Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, UK military intelligence warned on Saturday, a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stormed out of G20 talks in Indonesia amid criticism of the war in Ukraine. Follow the day’s events on our liveblog. All times are Paris time, GMT+2.
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9:56pm: Ukrainian company makes prosthetics for wounded soldiers
A report by FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg about a Ukrainian company that makes prosthetics for wounded soldiers.
6:37pm: Zelensky fires Ukraine’s envoy to Germany and several other top ambassadors
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Kyiv's ambassador to Germany on Saturday as well as several other top foreign envoys, the presidential website said.
In a decree that gave no explanation for the move, he announced that Ukraine’s ambassadors to Germany, India, Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary had been sacked.
It was not immediately clear whether the envoys would be given new jobs.
2:37pm: Six injured in Kharkiv in Russian strikes
The Russian defence ministry released a statement in which it claimed responsibility for strikes on the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where six civilians were injured according to the local Ukrainian prosecutor's office.
12:45pm: Ukrainian recruits begin military training in UK
The first batch of up to 10,000 inexperienced Ukrainian military recruits set to train in Britain over the coming months have started drills, the UK's ministry of defence (MoD) has said.
The new British-led programme involves 1,050 UK service personnel training the Ukrainian volunteers, who have little to no military experience, at MoD sites across England for several weeks.
It follows the UK's Operation Orbital – prompted by Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine – which gave 22,000 Ukrainians military training between 2015 and 2022.
"This ambitious new training programme is the next phase in the UK's support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression," Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in a statement, after visiting the latest recruits this week.
"Using the world-class expertise of the British Army we will help Ukraine to rebuild its forces and scale-up its resistance as they defend their country's sovereignty and their right to choose their own future," he added.
10:35am: Blinken urges Beijing to distance itself from Moscow in talks with Chinese FM
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has held rare talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, a day after the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Describing the talks as "constructive", Blinken said he called on China to distance itself from Russia over the war in Ukraine.
Washington's top diplomat said he told Wang that "this really is a moment where we all have to stand up, as we heard country after country in the G20 do, to condemn the aggression, to demand among other things that Russia allow access to food that is stuck in Ukraine" .
He added there were "no signs" Moscow was willing to engage after it faced a barrage of criticism at the G20 talks a day earlier.
8:55am: Ukraine reports heavy shelling along Donbas front line
Ukrainian officials have reported heavy shelling of towns and villages as Russian forces attack Ukrainian positions in the Donbas from several directions.
"Russians are firing along the entire front line," the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Gaidai, said on the Telegram message system.
"The enemy is trying to advance from the settlements of the Luhansk region to the first villages of Donetsk region," Gaidai added.
After taking the city of Lysychansk last Sunday and effectively cementing control of Luhansk, Russia has made clear it is planning to capture parts of neighbouring Donetsk province.
Gaidai said Russian forces had not paused after their recent advances in the east. "They attack and bombard our lands with the same intensity as before."
7:30am: Russia assembling reserve forces for future offensive, says UK intelligence
Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations, British military intelligence has warned in its daily bulletin on the war.
A large proportion of the new Russian infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport, Britain's ministry of defence tweeted.
4:45am: Divisions over Ukraine roil G20 summit
At the meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali on Friday, some of the staunchest critics of the invasion of Ukraine confronted their Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
High on their list of concerns was getting grain shipments from Ukraine out through ports blocked by Russia's presence in the Black Sea and naval mines.
But FRANCE 24’s Armen Georgian explains G20 members are not all on the same page when it comes to punishing Russia for its act of aggression against a neighbouring state.
For one, the G20 “is not a permanent institution, it cannot issue legally binding resolutions”, Georgian explained. “It can make political declarations and then it’s up to members to implement them as they see fit. It can only urge an end to the Ukrainian grain crisis.”
Within the G20, the BRICKS grouping members have not lined up against Russia, said Georgian. Brazil, India, China and South Africa represent 42 percent of the world’s population, and countries like India and China are “seen as having lined up with Russia”, he explained.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters, AFP, AP)
