Summary
We’re ending our live coverage of the war in Ukraine for today. In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of all the latest developments.
Russia is ramping up its attacks in the eastern Donetsk region, the Ukrainian military has said. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun has “doubled its artillery fire and airstrikes” and had also “intensified ground infantry attacks”.
Russia is also likely to have begun using more 500kg cluster munitions in Donetsk, according to the British intelligence. The Ministry of Defence said the munitions, which eject 100-350 submunitions over a wide area, were thought to have been deployed in a number of parts of the region.
Russian forces claimed to have taken control of the village of Khromove in the same region. The village is on the western edge of Bakhmut, a city that fell to Russia over summer after a months-long battle and which remains the scene of heavy fighting.
Russian casualties since the beginning of the war now stand at 327,580, according to the Ukrainian military. In its latest daily update, Ukraine’s general staff said the figure had increased by 1,140.
Ukraine claimed to have killed five “high-ranking” Russian officials in a strike on a building in an occupied part of Kherson. The country’s armed forces said the strike had targeted a meeting in the village of Yuvileyne following “information provided by the underground and concerned local residents”.
Ukraine said its air defences shot down 21 out of 21 Iranian-made Shahed drones headed for the western Khmelnytskyi region, home to a Ukrainian air base, overnight on Tuesday. Earlier this year, Ukraine called on its western allies to help strengthen its air defences to enable it to protect itself from Russian attacks on its infrastructure.
The secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has warned that the bloc must not underestimate Russia and its ability to continue fighting the war in Ukraine. “Russia’s economy is on a war footing, Putin has a high tolerance for casualties, and Russian aims in Ukraine have not changed,” he said.
The European Union has delivered about 300,000 of the 1m shells it has promised to Ukraine, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said. Kuleba said the demands of Ukraine’s war effort meant there was a need for greater alignment of Ukrainian and Nato arms production and to create “a Euro-Atlantic common area” of defence industries.
Russia has failed in its bid to be re-elected to the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Following a vote of the member states, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland were elected to fill the three seats from the Eastern Europe bloc that were set to come free for the 2024-2026 term.
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Ukraine has seen no sign that its Nato allies are tiring of the war or of providing it with support, the country’s foreign minister has insisted.
Dmytro Kuleba was speaking from Brussels, where Nato’s foreign ministers are meeting to discuss the security situation in Ukraine and other parts of the world.
“I heard a clear ‘No’ to any reference to fatigue, and I heard [a] clear ‘Yes’ to increased support to Ukraine,” he told the Associated Press.
He also said some allies had made fresh offers of support, though declined to provide details.
“They understand that in order for them to feel safe, in order for them not to end up in a situation where NATO’s soldiers will have to fight, Ukraine has to win in this war,” he said.
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