Summary
It is now just after 6pm in Kyiv. Here is a summary of the main events from today:
Britain is prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets in the UK on the basis that Russia will be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine at the end of the war, the UK foreign secretary David Cameron has said. He said the assets would be used as surety for the payment of the reparations.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, called on Russians to join an election day protest at noon on 17 March to vote against president Vladimir Putin or spoil their ballots. Navalnaya called on her supporters to vote for “any candidate except Putin”.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that people had been killed and injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa. Zelenskiy was also quoted by the broadcaster Suspilne as saying that Ukraine needed stronger air defences. He was meeting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Odesa, Reuters reports.
Greece will continue standing by the side of Ukraine, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday, after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in the Black Sea port of Odesa. Mitsotakis told Zelenskiy: “My presence here reflects the respect of the entire free world for your people and underlines Greece’s commitment to remain by your side.”
Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson and foreign minister Tobias Billstrom will travel to Washington DC on Wednesday, Reuters reports the government said in a brief statement. Sweden is expected to hand over its final Nato accession documents to US representatives in the coming days, the final step required to complete the country’s two-year process to join the military alliance.
Germany is participating in a Czech Republic initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine with a three-digit million euro contribution, Reuters reports a spokesperson for the German government told the media on Wednesday.
A reporter for an independent Russian news outlet was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday for articles he wrote about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, his publication said. Roman Ivanov, who works for the online RusNews, was convicted of publishing “fake news” about the Russian army under wartime censorship laws passed shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Reuters reports.
The Kremlin said the west is playing with fire by discussing the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, Russian state news agency Tass reported. French president Emmanuel Macron said last month he could not rule out such a possibility, though other European Nato members and the United States said there were no such plans.
The former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has fallen into Russia’s trap by criticising the leak of highly sensitive German military discussions over transferring the German Taurus missile to Ukraine, Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK said on Wednesday, Patrick Wintour reported.
The Kremlin said that Russia will not interfere in the US presidential election that the US was fighting against Russia in Ukraine. It also said that Russia does not want to fight against Germany, Russian state news agency Tass and Reuters.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that he would discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and that talks with other Russian authorities had been “tense”, Russian news agencies reported.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that international criminal court arrest warrants issued for two of its commanders in Ukraine had no significance for Russia, and was a “provocation”. In separate news, she said that Moscow had never wanted conflict with Nato, the US, or Ukraine, but that threats made against it would not go unanswered, Reuters reports.
Russia does not recognise the arrests warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for two Russian commanders, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. The Kremlin said Russia was not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC – and that the process at the court was closed, Reuters reports.
A second Ukrainian drone struck the Mikhailovsky GOK iron ore refinery in Russia’s Kursk region, shortly after an earlier attack at the plant, regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram.
Thank you for reading. You can find more of our coverage of the war here. Come back tomorrow for more live updates.
The widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has called for people to protest against Vladimir Putin at polling booths in the forthcoming presidential election.
Yulia Navalnaya urged her supporters to protest against Putin by voting en masse at noon local time in the 17 March election, forming large crowds and overwhelming polling stations.
She said the action would also be a way to honour her late husband, who came up with the idea in one of his last public messages before his sudden death in an Arctic prison.
“I want to do what he thought was right,” Navalnaya said in a video published on Wednesday on YouTube. “There are many people around you who are anti-Putin and anti-war, and if we come at the same time, our anti-Putin voice will be much louder.”
The polling protest has been labelled “midday against Putin” and by Navalny’s allies as his “political will”.
Navalnaya called on her supporters to vote for “any candidate except Putin”.
She said: “You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station and then turn around and go home.”
Putin is set to secure another six-year term in the 15-17 March vote, which would keep him in the Kremlin until at least 2030.
You can read the full article here.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that people had been killed and injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa.
Zelenskiy was also quoted by the broadcaster Suspilne as saying that Ukraine needed stronger air defences. He was meeting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Odesa, Reuters reports.
Greece will continue standing by the side of Ukraine, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday, after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in the Black Sea port of Odesa.
Mitsotakis told Zelenskiy:
My presence here reflects the respect of the entire free world for your people and underlines Greece’s commitment to remain by your side.
A reporter for an independent Russian news outlet was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday for articles he wrote about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, his publication said.
Roman Ivanov, who works for the online RusNews, was convicted of publishing “fake news” about the Russian army under wartime censorship laws passed shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Reuters reports.
Russia has used those laws to crack down on journalists and activists who report information that counters Kremlin narratives of what Moscow calls its special military operation in Ukraine.
The charges against Ivanov stem from articles he wrote about a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, a UN war crimes report and Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The articles were published on the social media accounts of “Chestnoye Korolyovskoye”, a news channel run by Ivanov where he blogged about local issues in Korolyov, the small city outside Moscow where he lives.
A prosecutor at the Korolyov city court had requested an eight-year sentence, RusNews said.
Ivanov used his closing speech in court on Tuesday to speak out forcefully again about what he called the “crime” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a human rights group said.
“Our country has simply turned into an avalanche of grief and misfortune,” Ivanov was quoted as saying, adding that he had decided to post about the events in Bucha so that Russians could see that war “brings nothing but fear, pain, grief, destruction, loss”.
“We must understand that everything that happened [in Ukraine] is our fault,” Ivanov said.
The text of his speech was published on the website of Memorial, one of Russia’s most celebrated human rights organisations, whose director, Oleg Orlov, was sentenced last month to two and a half years in prison for “discrediting the Russian armed forces”.
Ivanov is the second RusNews journalist to be jailed for “fake news” after colleague Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced last month to six years for accusing Moscow of bombing a theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, in the first months of the invasion.
Another RusNews journalist is on trial on charges of public calls for “extremism” in encouraging street protests on Telegram over three years ago, the outlet said.
Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson and foreign minister Tobias Billstrom will travel to Washington DC on Wednesday, Reuters reports the government said in a brief statement.
Sweden is expected to hand over its final Nato accession documents to US representatives in the coming days, the final step required to complete the country’s two-year process to join the military alliance.
Germany is participating in a Czech Republic initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine with a three-digit million euro contribution, Reuters reports a spokesperson for the German government told the media on Wednesday.
Here are some of the latest images from the news wires:
The Kremlin said the west is playing with fire by discussing the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, Russian state news agency Tass reported.
French president Emmanuel Macron said last month he could not rule out such a possibility, though other European Nato members and the United States said there were no such plans.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said last week the west should understand it risked provoking a nuclear war if it sent troops to Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Here is the video of Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s widow, calling on Russians to head to polling stations at 12 on 17 March to show opposition to Putin on election day.
She asks them to do so in memory of Alexei, her late husband.
She said:
Putin will not be a legitimate president … but we can come out … and see that we are many and we are strong.
17 марта. Полдень. За Навального. pic.twitter.com/9fxFxt0NOY
— Yulia Navalnaya (@yulia_navalnaya) March 6, 2024
The Kremlin said that Russia will not interfere in the US presidential election that the US was fighting against Russia in Ukraine.
It also said that Russia does not want to fight against Germany, Russian state news agency Tass and Reuters.
The former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has fallen into Russia’s trap by criticising the leak of highly sensitive German military discussions over transferring the German Taurus missile to Ukraine, Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK said on Wednesday
A 38-minute recording in which German military officers discussed sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine was leaked on Russia’s state broadcaster RT on Friday with the authenticity of the tape confirmed by the German government. The breach came after a senior German air force official dialled into the WebEx call from a Singapore hotel, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday.
Wallace at the weekend said the leak confirms Germany is “pretty penetrated” by Russian intelligence. “It just demonstrates they are neither secure nor reliable,” he said.
Berger said “it is extremely unhelpful what Wallace has said and the way he has communicated as a backbencher now. This is what Russia wants by publishing this phone conversation.”
He added “we have to be careful not to fall into the Russian trap of creating division. Regrettably some people and some media have fallen into this trap”.
He said of the leak “this is a Russian hybrid attack. Clearly the intention is to destabilise the West’’. Berger argued the leak coincided with thousands of Russians taking to the streets to mark the murder of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
Berger told the BBC Today program that an internal investigation showed “it was an individual mistake made by one officer in a call that was over a secure system”. He said “it is a good lesson for everyone not to use a hotel internet if you want to make a secure call”.
But he insisted the conversation was a professional discussion about the use of long range missiles, and how any theoretical positive decision to provide Ukraine with Taurus missiles could be implemented.
He defended Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision not to provide Ukraine with the Taurus missile arguing what Ukraine really needs is extra ammunition and air defences. “The Chancellor wants to make sure that whatever we do there is no escalation that leads to consequences we do not want to see”, he said.
He described the Taurus missile as the Mercedes-Benz of long range missiles, and fired from Ukraine could reach Moscow, one of the reasons the Chancellor opposed handing the weapon over.
Pistorius had spoken to the UK defence secretary Grant Shapps about the internal German investigation of the leak, but the UK is unhappy at sloppy German defence officers who ended up revealing British officers were operating in Ukraine, and are capable of helping the Ukrainians to fire the missile.
Pistorius has said he does not want to sacrifice one of his best officers to Putin’s games, but admits he is very annoyed if there has been a failure to follow the rules.
Germany feels it is not getting the credit it deserves for boosting aid to Ukraine. It is doubling military support to Ukraine, delivering €7.5bn in military aid in 2024 making it the biggest contributor in Europe.
The leak comes as the French president Emmanuel Macron continues his indirect assault on Germany for failing to do more to help Ukraine, an assault that is allowing it to rebuild alliances with Baltic and frontline states in eastern Europe.
Updated
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that he would discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and that talks with other Russian authorities had been “tense”, Russian news agencies reported.
State news agency RIA cited Grossi has saying that he had been able to assess the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, Reuters reports.
Grossi is visiting Russia, and is due to meet Putin in the southern city of Sochi. He has held talks with Russia’s state nuclear energy company, its defence ministry, and foreign ministry.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that international criminal court arrest warrants issued for two of its commanders in Ukraine had no significance for Russia, and was a “provocation”.
In separate news, she said that Moscow had never wanted conflict with Nato, the US, or Ukraine, but that threats made against it would not go unanswered, Reuters reports.
Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency is responsible for an attack on the Mikhailovsky iron ore plant in Russia’s Kursk region, a source in GUR told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Russian officials and the plant’s owner, Metalloinvest, said earlier that two drones had struck a fuel tank at the enterprise, one of Russia’s largest iron ore plants.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, called on Russians to join an election day protest at noon on 17 March to vote against president Vladimir Putin or spoil their ballots, Reuters reports.
Britain 'prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets in UK'
Britain is prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets in the UK on the basis that Russia will be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine at the end of the war, the UK foreign secretary David Cameron has said.
He said the assets would be used as surety for the payment of the reparations.
The plan is more radical than proposals discussed in the European Union for Ukraine to be given only the windfall profits from the Russian central bank assets being held by the West. The annual windfall profits are estimated at $4bn.
Cameron told peers on Tuesday night:
There is an opportunity to use something like a syndicated loan or a bond that effectively uses the frozen Russian assets as a surety to give that money to the Ukrianians knowing that we will recoup it when reparations are paid by Russia. That may be a better way of doing it. We are aiming for the maximum amount of G7 and EU unity on this but if we cannot get it I think we will have to move ahead with allies that want to take this action.
Cameron said he did not think the bond plan would undermine the reputation of the City of London in any way.
It is the first time Cameron has spoken about the proposal openly in such detail, and probably underscores the political support the plan has in the US, but not the EU.
The plan would be especially helpful to Ukraine if the US Congress continues to block an extension of aid to Ukraine since it would provide Ukraine with a new source of funds to buy armaments, and fund its budget deficit.
The G7 has been debating for over a year whether the Russian central bank assets frozen at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine could also be seized without undermining faith in the international financial system.
The EU estimates around €260bn in Central Bank of Russia assets have been immobilised in the form of securities and cash in the jurisdictions of the G7 partners, the EU and Australia, with more than two-thirds of those immobilised in the EU.
Belgium is thought to have control of as much as 190bn of the assets, housed in its Euro clear financial clearing house, and is the most reluctant to follow the kind of radical plan set out by Cameron. It says it is already facing a series of court cases mainly in Russia, and its stance has the backing of France and Germany.
The US Treasury, initially reluctant to seize Central Bank assets due to the assumed sanctity of sovereign state assets, has warmed to the idea of a bond. The US is estimated to have $40 to $60bn worth of Russian assets, and the UK closer to £25bn, but no official figure has been disclosed.
The strength of the proposal is that seized assets would be deemed to have been returned to Russia after the payment of reparations. The proposal’s weakness is that it assumes Ukraine will win a military victory and a defeated Moscow will be prepared to pay reparations for the damage it caused to Ukraine, something that now seems unimaginable.
Vladimir Putin has already retaliated by seizing the assets of some US companies operating in Russia.
It is estimated Ukraine needs €100bn a year to fight off the Russian invasion, and another €50bn a year for reconstruction.
Similar appropriations of state assets have happened before, most notably the UN-sanctioned US seizure of billions of dollars of Iraqi funds that were earmarked for reparations for Kuwait in the after the 1990 invasion. Russia would veto any UN move to endorse seizure of its assets
The foreign secretary said he did not think the Russian President Vladimir Putin would stop at Ukraine, saying“ if we allowed Russian any form of win in Ukraine Moldova would be at risk and some of the Baltic states would be at risk.”
Updated
Russia does not recognise the arrests warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for two Russian commanders, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said Russia was not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC – and that the process at the court was closed, Reuters reports.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sergei Kobylash and Viktor Sokolov for suspected war crimes in Ukraine, saying there were reasonable grounds to believe that the two were responsible for “missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin will meet International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi today in the southern Russian city of Sochi, the Kremlin said.
After the first attack on the iron ore plant in Russia, Metalloinvest said in a statement:
Today, as a result of a drone attack in the Zheleznogorsky district, a fuel tank at the fuel and lubricants warehouse of the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant caught fire.
There were no casualties. The necessary measures are currently being taken to extinguish the fire.
A second Ukrainian drone struck the Mikhailovsky GOK iron ore refinery in Russia’s Kursk region, shortly after an earlier attack at the plant, regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram.
He said there were no casualties from either of the strikes, according to Reuters.
This comes as a Ukrainian drone struck a fuel tank at one of Russia’s largest iron ore plants, though no one was injured and the plant was working as normal, Russian officials and the owner of the plant said.
Unverified video footage on Russian Telegram channels showed plumes of black smoke soaring into the sky in the Kursk region and damage at the Mikhailovsky GOK iron ore plant which is owned by Metalloinvest, Russia’s largest iron ore producer.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments to start with:
Emmanuel Macron has urged Ukraine’s allies not to be “cowards” in supporting its fight against the Russian invasion. He “fully stood behind” remarks made last week not ruling out the deployment of western troops.
“We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards,” the French president said on a visit to the Czech Republic.
Speaking after meeting his Czech counterpart, Petr Pavel, Macron asked: “Is this or is it not our war? Can we look away in the belief that we can let things run their course? I don’t believe so, and therefore I called for a strategic surge and I fully stand behind that … We want no escalation, we’ve never been belligerent.”
Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Macron’s quotes were not helpful. “We don’t need really, from my perspective at least, discussions about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.”
Pavel, a former Nato general, said the west would not cross “the imaginary red line” by getting involved in combat operations but suggested Nato countries could, for instance, train Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine, which would be “no violation of international rules”.
Macron met Pavel to discuss the Czech plan to buy ammunition for Ukraine outside Europe. Macron said France backed the plan and also supported using earnings from frozen Russian assets in Europe to fund Ukraine’s defence while not touching the capital.
Ukraine has sunk a Russian warship near the Kerch strait in occupied Crimea in a further blow to Moscow’s naval power and its control over the Black Sea. Kyiv’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, said it attacked the Sergei Kotov on Tuesday using naval drones. The vessel, which was on patrol, suffered damage to the stern, right and left sides, then sank, said the HUR.
The international criminal court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian military figures deemed responsible for missile attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023. They are for Lt Gen Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash of the Russian armed forces and Adm Viktor Kinolayevich Sokolov of the Russian navy.
David Slater, the former US air force employee charged with sharing classified Ukraine war information on a foreign dating website, has pleaded not guilty at a court appearance in Omaha, Nebraska.
The European Commission has proposed a new €1.5bn defence industry programme, which would be financed from the EU budget for the period between 2025 and 2027. The new programme calls on the 27 EU member states to procure at least 40% of their defence equipment collectively by 2030.
Ukrainian authorities are pressing up to 10 EU member states to allow the extradition of criminals to Ukraine including suspects involved with the Wagner group and those accused of large-scale corruption.
Russia has strengthened its military forces in its north and west to counter what the government perceives as a buildup of Nato forces, its defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said. In response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Finland has joined Nato and Sweden is on the point of doing so. Nato is this week conducting a military exercise called Nordic Response 2024 which it says will involve more than 20,000 soldiers in Norway, Finland and Sweden and will focus on collective defence.
