Closing summary
The images of EU member state Hungary’s prime minister shaking hands with Vladimir Putin were “very, very unpleasant” and defied logic given Budapest’s past history with Moscow, the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, said.
Russian attacks overnight and on Wednesday killed at least seven civilians in Ukraine and damaged the power grid in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.
The Russian president warned Washington’s decision to supply the long-range army tactical missile systems, whose use Kyiv confirmed on Tuesday, “just prolongs the agony” for Ukraine, saying the US is wading deeper into the conflict.
The lower house of the Russian parliament has passed the second and third readings of a bill that revokes Russia’s ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Both were passed unanimously by 415 votes to zero. Ukraine’s foreign ministry later condemned the steps taken, and urged the international community to respond to Moscow’s “provocations”.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in North Korea on Wednesday, Russian news agencies said, with a Kremlin spokesperson telling the Tass news agency that the two-day visit was expected to lay the groundwork for a future trip to the country by Putin.
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Russian state television has played footage of crowds greeting the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in the pouring rain in Pyongyang, alongside a welcoming party waving pompoms (see earlier post at 13.05).
Shortly after arriving in Pyongyang, Lavrov said his visit was an opportunity to discuss implementing the agreements that Putin and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had signed when they met at Russia’s Vostochny cosmodrome in September.
Lavrov hailed Putin’s meeting with Kim as “historic,” saying their talks demonstrated the countries’ “deep interest in the development of comprehensive cooperation”, the Associated Press reports.
He said Russia highly appreciated North Korea’s “principled, unequivocal support for Russia’s actions” in Ukraine.
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A Norwegian navy ship shadowed a Chinese container ship investigated over damage to a gas pipeline in the Gulf of Finland for about 15 hours as it sailed along the western coast of Norway on Monday, vessel tracking data showed.
Reuters reports:
Finnish investigators on Tuesday said they were looking into the Chinese vessel, the NewNew Polar Bear, and a Russian-flagged ship, the Sevmorput, as well as other vessels, present in the area when a Baltic Sea pipeline was damaged on 8 October.
They said the incident was due to “outside activity” and could have been deliberate.
The NewNew Polar Bear is a container ship travelling between Europe and China via the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic.
On Monday, it left the Baltic Sea and entered the North Sea to head north along the Norwegian coast.
A Norwegian coast guard patrol vessel, the KV Sortland, shadowed the NewNew Polar Bear from Monday 0400 GMT off Norway’s southern tip, until around 1915 GMT, when the vessel was 70 km (43 miles) northwest of Bergen, Marine Traffic data showed.
The area covered broadly coincides with the area where most of Norway’s exporting gas pipelines are located, as well as some of its key oil and gas platforms.
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Estonia’s PM dismayed by Orban’s handshake with ‘criminal’ Putin
The images of EU member state Hungary’s prime minister shaking hands with Vladimir Putin were “very, very unpleasant” and defied logic given Budapest’s past history with Moscow, Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has said.
Hungary cultivates closer ties with Russia than other EU states, and is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open EU accession talks with Ukraine, which would require the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 members.
Viktor Orbán and Putin held talks in China on Tuesday, with the Hungarian prime minister telling the Russian president he had never wanted to oppose Moscow and is trying to salvage bilateral contacts.
“It was very, very unpleasant to see that,” Kallas, one of Ukraine’s staunchest defenders, told Reuters in an interview in Paris.
“How can you shake a criminal’s hand, who has waged the war of aggression, especially coming from a country that has a history like Hungary has?”
“It is not so distant past what happened in Hungary, what the Russians did there,” Kallas said.
The 1956 Hungarian Uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks and troops; at least 2,600 Hungarians and 600 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.
After holding talks with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, Kallas said Ukraine’s allies should not get distracted by other conflicts and redouble their efforts to show they are in it for the long haul.
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Joe Biden said he would ask Congress this week for “unprecedented” aid for Israel, which is expected to be part of a $100bn package that includes Ukraine support.
A source told AFP that Biden would propose a joint $100bn package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border.
The package is intended to bypass congressional chaos and bring Democrats, who have sought additional aid for Kyiv for weeks, together with Republicans, who want funds to tighten controls on the southern border.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he discussed figuring out ways to strengthen his country’s air defence and naval capabilities during a phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.
I had a call with @EmmanuelMacron.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 18, 2023
Ukraine highly values France’s military aid. President Macron and I focused on the next steps to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense, long-range, and naval capabilities.
We also discussed the Black Sea grain corridor and ways to protect it, as…
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Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned steps by Russia to revoke ratification of the 1996 comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (see earlier post at 11.30), and urged the international community to respond to Moscow’s “provocations”.
It said that Russia had “already provoked a dangerous imbalance in the global architecture of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation” by suspending participation in the new Start treaty and with the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
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Russian attacks overnight and on Wednesday killed at least seven civilians in Ukraine and damaged the power grid in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said (the reported death toll has increased by two since the earlier post at 11.43).
Four civilians were killed in a morning missile strike on a residential building in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, and a 31-year-old woman was killed in an attack on the village of Obukhivka in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, they said.
A man and a woman were also killed in an overnight attack on the southern region of Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
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The German government has proposed steps to speed up the integration of tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees into its labour market, Reuters reports.
The government is hoping to enlist the support of companies, employment agencies and associations for a voluntary commitment, and appointed a special representative from the federal employment agency, Daniel Terzenbach, to liaise with them.
According to the federal employment agency, the employment rate of Ukrainians in Germany is 19%.
“But this is far from enough,” the labour minister, Hubertus Heil, told a press conference.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, more than one million people from Ukraine have sought protection in Germany.
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US decision to supply Atacms missiles to Kyiv ‘just prolongs the agony’ for Ukraine, warns Putin
Vladimir Putin has warned Washington’s decision to supply the long-range army tactical missile systems (Atacms), whose use Kyiv confirmed on Tuesday, “just prolongs the agony” for Ukraine, saying the US is wading deeper into the conflict.
The Russian president, who was speaking earlier to journalists during a visit to China, was quoted by Reuters as saying:
Firstly, this of course causes harm and creates an additional threat. Secondly, we will of course be able to repel these attacks. War is war.
But most importantly, it fundamentally lacks the capacity to change the situation on the line of contact at all … This is another mistake by the United States …
Putin added:
A mistake of a larger scale, as yet invisible but still of great importance, is that the United States is becoming more and more personally drawn into this conflict.
And let no one say that they have nothing to do with this. We believe they do.
Ukraine had repeatedly asked Washington for the long-range missiles to help it attack and disrupt supply lines, airbases and rail networks in Russian-occupied territory.
Several US media outlets reported that Ukraine had used the Atacms missiles in an overnight attack on Tuesday on two airbases in Russian-held territory.
Without mentioning the US missiles, Ukrainian special forces said they had carried out an overnight operation named “Dragonfly” striking a military airfield in Berdiansk and another one in the Luhansk region and resulting in “significant losses” on the Russian side.
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Russia’s central bank halted the circulation of a new 1,000 ruble note Wednesday after Orthodox priests complained that the image of a church dome lacked a cross, even though it does not have one in real life.
According to AFP, in a rare U-turn, the central bank changed it’s decision. It said:
Currently a decision was taken to stop the production of the notes.
It did not enter widespread circulation.
The bank had presented new designs of the 1,000 and 5,000 ruble notes earlier this week.
One of them featured two religious sites in the majority-Muslim Tatarstan republic: a minaret with an Islamic crescent moon and an Orthodox church with a dome that did not have a cross on it. Both are inside the Kazan Kremlin, in Tatarstan’s capital.
Priest Pavel Ostrovsky said on Telegram that the bill was either the result of “the stupidity of the designers” or a “deliberate provocation” by the “followers of Islam” in Tatarstan.
He added that “there was no difference what the building looks like in real life” as most Russians do not know its history. After the bank removed the note, the church welcomed the decision as “very correct.”
Its spokesperson Vladimir Legoyda said the Orthodox cross “which personifies the religious and cultural identity of the majority of our citizens, is a natural part of the state symbols of our country.”
Here are some of the latest images from the wires, showing the aftermath of a Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
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Finland has had increased online espionage attempts from Russia since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, security services have said.
Supo, the Finnish security and intelligence service, said the country faced various threats from Russia, including cyberattacks and disinformation.
Last week, Supo said Russia was one of the most active perpetrators of intelligence operations targeting Finland, amid increased tensions after the country’s accession to Nato and the war in Ukraine.
“Russia’s espionage attempts towards us have increased during the war, mainly in the cybersphere,” said Suvi Alvari, a senior analyst for Supo.
You can read the full story, by the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, Miranda Bryant, here:
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said the Kremlin’s forces are trying to push forward in some parts of eastern Ukraine.
However, the areas are well defended and it is “highly unlikely” the Russian troops will accomplish their goal of a major breakthrough, it said in its latest intelligence update posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The MoD wrote:
There has been a significant increase in Russian offensive activity on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis in the last two weeks.
Russian shelling has intensified and elements of the Russian 6th and 25th Combined Arms Armies (CAA) and the 1st Guards Tank Army have conducted attacks, but with limited success.
It is highly likely that this activity is part of an ongoing Russian offensive being conducted on multiple axes in eastern Ukraine.
The objective of Russian Ground Forces (RGF) on the Kupiansk-Lyman axis is probably to advance west to the Oskil River to create a buffer zone around Luhansk oblast.
RGF have built up combat capacity in the Kupiansk-Lyman direction in recent months. However, Ukrainian forces retain a significant defensive presence on this axis and it is highly unlikely RGF will achieve a major operational breakthrough.
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Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in North Korea on Wednesday, Russian news agencies said, with a Kremlin spokesperson telling the Tass news agency the two-day visit is expected to lay the groundwork for a future trip to the country by Vladimir Putin.
Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang from Beijing (see earlier post at 10.48), where Putin was a guest of honour at a summit celebrating Xi’s vast Belt and Road investments project.
Last month, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, travelled to Russia aboard his specially built bullet-proof train for his own face-to-face meeting with Putin.
During his first trip outside North Korea since the Covid-19 pandemic, Kim declared bilateral ties with Moscow his country’s “number one priority”
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Moscow has launched a drive to recruit Serbs to fight for the Russian army in Ukraine, as the Kremlin seeks to replenish its forces, depleted by 18 months of fighting, writes my colleague Pjotr Sauer.
Based on accounts provided by two Serbian fighters who travelled to Russia, as well as a leaked list of recruited Serbs, the Guardian found that Russian officials appear to have made plans to recruit hundreds of Serbian nationals to bolster the army.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has introduced a series of laws to lure foreign citizens to join its ranks. Vladimir Putin, at a security meeting shortly after his troops invaded Ukraine, said the Kremlin should help people from overseas who planned to fight on Russia’s side.
Since then, the Russian leader has signed an order lowering the minimum length of contract military service for foreigners from five years to one, and offered a fast-track recruitment drive to non-Russian combatants.
Serbia, an EU accession candidate since 2012, has struggled to balance historically close ties with Russia against aspirations for integration with Europe, and tensions have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, with many Serbs sympathetic to Russia.
You can read the full story here:
Russian forces are likely to escalate their assault on the frontline town of Avdiivka and have been shelling nearby Ukrainian positions, a local official has said.
Ukraine has in recent weeks reported intense Russian shelling of Avdiivka, which lies just north of the Moscow-controlled city of Donetsk that was seized by separatist forces in 2014.
“I can say for sure that this is the largest offensive that has ever taken place in Avdiivka since the war began in 2014,” the head of the town’s administration Vitaliy Barabash said.
He said that while attacks on the town itself had quietened down, there were still “round the clock” skirmishes and shelling of Ukrainian positions, AFP reports.
“Most likely, in the next few days we expect this escalation to continue,” he warned.
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Vladimir Putin has told reporters that he had informed Xi Jinping on “the situation that is forming on the Ukrainian track, in quite a detailed way”, according to AFP.
Putin said the pair first met with their delegations, before holding “eye to eye” talks alone.
He said Xi had “suggested that we be alone, and we spoke eye to eye. That’s how it was, over a cup of tea.”
“We spoke maybe about an hour and a half, maybe two hours.”
Xi noted that he had met with Putin 42 times in the past decade, saying they had “developed a good working relationship and a deep friendship”.
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Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that Russia was reinforcing its western border in anticipation of US-made F-16 fighter aircraft being supplied to Ukraine in 2024, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.
Earlier this month, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said Denmark was working to “expand and deepen” a coalition of countries committed to deliver the fighter jets to Ukraine.
The Netherlands and Denmark have led a push to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s and to later deliver fighter jets to Ukraine to help counter Russia’s air superiority.
At the end of August, Norway also committed to delivering F-16s to Ukraine, while many other countries, including the US, have said they would help train Ukrainian pilots to fly the jets.
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Russian attacks kill at least five civilians in Ukraine, officials say
Russian attacks overnight and on Wednesday killed at least five civilians in Ukraine and damaged the powergrid in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Two civilians were killed in a morning missile strike on a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia (see earlier post at 09.25), and a 31-year-old woman was killed in an attack on the village of Obukhivka in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, they said.
A man and a woman were also killed in an overnight attack on the southern region of Kherson, according to the regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.
Officials in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city, said the local power grid was damaged in a Russian airstrike and that outages were possible. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Updated
Russian parliament passes law to revoke ratification of nuclear test ban treaty
The lower house of the Russian parliament has passed the second and third readings of a bill that revokes Russia’s ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT).
Both were passed unanimously by 415 votes to zero, Reuters reports.
Earlier this month, Putin urged the State Duma to make the change in order to “mirror” the position of the US, which has signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty.
Parliament’s speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said:
We understand our responsibility to our citizens, we are protecting our country. What is happening in the world today is the exclusive fault of the United States.
Russia says it will not resume testing unless Washington does, but arms control experts are concerned it may be inching towards a test that the west would perceive as a Russian nuclear escalation amid the war in Ukraine.
They say a test by either Russia or the US could prompt the other to do the same.
The CTBT bans all nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, although it has never fully entered into force.
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Speaking at a televised news conference in Beijing, Vladimir Putin said that US deliveries of long-range Atacms missiles to Ukraine were a “mistake” that would create additional threats to Russian forces.
The Russian president said, however, that they would not significantly change the situation on the front.
Several US media outlets reported that Ukraine had used Atacms missiles in an overnight attack on Tuesday on two airbases in Russian-held territory.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, later confirmed that Ukraine’s military had used US-provided long-range Atacms missiles for the first time.
Without mentioning the US missiles, Ukrainian special forces said they had carried out an overnight operation named “Dragonfly” striking a military airfield in Berdiansk and another one in the Luhansk region and resulting in “significant losses” on the Russian side.
In the statement, Ukraine said it had successfully destroyed nine Russian military helicopters, an anti-aircraft missile system and an ammunition warehouse.
The Washington Post reported that the Atacms version used by Ukraine to hit the targets was armed with cluster bomblets, rather than a single warhead.
Updated
Vladimir Putin discussed Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East at talks with Xi Jinping on Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported.
Putin said common threats would only strengthen cooperation between China and Russia, and was quoted as saying the two countries plan to sign a coordination plan stretching as far as 2030.
Russian foreign minister arrives in North Korea - reports
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in North Korea for a visit on Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reported, according to Reuters.
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A law to revoke Russia’s ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty passed the second of three required readings in the lower house of parliament on Wednesday.
Of 450 deputies, 415 voted in favour, with none voting against or abstaining, Reuters reports.
Footage was shown on Wednesday of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Beijing accompanied by officers carrying the so-called nuclear briefcase which can be used to order a nuclear strike.
Putin, after a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing, was filmed walking to another meeting surrounded by security and followed by two Russian naval officers in uniform each carrying a briefcase. The camera zooms in on one of the briefcases, Reuters reports.
Russia’s nuclear briefcase is traditionally carried by a naval officer. Known as the “Cheget” (named after Mount Cheget in the Caucasus Mountains), the briefcase is with the president at all times but is rarely filmed.
“There are certain suitcases without which no trip of Putin’s is complete,” the Kremlin correspondents of state news agency RIA said in a post on Telegram under the footage.
In another clip, Putin walks out of a meeting in Beijing with the naval officers again filmed just a few paces from Putin who grins as he walks down some stairs.
Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia kills two, says Zelenskiy
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian missile that slammed into a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia early on Wednesday has killed at least two people and wounded five.
Zelenskiy said eight apartments had been destroyed in the strike on Zaporizhzhia and rescuers were searching for any survivors in the rubble. His office said three people were missing after the attack, Reuters reports.
On Telegram, he said:
Overnight, Russian terrorists attacked Zaporizhzhia with missiles, striking an ordinary five-storey residential building.
The evil state continues to use terror and wage war on civilians. Russian terror must be defeated.
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A Russian strike killed one civilian and wounded three more on Wednesday in Ukraine’s Dnipro region, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
Lysak said on Telegram that six private houses were damaged, according to Reuters.
These claims have not been independently verified.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accepted an invitation from his Vietnamese counterpart to visit Vietnam as the two met on the sidelines of China’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Vietnamese state media reported.
Vietnam’s president, Vo Van Thuong, invited Putin to visit the country “soon” and “Putin happily accepted the invitation”, Vietnam news agency, the state’s official newswire, reported late on Tuesday.
No practical preparation was under way “yet” as there was no date set for the possible visit, one Russian diplomat said, adding that Putin also invited Thuong to Moscow.
The two leaders met on Tuesday, the first day of the forum in Beijing, where representatives from more than 130 countries gathered to hear China’s president, Xi Jinping, explain his vision for the next phase in his signature policy to build global infrastructure and energy networks.
The visit to Beijing was Putin’s second known trip abroad since The Hague-based international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March. Earlier this month, he had visited Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, Reuters reports.
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Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that a strike on a hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians was a shockingly dehumanising crime and said Israel should provide satellite imagery if it was not involved.
Palestinian officials said an Israeli airstrike hit the hospital while Israel blamed the blast at al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital on a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which denied responsibility, Reuters reports.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson told Radio Sputnik:
We qualify such a felonious deed as a crime – as an act of dehumanisation.
Zakharova said there was a clear attempt by some to absolve themselves of responsibility and that it was not enough to simply make comments in the media on such an incident so Israel and the US should provide satellite imagery.
Please be so kind as to provide satellite images, and it would be nice if American partners did it.
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Opening summary
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has confirmed that Kyiv used US-provided long-range army tactical missile systems (Atacms) missiles. “Today, special thanks to the United States,” he said. “Our agreements with President Biden are being implemented. Very accurately – Atacms missiles proved themselves.” This marks the first officially confirmed use in Ukraine of Atacms, which can fly up to 190 miles (305km).
Vladimir Putin has given a speech in Beijing, after being greeted by Xi Jinping on Tuesday. The internationally isolated leader praised the “successes” of “our Chinese friends” ahead of in-depth talks that are expected later on Wednesday. Shortly before Putin starting speaking, a handful of European delegates, including the former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, walked out of the room, according to Reuters.
Welcome to our continuing coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Other developments include:
Ukrainian forces struck airfields in Russian-held territory in eastern and southern Ukraine overnight, destroying helicopters, knocking out an air defence missile launcher and damaging runways, Kyiv’s military said. It said its forces had carried out “well-aimed strikes on enemy airfields” near the eastern city of Luhansk and the southern city of Berdiansk. Atacms are thought to have been used.
A telecommunication cable connecting Sweden and Estonia has been damaged, Sweden’s civil defence minister has said. Carl-Oskar Bohlin said it appeared to have occurred at the same time as a underwater gas pipeline and a telecom cable connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged on 8 October.
The lower house of the Russian parliament has reportedly given preliminary approval to a bill revoking the ratification of a global nuclear test ban treaty.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam in south-eastern Ukraine in June caused $14bn-worth of damage and losses, according to a report by the Ukrainian government and the UN.
Grant Shapps, the UK defence secretary, is due to visit the US on Tuesday for urgent talks over conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Canada is targeting nine individuals and six TV stations in new sanctions against Russian collaborators in Moldova. Those targeted are associated with influential oligarchs, such as Vladimir Plahotniuc and Ilan Mironovich Shor, while the TV stations promote and disseminate Russian disinformation, the Canadian foreign ministry said.
US, South Korean and Japanese officials have met in Jakarta to discuss North Korea’s engagement with Russia, including arms transfers violating UN security council resolutions.
A convoy of British ambulances has arrived in Lviv in western Ukraine and will be delivered to hospitals on the frontline. Five vehicles donated by the charity Medical Life Lines Ukraine are being sent to the southern city of Kherson – which is under intense Russian attack – as well as the towns of Kupiansk and Vorozhba in the wartorn north-east of the country. The group has donated 43 vehicles since last year’s full-scale invasion.
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