Closing summary
The Ukraine live blog is coming to a close. Below is a summary of the day’s events:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine had seized the initiative from Russia in the Black Sea and forced Russia’s naval fleet to pull back in the eastern part of the sea.
The foreign secretary, David Cameron, met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during a trip to Kyiv, pledging continued military support and a refocus on Ukraine as conflict continues in the Middle East.
At least one person was killed and two injured during Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian Kherson region, the local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
The Ukrainian military shot down 16 out of 18 attack drones launched by Russia as well as one missile during overnight strikes, Kyiv’s air force said.
Rescuers cleared rubble from a Russian strike on a residential building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove the previous day, and one more body was recovered, taking the death toll to three, an emergency service said.
Russian forces have continued attacks in the contested town of Avdiivka in Donetsk oblast, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In the latest intelligence update, the MoD said: “Russia is almost certainly attempting a pincer movement to encircle the town.”
The European Commission has proposed a 12th round of sanctions against Moscow, including restrictions on scores of individuals apparently including the son of former president Dmitry Medvedev and a relative of Vladimir Putin’s.
Finland will close four of the nine crossing points on its border with Russia to stem a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, the prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said on Thursday.
The Kremlin has said that the Czech Republic’s decision to freeze Russian state-owned properties was illegal and that Moscow may retaliate against what it called a hostile step.
The Russian financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has placed three lawyers for the jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny on a list of “terrorists and extremists”.
A Russian court has found the artist and musician Alexandra Skochilenko guilty of knowingly spreading fake news about the Russian army’s behaviour in Ukraine and sentenced her to seven years in a prison colony. Amnesty International has declared 33-year-old Skochilenko – who replaced supermarket price tags with messages calling for an end to Moscow’s war in Ukraine – “a prisoner of conscience”.
Russia has sustained casualties of 300,000-400,000, western officials say
Russia has sustained casualties of between 300,000 and 400,000 killed and wounded in the war in Ukraine so far, and in the heaviest fighting at Avdiivka is losing between 500 and 1,000 a day according to a briefing by western officials.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, nevertheless acknowledged that Ukraine's counter offensive on the Zaporizhzhia front has essentially culminated, although "three brigades" are believed to have made it across the Dnipro river near Kherson.
"Neither side is capable of mounting a decisive operation on land," one of the officials said, and it appeared that "a prolonged conflict" was likely to follow in which long term US and European military aid would be crucial.
A significant force, described as three brigades, had established a position across the Dnipro that the Russians have proved unable to dislodge, although it was unclear, they said, how much armour the Ukrainian military had been able to get across the river.
But despite the cross-river success, the officials said they expected that Ukraine would most likely only be able to make incremental "village at a time" progress, a similar pace to summer efforts south of Orikhiv and Velyka Novosilka.
