Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said his country will be handing over four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in the coming days. Speaking at a news conference, Duda said Warsaw would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes in the coming days and that “the rest are being prepared, serviced”. His announcement makes Poland the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine, marking a significant upward step in military backing for Kyiv
Poland’s decision to give Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets is a “sovereign decision” that will not prompt President Joe Biden to supply Kyiv with American F-16 aircraft, the White House has said. Biden has previously said the US will not provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine has sought in its fight against Russia. White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday that President Duda’s announcement “doesn’t change our calculus with respect to F-16s”.
Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published on Thursday. The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Mariupol that killed hundreds of people. Its head said the team was following the evidence and that there were “some aspects which may raise questions” about possible genocide.
The Pentagon has released a video showing the moments before a Russian fighter crashed into a $32m US Reaper drone after spraying it with jet fuel on Tuesday morning over the Black Sea. The declassified footage shows an Su-27 Flanker jet making two exceptionally close passes of the uncrewed drone, spraying fuel in front of it, a harassment tactic that US experts say has not been seen before. The US air force has also released a map of the approximate locations and times of the collision.
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the downed US MQ-9 Reaper drone from the Black Sea will come from the Russian military. “If they deem it necessary to do that in the Black Sea for our interests and for our security, they will deal with that,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage, but US officials have said the debris could be in such deep water that recovery is impossible, and would have no real intelligence value. The US believes Russia has recovered some debris in the Black Sea from the downed US surveillance drone, according to one US official.
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday that operating drone flights near Crimea was provocative and could lead to an escalation, the Russian defence ministry said. Russia, the statement said, “had no interest in such a development but will in future react in due proportion”.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, told state-owned news agency Tass Thursday that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units”.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he and senior Chinese diplomat, Qin Gang, had discussed the “significance of the principle of territorial integrity” during a phone call today. “I underscored the importance of (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s) peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Qin told Kuleba that China “hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Vladimir Putin as soon as next week, and to subsequently hold a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Talks between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, would be a “good thing”, the White House has said. The US “support(s) and have supported” contact, the White House’s spokesperson John Kirby said, but he warned Beijing against taking a “one-sided” view of the conflict.
The UN has called for a 120-day renewal of a deal allowing the safe export of grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports ahead of a deadline later this week. In response to the UN’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric’s remarks, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the deal “is being extended for 60 days”.
Vladimir Putin has told his country’s leading billionaires that Russia is facing a “sanctions war”. In an address to Russia’s business elite, the president urged them to invest in new technology, production facilities and enterprises to help Russia overcome what he said were western attempts to destroy its economy. He also appeared to mock the UK as he said western leaders were asking their citizens to eat turnips.
At least one person has been killed and two people injured in a blast and fire at a building belonging to Russia’s FSB security service in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, according to officials quoted by Russian news agencies. Video footage showed thick black smoke billowing into the air near residential buildings and a shopping centre in Rostov, the capital of a region that adjoins parts of eastern Ukraine where battles with Russia are raging.
Ukrainian soldiers have downed a Chinese-made drone near the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was launched from Russian-held territory on Friday night, before being shot down from a low altitude by Ukrainian forces in the early hours of Saturday.
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been given a five and a half year suspended jail sentence by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army. Daniil Frolkin, 21, said he shot and killed a male civilian in Andriivka, a village near Kyiv that was occupied by Russian forces shortly after the invasion began.
The former mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, has been detained over a social media post in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Yevgeny Roizman, one of the last opposition figures still in Russia and not behind bars, has denied the charges.
Polish authorities say they have detained nine members of a Russian spy ring who they say were gathering intelligence on weapons supplies to Ukraine and making plans to sabotage the deliveries. Six people have been charged with preparing acts of sabotage and espionage, and charges are being prepared against the other three.
Downing Street has confirmed a call took place earlier today between the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The pair discussed the latest situation on the ground, and Sunak said Britain would continue to work closely with allies to ensure Ukraine had the equipment it needed, according to Downing Street’s read-out of the call.
Sunak updated the Ukrainian leader on the delivery of further UK military aid, adding it was “vital Ukraine had the capabilities to change the battlefield equation as soon as possible”.
