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.
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