Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin victory ‘would not end well for Europe’, Lithuania’s foreign minister says

Ukraine said it was behind a drone strike that sparked a huge inferno at an oil depot in western Russia on Friday, the latest in a series of escalating cross-border attacks.

The strike is the second on a Russian oil depot in as many days, part of what Kyiv has called “fair” retaliation for Moscow’s strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Friday’s strike targeted a Rosneft oil storage facility about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Ukrainian border, in the Russian town of Klintsy, officials said. It was carried out by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, a Ukrainian security source confirmed to AFP, without elaborating.

Videos showed a huge fireball tearing through the oil depot’s storage tanks, while a cloud of black smoke billowed over the town of some 60,000 inhabitants.

Regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said:

Four oil tanks are burning in Klintsy. For safety reasons 32 residents of the private sector were temporarily evacuated to relatives. A temporary accommodation centre has been prepared.

There were no casualties, but 13 fire trucks were deployed to battle the blaze, Bogomaz announced earlier. The fire started after a drone dropped “munitions” on the depot, he said but claimed the drone had been intercepted. Two other drones targeting the region were shot down by air defences.

NATO will launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week with around 90,000 personnel set to take part in months of drills aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, top officers said Thursday.

The exercises come as Russia’s war on Ukraine bogs down. NATO as an organization is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support, although many member countries send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups, and provide military training.

In the months before President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, NATO began beefing up security on its eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine. It’s the alliance’s biggest buildup since the Cold War. The war games are meant to deter Russia from targeting a member country.

The exercises – dubbed Steadfast Defender 24 – “will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers (miles), from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organization said, according to AP.

Troops will be moving to and through Europe until the end of May in what NATO describes as “a simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary.” Under NATO’s new defense plans, its chief adversaries are Russia and terrorist organizations.

“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via transatlantic movement of forces from North America,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, told reporters.

Cavoli said it will demonstrate “our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other.”

The chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, said that it’s “a record number of troops that we can bring to bear and have an exercise within that size, across the alliance, across the ocean from the U.S. to Europe.”

Bauer described it as “a big change” compared to troop numbers exercising just a year ago. Sweden, which is expected to join NATO this year, will also take part.

U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has said that the government in London would send 20,000 troops backed by advanced fighter jets, surveillance planes, warships and submarines, with many being deployed in eastern Europe from February to June.

The Kremlin on Friday said there was no prospect of reviving the Black Sea grain deal and that alternative routes for shipping Ukrainian grain carried huge risks, Reuters reports.

The original deal, which facilitated safe grain exports from Ukraine via the Black Sea, expired last year after Moscow refused to renew it, saying its interests had been ignored.

Police in the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan on Friday arrested more protesters incensed over the jailing of a popular activist as a court sentenced nine demonstrators to short jail terms, reports AFP.

Thousands have taken to the streets of the small town of Baymak in freezing temperatures this week, clashing with riot police in a rare display of public outrage.

They are supporting Fail Alsynov, a local activist who campaigns for the protection of the Bashkir language and was sentenced to four years in prison on Wednesday for “inciting hatred.”

Alsynov had publicly criticised Moscow’s mobilisation drive for the offensive in Ukraine launched nearly two years ago and also opposes mining in the region on environmental grounds.

Videos on social media showed police arresting protesters at a small rally in the regional capital of Ufa on Friday.

Australia is being criticised this morning for allowing itself to drop from being the biggest non-Nato contributor of help to Ukraine, to sixth on that list.

Specifically, a storm has blown up around the government’s refusal to hand over a fleet of European-designed NH90-type army helicopters to Ukraine, having retired them from service after a troubled history.

The NH90 was assembled in Australia as the MRH90 Taipan. The government in Canberra has decided not to send its unwanted Taipans, preferring to strip them for spare parts before burying them.

The co-chair of the Australian Federation Ukrainian Organisations, Stefan Romaniw, on Friday called on the government to reverse its decision. “[The helicopters] would significantly boost Ukraine’s air power, which will help defend freedom and democracy and save lives,” he said. “[But] Australia now risks simply standing by instead of standing up for what’s right.”

Australia’s defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, defended the decision. He said none of the aircraft were in flying condition, the fleet had been grounded for three months before Ukraine made its request, and repairs would have required a significant investment in time, resources and taxpayer funds.

Safety questions also remained after a Taipan crash claimed the lives of four Australian defence personnel in July, he said – although the safety issue has been disputed by former military officers.

The Australian government has previously been criticised for refusing to donate its retired, mothballed fleet of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets to Ukraine – a plane that is considered more rugged than the F-16 fighters Ukraine will soon receive.

Retired Maj Gen Fergus McLachlan agreed the cost of making the Taipan helicopters airworthy would be prohibitive, but he said the government had acted “in a fair bit of haste”.

“This is over a billion dollars worth of our tax money in a capability that, while it disappointed, was not an unsafe aircraft,” he told ABC radio.

He said they were “very capable helicopters”, with at least 12 countries still flying them, though he would not recommend them for the Ukrainian effort.

“All of the user nations in Nato are affluent nations with all of the resources needed to maintain and operate a complex helicopter, [but they] struggle to get this aircraft in the air reliably,” he said.

“For an army at war, who needs high availability, high reliability, in my opinion, this is not the aircraft that they needed.”

But Romaniw said the 45 Taipans could have replaced the Ukrainian helicopters that had gone missing since the start of Russia’s offensive. “Words won’t help us win this war,” he said.

The Australian government has provided $910m worth of support to Ukraine, including $730m of military assistance.

A Russian official says a Ukrainian drone has struck an oil storage depot in western Russia, causing a massive fire.

Russian officials and news reports said four oil reservoirs with a total capacity of 6,000 cubic meters (1.6m gallons) were set on fire Friday after the drone reached Klintsy, a city of 70,000 people located about 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Ukraine has recently intensified its efforts to unnerve Russians and undermine president Vladimir Putin’s claims that life in Russia is going on as normal before its 17 March presidential election.

This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is day 695 of Vladimir Putin’s illegal campaign. Let’s get started:

• Russia winning in Ukraine would not end well for Europe, Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, has said at the Davos summit in Switzerland. “There’s a chance that Russia might not be contained in Ukraine,” he said. “[We need] common procurement, we could procure things that are needed to defend Europe … it’s Europe’s war.”

• Ukraine is working “intensively” with partners to restore air travel which has been suspended for nearly two years, with the main focus on Boryspil international airport outside the capital, Kyiv, and perhaps Lviv, presidential official Rostyslav Shurma has said. “We need to get approvals from the Iata [International Air Transport Association] and FAA (the US aviation administration) which is not an easy case. And it depends more on the bold decisions of international partners that we believe we’ll get.”

• Ukraine has warned that its army faces a “very real and pressing” ammunition shortage as a new 23-nation effort to supply it with artillery was agreed at a meeting in Paris. The “artillery coalition” sits within the wider Ramstein contact group, which gathers more than 50 countries supporting Ukraine.

• Ukraine has bought six more Caesar howitzers, said France’s defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu.

• In Australia, criticism is being directed at the government for refusing to donate to Ukraine its retired fleet of Taipan army helicopters, the Australian-built version of the European NH90 – opting instead to strip them for parts and then bury what is left. The Taipan has had a troubled service history, including a fatal crash, but the NH90 is flown by militaries in Europe and elsewhere.

• Australia has also dropped from being initially the top non-Nato contributor of support to Ukraine, to sixth place. The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations has called on the Australian government to reverse its decision regarding the Taipans.

• A Ukrainian drone attack hit an oil terminal in St Petersburg on Thursday as part of a “new phase” of strikes on the region, a Ukrainian military source told news agency Reuters. Reuters could not independently verify the statement but the Kyiv Independent also reported the news.

• Romanian farmers blocked a crossing on the Romanian-Ukrainian border on Thursday, Ukraine’s state customs service said. Truckers in several EU countries bordering Ukraine have protested about Ukrainian drivers being allowed concessional entry and undercutting their business.

• The Russian city of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, had to cancel its traditional Orthodox Epiphany festivities on Friday due to the threat of attacks by Ukraine. Belgorod has been targeted by Ukraine because it is a key Russian military staging point.

• Nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan meeting in Seoul have condemned North Korea for its arms trade with Russia, recent missile tests, and increasingly hostile rhetoric at a meeting in Seoul.