Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Two civilians have been killed in Russian shelling of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, according to regional officials. Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional military administration, said an 81-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man were killed during shelling of the village of Novotyahinka, about 40 km (25 miles) from Kherson city. A Russian missile strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Wednesday morning has also left two civilians wounded, Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, has said.
Joe Biden has boarded Air Force One, concluding a historic trip to Poland and Ukraine ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden vowed that the US will defend “literally every inch of Nato” territory ahead of talks with Nato’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and leaders of the Bucharest Nine (B9), a collection of nations on the most eastern parts of the Nato alliance and closest to Russia. The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
All members of the Bucharest Nine (B9) have jointly condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine, a Polish presidential adviser said. President Biden and the B9 leaders “reaffirmed their unwavering support for Ukraine and underscored their shared commitment to stand with the Ukrainian people for as long as it takes” according to a White House account of Wednesday afternoon’s meeting in Warsaw.
Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, said he urged Joe Biden to seek Nato deployment of additional military equipment, including Himars artillery or attack helicopters, in the Baltic states, during the US president’s meeting with B9 leaders. He said Biden was silent but took notes as he listened to Nausėda and others on deploying air defence systems in the Baltics and other eastern flank countries.
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, has met Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as China and Russia reaffirm their close bilateral relationship just days before the first anniversary of the start of the Ukraine war. Wang told Vladimir Putin that Beijing will play a “constructive” role in reaching a political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, Russian state-owned Tass news agency reported.
Earlier on Wednesday, Wang met Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, where he said he expected to reach a “new consensus” on advancing the relationship between the two allies. Xi Jinping, China’s president, is expected to visit Putin in Russia in the coming months, although an exact date has not been announced.
Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US will not increase the risk of a nuclear war, Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said. Russia’s parliament on Wednesday approved Vladimir Putin’s move to suspend the treaty. Biden has said Putin “made a mistake” by suspending the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the US.
Vladimir Putin has praised soldiers who are “fighting heroically, courageously, bravely” to “defend the fatherland” in a speech at a rally in Moscow to mark a year of war in Ukraine. Thousands gathered at Luzhniki stadium in Moscow to attend a concert marking the “Defenders of the Fatherland” Day.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will meet UN secretary general, António Guterres, to discuss ongoing support for Ukraine as the UN’s security council meets this week, the US state department has said. Blinken is expected to travel to New York tomorrow to attend the security council meeting on Ukraine, marking one year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
EU countries have failed to agree on a new set of sanctions against Russia meant to be in place for the one-year anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday, four diplomatic sources in Brussels have told Reuters. More talks among Brussels representatives of EU member countries were due on Thursday afternoon, said the sources.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged member states to speed up delivery of ammunition from their stocks to Ukraine “as a matter or urgency”. Building on comments at the Munich Security conference over the weekend and at Nato headquarters on Tuesday, Borrell said the EU was” looking into the question of joint procurement” of ammunition and “how to ramp up the production capacity of the European defence industry”.
Britain has begun to “warm up” its production lines to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and increase production of artillery shells to try to help Kyiv push back Russian forces, defence minister Ben Wallace has said. In an interview with Reuters, Wallace said he believed Britain was in a good place to help Ukraine but needed to sustain the provision of weapons.
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has urged the UN to establish a special tribunal to try Russia for crimes of aggression to ensure Moscow’s invasion “never will be repeated” anywhere. Ukraine’s victory “would mean the victory of human rights over lawlessness, torture and destruction”, Zelenska said in a video address to a special meeting at the UN on human rights violations in Ukraine.
Nato must “seriously plan” for the likely future reality of a Russian-controlled Belarus, the US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has warned. Putin will “very likely secure significant gains in restoring Russian suzerainty over Belarus” and use it as a launch pad to further threaten Ukraine and Nato’s eastern flank, regardless of the outcome of his invasion of Ukraine, the ISW said in its latest update on the war.
Ukraine will ask Turkey and the UN this week to start talks to roll over the Black Sea grain deal, seeking an extension of at least one year that would include the ports of Mykolaiv, a senior Ukrainian official said. Yuriy Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of restoration also said he wanted the ports of Mykolaiv included in the deal, and that Russia’s current occupation of the Kinburn spit was an obstacle. The spit of land overlooks the route that ships would use to sail from Mykolaiv’s ports into the Black Sea.
A group of 10 EU member states have called for stronger action to stop Russia sourcing military parts through front companies in neighbouring countries and evading western sanctions. The 10 countries, which include France, Germany, Italy and the Baltic states, write that “2023 must be the year of success in countering circumvention”, warning that public support and international legitimacy of sanctions could wane if they are deemed ineffective.
Women in Ukraine are increasingly vulnerable to sexual violence 12 months after Russia invaded the country, with reports of abuse on the rise, according to a leading humanitarian organisation in the country. Women fleeing from bombed houses and their home towns are reporting attacks occurring in the home and in communal shelters, said Marysia Zapasnik, Ukraine country director for the International Rescue Committee.
India does not want the G20 nations to discuss additional sanctions on Russia during its one-year presidency of the bloc, according to officials. On Tuesday, Japan’s finance minister said financial leaders of the G7 nations would meet tomorrow, on the sidelines of the G20 gathering in India, to discuss measures against Russia.
Belgium has said it is investigating a Russian “spy ship” detected in the North Sea around mid-November last year. It comes after Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD said Russia has been attempting to gain intelligence to sabotage critical infrastructure in the Dutch part of the North Sea.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war live blog today. Thanks for following along, we’ll be back tomorrow.
Updated
UK's Challenger tanks to arrive in Ukraine 'in the spring', says defence minister
Britain has begun to “warm up” its production lines to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and increase production of artillery shells to try to help Kyiv push back Russian forces, defence minister Ben Wallace has said.
Wallace earlier spoke with Ukrainian soldiers who were training to use the UK’s Challenger tanks, which he said would arrive in Ukraine in “the spring”.
In an interview with Reuters, Wallace said he believed Britain was in a good place to help Ukraine but needed to sustain the provision of weapons.
Asked whether the UK had the commercial capacity to continue to provide Ukraine with weapons such as artillery shells, he said:
We have laid contracts ... We’ve started to already now receive some deliveries of that for our own restocking and also some of it to Ukraine.
He said shells could be made fairly quickly but “the key is to make sure that we place the orders, and we’ve started placing those orders over the last 10 months and that starts to sort of warm up those production lines”.
He added:
Absolutely part of the effort this year is sustainability - how can we, the international community, stimulate supply chains, how can we stimulate our own supply chains for our own equipment and that’s been one of the changes
