Putin’s Russia ‘most heinous evil world has witnessed since WWII’, says minister

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said Vladimir Putin’s Russia “is the most heinous evil the world has witnessed since WWII” and that the Russian president and other “Russian perpetrators must face justice for their crimes”.

Posting on X, he cited Forbes Ukraine as reporting that Russia has spent around $167bn (£137bn) on its full-scale war against Ukraine between February 2022 and August 2023.

Kuleba said that with this money, Moscow could have built almost 24,000 kindergartens across Russia, or over 4,500 maternity wards, or about 17,000 schools.

But he said “instead, Russian war criminals have bombed Ukrainian kindergartens, maternity wards, schools, and hospitals, destroying almost 120,000 civilian structures in all, including the latest attack on Nova Poshta terminal in Kharkiv.”

Six people killed in missile attack on Kharkiv postal depot were all workers, says regional governor

The six people killed in the Kharkiv missile attack were all workers at the Nova Poshta depot, located in the village of Korotych on the outskirts of Kharkiv city, the regional governor, Oleg Sinegubov, said.

“The victims, aged between 19 and 42, received shrapnel wounds and blast injuries,” he said, AFP reports.

Of the injured being treated in hospital, seven were in a serious condition, Sinegubov said, adding that “Doctors are fighting for their lives.”

The regional prosecutor’s office later updated the number of injured to 17.

Sergiy Nozhka, who works for Nova Poshta, described the condition of some his colleagues as “mild to moderate severity”, adding that “there are some people in a very serious condition”.

He said that a rocket “flew into the neighbouring depot, but at ours too – the windows and shutters flew out. This is not the first time.”

According to the prosecutor’s office, Russian forces in the Belgorod region north of Kharkiv fired S-300 missiles, two of which hit the warehouse.

“Debris analysis continues at the site in order to establish the exact number of injured and dead,” office spokesperson Dmytro Chubenko told Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne.

Separate Russian attacks on villages near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut killed at least two people on Sunday, officials said.

(via AFP agency)

Over a third of Ukraine’s territory is contaminated with mines and explosive objects, Ukraine says

More than a third of the territory of Ukraine is contaminated with mines and explosive objects due to the war with Russia, the official account of the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine posted on Telegram.

It wrote:

Over the past week, specialists of the support forces command of the armed forces of Ukraine examined and cleared more than 260 hectares of agricultural land and other territories of explosive objects, where 3,530 explosive objects were removed and neutralized.

In total, since the beginning of the large-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, demining groups of units of the support forces command of the armed forces of Ukraine have cleared more than 11,285 thousand hectares of agricultural land of explosive objects, removed and neutralized 135,792 explosive objects.

Zelenskiy grateful to Biden for his ‘strong signal of support’

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is grateful to Joe Biden for his “strong signal of support”, after speaking to the US president shortly before he gave a rare Oval Office address in which he asked Americans to back further military aid to both Ukraine and Israel.

Zelenskiy said he had discussed a “significant support package for our country” in his telephone call with Biden, who said in his speech that he would send an urgent budget request to Congress on Friday to fund support for Kyiv and Israel.

“It’s a smart investment that is going to pay dividends for American security for generations,” Biden said.

Moscow immediately hit back, saying Biden’s comments betrayed a cynical attitude to the war in Ukraine. “They used to call it ‘fighting for freedom and democracy’,” foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Telegram. “Now it turns out it is just calculations. It has always been that way, they just fooled the world using values for which Washington has never really stood.”

“Wars have traditionally been ‘smart investments’ for the United States as they did not take place on the American soil and they do not care about costs borne by others,” Zakharova added.

In other developments:

• Ukraine’s parliament has voted overwhelmingly to advance legislation seen as effectively banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church over its ties to Moscow, despite the church’s insistence that it is fully independent and supportive of Ukraine’s fight against Russian invaders.

• A Russian-American journalist has been detained in Russia on charges of violating its foreign agents law, reportedly due to her coverage of Russia’s military mobilisation for its invasion of Ukraine. Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor with Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty’s (RFE-RL) Tatar-Bashkir service, was detained on Wednesday.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he wants to build a “forward-looking” relationship with Russia as he met with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, state media reported. The veteran envoy’s two-day visit is expected to lay the groundwork for a trip to the country by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was invited by Kim last month at a high-profile summit in Russia’s far east.

• Ukraine claimed to make a small incremental gain of 400 metres to the south-west of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region. Military spokesperson Oleksandr Stupun said the southern advance was still difficult because of Russian minefields and heavily fortified defences.

• Kazakhstan has banned exports to Russia of 106 goods that could be used in the Ukraine war after the ex-Soviet state vowed not to help its ally circumvent western sanctions, local media said Thursday. On a visit to Berlin last month, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said his country will “follow the sanctions regime”, amid suspicions Moscow is still receiving vital goods via Kazakhstan.

• The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the EU must collectively continue to financially support Ukraine in future. “We have a clear stance here: This aid for Ukraine, for the financial stability of the country, we will have to provide this jointly as Europeans,” Scholz told lawmakers, while adding “that this cannot all be solved with additional funds”.

• Ukraine’s parliament gave initial approval for the 2024 budget, which will increase funding for the army and national defence. Finance minister Serhiy Marchenko said the government’s priorities next year included accumulating funds for defence and security, and securing social payments for the population “to bring Ukraine’s victory closer”.

• Nato is stepping up patrols in the Baltic Sea after recent damage to undersea infrastructure. “The increased measures include additional surveillance and reconnaissance flights. A fleet of four Nato minehunters is also being dispatched to the area,” Nato said in a statement.

• Finland’s Ministry of Defence said on Thursday it had blocked three planned property transactions involving Russian buyers on grounds that allowing the acquisitions to take place could hamper the defence of Finnish territory.

Summary

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. We begin the day as always with a summary of recent developments …

• Vladimir Putin called the US delivery of long-range tactical ballistic missiles to Kyiv “another mistake by the United States” in his first public comments since an unprecedented Ukrainian strike destroyed helicopters at two airfields in Russian-occupied territory this week. The Russian president also claimed that the delivery of the Atacms missiles, which can strike targets more than 100 miles away and deliver salvoes with cluster munitions, would “simply prolong [Ukraine’s] agony.”

• Images of Hungary’s prime minister shaking hands with Putin were “very, very unpleasant” and defied logic given Budapest’s past history with Moscow, the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, said. Viktor Orbán and Putin held talks in China on Tuesday, with the Hungarian prime minister telling the Russian president he had never wanted to oppose Moscow and is trying to salvage bilateral contacts.

• Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in North Korea on Wednesday, Russian news agencies said, with a Kremlin spokesperson telling the Tass news agency that the two-day visit was expected to lay the groundwork for a future trip to the country by Putin. The trip took place days after the US said Pyongyang had transferred munitions to Russia for the war in Ukraine.

• Russian attacks in the past two days have killed at least 10 civilians in Ukraine and damaged the power grid in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. Among the targets hit was a residential building in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

• The lower house of the Russian parliament has passed the second and third readings of a bill that revokes Russia’s ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. Both were passed unanimously by 415 votes to zero. Ukraine’s foreign ministry later condemned the steps taken, and urged the international community to respond to Moscow’s “provocations”.

• US President Joe Biden is to give a primetime speech to Americans on Thursday on the war in Israel and in Ukraine, the White House said. There have been concerns that the war between Israel and Hamas may divert military and international support from Kyiv.

• French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his country’s support for Ukraine during a phone call on Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the French presidency said. “He assured the Ukrainian president that the proliferation of crises would not weaken French and European support for Ukraine, which will be there for as long as it takes,” said Macron’s office.

• Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, in charge of Ukraine’s operations in the south, said Ukrainian forces had had “partial success to the south of Robotyne.” Robotyne is one of a group of villages in the south that Ukraine wants to secure as part of its advance towards the Sea of Azov – aimed at severing a land bridge linking Russian positions in the south and east.

• Biden is reportedly to propose a joint $100bn package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border this week. The package is intended to bypass congressional chaos and bring Democrats, who have sought additional aid for Kyiv for weeks, together with Republicans, who want funds to tighten controls on the southern border.

Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia kills two, says Zelenskiy

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian missile that slammed into a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia early on Wednesday has killed at least two people and wounded five.

Zelenskiy said eight apartments had been destroyed in the strike on Zaporizhzhia and rescuers were searching for any survivors in the rubble. His office said three people were missing after the attack, Reuters reports.

On Telegram, he said:

Overnight, Russian terrorists attacked Zaporizhzhia with missiles, striking an ordinary five-storey residential building.

The evil state continues to use terror and wage war on civilians. Russian terror must be defeated.

Russian assault on Avdiivka reported to be weakening

A days-long attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam, Kyiv officials said on Monday.

Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian general staff said. That compared with up to 60 attacks a day in the middle of last week, according to Vitalii Barabash, the head of the city administration. The slackening suggests the Russian effort to capture Avdiivka has “deflated”, Barabash said.

A Washington-based thinktank broadly concurred with that assessment. “Russian forces continued offensive operations aimed at encircling Avdiivka … but have yet to make further gains amid a likely decreasing tempo of Russian operations in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War said in analysis published late on Sunday.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told a UN security council meeting last Friday that the ramped-up attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.

With the looming onset of wintry conditions that will limit military operations, both sides have been seeking battlefield breakthroughs that could invigorate their efforts and raise morale.

Ukrainian officials have said their troops are holding out against fierce Russian efforts to wrest control of Avdiivka, a heavily fortified city.

Avdiivka lies in the northern suburbs of the city of Donetsk, in a region of the same name that Russian forces partially occupy. Avdiivka’s location grants Ukrainian forces artillery advantages over the city and could serve as a springboard for them to liberate Donetsk.

‘International issues’ will form focus of talks between Putin and Xi on Wednesday

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing for talks on Wednesday, the Kremlin has confirmed.

The talks will take place on the sidelines of a forum marking a decade of China’s belt and road initiative, the Kremlin said.

“During the talks, special attention will be paid to international and regional issues,” it said, without elaborating.

It will be the Russian president’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the international criminal court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.

Putin has increasingly turned to Beijing for trade and political support since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Opening summary

Welcome to our continuing coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Below is a selection of the latest developments to bring you up to speed.

• Fierce fighting in Avdiivka on the eastern frontline entered a fifth day as Russia continued to deploy new forces in an attempt to surround the city, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of its military administration. Shelling was so fierce that emergency crews were unable to recover the dead from wrecked buildings, Barabash said. Both Russia and the United States have described the upsurge in violence around Avdiivka as a new Russian offensive. “They are striking with everything they have. Bouts of shooting, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, mortars and a lot of aircraft,” Barabash told national television. He said 1,620 residents remained in Avdiivka, a town with a large coking plant and a pre-war population of 32,000.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked troops in areas where fighting was “particularly hot”. In his regular address he said: “I thank everyone who is holding their positions and destroying Russian troops”, citing Avdiivka, Maryinka and other key locations in the Donetsk region.

• Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had shot down two Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea near the southern resort city of Sochi on Saturday morning. The city’s mayor, Alexei Kopaigorodskyi, said there had been no casualties or damage and that the situation was under control.

• A top Ukraine general said fighting in the north-east had “significantly worsened” as daily Russian attacks continued.

• Protesters gathered outside city hall in Odesa again to speak out against the misuse of budget funds and pay tribute to Ukrainian soldiers killed or injured in the war.

• The Russian Black Sea Fleet is highly likely to have reinforced its defensive and reactive posture since suffering a series of strikes in August and September, the UK Ministry of Defence said. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said the BSF has relocated many of its prestige assets – including cruise missile-capable ships and submarines – from Sevastopol to operating and basing areas farther east, such as Novorossiysk.

• Russia has detained three lawyers of the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and raided their homes, aides said, a step that comes as pressure on the Kremlin’s critics increases. The move was an attempt to “completely isolate Navalny”, his ally Ivan Zhdanov said on social media

Top Ukraine general says fighting in north-east has ‘significantly worsened’

Fighting along the northern section of Ukraine’s eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days, with dozens of daily assaults by Russian forces, the commander of Kyiv’s ground forces has said.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was visiting troops in the area, said Russian forces had regrouped after suffering losses and were attacking around the village of Makiivka and towards the city of Kupiansk, according to a report by Reuters.

“The main objective of the enemy is the defeat of a grouping of our troops, the encirclement of Kupiansk and to reach the Oskil River,” he said in comments carried by an official military platform.

He also said that despite the Russian attacks, Ukrainian troops had been ready and were holding their ground.