Closing summary
It is approaching 8pm in Kyiv and 9pm in Moscow. This liveblog will be closing soon but you can keep up to date on the Guardian’s latest coverage of Russia and Ukraine here.
Here are the latest developments:
President Joe Biden’s administration is urging Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and revamping its mobilisation laws to allow for the conscription of troops as young as 18. A senior Biden administration official, who spoke to the Associated Press (AP) on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private consultations, said on Wednesday that the outgoing Democratic administration wants Ukraine to lower the mobilisation age to 18 from the current age of 25 to help expand the pool of fighting age men available to help Ukraine in its nearly three-year-old war with Russia.
Ukrainian defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said he had discussed joint steps to strengthen security and stability with South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, while on a visit to Seoul on Wednesday. “We believe that our arguments about the need to increase cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Korea will lead to a tangible strengthening of security for our peoples and regions,” Umerov wrote in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Yoon’s office said in a statement that the president hopes that Seoul and Kyiv will work out effective ways to cope with the security threat posed by the North Korean-Russian military cooperation including the North’s troop dispatch.
The Ukrainian delegation later met separately with Yoon’s national security adviser, Shin Wonsik, and defence minister, Kim Yong Hyun. During the meetings, Umerov briefed the South Korean officials on the status of the Russia-Ukraine war and expressed hope that Kyiv and Seoul will strengthen cooperation, the statement said. It said the two sides agreed to continue to share information on the North Korean troops in Russia and North Korean-Russian weapons and technology transfers while closely coordinating with the US. The South Korean statement did not say whether the two sides discussed Seoul’s possible weapons supply to Ukraine.
Nordic and Baltic states and Poland said on Wednesday that they would in the coming months step up support for Ukraine, including to the country’s defence industry, and invest in making more ammunition available. “We are committed to strengthening our deterrence, and defence, including resilience, against conventional as well as hybrid attacks, and to expanding sanctions against Russia as well as against those who enable Russia’s aggression,” the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Poland and Sweden said in a statement.
Russia warned the US on Wednesday to halt what it called a “spiral of escalation” over Ukraine, but said it would keep informing Washington about test missile launches in order to avoid “dangerous mistakes”. The comments from the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, sent a signal that Moscow, which last week approved a new policy that lowered its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, wants to keep communication channels open at a time of acute tensions with the US.
Ryabkov, also said on Wednesday that the use of the new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine was needed to make Moscow’s voice heard, Reuters reported citing the state RIA news agency.
Russia’s rouble has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the wake of new western sanctions and growing geopolitical tensions.
Russia said on Wednesday that it would expel one correspondent and one cameraman from Germany’s ARD in a symmetrical response to German moves against journalists from Russia’s Channel One that Berlin denied undertaking. WDR, a regional arm of ARD responsible for the broadcasting association’s news output from Russia, criticised Russia’s decision to strip the two German journalists of their permits to work in the country.
Pushing back against Russia’s version of events, a German foreign ministry spokesperson denied that the Channel One office in Berlin was being shuttered, and said the Russian journalists’ departure was related to residence law matters. “Russian journalists can report freely and unhindered in Germany. A whole series of Russian journalists are also accredited with the Federal Press Office,” the spokesperson told a regular government news conference.
Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a two-day trip aimed at shoring up ties with his Central Asian ally as tensions mount over the Ukraine war. Kazakhstan is a member of the Moscow-led CSTO security alliance but has expressed concern about the almost three-year conflict, which Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has refused to condone.
Russia said on Wednesday that if the US stationed missiles in Japan, this would threaten Russian security and prompt Moscow to retaliate. Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday that Japan and the US aim to compile a joint military plan for a possible Taiwan emergency that includes deploying missiles. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, accused Japan of escalating the situation around Taiwan to justify the expansion of military ties with Washington.
Any plan for the west to give Ukraine nuclear weapons would be “insane”, the Russian foreign ministry has said and claimed that preventing such a scenario was one of the reasons why Moscow went into Ukraine. Zakharova said it was in the interests of responsible governments to ensure that such a scenario, which she called “suicidal”, did not unfold.
The head of the EU executive, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for more defence spending in Europe over the next five years, as her top team was voted in by a wafer-thin majority of MEPs. The EU faces acute challenges, including the war in Ukraine, the return of Donald Trump and the climate crisis, all against a backdrop of deepening fears of economic decline as von der Leyen starts her second term.
Poland said on Wednesday that it had detained a German citizen and charged the suspect with brokering and exporting dual-use goods to Russia. The German citizen traded in specialist machines used in the technological industry, which – through his company – were illegally sent to Russian military plants involved in the production of weapons,” the Internal Security Agency (ISA) said in a statement. “The suspect pleaded guilty and filed a motion for voluntary submission to punishment.”
Russia’s rouble has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the wake of new western sanctions and growing geopolitical tensions.
The rouble on Wednesday hit 110 against the dollar for the first time since 16 March 2022. Before launching its war on Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian currency traded at around 75-80 against the US dollar.
The latest drop came just days after the US introduced sanctions against Gazprombank, Russia’s third-largest bank, which played a key role in processing payments for the remaining Russian natural gas exports to Europe.
Earlier rounds of sanctions had spared Russian gas because Europe’s economy was so dependent on it, but it is now far less reliant on Russian supplies. The Gazprombank sanctions raise the prospect of a further decrease in gas revenues and foreign currency for Moscow.
The rouble’s weakening threatens to erode Russians’ purchasing power by increasing the cost of imported goods and could further increase inflation.
The country is already contending with runaway inflation, which could climb to 8.5% this year – twice the Central Bank’s target.
The borscht index, an online cost of living tracker monitoring the prices of four ingredients needed to make the traditional soup, reports a 20% rise compared with 2023.
The rising inflation prompted the Central Bank last month to raise interest rates to 21% – their highest level in more than 20 years – and a further hike is expected in December.
The weak rouble will, however, also help the Kremlin prop up its budget – much of which comes from energy exports – in order to pay for its war in Ukraine and maintain public spending.
