Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said he does not think it is the right approach “for now” to send UK fighter jets to Ukraine. He said it was “not a solid decision”, adding: “I’ve learned two things: never rule anything in and never rule anything out.” Meanwhile, Downing Street has continued to rule out providing Kyiv with British jets, saying it was not practical given the complexity of the jets.
The UK’s statements came as its former prime minister Boris Johnson called on western leaders to “give the Ukrainians the tools to finish the job”, including heavy tanks and planes. Addressing the Atlantic Council in Washington, Johnson urged the west to “stop focusing on Putin and focus entirely on Ukraine”.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said he had a “frank and productive” conversation with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, regarding his country’s “urgent operational needs for self-defence”.
Spain will initially send between four and six Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, El País is reporting. Italy is to join forces with France in supplying air defences to Ukraine, the FT reported. In an interview, Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said a package of military aid now being prepared by Giorgia Meloni’s government would probably include “weapons of defence against Russian missile attack”. “Italy is expected to provide the missile launchers, while France would supply the rockets,” the paper reports.
Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has spoken out against his country delivering fighter jets to Ukraine. Habeck, an early supporter of his government supporting Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks, said such a move would probably be a step too far for western allies weighing up support for Kyiv’s cause against fears of being drawn into an outright war.
The US is readying more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine that is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons, two US officials briefed on the matter told Reuters. The Kremlin said longer-range rockets reportedly included in the upcoming package of military aid would escalate the conflict but not change its course.
Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister have urged Oslo to increase its support for Ukraine, saying the government must do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war. The Scandinavian country’s oil and gas revenues have soared to record levels over the past 12 months as energy prices have tripled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Russia and China’s growing relationship poses a threat not only to Asia but also to Europe. In a speech to Keio University in Tokyo, the Nato chief underlined the importance of stronger cooperation and more “friends” for Nato in the Indo-Pacific region, adding that the war in Ukraine had demonstrated “how security is interconnected”.
Pro-Russia forces have claimed in Russian media that the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut is nearly encircled. Tass quoted Col Vitaly Kiselev, on behalf of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, saying: “Bakhmut has practically been ‘embraced’ from three sides, an intensive knocking out of the enemy is under way. They are trying, and I am sure that they will succeed … to go to the Chasiv Yar area, from where intensive shelling is going on back to Soledar, Bakhmut.”
The Kinburn peninsula, a strip of land that protrudes from the southern side of Kherson oblast on the left bank of the Dnieper River, is in the “grey zone”, with neither Ukrainian or Russian military fully in control of the territory, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne.
The UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence update says that recent days have seen “some of the most intense shelling of the conflict” along the Dnieper River. “This has included continued shelling of Kherson city,” the ministry notes, adding that outside the Donbas, Kherson is the city most consistently shelled in the conflict.
The woman leading the Kyiv tax authority has been accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud after a raid on one of her four homes. Ukraine’s state bureau of investigation (SBI) said in a statement that the acting head of the inspectorate, who has not been named, had abused her “power and official position” along with other members of the authority.
The development came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s campaign against state corruption in Ukraine continues before a meeting on Friday in Kyiv with senior EU officials to discuss potential accession to the bloc. The crackdown continued on Wednesday with a raid on the house of Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, and the former interior minister Arsen Avakov.
Russia has claimed it wants to preserve the New Start treaty, describing the treaty as “very important”. The US accused Moscow on Tuesday of violating the treaty – the last remaining nuclear treaty between the two countries – which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy. Washington has been keen to preserve the treaty but ties with Moscow are the worst in decades over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he would be willing to consider serving as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine if asked by both warring countries and the US. Netanyahu said he was asked to be a mediator shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year but he declined because he was Israel’s opposition leader at the time, not the prime minister.
The prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court after it found him guilty of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army. Investigators opened a case against Nevzorov last year for posts on social media in which he accused Russia’s armed forces of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.
Belarus’s armed forces are now in autonomous control of Russian-supplied, nuclear-capable Iskander mobile guided missile systems after completing training in Russia as well as exercises in Belarus, its defence ministry has said. The commander of Belarusian rocket and artillery forces, Ruslan Chekhov, praised the missiles for their “simplicity of use, reliability, manoeuvrability and firepower”.
Latvia will not send its athletes to the 2024 Paris Olympics if competitors from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part while the invasion of Ukraine is ongoing, a spokesperson for the country’s Olympic committee said. Ukraine has threatened to boycott the 2024 Games if athletes from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part. Neither Lithuania’s nor Estonia’s national Olympic committees are considering boycotts, their chairs said on Tuesday.
Updated
Norway urged to step up Ukraine support after profiting from war
Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister have urged Oslo to increase its support for Ukraine, saying the government must do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war.
In a letter published in the VG tabloid, signatories including the former foreign minister Knut Vollebæk, the anthropologist Erika Fatland and Henrik Urdal of the Oslo Peace Research Institute said Norway was the only country in Europe to be profiting from the war.
The wealthy Scandinavian country’s oil and gas revenues have soared to record levels over the past 12 months as energy prices tripled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.
Compared with original estimates, Oslo’s state budget projected an additional €180bn (£160bn) in oil and gas income for 2022 and 2023, the signatories wrote, adding that the government’s public pledges of support for Ukraine over the same period amounted to just €1.27bn.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has dismissed any suggestion that the country is profiteering from the war. “It’s a notion I flatly refuse,” Støre told AFP on Tuesday, adding that a major “multi-year support package” would be announced in the coming days.
The letter acknowledged that more humanitarian and military support would be coming and said the value of arms supplies in particular was hard to calculate, but said:
Either way, Norway can afford to contribute more to Ukraine than we are doing. Far more.
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