Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
World leaders, military officers and diplomats are gathering in Germany for the Munich security conference to discuss Europe’s security situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, almost a year ago. About 40 heads of state and government, as well as politicians and security experts from almost 100 countries, including the US, Europe and China, are expected to attend the three-day conference.
The west needs to speed up its support for Ukraine as Vladimir Putin will gain a military advantage unless arms deliveries arrive soon, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in a video address to world leaders at the Munich conference. “We need to hurry up. We need speed – speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery … speed of decisions to limit Russian potential,” the Ukrainian president said.
Zelenskiy warned a possible consequence of delaying western weapons to Ukraine could be a Russian invasion of Moldova. He also said neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive and claimed polls showed 80% of the country did not wish to join.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, gave Zelenskiy an indirect rebuff, saying caution was better than hasty decisions and unity was better than going it alone. Scholz said Germany was the biggest supplier of weapons in continental Europe, and that the region was in uncharted territory and there was no blueprint for confronting a nuclear-armed aggressor, making it vital to avoid an unintended escalation.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Friday urged allies to intensify their military support for Ukraine to help the country carry out a needed counter-offensive against Russia. There can be no peace in Ukraine until Russia is defeated, Macron said at the Munich conference, adding that Russia was doomed to “a defeat in the future”.
Vladimir Putin has been meeting the Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko. The two last met in St Petersburg in December 2022. Russian troops were stationed in Belarus in February 2022 before launching their failed initial attempt to capture Kyiv at the start of Russia’s invasion, and the Belarus and Russian armed forces have been holding joint exercises in Belarus.
The first batch of Leopard-1A5 battle tanks the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are buying for Ukraine will be delivered as soon as possible, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said. He added that the Netherlands was prepared to host a new tribunal to judge Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding that more support was needed for that to happen.
Negotiations will start in a week on extending a UN-backed initiative that has enabled Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia after its invasion, a senior Ukrainian official said on Friday. Yuriy Vaskov said: “I think common sense will prevail and the corridor will be extended.”
The US considers Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, should be demilitarised at a minimum and Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula, the under-secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has said the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by the US under-secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. Zakharova said: “The American warmongers have gone even further: they are inciting the Kyiv regime to further escalate, simply to transfer the war to the territory of our country.”
As many as 60,000 Russian forces may have been killed just under a year of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said. The casualty rate “has significantly increased since September 2022 when “partial mobilisation” was imposed”, the latest British intelligence reads. Convict recruits used by Wagner may have had a casualty rate of one in every two men, it added.
Russia’s defence ministry website has posted an update confirming a new leadership appointment of its military district, state-run media is reporting. Lt Gen Andrey Mordvichev is now head of the central military district, replacing Col Gen Alexandr Lapin, who was appointed chief of staff of Russia’s ground forces last month. Mordvichev’s appointment follows other sweeping changes to Russia’s military leadership.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it has summoned the Italian ambassador, after Moscow said a number of performances by Russian artists in Italy had been cancelled. In a statement, the Russian ministry accused Italian authorities of discriminating against Russian artists, without providing further detail.
Russia’s foreign ministry also said it had summoned the Dutch ambassador over what it called “obsessive attempts” by authorities in the Netherlands to hold it responsible for the downing of flight MH17 in Ukraine in 2014. In a statement, it accused the joint investigation team set up to establish who was responsible of being “politicised”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has appealed for more funds to support Ukraine’s health sector, which has been severely damaged by the war. Ukraine needs more funds to ensure mental health, rehabilitation and community access to health services, the WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said in a briefing from the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.
A British embassy security guard has been jailed for more than 13 years after a judge told him his “treachery” spying for Russia had put his former colleagues at “maximum risk”. David Ballantyne Smith, 58, originally from Paisley, Scotland, copied secret documents he found in unlocked filing cabinets and on desks at the embassy, including a letter to the then prime minister, Boris Johnson.n the war.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine live blog today. Thank you for following along, I’ll be back on Monday.
Here are some of the latest images we have received from Ukraine.
