Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ruled out giving up any Ukrainian territory in a potential peace deal with Russia. In an interview with the BBC, Ukraine’s leader said conceding land would mean Russia could “keep coming back”. Zelenskiy said a predicted spring offensive had already begun but that he believed that his country’s forces could keep resisting Russia’s advance until they were able to launch a counter-offensive.
The embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut will fall within a couple of months, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary group Wagner, has predicted. In an interview with a pro-war military blogger, Prigozhin forecast Bakhmut would be seized in March or April, depending on how many soldiers Ukraine commits to its defence and how well his own troops are supplied.
Russia launched a total of 36 air and sea-based cruise missiles, guided air-to-surface missiles and anti-ship missiles at Ukraine overnight into Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least 16 were shot down by Ukrainian air defence batteries, Ukraine’s air force said. Among them, air defences in the south downed eight Kalibr missiles fired from a ship in the Black Sea, Ukrainian officials said.
Critical infrastructure was damaged in Russian strikes on the Lviv region in Ukraine’s west, the head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, reported on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties.
The overnight Russian bombardment did not have a major impact on power, Ukraine’s energy minister German Galushchenko and the national power grid operator Ukrenergo said. Ukraine was meeting consumer demand for the fifth successive day, Galushchenko said. Ukrenergo said it saw no need to introduce emergency power outages to conserve supplies.
Russia has “definitely changed tactics” by using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons to fool Ukraine’s air defences, according to a senior Ukrainian official. The goal of the decoy missiles was to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by offering too many targets, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Russian sortie rates have increased over the last week, following several weeks of quieter activity, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has reported. Air activity is “now roughly in line with the average daily rate seen since summer 2022”, its latest intelligence update reads. The MoD has also reported that the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) continue to deploy a similar number of aircraft in support of the Ukraine operation to what they have for many months.
Russia “continues to introduce large numbers of troops” on to the battlefield in Ukraine, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said. Those troops are “ill-equipped and ill-trained” and as a result, Russian forces are “incurring a lot of casualties and we expect that that will continue”, Austin told reporters in Estonia. He added that the US was ready to defend the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if required.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to achieve their military aims, Gen Mark Milley, chair of America’s joint chiefs of staff, has said. In an interview with the Financial Times, Austin said he believes the war will end at the negotiating table. The Pentagon is re-examining its weapons stockpiles and may need to boost military spending after seeing how quickly ammunition has been used during the war in Ukraine, he added.
Russia’s equipment and manpower are likely “significantly depleted”, says the Institute for the Study of War. In an update posted on its website, it said Putin is “unlikely to announce measures for further escalation of the war in Ukraine, major new Russian mobilisation initiatives, or any other significant policy in his planned address to the Russian Federal Assembly on 21 February.”
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine has returned 101 prisoners of war to Russia following talks, state-run media is reporting. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said 100 troops and one civilian had been returned to Ukraine. Nearly all had been defending the besieged southern city of Mariupol before it fell to Russian forces, Yermak said.
Belarus will fight alongside ally Russia if another country launches an attack against it, president Alexander Lukashenko has said. Lukashenko, who has repeatedly denied claims from Kyiv and the west that his country could be dragged further into the conflict in Ukraine on the side of Moscow, also said he planned to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Friday.
EU countries are “on good track” to adopt new sanctions against Russia in time for the anniversary of Moscow’s attack on Ukraine on 24 February, according to diplomatic sources. The European Commission has called for a ban on the export of vital technology to Russia worth €11bn to further weaken the Kremlin’s war effort, cementing what EU officials have called the bloc’s toughest ever sanctions.
The European Commission has abandoned plans to sanction Russia’s nuclear sector or its representatives in its next sanctions package, according to a report. A leaked version of the latest proposals seen by the Guardian yesterday showed the EU had not answered Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plea to blacklist Russia’s nuclear industry in Europe.
Norway’s parliament has announced it will donate 75 billion kroner (£6.1bn) to Ukraine as part of a five-year support package, making the oil-rich country one of the world’s biggest donors to Kyiv. The money will be split evenly between military and humanitarian assistance over five years, broken down to 15 billion kroner (£1.2bn) annually. Speaking via video link to the Norwegian parliament, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Norway’s decision set a precedent for “sustainable support”, calling it a “historic contribution”.
The UK Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, has travelled to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Starmer said the UK’s position on Ukraine “will remain the same” if there is a change of government next year, as he travelled to the suburbs of Irpin and Bucha where Russia committed significant atrocities last year as they were forced back by Ukrainian forces.
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, arrived in Kyiv today to meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the first public visit to the Ukrainian capital by a senior Israeli official since Russia’s invasion last year. During a joint briefing with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, Cohen said Israel would support a Ukrainian peace initiative at the UN and help secure up to $200m for healthcare and infrastructure projects.
Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, have agreed on the importance of stepping up support to Ukraine in the coming weeks, Sunak’s office said. Duda’s visit to the UK comes after Nato defence ministers met in Brussels earlier this week, and ahead of the Munich Security Conference this weekend.
Russia’s foreign ministry has said it is expelling four Austrian diplomats. In a statement, the Russian ministry said Austria had taken an “unfriendly and unjustified step” and was ruining its previous position as a respected, unbiased and neutral state. The move comes after Austria’s foreign ministry said earlier this month it was expelling four Russian diplomats for behaving in a manner inconsistent with international agreements, a reason often invoked in spying cases.
The UN general assembly will vote next week on a draft resolution stressing “the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. Ukraine and its supporters hope to deepen Russia’s diplomatic isolation by seeking yes votes from nearly three-quarters of the General Assembly.
Russia has “definitely changed tactics” by using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons to fool Ukraine’s air defences, according to a senior Ukrainian official.
The goal of the decoy missiles was to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by offering too many targets, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an interview with the Associated Press.
He said:
They want to overload our anti-aircraft system to get an extra chance to hit infrastructure facilities.
Podolyak said Russian troops were facing “missile exhaustion” and that shortages were forcing the change in its tactics. Russia was mixing in older Soviet-era missiles with “new missiles that have some value”, he added.
He said Russia was also using “special air balloons” in its new strategy, but he did not go into detail about their suspected purpose.
