Summary of the day
It is approaching 6pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. Here are the latest headlines.
The human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament has said that the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian children deported by Russia now stands at over 19,540. Speaking at a human rights conference in Kyiv, Dmytro Lubinets said “this is against the background of the Russian Federation continuing to deport more and more groups of Ukrainian children from our state every day”. In March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children.
The UK’s government has said it has levelled “appropriate sanctions” after summoning the Russian ambassador following accusations that groups linked to the Russian FSB had been hacking prominent British figures as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”. UK deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden said Russia was “behind sustained hostile cyber operations aimed at interfering in parts of the UK democratic processes. This has included members of parliament, civils servants, thinktanks, journalists and NGOs”. The former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, has confirmed he was one of the figures targeted.
Four occupied regions of Ukraine that were “annexed” by the Russian Federation in late 2022 are expected to participate in Russia’s presidential election next year, after the date was set for 17 March. Russia’s Federation council confirmed the date this morning, with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, saying a decision will be made by 12 December on whether occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will take part.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has not yet announced whether he will run, however the 71-year-old is widely anticipated to secure a fifth term and remain in power until at least 2030. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an online statement urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin, saying “Putin views this election as a referendum on approval of his actions. A referendum on approval of the war. Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood.”
A driver was killed and grain infrastructure damaged by a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian grain infrastructure near the Danube River, the governor of Odesa region said on Thursday. Ukraine’s air force said 18 Shaheds were launched at the southern Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions in western Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the rest of the EU by threatening to block Ukraine membership talks unless it releases withheld funds to Hungary, MEPs have said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the EU,” said Pedro Marques, vice-president of the Socialist and Democratic group that represents 142 MEPs. “It is a wake-up call for the leaders that we cannot continue allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by some authoritarian leader,” he added.
Ukraine aims to bypass a border blockade by truck drivers in Poland by bringing in lorries on train platforms, an official from the national railways company said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday that cold weather had pushed power usage 2.7% above forecast levels, causing a deficit in the power system. It said the deficit was being filled by imports from Poland, Slovakia and Romania.
On Wednesday Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine. The vote increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.
Before the vote, President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in position to attack Nato allies and could draw US troops into a war. “If [Russian President] Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin would attack a Nato ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said. “We can’t let Putin win,” he said. Russia’s ambassador to the US has described Biden’s words as “unacceptable”.
Thank you for reading today, we will shortly be closing this live blog.
Reuters reports that the US has also imposed cyber-related sanctions on Andrey Korinets and Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko, the two men who were named by the UK’s foreign office earlier today as being involved in targeted cyber-attacks against prominent figures in British politics. Andrey Korinets is also known as Alexey Doguzhiev.
