Good evening, we are now closing this blog but you can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
A summary of today's developments
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia. “In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.
The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass. The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting. The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.
Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it. A Guardian team on the scene said the rockets shells were likely to have come from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.
US president Joe Biden has said the prospect of China negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia is “just not rational”. Speaking on ABC News about China’s peace plan, he said: “I’ve seen nothing [that] would indicate there’s something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia. The idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.”
China has not moved towards providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday. “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance, but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union programme.
Russian online bank Tinkoff, run by TCS Group Holding, said it would suspend trading in euros from Monday after the imposition of a further set of EU sanctions. The EU agreed a 10th round of punitive measures on Friday to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. The package includes cutting off more banks, among them Tinkoff and the private Alfa-Bank, from the Swift global payments system, Reuters reports.
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said it was up to Kyiv to decide when, and under what conditions, to enter talks with Moscow. He suggested the same was true for any decision on recapturing the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, will visit Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Lukashenko was due to visit between Tuesday and Thursday, but gave no details about his agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday, citing a foreign ministry statement. “This decision falls within the framework of preserving the interests of the Algerian state and the interests of the national community in this country,” state TV quoted the foreign ministry statement as saying.
More than a third of British adults have donated to help the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine, according to polling that reveals the vast majority of the public remain concerned about the conflict a year on. With charitable drives for those plunged into dire need by the war continuing, a poll commissioned by Christian Aid revealed that 37% of the adult population in the UK had made some kind of donation, while 81% said they remain concerned about the impact of the conflict.
Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies have strongly condemned Moscow for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement on Saturday. India, which as chair of the G20 group of economies was hosting a meeting in the city of Bengaluru, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war, but western nations said they could not back any outcome that did not include a condemnation, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s energy minister says the country has been able to amass some power reserves and that there will be no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian strikes, after months of power cuts.
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There are 180 political prisoners being held in Crimea, according to Ukraine’s rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets.
Sky News reported that Lubinets wrote on Telegram: “Due to the constant fear of Ukrainian resistance, Russia does not stop harsh repression and persecution of our citizens in the temporarily occupied Crimea: illegal searches, fabricated criminal cases, fabricated sentences, in particular, against representatives of the Indigenous people of the peninsula – the Crimean Tatars.”
The Ukrainian official added that the recent deaths in Kremlin cells of two tortured political prisoners was a “flagrant violation of fundamental human rights and norms of international law by Russia”.
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Germany’s interior minister has warned of a “massive danger” facing Germany from Russian sabotage, disinformation and spying attacks.
Nancy Faeser said Vladimir Putin was putting huge resources into cyber-attacks as a key part of his war of aggression.
“The cybersecurity concerns have been exacerbated by the war. The attacks of pro-Russia hackers have increased,” she said in an interview with the news network Funke Mediengruppe published on Sunday.
Since Germany started supporting Ukraine with weapons deliveries and by introducing sanctions against Russia, cyber-attacks have been on the rise, in particular against energy providers and military organisations. Security experts have been warning of the considerable danger these pose to German domestic security, specifically the cyber-attackers’ ability to target critical infrastructure, as well as political operations such as the Bundestag.
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The Russian online bank Tinkoff, run by TCS Group Holding, said it would suspend trading in euros from Monday after the imposition of a further set of EU sanctions.
The EU agreed a 10th round of punitive measures late on Friday to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. The package includes cutting off more banks, among them Tinkoff and the private Alfa-Bank, from the Swift global payments system, Reuters reports.
“Withdrawals in euros will be available. Euro trading will be suspended from [Monday],” Tinkoff said in a statement, adding that trading in other currencies would not be affected.
In a separate statement, Tinkoff said it had prepared countermeasures to the sanctions that would allow a transfer of assets to a new company within three weeks.
Tinkoff Bank was set up by the entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, who has become an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Tinkov said last November that he had renounced his Russian citizenship over the war in Ukraine.
Tinkoff was forced to sell his 35% stake in the bank’s parent, TCS, to the Russian metals magnate Vladimir Potanin last April after a string of anti-war comments.
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Vladimir Putin has accused the west of seeking to “dismember” Russia and and to turn the country into a series of weak mini-states.
In an interview with the state TV channel Rossiya on Sunday, Putin claimed the US and its Nato allies wanted to “inflict a strategic defeat on us”. He said the aim was to “make our people suffer”, adding: “How can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?”
Russia’s president said this alleged plot had been under way since the collapse of the USSR. “They tried to reshape the world exclusively on their terms. We had no choice but to react,” he said, adding that the west was complicit in Ukraine’s “crimes”.
If Washington got its way, Russia would be divided into Moscow, the Urals and other disparate regions, he continued, claiming there was “written proof” for his assertion.
The remarks come at a time when Russian troops have made localised gains in Ukraine’s east but have failed to achieve a major breakthrough. Moscow’s military focus is to capture the entirety of the Donbas region, much of which remains under Kyiv’s control.
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A statement by Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Ukraine’s Day of Resistance: “Our commitment to Ukrainians and the principles they’re fighting for – democracy, justice, and freedom – is unwavering. We’ll keep standing with them and using every tool at our disposal to support them.”
Our commitment to Ukrainians and the principles they’re fighting for – democracy, justice, and freedom – is unwavering. We’ll keep standing with them and using every tool at our disposal to support them. My statement on Ukraine’s Day of Resistance: https://t.co/NPh3UNgaEc
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 26, 2023
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Afternoon summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 6pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s stories so far:
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia. “In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.
The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass. The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting. The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.
Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it. A Guardian team on the scene said the rockets shells were likely to have come from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.
US president Joe Biden has said the prospect of China negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia is “just not rational”. Speaking on ABC News about China’s peace plan, he said: “I’ve seen nothing [that] would indicate there’s something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia. The idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.”
China has not moved towards providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday. “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance, but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union programme.
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said it was up to Kyiv to decide when, and under what conditions, to enter talks with Moscow. He suggested the same was true for any decision on recapturing the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, will visit Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Lukashenko was due to visit between Tuesday and Thursday, but gave no details about his agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday, citing a foreign ministry statement. “This decision falls within the framework of preserving the interests of the Algerian state and the interests of the national community in this country,” state TV quoted the foreign ministry statement as saying.
More than a third of British adults have donated to help the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine, according to polling that reveals the vast majority of the public remain concerned about the conflict a year on. With charitable drives for those plunged into dire need by the war continuing, a poll commissioned by Christian Aid revealed that 37% of the adult population in the UK had made some kind of donation, while 81% said they remained concerned about the impact of the conflict.
Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies have strongly condemned Moscow for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement on Saturday. India, which as chair of the G20 group of economies was hosting a meeting in the city of Bengaluru, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war, but western nations said they could not back any outcome that did not include a condemnation, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s energy minister says the country has been able to amass some power reserves and that there will be no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian strikes, after months of power cuts.
Thousands of people have taken part in a demonstration in central Berlin to protest against giving more weapons to Ukraine, urging the German government to instead pave the way for negotiations with Vladimir Putin. In London, Marina Litvinenko – the widow of a defector poisoned in London – led calls for a Ukrainian victory in the war at a demonstration of several hundred outside the Russian embassy.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for today. My colleague Nadeem Badshah will be along shortly to continue bringing you the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, in Kyiv today.
Footage of the meeting was published by the Saudi Gazette.
#VIDEO: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky receives #Saudi Foreign Minister Prince @FaisalbinFarhan in Kyiv pic.twitter.com/fjctLBBWsi
— Saudi Gazette (@Saudi_Gazette) February 26, 2023
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US president Joe Biden has said the prospect of China negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia is “just not rational”.
Speaking on ABC News about China’s peace plan, he said:
I’ve seen nothing [that] would indicate there’s something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia.
The idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.
Biden on ABC on China's peace plan: "I've seen nothing [that] would indicate there's something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia ... the idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that's a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational" pic.twitter.com/inp3cOWbkZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 26, 2023
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, will visit Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry confirmed.
Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Lukashenko was due to visit between Tuesday and Thursday, but gave no details about his agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Belarus has strongly backed Moscow and allowed its territory to be used as a staging ground for the initial invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
Lukashenko has been Belarus’ only president since the position was created in 1994, and crushed 2020 protests over his disputed re-election in a vote that the opposition and western countries regard as fraudulent.
The announcement comes as top US officials repeated warnings to China against providing military aid to Russia, saying that it would bring heavy consequences.
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China lethal aid to Russia would come at 'real costs', says White House
China has not moved towards providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday.
“Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance, but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union programme.
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German defence minister 'leaning towards' saying Crimea is Ukrainian and must be returned by Russia
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said it was up to Kyiv to decide when, and under what conditions, to enter talks with Moscow.
He suggested the same was true for any decision on recapturing the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
“I am leaning towards saying, yes, Crimea is Ukrainian territory and it therefore has to be given back,” he said in the interview. “But again: this is not a decision that’s up to us to take.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says his troops will eventually drive Russia from all the captured territory, including the Crimean peninsula.
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A shop left severely damaged by the Russian military’s constant assault on Donetsk, pictured yesterday.
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Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday, citing a foreign ministry statement.
“This decision falls within the framework of preserving the interests of the Algerian state and the interests of the national community in this country,” state TV quoted the foreign ministry statement as saying.
“The Algerian embassy in Kyiv, which suspended its activities due to the deteriorating security situation in Ukraine, will be managed by the Charge d’Affaires.”
The embassy closed in March last year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.
The decision to reopen the embassy will be effective “as soon as possible”, the statement read.
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There has been no development for months in the discussion of possible Nato security guarantees for Ukraine, a government spokesperson said.
“At the recent meeting of German chancellor Olaf Scholz and French president Emmanuel Macron with Ukrainian leader Zelenskiy, this issue played no role at all,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The statement follows a recent report by the Wall Street Journal that said some of Nato’s biggest European members are floating a defence pact with Ukraine.
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German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday reacted with scepticism to a Chinese ceasefire proposal for the war in Ukraine.
“When I hear reports – and I don’t know whether they are true – according to which China may be planning to supply kamikaze drones to Russia while at the same time presenting a peace plan, then I suggest we judge China by its actions and not its words,” he told German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk in an interview.
British MPs travel to Ukraine to deliver aid
A group of MPs were on their way back to London on Sunday after an epic road trip delivering aid to Ukraine.
The cross-parliamentary group set off from Dover and drove across Europe to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Two Labour MPs – Alex Sobel and Anna McMorrin – made the journey together with their Conservative counterparts Kevin Foster and Scott Benton.
The group delivered medical equipment and de-mining tools. They dropped off a generator at a village close to the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv and the Belarus border.
“A lot of parliamentary groups go on trips and have meetings. We didn’t feel that was appropriate for Ukraine. We wanted to provide practical support, and to show that MPs could go above and beyond,” Sobel said.
The trip was made to coincide with the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The UK parliamentary delegation to Kyiv included Tory MPs Bob Seely and Alicia Kearns, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee. Sobel – the MP for Leeds North West – and McMorrin, who represents Cardiff North, attended Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s press conference on Friday.
Asked if this bipartisan model could be repeated elsewhere, Sobel said: “People will be surprised on how many things we can agree on.”
The MAD Foundation charity organised the trip.
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More than a third of British adults have donated to help the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine, according to polling that reveals the vast majority of the public remain concerned about the conflict a year on.
With charitable drives for those plunged into dire need by the war continuing, a poll commissioned by Christian Aid revealed that 37% of the adult population in the UK had made some kind of donation. Eighty-one per cent said they remain concerned about the impact of the conflict.
According to Christian Aid, 17.7 million Ukrainians are in need of aid and more than 13 million people are unable to return to their homes one year on from the invasion. Emergency assistance has reached more than 770,000 people affected by the war. John Sentamu, the former archbishop of York who is chair of Christian Aid, said the British public had shown an “overwhelming generosity to the Ukrainian people”.
“Vladimir Putin’s invasion has unleashed terrible violence and caused untold suffering to millions of innocent people,” Sentamu said. “We have seen how homes have been destroyed, families torn apart, and innocent people subjected to atrocious violence and trauma.
“I am not surprised that so many people across our isles remain worried about the war. We must remember every prayer, every gift, every action is bringing hope to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.
“Christian Aid is therefore urging actors not to give up searching for a just and lasting peace for Ukraine and to ensure the conflict does not cut support for other crises across the globe.”
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Russian offensives on Yahidne not successful, say Ukrainian armed forces
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his forces had captured Yahidne. On Friday, he had claimed control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.
But the Ukrainian bulletin said attacks were continuing, citing “unsuccessful offensives” near six settlements, including Yahidne and Berkhivka, in the Donetsk region, which Moscow claims to have annexed.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports of either side.
Ukraine’s Sunday bulletin said Russian forces had shelled the areas of 22 settlements along that part of the frontline in Donetsk over the past day, while Ukraine had repelled 71 in Donetsk and elsewhere along the frontline.
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Putin accuses west of wanting to dismantle Russia
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia.
“In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.
The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass.
The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.
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A Ukraine military official says a fresh push to retake seized territory is planned for spring, saying Kyiv’s forces will “not stop until we get our country back to its 1991 borders”.
Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, told a German newspaper group on Sunday:
One of our strategic military objectives is to try to drive a wedge into the Russian front in the south, between Crimea and Russian territory.
Beyond that, he said, “the objective of our counter-offensive is to liberate all the occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea”.
Reuters also reported that Skibitsky raised the possibility of future Ukrainian strikes on “arms depots or military equipment on Russian territory, for example around the city of Belgorod, from where attacks on Ukraine are launched”.
Isobel Koshiw has filed this report on Ukrainian civilians regularly being caught up in poorly targeted Russian attacks:
Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a local GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it.
A Guardian team on the scene assessed the rockets shells likely came from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.
A woman in her 60s, who lived in the neighbouring house, was injured and quickly whisked away by an ambulance, according to eyewitnesses.
A neighbour who lived opposite and declined to give her name said:
She came out of her house screaming and then fell on the ground.
The impact of the rocket also tore down the electricity line, cutting power to the surrounding neighbourhood, according to neighbours who came out to see the devastation.
Poorly targeted attacks like these have been a regular occurrence for those living along the frontlines, particularly in Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk, where the fighting has been consistently heavy since the invasion started. Since the summer, Ukrainian officials have reported Russia using imprecise weapons in an attempt to hit Ukrainian military bases and equipment behind the frontlines which have resulted in a steady stream of civilian deaths.
On 14 January, Russia launched an anti-ship missile, weighing a whopping 5,800kg, which hit and destroyed an entire section of an apartment block in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. At least 46 people died and dozens more were injured.
Oleksiy Yakovlenko, the head doctor at the main civilian hospital for the Donbas region, told the Guardian that the recent concentration of fighting in six areas of the region had led to a decrease in the number of civilian casualties but the numbers remained high.
If a month ago, we were receiving around 100s patients every day, now it’s in the dozens.
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Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies have strongly condemned Moscow for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement on Saturday.
India, which as chair of the Group of 20 economies was hosting a meeting in the city of Bengaluru, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war but western nations insisted they could not back any outcome that did not include a condemnation, Reuters reported.
The lack of consensus among G20 members meant India resorted to issuing a “chair’s summary and outcome document” in which it simply summed up the two days of talks and noted disagreements.
Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” it said, citing disruption of supply chains, risks to financial stability and continuing energy and food insecurity.
“There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” it said, referring to measures put in place by the United States, European countries and others to punish Russia for the invasion and to starve it of revenues.
The outcome was similar to that of a G20 summit in Bali last November when host Indonesia also issued a final declaration acknowledging differences.
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Wagner and Kyiv make conflicting claims on control of eastern village
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said forces of his Wagner group had captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday.
But Ukrainian military reports issued a day after the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggested that villages near the key town remained under Kyiv’s control.
Reuters could not independently confirm Prigozhin’s claim, made in a short audio message, or the report by the Ukrainian military’s general staff.
However, other sources reported that Russian forces had entered Yahidne as the situation around Bakhmut appeared to grow more perilous for its Ukrainian defenders.
Russian forces have been trying to take the now shattered Donbas city for seven months, inching forward at a glacial pace to try to encircle it with a narrowing corridor for Ukrainian defender.
According to accounts from the Bakhmut area, while Russian forces were bogged down to the south of the city, to the north they had advanced over a kilometre into the outskirts of Yahidne. Large assaults were also being reported to the south-west towards Ivanivske in the direction of the T0504 highway with the aim of cutting access to the city from the west.
Ukrainian troops in the town reported that the Russian tactic appeared to be the familiar one of throwing large groups of troops against their defences.
Commenting on the current Russian tactics last week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said the Russians aim was to wear down Ukraine’s defences by sheer weight of numbers, even if that meant taking huge casualties.
Recent footage from Bakhmut showed Ukrainian armoured vehicles pouring autocannon and machine-gun fire into Russian positions.
With the situation in Bakhmut described as difficult, the head of Ukraine’s land forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited the sector on Saturday to consult with commanders.
The Bakhmut sector is one of six areas where Russian forces have been expended increased effort in the past three weeks as part of a stepped-up offensive along the eastern front that has yet to produce any significant gains.
While western analysts suggest the capture of Bakhmut would be used as a propaganda victory by the Kremlin, many are sceptical that the city’s fall – and after so many losses – would offer a significant advantage.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton bringing you the latest developments.
Yevgeny Prigozhin says his Wagner mercenary group has captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Yahidne, near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut.
However, Ukrainian military reports issued on Saturday suggested villages near the city remained under Kyiv’s control.
Reuters said it could not independently confirm Prigozhin’s claim or the report by the Ukrainian military’s general staff.
On Friday, Prigozhin said Wagner had taken control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.
More on that story soon.
In other key developments as it approaches 9am in Kyiv:
Ukraine’s energy minister says the country has been able to amass some power reserves and that there will be no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian strikes, after months of power cuts.
Thousands of people have taken part in a demonstration in central Berlin to protest against giving more weapons to Ukraine, urging the German government to instead pave the way for negotiations with Vladimir Putin. In London, Marina Litvinenko – the widow of a defector poisoned in London – led calls for a Ukrainian victory in the war at a demonstration of several hundred outside the Russian embassy.
A meeting of finance chiefs of the Group of 20 leading economies has ended without a consensus, with Russia and China objecting to the description of the war in Ukraine in a final document. In a statement at the end of the meeting in Bengaluru, the G20 chair, India, said a statement demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine was endorsed by all members except Moscow and Beijing.
The French president has said China’s engagement in peace in Ukraine is a “good thing”. Emmanuel Macron told reporters he would visit China in early April, in part to seek Beijing’s help with ending the war. “China must help us put pressure on Russia so that it never uses chemical or nuclear weapons,” he said.
The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine, according to US officials. They said it did not appear Beijing had made a final decision yet, CNN reported, but Russia-China negotiations about the price and scope of the equipment were ongoing.
Poland’s largest oil company, PKN Orlen, has stopped receiving oil via the Druzhba pipeline from Russia, its CEO, Daniel Obajtek, has said. Orlen said it could fully supply its refineries via sea and that consumers would not be affected by the halt. Russian oil accounts for about 10% of Polish supply.
Explosions have reportedly been heard in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, according to Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the city’s exiled mayor. The explosions were reported in the location of a large Russian military personnel cluster, he said, adding: “It’s a good trend.” Ukraine’s armed forces have in recent days claimed strikes on Mariupol, previously thought to be outside the effective range of Ukrainian missiles.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has dismissed as “unrealistic” China’s proposal to end the conflict. Podolyak posted on Twitter that Beijing should not “bet on an aggressor who broke [international] law and will lose the war”. President Zelenskiy has cautiously welcomed China’s 12-point proposal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory.
Russia appears to have run out of its current stock of Iranian-made drones and will seek to resupply, the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest update says. Russia most likely saw the drones as “useful decoys which can divert Ukrainian air defences from more effective Russian cruise missiles”, it said.
The European Union has agreed to impose a 10th package of sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, just in time for a self-imposed deadline to mark the first anniversary of the war. The latest round of sanctions tackled the banking sector, advanced technologies and Russia’s access to technology that could be used for civilian and military purposes, said the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.
Joe Biden has ruled out “for now” sending American advanced fighter jets to Ukraine, saying Volodymyr Zelenskiy “doesn’t need F-16s now”. The US president told the American Broadcasting Company “there is no basis upon which there is a rationale, according to our military now, to provide F-16s” to Ukraine.
The Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, said he and Vladimir Putin spoke for a long time on Friday. Lukashenko’s remarks to reporters came as China’s foreign ministry confirmed he is expected to visit China on Tuesday.
A former commander of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been arrested after allegedly attacking a police officer in Oslo, according to Norwegian prosecutors. Andrey Medvedev, who has been living in Norway in January since he fled from Russia, was allegedly detained in the early hours of Wednesday after a fight outside a bar in the Norwegian capital.
Thousands of tickets for the Eurovision song contest are to be allocated to Ukrainians who have been forced from their homes and are living in the UK. The UK government also announced £10m in funding to “help ensure the event truly showcases Ukrainian culture”.
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