Key events
Summary of the day so far …
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, will be the opening speaker on Friday at the three-day Munich security conference as the west faces urgent calls to speed up ammunition production and supplies to Kyiv in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive. The conference is expected to be attended by more than 100 world leaders, and diplomats, including the US vice-president Kamala Harris, and the event will be seen as a key test of the west’s resolve to fight out a grinding, prolonged, expensive war.
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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.”
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Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that the energy grid is working without consumption restrictions today across all of Ukraine, with the exception of Odesa, where “due to damaged infrastructure there are still restrictions” and “power outage schedules are applied.”
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Finland’s parliament will vote on 28 February to approve the necessary legislation that will allow the country to eventually become a member of Nato, Reuters reports the Finnish parliament’s head of foreign affairs committee said on Friday.
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Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said that the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. Zakharova said “[The US] supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence, simply participate directly in the planning of military operations, train Ukrainian armed formations. Now 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.”
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Nuland had told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington the US considers that 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.
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Facebook allowed exiled Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor with ties to the Kremlin to run ads calling for protests and uprisings against the pro-western government, even though he and his political party were on US sanctions lists.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly.
Ahead of the Munich security conference, Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has reiterated Kyiv’s position that Russia must withdraw from Ukraine as a pre-condition for peace talks.
Reuters reports Podolyak tweeted “For decriminalization of global politics and real global security, the war must end with Ukraine’s victory. Negotiations can begin when Russia withdraws its troops from the territory of Ukraine. Other options only give Russia time to regroup forces and resume hostilities at any moment.”
Finland’s parliament will vote on 28 February to approve the necessary legislation that will allow the country to eventually become a member of Nato, Reuters reports the Finnish parliament’s head of foreign affairs committee said on Friday.
Turkey and Hungary are yet to approve the bids by Sweden and Finland to join the alliance.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said that the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. [See 8.43 GMT]
Tass reports that in her weekly press briefing, Zakharova said:
Once again, we have to state the involvement of the US in the conflict in Ukraine. They supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence, simply participate directly in the planning of military operations, train Ukrainian armed formations.
Now 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. Like this, direct strikes. This is what we warned about before, and what we were because of forced to launch a special military operation. Now they, US officials, are talking about it openly.
Nuland had said that the US supported Ukraine striking at targets in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in a move which is not widely recognised by the international community.
Zakharova said “Crimea is reliably protected”, according to the Tass report.
Ukrainian official: Negotiations to extend Black Sea grain export deal will begin next week
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.
“Negotiations on extending the grain corridor will begin in a week and then we will understand the positions of all parties,” Ukrainian deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov said during a grain conference in Kyiv organised by the ProAgro agriculture consultancy.
“I think common sense will prevail and the corridor will be extended,” he said.
Reuters reports he said that pressure was being exerted on Russia not only to extend the corridor but also to improve the way it works. “We see that the enemy is starting to put forward new conditions. We understand that it will be difficult – as it was in November,” Vaskov said.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last July allowed grain to be exported from three Ukrainian ports.
The agreement was extended by a further 120 days in November and is up for renewal again in March, but Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal and has asked for sanctions affecting its agricultural exports to be lifted.
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports from Munich:
The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, will be the opening speaker on Friday at the three-day Munich security conference as the west faces urgent calls to speed up ammunition production and supplies to Kyiv in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive.
The conference is expected to be attended by more than 100 world leaders, and diplomats, including the US vice-president Kamala Harris, and the event will be seen as a key test of the west’s resolve to fight out a grinding, prolonged, expensive war. Few are expected to hold out hope of early peace negotiations.
The MSC has had a tradition going back decades of inviting senior leaders from states hostile, or ambivalent, towards the west, but this year has taken the unusual decision to exclude any representatives from Iran or Russia. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has responded to his exclusion by setting a Moscow foreign policy goal of ending the diplomatic monopoly of the west.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, however, will be speaking at the conference and his speech will be watched closely to see how far he is willing to go both in distancing himself from Russia’s invasion and in seeking out a post-Covid new trading relationship with the west. He is expected to meet the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who is likely to urge him to do more to criticise the invasion of Ukrainian sovereign territory. A planned trip by Blinken to Beijing was cancelled over the Chinese spy balloon controversy.
Read more here: Zelenskiy to open Munich summit amid fears of new Russian offensive
In Russia, Tass is reporting some reaction to those comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. She said the US supported Ukrainian strikes on Crimea as legitimate military targets, and that Crimea should be demilitarised at least as part of any solution to the war. [See 8.43 GMT]
Tass quotes Dmitry Novikov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs saying:
Each such statement serves as a pretext for escalation not only in Ukraine, but also around it. An increasing number of states are forced to determine their position in relation to what is actually happening in the centre of Europe. Nevertheless, the more provocative statements are heard, and Nuland’s statement is pure provocation, the further we are from resolving the conflict.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that the energy grid is working without consumption restrictions today across all of Ukraine, with the exception of Odesa, where “due to damaged infrastructure there are still restrictions” and “power outage schedules are applied.”
The United States considers that 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, under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.
“No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarised,” Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Asked about the dangers of escalation in the Ukraine war, Reuters reports Nuland said Russia had a host of military installations crucial for the conflict. “Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them and we are supporting that,” Nuland said.
Reuters has a quick snap that a Ukrainian official has said negotiations on extending the Black Sea corridor grain export deal will begin next week.
More details soon …
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports on Telegram that two people were killed in the Beryslav district of Kherson in the last 24 hours. Citing Volodymyr Litvinov, head of the Beryslav district administration, it reported:
During the day, the Russian army shelled four communities of the Beryslav district. Residents’ residential buildings and outbuildings were damaged. Two people were killed in the village of Zmiivka, and one was injured in Tyahynka.
Facebook allowed an exiled Moldovan oligarch with ties to the Kremlin to run ads calling for protests and uprisings against the pro-western government, even though he and his political party were on US sanctions lists, Associated Press reports.
The ads featuring exiled opposition politician Ilan Shor were ultimately removed by Facebook but not before they were seen millions of times in Moldova.
Seeking to exploit anger over inflation and rising fuel prices, the paid posts from Shor’s political party targeted the government of pro-western president, Maia Sandu, who earlier this week detailed what she said was a Russian plot to topple her government using external saboteurs.
“Destabilisation attempts are a reality and for our institutions, they represent a real challenge,” Sandu said Thursday as she swore in a new government led by pro-western prime minister, Dorin Recean, her former defence and security adviser.
The ads reveal how Russia and its allies have exploited lapses by social media platforms – like Facebook, many of them operated by US companies – to spread propaganda and disinformation that weaponises economic and social insecurity in an attempt to undermine governments in eastern Europe.
Moldova borders Ukraine, and the pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria is sandwiched between the two.
China’s President Xi Jinping will deliver a peace speech on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Italy’s foreign minister said on Friday, citing top diplomat Wang Yi.
Wang Yi “told me that Xi will make a peace speech on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine” on 24 February, Reuters reports minister Antonio Tajani told Italian radio RAI, the day after he met the top Chinese diplomat in Rome.
The UK Ministry of Defence says that as many as 60,000 Russian forces may have been killed just under a year of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and that the casualty rate “has significantly increased since September 2022 when ‘partial mobilisation’ was imposed”.
Convict recruits used by Wagner may have has a casualty rate of one in every two men.
Wagner chief blames ‘bureaucracy’ for slowing military gains
The head of Russia’s mercenary outfit Wagner said on Thursday it could take months to capture the embattled Ukraine city of Bakhmut and slammed Moscow’s “monstrous bureaucracy” for slowing military gains.
Russia has been trying to encircle and capture the battered industrial city ahead of 24 February, the first anniversary of what it terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“I think it’s [going to be in] March or in April,” Wagner head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in one of several messages posted online.
“To take Bakhmut you have to cut all supply routes. It’s a significant task,” he said, adding: “Progress is not going as fast as we would like.
“Bakhmut would have been taken before the New Year, if not for our monstrous military bureaucracy.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in his nightly video address on Thursday that his priority at the moment is to hold off Russian attacks and get ready for an eventual Ukrainian counter-offensive.
“Holding the situation at the front and preparing for any enemy steps of escalation – that is the priority for the near future,” he said.
Nato alliance officials this week discussed the need for more military hardware for Kyiv, and Britain and Poland agreed after their leaders met on Thursday that support should be stepped up.
US officials have advised Ukraine to hold off with any counter-offensive until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training has been provided.
Last year’s gathering took place days before the war began. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders, western leaders in Munich urged President Vladimir Putin not to invade and warned of dire consequences if he did.
This year, leaders will grapple with the consequences of Putin’s decision to ignore their pleas and unleash the most devastating war in Europe since the second world war that has killed countless thousands and forced millions to flee.
Russian leaders will be notable by their absence at the conference, which runs until Sunday, but senior Ukrainian officials are expected to address it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address his priority was to hold off Russian attacks and get ready for an eventual Ukrainian counter-offensive.
“Holding the situation at the front and preparing for any enemy steps of escalation – that is the priority for the near future,” he said.
Nato alliance officials this week discussed the need for more military hardware for Kyiv, and Britain and Poland agreed after their leaders met on Thursday that support should be stepped up.
US officials have advised Ukraine to hold off with any counter-offensive until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training has been provided.
The Ukraine military’s general staff, in a Thursday evening report, said Russia had also shelled more than two dozen eastern and southern settlements.
There was no word from Russia on the missile strikes or shelling, and Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
World leaders meet in Munich for security conference
Senior politicians and military leaders from around the world are meeting today in Germany, with Ukrainian officials expected to address the security conference.
Bolstered by tens of thousands of reservists, Russia has intensified ground attacks across southern and eastern Ukraine, and, as the first anniversary of its 24 February invasion nears, a major new Russian offensive appears to be taking shape.
Russia rained missiles across Ukraine on Thursday and struck its largest oil refinery. Of at least 36 missiles that Russia fired about 16 were shot down, the air force said, a lower rate than normal.
Ukraine said the barrage included missiles that its air defences cannot shoot down, which will only add urgency to its appeals for more western military support.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and US vice-president Kamala Harris are among many top officials attending the Munich Security Conference.
Summary and welcome
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.
Senior politicians and military leaders from around the world will meet today in Germany for the Munich Security Conference, with Ukrainian officials expected to address gathering.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and US vice-president Kamala Harris are among many top officials attending the meeting.
In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:
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Russia fired Grad rockets and barrel artillery at a residential district in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Thursday, killing three men and two women and wounding nine more, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said. Blurred images of the victims were shared on Telegram by the office of the prosecutor, who said the attack was being investigated as a war crime. “Criminal proceedings have been initiated.”
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Russia launched a total of 36 air- and sea-based cruise missiles, guided air-to-surface missiles and anti-ship missiles at Ukraine overnight into Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least 16 missiles were shot down by Ukrainian forces, the air force said. Among them, air defences in the south downed eight Kalibr missiles fired from a ship in the Black Sea, the officials said.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ruled out giving up any Ukrainian territory in a potential peace deal with Russia. In an interview with the BBC, Ukraine’s leader said conceding land would mean Russia could “keep coming back”. Zelenskiy said a predicted spring offensive had already begun but he believed his country’s forces could keep resisting Russia’s advance until they were able to launch a counter-offensive.
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Bakhmut will fall within a couple of months, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has predicted. In an interview with a pro-war military blogger, Yevgeny Prigozhin forecast Bakhmut would be seized in March or April, depending on how many soldiers Ukraine commits to its defence and how well his own troops are supplied.
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Russia’s overnight bombardment did not have a major impact on power, Ukraine’s energy minister said. German Galushchenko said Ukraine was meeting consumer demand for the fifth successive day. The national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, said it saw no need to introduce emergency power outages to conserve supplies.
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Critical infrastructure was damaged in Russian strikes on the Lviv region in Ukraine’s west, the regional state administration’s head, Maksym Kozytskyi, reported on Telegram, adding there were no casualties.
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Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had returned 101 prisoners of war to Russia following talks, state-run media reported. Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said 100 troops and one civilian had been returned to Ukraine. Nearly all had been defending the southern city of Mariupol before it fell to Russian forces, he said.
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Russia has “definitely changed tactics” by using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons to fool Ukraine’s air defences, according to a senior Ukrainian official. The goal of the decoy missiles was to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by offering too many targets, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Associated Press.
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Russian sortie rates have increased over the past week following several weeks of quieter activity, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported. Air activity is “now roughly in line with the average daily rate seen since summer 2022”, its latest intelligence update reads.
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Russia “continues to introduce large numbers of troops” on to the battlefield in Ukraine, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said. Those troops were “ill-equipped and ill-trained” and, as a result, Russian forces were “incurring a lot of casualties and we expect that that will continue”, he told reporters in Estonia.
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Neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to achieve their military aims, according to Gen Mark Milley, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff. In an interview with the Financial Times, Milley said he believed the war would end at the negotiating table. The Pentagon was re-examining its weapons stockpiles and may need to boost military spending after seeing how quickly ammunition has been used during the war in Ukraine, he added.
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Belarus will fight alongside ally Russia if another country launches an attack against it, President Alexander Lukashenko has said, adding that he planned to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Friday.
