Closing summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s main news:
The chief of mercenary group Wagner has reportedly accused Moscow’s top brass of deceiving Russians about the course of Ukraine’s offensive and pointed to Kyiv’s progress on the battlefield.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, accused opponents of waging a campaign to discredit him and force him out of office on Wednesday after a rift with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Reuters reported.
EU governments agreed to an 11th package of sanctions against Russia, aimed at stopping other countries and companies from circumventing existing measures.
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said all Nato allies are backing a plan to give Ukraine a fast track to Nato membership of the kind offered to Sweden and Finland earlier this year.
Vladimir Putin announced that new Sarmat nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles would soon enter service. The missiles are designed to carry out nuclear strikes on targets thousands of missiles away but their deployment has proceeded slower than planned. He reportedly said Moscow had seen a “lull” in the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and that Kyiv had suffered heavy losses in attacks in the south.
Russia’s top investigator reportedly claimed that over 30 Ukrainians had been given long jail terms in Russian-held Ukraine for committing what he described as serious crimes such as killing civilians.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy accepted in a BBC interview that progress in the country’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces had been “slower than desired”. Zelenskiy told the Ukraine Recovery conference that Ukraine had made the west, including the EU, more united than ever before and could become an engine for green world growth and security for decades.
Rishi Sunak outlined how Ukraine must be supported to fast-track recovery and support this “help Ukraine unleash its potential”. “It’s clear Russia must pay for the destruction that they’ve inflicted. So we’re working with allies to explore lawful routes to use Russian assets,” the prime minister said at the conference, held in London.
Russian air defences downed three drones in the Moscow region on Wednesday, the defence ministry said, in what it called an attempted Ukrainian attack, Reuters reported.
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Wagner chief accuses Moscow of 'misleading Russians' over Ukraine offensive
The chief of mercenary group Wagner accused Moscow of deceiving Russians about the course of Ukraine’s offensive and pointed to Kyiv’s progress on the battlefield, AFP reports.
Early this month Kyiv’s military launched its counteroffensive in the east and south of the country in an effort to claw back territory lost since last year. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Ukraine’s offensive is failing.
But the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose forces had for months led an assault for towns in eastern Ukraine including Bakhmut, accused the defence ministry of not telling the truth and losing territory to Ukrainian troops.
“They are misleading the Russian people,” he said in an audio message released by his spokespeople.
A number of villages, including Piatykhatky has been lost, Prigozhin said, pointing to a lack of arms and ammunition.
“Huge chunks have been handed over to the enemy,” he said, adding: “All of this is being totally hidden from everyone,”
“One day Russia will wake up to discover that Crimea too has been handed over to Ukraine,” he said.
Kyiv has reported modest gains, retaking eight settlements in the first cautious steps of a fightback against entrenched Russian positions.
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