Commemorations have been held in Ukraine and around the world on the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with moments of silence observed, and candlelit vigils and protests held. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, describing the events of 24 February 2022 as “the longest day of our lives”, pledged to push for victory.
Striking a tone of grim defiance as he congratulated Ukrainians on their resilience in the face of Europe’s biggest and deadliest conflict since the second world war, in a video address Zelenskiy said Ukrainians had proved themselves to be invincible over “a year of pain, sorrow, faith and unity”.
Zelenskiy said the military situation in Ukraine’s south is “quite dangerous” in some places, while conditions in the east are “very difficult”. He said pro-Moscow forces had again shelled the southern city of Kherson, this time cutting off heat for 40,000 people.
In a further address in Lithuania given via video link, Zelenskiy said Russia had to lose its war in Ukraine to ensure it stopped seeking to conquer territories it once controlled. “Russian revanchism must forever forget about Kyiv and Vilnius, about Chișinău and Warsaw, about our brothers in Latvia and Estonia, in Georgia and every other country that is now threatened,” he said.
Russia’s Wagner group of mercenaries has taken full control of the Ukrainian village of Berkhivka, just north-west of Bakhmut, the Wagner founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed on Telegram.
The Group of Seven (G7) has announced a range of further economic, military and financial sanctions against Russia. The group announced it would take unprecedented measures in order to weaken Russia, promising measures against its diamond exports. It said third countries that helped Russia evade sanctions would face “severe costs” and it is understood to be setting up an “enforcement coordination mechanism” to stop evasion of G7 sanctions already imposed.
The US has announced an additional package of security assistance for Ukraine. In a statement, the Biden administration said it would include “several new unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) equipment to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences … and electronic warfare detection equipment to bolster Ukraine’s ability to repel Russia’s aggression”.
China has called for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, while urging all parties to avoid nuclear escalation and end attacks on civilians, in a statement that appeared to maintain Beijing’s stance that the west is fuelling the conflict and was dismissed as anodyne by analysts. The 12-point position paper on Ukraine was released on Friday morning. The paper, for which Ukraine was not consulted, was cautiously welcomed by Kyiv, but criticised by US officials and some analysts who noted the growing ties between China and Russia. On Wednesday, China’s top diplomat visited Moscow and pledged a deeper partnership.
China’s call for peace talks “doesn’t have much credibility”, the secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, said, as he warned Beijing against supplying arms to the Kremlin war machine. Stoltenberg told reporters: “China doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine and they also signed just days before the invasion an agreement between President Xi and President Putin on a limitless partnership with Russia.”
President Zelenskiy has welcomed some elements of a Chinese proposal for a ceasefire in Russia’s war on Ukraine. “China has shown its thoughts. I believe that the fact that China started talking about Ukraine is not bad,” Zelenskiy said.
Russia appreciated China’s plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and was open to achieving the goals of what it calls its “special military operation” through political and diplomatic means, the foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. However, this would also mean recognising “new territorital realities” in Ukraine, Zakharova said, referring to Russia’s unilateral annexation of four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - as well as Crimea.
The Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has said any “peace plan” to end the conflict must involve the withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders of 1991. He said a ceasefire that resulted in the continued occupation by Russia of Ukrainian territory “isn’t about peace, but about freezing the war, Ukraine’s defeat, next stages of genocide”.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Friday more talks between parliamentary groups were needed before Hungary’s ratification of Finland and Sweden’s Nato membership, which lawmakers will start debating next Wednesday.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, said his country has delivered its first Leopard tanks to Ukraine. The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, went to Kyiv on Friday in a show of support for Ukraine, the government spokesperson Piotr Muller wrote on Twitter.
Sweden will send up to 10 Leopard tanks and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, and defence minister, Pål Jonson, said.
Canada will provide more than $32m (£19.7m) in support to further strengthen Ukraine’s security and stabilisation, its government has announced.
Denmark is “open” to the idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine to help its war effort, the Danish defence minister said on Friday.
Britain is not planning to send RAF Typhoons to Ukraine, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace said. Wallace said the jets would be too complex for Ukraine – but added, with the backing of Downing Street, the fighters could provide air cover for eastern bloc countries to backfill if they wanted to send their MiG-29 and other Soviet-era jets to Kyiv.
Wallace also said Britain is taking steps to rebuild its stockpiles of munitions which have been depleted by the war in Ukraine.
Britain has imposed an export ban on every piece of equipment Russia has been found using on the battlefield in Ukraine, the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, announced .
The archbishop of Canterbury said an end to the war in Ukraine cannot lead to Russia being treated like Germany after the first world war.
The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the only way for Moscow to eventually ensure a lasting peace with Ukraine was to push back its own borders as far as possible, “even if these are the borders of Poland”.
Some US and western officials estimate Russia’s military casualties at nearly 200,000 dead or wounded. Battlefield losses are impossible to verify independently, but soldiers fighting on the frontline and military officials have conceded that the death toll has spiked in recent weeks. Thousands of civilians have been killed and Ukrainian prosecutors have reported thousands of allegations of war crimes.
On Thursday, the UN general assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution to demand Moscow withdraw its troops from Ukraine. There were 141 votes in favour and 32 abstentions on Thursday night. China abstained on the vote and six countries joined Russia to vote no – Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua and Syria.
A US army official has said it could take up to two years for M1 Abrams tanks to be delivered to Ukraine. The US announced in January that it would supply Ukraine with 31 advanced M1 Abrams tanks worth $400m in a matter of months. But plans were still being drawn up on how and when they would be delivered, the US army secretary, Christine Wormuth, said.
Russia’s foreign ministry has warned that any actions threatening its troops in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria would be seen as a direct attack on Russia and trigger an “adequate response”.
Moldova has dismissed an accusation by Russia’s defence ministry that Ukraine planned to invade Transnistria after staging a false-flag operation, and called for calm. The Russian ministry said Ukraine planned to stage an attack purportedly by Russian forces from Transnistria as a pretext for the invasion, state media reported.
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The EU is expected to announce a ban on €11bn (£9.7bn) worth of exports of critical technologies to Russia, as part of a 10th round of sanctions. Despite plans to have the measures in place by the first anniversary of the invasion, the latest measures were being held up by a last-minute dispute over how quickly to ban synthetic rubber imports from Russia. Italy objected to a rapid phase-out, while Poland blindsided other member states with its insistence the trade be stopped as soon as possible.
