Summary
Thank you for joining us for today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
We will be pausing our live reporting overnight and returning in the morning.
In the meantime, you can read our comprehensive summary of the day’s events below.
- A breakthrough deal to resume exporting Ukrainian grain has been announced with the establishment of a coordination and monitoring centre in Istanbul. Turkey’s defence minister Hulusi Akar said Ankara will ensure the safety of shipments in transit and the parties will jointly check grain cargoes in ports after officials from Ukraine, Russia, United Nations and Turkey met for talks in Istanbul on Wednesday. UN chief Antonio Guterres described the talks as a “critical step forward” but said more work was needed before a deal is set to be signed next week.
- A traffic jam of more than 130 cargo ships loaded with Ukrainian grain is waiting in the Black Sea to pass into the Danube. The ships are waiting to access exit routes through the Sulina and Bystre estuary canals to reach a series of ports and terminals in Romania from where the grain can be transported on around the world
- Russian and proxy forces have reportedly entered the town of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Russian media reports. State news agency Tass quoted Vitaly Kiselyov, an official from the self-appointed Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying the town could fall within a couple of days, but it was not clear what that claim was based on.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal. In a briefing, Kuleba said no peace talks were under way between Moscow and Kyiv “because of Russia’s position and its continued aggression against our country”.
- Russia has forcibly removed nearly 2 million people from Ukraine, including several hundred thousand children, since its invasion of the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian are being held in filtration camps in the temporarily Russian-occupied territories, Zelenskiy said in a video address to the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul on Wednesday.
- The death toll from a weekend Russian missile attack on a residential apartment block in Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine has risen to at least 47. According to Kyiv, the residential building was hit by Russian rockets fired from truck-borne systems late on Saturday evening. The Ukrainian emergency services initially gave a death toll of 10, but as rescue teams continued to comb through the debris that number rose.
- Russian forces will probably focus on taking several small Donbas towns during the coming week, including Siversk and Dolyna on the approaches to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. “The urban areas of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk likely remain the principal objectives for this phase of the operation,” the British intelligence report said.
- North Korea has officially recognised the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian occupied territories in the east of Ukraine. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) becomes only the third UN member state to recognise them as legitimate authorities, after Russia and Syria. In response, Ukraine’s foreign ministry announced it has cut ties with North Korea.
- The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called for an immediate halt to Russian deportations of Ukrainian citizens. Blinken accused Russia of “deliberately separating Ukrainian children from their parents and abducting others from orphanages before putting them up for adoption inside Russia”.
- A third American national is being held captive by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, according to reports. Suedi Murekezi, 35, was arrested last month in Kherson, a Russian-occupied port city in southern Ukraine where he had been living for more than two years, his brother Sele Murekezi said.
- A Moscow court has ordered one of the last prominent opposition figures still in Russia, Ilya Yashin, to be detained for two months pending an investigation into the spreading of “fake information” about Russia’s army. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false information” about Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
- Lithuania will allow sanctioned Russian goods to transit its territory on their way to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, its foreign ministry said on Wednesday, reversing its policy after new European Commission guidelines.
- The global economic outlook that has “darkened significantly” following the consequences of the war in Ukraine, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund. Kristalina Georgieva said the global outlook remains “extremely uncertain” with an increased risk of recession. “The human tragedy of the war in Ukraine has worsened. So, too, has its economic impact … and it’s only getting worse,” she said. G20 finance ministers and central bank governors are preparing to meet in Bali this week.
Updated
Russian forces enter town of Siversk, separatist official says
Russian and proxy forces have entered the town of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Russian media reports.
State news agency Tass quoted Vitaly Kiselyov, an official from the self-appointed Luhansk People’s Republic, as saying the town could fall within a couple of days, but it was not clear what that claim was based on.
Ukraine’s armed forces said in their evening operational update that Russia had not conducted any new assaults on the frontline that includes Siversk, but that the town had been fired upon by artillery.
The Guardian has not been able to immediately verify the report.
In its latest intelligence report, the UK Ministry of Defence predicted that Russian forces will likely focus on taking several small towns during the coming week, including Siversk and Dolyna on the approaches to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
