Summary of the day
Here is the summary of the key developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict today:
Russia and Ukraine have conducted a major prisoner of war exchange just one week after a previous swap was shelved when a Russian Il-76 transport plane was shot down. Russia and Ukraine both said that around 200 prisoners were exchanged on Wednesday, although the two sides disagreed about the exact figures.
The EU expects to reach 52% of its target to send 1m rounds of shells to Ukraine by March this year, while the bloc plans to train another 20,000 soldiers, said the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Russian troops were holding ground on the outskirts of the east Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, an embattled industrial hub.
Ukraine claimed to have carried out another drone attack on an oil facility deep inside Russian territory, according to a military intelligence source.
Vladimir Putin called for an international investigation into the downing last week of an Il-76 military transport plane in the Belgorod region on Russia’s border with Ukraine. The Russian president said that the plane had been struck with missiles fired from a US-supplied Patriot air defence system, which Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied.
Olaf Scholz and four other European leaders admitted that the EU has “fallen short” of its goals to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition on the eve of an emergency EU summit of EU leaders designed to break the deadlock between member states and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over a €50bn aid package.
The EU must show “clear commitment” to Ukraine, which needs more ammunition, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels.
The Kremlin said that it was monitoring the situation around Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, after western and Ukrainian media outlets said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was trying to oust Zaluzhny.
Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told military manufacturers to “stop fooling around” and further increase the production of self-propelled artillery systems during a visit to arms-producing factories in the Urals.
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Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings, the military has said.
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Updated
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will visit Nato member Turkey to meet President Tayyip Erdogan on 12 February, a Turkish official has said.
Putin’s visit will be his first to a Nato member since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin’s scope to travel abroad has been limited since March last year when the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him for the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a war crime. Russia denied the charge and called the move outrageous, but said it was legally void in any case because Russia is not a member of the ICC.
Turkey is also not a party to the Rome statute of the ICC, so Putin can travel to Turkey without fear of being arrested under the warrant.
Turkey has sought to maintain good relations with both Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine. It has provided military support to Ukraine and voiced support for its territorial integrity, but also opposes sanctions on Russia in principle.
Ankara is seeking to convince Russia to return to the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative after Moscow withdrew last July, ending a year of protected exports from Ukrainian ports amid the war. Erdogan said alternatives to the deal could not provide a lasting solution.
Updated
Ukraine claims to have carried out drone attack on Russian oil facility
Ukraine carried out another drone attack on an oil facility deep inside Russian territory, a military intelligence source in Kyiv told AFP on Wednesday.
Kyiv has ramped up strikes on Russian oil and gas facilities over the past two months, part of what it has called “fair” retaliation for Russian strikes on its own energy infrastructure.
The claim comes after the governor of Saint Petersburg said there had been a loud blast at an industrial site outside the northern city.
Local media meanwhile reported that S-400 missiles systems had shot at a drone that crashed on an oil storage facility in the Nevsky district.
“It was a GUR operation,” the source told AFP referring to Ukraine’s military intelligence services. The source said the target was used for “military purposes”.
Ukraine, nearing the third year of war with Russia, posted a current account deficit of $9.8bn (£7.7bn) in 2023 compared with a surplus of $8bn (£6.3bn) in 2022, the central bank said on Wednesday.
It said weak exports, rising imports and a smaller share of grants in international financial aid were key reasons for the deficit.
Updated
EU expects to reach half of ammunition target for Ukraine by March
The EU expects to reach 52% of its target to send 1m rounds of shells to Ukraine by March this year, according to the latest production data compiled by the commision, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said on Wednesday.
Speaking after an EU ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Josep Borrell also said EU countries plan to train another 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers, on top of 40,000 already trained.
Updated
Ground commander Syrskyi 'refused Zaluzhnyi's job', claims source
Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, was offered the job of replacing his boss Valeriy Zaluzhnyi as commander of the armed forces, but declined, a source familiar with the matter has told Reuters.
Ukrainian media reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Gen Zaluzhnyi, head of the Ukrainian army, to step aside this week, but that he refused.
His exit as army chief would represent a huge shake-up in the Ukrainian military, which is fending off multiple Russian attacks in the east as uncertainty grows over the future of vital US and European Union support.
The source, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, was unable to say exactly how or when the job offer was communicated to Syrskyi.
The Ukrainian general staff and president’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ukrainian media tipped Syrskyi and military spy chief Kyrylo Budanov as two possible successors to Zaluzhnyi.
Updated
Putin says Russia is holding ground in Avdiivka
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday Russian troops were holding ground on the around the east Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, an embattled industrial hub.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Russia launched a costly bid in October to seize the town, that has been caught up in fighting since 2014 after it briefly fell to Moscow-backed separatists.
Putin said in a televised event that Moscow’s forces “broke through the enemy’s defenses and reached the outskirts of Avdiivka.”
They captured 19 houses and are holding them.
The mayor of Avdiivka told AFP last week that Russian forces entered the war-battered town for the first time, but were pushed back.
Russian forces control territory to the north, east and south of Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of around 32,000 people.
Ukraine has said its forces were fending off attacks and holding out against Russia’s efforts to surround the town.
The capture of Avdiivka would provide a much needed victory for Russia to bring home as the second anniversary of its offensive and the March presidential election approaches.
Updated
International court of justice rules that Russia violated UN treaty
The international court of justice (ICJ) on Wednesday found Russia had violated some parts of a UN anti-terrorism treaty by not investigating financial support for separatist groups in eastern Ukraine in 2014, but did not order compensation as requested by Ukraine.
The United Nations’ top court declined to rule specifically on alleged Russian responsibility for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, as Kyiv had asked it to do.
The ICJ also ruled that Russia had violated the UN anti-discrimination treaty by failing to protect education in the Ukrainian language in Crimea.
Enrolment in education in the Ukrainian language plummeted after Russia in 2014 declared that it had annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the UN’s top court said.
The court did not, however, grant Ukraine the compensation it had demanded from Russia, and rejected other claims of discrimination against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians after the annexation.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will visit Nato member Turkey to meet with President Tayyip Erdogan on 12 February, a Turkish official said on Wednesday.
Erdogan will travel to Egypt on 14 February, the official also said, after the two countries upgraded their diplomatic relations by appointing ambassadors last year following a decade of tension.
Updated
Turkey and Ukraine have signed an accord that will allow Turkish construction firms to take part in the reconstruction of Ukrainian infrastructure damaged amid Russia’s invasion, the two countries said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports:
Turkey shares a maritime border with both Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea and has good ties with both. The Nato member opposes Russia’s invasion, as well as Western sanctions against Moscow.
In a meeting in Istanbul, Turkish Trade Minister Omer Bolat, Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu, and Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov signed a document setting out the parameters for a “Turkish-Ukrainian Reconstruction Task Force”.
Bolat said the three ministers had discussed the role Turkey “will undertake in the reconstruction of Ukraine”, and added the two countries would use the task force, which was formed under a 2022 memorandum of understanding on Ukraine’s reconstruction, to determine projects in Ukraine and evaluate financing conditions.
He said at the document signing ceremony:
This will provide an important legal basis for efforts for the reconstruction of Ukraine. We are ready to cooperate with third countries as well.
Kubrakov said the main areas in need of reconstruction were the housing and transport sectors, including roads, bridges and railways, and Ukraine’s water transport infrastructure. He added that he believed the efforts would also boost bilateral trade.
Putin asks for international investigation into Belgorod plane downing
Vladimir Putin has called for an international investigation into the downing last week of an Il-76 military transport plane in the Belgorod region on Russia’s border with Ukraine.
The Russian president said that the plane had been struck with missiles fired from a US-supplied Patriot air defence system.
Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane and of killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers it said were en route to be swapped for Russian prisoners of war.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it downed the plane, and has demanded proof of who was on board.
Updated
The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has played down fears that a re-election of former US president Donald Trump would weaken the defence alliance as it works to ensure robust support for Ukraine.
Stoltenberg said he did not think a second Trump presidency would jeopardise US membership in Nato.
He told CNN:
I believe that the United States will continue to be a staunch NATO ally, regardless of the outcome of the US election, because it is in the US interest.
I worked with him for four years and I listened carefully, because the main criticism has been about the Nato allies spending too little on Nato.
So the message from the United States that European allies had to step up has been understood and they are really moving in the right direction
Republican Trump, a fierce critic of Nato when he was president, has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the alliance, complaining that the United States was paying more than its fair share.
Stoltenberg, who has been pushing member states to boost defence spending, said more of the allies are increasing their military contributions.
Trump has continued to criticise the alliance, saying over the weekend while campaigning that he did not believe Nato countries would support the United States if it were attacked. Nato’s treaty contains a provision that guarantees mutual defence of member states if one is attacked.
On the war in Ukraine, Trump has called for de-escalation and has complained about the billions spent so far. US Senate talks on a border security deal that some have set as a condition for additional Ukraine aid have encountered growing opposition among Republicans aligned with Trump.
Updated
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, vowed Wednesday to rally European partners to cobble together support for Ukraine “so huge” that it would weigh on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s calculations.
Agence France-Presse reports:
The pledge by the German leader, once criticised for dragging his feet on arming Kyiv, came with fears growing that support from Ukraine’s biggest weapons supplier, the United States, could fall away.
He told the German parliament ahead of an EU summit aimed at shoring up military support for Kyiv:
We will do everything to ensure that the joint contribution from Europe is so huge that Ukraine can build on it and that Putin would not be able to count on our support waning at some point.
In recent weeks, Scholz had ramped up calls for other EU nations to dig deeper for Ukraine.
Germany has become Ukraine’s second biggest armaments supplier after a sputtering start. Much of its contributions like Leopard tanks had been made only after public haranguing from other allies.
Even now, Scholz comes under fire for refusing to provide the long-range Taurus missiles sought by Kyiv.
Scholz added that it “would be hubris” to imagine that Germany could shoulder the weight alone without the United States.
“We are only a middle-sized power,” he said.
Updated
Russia and Ukraine have conducted a major prisoner-of-war exchange just one week after a previous swap was scuttled when a Russian Il-76 transport plane was shot down and exploded in a fiery crash along the border, writes the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth.
Russia and Ukraine both said that around 200 prisoners were exchanged on Wednesday, although the two sides disagreed about the exact figures. Ukraine said that it had returned 207 of its personnel in the swap, while Russia said that each side had handed over “exactly” 195 POWs.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote on Telegram:
Our people are back. 207 of them. We return them home no matter what.
He published photos showing Ukrainian soldiers hugging, making telephone calls, and crying after the swap. Many were holding yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags.
Zelenskiy continued:
We remember each Ukrainian in captivity. Both warriors and civilians. We must bring all of them back. We are working on it. The Ukrainian team has done another excellent job.
Russia’s defence ministry released a statement in which it confirmed the swap and said that “exactly 195 Ukrainian Armed Forces prisoners of war have been handed over” for the return of 195 captured Russian soldiers.
President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would continue such exchanges and that Kyiv had indicated it was open to more.
Wednesday’s swap showed an unexpectedly quick return to prisoner exchanges after Russia accused Ukraine of shooting down an Il-76 transport plane last week shortly before a similar swap was set to take place.
Russia said that there were Ukrainian POWs on board the plane and accused Ukraine of intentionally targeting the flight. But Moscow has not released proof that there were prisoners aboard the plane or a confirmed flight manifest. Ukraine said it had no information about prisoners aboard the plane but confirmed plans for a swap and accused Russia of putting its servicemen at risk before the swap. Both sides have ordered an investigation into the crash.
Updated
Russia has claimed that Ukraine’s leaders are divided after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, reportedly tried to pressure his popular armed forces chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to stand down.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in Moscow that reports of the attempted dismissal exposed “growing differences” between Ukraine’s civilian and military leadership.
Rumours have swirled across Ukrainian media this week that Zelenskiy was moving to fire Zaluzhnyi, who has headed the armed forces since before Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Various reports suggested Zaluzhnyi would be replaced by Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence.
Citing sources in Zelenskiy’s office and entourage, Ukrainian news website Zn.ua reported on Tuesday that the president met commander-in-chief Zaluzhnyi on Monday to suggest he stand down and write a letter of resignation.
Zaluzhnyi was offered another role – either as an adviser or ambassador, according to different reports.
He rejected the proposal and the president did not dismiss him, Zn.ua reported.
Zelenskiy’s office has denied it planned to remove Zaluzhnyi and the country’s defence ministry said the reports were “not true” in a post on social media.
Zelenskiy himself has not commented on the reports – which some have seen as a leak to test public opinion about the idea of a change in military leadership.
Differences between the two men were thrust into the spotlight last year, when Zaluzhnyi said the war had ground to a stalemate in a high-profile interview with the Economist.
Zelenskiy publicly rejected that assertion, in the first sign of a possible rift between the president and his commander-in-chief.
In Moscow on Wednesday, Peskov said the possible standoff was the inevitable result of Ukraine’s bogged-down armed forces.
He said:
It’s obvious that the failed counteroffensive and problems on the fronts are leading to growing differences between representatives of the Kyiv regime – both the military leadership and the civilian one.
These differences will grow as Russia’s special operation continues successfully.
Neither side has made a significant territorial gain in more than a year.
Updated
Zelenskiy says 207 Ukrainians returned
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said on Telegram that 207 Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia have returned in the prisoner swap deal.
He posted:
Our people are home.
Updated
Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war, Moscow announces
The Russian defence ministry has announced the return of 195 Russian prisoners of war from Ukraine, in exchange for the same number of Ukrainian PoWs.
Reuters reports:
The Russian defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday it had completed an exchange deal with Ukraine under which each side got 195 soldiers back and that its own soldiers would be flown to Moscow to receive medical and psychological treatment.
It was cited by the RIA state news agency as saying that the United Arab Emirates had played a role in brokering the deal.
“On January 31, as a result of the negotiation process, 195 Russian servicemen who were in mortal danger in captivity were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, exactly 195 prisoners from the armed forces of Ukraine were handed over,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
It was the first such exchange since the crash of a Russian military transport plane last week that Moscow says was carrying 65 Ukrainian soldiers ahead of a planned exchange.
Russia says Ukraine shot down the plane with a ground-to-air missile and that all 74 people on board were killed.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it downed the plane, and has demanded proof of who was on board.
Updated
Here’s a summary of the day so far:
Olaf Scholz and four other European leaders admitted that the EU has “fallen short” of its goals to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition on the eve of an emergency EU summit of EU leaders designed to break the deadlock between member states and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over a £50bn aid package.
The EU must show “clear commitment” to Ukraine, which needs more ammunition, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels.
The Kremlin said that it was monitoring the situation around Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, after western and Ukrainian media outlets said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was trying to oust Zaluzhny.
Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told military manufacturers to “stop fooling around” and further increase the production of self-propelled artillery systems during a visit to arms-producing factories in the Urals.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings, the military has said.
Updated
The United Nations’ top court will rule today on whether Russia violated an anti-terrorism treaty by funding pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, including those who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.
Kyiv says Russia also violated a human rights treaty by discriminating against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, the peninsula which Russia declared annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine had asked the International Court of Justice to find Russia guilty of breaching obligations under the two UN treaties, which both countries have signed, and to order it to pay reparations.
In a hearing at the court in The Hague last June, Russia dismissed Ukraine’s allegations as fiction and “blatant lies“. Lawyers for Moscow denied systematic human rights abuses in Ukrainian territory that it occupies and rejected the accusation that it violated the U.N. treaty against the financing of terrorism.
Kyiv took Russia to the United Nations highest court in 2017, before Russia’s full scale invasion.
In the case, which has taken almost seven years, Russia is accused of equipping and funding pro-Russian forces, including rebels who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.
In Crimea, Ukraine says Russia was trying to erase the culture of ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians.
The court’s judgments are final and without appeal but it has no way to enforce its rulings.
The US under secretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday for talks amid growing uncertainty over US economic and military assistance to Kyiv as the war with Russia approaches its third year.
The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, said on social media platform X:
“Today we will meet government leaders, veterans and civil society to underscore our shared commitment to defeating Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
She published a picture of Nuland at Kyiv’s central railway station.
A warm welcome back to Ukraine, @UnderSecStateP Victoria Nuland. Today we will meet government leaders, veterans, and civil society to underscore our shared commitment to defeating Russian aggression in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/0eYQ7xCrqV
— Ambassador Bridget A. Brink (@USAmbKyiv) January 31, 2024
So far this year, Kyiv has not received military or financial aid from its two main backers, the US and EU.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff has said that the postponement of US assistance for Kyiv being debated in Congress would create a “big risk” of Ukraine losing the war with Russia.
President Joe Biden’s administration asked Congress in October 2023 for nearly $106bn to fund ambitious plans for Ukraine, Israel and US border security, but Republicans who control the House with a slim majority have opposed the package.
Updated
European leaders admit EU has 'fallen short' in ammunition supply to Ukraine
Olaf Scholz and four other European leaders have admitted that the EU has “fallen short” of its goals to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition, writes the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent Lisa O’Carroll.
On the eve of an emergency EU summit of EU leaders designed to break the deadlock between member states and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over a £50bn aid package, they have warned that Europe needs to intensify and accelerate its supplies to the frontline.
The leaders wrote in a letter published in the Financial Times on Wednesday:
“At the beginning of last year, the EU committed itself to an ambitious goal of supplying Ukraine with 1m artillery rounds before the end of March 2024. The hard truth: we have fallen short of this goal.
“Russia doesn’t wait for anybody and we need to act now. If Ukraine loses, the long-term consequences and costs will be much higher for all of us. We Europeans have a special responsibility. Therefore, we must act. Europe’s future depends on it.
Updated
The European Commission proposed on Wednesday measures to limit agricultural imports from Ukraine and greater flexibility towards rules on fallow land in a bid to quell protests by angry farmers in France and other EU members.
The commission said it would extend the suspension of import duties on Ukrainian exports for another year to June 2025. They were originally suspended in 2022 to help support Ukraine’s economy following Russia’s invasion.
French and Belgian farmers have set up dozens of blockades on highways and on access roads to a major container port on Wednesday to press governments to ease environmental rules and help protect them from rising costs and cheap imports.
Updated
Kremlin monitoring situation around Valery Zaluzhny after Ukraine military commander refused Volodymyr Zelenskiy request to step down
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it was monitoring the situation around Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, after western and Ukrainian media outlets said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was trying to oust Zaluzhny.
The media reports, attributed to unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter, said that Zelenskiy in a meeting on Monday had offered Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, a new role but that the general had refused.
Commenting on the situation around Zaluzhny, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
Of course we are following this. There are still a lot of questions. [But] one thing remains obvious – the Kyiv regime has a lot of problems, things are not going well there.
It is obvious that the failed [summer] counter-offensive and the problems on the front are leading to growing contradictions among the representatives of this Kyiv regime. These contradictions will grow as the special military operation continues to be successful.
Updated
European Union leaders will propose on Thursday holding an annual debate on a planned €50bn aid package for Ukraine in an effort to overcome opposition from Hungary, according to draft summit conclusions.
The aid is to cover Ukraine’s needs for 2024-2027. Hungary has been pushing for an annual review with a veto right, which other EU members oppose.
In a new update to the draft summit conclusions, the EU leaders would hold yearly debates on the aid package based on reports by the European Commission.
The January 30 draft conclusions, seen by Reuters, say:
The European Council will hold a debate each year on the implementation of the facility with a view to providing guidance on the EU approach towards the situation stemming from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Updated
Russia's defence minister orders military manufacturers to increase production
Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has told military manufacturers to “stop fooling around” and further increase the production of self-propelled artillery systems.
Shoigu visited arms-producing factories in the Urals industrial city of Yekaterinburg on Tuesday and said Russia was increasing production of air defence missiles after a series of Ukrainian drone attacks that have targeted cities and energy infrastructure.
In video published by news site RBC on Wednesday from Shoigu’s factories tour, he chided the management of one plant for not producing enough self-propelled artillery.
He told the plant’s bosses
Listen, stop fooling around here, guys. We got busy with this in 2022. We should have had these machines operating at full capacity in 2023.
I’d like to receive within a week a specific proposal on how we’ll reach the indicators set by the president (Vladimir Putin) ... this must be done, because all these orders are connected with the performance of very specific work on the battlefield.
The director said the factory had already increased production six-fold in the last two years.
Russia has placed its economy on a war footing and shifted defence plants to round-the clock production to meet the needs of its forces in Ukraine.
Its defence industry will supply the army with “several times” more military equipment this year than in 2022 and 2023, Interfax news quoted Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Krivoruchko as saying this month.
The Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin has said he submitted 105,000 signatures in his support to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to underpin his bid to challenge Vladimir Putin in an upcoming presidential election.
Reuters reports:
The CEC will check the authenticity and quality of the signatures submitted by Nadezhdin and other would-be candidates and announce next month who will join Putin on the ballot paper.
Putin’s victory is widely seen as a foregone conclusion, but Nadezhdin has surprised observers with his trenchant criticism of what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
After a series of heating outages across Russia during an unusually cold winter, Nadezhdin said earlier this month that the country would be able to afford to spend more on its citizens if it was not pouring so much money into the military.
As a candidate nominated by a political party, he needed to gather 100,000 signatures across at least 40 regions in order to stand in the 15-17 March election.
Putin, who has chosen to run as an independent rather than as the candidate of the ruling United Russia party, needs 300,000 signatures but has already collected more than 3.5m, according to his supporters.
Updated
The Russian deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, has said there are no talks, neither with Ukraine nor the European Union, about an extension of the Russian gas transit deal, which expires in the end of 2024.
Under the five-year deal agreed between Moscow and Kyiv in 2019, Russia exports gas to Europe via Ukraine and pays Ukraine for the usage of its pipeline network.
Updated
China’s new defence minister, Dong Jun, held a video call with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, today, according to a defence ministry statement, in his first public engagement since being appointed last month.
Reuters reports:
Former navy chief Dong’s appointment came after his predecessor, Li Shangfu, disappeared from public view in August, throwing China’s military diplomacy in doubt.
Dong told Shoigu that the Chinese and Russian militaries will “promote bilateral military relations to reach an even higher level, in order to play an even bigger role in upholding global security and stability”, according to the Chinese defence ministry readout.
Dong added that both militaries will “firmly respond to global challenges and continue to enhance mutual strategic trust”.
The role of China’s defence minister is to be the public face of the People’s Liberation Army in its engagement with the media and with other armed forces.
China and Russia’s close military ties have been the target of western scrutiny, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Beijing has refused to condemn.
Updated
The Swedishprime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said he will meet his Hungarian counterpart in Brussels on Thursday, though no time has been set for a formal meeting.
Kristersson told reporters:
We will meet there (Brussels) and have a decent chance to have a chat before a meeting later.
Hungary is the only Nato member not to approve Sweden’s application yet.
Updated
EU's Borrell says Ukraine needs more ammunition
Ukraine needs more ammunition, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels.
We have to show that our clear commitment with Ukraine remains and continues.
He added that it was important to clarify the situation and “know where we are now, where we will be by March and by the end of the year”.
Updated
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings, the military said on Wednesday.
The Air Force said in a statement the Iranian-made Shahed drones and also three Iskander missiles targeted five Ukrainian regions in the south and the east.
The southern military command said one person was injured and agricultural warehouses and a shop were damaged in the Mykolayiv region where five drones were shot down.
Details on damage in other regions were not immediately available.
The UN’s top court will hand down its verdict today in a case brought by Ukraine against Russia for alleged terrorism financing and racial discrimination after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Kyiv has accused Moscow of being a terrorist state whose support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine was a harbinger of the full-fledged 2022 invasion.
It wants Russia to compensate all civilians caught up in the conflict, as well as victims from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
The case predates Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The international court of justice (ICJ) will decide on Friday whether it has jurisdiction to rule in a separate case over that war.
Russia is also in the dock for alleged breaches of an international convention on racial discrimination due to its treatment of the Tatar minority and Ukrainian speakers in occupied Crimea.
During hearings on the case, Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accused Ukraine of “blatant lies and false accusations … even to this court”.
Top Ukrainian diplomat Anton Korynevych retorted that Russia was trying to “wipe us off the map”.
He said:
Beginning in 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then engaged in a campaign of cultural erasure, taking aim at ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.
The case started in 2017 and has seen lengthy exchanges in the ICJ’s Great Hall of Justice, plus thousands of pages of documents submitted to the judges.
Ukraine has also taken Moscow to court over maritime law and alleged human rights abuses.
In 2017, the ICJ rejected Kyiv’s initial request for emergency measures to halt Russia’s funding of separatists.
However it did order Moscow to refrain from imposing “limitations” on the Crimean Tatars or the use of Ukrainian on the peninsula.
The ICJ, based in The Hague, rules on disputes between states, and is separate from the international criminal court (ICC), which prosecutes war crimes by individuals.
ICJ rulings are final and cannot be subject to appeal but it has little power to enforce them. For example, it issued an emergency ruling ordering Russia to halt its invasion one month after tanks rolled over the border – to no avail.
Summary
Today’s Guardian live coverage of the war in Ukraine starts here. Let’s go through the major developments:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he might be dismissed by the president amid tensions between them. Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.
Ukraine will soon receive the first big batch of long-range missiles made by Boeing and Saab that promise to extend its range deep into Russian-held territory, according to reports. Ukraine needs the ground launched small diameter bomb (GLSDB) to supplement its 100-mile Atacms rockets from the US.
EU nations have decided to approve an outline deal that would deliver Ukraine the taxes and profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central bank assets that have been frozen outside Russia because of its war against Ukraine. It is seen as a first step towards using the Russian assets – there are also calls to seize the entire sum outright for Ukraine’s benefit.
Peers have criticised the UK government for failing to agree a deal with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to spend £2.5bn from his sale of the London football club.
EU leaders will meet on Thursday hoping to approve €50bn in support for Ukraine over the solitary opposition of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Russian attack drones hit Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Tuesday, slightly injuring three people, triggering a fire and causing damage to apartment blocks and infrastructure, local officials said.
Ukraine said it had carried out a successful cyber-attack that knocked out a server used by Russia’s defence ministry, temporarily disrupting communications for military units.
Ukraine is likely to face a tough year fighting Russia in 2024, the CIA director, Bill Burns, has written in Foreign Policy, arguing that to cut off US aid would be an error of “historic proportions”.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Tuesday that European countries must get ready to help Ukraine keep fighting “over the long term”, with or without American help. “If the United States were to make a sovereign choice to stop or reduce this aid, it should have no impact on the ground.”
The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, has said he expects Russia’s offensive on the eastern frontline to fizzle out by early spring. He credited them with only “a few advances across some fields” and near Avdiivka. “Now it’s the enemy’s move. It will end, and I think ours will start.”
A Ukrainian military spy official said on Tuesday that Russia was showing no willingness to return the bodies of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war that it said died in a military plane crash in the Belgorod region last week. Russia has produced no proof there were Ukrainian prisoners on the plane.
The Ukrainian government submitted to parliament on Tuesday an amended version of its bill to tighten army mobilisation rules. The parliament rejected the previous draft amid public outcry. A key provision in the legislation is a lowering to 25 from 27 the minimum age for the draft. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the army needs 450,000-500,000 more personnel.
There is growing evidence that Russia is using “shadow tanker fleets” to circumvent a western oil price cap, a committee of Britain’s House of Lords has warned.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Arguing Britain and its allies must maintain sanctions and military support for Ukraine for “as long as it takes”, the Lords committee urged “decisive action”.
A year ago the G7, European Union and Australia imposed the unprecedented price cap on Russian oil, hoping to starve President Vladimir Putin of revenue while ensuring he still supplied the global market. Initially successful, the US$60 (£47) per barrel price ceiling on Russian oil lost its impact once Moscow found new buyers and new tankers.
Companies based in the EU, G7 member states and Australia are banned from providing services enabling maritime transport, such as insurance, of oil above that price.
Recent assessments show Moscow has reduced its dependence on western shipping services and skirted the curb by building so-called shadow fleets of tankers and buying old ships while offering its own insurance.
The Lords’ European affairs committee reported:
We are concerned at the growing evidence that Russia has been able to circumvent sanctions, including through third states and uninsured shadow tanker fleets.
This is an issue where decisive action by the UK and its allies is needed.
The committee urged the government to detail “specific examples” of enforcement action.
But the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) is the latest to highlight the extent to which Russia is now able to get around the mechanism. In its December Russian oil tracker report released this month, it estimated “179 loaded Russian shadow fleet tankers left Russian ports in November 2023”.
Around 70% of the vessels were built more than 15 years ago, it said.
In October 2023, the shadow fleet was responsible for exports of around 2.3m barrels per day of crude oil and 800,000m barrels per day of petroleum products, according to the KSE.
The Lords committee welcomed the western sanctions regime imposed on Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, in particular that it had been “broadly aligned”, but warned:
Divergence between sanctions regimes results in gaps and loopholes, weakening their effectiveness; it should be as limited as possible.
