Closing summary
It has just passed 6pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Russia and Ukraine coverage here, including our story on Russia retaking Kursk villages here.
Here is a recap of today’s other latest developments:
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed that three of its staff members were killed on Thursday after shelling hit the site of a planned frontline aid distribution in the Donetsk region. Two additional ICRC staff members were injured, it said in a statement. Although Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of being behind the attack, the ICRC’s statement did not specifically address who was responsible for the shelling. Russia has not yet commented.
More than $30m (£23m) worth of aircraft tyres made by western manufacturers including the French firm Michelin and Britain’s Dunlop were imported into Russia last year via intermediaries despite attempts to ban the trade, according to a Ukrainian government agency. According to the available customs records, the vast majority imported into the country in 2023 were produced by companies headquartered in France, Britain, the US and Japan.
A Russian missile hit a civilian vessel carrying grain from Ukraine that had already left Ukrainian waters in the Black Sea, Zelenskiy said on Thursday. Foreign minister Andrii Sybiha called the strike “a brazen attack on freedom of navigation and global food security.” There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Radosław Sikorski, said on Thursday that his country is in favour of lifting restrictions on Ukraine using long range weapons and supports increasing pressure on the Russian government. “We should continue to deliver [Ukraine] advanced air defence systems … and lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons,” he told journalists at a joint news conference in Warsaw with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
Blinken is wrapping up a three-nation, Ukraine-focused European tour in Poland after hearing repeated appeals from Ukrainian officials to use western-supplied weaponry for long-range strikes inside Russia. Blinken traveled to Warsaw on Thursday after spending a day in Kyiv with the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, during which they pledged to bring the Ukrainian requests to their leaders.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the decision to lift restrictions on long-range weapons “to attack the Russian Federation’s territory was taken long ago”. He was speaking during what the Russian foreign ministry said was an ambassador’s roundtable. He added: “Now they are trying to legalise it in the public space in some way.”
Russian drones inflicted significant damage to the northern Ukrainian town of Konotop’s energy infrastructure in an overnight attack that injured at least 14 people and cut electricity to the settlement, local officials said on Thursday. Regional officials said there had been 10 explosions during the attack and mayor Artem Semenikhin said the power system was in critical condition.
The key eastern Ukraine city of Pokrovsk is without a drinking water supply or natural gas for cooking and heating, authorities said on Thursday. A water filtration station in Pokrovsk was damaged in recent fighting, and more than 300 hastily drilled water wells are the city’s last source of drinking water, Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Zelenskiy said a Chinese-Brazilian peace proposal is “destructive” and simply serves as a “political statement” in an interview posted on Wednesday. “The Chinese-Brazilian proposal is also destructive, it’s just a political statement,” Zelenskiy said, according to the Brazilian Metrópoles media outlet. “How can you offer ‘here is our initiative’ without asking anything from us?”
The Kremlin said on Thursday that letting Ukraine use western weaponry to strike Russian territory would deepen western involvement in the conflict and trigger a reaction from Moscow. Reuters cited the state news agency, Tass, for the report.
Russian shelling on Thursday killed two and injured seven more in the Ukrainian northeastern Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian interior ministry said. The ministry said on the Telegram messenger that emergency services were working at the site after a Russian attack on Borova village when Moscow troops shelled it again. Three rescuers were among the injured, it added.
Chinese president Xi Jinping could meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy next month, a Ukrainian delegate said in Beijing on Thursday, as China opened its biggest annual military diplomacy event. Oleksandr Chalyi, a former deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, told one of the opening sessions of the three-day Xiangshan Forum that diplomacy had improved in recent months between Beijing and Kyiv, and that a meeting was now possible.
Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the heads of the British, French, German and Dutch embassies on Thursday, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported, after accusations of missile transfers to Russia and the imposition of new sanctions.
The Chinese president will attend the Brics summit in Russia next month, China’s foreign minister announced on Thursday. “President Xi is very happy to accept your invitation”, Wang Yi told Russian president Vladimir Putin at a meeting in St Petersburg.
A Russian court on Thursday put three lawyers who used to represent the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny on trial over “extremism” charges. The trial of three of his former lawyers – Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin – opened Thursday in a court in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, AFP journalists in the courtroom reported.
Updated
Russian shelling on Thursday killed two and injured seven more in the Ukrainian northeastern Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian interior ministry said.
According to Reuters, the ministry said on the Telegram messenger that emergency services were working at the site after a Russian attack on Borova village when Moscow troops shelled it again. Three rescuers were among the injured, it added.
