Closing summary
It is 9pm in Ukraine. We’re closing this live blog now but a fresh one will commence in the coming hours, with plenty of news reported by the Guardian on the war in the meantime. Here are the main events that occurred during this day.
The Russian government has written to the United Nations telling the international body that “starting today” it is suspending for an “indefinite term” the Black Sea grain deal that allowed vital exports of Ukrainian food supplies. Moscow also requested a related meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Monday.
Russia has reportedly suspended participation in the grain deal to export agricultural produce from Ukrainian ports after attacks on ships in Crimea, according to Tass. The UN secretary general had urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain deal that has seen more than 8m tonnes of grain exported from Ukraine and brought down global food prices. The agreement between Ukraine and Russia was due to expire on 19 November.
Russia accused the British Navy of a “terrorist attack” on Nord Stream gas pipelines, and claimed British “specialists” aided a drone attack in Sevastopol. The targeted ships, Russia says, were involved in a UN-brokered deal to allow the export of Ukrainian grain. Responding to the Nord Stream accusations, a spokesperson for Britain’s ministry of defence said: “To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” and that “this latest invented story, says more about the arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the west.”
Russia said on Saturday that it would raise the Nord Stream pipeline blasts and an alleged drone attack in Crimea at the UN Security Council, both incidents in which Moscow has alleged British involvement.
The European Union has frozen Russian assets worth about 17bn euros (£14.6bn) since Moscow invaded Ukraine, the EU justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, said in an interview published on Saturday.
Up to 100 prisoners of war have been reportedly exchanged between Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that Ukraine handed over 50 prisoners of war after talks. The Ukrainian armed forces account posted on Telegram that “52 Ukrainians returned home” during another “exchange of prisoners”.
A senior Ukrainian official expressed scepticism on Saturday about the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. The billionaire and Tesla boss drew fury from Kyiv and praise from Moscow this month when he posted a Twitter poll proposing Ukraine permanently cede Crimea to Russia, that new referendums be held under UN auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality.
Russian-backed forces say they have finished a pull-out of civilians from the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. The city had a population of about 288,000 people before the war and was one of the first to fall to Moscow’s troops after the February invasion. A Russian-installed official in Kherson has said at least 70,000 people had left their homes in the region in the space of a week.
Here are more details and background on Russia stating it is pulling out of the deal aimed at unlocking Ukrainian grain and fertiliser exports from Black Sea ports and easing global food shortages.
The deal brokered in July aimed to help avert famine by injecting more wheat, sunflower oil and fertilizer into world markets and to ease a dramatic rise in prices, Reuters reports.
The United Nations World Food Programme said at the time the deal was signed that some 47 million people had moved into a stage of “acute hunger” due to fall-out from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which halted Ukrainian shipments.
The deal signed on July 22 was valid for 120 days and the United Nations expected it to be renewed unless the war had ended by then. It ensured safe passage in and out of Odesa and two other Ukrainian ports in what the official called a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered.
Since the deal was signed, more than 9 million tonnes of grains and other food products have been exported, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffith said this week. He added the deal had been successful in bringing food prices down and boosting export quantities.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine attacked the Black Sea Fleet near Sevastopol on the annexed Crimean peninsular with 16 drones in the early hours of Saturday, and that British navy “specialists” had helped coordinate the “terrorist” attack.
Russia said it had repelled the attack, with just minor damage to a minesweeper, but that the ships targeted were involved in ensuring the grain corridor.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, accused Russia of inventing “fictitious terrorist attacks on its own facilities” while Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow was using a “false pretext” to sink the deal.
