Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The EU has pledged to double a military aid programme for Ukraine by training an extra 15,000 soldiers as part of a blizzard of announcements aimed at showing that it will “stand by Ukraine for the long-haul”. Speaking at the start of a two-day trip to Kyiv, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, reiterated that the EU aimed to have a tenth package of sanctions against Russia in place by 24 February.
Von der Leyen also reiterated that the EU would cap the price of Russian petroleum products, as part of a broader G7 plan to restrict oil revenues available to the Kremlin’s war machine. The G7 and the EU have already agreed a price cap on crude oil that came into force last December and according to Von der Leyen, costs Russia €160m (£142m) a day. The EU’s 27 member states are yet to agree on the latest oil price cap.
The EU also intends to work with Ukrainian prosecutors to set up an international centre for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine to be located in The Hague, Von der Leyen said. The purpose of this centre is to collect and store evidence, for any future trial, whether that takes place via a special tribunal or some other way.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged the EU to impose more sanctions on Russia, and said he had discussed a new sanctions package with Von der Leyen. Ukraine’s president said the speed of the EU sanctions campaign against Russia had “slightly slowed down” while Russia had been “increasing its pace of adapting to sanctions”.
Russia is planning a major offensive to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine on 24 February, according to the country’s defence minister. Speaking to French media, Oleksii Reznikov warned Russia would call on a large contingent of mobilised troops. Referring to the general mobilisation of 300,000 conscripted soldiers in September, he claimed that numbers at the border suggest the true size could be closer to 500,000.
Russia has warned it has “the potential” to respond to western arms deliveries to Ukraine that will not just be about “using armoured vehicles”. In a speech marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in the Battle of Stalingrad, Vladimir Putin appeared to allude to Russia’s enormous nuclear weapons arsenal, warning “those who expect to win on the battlefield apparently do not understand that a modern war with Russia will be utterly different for them”.
Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia’s arms suppliers will “significantly” increase their deliveries of military hardware during 2023. Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of the powerful Security Council and oversees a government commission on arms production, said new supplies would help Russia inflict a “crushing defeat” over Ukraine on the battlefield.
Two Russian missiles struck Kramatorsk on Thursday, after an apartment block in the eastern Ukrainian city was hit Wednesday night, killing three people. The latest strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, said the head of the regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, but it is not clear how many. Two people were killed by Russian shelling in the southern Kherson region.
Those attacks came after a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Kramatorsk on Wednesday night killed at least three people and injured 20 others. The police force said an Iskander-K tactical missile had struck at 9.45pm local time.
At least eight people have died after a fire at a dormitory for construction workers in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, Russian officials said. The fire broke out in temporary accommodation for workers building the Tavrida highway, a road linking the cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol, according to the Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said everybody wanted the conflict in Ukraine to end, but that the west’s support for Kyiv was playing an important role in how Moscow approached the campaign. In an interview on Russia’s state TV, Lavrov also said Moscow had plans to overshadow pro-Ukrainian events arranged by western and allied countries around the world to mark the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
A senior Russian lieutenant who fled after serving in Ukraine has described how his country’s troops tortured prisoners of war and threatened some with rape. “I have personally seen our troops torture Ukrainian soldiers,” Konstantin Yefremov, who is the most senior soldier to speak out against the war, told the Guardian in a phone call. “I feel relieved that I can finally speak out about the things I have seen.”
A state-of-the-art missile defence system provided by Italy and France should be up and running in Ukraine within the next two months, Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has said. France and Italy agreed to supply their SAMP/T air defence system to Ukraine, on Kyiv’s request, to help protect the country’s critical infrastructure and cities from the regular barrage of Russian missiles hitting Ukraine.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said he is open to supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets if the decision were taken together with Nato allies. In an interview with Bild, he stressed that his assessment was “based on what Nato countries decide together” and that the decision required the “strategic consideration of the whole” alliance.
Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said Russia is using tactics similar to those used in the first world war and suffering heavy casualties as a result. Asked about the possibility of supplying British fighter jets to be used by Ukrainian forces, Wallace did not rule out the possibility but said there was “no magic wand” that could help Kyiv in its fight against Moscow.
The European parliament has voted in support of a roadmap for Ukraine’s accession to the EU. The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said he wanted Ukraine to join the EU in two years but in reality, it was likely to take much longer.
Norway will increase the spending from its sovereign wealth fund in the coming years to fund military and civilian aid to Ukraine, the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, told parliament on Thursday. He did not specify how much money Norway would spend on Ukraine aid, but said it would be a multi-year commitment. The announcement comes after Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister urged Oslo to do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war.
Updated
Former Russian soldier reveals he saw Ukrainian prisoners of war tortured
A senior Russian lieutenant who fled after serving in Ukraine has described how his country’s troops tortured prisoners of war and threatened some with rape.
Konstantin Yefremov left Russia in December after spending three months in the parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia oblast that were occupied in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I have personally seen our troops torture Ukrainian soldiers,” Yefremov, who is the most senior soldier to speak out against the war, told the Guardian in a phone call from Mexico, where he currently is. “I feel relieved that I can finally speak out about the things I have seen.”
Yefremov is one of a growing body of soldiers who have fled Russia and spoken out against the war. The Guardian earlier interviewed Pavel Filatyev and Nikita Chibrin, two Russian contract soldiers who have similarly denounced the war.
Yefremov was previously based in Chechnya in the Russian army’s 42nd Motorised Rifle Division, where he was involved in mine clearance. At the beginning of February last year, two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, he said he was sent with his unit to Crimea to take part in what he was told were military exercises.
He said he tried to flee as soon as he realised he would be sent to fight in Ukraine.
I left my gun, found the first taxi and drove off. I wanted to return to my base in Chechnya and hand in my resignation papers because I was against this horrible war.
But, according to Yefremov, he was threatened with 10 years in jail for desertion by his superiors and he decided to return to his unit. “It was a mistake, I should have tried harder to leave,” he said.
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