Summary
The time in Kyiv is almost 9pm. Here is a round up of the day’s top stories:
The Swedish prosecutor who is leading the investigation into the damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines has confirmed that the incident was sabotage, and said that traces of explosives have been found. In a statement, prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said: “During the crime scene investigations that were carried out on site in the Baltic Sea, extensive seizures were made, and the area has been carefully documented. Analysis that has now been carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found. Advanced analysis work continues in order to be able to draw firmer conclusions about the incident.”
A senior UN official welcomed the extension by four months of a deal aimed at easing global food shortages by helping Ukraine export its agricultural products from Black Sea ports, but said there was still work to be done.
Russia’s ministry of defence has issued a strongly worded statement after the emergence of video footage it claims shows Ukrainian military personnel deliberately killing more than 10 captured Russian servicemen. The ministry said “The brutal murder of the Russian servicemen is neither the first, nor the single war crime. This is a common practice in the armed forces of Ukraine that is actively supported by the Kyiv regime and straightforwardly ignored by its western patrons”. Earlier this week a UN human rights monitoring agency in Ukraine said it had evidence of both the Russian Federation and Ukraine mistreating prisoners of war.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan talked on the phone with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy and congratulated each other for the extension of a UN-brokered grains deal, Erdoğan’s office said. Erdoğan told Zelenskiy that the grains deal and the prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine were positive experiences, and that the “extension of this understanding to the negotiation table” would benefit all parties.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, said that eight people were injured on Thursday dealing with the consequences of a Russian strike on what he described as “gas industry equipment” in Izium.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said there is no prospect or plans of a summit between Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the US president, Joe Biden. Moscow’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was not ruling out further high-level meetings with the US on “strategic stability”. “If the Americans show interest and readiness, we will not refuse,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying in Russian state media. Tass also quoted him saying: “There is simply nothing to talk about Ukraine with them [the US].”
The Russian state-owned RIA Novosti news agency has reported that a school was struck by Ukrainian fire in the occupied region of Donetsk, one of the areas of Ukraine that the Russian Federation claims to have annexed. It quoted the Russian-imposed mayor of Donetsk Aleksey Kulemin saying that 10 shells were fired at the central districts of the city, two of which landed in close proximity to the school.
Poland will not grant a Russian delegation visas to attend an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Lodz on 1-2 December, a foreign ministry spokesman said. “We are not giving them visas,” Lukasz Jasina said.
Pope Francis reiterated on Friday the Vatican was ready to do anything possible to mediate and put an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the pontiff said in an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa. Asked whether he believed reconciliation between Moscow and Kyiv was possible, the pontiff called on everyone not to give up.
The Dutch government will summon the Russian ambassador in the Netherlands over Russia’s response to the verdict in the trial over the downing of passenger flight MH17, news agency ANP reported, citing foreign minister Wopke Hoekstra. Russia said on Thursday the Dutch court’s decision to convict two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader over the 2014 downing of the Malaysian airliner “neglected impartiality”.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed this live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline.
The footage appears to show a group of Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie facedown.
One of the men wearing all black, however, seems to turn his gun on what appears to be a Ukrainian unit of soldiers wearing yellow armbands as he emerges from the half-destroyed outhouse.
The footage, seemingly taken by a Ukrainian soldier, suggests that all the Russians, including those in a prone position, were killed in the violence that followed. There are at least 12 bodies.
The incident was said to have taken place on the grounds of a house near the village of Makiivka in the eastern Luhansk region of Ukraine, which is part of a wider area known as the Donbas.
Neither the location nor the identity of those featuring the video could be immediately independently verified.
Updated
