Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said his country will be handing over four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in the coming days. Speaking at a news conference, Duda said Warsaw would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes in the coming days and that “the rest are being prepared, serviced”. His announcement makes Poland the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine, marking a significant upward step in military backing for Kyiv
Poland’s decision to give Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets is a “sovereign decision” that will not prompt President Joe Biden to supply Kyiv with American F-16 aircraft, the White House has said. Biden has previously said the US will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia. White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday that President Duda’s announcement “doesn’t change our calculus with respect to F-16s”.
Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published on Thursday. The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Mariupol that killed hundreds of people. Its head said the team was following the evidence and that there were “some aspects which may raise questions” about possible genocide.
The Pentagon has released a video showing the moments before a Russian fighter crashed into a $32m US Reaper drone after spraying it with jet fuel on Tuesday morning over the Black Sea. The declassified footage shows an Su-27 Flanker jet making two exceptionally close passes of the uncrewed drone, spraying fuel in front of it, a harassment tactic that US experts say has not been seen before. The US air force has also released a map of the approximate locations and times of the collision.
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the downed US MQ-9 Reaper drone from the Black Sea will come from the Russian military. “If they deem it necessary to do that in the Black Sea for our interests and for our security, they will deal with that,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage, but US officials have said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value. The US believes Russia has recovered some debris in the Black Sea from the downed US surveillance drone, according to one US official.
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian defence ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in future react in due proportion”.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, told state-owned news agency Tass Thursday that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units”.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he and senior Chinese diplomat, Qin Gang, had discussed the “significance of the principle of territorial integrity” during a phone call today. “I underscored the importance of (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s) peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Qin told Kuleba that China “hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Vladimir Putin as soon as next week, and to subsequently hold a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Talks between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, would be a “good thing”, the White House has said. The US “support(s) and have supported” contact, the White House’s spokesperson John Kirby said, but he warned Beijing against taking a “one-sided” view of the conflict.
The UN has called for a 120-day renewal of a deal allowing the safe export of grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports ahead of a deadline later this week. In response to the UN’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric’s remarks, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the deal “is being extended for 60 days”.
Vladimir Putin has told his country’s leading billionaires that Russia is facing a “sanctions war”. In an address to Russia’s business elite, the president urged them to invest in new technology, production facilities and enterprises to help Russia overcome what he said were western attempts to destroy its economy. He also appeared to mock the UK as he said western leaders were asking their citizens to eat turnips.
At least one person has been killed and two people injured in a blast and fire at a building belonging to Russia’s FSB security service in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, according to officials quoted by Russian news agencies. Video footage showed thick black smoke billowing into the air near residential buildings and a shopping centre in Rostov, the capital of a region that adjoins parts of eastern Ukraine where battles with Russia are raging.
Ukrainian soldiers have downed a Chinese-made drone near the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was launched from Russian-held territory on Friday night, before being shot down from a low altitude by Ukrainian forces in the early hours of Saturday.
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been given a five and a half year suspended jail sentence by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army. Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the invasion began.
The former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, has been detained over a social media post in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Yevgeny Roizman, one of the last opposition figures still in Russia and not behind bars, has denied the charges.
Polish authorities say they have detained nine members of a Russian spy ring who they say were gathering intelligence on weapons supplies to Ukraine and making plans to sabotage the deliveries. Six people have been charged with preparing acts of sabotage and espionage, and charges are being prepared against the other three.
Downing Street has confirmed a call took place earlier today between the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The pair discussed the latest situation on the ground, and Sunak said Britain would continue to work closely with allies to ensure Ukraine had the equipment it needed, according to Downing Street’s read-out of the call.
Sunak updated the Ukrainian leader on the delivery of further UK military aid, adding it was “vital Ukraine had the capabilities to change the battlefield equation as soon as possible”.
The US believes Russia has recovered some debris in the Black Sea from the downed US surveillance drone, according to a US official.
The official told CNN that the recovered wreckage consisted of pieces of fibreglass or small bits of the MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Poland will become the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine in the next few days, marking a significant upward step in military backing for Kyiv ahead of an expected counter-offensive.
The precedent, involving four Soviet-era MiG-29s as a first instalment, could lead to other Nato members providing warplanes, a longstanding Ukrainian request.
The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, made the announcement in Warsaw. He said the first planes being handed over were inherited from East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Duda said the MiGs were coming to the end of their working lives after 30 years, but were “still in working order”. The president said that more Polish MiGs were being serviced and repaired in preparation for being handed to Ukraine. In all, Poland has 28 MiG-29s which are to be replaced over the next few years by South Korean FA-50s and US F-35s.
Until now, Ukraine’s backers in Nato have only provided spare parts for its fleet of Soviet-era warplanes, amid fears that delivering functioning planes to Ukraine would be seen by Moscow as direct participation in the war. A year ago, Poland offered to hand over all its MiGs to the US at its airbase in Ramstein, Germany, so they could be passed on to Ukraine, but Washington rejected the plan.
Slovakia, Finland and the Netherlands have all said they would consider supplying Ukraine with warplanes. The US and UK have so far refused to supply their F-16s and Typhoon combat aircraft respectively, on the grounds that they require too much training, ground support and long, smooth runways to be of any short-term help to Ukraine. However, the UK has offered to provide air cover for any eastern European country willing to supply Kyiv with Soviet-era jets.
Switzerland’s parliament has approved a bill allowing for the prosecution of the perpetrators of crimes of aggression under Swiss national legislation.
The bill, passed with 127 votes in favour and 53 against, came hours after a UN investigative body said it found Russia had committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children.
In a statement, the Swiss parliament said:
Switzerland’s adoption of crime of aggression in its legislation would allow it to step up the fight against impunity for the gravest crimes under international law.
The crime of aggression is broadly defined as the invasion of, or attempt to gain political and military control over, another sovereign state, Reuters reports.
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires, a year to the day after a Russian airstrike killed hundreds sheltering in a theatre in Mariupol.
Talks between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, would be a “good thing”, the White House has said.
Asked about a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that the pair will speak for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, the White House’s spokesperson John Kirby said:
We think it would be a very good thing if the two of them talk.
The US “support(s) and have supported” contact, he said, but warned Beijing against taking a “one-sided” view of the conflict.
Kirby cautioned against a Chinese push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, saying it would effectively “ratify Russia’s conquest” and “in effect, recognise Russia’s gains”.
There has been no confirmation of a call between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia. Earlier today, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, by phone.
Xi is also expected to visit Moscow to speak with Vladimir Putin. The US has not confirmed a Putin-Xi summit will take place, Kirby said.
Poland’s decision to send jets to Ukraine ‘will not prompt the US to send F-16s’
The White House has said Poland’s decision to give Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets is a “sovereign decision” that will not prompt President Joe Biden to supply Kyiv with American F-16 aircraft.
The pledge from Polish president, Andrzej Duda, earlier today that his country would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes “within the next few days” does not alter decision-making by the Biden administration, CNN cites White House spokesperson John Kirby as saying.
Biden has previously said the US will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia. The US president has said he will remain in discussions with Ukraine about its weapons requests.
Speaking today, Kirby said:
It doesn’t change our calculus with respect to F-16s. These are sovereign decisions for any country to make and we respect those sovereign decisions.
He declined to endorse the decision, saying he didn’t think it was the US’ place “to characterise Poland’s decision one way or another”.
A Russian local politician who dangled spaghetti from his ears while listening to a speech by President Vladimir Putin has been fined 150,000 rubles (£1,595) on a charge of discrediting Russia’s armed forces, according to a human rights monitoring group.
Mikhail Abdalkin, a Communist party lawmaker in the southern Russian region of Samara, posted a video of himself remotely watching Putin’s state of the nation address last month.
The phrase “to hang noodles on someone’s ears” is based on a Russian saying that refers to someone who has been strung along or deceived.
The monitoring group OVD-Info quoted Abdalkin as saying it had been an ironic gesture to express his dissatisfaction with “the president’s silence about internal political problems”.
Updated
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he had a “good conversation” with the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and thanked Britain for its “unwavering position” and support.
Zelenskiy said he informed Sunak of the situation at the front as well as of the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, and that he had “concrete results in increasing defence and economic support for Ukraine”.
A good conversation with 🇬🇧 PM @RishiSunak. I informed him of the situation at the front, Bakhmut's defense. Exchanged views on recent international events. As always, we have concrete results in increasing defense & economic support for 🇺🇦. Appreciate 🇬🇧's unwavering position!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 16, 2023
The UN has called for a 120-day renewal of a deal allowing the safe export of grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports ahead of a deadline later this week.
It comes after Russia said earlier this week that it would only extend the UN-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative for 60 days.
On Wednesday, Turkey said it would continue talks to extend the deal for 120 days rather than 60 days. Ukraine has also said the agreement should be renewed for 120 days.
Since the deal was signed last July, millions of tonnes of grain and other food products have been exported from Ukrainian ports, helping lower global food prices from record highs.
Asked about Ankara’s remarks, the UN’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said:
For us, the text in the agreement is clear and it calls for a 120-day rollover.
In response to Dujarric’s remarks, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the deal “is being extended for 60 days”.
The difference in the Russian and UN interpretation of the duration of the deal “may simply be a display of (the UN’s) incompetence,” she added.
One killed in blast at FSB building in Rostov - reports
At least one person was killed and two injured in a blast and fire at a building belonging to Russia’s federal security service (FSB) in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, according to officials quoted by Russian state media.
Video footage circulating on social media showed thick black smoke billowing into the air near residential buildings and a shopping centre in Rostov, the capital of a region that adjoins parts of eastern Ukraine where battles with Russia are raging.
In a statement, the FSB said fuel and lubricants had caught fire in a workshop, causing an explosion and the partial collapse of the building housing its border patrol section.
Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev had earlier said the fire appeared to have been caused by an electrical short-circuit, and that nearby buildings had been evacuated while the fire burned.
Russian state-owned news agencies cited emergency services as saying one person had been killed and two more injured.
Summary of the day so far
It’s just past 6pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The Pentagon has released a video showing the moments before a Russian fighter crashed into a $32m US Reaper drone after spraying it with jet fuel on Tuesday morning over the Black Sea. The declassified footage shows an Su-27 Flanker jet making two exceptionally close passes of the uncrewed drone, spraying fuel in front of it, a harassment tactic that US experts say has not been seen before. The US air force has also released a map of the approximate locations and times of the collision.
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the downed US MQ-9 Reaper drone from the Black Sea will come from the Russian military. “If they deem it necessary to do that in the Black Sea for our interests and for our security, they will deal with that,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage, but US officials have said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value.
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian defence ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in future react in due proportion”.
Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published on Thursday. The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Mariupol that killed hundreds of people. Its head said the team was following the evidence and that there were “some aspects which may raise questions” about possible genocide.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said his country will be handing over four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in the coming days. Speaking at a news conference, Duda said Warsaw would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes in the coming days and that “the rest are being prepared, serviced”. His announcement makes Poland the first Nato member country to fulfil Kyiv’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, told state-owned news agency Tass Thursday that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units”.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he and senior Chinese diplomat, Qin Gang, had discussed the “significance of the principle of territorial integrity” during a phone call today. “I underscored the importance of (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s) peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Qin told Kuleba that China “hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Vladimir Putin as soon as next week, and to subsequently hold a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Vladimir Putin has told his country’s leading billionaires that Russia is facing a “sanctions war”. In an address to Russia’s business elite, the president urged them to invest in new technology, production facilities and enterprises to help Russia overcome what he said were western attempts to destroy its economy. He also appeared to mock the UK as he said western leaders were asking their citizens to eat turnips.
Ukrainian soldiers have downed a Chinese-made drone near the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was launched from Russian-held territory on Friday night, before being shot down from a low altitude by Ukrainian forces in the early hours of Saturday.
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been given a five and a half year suspended jail sentence by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army. Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the invasion began.
The former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, has been detained over a social media post in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Yevgeny Roizman, one of the last opposition figures still in Russia and not behind bars, has denied the charges.
Poland claims to have broken up a Russian espionage network operating in the country. Defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak on Thursday said “I would like to emphasise the great success achieved by the officers of the internal security agency, because the whole spy network has been unravelled.”
Good afternoon from London, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong still here with all the latest developments from the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m on Twitter or you can email me.
Here’s more from Vladimir Putin’s speech to Russia’s oligarchs and business leaders earlier today, where he appeared to mock the UK as he said western leaders were asking their citizens to eat turnips.
In his speech, the Russian leader said western analysts had prophesied that his country’s store shelves would empty and services collapse as a result of sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Putin said:
Life had other ideas. The western countries themselves ran into all the same problems. It’s got to the point where their leaders suggest that citizens switch to turnips instead of lettuce or tomatoes.
He appeared to be referring to remarks by Britain’s environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who last month suggested that UK shoppers struggling to find tomatoes and cucumbers should “cherish” seasonal foods such as turnips.
The US air force has published a map of the approximate locations and times of the collision between the American MQ-9 Reaper drone and a Russian fighter jet over the Black Sea earlier this week.
In a follow-up tweet, it said: “The points on the map are not plotted to scale, the distances provided in the text boxes are an estimation of the incident’s location.”
The graphic below depicts approximations of the locations and times of the @usairforce MQ-9 Reaper collision and crash into the Black Sea. The video released earlier today by @US_EUCOM occurs at the middle plot point on the timeline. pic.twitter.com/nz8fTzL4ZG
— USAFE-AFAFRICA (@HQUSAFEAFAF) March 16, 2023
Updated
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires.
A little more here from Reuters on that contact between China and Ukraine. “China hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible,” senior Chinese diplomat Qin Gang told Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
China has refrained from condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and has instead urged both sides to agree to a gradual de-escalation leading to a comprehensive ceasefire in its 12-point paper on the “political resolution of the Ukraine crisis”.
The plan, which received a lukewarm welcome on both sides, called for the protection of civilians and respect for each other’s sovereignty.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Vladimir Putin as soon as next week, and to subsequently hold a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he and senior Chinese diplomat Qin Gang had discussed the “significance of the principle of territorial integrity” during a phone call on Thursday.
“I underscored the importance of (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s) peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Reuters reports a Chinese foreign ministry statement quoted Qin as saying Beijing was concerned about an escalation of the war in Ukraine and that it wants Moscow and Kyiv to engage in peace talks.
The head of the UN-backed investigative body the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine says it has not found evidence of genocide as it investigates violations of human rights in the conflict with Russia.
Erik Møse told journalists:
We have not found that there has been a genocide within Ukraine.
He said the team was following the evidence and that there were “some aspects which may raise questions” about possible genocide.
A fire at the federal security service (FSB) building in the Russia city of Rostov-on-Don was caused by an electrical short-circuit, according to the region’s governor, Vasily Golubev.
A video clip circulating on social media, showing smoke rising in the air, has been geolocated to the vicinity of a building used by the FSB.
The cause of the fire “was a short circuit in the electrical wiring inside the building. The spreading fire caused explosions of containers with fuel and lubricants,” Golubev said.
The fire spread over an area of 800 sq metres, resulting in the collapse of two walls.
One victim was hospitalised with moderate injuries, he said.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the fire “clearly indicates that this is a manifestation of panic, weakening of power control and [the Russian Federation’s] transition to a major internal conflict”.
Any FSB building that burns or explodes in RF, particularly in Rostov region, clearly indicates that this is a manifestation of panic, weakening of power control and RF’s transition to a major internal conflict. Ukraine doesn’t interfere, but watches with pleasure...
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 16, 2023
Updated
Russia has committed ‘wide range’ of war crimes in Ukraine, says UN-backed inquiry
Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published today.
Russian forces have carried out “indiscriminate and disproportionate” attacks on Ukraine, resorted to torture, killed civilians outside of combat and failed to take measures to safeguard the Ukrainian population, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, a UN-mandated investigative body, said.
The report, released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Mariupol that killed hundreds of people, marked a highly unusual condemnation of a member of the UN’s security council.
The commission cited repeated attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure that left hundreds of thousands without heat and electricity during the coldest months as potential crimes against humanity.
The report also described the “systematic and widespread” use of torture across multiple regions under Russian occupation, and gave details of torture methods used in Russian detention facilities where victims were subjected to electric shocks with a military phone – a treatment known as a “call to Putin” – or hung from the ceiling in a “parrot position”.
The report, based on more than 500 interviews as well as satellite images and visits to detention sites and graves, comes as the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague is expected to seek the arrest of Russian officials for forcibly deporting children from Ukraine and targeting civilian infrastructure.
The report’s authors also noted a “small number” of apparent violations by Ukrainian forces, including one they said was under criminal investigation by Ukrainian authorities. The vast majority of the report focused however on allegations against Russia. Russia denies committing atrocities or targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Updated
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has also announced further arms deliveries to Ukraine today.
Scholz, in a statement to the lower house of parliament on next week’s EU summit, said Berlin will, together with its European partners, ensure that Kyiv receives weapons and equipment to hold out and defend itself. He said:
It is particularly important to quickly provide Ukraine with the necessary ammunition. At the European Council, we will decide on further measures together with our EU partners to achieve an even better, continuous supply.
Updated
Here’s a bit more from Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has just announced that his country will send Ukraine at least four MiG-29 fighter jets in the coming days.
Speaking at a news conference, Duda said Warsaw would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes in the coming days.
Firstly, literally within the next few days, we will hand over, as far as I remember, four aircraft to Ukraine in full working order.
The rest are being prepared, serviced.
Duda’s announcement makes Poland the first Nato member country to fulfil Kyiv’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes. The Polish leader did not say if other countries would be making the same move.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, had hinted at the news that Warsaw will send Kyiv four MiG-29 fighter jets by posting four plane emojis during President Andrzej Duda’s announcement.
✈️ ✈️ ✈️ ✈️ https://t.co/bYS6GGQQUf
— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) March 16, 2023
Poland to transfer four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in coming days, says president
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said his country will be handing over four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in the coming days.
Speaking at a news conference just now, Duda said other MIG jets are also being prepared for the transfer, Polskie Radio’s Karol Darmoros reports.
Prezydent @AndrzejDuda: W ciągu najbliższych dni przekazujemy 4 samoloty MiG-29 na Ukrainę.
— Karol Darmoros 🇵🇱 (@KarolDarmoros) March 16, 2023
Jak dodał PAD, pozostałe maszyny są serwisowane i przygotowywane do przekazania. Zastąpimy je dostawami koreańskich FA-50 i amerykańskich F-35 pic.twitter.com/m63OLkwM7y
Updated
Vladimir Putin has been meeting Russia’s leading billionaires and business elite in person today for the first time since he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine more than a year ago.
The Russian leader urged them to invest in new technology, production facilities and enterprises to help Russia overcome what he said were western attempts to destroy its economy, Reuters reports.
He said Moscow had so far defied these attempts, and the western firms that had decided to stay in Russia had made a smart decision.
Images from the gathering showed those attending included the billionaires Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Potanin, Alexei Mordashov, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg, Viktor Rashnikov, Andrei Melnichenko and Dmitry Mazepin, whose interests range from metals and banking to fertilisers.
Many Russian oligarchs have been placed under western sanctions since last February. Speaking today, Putin said he had been left with no choice but to send his forces into Ukraine.
He told the business leaders Russia was facing a “sanctions war” but was swiftly reorienting its economy towards countries that had not imposed sanctions on Russia.
Updated
The former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, has been detained over a social media post in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Yevgeny Roizman, an opposition politician and Kremlin critic, allegedly posted a video clip briefly showing the logo of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which was outlawed as an “extremist” organization in 2021, the Moscow Times cited Russian police as saying.
Roizman’s lawyer confirmed he had been detained, but rejected the accusations and said his client had not shared the video.
Roizman, who enjoyed broad popularity as mayor of Yekaterinburg between 2013 and 2018, said on his way to court today:
I do not admit that the event even took place, let alone my guilt.
If convicted, he could face a 15-day arrest or new criminal charges related to the alleged violation of the terms of his sentence last year.
Roizman, one of the last opposition figures still in Russia and not behind bars, is already awaiting trial on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army.
He has been barred from attending public events, using the internet, telephone or mail and communicating with anyone other than his lawyers and close family.
Russian ships 'seen near area where Reaper drone crashed'
Russian ships have been seen near the area where the US MQ-9 Reaper drone crashed two days ago, Reuters has cited a US official as saying.
They did not appear to have recovered any parts of the drone yet, and it is not clear if they are still in the area.
Washington has said that any recovery efforts relating to the drone would be difficult because of the depth of water in the region.
Updated
Footage 'absolutely confirms' collision between US drone and Russian jet, says senior US official
Video footage released by the US European Command earlier today which it said shows the moment of impact between a Russian fighter jet and a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea “absolutely confirms” that there was a physical collision and dumping of fuel, CNN’s MJ Lee cites a senior US administration official as saying.
The footage, however, does not confirm whether it was the Russian pilot’s intent and whether they meant to strike the US drone’s propeller, according to the official.
The footage released this morning of the encounter between Russian fighter jets and a US drone over the Black Sea "absolutely confirms" that there was a physical collision and dumping of fuel, a senior administration official says.
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) March 16, 2023
But what it does not confirm, still, is the Russian pilot's intent and whether they meant to strike the US drone's propeller, the official said.
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) March 16, 2023
That remains one of the key questions in what has emerged a serious US-Russia dispute.
Asked whether the Russian pilot intended to strike the US drone’s propeller, the official replied that they didn’t know, but that there was no question that the footage confirmed the fighter jets were engaging in “aggressive flying” and “recklessness”.
Updated
Russian military to decide on retrieving drone from Black Sea, says Kremlin
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the downed US MQ-9 Reaper drone from the Black Sea will come from the Russian military.
Asked if Russia would try to raise the drone from the seabed to examine it, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov replied:
This is the prerogative of the military. If they deem it necessary to do that in the Black Sea for our interests and for our security, they will deal with that.
Peskov added that he did not know what the defence ministry’s plans were.
Hello everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here again, taking over the live blog from Martin Belam. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.
Summary of the day so far …
US European Command on Thursday issued a video which it says shows the moment of impact when a Russian fighter jet struck the propellor of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea, causing the latter to be ditched into the water. The footage, which lasts 42 seconds, shows aircraft making two extremely close passes to the drone, before the image breaks up.
Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage of a US military drone that crashed over the Black Sea, in a confrontation Washington blamed on two Russian fighter jets. US officials said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value.
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian defence ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in future react in due proportion”.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, told state-owned news agency Tass Thursday that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units”.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, reports that the Russian military destroyed and damaged private houses and infrastructure facilities in two settlements in the Kharkiv region overnight.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted to Telegram to commemorate a year since the Mariupol theatre bombing. Ukraine’s president wrote: “A year ago, Russia deliberately and brutally dropped a powerful bomb on the Drama Theatre in Mariupol. Next to the building was the inscription ‘Children’, which was impossible to overlook. Hundreds of people were hiding from the shelling there. Step by step, we are moving towards ensuring that the terrorist state is fully held to account for what it has done to our country and our people.”
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army. Daniil Frolkin is the first known soldier to be sentenced by Russia after admitting to killing civilians. The move is widely seen as a way to deter other servicemen from speaking out.
Both Tass and RIA are reporting that there is a fire at the border department of Russia’s federal security service in Rostov-on-Don. Some news sources are reporting that witness heard explosions or an explosion before the fire began.
State-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Russia’s education minister Sergey Kravtsov has confirmed that he expects by the beginning of the academic year Russian schools will have a new history textbook for high school pupils with a section on the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Poland claims to have broken up a Russian espionage network operating in the country. Defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak on Thursday said “I would like to emphasise the great success achieved by the officers of the internal security agency, because the whole spy network has been unravelled.”
The British foreign minister, James Cleverly, said on Thursday that the best way to protect Moldova from attack by Russia was to protect Ukraine.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be here shortly to take you through the next few hours of our live coverage.
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army.
In an interview with the independent news outlet Istories last August, Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the start of the invasion.
“I tell him: “Get down on your knees.” And I just put a bullet through his forehead. killed one person,” Frolkin told Istories in a phone conversation published by the outlet.
Istories identified the dead man as 47-year-old Ruslan Yaremchuk.
“I, a military serviceman from military unit 51460, Guards Private First Class, Frolkin Daniel Andreevich, confess to all the crimes I committed in Andreevka, to shooting civilians, stealing from civilians, taking their phones,” Frolkin added.
Frolkin was part of the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, a notorious unit based in the Khabarovsk region that has been accused of committing war crimes in Bucha.
Vladimir Putin has previously awarded the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade the honorary title of “guards” and praised the unit for its “great heroism and courage”.
Frolkin is the first known soldier to be sentenced by Russia after admitting to killing civilians. The move is widely seen as a way to deter other servicemen from speaking out.
Read more of Pjotr Sauer’s report here: Russian soldier who confessed to killing Ukrainian civilian jailed over ‘fake news’
US releases footage of drone collision over Black Sea
US European Command has issued a video which it says shows the moment of impact when a Russian fighter jet struck the propellor of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea, causing the latter to be ditched into the water.
U.S. military releases video showing a Russian Su-27 fighter jet colliding with an American MQ-9 Reaper drone above the Black Sea earlier this week. pic.twitter.com/4wrHauzObC
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) March 16, 2023
The footage, which lasts 42 seconds, shows aircraft making two extremely close passes to the drone, before the image breaks up.
The video was released with the following caption:
Two Russian Su-27 aircraft conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept with a US air force intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance unmanned MQ-9 aircraft operating within international airspace over the Black Sea on 14 March 2023. Russian Su-27s dumped fuel upon and struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing US forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters.
The video also came with the note “This declassified video has been edited for length, however, the events are depicted in sequential order.”
Russia’s defence ministry maintained earlier in the week that its fighters “did not use airborne weapons and did not come into contact” with the US drone.
On Wednesday, Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, called the incident a “provocation”, and said that “We are concerned about the unacceptable activity of the US military in the immediate vicinity of our borders,” accusing the US of supplying intelligence to Kyiv”. The US had summoned the ambassador over the incident.
The MQ-9 Reaper is a large unmanned aircraft 11 metres long with a wingspan of over 22 metres. The US air force says its primary use is as “an intelligence-collection asset”.
Defence secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen Mark Milley have spoken to their Russian counterparts about the destruction of the drone.
Updated
British foreign minister: best way to protect Moldova is to protect Ukraine
The British foreign minister, James Cleverly, said on Thursday that the best way to protect Moldova from attack by Russia was to protect Ukraine.
Reuters reports that asked by reporters whether Britain planned on sending military support to Moldova, Cleverly said: “We strongly believe that one of the best ways of protecting Moldova from physical attack is helping the Ukrainians defend themselves against Russia.”
Earlier the Kremlin said it regretted Moldova’s “unjustified prejudice” against Moscow, and that Russia remained open to good relations.
Updated
Both Tass and RIA are reporting that there is a fire at the border department of Russia’s federal security service in Rostov-on-Don.
Some news sources are reporting that witness heard explosions or an explosion before the fire began. Video clips are circulating which show smoke rising in the air.
In #Rostov-on-Don, the building of the #FSB department caught fire.
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 16, 2023
Local residents report hearing "sounds of explosions". pic.twitter.com/PahTxWll3E
Rostov-on-Don is about 32 kilometres (20 miles) from the Sea of Azov,
Amy Hawkins is the Guardian’s senior China correspondent:
Ukrainian soldiers have downed a Chinese-made drone near the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was launched from Russian-held territory on Friday night, before being shot down from a low altitude by Ukrainian forces in the early hours of Saturday.
The UAV was a Mugin-5, a commercial drone made by Chinese company Mugin Limited in Xiamen on China’s east coast. The company confirmed to CNN that the downed UAV was their airframe, saying that it was “deeply unfortunate”.
The UAV, which is available to buy for about $15,000 on Chinese e-commerce websites, had been retrofitted to carry a bomb, which the Ukrainian forces were able to destroy.
Mugin Limited said that it condemned the use of its products for military purposes and had stopped selling to Russia or Ukraine at the start of the war. But in January Russian officials claimed that they had also shot down a Mugin-5 which had been launched by Ukrainian forces.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Ukraine.
State-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Russia’s education minister Sergey Kravtsov has confirmed that he expects by the beginning of the academic year Russian schools will have a new history textbook for high school pupils with a section on the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
It quotes Kravtsov saying “Now the work is in full swing and we plan that by the beginning of the academic year it will be prepared for the senior classes”. He said that schools would be able to gradually switch to it.
“Special military operation” has been the preferred name by Russian authorities for the invasion of Ukraine which commenced on 24 February 2022.
The air alert that has been in place across most of Ukraine since just after 9am local time this morning has ended after about 90 minutes.
Russian-backed Donetsk leader says no signs Ukrainian troops leaving Bakhmut
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, has told state-owned news agency Tass that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units.”
He claimed, however, that Ukrainian forces were finding it difficult to supply ammunition, food or reinforcements, as the road into Bakhmut from the Ukrainian side is “even more significantly under the fire control of the Wagner mercenary group.”
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Poland claims to have broken up Russian spy ring
Poland claims to have broken up a Russian espionage network operating in the country.
Broadcaster RMF reported on Wednesday that Polish security services had detained six people suspected of spying for Russia. According to the broadcaster the group had been planning sabotage activities.
Defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak today said “I would like to emphasise the great success achieved by the officers of the internal security agency, because the whole spy network has been unravelled” on Polskie Radio 1. “This is undoubtedly proof that the Polish services work for the security of our country in a very efficient manner,” he added.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the report.
Updated
Key event
Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014 in a move not widely internationally recognised, has spoken to state-owned news agency Tass about the future prospects of the peninsula. He said that Ukraine has no chance of re-taking the territory due to the fortification of the region.
Tass quotes him saying:
They understand that they have no chance of taking Crimea, taking into account the measures that are being implemented on behalf of the president. Nothing threatens Crimea in this part and the Crimeans can sleep peacefully. The measures have been taken 100%, and their implementation will allow minimising possible damage as much as possible.
Aksyonov accused Kyiv of using western-purchased drones to try to probe the defences of Crimea.
Suspilne correspondents are reporting that explosions have been heard in Kherson this morning.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, reports that the Russian military destroyed and damaged private houses and infrastructure facilities in two settlements in the Kharkiv region overnight. The claim has not been independently verified.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that yesterday in Kherson “pyrotechnicians neutralised 90 explosive objects in the de-occupied settlements of the region”. It also reports that more than 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres), and more than seven kilometres (4.3 miles) of power lines were inspected.
An air alert has been declared across much of Ukraine. NPR journalist Eleanor Beardsley, who is currently in Kyiv, has said “I don’t know how Ukrainians live like this.”
Sitting here working this morning and my phone starts wailing. I don’t know how Ukrainians live like this. pic.twitter.com/r9Dt1H3U22
— Eleanor Beardsley (@ElBeardsley) March 16, 2023
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted to Telegram to commemorate a year since the Mariupol theatre bombing. Ukraine’s president wrote:
A year ago, Russia deliberately and brutally dropped a powerful bomb on the Drama Theatre in Mariupol. Next to the building was the inscription “Children”, which was impossible to overlook. Hundreds of people were hiding from the shelling there.
Zelenskiy’s message continued:
Step by step, we are moving towards ensuring that the terrorist state is fully held to account for what it has done to our country and our people. We will not forgive a single life ruined by the occupiers. We remember all those whose lives were taken by Russian terror.
A week after the incident, Ukrainian authorities put the death toll at as many as 300 people. The figure was based on the accounts of witnesses.
The Russian authorities have repeatedly denied targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure in a war where urban civilian casualties have been high.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com
More now on Moldova. One of Europe’s poorest countries, Moldova has been buffeted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the presence of pro-Russian separatists on its doorstep.
Led by pro-European President Maia Sandu, Moldova accuses Russia of plotting to destabilise it. Transdniestria, meanwhile, last week said it had foiled a Ukrainian plot to assassinate its leaders.
A contingent of 1,500 Russian “peacekeepers” remain in the separatist region 30 years after a brief war pitting it against newly independent Moldova.
Transdniestria channels funds from gas bills paid by domestic and industrial users to a “gas account” used to cover some of its substantial budget deficits.
The sum of Transdniestria’s unpaid bills for Russian gas is estimated by Moldovan officials at several billion dollars.
Accumulated arrears for the Moldovagaz company in the rest of Moldova stand at $709 million, though officials in Chisinau last year ordered an international audit of the debt. Moldova depends on Transdniestria to provide most of its electricity at relatively cheap prices from a thermal power station supplied by Gazprom.
France is being accused of slowing down a €2bn EU package for purchasing weapons for Ukraine by demanding that the munitions be manufactured inside the bloc, The Telegraph reports.
“Paris wanted guarantees that a deal to jointly procure weapons would only benefit firms based in the EU,” the newspaper reported, quoting European sources.
US and Russia race to reach US drone wreckage
Russia has reportedly reached the site of the US drone, CNN are reporting, citing officials. In a press conference following a rare call between Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and his Russian counterpart, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Milley said that the drone would be difficult to recover.
CNN reports that two officials said Russia had reached the MQ-9 crash site in the Black Sea.
Milley told reporters that the drone “probably sank to some significant depths, so any recovery operation from a technical standpoint would be very difficult”, but that the intelligence it had gathered would not be able to be accessed.
“It’s probably about maybe 4,000 or 5,000 feet of water, something like that. So, any recovery operation is very difficult at that depth by anyone,” Milley said.
“As far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, et cetera, as normal, we would take – and we did take mitigating measures, so we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value.”
We are no longer receiving Russian gas, says Moldava energy minister
Ex-Soviet Moldova is no longer receiving Russian gas or enduring the “blackmail” imposed by gas giant Gazprom over its difficulties in paying for supplies, the country’s energy minister said.
Victor Parlicov, speaking to TV8 television on Wednesday evening, said Gazprom had been providing supplies only to Moldova’s Russian-backed Transdniestria separatist region since December, with none going to central authorities in Chisinau.
He said Moldova, wedged between Ukraine and European Union member Romania, was able to secure European supplies thanks to €300m ($318m) in credits from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
But Transdniestria, he said, has never paid Gazprom for the gas it receives.
“Transdniestria did’t pay for gas before and it’s not paying now,” Parlicov said. “Gazprom puts up with debts from there. But when the (rest of Moldova) was getting gas, the Russian company resorted to supply cuts, to blackmail.”
Gazprom had allowed this for 30 years, Parlicov said, to keep the pro-Russian sliver of land from collapsing.
“They understand that if they abandon this contract they will be practically be allowing the region to collapse,” he said.
Updated
Welcome
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.
Our top story this morning: ex-Soviet Moldova is no longer receiving Russian gas or enduring the “blackmail” imposed by gas giant Gazprom over its difficulties in paying for supplies, the country’s energy minister said.
Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has been buffeted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the presence of pro-Russian separatists on its doorstep.
Led by pro-European President Maia Sandu, Moldova accuses Russia of plotting to destabilise it.
We’ll have more on this and other news shortly.
Here are the key recent developments:
Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage of a US military drone that crashed over the Black Sea, in a confrontation Washington blamed on two Russian fighter jets. US officials said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value.
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian Defence Ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in future react in due proportion”.
Austin declined to offer any details on the call, including whether he criticised the Russian intercept. But he reiterated at a news conference that the US intended to continue flying where international law allowed and demanded Russian military aircraft operate in a safe and professional manner.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said that the incident was “being investigated”. Blinken declined to speak to the motive or intent behind the incident, saying he would let the investigation proceed and that the US is “in close coordination” with allies and partners on the matter.
The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, accused Russia of acting “unprofessionally”. Wallace’s comments reflect an emerging western view that the extraordinary mid-air incident was a one-off, not immediately meriting anything stronger than diplomatic complaints.
The Kremlin said on earlier on Wednesday that relations with the US were in a “lamentable state” and at their lowest level, after Washington accused Russia of downing one of its reconnaissance drones over the Black Sea.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian ground forces shot down a Russian fighter jet near the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian official has said. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, also said Kyiv’s forces had made gains in northern parts of the city.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary Wagner group, said Russian forces had taken control of the settlement of Zaliznyanskoye and are expanding the encirclement of Bakhmut. Neither side’s claims of success in what has become the longest-running battle since the war began could be verified.
Ex-Soviet Moldova is no longer receiving Russian gas or enduring the “blackmail” imposed by gas giant Gazprom over its difficulties in paying for supplies, the country’s energy minister said. Victor Parlicov, speaking to TV8 television on Wednesday evening, said Gazprom had been providing supplies only to Moldova’s Russian-backed Transnistria separatist region since December, with none going to central authorities in Chisinau.
Russia’s defence ministry will start a new recruitment campaign on 1 April, with the aim of recruiting 400,000 professional soldiers to the Russian army, according to a report. Russian military recruitment offices are trying to compensate for its losses in specialised soldiers, such as tank drivers and artillerymen, according to a separate report.
Turkey’s parliament is “highly likely” to ratify Finland’s Nato accession bid before mid-April, two Turkish officials told Reuters. Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the defence pact after Russia invaded Ukraine but faced objections from Turkey.
