Summary
Thank you for joining us for today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
We will be pausing our live reporting overnight and returning in the morning.
In the meantime, you can read our comprehensive summary of the day’s events in our summary below.
- Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, says a new “iron curtain” is descending between Russia and the west, and that Moscow would not trust Washington and Brussels “from now on”. The process “has begun”, Lavrov said after talks with his counterpart from Belarus. “As far as an iron curtain is concerned, essentially it is already descending,” he added.
- Ukrainian forces say they have pushed Russian forces from Snake Island, a strategic Black Sea outpost off the southern coast. Russia portrayed the pullout from the island as a “goodwill gesture”. Ukraine’s military said the Russians fled the island in two speedboats following a barrage of Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes.
- The situation in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk is “extremely difficult” as Russian forces’ continuous shelling makes it impossible for civilians to evacuate, officials say. “There is a lot of shelling and from multiple directions. The Russian army is approaching from different directions towards Lysychansk,” Luhansk regional governor, Serhiy Haidai said, adding that Russian forces remain on city outskirts where there is currently no street fighting.
- Russia is using inaccurate missiles from old Soviet stocks for more than 50% of its strikes in Ukraine, leading to significant loss of civilian life, a brigadier general in Ukraine’s armed forces said. The rate of Russian strikes in Ukraine has more than doubled in the last two weeks, Brigadier Gen Oleksii Hromov said in a news conference.
- A cargo ship left the Russian-occupied Ukrainian port of Berdiansk for the first time since the city was seized by Moscow’s troops, according to a pro-Russia official. Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the pro-Russia administration, was cited by Russian state media as saying the first cargo ship to leave Berdiansk was carrying 7,000 tonnes of grain to “friendly countries”, without saying what cargo the ship was carrying.
- Joe Biden declared that the US and Nato allies will stick with Ukraine “as long as it takes” as the military alliance promised hundreds of thousands more troops to defend eastern Europe. The US president also announced another $800m of military aid to Kyiv – but questions remained over how much detail there was behind the plan to create a 300,000-strong force to deter any Russian attack.
- Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Sweden and Finland are expected to formally sign the Nato accession protocol on Tuesday. Following the Nato summit in Madrid, Stoltenberg said leaders had decided to support Kyiv “to make sure Ukraine prevails as an independent sovereign state in Europe”.
- Turkey’s president has warned that Ankara could still block Finland and Sweden’s accession to Nato if the two countries fail to fully meet his expectations. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that if the two Nordic countries renege on their promises, including to extradite terror suspects with links to outlawed Kurdish groups, Turkey’s parliament could refuse to ratify the deal reached on Tuesday.
- Estonian and Latvian defence ministers signed a letter of intent on Thursday at the Nato summit in Madrid for joint procurement of medium-range anti-aircraft systems.“The aggression of Russia in Ukraine clearly shows the need for air defence systems,” Latvian defence minister Artis Pabriks said in a statement.
- French president, Emmanuel Macron, said France will deliver six CAESAR howitzers and a “significant number” of armoured vehicles to Ukraine. Macron added that the Nato allies meeting in Madrid “unanimously decided” to boost humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine as it attempts to fight of Russian forces.
- The UK’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said it is a “realistic” ambition to push Russian forces out of Ukraine entirely. Asked whether the British government believed Russia could be pushed out of all of Ukraine within a foreseeable timeframe, Truss replied: “It is realistic, and that is why we are supplying the extra lethal aid we’re supplying.”
- Russia’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the British ambassador in Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, to protest against Boris Johnson’s “offensive” remarks regarding Russia and Vladimir Putin. A strong protest was expressed to the ambassador over “the frankly boorish statements of the British leadership regarding Russia, its leader and official representatives of the authorities, as well as the Russian people”, it said in a statement.
- Norway’s foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, has said her nation is not blocking Russian access to Svalbard. On Wednesday, Russia accused Norway of disrupting the delivery of critical supplies and threatened retaliation. Huitfeldt said Norway was not blocking Russian access to the Arctic archipelago, only applying international sanctions, and that Russia had other means to reach its settlements.
- The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, arrived in Moscow where he will urge Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire and seek ways to allow the export of grain from Ukraine. Widodo also met with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Wednesday during a visit he described as a “manifestation of the Indonesian people’s concern for the situation in Ukraine”.
Updated
Satellite images shows smoke rising from Snake Island, off the coast of Ukraine, on Thursday.
Ukrainian forces say they pushed Russian forces from the strategic Black Sea island.
