UK defence minister hails ‘functional defeat’ of Russia in the Black Sea over recent weeks

The UK’s defence minister James Heappey has hailed “the functional defeat” of Russia in the Black Sea over past weeks saying the “Russian navy has been forced to disperse to ports from which it cannot have an effect on Ukraine”.

Speaking at at a security event in Warsaw he said, despite allied disappointment about the pace of Ukraine’s land offensive, the naval success was “every bit as important” as the Ukrainian land breakthrough in Kharkiv oblast.

There was also interesting speculation about the UK needing an offshore arms manufacturing capacity from Heappey.

He made the familiar argument that over the past 20 to 30 years Europe has run down its arms stockpiles and manufacturing capacity, something that has been revealed by the “constant drumbeat” of demand made by Ukraine.

But he added the UK was a post industrial economy and that had implications for the Ministry of Defence’s thinking on how to conduct a big war. He said there simply was no means in the UK to repurpose its locomotive factories into tank manufacturing, or civilian aircraft manufacturing into military manufacturing.

“We don’t have a lot of that stuff anymore before” he explained, implying a large UK defence industrial base cannot be reconstructed in tiem required.

He said that led to an interesting question “Where is near to the UK with defendable air and sea lines of communication where we can have an offshore manufacturing base that is more resilient and more reachable for the UK than where we manufacture now?”

EU foreign ministers to consider Zelenskiy peace plan at Kyiv summit amid fears over US aid

EU foreign ministers will consider Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace plan at a historic meeting in Kyiv this morning.

The ministers, who rarely meet outside the confines of the territory of the EU, takes place amid concerns over cracks in US funding for the war and after a pro-Russian populist party won the most votes in an election in Slovakia on Saturday.

Speaking on the way into the summit, the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, did not mention either issue but underlined the importance of solidarity in Europe.

“It is about [the] stability and predictability of the world. Because this war is having deep consequences for the whole world. But for us Europeans, it’s an existential threat. Maybe it’s not being seen like this for everybody around the world. But for us, Europeans, allow me to repeat it. It’s an existential threat,” he said.

Sources say the meeting will focus on all aspects of “EU support to Ukraine, with particular focus on continued military assistance, peace efforts and EU accession”.

Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace plan has been discussed by national security representatives twice in the past year, but not at this level.

Joe Biden vowed to stand by Ukraine after the passing of a stopgap bill on Saturday. The bill extended government funding for 45 days in order to avert a US government shutdown, but did not include aid for Kyiv.

Medvedev: UK’s plans to train service members in Ukraine makes them ‘legal targets’

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former leader, has responded to comments made by UK defence secretary Grant Shapps today that the UK is in talks to move training and production of military equipment into Ukraine.

“The number of leading idiots in Nato countries is growing,” Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said on Telegram.

Medvedev said that transferring English training courses for Ukrainian soldiers to the territory of Ukraine itself would “turn your instructors into legal targets for our armed forces. Knowing full well that they will be mercilessly destroyed. And no longer as mercenaries, but precisely as British Nato specialists.”

In the same Telegram post, Medvedev called out “the head of the German defence committee with an unpronounceable surname – Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann – who said yesterday that she believes that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles to attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation.

“They say this is in accordance with international law,” Medvedev said. “Well, in this case, attacks on German factories where these missiles are made will be fully consistent with international law.”

“These idiots are actively pushing us towards a third world war,” Medvedev said.

Wagner veterans likely think ex-commander who met Putin ‘a traitor’, says UK MoD

Many veterans of the Wagner mercenary force probably consider former commander Andrei Troshev, who Vladimir Putin met on Thursday, to be a “traitor”, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

In its latest intelligence update, the ministry also said the meeting suggested Moscow had plans to use the mercenary force, including in the global south, but with greater oversight from the Kremlin.

On Friday Russian authorities published footage of the Russian president meeting Troshev, the Wagner Group’s former chief of staff, and tasking him with overseeing and establishing new “volunteer fighting units”, the ministry said. Deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was also at the meeting.

Vladimir Putin, left, at the meeting with Andrei Troshev, right, and Yunus-Bek Yevkurov in Moscow. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AP

The ministry said in its update, posted on X/Twitter, that around the time of Wagner’s short-lived insurrection in June, Troshev took up a role in Russia’s official security forces and was probably involved in encouraging other Wagner personnel to sign contracts with Russia, contributing to the rebellion.

The ministry said:

Many Wagner veterans likely consider him a traitor.

Yevkurov had recently been pictured touring African states, the ministry said.

Presidential endorsement of Troshev and Yevkurov indicates Russia’s continuing utilisation of volunteer units and private military companies, and planning for the future of Wagner.

It is prepared to draw on the experience of veterans who can demonstrate their loyalty to the state and continued involvement in the global south, but probably with greater oversight from the Kremlin.

Putin meets former Wagner commander Andrei Troshev

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said on Friday, Reuters reports.

The meeting underscored the Kremlin’s attempt to show that the state had now gained control over the mercenary group after a failed June mutiny by the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August.

The Kremlin said Putin had met with Troshev, who is known by his nom de guerre “Sedoi” – or “grey hair”, and the deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who sat closest to Putin, on Thursday night.

Addressing Troshev, Putin said that they had spoken about how “volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, above all, of course, in the zone of a special military operation”.

“You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year,” Putin said. “You know what it is, how it is done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that the combat work goes in the best and most successful way.”

Putin also said he wanted to speak about social support for those involved in the fighting.

British defence secretary Grant Shapps visits Kyiv

British defence secretary Grant Shapps discussed how to bolster Ukraine’s air defences during talks in an unannounced visit to Kyiv to meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president’s office said on Thursday.

The visit to the Ukrainian capital was Shapps’s first to Kyiv since he became defence secretary last month, Reuters reports.

“On behalf of the whole nation, I thank you for everything you are doing for us. We are grateful for your help – military, financial, humanitarian. We greatly appreciate that we can rely on you,” a statement released by Zelenskiy’s office quoted the president as saying.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Grant Shapps in Kyiv. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/PA

Zelenskiy is believed to have raised defence sector cooperation between Kyiv and London, which he said had allowed Ukraine to significantly expand its capabilities on the battlefield with long-range weapons.

Britain this year supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles that have allowed Ukraine to conduct long-range strikes on targets in Russian-occupied territory.

Ukrainian and British delegations meet in Kyiv during Grant Shapps’s visit. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/PA

The visit was not pre-announced, and it was unclear exactly when Shapps met Zelenskiy. Shapps has visited Ukraine before during the war, but in his previous capacity of energy minister.

Black Sea fleet commander seen on video again

Russia’s military news outlet Zvezda on Wednesday published an interview with Black Sea fleet commander Viktor Sokolov, despite Ukraine claiming to have killed him in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol.

“The Black Sea Fleet carries out the tasks set by the command confidently and successfully,” Sokolov says in the short video, wearing a military uniform.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry released footage showing Sokolov attending a defence board meeting via video call.

In response to the Russian video, Ukraine’s special forces appeared to backtrack their earlier claims that Sokolov was killed, writing on Telegram: “Since the Russians were urgently forced to publish a response with Sokolov allegedly alive, our units are clarifying the information.”

Russian missiles strike Odesa and Kryvyi Rih

More now on the Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight, via Reuters: an overnight Russian air strike on the key Ukrainian grain exporting port of Izmail injured two people and damaged infrastructure, the governor of the Odesa region said on Tuesday.

A port building, storage facilities and more than 30 trucks and cars were damaged in the attack, which lasted more than two hours, Oleh Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainian military reported shooting down 26 of the 38 Iranian-made attack drones it said were launched by Russia.

Moscow has intensified its air attacks on Ukrainian ports on the Danube River, including Izmail and Reni, after it quit a grain deal in July that ensured the safe export of Ukrainian grains.

Separately on Tuesday, a Russian missile strike also damaged a local enterprise in the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, its mayor, Oleksandr Vilkul, said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

UN says evidence indicates the use of torture by Russian forces has been ‘widespread’

A UN investigation into human rights violations in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion has today warned that evidence indicates the use of torture by Russian forces has been “widespread and systematic”.

Speaking to the UN human rights council, the head of the investigation team, Erik Mose, said that the commission, which had travelled to Ukraine more than 10 times, “may also clarify whether torture and attacks on energy infrastructure amount to crimes against humanity”.

The commission had also “collected further evidence indicating that the use of torture by Russian armed forces in areas under their control has been widespread and systematic”, he said.

The torture was mainly taking place in detention centres controlled by Russian authorities, he said, adding that in some cases it was “inflicted with such brutality that it caused the death of the victim”, AFP reports.

In the Kherson region, the commission had found that “Russian soldiers raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years”.

Such acts were often accompanied by “threats or commission of other violations”, Mose said, adding that “frequently, family members were kept in an adjacent room, thereby forced to hear the violations taking place”.

The team, he said, also recalled the need for the Ukrainian authorities “to expeditiously and thoroughly investigate the few cases of violations by its own forces”.

Russia denies committing atrocities or targeting civilians in Ukraine. Russia was given an opportunity to respond to the allegations at the council hearing but no Russian representative attended, reports Reuters.

Russian-backed head of Donetsk imposes five-hour curfew

The Russian-installed head of the Donetsk oblast has imposed a curfew banning the presence of civilians on streets and public places from 11pm until 4am on Mondays through Fridays, Reuters is reporting.

Denis Pushilin published a decree on Sunday that forbids assemblies, rallies and demonstrations, in addition to other mass events, in the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk oblast – unless they were permitted by the local operational headquarters for military threat response.

This comes after Pushilin signed a decree last week introducing “military censorship of postal mail and messages transmitted via telecommunications systems as well as control of telephone conversations”.

Pushilin’s order also established checkpoints and security posts at borders with the Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.