Summary
Thank you for following the Guardian’s live reporting of the war in Ukraine. Here is a quick wrap-up of today’s developments:
At least six people have been killed and more than 60 wounded in the latest series of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials have said. Russia unleashed a mass airstrike on Ukraine on Tuesday, mostly targeting the country’s two largest cities, the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv in the east.
The Russian military does not target civilians when it hits objects in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday when asked to comment on what Ukraine said were deadly Russian strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Russia launched 41 missiles at Ukraine early on Tuesday and air defences destroyed 21 of them, the Ukrainian military said.
The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been placed in solitary confinement for 10 days in a prison above the Arctic Circle for “incorrectly introducing himself” to a guard, his spokesperson said.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had invited Sweden’s prime minister to visit and negotiate his country joining the Nato military alliance, a process that Hungary and Turkey have delayed. On X, Orban said: “Today I sent an invitation letter to prime minister Ulf Kristersson for a visit to Hungary to negotiate on Sweden’s Nato accession.”
Russia launched missile strikes on Ukraine’s military production facilities and successfully hit all intended targets, Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, on Tuesday launched the construction of a new unit at Egypt’s El-Dabaa nuclear power plant via video link, the Ria Novosti news agency reported.
Italy will use its presidency of the Group of Seven major democracies to challenge growing perceptions that Russia is winning in Ukraine and that the west is tiring of the war, Reuters reports.
Poland and the Baltic states are calling for import bans on Russian aluminium and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the European Union’s 13th package of sanctions against Moscow over its Ukraine invasion, a Polish official said.
The US has issued cyber-related sanctions against the Russian citizen Aleksandr Ermakov, according to a notice posted on the US Treasury Department website on Tuesday, one day after Australian authorities also targeted him over a breach of the Australian insurer Medibank, Reuters reports.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, insisted life in the Ukrainian capital was “absolutely normal” and there was no war, a day before his first meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister and just hours after Russian missiles fell on Kyiv.
That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for continued updates on the war.
Updated
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, insisted life in the Ukrainian capital was “absolutely normal” and there was no war, a day before his first meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister and just hours after Russian missiles fell on Kyiv.
Fico, who took power in October and reversed course on Slovakia’s foreign policy to halt military support for Ukraine, was speaking at a news briefing in eastern Slovakia, Reuters reports. He is due to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Shmyhal, on Wednesday in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod.
A reporter asked Fico if it would be appropriate for him to travel to Kyiv to better grasp Ukraine’s war with Russia, which is approaching its second year following an invasion by Moscow.
He said:
There is a conflict that is localised. You seriously think there is war in Kyiv? You are joking, please, I hope you are not being serious. Go there and you will find out there is normal life in the city, absolutely normal life.
He added it was more practical to meet in Uzhhorod, which he said the Ukrainian side picked after Fico first wanted to meet on the two countries’ shared border.
Updated
The US has issued cyber-related sanctions against the Russian citizen Aleksandr Ermakov, according to a notice posted on the US Treasury Department website on Tuesday, one day after Australian authorities also targeted him over a breach of the Australian insurer Medibank, Reuters reports.
Updated
Poland and the Baltic states are calling for import bans on Russian aluminium and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the European Union’s 13th package of sanctions against Moscow over its Ukraine invasion, a Polish official said.
The EU is aiming to pull together more measures ahead of the second anniversary of the Ukraine war at the end of February. But diplomats said they were running out of options that would have enough support from EU member states, Reuters reports.
Poland and the Baltic countries have been the staunchest supporters of sanctions ahead of every new package.
These countries are also suggesting more measures to combat sanctions circumvention and to tighten sanctions in the aviation sector, the Polish official said.
They also want to expand the list to include products that can be used to make drones and align sectoral measures imposed on Russia with measures against Belarus in another effort to prevent circumvention.
“The big items are already sanctioned and the big ones left like LNG and nuclear are not available,” a senior EU diplomat said.
The EU diplomat said each new package was moving to close the loopholes and there was a long list of new entities and individuals that could be added.
The previous package, agreed in December, managed to push through two new bans – diamonds and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), known as propane and butane.
The package banned direct Russian diamond imports as of 1 January, with an indirect ban coming in March in coordination with the Group of Seven countries.
A second diplomatic source said:
[The 13th package] is at the embryonic phase. We might be able to unblock one thing from that [Polish] list but we expect lots of new listings of individuals … There is a push to include more third country companies but it’s a big issue because it risks trade ties.
Updated
During a virtual meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, welcomed allies’ commitments to continue supporting Ukraine now and for the long term, the acting spokesperson for Nato, Dylan White, said.
#NATO Secretary General @jensstoltenberg participated in a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group where he welcomed Allies’ commitments to continue supporting #Ukraine now and for the long term.
— Dylan White (@NATOpress) January 23, 2024
Read: https://t.co/JQhtnuzcyB pic.twitter.com/Oo2bXNKo87
Updated
Here are some more images from the news wires that show rescue efforts after Russian airstrikes in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
Updated
Death toll rises to six in Russian airstrikes on Kharkiv, governor says
At least six people have been killed in Russian airstrikes on Kharkiv on Tuesday morning, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, has said.
“Unfortunately, another 21-year-old woman died as a result of Russian strikes. Rescuers unblock the body of the deceased from under the rubble of the house. A total of 6 people died as a result of the morning shelling of Kharkik,” Syniehubov said on Telegram.
A missile also killed a 43-year-old woman and damaged two schools and eight high-rise buildings in Pavlohrad, an industrial city in the eastern Dnipro region, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
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Our video team has compiled footage of the Russian airstrikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv and the impact of those nearby.
Updated
Russia has carried out a wave of attacks on Ukraine, killing five people and wounding at least 40 others, with a sports club in central Kyiv one of several civilian buildings damaged.
The early morning strikes targeted the Ukrainian capital and Kharkiv, with air raid sirens at 5.43am local time (0343 GMT). About an hour later there were a series of explosions and burning debris fell from the sky.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, said air defences had shot down 21 out of 41 enemy missiles while others got through. Two people were killed and 35 wounded when an apartment block in Kharkiv was hit and caught fire.
In Kyiv, a Russian projectile landed on the roof of the Lokomotiv sports club, close to the southern railway station. It shattered balconies and windows in a 15-storey block opposite and in a dormitory used by railway workers, families and students. Three other districts were targeted.
One resident, Margerita, told the Guardian:
It was fucking scary.
There was a metallic sound and then our windows blew in. I found glass on my face. The Russians are crazy. They don’t care about human life.
I really hope that the world helps us. We need more support because our enemy is more powerful than America. In my opinion the US is secretly afraid of Russia.
Italy will use its presidency of the Group of Seven major democracies to challenge growing perceptions that Russia is winning in Ukraine and that the west is tiring of the war, Reuters reports.
Italy will chair the G7, which also groups the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Canada, throughout 2024 and will host a summit in June.
Laying out Italy’s priorities for the first time, a source familiar with Italy’s G7 plans said core issues on the leaders’ agenda would include conflict in the Middle East, food security, climate change, development in Africa, engagement with China and artificial intelligence.
As in the last two G7 presidencies, the war in Ukraine will also be a major consideration, said the source, who was not authorised to go on the record talking about Italy’s plans.
The West’s once-staunch wartime support for Kyiv has appeared to waver in recent months amid political wrangling in Washington and Brussels that has held up the delivery of badly needed arms and funding.
However, the source said G7 leaders were determined to show they remained fully committed to Kyiv and could not risk showing signs of weakness two years after Russia invaded its neighbour.
“We must change the narrative on Ukraine,” the source said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin had lost significant financial, military and diplomatic clout since the invasion.
Italy is planning to stage 20 ministerial meetings during its G7 presidency, kicking off with a three-day gathering from March 13-15 on industry, technology and digitalisation, which will put a spotlight on the fast-paced AI revolution.
Prime minister Giorgia Meloni has already said that the dangers posed by AI will be a key issue for Italy’s G7 presidency and she will dedicate one session to the subject at the June 13-15 summit in Puglia, the source said.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fatah al-Sisi on Tuesday launched the construction of a new unit at Egypt’s El-Dabaa nuclear power plant via video link, the Ria Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday.
The construction is being carried out by the Russian state corporation Rosatom. The plant will consist of four power units with a combined capacity of 4.8 gigawatts, Reuters reports.
Updated
Russia launched missile strikes on Ukraine’s military production facilities and successfully hit all intended targets, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.
The strikes were carried out with air and land-based missiles against enterprises producing missiles, explosives and ammunition, the Defence Ministry said in a statement that Reuters could not independently verify.
The Russian military does not target civilians when it hits objects in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Tuesday when asked to comment on what Ukraine said were deadly Russian strikes on the cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that Russia had unleashed a mass airstrike on the cities, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others, Reuters reports.
Asked if the strikes were Moscow’s response to what Russia said was a Ukrainian artillery attack on the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday that killed 27 people, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters:
No, you cannot say that. We are continuing our special military operation and our military does not hit social facilities and residential neighbourhoods and does not hit civilians, unlike the Kyiv regime.
This is what fundamentally distinguishes our military from the military of the Kyiv regime.
Emergency services help the wounded and search for survivors after the airstrike in Kharkiv. Here are some of the latest images showing the aftermath from the news wires:
Casualties as Russian strikes target Kyiv and Kharkiv
Three people were killed and at least 60 wounded in the latest series of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine, Ukrainian officials have said.
Russia unleashed a mass airstrike on Ukraine on Tuesday, mostly targeting the country’s two largest cities, the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv in the east.
On Telegram, governor Oleh Synehubov said three people were killed and 42 wounded in Kharkiv in strikes on apartment buildings.
In Kyiv, 20 people including three children had been wounded across at least three districts, and that several apartments and non-residential buildings had caught fire, mayor Vitalii Klitschko said.
Updated
The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been placed in solitary confinement for 10 days in a prison above the Arctic Circle for “incorrectly introducing himself” to a guard, his spokesperson said.
Navalny, 47, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning president Vladimir Putin’s elite and voicing allegations of vast corruption, is now in a jail about 60km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.
Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson said on X that it was the 25th time Navalny had been placed in solitary confinement and that he had spent 283 days in such conditions.
Sentenced to stay in prison until he is 74 on charges he says were trumped up to keep him out of politics, Navalny said on Monday that he was being forced to listen to a pro-Putin pop singer at 5am every morning after being played the Russian national anthem, Reuters reports.
The Russian authorities cast Navalny as a fraudulent western-backed extremist out to up-end political stability and sow chaos across the world’s largest country, something he denies.
Updated
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had invited Sweden’s prime minister to visit and negotiate his country joining the Nato military alliance, a process that Hungary and Turkey have delayed.
On X, Orban said:
Today I sent an invitation letter to prime minister Ulf Kristersson for a visit to Hungary to negotiate on Sweden’s Nato accession.
Russia launched 41 missiles at Ukraine early on Tuesday and air defences destroyed 21 of them, the Ukrainian military said.
On Telegram, Ukraine’s air force said:
The enemy launched a combined missile attack on Ukraine, using cruise, ballistic, air and anti-aircraft guided missiles.
As a result of combat operations, the air force, in cooperation with the Air Defence Forces, destroyed 15 X-101/X-555/X-55 cruise missiles; 5 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 1 X-59 guided missile.
Summary
This is the latest instalment in the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. Here are the developments:
A Russian missile attack has hit Kyiv and Kharkiv. Ukrainian officials said at least six people were killed and dozens wounded in the Tuesday morning attack.
Russia’s foreign minister has clashed with the US and Ukraine’s other supporters at the UN security council after Moscow ruled out any peace plan backed by Kyiv and the west, and China warned that further global chaos could affect the slowing world economy.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, told the security council that peace plans presented by Ukraine and the west were “a road to nowhere”. The US deputy ambassador, Robert Wood, countered that it was Vladimir Putin’s “single-minded pursuit of the obliteration of Ukraine and subjugation of its people that is prolonging” the war that began with Moscow’s 2022 invasion.
The Turkish parliament’s general assembly will debate Sweden’s Nato membership bid on Tuesday, three sources from parliament said. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been blocking Sweden’s membership to extract concessions from Sweden and other Nato members. The parliament’s foreign affairs commission has approved the bid, raising hopes that it will be approved by the full parliament and signed into law by Erdoğan.
A Mexican border security deal in the US Senate is being finalised in a compromise aimed at unlocking Republican support to replenish US wartime aid for Ukraine. But far-right House Republicans under the sway of Donald Trump have indicated that they want to block any bipartisan deal in order to hamper Joe Biden’s prospects for re-election as president – even if it leaves chaos at the US-Mexico border. “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican, told CNN.
Moderate Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw has criticised Maga Republicans not willing to work with Biden on border security. Crenshaw told MSNBC that some Republicans were saying “we’ll never vote for it if it’s attached to Ukraine aid. Really? We get meaningful border policy with the Ukraine aid and you’re not going to vote for that? … Some people say Biden wants it now because it’s helpful to him politically? OK! I want border security, that’s what I told my constituents I would do for them. So if we can get that deal, that’s a no-brainer.”
EU foreign ministers have met to discuss support to Ukraine. With ministers focusing also on the situation in the Middle East, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insisted that Ukrainians should not worry and that the EU’s support for Kyiv would continue as strong as ever.
Borrell also said Ukraine “needs more and faster military support now”. Latvia’s foreign minister, Krišjānis Kariņš, said that “if we do not help Ukraine stop Russia now, it will be only all the more expensive for us later”.
Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, said there was a need to fulfil Ukraine’s immediate defence needs, but that Europe also needed to ramp up its defence industry and capabilities.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced a proposal aimed at allowing ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants abroad to hold Ukrainian citizenship.
Zelenskiy said he had “very productive talks” with Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who visited Kyiv. The Ukrainian leader said the two countries would be able to resolve problematic issues. Tusk underlined that Warsaw and Kyiv would work in a spirit of friendship to resolve differences.
Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister, said he “discussed the free movement of goods across the border” with Tusk and that the sides agreed to resume intergovernmental consultations.
There is movement toward a meeting between Zelenskiy and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a senior Ukrainian official has said.
The UK has updated its travel advice “to advise against all but essential travel” to the regions of Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Chernivtsi in western Ukraine. Previously, there was advice against all travel to the whole of Ukraine.
The Kremlin has drawn up a bill to confiscate property and valuables from Ukraine war critics convicted of, among other crimes, “discrediting the Russian army” or calling for foreign sanctions.
Updated
Russia launched a missile strike on Kyiv and the region surrounding the capital, a Ukrainian military official said on Tuesday.
“Air defence engaged in Kyiv. Stay in shelters until the air-raid alarm goes off!” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, posted online.
The Kyiv region’s military administration said air defence systems were engaged in repelling Russia’s missile attack.
Updated
