shelling, with heavy bombardments and the deployment of large numbers of troops and tanks by Russian forces.
“It was a hot night in Avdiivka,” Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the town’s military administration, told Ukrainian television, adding that Russian forces were closing in on the area with infantry and striking with artillery. “The assaults do not stop, day or night.”
The attack on Avdiivka, already devastated by Russian shelling during the war, may indicate that Moscow is trying to regain the initiative on the battlefield, after months on the defensive after Kyiv launched its counteroffensive this summer in the south.
“The enemy sees Avdiivka as an opportunity to gain a significant victory and turn the tide of hostilities,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern forces, said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s military has claimed that many Russian troops and armored vehicles have already been eliminated in the assault, in which Russian forces have captured less than two square miles, according to geolocated footage analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Mr. Barabash said Russian forces were trying to encircle Avdiivka, which sit in a strategic pocket surrounded to the north, east and south by Russian positions. He reported intense fighting to the north and south of the town, adding that one civilian had been killed and several others wounded over the past day.
Former Olympic champions Yelena Isinbayeva and Shamil Tarpischev – Russia‘s two International Olympic Committee members – have no contractual links to the country’s military and have not supported the invasion of Ukraine, IOC president Thomas Bach said today.
It comes after the IOC’s executive board yesterday suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) for recognising regional organisations from four territories annexed from Ukraine. Asked why the IOC members from Russia had not been banned as well, Bach said an internal ethics investigation showed no reason to do so.
What we have to have in mind is the position of IOC members. They are not representatives of Russia in the IOC. They are the representatives of the IOC in Russia.
In order to ensure the equal treatment between officials and athletes we have nevertheless submitted these IOC members in Russia to an assessment by the IOC ethics commission. The understanding of the ethics commission is that neither Ms Isinbayeva nor Mr Tarpischev had contractual links with the Russian military or security agencies or supported the war in Ukraine.
Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic pole vault champion, has received several honours by the Russian armed forces during her career and has also been repeatedly pictured in uniform.
Bach said while the decision blocked Russian Olympic officials from attending Olympic meetings or taking part in the Olympics, athletes with Russian passports could continue competing as neutrals.
The IOC has yet to decide if Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete at next year’s Paris Olympics. “We will keep monitoring the developments. There is no time pressure,” said Bach when asked about a decision for next year’s games in France.
Updated
Russian president Vladimir Putin has dubiously claimed that sanctions on Russia and reduced EU imports of oil and gas from the country could explain the eurozone’s sluggish economic growth.
Vladimir #Putin: European countries have effectively turned down 🇷🇺 energy. For many years, our resources have played a significant role in ensuring the economic and social prosperity of #EU. Perhaps, not entirely, but our energy accounted for much of their well-being. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/RohGEoaVav
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) October 13, 2023
Vladimir #Putin: Restrictive measures have been imposed on banking services, freight, insurance, and price caps have been established on 🇷🇺 oil and gas. European countries are now paying more for resources. As a result, the #EU's economy is hovering near the zero-growth mark. 2/2
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) October 13, 2023
No final communique is expected to be released at the end of the International Monetary Fund’s meetings in Marrakech because of a disagreement on how to refer to Russia‘s war in Ukraine, a European official said today.
The official, who was present at the talks in Marrakech, said Nordic, European and Baltic nations were blocking agreement because they considered the wording - a reproduction of language approved by a G20 summit last month - was “too watered down”.
Instead, the IMF communique will be replaced tomorrow by a simple “chairman’s statement” summing up what took place at the meetings, leaving any disagreements open.
The official said there had been a proposal for the communique to adopt the wording agreed by G20 leaders last month at a summit in New Delhi.
That called in general terms for all countries to adhere to the UN charter on territorial integrity. It highlighted the human suffering of the Ukraine war while noting there were “different views and assessments of the situation”.
Updated
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the Joint Expeditionary Conference that he “stressed the need for geopolitical stability in Europe and the entire Euro-Atlantic, new forms of cooperation, and strengthening of existing ones”.
If an enemy of freedom has significant resources and boundless cynicism - like Russia, Hamas, or other terrorists – then free nations need a really full-scale defence. Fast, flexible, not limited by outdated procedures, and one that can be maintained as long as it is needed.
Ukraine, being on the road to Nato, is developing a system of security guarantees. And I thank those of you who joined us in this process. Geopolitical stability is the basic element for all other forms of stability.
In my online address to the Joint Expeditionary Force Summit on Gotland, a critical location for the security of the entire region, I stressed the need for geopolitical stability in Europe and the entire Euro-Atlantic, new forms of cooperation, and strengthening of existing ones. pic.twitter.com/Hv8VvDiozi
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 13, 2023
Updated
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would continue to export large quantities of grain next year despite Western sanctions.
Last year, as you know, there was a historically record harvest of 158 million tons [of cereals]. This year it will also be very big with over 130 millions. Russia is likely to retain the first place in the world in wheat exports. Our grain exports will also be the same as last year with not less than 50-60 million tons.
Putin was taking part in a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an organisation gathering some post-Soviet states. “Our friends and colleagues in the CIS have needs [for Russian grain], all of which will be fulfilled,” said Putin.
Early last month, the Russian leader said his country was nearing a deal that would secure free grain to six African countries, AFP reports.
Simultaneously Moscow has been complaining that the West is imposing indirect restrictions on its grain and fertiliser exports by limiting its access to global payment systems and insurance. It said this pushed it to withdraw from a deal designed to ensure safe grain exports via the Black Sea.
Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
Russian forces have continued to pummel the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka from the ground and air on Friday, the fourth day of intense fighting in the biggest offensive by Russian forces in months. Ukraine said its forces were holding their ground but Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said the town was under constant attack from air, artillery and large numbers of troops.
Video posted on social media by Maskym Zhorin, a Ukrainian military commander, showed smoke pouring from the shells of shattered, abandoned apartment buildings in the eastern town of Avdiivka. Empty streets were littered with rubble and smashed installations
Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary for energy resources said Russia would never again be viewed as a reliable energy supplier, a day after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow because of its war in Ukraine. Speaking at an online briefing ahead of next week’s US-Japan Energy Security Dialogue, Pyatt also said the United States and its partners in the Group of 7 were committed to denying Russia any energy revenues
Norway, Europe’s largest gas supplier, is closely monitoring the progress of a probe into unexplained damage on a Baltic Sea gas pipeline, having already stepped up security at its energy installations after the Nord Stream blasts last year.
Finland said it could not exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday the US would support Finland and Estonia as they probed the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline and parallel Estlink telecommunications cable between the two countries.
The International Olympic Committee on Thursday suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for recognising regional organisations from four territories annexed from Ukraine. Russia’s National Olympic Committee denounced the decision, calling it counterproductive and politically motivated.
Ukraine claims it has thwarted an attempt overnight by a Russian saboteur group to cross its north-eastern border in the Sumy region, Serhiy Naev, commander of the joint forces of the armed forces of Ukraine, said on Thursday. “The saboteurs tried to cross the state border of Ukraine and intended to move further towards one of the civilian critical infrastructure facilities,” he wrote on Telegram. The eight-member group was repelled by Ukrainian fire, he said.
Russia expects its military and defence cooperation with Kyrgyzstan to expand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin said during a visit to a Russian airbase near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in his first trip outside Russia since the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning of an exiled Russian journalist who staged a high-profile protest against the war in Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up a placard reading “Stop the war” on Russian television last year, became unwell after opening the door to her apartment in Paris and finding a powdered substance, AFP reported.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday recognised the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a “genocide”. The text on the 1932-33 “Holodomor” was voted through almost unanimously with 73 votes in favour and one against at the meeting in Strasbourg, which followed a similar resolution approved by the European Parliament in December.
Romanian authorities said Thursday they had found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine on to a Nato member country.
US military officials displayed what they said were pieces of Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine to UN member states on Thursday – evidence, according to the Pentagon, of growing ties between Iran and Russia. Tehran has denied western accusations that it is supplying Russia with large quantities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), some armed, to use in its invasion of Ukraine.
The UN human rights council on Thursday extended the mandate of its rapporteur on rights violations in Russia by a year, in a second diplomatic defeat for Moscow in three days. The UN’s top rights body adopted a resolution brought by several European countries to prolong Bulgarian human rights expert Mariana Katzarova for another year by 18 votes to seven.
Khaybar Akifi, a journalist, was severely wounded in a drone attack that killed his four-year-old daughter and his wife’s parents in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, several media officials said. The head of state television channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, said Akifi was in a coma.
Russian forces have continued to pummel the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka from the ground and air on Friday, the fourth day of intense fighting in the biggest offensive by Russian forces in months, Reuters reports.
Ukraine said its forces were holding their ground but Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said the town was under constant attack from air, artillery and large numbers of troops.
Barabash said in televised comments:
The battles have been going on for four days now. Fierce and really non-stop … They are firing from everything they have available.
It was a very hot night in Avdiivka. There were several airstrikes on the city itself … the attacks do not stop day or night.
The attack on Avdiivka is one of the few big assaults Russia has mounted since Ukrainian forces launched a counteroffensive in early June to try to drive out Russian troops occupying large swathes of territory in the east and south.
In the last few months, Russia has focused on holding back Ukrainian forces who have made slow progress through Russian minefields and heavily fortified trenches, and on carrying out airstrikes on port and grain infrastructure.
But Kyiv says Moscow has massed troops around Avdiivka and sent in heavy equipment, enabling it to hit back hard.
It says Moscow aims to encircle and capture the town, just northwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk, and draw in Ukrainian troops from other fronts.
Updated
My colleague Charlotte Higgins in Kharkiv has this report on the Kharkiv opera house and how its company of performers continues to perform, often for troops and volunteers, in war-torn city on the Ukraine frontline.
On 1 March last year, during a ferocious bombing campaign against the city, Russia hit Kharkiv’s main Svobody (Freedom) Square, severely damaging the city hall. Buildings for blocks around were affected – including the opera house. As the bombings continued over the following days and weeks, it had many of its windows blown out, was mauled by shrapnel, and hit by debris from intercepted missiles.
Ukraine successfully defended Kharkiv. But missile strikes, though less intense than during those first spring months of 2022, continue almost daily in Ukraine’s second city, with air raid alarms frequent and visits to bomb shelters routine for residents.
Unlike Kyiv, Kharkiv is not protected by a Patriot air defence system capable of shooting down missiles as they approach. Duhinov was speaking two days after two S300 missiles exploded in the city at about 11pm, and the day before a major attack in which six hit the southern suburbs just after 5.30am. And in early October, the Russians hit the city centre, a few blocks from the opera house, killing a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, much of the opera house’s company was evacuated, said Duhinov. Ballet dancers, opera singers and orchestral musicians, plus backstage staff – about 250 people in total – got out to Lithuania. They have been touring ever since, in Slovakia, Italy, France, Belgium and Moldova, earning as much income as they can.
In Kharkiv, a tiny handful of the company is in situ: 20 musicians, 16 chorus members, four dancers and nine operatic soloists. Ten of the company are serving in the army. One member of the technical department has been killed on the frontline.
In this, the 148th season of the company, the tiny core of remaining artists is battling on in Kharkiv to bring live music, song and dance to the city – it is “the only company that’s working and bringing concerts to Kharkiv”, said Duhinov.
“Our mission No 1 is to preserve the company and the theatre,” he said. “If the artists don’t work they lose their skills. They are like athletes – they need to keep in training.”
Read the full story here:
Ukrainian troops are holding their ground near the eastern town of Avdiivka in heavy fighting against Russian forces, the head of the president’s office said on Friday.
Andriy Yermak said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian forces were holding their positions “in difficult fighting” despite a large number of Russian reinforcements.
Norway monitors progress of probe into damage to Baltic Sea gas pipeline
Norway, Europe’s largest gas supplier, is closely monitoring the progress of a probe into unexplained damage on a Baltic Sea gas pipeline, having already stepped up security at its energy installations after the Nord Stream blasts last year.
Sunday’s incident in the Gulf of Finland, when a pipeline and a data cable were damaged due to “outside activity” according to Finnish authorities, has stoked concerns about the security of energy supply in the wider Nordic region, Reuters reports.
Norway exported more than 120 billion cubic metres of gas in 2022 to the European Union and Britain, mainly via a system of 22 pipelines spreading over more than 8,800 km (5,470 miles).
A spokesperson for Gassco, which operates Norway’s gas pipeline network, said:
We are now in close dialogue with the relevant security authorities and are following the situation closely to assess relevant security measures.
There have been no reported incidents in Norway, the spokesperson added.
On Wednesday, Norwegian police said it had increased patrols around onshore installations on the west coast, which include the Mongstad oil terminal and two gas processing plants, Kollsnes and Kaarstoe.
“The security level has been raised since the events of last year, and still is,” said a spokesperson for oil lobby group Offshore Norge, referring to the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.
Still, the undersea infrastructure is so vast it is very difficult to protect.
On Thursday, after a two-day Nato meeting during which the Baltic Sea incident was discussed, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said:
We speak about thousands of kilometres of cables or pipelines.
Of course there is no way to have military presence along all these pipelines and infrastructure all the time.
Updated
Ahead of the Joint Expeditionary Summit (JEF) on the Baltic island of Gotland, Sweden, Rishi Sunak and other political leaders were invited to view military equipment that has been given to Ukraine.
Russia will never again be viewed as reliable energy supplies, says US assistant secretary for energy resources
Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary for energy resources said Russia would never again be viewed as a reliable energy supplier, a day after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow because of its war in Ukraine.
Speaking at an online briefing ahead of next week’s US-Japan Energy Security Dialogue, Pyatt also said the United States and its partners in the Group of 7 were committed to denying Russia any energy revenues, Reuters reports.
The US on Thursday imposed the first sanctions on owners of tankers carrying Russian oil priced above the G7’s price cap of $60 a barrel, in an effort to close loopholes in the mechanism.
Pyatt told reporters:
It’s very clear to me that Russia is never again going to be viewed as a reliable energy supplier.
In the case of our G7 partners in particular, we are also committed to work jointly to deny Russia future energy revenues, and target in particular investments and projects growing Russia’s future energy revenue.
Russia has played down the impact of Western sanctions, saying they are used by the United States to eliminate Moscow as a competitor in global energy supplies.
Asked about purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by some Asian countries, Pyatt said that unlike oil, gas exports were not covered by Western sanctions “so this is a matter of how different countries accommodate their energy mix and seek to reduce their exposure to Russia, to Russian supplies”.
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The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American non-profit research group and thinktank, said geolocated footage showed Russia had advanced in some villages southwest and northwest of Avdiivka this week.
But encircling Avdiivka was likely to require more forces than Russia has committed to its offensive, it said.
Oleksandr Hetman, a Ukrainian military analyst, said Russian forces were pouring resources into a drive on Avdiivka to draw Ukrainian forces away from an advance in the south that could disrupt Moscow’s supply network along a key rail line.
Hetman told Ukrainian NV Radio:
That is why they are moving all their forces there (to Avdiivka). They are attacking in other sectors in order to halt our offensive.
Russia has also intensified airstrikes on Danube River ports in the southern Odesa region in recent weeks, attacking Kyiv’s main route for food exports since Moscow quit a deal allowing shipments via the Black Sea in July.
In the latest overnight attacks, a military spokesperson said a grain storage facility had been hit in the Odesa region. She said some grain had been damaged but did not say how much.
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Social media video by Ukrainian military commander shows smoke in Avdiivka
Video posted on social media by Maskym Zhorin, a Ukrainian military commander, showed smoke pouring from the shells of shattered, abandoned apartment buildings in the eastern town of Avdiivka. Empty streets were littered with rubble and smashed installations, Reuters reports.
Kyiv says Moscow has redirected many soldiers and large amounts of equipment to the Avdiivka area, showing it can hit back over four months into a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south that has encountered stiff Russian resistance.
Ukrainian special operations forces said Kyiv’s troops had “foiled the plans of the crazed enemy, repelled all attacks and held their positions”.
Avdiivka, which is home to a big coking plant in the south-west of the Donetsk region and lies just northwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk, has become a symbol of resistance, holding out against Russian troops who invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and helping ensure Moscow has been unable to gain full control of the region even though it says it has annexed it.
Ukrainian forces had been defending Avdiivka since long before last year’s invasion, holding the line against Russian-backed militants who took control of territory in east Ukraine in 2014 after Russian forces seized Crimea. Just over 1,600 residents of a pre-war population of 32,000 remain, but shelling ruled out a mass evacuation, Barabash said.
The attack on Avdiivka is one of the few big offensives Moscow has launched in months as its troops focus on holding back Kyiv’s counteroffensive, which has made slow progress through vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified trenches.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in areas including Avdiivka but gave few details.
Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern group of forces, said Russia saw Avdiivka as an opportunity to win a significant victory and “turn the tide of fighting”.
He said:
Today the capture or encirclement of Avdiivka is probably the most it can achieve at this stage.
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US military officials displayed what they said were pieces of Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine to UN member states on Thursday – evidence, according to the Pentagon, of growing ties between Iran and Russia, AFP reports.
The US mission to the UN said representatives from more than 40 countries attended the event, where Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials said the debris included parts of Iranian Shahed 101, Shahed 131 and Shahed 136 drones found in Ukraine.
According to her office, the US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said at the event:
These are not replicas. These are the real thing. These are the weapons of war that Iran has transferred to malign actors.
Iranian officials have made no secret of their ambition to expand the sale of these attack drones. And now, they are in Russian hands, being used against civilians in Europe.
Tehran has denied western accusations that it is supplying Russia with large quantities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), some armed, to use in its invasion of Ukraine.
DIA officials previously showed pieces of what they said were Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine in Washington in August. This time, they displayed the shells of two Shahed 131s, one they said was used in Ukraine in the fall of 2022 and the other found in Iraq in 2021.
Describing the Iran-Russia relationship as “deeply disturbing”, a DIA analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to the two drones’ similar design and components as proof Iran made them both.
Further evidence that the two UAVs are both Iranian, according to another military intelligence official, is their “honeycomb structure.”
The official said:
We are almost certain that Iran is the only country to use the honeycomb-like structure.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Fierce fighting has been reported around the eastern town of Avdiivka after Moscow launched one of its biggest military offensives in months this week.
On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces were holding their ground on the third day of battle, but municipal officials said the Russian attacks were relentless.
Ukrainian officials described scenes of destruction in and around the town amid round-the-clock Russian attacks. “Everything is so difficult and tense. For three days, there as been no letup in battles, day or night,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of the city’s military administration, told Espreso TV.
“The enemy is using all available means: artillery, grad (missile launchers), mortars and everything else. We are not talking about isolated strikes. No one counts them any longer. This is endless shelling.”
Avdiivka has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, holding out against Russian troops who invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and helping ensure Moscow has been unable to gain full control of the region even though it says it has annexed it.
In other key developments:
Finland said it could not exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday the US would support Finland and Estonia as they probed the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline and parallel Estlink telecommunications cable between the two countries.
The International Olympic Committee on Thursday suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for recognising regional organisations from four territories annexed from Ukraine. Russia’s National Olympic Committee denounced the decision, calling it counterproductive and politically motivated.
Ukraine claims it has thwarted an attempt overnight by a Russian saboteur group to cross its north-eastern border in the Sumy region, Serhiy Naev, commander of the joint forces of the armed forces of Ukraine, said on Thursday. “The saboteurs tried to cross the state border of Ukraine and intended to move further towards one of the civilian critical infrastructure facilities,” he wrote on Telegram. The eight-member group was repelled by Ukrainian fire, he said.
Russia expects its military and defence cooperation with Kyrgyzstan to expand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin said during a visit to a Russian airbase near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in his first trip outside Russia since the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning of an exiled Russian journalist who staged a high-profile protest against the war in Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up a placard reading “Stop the war” on Russian television last year, became unwell after opening the door to her apartment in Paris and finding a powdered substance, AFP reported.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday recognised the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a “genocide”. The text on the 1932-33 “Holodomor” was voted through almost unanimously with 73 votes in favour and one against at the meeting in Strasbourg, which followed a similar resolution approved by the European Parliament in December.
Romanian authorities said Thursday they had found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine on to a Nato member country.
US military officials displayed what they said were pieces of Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine to UN member states on Thursday – evidence, according to the Pentagon, of growing ties between Iran and Russia. Tehran has denied western accusations that it is supplying Russia with large quantities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), some armed, to use in its invasion of Ukraine.
The UN human rights council on Thursday extended the mandate of its rapporteur on rights violations in Russia by a year, in a second diplomatic defeat for Moscow in three days. The UN’s top rights body adopted a resolution brought by several European countries to prolong Bulgarian human rights expert Mariana Katzarova for another year by 18 votes to seven.
Khaybar Akifi, a journalist, was severely wounded in a drone attack that killed his four-year-old daughter and his wife’s parents in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, several media officials said. The head of state television channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, said Akifi was in a coma.
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