Opening summary

Hello and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments to start with:

Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Earlier, road traffic near Feodosia was significantly restricted, Russian-installed officials in Crimea said, with traffic on the bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia halted for hours before resuming.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the west to rapidly deliver more air-defence systems as a wave of Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least 11 people. “Russia continues to hit civilians,” the Ukrainian president posted on social media on Saturday. Eight were confirmed dead, including a child and a baby, after an overnight drone strike on an apartment block in the southern port city of Odesa, a regional official said. Zelenskiy said in his post: “We need more air defences from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection for our people from Russian terror.”

• About 10 people were still unaccounted for after the Odesa strike on the nine-storey building, the interior minister, Igor Klymenko, said on Telegram. Almost 100 rescuers were set to continue a search and rescue operation overnight. Ukraine’s armed forces said the Odesa region was attacked by eight drones, of which seven were shot down.

• The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a purported recording of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”, a ministry spokesperson said. The recording apparently showed German officials discussing striking Crimea and delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv.

• Shelling attacks on the frontline Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions killed another three people, Ukrainian officials said.

• Ukraine downed a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber on Saturday, the Ukrainian air force commander said on Telegram. Mykola Oleshchuk’s claim could not be independently verified.

• A drone crashed into an apartment building in St Petersburg, Russia’s state news agency said. A report by RIA Novosti said six people received medical help after an explosion on Saturday morning in the north-western Russian city

• Russian artillery shelling reportedly killed a 53-year-old man in the partly occupied Kherson region on Saturday.

• The mother and mother-in-law of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were among mourners who brought flowers to his grave in Moscow on Saturday, a day after thousands turned his funeral into one of the largest recent displays of dissent in Russia.

• More than 20 settlements in Ukraine’s eastern province of Kharkiv have reportedly sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks. As well, high-rise buildings in Kharkiv city were damaged by a drone attack, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, was reported as saying.

Share

Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress managed to ward off a damaging federal government shutdown with a last-minute compromise reached this week – but remain deadlocked over approving further military assistance for Ukraine and Israel, and tightening immigration laws.

Congress was up against a Friday midnight deadline to reauthorize government spending or see a chunk of the federal departments cease much of their operations.

On Wednesday, top lawmakers including Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, announced they “are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government”, and the following day lawmakers passed a short-term spending measure that Joe Biden signed yesterday.

The US president hailed Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s support for Ukraine during a meeting at the White House.

US President Joe Biden meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
Photograph: Chris Kleponis/EPA

Similar agreement between the Republicans and Democrats has proven elusive when it comes to funding both the continuation of Ukraine’s grinding defense against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Last month, a bipartisan Senate agreement that would have paired the latest tranche of military aid with measures to limit the number of undocumented people and asylum seekers crossing into the country from Mexico was killed by Republicans – reportedly so Donald Trump, who is on the cusp of winning the Republican presidential nomination, could campaign on his own hardline approach to immigration reform.

The Senate then approved a $95bn bill that would authorize aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without changing policy at the border, but Johnson has refused to put it to a vote in the House. Meanwhile, the government funding saga isn’t quite over. This week’s agreement pushed the funding deadlines for the two bills authorising spending to 8 and 22 March. In their joint statement, the House and Senate leaders said lawmakers would vote on the 12 separate appropriations bills funding federal departments before these dates.

Share

Multiple Navalny mourners detained across Russia

Multiple mourners of Alexei Navalny have been detained by Russian authorities on Friday, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights defense group.

Videos and pictures posted online by the group showed what appeared to be Russian authorities detaining mourners across multiple cities including Moscow and Novosibirsk:

Share

Ukrainian forces have pushed back Russian troops from the village of Orlivka, west of Avdiivka, but the situation on the eastern front remains difficult, Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Thursday.

Orlivka is less than 2 kilometres northwest of Lastochkyne, which was recently occupied by Russian forces.

Russian forces last week captured the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka after a months-long assault and are pressing on several other areas along the frontline, Ukrainian authorities say.

Ukraine’s military said this week it had withdrawn from two more villages near Avdiivka, losing more territory as support from its western allies runs short.

On Telegram, Syrskyi said:

The enemy continues active offensive actions in many areas of the frontline. The situation is particularly tense in the Avdiivka and Zaporizhzhia sectors.

He said Russian assault units were trying to break through the Ukrainian defences and capture the settlements of Tonenke, Orlivka, Semenivka, Berdychi and Krasnohorivka.

Syrskyi, who visited troops on the eastern front, said some commanders had revealed certain shortcomings in their “situational awareness and assessment of the enemy”, which directly affected the sustainability of defence in certain areas.

I took all measures to remedy the situation on the ground, with the allocation of additional ammunition and material resources, as well as the necessary reserves.

Share

Yulia Navalnaya urges European lawmakers to investigate financial flows in the west linked to Putin

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, on Wednesday urged European politicians and officials to investigate financial flows in the west linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin and his allies, reports Reuters.

Navalnaya was speaking to the European parliament in Strasbourg, 12 days after her husband died suddenly in a Russian penal colony. Reuters report that she was greeted with a standing ovation.

Yulia Navalnaya has addressed the European parliament in Strasbourg, urging European politicians and officials to investigate financial flows in the west linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images

“Putin is the leader of an organised criminal gang. This includes poisoners and assassins but they’re just puppets. The most important thing is the people close to Putin – his friends, associates and keepers of mafia money,” she said.

She added:

You and all of us must fight the criminal gang. And the political innovation here is to apply the methods of fighting organised crime, not political competition. Not statements of concern but the search for mafia associates in your countries, for discreet lawyers and financiers who are helping Putin and his friends to hide money.”

Navalnaya has accused Putin of having her husband killed, an allegation the Kremlin has rejected. She has promised to continue his work, urging Russians to share her rage against Putin, and has met western politicians, including US president Joe Biden last week.

In reference to her husband’s funeral, Navalnaya said she was not sure whether the service would be peaceful or whether the police would make arrests.

Share

Kremlin warns of conflict with Nato if alliance troops fight in Ukraine

The Kremlin has suggested that conflict between Russia and the US-led Nato military alliance would become inevitable if European members of Nato sent troops to fight in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic have distanced themselves from Emmanuel Macron saying on Monday that there was “no consensus” on sending western troops to Ukraine but “nothing should be excluded” (see post at 10am).

“The very fact of discussing the possibility of sending certain contingents to Ukraine from Nato countries is a very important new element,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Macron’s remarks.

Asked by reporters what the risks of a direct Russia-Nato conflict would be if Nato members sent their troops to fight in Ukraine, Peskov said:

“In that case, we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability (of a direct conflict).”

French officials have become worried there has been no single galvanising western force responding to Vladimir Putin putting his economy on such an effective war footing, and insufficiently clear practical responses had emerged from the west.

Ukrainian forces report shortages of weapons and ammunition, as a grinding stalemate gives way to Russian gains.

Share

Denmark ends Nord Stream blast investigation but concludes deliberate sabotage at play

Denmark on Monday said it had dropped its investigation into the explosions in 2022 on the Nord Stream pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany, becoming the second nation to do so after Sweden also closed a separate probe, Reuters reports.

The multi-billion dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of blasts in the Swedish and Danish economic zones in September 2022, releasing vast amounts of methane into the air.

Russia and the West, at loggerheads over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year, have pointed fingers at one another. Each has denied any involvement and no one has taken responsibility.

“There is not sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark … and therefore the Copenhagen Police has decided to conclude the criminal investigation of the explosions,” Denmark’s police said in a statement.

Police added that they believe there was deliberate sabotage of the gas lines.

Sweden earlier this month dropped its investigation into the explosions saying it lacked jurisdiction in the case but had handed evidence uncovered over to German investigators, which are yet to publish any findings.

Email link

Zelenskiy says 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed since Russia invaded

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago, giving the first official figure for more than a year.

Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv that he could not disclose the number of wounded because it would help Russian military planning, Reuters reported.

“31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000 … Putin is lying there … But nevertheless, this is a big loss for us.”

Ukraine has not put a number to its military losses since the end of 2022, when presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the invasion.

Russia does not disclose military losses, which it regards as secret.

Email link

Drone suspected after blaze at Russian steel plant, governor says

A fire broke out and was extinguished at Russian steelmaker NLMK’s main plant, the regional governor said on Saturday, the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Preliminary data indicated the fire at the Novolipetsk Steel plant was caused by a drone, the Lipetsk regional governor, Igor Artamonov, said on Telegram, without mentioning Ukraine, Reuters reports.

There were no casualties, Artamonov said.

A video posted on social media showed an explosion, with a large orange flame illuminating the nighttime sky.

The plant, NLMK’s key production site, is about 400km (250 miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border. It specialises in flat steel products, making 80% of NLMK’s steel products and 18% of Russian steel.

Email link

US sanctions three Russian officials over Alexei Navalny’s death

The US has sanctioned three Russian officials over last week’s death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Agence France-Presse reports.

The individuals sanctioned include Valery Boyarinev, the deputy director of the Russia’s federal penitentiary service, which oversaw Polar Wolf, the penal colony where Navalny suddenly died last week.

“Following Navalny’s death, Boyarinev was promoted to ‘colonel general’ by decree of Vladimir Putin,” the state department said, AFP reports.

The other two sanctioned individuals are officials administering the penal colony.

The sanctions come as part of Joe Biden’s broader sanctions against Russia which he announced on Friday to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Email link