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.
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, according to Reuters.
White House pressing Ukraine to draft 18-year-old men to help fill manpower needs to battle Russia
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, reports the Associated Press (AP).
A senior Biden administration official, who spoke to the 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.
The White House has pushed more than $56bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s February 2022 invasion and expects to send billions more to Kyiv before Biden leaves office in less than months.
But with time running out, the Biden White House is also sharpening its viewpoint that Ukraine has the weaponry it needs and now must dramatically increase its manpower if it is going to stay in the fight with Russia.
According to the AP, the official said the Ukrainians believe they need about 160,000 additional troops, but the US administration believes they probably will need more.
Poland said on Wednesday that it had detained a German citizen and charged the suspect with brokering and exporting dual-use goods to Russia, reports Reuters.
“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.”
A German foreign office source said the embassy in Warsaw was in touch with Polish authorities and working urgently to get details, according to Reuters.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has already applied a range of sanctions against Moscow to diminish the Kremlin’s ability to finance the war. The sanctions include a ban on selling to Russia certain dual-use goods and technologies that have both civilian and military applications.
The ISA statement did not specify the article of the criminal code under which the suspect was charged and it was not immediately clear what penalty he faces, reports Reuters.
Nordic, Baltic countries and Poland to increase support and ammunition 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, according to Reuters.
The leaders were meeting at the Swedish government’s country retreat in Harpsund, south-west of Stockholm, for talks covering transatlantic relations, regional security cooperation and a common policy on the war in Ukraine.
The election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term has raised questions about the US’ commitment to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia and about Washington’s role in Nato.
Many analysts believe that Europe will have to spend more on its own defence and on bolstering Ukraine’s military effort after Trump is inaugurated in January. The Nordic and Baltic countries – several of which share a border with Russia – are among Ukraine‘s biggest backers.
Aid from the Nordics, Baltics and Poland totals about €24bn, according to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker, second only to the US in absolute terms.
“Europe needs to take a greater responsibility for its own security,” Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said in a separate statement, reports Reuters.
He said:
That is preconditioned on us increasing our cooperation and continuing to support Ukraine, which is fighting for both its own and our security, over the long term.”
Updated
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, reports Reuters.
“This is a drastic step. It restricts our ability to report from Moscow once again. We have been dealing with intimidation and restrictions on our reporting from Moscow for almost three years,” said WDR programming director, Joerg Schoenenborn.
WDR is assessing how it might continue its work in Moscow, it said in a statement.
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.
Residence law falls within the competences of the regional states, or Laender, which make decisions independently of the federal government in Berlin, he added.
The spokesperson said the government was in close contact with German media in Moscow because of concerns that Russia was taking “very vehement” action against journalists.
Updated
According to Reuters, the Nordic states, the three Baltic republics and Poland said in a joint statement on Wednesday they would step up their support for Ukraine and make more ammunition available to it in the coming months.
We will update the blog with more on this story as soon as possible.
European Commission president calls for more EU defence spending
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 European parliament’s endorsement of the new EU executive by the narrowest-ever margin clears the way for von der Leyen and her chosen 26 European commissioners to start a five-year term on Sunday.
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.
She told MEPs in the run-up to the vote that there was “something wrong in [the] equation” where Russia was spending up to 9% of GDP on defence while the European average was 1.9%.
“War is raging at Europe’s borders and we must be ready for what lies ahead, working hand in hand with Nato,” she told MEPs. “Our defence spending must increase,” she added, calling for efforts to boost the European defence industry and common defence projects.
Von der Leyen said Europe faced difficult choices that required “massive investments in our security and our prosperity”.
For the past three years, the CIA has run an unusually bold outreach programme. It targeted Russians within the country’s government and security services, attempting to turn them into double agents.
Slickly produced recruitment videos portrayed cooperation with the US secret agency as the patriotic choice for officials disaffected with Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine. The videos ended with instructions on how to contact the CIA in a secure manner.
Come January, however, any Russians who answered those calls will be facing a very different geopolitical reality. Donald Trump will be back in the White House and, if he pursues the same policies as last time around, will look to make an ally of Putin’s Russia. His nomination for a key intelligence post is Tulsi Gabbard, who has raised concerns with her remarks on foreign policy in recent years, including speaking of “Russia’s legitimate security concerns” as part of the cause of the war in Ukraine.
The dramatic change in potential policy towards Russia and Ukraine, combined with Trump’s well-established dismissiveness of concerns over the security of classified information, may lead to sleepless nights among any double agents who remain inside Russia.
“We don’t know for sure whether recruitments have been made, and nor should we know, but it’s certainly been the strategy, and moments of crisis like this in the past have been a golden opportunity for recruitment drives for western services,” said Calder Walton, an intelligence historian at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the author of a recent book on the history of the intelligence battle between Moscow and Washington.
Russia said on Wednesday that if the US stationed missiles in Japan, this would threaten Russian security and prompt Moscow to retaliate, reports Reuters.
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.
According to Reuters, it cited unnamed US and Japanese sources as saying that under the plan, the US would deploy missile units to the Nansei islands of Japan’s south-western Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, and to the Philippines.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, accused Japan of escalating the situation around Taiwan to justify the expansion of military ties with Washington.
She said:
We have repeatedly warned the Japanese side that if, as a result of such cooperation, American medium-range missiles appear on its territory, this will pose a real threat to the security of our country and we will be forced to take the necessary, adequate steps to strengthen our own defence capability.”
Zakharova said Tokyo could get an idea of what such steps would entail by reading Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, published last week, which expanded the list of scenarios under which it would consider using nuclear weapons.
On Monday, deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Russia would consider deploying short- and intermediate-range missiles in Asia if the US deployed such missiles to the continent.
According to Reuters, when asked about that statement, Zakharova declined to discuss where Russia might site such weapons, but noted that half its territory is in Asia so any Russian missiles potentially deployed east of the Urals would be in that region.
She said Moscow had sent a clear signal to the US and its “satellites” that Russia would respond decisively and in symmetrical fashion to the placing of land-based medium and shorter-range missiles in various parts of the world. She added that the west should have no doubts about Russia’s potential after it launched a new hypersonic intermediate-range missile, the Oreshnik, at a target in Ukraine last week.
Updated
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.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry, said it was in the interests of responsible governments to ensure that such a scenario, which she called “suicidal”, did not unfold.
She said that what she called “irresponsible actions” by Ukraine and its western backers could bring the world to “the brink of catastrophe.”
Updated
Germany rejects Russia's claims it had shut Russian TV channel's Berlin bureau as 'false'
Further to our earlier report, Germany rejected Russia’s claims it had shut a Russian TV channel’s Berlin bureau as ‘false’ on Wednesday, and criticised moves to expel two German journalists from Moscow in retaliation.
“The Russian claims are false, the federal government has not closed the office of this broadcaster,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Christian Wagner.
Commenting on reports Moscow would expel two German journalists in retaliation for the alleged closure, he said that Germany would reject such a move “in the strongest possible terms”.
Russian state-controlled media outlets have faced restrictions in the west including broadcast bans since Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive, as western regulators accuse them of spreading disinformation.
Russian state broadcaster Channel One’s correspondent Ivan Blagoi said on air that he and cameraman Dmitry Volkov were notified on Tuesday that they “must leave German territory in the first half of December”.
Russia said on Wednesday it was expelling two correspondents from German public broadcaster ARD in retaliation.
In Berlin, Wagner said about the two Russian journalists that “I can only assume that this is related to questions of residence rights”, which were a matter for regional, not national, authorities.
“Russian journalists can report freely and unhindered in Germany,” he added, stressing that many Russian journalists are accredited in the country.
He said that the Russian broadcaster “has been subject to EU sanctions since December 2022” – but that while this banned it from broadcasting in Europe, it did not impose any reporting restrictions.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that if the United States stationed missiles in Japan than it would pose a threat to Russia and Moscow would have to take retaliatory steps.
Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova suggested that Russia’s nuclear doctrine be consulted to give a guide on what retaliatory steps could be taken in such a situation. Zakharova said that the United States continued to escalate the situation around Taiwan, undermining regional stability.
She said that the United States had deployed medium-range missiles in the Philippines, a step she said would stoke an arms race and increase strategic risks.
Germany has not closed the office of Russian broadcaster Channel One, and two journalists from the station who have reportedly been ordered to leave was a state matter related to residency requirements, said a German foreign ministry spokesperson.
“Russian journalists can report freely and unhindered in Germany. A whole series of Russian journalists are accredited with the federal press office,” said the spokesperson on Wednesday, emphasising that the office had not been closed.
A government spokesperson said that residency law was a matter for state authorities, but “if you don’t meet the residency requirements, then it’s no use working as a journalist, you have to meet the requirements”.
The foreign ministry is in close contact with media colleagues in Moscow due to concerns that Russia is taking “very vehement” actions against journalists, added the spokesperson.
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.
In an article published in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper before Putin’s visit, Tokayev emphasised his country’s support for “peaceful dialogue”, without mentioning Ukraine.
Putin praised Kazakhstan’s “close [to Russian] cultural, spiritual and moral values” in an article published in a state-run Kazakh paper, saying he was ready to further develop “friendly and allied relations” with Astana.
Russian state media showed footage of Putin’s plane landing in the capital on Wednesday.
Trade ties between the two countries have frayed in recent months, with Moscow banning some Kazakh agricultural exports a day after the Central Asian state declined to join Brics.
Putin has made expanding the alliance of emerging economies a pillar of Russia’s foreign policy, touting BRICS as a powerful counterweight to what he sees as a global western “hegemony”.
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, reports my colleague Pjotr Sauer.
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 of 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.
The full story is here:
Russia warns US against 'spiral of escalation' but says it will keep channels open
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”, reports Reuters.
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 was speaking six days after Russia launched what it described as a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile called the Oreshnik against Ukraine – something he said had sent a clear message to the west.
“The signal is very clear and obvious – stop, you should not do this any more, you mustn’t supply Kyiv with everything they want, don’t encourage them towards new military adventures, they are too dangerous,” state media quoted Ryabkov as saying.
It cited Ryabkov as saying:
The current (US) administration must stop this spiral of escalation. They simply must, otherwise the situation will become too dangerous for everyone, including the United States itself.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it will expel one correspondent and one cameraman from Germany’s ARD in a tit-for-tat response to German moves against Russia’s Channel One, reports Reuters.
Channel One reported that Germany was closing its Berlin bureau and that two Russian journalists, a correspondent and cameraman, working for the channel had been ordered to leave Germany on security grounds.
Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, 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 reports citing the state RIA news agency.
RIA reported Ryabkov as saying that Russia did not believe that the time for negotiations with the west had passed, but that it now needed to use stronger methods in order to get its point heard clearly.
South Korean president meets Ukraine delegation and calls for response to North Korean troops in Russia
Further to our previous post a Ukrainian delegation led by defence minister, Rustem Umerov, meeting South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, the Associated Press (AP) has further details.
According to the AP, 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 AP reports that the South Korean statement did not say whether the two sides discussed Seoul’s possible weapons supply to Ukraine.
Updated
Ukraine defence minister in South Korea to discuss arms
Ukraine’s defence minister arrived in South Korea and is holding bilateral meetings, Kyiv said on Wednesday, after reports that officials from the countries would discuss potential South Korean military support for Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the trip comes as South Korea signalled it could reverse a longstanding policy of not providing weapons to countries in conflict after revelations that North Korea had deployed thousands of troops to aid Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine.
The Ukrainian defence ministry confirmed to AFP that defence chief, Rustem Umerov, is already in South Korea and that “his meetings there are taking place”.
South Korean media had reported a planned meeting between Umerov and president Yoon Suk Yeol – though the presidential office declined to confirm to AFP.
The Ukrainian delegation was expected to “share intelligence on North Korea’s troop deployment to Russia” and seek Seoul’s support for Kyiv’s war efforts, South Korean Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with South Korean media last month that his country was preparing to submit a list of needed military support. “This will be carried out simultaneously with our envoy, who will visit South Korea soon, and discussions will be held on weapons support,” Zelenskyy said according to a transcript by KBS. He added the list would include artillery support and air defence systems.
According to AFP, earlier this month, Yoon said whether – or how – South Korea decides to help Ukraine directly depends on “the level of North Korean involvement” in the conflict, adding that Seoul was “not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons”. If South Korea were to supply arms, the initial batch would be defensive in nature, Yoon said.
Ukraine is reliant on western air defence systems, particularly Patriots, to protect itself from Russian missile barrages – and has been calling for more deliveries.
South Korea, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed North and has maintained production of weaponry long overlooked by western arms industries, could make a significant impact if it decides to supply weapons, experts say.
Updated
Russian legislators give final backing to army spending increase
Lawmakers in Russia’s upper house of parliament on Wednesday approved an almost 30% increase in defence spending next year, committing the country to yet more huge outlays as it wages its military offensive against Ukraine, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Moscow had already ramped up military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet era, pumping out missiles and drones to fire on Ukraine and paying lucrative salaries to its hundreds of thousands of frontline soldiers, according to AFP.
The 2025 budget will see a record 13.5tn rubles ($125bn) spent on “national defence”, more than outlays for welfare and education combined. That figure does not include some other resources being directed to the military campaign, such as spending that Russia labels as “domestic security” and some outlays classified as top secret.
The budget will now be sent to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to sign into law.
More on that in a moment. Here are some of the other key updates on the Russia-Ukraine war:
South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, met on Wednesday with a Ukrainian envoy and said he hoped the countries would come up with an effective response to the threat posed by Russia’s military cooperation with North Korea, Yoon’s office said.
Russian’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had taken control of the settlement of Nova Illinka, close to the embattled Donetsk region town of Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine, the TASS state news agency reported.
TASS also cited the defence ministry as saying that Ukrainian forces had attacked the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with drones and artillery.
Ukraine’s defence ministry is investigating defective mortar shells after at least 100,000 Ukrainian-made 120mm rounds had to be removed from the frontline. Soldiers began saying in early November that the rounds failed to explode, remained stuck in the launcher or fell off target, according to private Ukrainian TV 1+1. The defence ministry confirmed it had stopped using them on the frontline “until the causes of the malfunction are determined” and seized part of the supply.
The Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives and caused limited damage, two senior Ukrainian government sources said. The Kremlin described it as a warning to the west after the US and the UK allowed Ukraine to fire their missiles inside Russia.
Russia said it was expelling a British diplomat that it accused of espionage and had summoned London’s ambassador to the foreign ministry in Moscow. A No 10 spokesperson said: “To be clear, we refute these allegations. They’re baseless. We’re now considering our response. This is not the first time that Putin’s government has made malicious, baseless accusations against our staff.”
On Tuesday the Kremlin also banned cabinet ministers including Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves from entering Russia under new sanctions. It comes after the UK imposed fresh sanctions on 30 oil tankers from Russia’s “shadow fleet” as Ukraine’s allies try to squeeze Vladimir Putin’s funding of the war.
Russian shelling killed two civilians in the city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, said Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president. Earlier, Russian forces staged their largest ever drone attack on Ukraine over Monday night into Tuesday – cutting power to much of the western city of Ternopil and damaging residential buildings in Kyiv region, Ukraine’s officials said.
Speaking in Athens, the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said he wants the alliance “to go further to change the trajectory of the conflict” in the Ukrainians’ favour. Nato needed to more than just “keep Ukraine in the fight”, he suggested. Rutte highlighted the importance of strengthening the bloc’s “deterrence and defence” and the critical need to increase investment and production in the arms industry.
The US is continuing to surge security assistance to bolster Ukraine’s defences in the east, Antony Blinken, Joe Biden’s secretary of state, said on Tuesday after meetings with the Group of Seven democracies.
The Kremlin said it was preparing retaliatory measures, claiming that Ukraine twice fired US-made Atacms missiles into Russia in the last three days. Moscow said both strikes targeted air defence positions in the Kursk region.
Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday that Russian forces had murdered five soldiers immediately after taking them prisoner in the eastern Donetsk region, building on previous war crimes allegations against Moscow. There was no immediate response to the claims from Moscow. The Ukrainian rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said he had contacted the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) over the allegations.
A journalist who once freelanced for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in prison in Russia after being convicted of cooperating with a foreign organisation. Nika Novak, 24, was found guilty after a closed hearing in the Zabaikalsky regional court in the far-eastern city of Chita. The human rights group Memorial has described Novak as a political prisoner and the RFE/RL president and CEO, Stephen Capus, said: “We condemn today’s unjust conviction and sentencing of RFE/RL journalist Nika Novak in Russia. These politically motivated charges are intended to silence individual reporters and cause a chilling effect.”
