Summary
Thank you for joining us for today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
We will be pausing our live reporting overnight and returning in the morning.
In the meantime, you can read our comprehensive summary of the day’s events below.
- A deal to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports is to be signed by Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN on Friday, Turkey says. The agreement will be put in writing by the parties and signed at the Dolmabahce Palace offices at 1.30pm GMT, the office of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said. “In summary, a document may be signed which will bind the sides to (ensure) safe functioning of export routes in the Black Sea,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko added.
- The US said it would hold Russia accountable for implementing the deal. State department spokesperson, Ned Price, accused Russia of weaponising food, saying: “What will really matter is the implementation of this agreement. We will of course continue to work with our partners to hold Russia accountable for its implementation.”
- Russia is “about to run out of steam” and take an operational pause offering Ukraine the chance to strike back, the head of UK intelligence said. “I think they’re about to run out of steam. I think our assessment is that the Russians will increasingly find it difficult to supply manpower material over the next few weeks,” said Richard Moore, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6. “They will have to pause in some way, and that will give the Ukrainians opportunities to strike back.”
- Britain will send scores of artillery guns and more than 1,600 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, the UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said on Thursday. Wallace said Britain would also provide counter-battery radar systems, hundreds of drones and more than 50,000 rounds of ammunition.
- Ukraine has called for an international tribunal to bring Putin to justice more quickly. Trying Russia separately for the act of aggression, with international participation, would speed up its quest to hold the Russian president and his inner circle accountable, officials said. “We hope to have the indictment within three months,” Andriy Smyrnov, Ukraine’s deputy head of the presidential administration, said.
- Belarus president said the war must be stopped in order to avoid the “abyss of nuclear war” and insisted that Ukraine accept Russia’s demands. “There’s no need to go further. Further lies the abyss of nuclear war,” he told AFP. Lukashenko also accused the west of seeking a conflict with Russia and of provoking the war. “If Russia had not got ahead of you, members of Nato, you would have organised and struck a blow against it,” he said.
- Russian proxies in the Russian-occupied territory of Donbas have been confiscating documents from forcibly mobilised troops, according to Ukrainian military chiefs. Russian proxies have reportedly been stripping personal documents from residents in attempts to force them to fight against Ukraine and making it impossible for forcibly mobilised troops to desert or identify those that have been killed, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said.
- Half of all the Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover around Europe have been expelled since the start of the war in Ukraine, the chief of MI6 told a US security conference. Richard Moore, who heads British foreign intelligence, said the expulsions of about 400 Russian diplomats from countries in continental Europe, including France and Germany, had dramatically reduced the Kremlin’s espionage capabilities.
- The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) has called for more funding to tackle Russian kleptocracy. The (NCA) said the UK had been slower to seize sanctioned Russian oligarchs’ assets than the US because it could not rely on the same “substantial level of investment” that Washington has poured into tackling international corruption and sanctions busting.
- The Kremlin claims Putin is in good health, dismissing what it called “false reports” he was unwell. “Everything is fine with his health,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said in reply to a question at his daily briefing. “These are nothing but fakes,” he added.
- What could be a priceless Fabergé egg has been found on board a Russian oligarch’s superyacht seized by US authorities. US deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco told the Aspen security forum on Wednesday it was one of the more “interesting” finds her team has made.
- Germany’s economics minister announced a new wave of emergency measures to cut the country’s consumption of gas after flows from Russia through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline resumed at reduced levels following a scheduled shutdown.
- An EU proposal that member countries cut gas use by 15% to prepare for possible supply cuts from Russia is facing resistance from governments, throwing into doubt whether they will approve the emergency plan.
Updated
Russia’s top diplomat will address the Arab League at its Cairo headquarters on Sunday, the organisation said.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will meet Arab League head Ahmed Aboul Gheit and representatives of the 22 nations that make up the pan-Arab bloc, according to Agence France-Presse.
On Tuesday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi hosted a summit that was attended by his Russian and Turkish counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
