Closing summary
Damage to a telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia earlier in October was caused by “external force or tampering”, the Swedish government said.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has submitted a bill for Sweden’s Nato membership bid to parliament for ratification, the Turkish presidency said. Turkey and Hungary are the only Nato members yet to ratify Sweden’s membership request.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russian government spending is becoming increasingly focused on the costs of its war on Ukraine.
Three residents of Kherson oblast were arrested for allegedly helping Russian forces target locations for strikes in the city of Kherson, the regional prosecutor’s office announced on Monday, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Vladimir Putin’s Russia “is the most heinous evil the world has witnessed since WWII” and that the Russian president and other “Russian perpetrators must face justice for their crimes”.
Updated
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Monday refused to leave his cell and skipped a court hearing, protesting after prison officials took away all of his writing supplies, his allies said.
The Associated Press reports:
Navalny, who is serving a 19-year prison term, was due to participate in a court hearing via video link on Monday on one of many lawsuits he had filed against his prison.
His ally Ivan Zhdanov said the politician refused to leave his cell after prison officials took away all of his writing supplies.
After that “security operatives in helmets entered the cell and, using force, dragged him to the investigator,” Zhdanov said, as the politician was also expected to attend unspecified “investigative procedures”.
He didn’t clarify why Navalny’s supplies were taken away and didn’t say whether he was then returned to his cell.
Russia’s independent news site Mediazona reported that after Navalny’s refusal to appear, the court hearing was adjourned until 2 November.
Navalny has been president Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, campaigning against official corruption and organising major anti-Kremlin protests. His 2021 arrest came after his return to Moscow from Germany where he recuperated from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He has since been handed three prison terms, most recently on the charges of extremism, and spent months in isolation facilities in the prison over various minor infractions prison officials accused him of.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and a vast network of regional offices were outlawed that same year as extremist groups, a step that exposed anyone involved with them to prosecution.
Navalny has previously rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has welcomed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s move to submit a bill approving Sweden’s bid to join the military alliance to parliament for ratification (see earlier post at 15.20).
Stoltenberg added he was now looking forward to a “speedy vote” in the Turkish parliament, according to Reuters.
Updated
The leader of the populist, rightwing Swiss People’s party (SVP) has promised more pragmatism and “less political correctness” after it won Sunday’s election with an improved vote share of 29%.
Final results on Monday showed the SVP – whose anti-immigration campaign platform included a pledge to keep the country’s 8.7 million-strong population below 10 million – won 62 seats in the 200-seat parliament, nine more than it had before.
Analysts said the vote was unlikely to change the formal makeup of the Swiss government, the federal council, whose seven cabinet posts are divided among the top four parties according to vote share, but marked a clear setback for liberals.
While green themes dominated the 2019 election campaign, the return of immigration to the top of Europe’s political agenda allowed the SVP to focus on the theme that has helped it finish first in every national election since 1999.
A 43% increase in asylum applications in the first half of 2023 and more than 65,000 refugees from Ukraine gave the nationalist party more ammunition, analysts said, which it deployed in a campaign that was widely criticised as xenophobic.
You can read the full story here:
Undersea cable between Sweden and Estonia damaged by 'external force or tampering'
The Swedish government has said that damage to an undersea telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia earlier in October was caused by “external force or tampering”.
“It has been confirmed that the cable has been damaged through external force or tampering,” Carl-Oskar Bohlin, minister for civil defence, said in a statement.
Bohlin added that Estonia had assessed that “the damage to the gas pipeline and communications cable between Finland and Estonia is related to the damage to the communications cable between Sweden and Estonia”.
On 8 October, a subsea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged, in what Finnish investigators believe may have been deliberate sabotage.
Helsinki is investigating the pipeline incident, while Tallinn is probing the cable incident. Last week, Sweden said a third link had been damaged at roughly the same time as the other two.
Nato has said it is stepping up patrols in the Baltic Sea after the incidents, which have stoked concerns about the security of energy supplies in the wider Nordic region.
Updated
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he had a call with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, on ways to deepen Ukraine’s ties with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
I had a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on ways to further develop Ukraine’s ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 23, 2023
I thanked His Royal Highness for his personal efforts to make the Peace Formula meeting in Jeddah a success. I invited a Saudi…
Updated
Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said his country looks “forward to becoming a member of Nato” after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan submitted a protocol for Sweden’s admission into the alliance to Turkey’s parliament for ratification.
He posted on X:
Glad to hear that Turkish President Erdoğan has now handed over the ratification documents to the Turkish parliament. Now it remains for parliament to deal with the issue.
Updated
Erdoğan submits Sweden's Nato bid to parliament for ratification, says presidency
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has submitted a bill for Sweden’s Nato membership bid to parliament for ratification, the Turkish presidency said. The presidency did not provide further details.
Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato last year after Russia invaded Ukraine. Finnish membership was sealed in April, marking a historic expansion of the western defence bloc, but Sweden’s bid has been held up by Turkey and Hungary.
All 31 Nato allies must endorse Sweden’s membership.
Turkey has previously said Sweden must take more steps at home to clamp down on the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which the EU and US also deem a terrorist group.
Updated
A lioness rescued from a zoo in Ukraine could be rehomed in the UK with her cubs.
The female lion, named Aysa, was pregnant when she was abandoned at a private zoo in the Donetsk region at the start of Russia’s invasion.
She was moved to another facility in Ukraine, where she gave birth to cubs Teddi, Emi and Santa.
Yorkshire Wildlife Park said it was working to get permission to move the lions to the UK before Christmas.
All four are currently at Poznan Zoo in Poland, where they have been temporarily rehomed.
Spain has seized ancient gold artefacts valued at 60 million euros (£52.3m) stolen from Ukraine after thieves were caught trying to sell them in Madrid, Spanish police said on Monday.
According to Reuters, the 11 pieces, primarily jewellery including intricate necklaces, bracelets and earrings, are dated from the Greco-Scythian period between the 8th and 4th centuries BC, the police said.
The items were exhibited in a Kyiv museum between 2009 and 2013, and were smuggled out of Ukraine in 2016, Madrid National Police said in a statement, without identifying the museum.
The artefacts had forged documents to make it look as if they belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, police said.
Three Spanish and two Ukrainian nationals were arrested as part of the investigation, which began in 2021, after one of the pieces – a gold belt with rams’ heads – was sold in a private sale in Madrid.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has arrived in Iran for talks with regional counterparts, the ministry of foreign affairs of Russia confirmed.
Lavrov is expected to talk with foreign ministers from Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia, who have also been invited to the ministerial meeting of the consultative regional platform “3+3” for the South Caucasus.
Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs posted a picture of Lavrov stepping off a place in Tehran on X, formerly known as Twitter.
🛬 Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey #Lavrov arrived in Iran to take part in the Ministerial Meeting of the Consultative Regional Platform "3+3" for the South Caucasus.
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) October 23, 2023
📍 Tehran, October 23 pic.twitter.com/uzrPLMhB2C
Updated
Russia plans significant increase in defence spending, says MoD
In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said Russian government spending is becoming increasingly focused on the costs of its war on Ukraine.
Consistently heightened military spending will highly likely contribute to inflationary pressures within Russia, the ministry said.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, the MoD wrote:
The state’s proposed 2024 budget envisages an approximate 68% increase in planned defence spending compared to that allotted for 2023 – this puts defence spending for 2024 at around 6% of GDP.
In contrast, education and healthcare spending will be frozen at the 2023 allocation, which amounts to a real term spending cut due to inflation.
More spending will need to be allocated to fund payments and healthcare costs for the mounting numbers of wounded soldiers and the families of those killed in the conflict.
More than half of those soldiers wounded severely enough to require longer term medical care have lost limbs, with one in five requiring upper limb amputations, deputy Labour minister Alexei Vovchenko stated on 17 October 2023.
These injured soldiers will almost certainly require lifelong healthcare.
Updated
Trade between Russia and India in the first eight months of 2023 more than doubled from the previous year, reaching a record high of almost $44bn, the Kyiv Independent cited Russian state-run media RIA Novosti as having reported.
At least 361 Ukrainian athletes have been killed as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gyunduz Mamedov, a former deputy prosecutor-general of Ukraine, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
More than 3,000 athletes and coaches continued to fight in the Ukrainian air force, he wrote, adding that the death of the athletes was a “heavy loss for Ukraine and its future”.
Updated
As prosecutors prepare a war crimes case, victims of alleged Russian torture in the Ukrainian city of Balakliia have relayed their horrifying experiences to the Guardian.
You can read the special report from my colleague, Lorenzo Tondo, here:
Three Kherson residents arrested for allegedly 'helping Russia target locations for strikes'
Three residents of Kherson oblast were arrested for allegedly helping Russian forces target locations for strikes in the city of Kherson, the regional prosecutor’s office announced on Monday, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Russia has focused on the industrial east since pulling back from a failed advance on Kyiv at the start of the February 2022 invasion and its forces have tried to maintain positions in Kherson since abandoning the region’s main town late last year.
Russian forces are routinely reported to have shelled Kherson and villages on the western bank of the Dnipro from positions on the eastern bank, where they retreated late last year.
Updated
We reported earlier that the Kremlin said any threats made against Russia were “unacceptable” after Latvia’s president said Nato should shut the Baltic Sea to shipping if Moscow were found responsible for damage to a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia.
It came after Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, said in a TV interview last week that Nato should close the Baltic Sea to ships if Russia were proven responsible for the damage to the Balticconnector.
Asked about Rinkevics’ remarks on Monday, Peskov told a regular news briefing:
Any threats must be taken seriously, no matter who they come from. Any threats to the Russian Federation are unacceptable. I repeat once again: Russia has nothing to do with this (incident).
Updated
Putin's Russia 'most heinous evil world has witnessed since WWII', says minister
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said Vladimir Putin’s Russia “is the most heinous evil the world has witnessed since WWII” and that the Russian president and other “Russian perpetrators must face justice for their crimes”.
Posting on X, he cited Forbes Ukraine as reporting that Russia has spent around $167bn (£137bn) on its full-scale war against Ukraine between February 2022 and August 2023.
Kuleba said that with this money, Moscow could have built almost 24,000 kindergartens across Russia, or over 4,500 maternity wards, or about 17,000 schools.
But he said “instead, Russian war criminals have bombed Ukrainian kindergartens, maternity wards, schools, and hospitals, destroying almost 120,000 civilian structures in all, including the latest attack on Nova Poshta terminal in Kharkiv.”
Russia has spent around $167 billion on its full-scale war against Ukraine between February 2022 and August 2023, according to Forbes Ukraine. This includes direct war expenses and lost equipment. Thousands of Russians are slain every week, but their lives are worthless to the…
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) October 23, 2023
Updated
There has been reaction to the news Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva has had her detention extended until 5 December (see earlier post at 09.38).
Kurmasheva, who works for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) media outlet, was detained by Russian law enforcement officers in the central city of Kazan on Wednesday.
The Sovietsky district court in Kazan, the main city of the Tatarstan republic, ruled she should be kept in detention as a “preventative measure”. She faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of the charges.
Following Monday’s hearing, RFE/RL called for Kurmasheva to be released immediately.
RFE/RL acting president, Jeffrey Gedmin, said:
We are deeply disappointed by the outcome of today’s hearing. We call for Alsu’s immediate release so she can be reunited with her family.
Updated
The Kremlin reiterated on Monday that Russia had nothing to do with damage inflicted on a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia, known as the Balticconnector.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also told a regular briefing that threats made towards Russia were unacceptable, when asked about comments by Latvia’s president regarding Moscow’s possible responsibility for the damage, Reuters reports.
The Latvian president, Edgars Rinkevics, said in an interview with LTV’s “Today’s Question” last Thursday that Nato should opt to close the Baltic Sea to ships if Russia were proven responsible for the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline.
Estonia, Latvia and Finland are all members of the Nato military alliance.
The Kremlin said on Monday that it agrees with US president, Joe Biden, on the need to build a “new world order”, but that it disagrees that the US is capable of building it.
In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the US was talking about an “American-centric” world order that would not exist in future, Reuters reports.
The conflict in the Middle East must not weaken the support in the EU for Ukraine, the Lithuanian foreign minister has said.
On his way into a foreign affairs ministers summit in Luxembourgh, Gabrielius Landsbergis expressed concern about political energy being drawn away from Ukraine because of the conflict in Israel and Gaza.
He said:
I truly expect us to be a visible and important partner in solving the crisis in Israel and Palestine because it is also about our security and the principles that we are fighting for in Ukraine about rule of law and things like that.
We cannot forget, we cannot keep our eyes off Ukraine ... We’re seeing Russia’s renewed offensive, and it reminds us that Russians are waiting for situations like this, where we draw our attention somewhere else so they can renew their attacks.
My main hope is that we can send a message with funding that Europe is committed to define Ukrainian defense objectives. If not, that just slows us down and in some cases proves that we are not as effective as we could be.
Updated
Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva had her pre-trial detention extended on Monday to 5 December, according to a Reuters reporter in court, in a case where she is accused of violating Russia’s law on foreign agents.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires.
Updated
Ukraine’s defence systems destroyed all air weapons Russia launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Monday.
The air force said on Telegram that a total of 14 attack drones, including 13 Iranian-made Shahed drones and one unspecified drone, as well as one cruise missile were all destroyed, Reuters reports.
Here’s a recent Reuters take on the situation around Avdiivka, and also Kherson:
Russian forces aiming to contain a four-month-old Ukrainian counteroffensive maintained unrelenting pressure on Sunday on the shattered town of Avdiivka in the east and intensified shelling in the southern area of Kherson.
Russia has focused on the industrial east since pulling back from a failed advance on Kyiv at the start of the February 2022 invasion and its forces have tried to maintain positions in Kherson since abandoning the region’s main town late last year.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Ukrainian forces repelled nearly 20 Russian attacks around Avdiivka, its buildings now largely reduced to shells. Russian air strikes hit nearby villages, it said.
Avdiivka has become a watchword for resistance, viewed as the gateway to recapturing the Russian-held city of Donetsk and the rest of Donbas – made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It was briefly seized in 2014 when Russian-backed separatists captured swathes of eastern Ukraine, but was later retaken by Ukrainian forces who, in the ensuing nine years, have built solid fortifications.
“It is true that Avdiivka has significance,” Andriy Yusov, spokesperson for the Ukraine defence ministry’s intelligence directorate, told the Espreso TV news outlet. “This is not the first instance the occupying forces have boosted tension with declarations of taking over all of Donetsk and Luhansk … Their plans have failed, the deadlines pushed back. This is just another episode of tension.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the situation in Avdiivka and the nearby town of Maryinka was “particularly tough. Numerous Russian attacks. But our positions are being held. Every day, we need results for Ukraine, to withstand Russian assaults, to eliminate occupiers, to move forward. Whether it’s a kilometre or 500 metres, but forward, every day.”
Russian military accounts made no mention of Avdiivka, but described successful operations against Ukrainian positions to the east in Bakhmut, seized by Moscow in May after months of fighting.
In Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said several villages had been struck in shelling episodes, as had transport and food production sites in the city of Kherson.
Reuters could not independently verify the accounts from either side.Russian forces routinely shell Kherson and villages on the western bank of the Dnipro from positions on the eastern bank, where they retreated late last year. The US-based Institute for the Study of War has reported in the past week that Ukrainian forces have crossed the Dnipro to take up new positions of their own and pursue Russian forces.
Opening summary
Welcome to our continuing coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Let’s make a start with a summary of recent developments.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the situation in Avdiivka and the nearby town of Maryinka remained “particularly tough. Numerous Russian attacks. But our positions are being held.” Russian forces have made a series of desperate and bloody lunges at the shattered town of Avdiivka, viewed as the gateway to recapturing Russian-held Donetsk and the rest of Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War has reported that Ukrainian forces in Kherson have crossed from their side of the Dnipro river to take up new positions and pursue Russian forces. The Russians occupy the east bank at Kherson while the west bank remains free and under Ukrainian control, though regularly shelled by the Russians has continued over the weekend. Russia has said that Ukrainian crossing attempts took place.
The six people killed in a Russian missile strike on a postal distribution centre in Kharkiv district on Saturday were all postal workers, aged between 19 and 42. Of the 17 injured, seven are in a serious condition, and said to be “fighting for their lives”.
The attack was condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Blink, who wrote on X: “The Kremlin’s disregard for life is for all the world to see.”
Mitch McConnell offered a strong endorsement on Sunday of the Joe Biden White House’s $106bn (£87bn) aid proposal to Israel and Ukraine, saying he and the president were essentially “in the same place” on the issue.
Russian forces shot down three missiles targeting the Crimean peninsula on Sunday, a Russian official said. The peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is crucial to Russia’s military offensive, both for supplying troops in southern Ukraine and for carrying out missile strikes from the sea, AFP reports.
It is likely that Russia has suffered 150,000-190,000 permanent casualties (killed or permanently wounded) since the Ukraine war began, according to the latest update from the UK’s Ministry of Defence. If the numbers of temporary wounded (those recovered and due to return to the battlefield) are added, that number rises to 240,000-290,000, the MoD said on X.
Russian troops attacked the village of Stanislav in Kherson region overnight on 22 October, damaging over 30 houses, though no casualties were reported.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is due to visit Tehran on Monday for talks with regional counterparts, his ministry’s spokesperson has confirmed. Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported earlier that the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia had been invited to the talks. Western countries have accused Tehran of supporting Russia’s offensive in Ukraine by providing it with large quantities of drones and other weaponry.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he had spoken with the Emir of Qatar sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to thank Qatar for its humanitarian assistance and mediation in returning home illegally deported Ukrainian children.
Ukraine fears a drone shortage due to China’s move to place restrictions on exports, the BBC reports. The war in Ukraine is the first armed conflict to see such extensive use of drones, which are used by both sides. Many of them are commercially made in China and bought off the shelf, and new supplies are vital because of the large numbers lost in the fighting.
Russia’s Gazprom, looking to compensate for the loss of most of its European markets, will supply extra gas to Hungary and China. Hungary is the only member of the EU whose leader, prime minister Viktor Orbán, has maintained friendly ties to Putin and is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open EU accession talks with Ukraine, which would require the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 members.
