Today’s Guardian live coverage of the war in Ukraine starts here. Let’s go through the major developments:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he might be dismissed by the president amid tensions between them. Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.
Ukraine will soon receive the first big batch of long-range missiles made by Boeing and Saab that promise to extend its range deep into Russian-held territory, according to reports. Ukraine needs the ground launched small diameter bomb (GLSDB) to supplement its 100-mile Atacms rockets from the US.
EU nations have decided to approve an outline deal that would deliver Ukraine the taxes and profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central bank assets that have been frozen outside Russia because of its war against Ukraine. It is seen as a first step towards using the Russian assets – there are also calls to seize the entire sum outright for Ukraine’s benefit.
Peers have criticised the UK government for failing to agree a deal with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to spend £2.5bn from his sale of the London football club.
EU leaders will meet on Thursday hoping to approve €50bn in support for Ukraine over the solitary opposition of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Russian attack drones hit Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Tuesday, slightly injuring three people, triggering a fire and causing damage to apartment blocks and infrastructure, local officials said.
Ukraine said it had carried out a successful cyber-attack that knocked out a server used by Russia’s defence ministry, temporarily disrupting communications for military units.
Ukraine is likely to face a tough year fighting Russia in 2024, the CIA director, Bill Burns, has written in Foreign Policy, arguing that to cut off US aid would be an error of “historic proportions”.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Tuesday that European countries must get ready to help Ukraine keep fighting “over the long term”, with or without American help. “If the United States were to make a sovereign choice to stop or reduce this aid, it should have no impact on the ground.”
The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, has said he expects Russia’s offensive on the eastern frontline to fizzle out by early spring. He credited them with only “a few advances across some fields” and near Avdiivka. “Now it’s the enemy’s move. It will end, and I think ours will start.”
A Ukrainian military spy official said on Tuesday that Russia was showing no willingness to return the bodies of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war that it said died in a military plane crash in the Belgorod region last week. Russia has produced no proof there were Ukrainian prisoners on the plane.
The Ukrainian government submitted to parliament on Tuesday an amended version of its bill to tighten army mobilisation rules. The parliament rejected the previous draft amid public outcry. A key provision in the legislation is a lowering to 25 from 27 the minimum age for the draft. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the army needs 450,000-500,000 more personnel.
Key events
The Swedishprime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said he will meet his Hungarian counterpart in Brussels on Thursday, though no time has been set for a formal meeting.
Kristersson told reporters:
We will meet there (Brussels) and have a decent chance to have a chat before a meeting later.
Hungary is the only Nato member not to approve Sweden’s application yet.
Ukraine needs more ammunition, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels.
We have to show that our clear commitment with Ukraine remains and continues.
He added that it was important to clarify the situation and “know where we are now, where we will be by March and by the end of the year”.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings, the military said on Wednesday.
The Air Force said in a statement the Iranian-made Shahed drones and also three Iskander missiles targeted five Ukrainian regions in the south and the east.
The southern military command said one person was injured and agricultural warehouses and a shop were damaged in the Mykolayiv region where five drones were shot down.
Details on damage in other regions were not immediately available.
The UN’s top court will hand down its verdict today in a case brought by Ukraine against Russia for alleged terrorism financing and racial discrimination after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Kyiv has accused Moscow of being a terrorist state whose support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine was a harbinger of the full-fledged 2022 invasion.
It wants Russia to compensate all civilians caught up in the conflict, as well as victims from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
The case predates Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The international court of justice (ICJ) will decide on Friday whether it has jurisdiction to rule in a separate case over that war.
Russia is also in the dock for alleged breaches of an international convention on racial discrimination due to its treatment of the Tatar minority and Ukrainian speakers in occupied Crimea.
During hearings on the case, Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accused Ukraine of “blatant lies and false accusations … even to this court”.
Top Ukrainian diplomat Anton Korynevych retorted that Russia was trying to “wipe us off the map”.
He said:
Beginning in 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then engaged in a campaign of cultural erasure, taking aim at ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.
The case started in 2017 and has seen lengthy exchanges in the ICJ’s Great Hall of Justice, plus thousands of pages of documents submitted to the judges.
Ukraine has also taken Moscow to court over maritime law and alleged human rights abuses.
In 2017, the ICJ rejected Kyiv’s initial request for emergency measures to halt Russia’s funding of separatists.
However it did order Moscow to refrain from imposing “limitations” on the Crimean Tatars or the use of Ukrainian on the peninsula.
The ICJ, based in The Hague, rules on disputes between states, and is separate from the international criminal court (ICC), which prosecutes war crimes by individuals.
ICJ rulings are final and cannot be subject to appeal but it has little power to enforce them. For example, it issued an emergency ruling ordering Russia to halt its invasion one month after tanks rolled over the border – to no avail.
Today’s Guardian live coverage of the war in Ukraine starts here. Let’s go through the major developments:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he might be dismissed by the president amid tensions between them. Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.
Ukraine will soon receive the first big batch of long-range missiles made by Boeing and Saab that promise to extend its range deep into Russian-held territory, according to reports. Ukraine needs the ground launched small diameter bomb (GLSDB) to supplement its 100-mile Atacms rockets from the US.
EU nations have decided to approve an outline deal that would deliver Ukraine the taxes and profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central bank assets that have been frozen outside Russia because of its war against Ukraine. It is seen as a first step towards using the Russian assets – there are also calls to seize the entire sum outright for Ukraine’s benefit.
Peers have criticised the UK government for failing to agree a deal with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to spend £2.5bn from his sale of the London football club.
EU leaders will meet on Thursday hoping to approve €50bn in support for Ukraine over the solitary opposition of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Russian attack drones hit Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Tuesday, slightly injuring three people, triggering a fire and causing damage to apartment blocks and infrastructure, local officials said.
Ukraine said it had carried out a successful cyber-attack that knocked out a server used by Russia’s defence ministry, temporarily disrupting communications for military units.
Ukraine is likely to face a tough year fighting Russia in 2024, the CIA director, Bill Burns, has written in Foreign Policy, arguing that to cut off US aid would be an error of “historic proportions”.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Tuesday that European countries must get ready to help Ukraine keep fighting “over the long term”, with or without American help. “If the United States were to make a sovereign choice to stop or reduce this aid, it should have no impact on the ground.”
The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, has said he expects Russia’s offensive on the eastern frontline to fizzle out by early spring. He credited them with only “a few advances across some fields” and near Avdiivka. “Now it’s the enemy’s move. It will end, and I think ours will start.”
A Ukrainian military spy official said on Tuesday that Russia was showing no willingness to return the bodies of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war that it said died in a military plane crash in the Belgorod region last week. Russia has produced no proof there were Ukrainian prisoners on the plane.
The Ukrainian government submitted to parliament on Tuesday an amended version of its bill to tighten army mobilisation rules. The parliament rejected the previous draft amid public outcry. A key provision in the legislation is a lowering to 25 from 27 the minimum age for the draft. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the army needs 450,000-500,000 more personnel.
There is growing evidence that Russia is using “shadow tanker fleets” to circumvent a western oil price cap, a committee of Britain’s House of Lords has warned.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Arguing Britain and its allies must maintain sanctions and military support for Ukraine for “as long as it takes”, the Lords committee urged “decisive action”.
A year ago the G7, European Union and Australia imposed the unprecedented price cap on Russian oil, hoping to starve President Vladimir Putin of revenue while ensuring he still supplied the global market. Initially successful, the US$60 (£47) per barrel price ceiling on Russian oil lost its impact once Moscow found new buyers and new tankers.
Companies based in the EU, G7 member states and Australia are banned from providing services enabling maritime transport, such as insurance, of oil above that price.
Recent assessments show Moscow has reduced its dependence on western shipping services and skirted the curb by building so-called shadow fleets of tankers and buying old ships while offering its own insurance.
The Lords’ European affairs committee reported:
We are concerned at the growing evidence that Russia has been able to circumvent sanctions, including through third states and uninsured shadow tanker fleets.
This is an issue where decisive action by the UK and its allies is needed.
The committee urged the government to detail “specific examples” of enforcement action.
But the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) is the latest to highlight the extent to which Russia is now able to get around the mechanism. In its December Russian oil tracker report released this month, it estimated “179 loaded Russian shadow fleet tankers left Russian ports in November 2023”.
Around 70% of the vessels were built more than 15 years ago, it said.
In October 2023, the shadow fleet was responsible for exports of around 2.3m barrels per day of crude oil and 800,000m barrels per day of petroleum products, according to the KSE.
The Lords committee welcomed the western sanctions regime imposed on Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, in particular that it had been “broadly aligned”, but warned:
Divergence between sanctions regimes results in gaps and loopholes, weakening their effectiveness; it should be as limited as possible.