Closing summary
This blog is now closing. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said only Kyiv can decide conditions for peace talks after territory row. The comments come after his chief of staff suggested Ukraine could give up land as a condition of Nato membership. “It is the Ukrainians, and only the Ukrainians, who can decide when there are conditions in place for negotiations, and who can decide at the negotiating table what is an acceptable solution,” Stoltenberg said.
The US has imposed sanctions on four Russians it accused of being involved in the 2020 poisoning of now jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The US Treasury Department in a statement said the four hit with sanctions are linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and included two it said are among the main reported perpetrators of Navalny’s poisoning.
Russia is making steady progress toward its goal of mass producing Shahed-136 drones that can travel more than 1,000 miles and target Ukrainian cities, the Washington Post reported, citing documents about the plan. Moscow is working on its own version of the Shahed-136, despite delays and sanctions that impact components needed from other countries, according to the documents.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is not trying to push Belarus into joining the war in Ukraine, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said in an online interview. “If you Ukrainians do not cross our border, we will never participate in this war. In this hot war. But we will always help Russia - they are our allies,” he said.
Ukraine will not be able to operate US-built F-16 fighter jets this coming autumn and winter, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian television late on Wednesday. “It’s already obvious we won’t be able to defend Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets during this autumn and winter,” Ihnat told a joint telethon broadcast by Ukrainian channels.
The US condemned Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine’s grain infrastructure and called for Moscow to return immediately to the grain deal, the state department said on Wednesday. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, did not care about global food security, the state department deputy spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters after Ukraine said earlier on Wednesday Russia had attacked its grain storage facilities overnight.
A civilian cargo vessel has left Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa, Kyiv has said, despite warnings from Russia that its navy could target ships using the Black Sea export hubs. The announcement raises the spectre of a standoff with Russian warships, after Moscow pulled out of a key deal last month brokered by the UN and Turkey, which guaranteed safe passage for grain shipments from three Ukrainian ports.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian territory on Thursday morning. Interfax said a drone had been downed over Russia’s southern Belgorod region, citing the defence ministry.
A senior Nato official has apologised and clarified his comments, a day after he said publicly that Ukraine could give up territory to Russia in exchange for Nato membership and an end to the war. Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to the Nato secretary general, said “My statement about this was part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I shouldn’t have said it that way. It was a mistake.”
Ukraine’s forces have entrenched themselves on the outskirts of Urozhaine after recapturing the settlement in the Donetsk region from Russian forces, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said. Hanna Maliar posted on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday morning that the village had been liberated, adding that offensive operations continue.
Ukraine’s air force on Wednesday said a large group of Russian army drones entered the mouth of the Danube river and headed toward the Izmail river port near the border with Romania. The governor of southern Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, asked residents of Izmail district to take shelter at about 1:30 am and cancelled the air raid alert one hour later.
Russia’s defence ministry said Wednesday it shot down three Ukrainian drones southwest of Moscow, the latest in a surge of aerial attacks near the capital. Ukraine launched the attack at 5:00 am using “three unmanned aerial vehicles on objects in the Kaluga region”, the ministry said on Telegram.
Russian authorities refused to renew the visa for Dutch journalist Eva Hartog, who has lived and worked in the country for 10 years, and gave her six days to leave Russia, she said in a column published Wednesday. Her effective expulsion is one of several in recent years and comes amid a months-long crackdown that the Kremlin has unleashed on independent journalists, critical news outlets, opposition activists and human rights groups.
Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to hold a meeting with Russian policymakers on Wednesday in order to discuss reintroducing some capital controls to help prop up the struggling rouble. Citing a Russian finance ministry proposal, the Financial Times said large exporters could be forced to convert up to 80% of their foreign currency into roubles in order to raise demand for the currency.
There have been direct contacts between Ukraine and Belarus but Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy put a halt to them, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said during an online interview broadcast on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The last such contact occurred a few months ago and included a discussion of the possibility of Belarus entering the war on Russia’s side, he said.
