Summary of the day
It is approaching 6pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. Here are the latest headlines.
The human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament has said that the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian children deported by Russia now stands at over 19,540. Speaking at a human rights conference in Kyiv, Dmytro Lubinets said “this is against the background of the Russian Federation continuing to deport more and more groups of Ukrainian children from our state every day”. In March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children.
The UK’s government has said it has levelled “appropriate sanctions” after summoning the Russian ambassador following accusations that groups linked to the Russian FSB had been hacking prominent British figures as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”. UK deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden said Russia was “behind sustained hostile cyber operations aimed at interfering in parts of the UK democratic processes. This has included members of parliament, civils servants, thinktanks, journalists and NGOs”. The former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, has confirmed he was one of the figures targeted.
Four occupied regions of Ukraine that were “annexed” by the Russian Federation in late 2022 are expected to participate in Russia’s presidential election next year, after the date was set for 17 March. Russia’s Federation council confirmed the date this morning, with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, saying a decision will be made by 12 December on whether occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will take part.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has not yet announced whether he will run, however the 71-year-old is widely anticipated to secure a fifth term and remain in power until at least 2030. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an online statement urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin, saying “Putin views this election as a referendum on approval of his actions. A referendum on approval of the war. Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood.”
A driver was killed and grain infrastructure damaged by a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian grain infrastructure near the Danube River, the governor of Odesa region said on Thursday. Ukraine’s air force said 18 Shaheds were launched at the southern Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions in western Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the rest of the EU by threatening to block Ukraine membership talks unless it releases withheld funds to Hungary, MEPs have said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the EU,” said Pedro Marques, vice-president of the Socialist and Democratic group that represents 142 MEPs. “It is a wake-up call for the leaders that we cannot continue allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by some authoritarian leader,” he added.
Ukraine aims to bypass a border blockade by truck drivers in Poland by bringing in lorries on train platforms, an official from the national railways company said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday that cold weather had pushed power usage 2.7% above forecast levels, causing a deficit in the power system. It said the deficit was being filled by imports from Poland, Slovakia and Romania.
On Wednesday Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine. The vote increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.
Before the vote, President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in position to attack Nato allies and could draw US troops into a war. “If [Russian President] Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin would attack a Nato ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said. “We can’t let Putin win,” he said. Russia’s ambassador to the US has described Biden’s words as “unacceptable”.
Thank you for reading today, we will shortly be closing this live blog.
Reuters reports that the US has also imposed cyber-related sanctions on Andrey Korinets and Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko, the two men who were named by the UK’s foreign office earlier today as being involved in targeted cyber-attacks against prominent figures in British politics. Andrey Korinets is also known as Alexey Doguzhiev.
Members of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s team have said they placed a number of billboards up in Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities reading “Russia” and “happy new year,” with links and QR codes leading to the website of their campaign against the Russian president, titled Russia without Putin.
The Associated Press found that some of the billboards already had been taken down.
Updated
Ukraine aims to bypass a border blockade by Polish truck drivers by bringing in lorries on train platforms, Interfax Ukraine news agency has quoted an official from the national railways company as saying on Thursday.
Protests by Polish truckers started last month against the terms of EU access for Ukrainian lorries. They blocked the main land corridors into Ukraine, leading to higher prices for fuel and some food items as well as delays to drone deliveries to the Ukrainian army.
“Now we have a loaded train standing at the crossing with Hrubeshuv (on the Ukrainian-Polish border). We already have 23 loaded container wagons with lorries,” Valeriy Tkachov, the deputy director of the commercial department at the railway, was quoted as saying.
Reuters reported he said the Ukrainian and Polish sides were harmonising technical issues. “As soon as this test train passes and all is well, we will launch this on a mass scale,” Tkachov said.
Updated
Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent. She writes:
Viktor Orbán cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the rest of the EU by threatening to block Ukraine membership talks unless it releases withheld funds to Hungary, MEPs have said.
“This is a make-or-break moment for the EU,” said Pedro Marques, vice-president of the Socialist and Democratic group that represents 142 MEPs.
“It is a wake-up call for the leaders that we cannot continue allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by some authoritarian leader,” he added.
“At a moment in which the US Congress has just outvoted a proposal by Joe Biden to continue to support Ukraine, we cannot put ourselves in a situation where the Ukrainians see that we are also not capable of continuing to assist them.
“It also not acceptable, from my point of view, that anyone gets the perception that at the end of next week, Orbán got his way and got his €30bn [£25.7bn] in exchange for allowing the EU to continue to assist Ukraine. It is simple: we cannot trade money for values. It’s not acceptable.”
His comments came before a meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Orbán in Paris over dinner on Thursday.
He is expected to tell Orbán that to block the opening of talks with Ukraine will undermine the EU’s strategy to fight Vladimir Putin.
“This is a test of Europe’s strategic autonomy,” said a diplomatic source. Orbán’s dissent will send a signal to Putin “but also to the Americans”.
Marquez said the EU also needed to abandon its rule that decisions on enlargement should be unanimous, something that is supported by other member states.
“When you join the EU it means you are a democratic country. I guess we did not foresee that democracy could be corrupted from the inside,” he said.
Updated
A Russian court has extended the custody of two lawyers of the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny until 13 March, it said in a statement on Thursday.
The lawyers, Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev, have been charged with being members of an extremist group, Reuters reports.
Updated
The US president, Joe Biden, reaffirmed his commitment to Ukraine and called on Congress to “stand against the tyranny of Putin, stand for freedom”.
In a tweet, he wrote:
History will judge us harshly if we turn our back on freedom’s cause in Ukraine.
We can’t let Putin win.
History will judge us harshly if we turn our back on freedom’s cause in Ukraine.
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 7, 2023
We can’t let Putin win. pic.twitter.com/8ukz0fuxyB
Updated
The Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who had said he wanted to challenge Vladimir Putin in the presidential election in March, had his pre-trial detention extended for six months on Thursday, a Moscow court said.
Reuters reports that Girkin is accused of “public calls to commit extremist activity”.
Girkin was arrested in July. He is a former battlefield commander of Russia’s proxy forces in east Ukraine who was convicted by a Dutch court over the shooting down of MH17. His armed intervention, backed by Russia, marked the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine.
Girkin had become a popular Telegram blogger and commentator on the war. Like other pro-war nationalists, he had been critical of the Russian military’s bungling of the invasion, calling top generals ineffective and criticising the president and other top officials. He had called for Putin’s downfall, saying Russia “could not survive another six years” of his rule.
Updated
UK foreign secretary: we are exposing 'malign attempts' by Russia to 'threaten our democratic processes'
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, is in Washington today, where he is expected to later give a press conference alongside the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
Cameron, the UK’s former prime minister, has issued a statement about the UK government’s allegation of Russian hacking efforts. PA Media reports that he said:
Russia’s attempts to interfere in UK politics are completely unacceptable and seek to threaten our democratic processes. Despite their repeated efforts, they have failed.
In sanctioning those responsible and summoning the Russian ambassador today, we are exposing their malign attempts at influence and shining a light on yet another example of how Russia chooses to operate on the global stage.
We will continue to work together with our allies to expose Russian covert cyber activity and hold Russia to account for its actions.”
Updated
It is understood that there are hundreds of victims of attempted hacks by Russia across the UK, many being widely recognisable names – with personal email accounts being targeted, not just official emails.
PA Media reports that foreign office minister Leo Docherty said that impersonation attempts and “false accounts” had been made to compromise email accounts in the public sector and wider civil society to create a “believable approach seeking to build a rapport before delivering a malicious link”.
MPs in London were told sanctions would be imposed on two members of hacking group Star Blizzard after a National Crime Agency investigation. They were named by the Foreign Office as Andrey Stanislavovich Korinets, also known as Alexey Doguzhiev, and FSB intelligence officer Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko.
Docherty said the Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office to be told “these actions have consequences”. It is understood the ambassador was unavailable when summoned and officials instead met with a senior member of the Russian government to express concerns over the attempts to interfere in democratic processes.
The Russian embassy in London is yet to comment on the allegations, although yesterday it issued a fiery statement condemning a new round of sanctions on Russians connected with the war on Ukraine, calling them “illegitimate unilateral restrictions” and describing the announcement as “yet another act of poorly staged drama” by the UK.
Here are some of the latest news images sent over the news wires to us from Ukraine.
Here is the Guardian’s Whitehall editor Rowena Mason on those claims by the UK government that the FSB has been directing ‘cyber interference’ in British political life:
Russian spies have been targeting MPs, journalists and others with cyber hacking as part of a concerted attempt to meddle in British politics, a Foreign Office minister has said.
Leo Docherty, a minister under David Cameron, told the House of Commons that the Russian federal security service was using “cyber interference” to target politically connected people.
MPs have previously complained about being targeted by hackers, with Labour’s Ben Bradshaw saying in 2019 that he believed he had been subject to interference by Russia. The Russian government was also suspected in 2017 of being behind a cyber-attack on parliament that breached dozens of email accounts belonging to MPs and peers.
However, this is the strongest confirmation from the government that it believes Russia is currently trying to interfere in the UK’s democratic processes.
A damning report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee found in 2020 that the British government and intelligence agencies failed to conduct any proper assessment of Kremlin attempts to interfere with the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Read more here: Russian spies targeting UK MPs and media with ‘cyber interference’
Summary of the day so far …
It is 2pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. Here is a summary of the latest headlines …
The UK’s government has said it has levelled “appropriate sanctions” after summoning the Russian ambassador following accusations that groups linked to the Russian FSB had been hacking prominent British figures as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”. UK deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden said Russia was “behind sustained hostile cyber operations aimed at interfering in parts of the UK democratic processes. This has included members of parliament, civils servants, thinktanks, journalists and NGOs”. The former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, has confirmed he was one of the figures targeted.
The human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament has said that the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian children deported by Russia now stands at over 19,540. Speaking at a human rights conference in Kyiv, Dmytro Lubinets said “this is against the background of the Russian Federation continuing to deport more and more groups of Ukrainian children from our state every day”. In March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children.
Four occupied regions of Ukraine that were “annexed” by the Russian Federation in late 2022 are expected to participate in Russia’s presidential election next year, after the date was set for 17 March. Russia’s Federation council confirmed the date this morning, with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, saying a decision will be made by 12 December on whether occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will take part.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has not yet announced whether he will run, however the 71-year-old is widely anticipated to secure a fifth term and remain in power until at least 2030. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an online statement urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin, saying “Putin views this election as a referendum on approval of his actions. A referendum on approval of the war. Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood.”
A driver was killed and grain infrastructure damaged by a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian grain infrastructure near the Danube River, the governor of Odesa region said on Thursday. Ukraine’s air force said 18 Shaheds were launched at the southern Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions in western Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down.
Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine. The vote increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.
Before the vote, President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in position to attack Nato allies and could draw US troops into a war. “If [Russian President] Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin would attack a Nato ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said. “We can’t let Putin win,” he said. Russia’s ambassador to the US has described Biden’s words as “unacceptable”.
Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday that cold weather had pushed power usage 2.7% above forecast levels, causing a deficit in the power system. It said the deficit was being filled by imports from Poland, Slovakia and Romania.
Ukraine human rights commissioner: there are more than 19,540 officially confirmed deported Ukrainian children
The human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament has said that the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian children deported by Russia now stands at over 19,540.
Ukrinform reports that, speaking during an international human rights conference “Freedom or Fear” being held in Kyiv, Dmytro Lubinets said:
Currently, there is a figure of more than 19,540 officially confirmed deported Ukrainian children. If we return one child every day, it will take us 55 years. And this is against the background of the Russian Federation continuing to deport more and more groups of Ukrainian children from our state every day. Unfortunately, we do not have many tools to return all Ukrainian deported children.
In March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia, where many have been adopted by Russian families. Russia does not officially recognise the court.
It has emerged that the former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, is one of those who was targeted by the alleged Russian hacking. In a statement, Dearlove said:
I have been through many more dramatic and worse things than being hacked. I was not particularly concerned about it. It is spot on from the government to stand up to it.
We are in a state of grey warfare with the Russians, short of open aggression and conflict. They will do anything to undermine critical infrastructure, national security, and attack any of our institutions that are not pro-Russia.
They have caused a huge amount of disruption. I had changed all my hardware, change emails, it was disruptive for a time.
Dearlove was in his role as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 until 2004.
In May last year the Guardian reported that a group of Russian hackers were believed to be behind the release of a cache of emails obtained from Dearlove and other Brexiters unhappy with Theresa May’s failure to negotiate a “clean” EU exit deal.
UK deputy PM: 'appropriate sanctions have been levelled' against Russia over FSB cyber allegations
The UK’s deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden has had this to say on the accusation that the FSB has been targeting high profile politicians and public figures.
He said Russia was “behind sustained hostile cyber operations aimed at interfering in parts of the UK democratic processes. This has included members of parliament, civils servants, thinktanks, journalists and NGOs.”
He went on to say:
This group operated by FSB officers has also selectively leaked and amplified information designed to undermine trust in politics, both in the UK and in like-minded states. Russian representatives have been summoned to the Foreign Office this morning, and appropriate sanctions have been levelled.
The UK summons Russian ambassador over cyber spying campaign
Reuters has a quick snap that the UK has summoned the Russian ambassador over the allegations that the FSB has been mounting a long-term concerted cyber spying campaign against politicians and journalists with the aim to “meddle in British politics”.
More details soon …
Speaking in the House of Commons in London, foreign office minister Leo Docherty has told UK lawmakers that a group linked to the Russian FSB has “selectively leaked and amplified the release of sensitive information”.
PA Media reports said: “We want to be as open as we can be with the House and the British public. Our commitment to transparency stands in sharp contrast to the efforts of the KGB successors to exert influence from the shadows.”
He said: “Centre 18, a unit within Russia’s FSB, has been involved in a range of cyber espionage operations targeting the United Kingdom.
“Secondly, that Star Blizzard, a cyber group the National Cyber Security Centre assesses is almost certainly subordinate to centre 18 is responsible for a range of malign activities targeting British parliamentarians from multiple parties.
“Thirdly, using these means the group have selectively leaked and amplified the release of sensitive information in service of Russia’s goals of confrontation.”
A statement of such gravity would usually be expected to be given to MPs in London by the foreign secretary. However, David Cameron is currently in Washington, where he is expected to give a joint press conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken later today. In any case, as he is not an MP, the UK foreign secretary is not able to address or take questions from MPs in the House of Commons.
UK government accuses Russia's FSB of 'attempted cyber interference' in British politics and media
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has used “cyber interference” to target MPs, journalists and others as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”, foreign office minister Leo Docherty told the Commons.
Speaking about Russian “attempted cyber interference” and “malicious cyber activity”, PA Media reports Docherty said: “I can confirm today that the Russian Federal Security Services, the FSB, is behind a sustained effort to interfere in our democratic processes.
“They have targeted members of this House and the House of Lords. They have been targeting civil servants, journalists and NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
“They have been targeting high-profile individuals and entities with a clear intent – using information they obtain to meddle in British politics.”
More details soon …
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an online statement Thursday urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin in next year’s presidential election.
“Putin views this election as a referendum on approval of his actions. A referendum on approval of the war. Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood: the will of the majority is that Putin must leave,” Reuters reports the statement said.
Russia’s ministry of defence has released footage of what it claims is Russian paratroopers destroying “two radar stations and a mobile communications station” on the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson.
The river runs through Kherson region, where the southern portion, on the river’s left bank is occupied by Russia, and the northern portion, on the river’s right bank, is held by Ukraine.
Four 'annexed' Ukraine regions expected to take part in Russian presidential election in March
Four occupied regions of Ukraine that were “annexed” by the Russian Federation in late 2022 are expected to participate in Russia’s presidential election next year, after the date was set for 17 March.
Russia’s Federation council confirmed the date this morning, with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, saying a decision will be made by 12 December on whether occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will take part. The four internationally recognised Ukrainian territories already participated in Russian regional elections in 2023.
One of the Russian-installed officials in the occupied territories, Leonid Pasechnik, in Luhansk, welcomed the move, saying it was “a new spring” for the Donbas region.
The election will also take place in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, in a move that was widely condemned as illegal by the international community.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has not yet announced whether he will run, however the 71-year-old is widely anticipated to secure a fifth term and remain in power until at least 2030. Sergei Mironov, chair of the “A Just Russia – For Truth” party, has already indicated that the party will nominate Putin for president at its 23 December congress.
Associated Press reports that two people have announced plans to run: former lawmaker Boris Nadezhdin, who holds a seat on a municipal council in the Moscow region, and Yekaterina Duntsova, a journalist and lawyer from the Tver region north of Moscow, who once was a member of a local legislature.
Allies of Igor Strelkov, a jailed nationalist who accused Putin of weakness and indecision in Ukraine, have cited his ambitions to run as well, but extremism charges levied against him by the Russian authorities render his candidacy unlikely. Also known as Igor Girkin, he is a former battlefield commander of Russia’s proxy forces in east Ukraine who was convicted by a Dutch court over the shooting down of MH17.
Updated
Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday that cold weather had pushed power usage 2.7% above forecast levels, causing a deficit in the power system. Reuters reports it said the deficit was being filled by imports from Poland, Slovakia and Romania.
Updated
Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed, has hailed the potential participation of the occupied Ukrainian territory in Russia’s 2014 presidential election.
In a message posted to Telegram, he wrote:
The elections will traditionally be held over three days – 15-17 March. And these three days are the very time when we can prove to the whole world: we are strong, we are together, we are a united great Russia.
Without exaggeration, we can say that the elections on 17 March are a new Donbas spring. Just as Crimea once “returned to its native harbour”, so Donbas returned home with the steel will of its people. For centuries our lands were Russian. And they will always be like this!
Today we have every opportunity to complete all integration processes in the shortest possible time. We are a full-fledged region of a great country. Pride, confidence, faith in the future – this is what unites all Russians, all of us, today.
Updated
The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation has said it will make a decision by 12 December on whether the four regions of Ukraine that the Russian Federation claimed to annex last year will take part in the 2024 Russian presidential election.
Interfax quotes the head of the commission, Ella Pamfilova, saying:
Having weighed all the pros and cons, we will make such a decision. If we accept it, then the next step will be to adopt the procedure for holding elections there; of course, it will be somewhat different, as the law provides for this, from voting in other constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
The Russian Federation claimed to annex Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson from Ukraine in late 2022, despite not fully controlling the territory of any of the regions. In September 2023, the four occupied regions held elections as part of Russia’s 2023 regional elections.
Russia’s upper house of parliament confirmed this morning that Russia’s next presidential election will take place on 17 March 2024. Vladimir Putin is likely to seek and win a fifth term in power.
Updated
Reuters has a little more detail on the drone strike on Odesa region overnight. It cites the regional governor saying that the drone attack lasted for more than two hours, and that while most were shot down, some got through and damaged a storage building, an elevator and trucks. As reported earlier, a driver was killed during the attack.(See 7.14 GMT)
Updated
2024 Russian presidential election confirmed for 17 March
Russia’s Federation council has confirmed the date of the 2024 presidential election in the country as 17 March, moving Vladimir Putin closer to a fifth term in office and handing him the opportunity to remain in power until at least 2030.
Putin, 71, has not yet announced his intention to run but Associated Press reports he is widely expected to do so in the coming days now that the date has been set.
With a tight control of the election mechanism in Russia, Putin is almost certainly assured of victory. His most prominent opponents are either in jail or abroad, and most independent media in Russia has been banned.
Under a constitutional overhaul he oversaw, Putin is eligible to seek a further two six-year terms after his current one expires.
Tass reports the decision was made unanimously by the upper house of Russia’s parliament, with 162 senators voting for it.
Updated
Russia’s ambassador to the US has described Joe Biden’s words about the potential for Nato and Russian forces to clash directly as “unacceptable”.
In a post on Telegram, Anatoly Antonov said:
In an attempt to add fuel to the fire of the Ukrainian war by proxy, they have completely lost touch with reality, easily talking about the likelihood of a direct clash between the armed forces of our countries. This kind of provocative rhetoric is unacceptable for a responsible nuclear power.
The US president had said that if Vladimir Putin was victorious in Ukraine, the Russian president would not stop there, and Biden predicted he would go on to attack a Nato ally of the US.
Accusing Biden of fabricating horror stories to justify the cost of US foreign policy towards Russia, Antonov added:
Let me emphasise: Washington and its insatiable military-industrial complex are the direct beneficiaries of the bloodshed in Ukraine. This is confirmed by the latest package of weapons allocated today for the needs of the crazed neo-Nazis in Kyiv. Isn’t it time for the local authorities to come to their senses and stop wreaking havoc around the world just to save themselves from the decline of American hegemony?
Updated
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, has reported multiple overnight instances of cross-border fire into Russia from Ukraine at villages and settlements near the border. In a post on his Telegram channel, he said there had been no damage or casualties as a result of the attacks.
Updated
Russian drone attack on Odesa region damages grain infrastructure, kills one
A driver was killed and grain infrastructure damaged by a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian grain infrastructure near the Danube River, the governor of Odesa region said on Thursday.
Reuters reports that Moscow hit Danube port infrastructure with waves of drone attacks in August and September – but the latest attack came after a lull in such strikes.
Ukraine’s air force said 18 Shaheds were launched at the southern Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions in western Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments:
Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine. The vote increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.
Before the vote, President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in position to attack Nato allies and could draw US troops into a war. “If [Russian President] Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin would attack a Nato ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said. “We can’t let Putin win,” he said.
A former Ukrainian MP regarded by Kyiv as a traitor has been shot dead in a park in suburban Moscow, in an attack attributed to Ukraine’s SBU security service. Illia Kyva was a pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but fled to Russia a month before the start of the war and frequently criticised Ukrainian authorities online and on Russian state TV talkshows.
European leaders are scrambling to rescue a plan to begin European Union accession negotiations for Ukraine, as Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, vows to block the decision at a summit of EU leaders next week. Orbán, widely seen as the EU’s most pro-Russian leader, has said repeatedly that he will not support Ukraine’s path to accession at this point. On Monday, he sent a letter to Michel demanding to take the issue off the agenda at the leaders’ meeting next Thursday and Friday.
A Russian-backed politician who served as a proxy lawmaker in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region was killed in a car bombing attack Wednesday, investigators said. Oleg Popov, who served as a deputy in the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was killed after the “detonation of an unidentified device in a car”, Russia’s Investigative Committee said, without providing detail.
The US has charged four Russian soldiers with war crimes after they allegedly abducted and tortured an American citizen last year who was living in southern Ukraine, according to court documents unsealed on Wednesday. The US justice department said the accused Russians kidnapped the American in April 2022 from his home in the village of Mylove, in Kherson province, where he lived with his Ukrainian wife.
FBI agents tasked with investigating sanctions-busting have been sent to Cyprus as the global crackdown against Russian oligarchs, and the web of enablers who have helped hide their wealth, intensifies. American investigators will question how local lawyers and accountants helped shield Kremlin-linked business people from punitive EU measures following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, after last month’s publication of Cyprus Confidential, an investigation by the Guardian and international reporting partners, raised concerns about potential breaches.
G7 leaders agreed to restrict imports of Russian diamonds from next year in a tightening of sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “We will introduce import restrictions on non-industrial diamonds, mined, processed, or produced in Russia, by 1 January 2024,” the leaders said in a statement after a virtual summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy told the G7 leaders that Russia had ramped up pressure on the frontlines and warned Moscow was counting on western unity to “collapse” next year. “Russia hopes only for one thing – that next year the free world’s consolidation will collapse,” Zelenskiy said.
Putin visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a lightning tour intended to raise Moscow’s profile as a Middle East power broker. It was his first trip to the region since he launched his invasion of Ukraine. Speaking at the start of his talks with the UAE president, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Putin offered to discuss the “Ukrainian crisis”, among other subjects.
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