Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin official warns of nuclear response if Kyiv hit missile launch sites

The UK has announced it will provide £2.5 billion in military aid to the country over the coming year.

Number 10 said that the £2.5 billion in funding would cover long-range missiles, air defence, artillery ammunition and maritime security, with the support an increase of £200 million on the last two years.

Around £200 million will also be spent on a push to procure and produce thousands of military drones, which the Government said was the largest delivery of drones to Ukraine from any nation – most of which are expected to be manufactured in the UK.

Rishi Sunak is making a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, as the UK announced it will provide £2.5 billion in military aid to the country over the coming year.

The Ukraine visit comes as the Mr Zelensky pushes allies in the West to give his country more support to fight back against Russian forces, amid fears interest in the war is flagging.

The PM and Mr Zelensky will use the one-day visit to sign a new UK-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation, after G7 countries agreed at last year’s Nato summit to sign bilateral security assurances with the country.

It comes just hours after the prime minister authorised strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, as Britain joined the US in Red Sea military action.

A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles.

He did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat.

“What does this mean? It means only one thing – they risk running into the action of paragraph 19 of the fundamentals of Russia’s state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“This should be remembered,” Medvedev said.

Paragraph nineteen of Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon. Medvedev made specific mention of point “g” of paragraph nineteen which deals with the nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack.

Ukraine and Switzerland will host around 120 national security advisors on Sunday in the Swiss resort town of Davos, Switzerland’s foreign affairs department said, the latest in a series of meetings to rally support for Ukraine’s peace plan.

The meeting, taking place in the run up to the World Economic Forum which begins the following day, is the fourth of its kind and the biggest yet, following previous gatherings in Copenhagen, Jeddah and most recently in Malta in October.

Officials had hoped the meeting in Malta would lead to the setting of a date for a global peace summit to build a coalition of support for Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan, drafted by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in December 2022.

However, co-chairs limited themselves at the time to a joint statement referring to the participants’ commitment to just and lasting peace.

A top Kyiv official told Reuters in November that a summit to begin implementing the plan “might” take place in February 2024, with Ukraine fearing the war in Gaza is making it harder to win over diplomatic support for its blueprint for peace.

Zelenskiy’s plan includes calls for the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, protection of food and energy supplies, nuclear safety and the release of all prisoners.

The peace formula talks do not involve Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has occupied nearly a fifth of the country. Russia has rejected the peace “formula”, saying it would be impossible to implement.

A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles.

He did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat.

“What does this mean? It means only one thing, they risk running into the action of paragraph 19 of the fundamentals of Russia’s state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence,” Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “This should be remembered.”

Paragraph nineteen of Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or to the use of conventional weapons against Russia “when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

Medvedev made specific mention of point “g” of paragraph nineteen, which deals with the nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack.

Mikhail Anatolyevich Trushin, 61, worked for Yukos oil company, which was worth nearly $40bn at its peak in the early 2000s, but was effectively renationalised by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s hotly debated draft law on tightening mobilization rules was returned to the government for further work, the parliamentary speaker said on Thursday.

The bill would enable Kyiv to call up more people to the army as the war with Russia approaches the two-year mark. The draft proposals included electronic call-ups and series of tight sanctions for those who flout the law on mobilization.

After a meeting between parliamentary leadership and military commanders, speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said the bill would be reworked.

“A joint decision was approved to send all developed recommendations and proposals to the government,” Stefanchuk said on Telegram.

Lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said there will be no movement in parliament on this particular draft in the nearest future.

Immediately after Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, thousands of Ukrainians rushed to enlist and defend their homeland. However, nearly two years into the war, many men are trying to avoid the fight.

It will be difficult for Ukraine to survive unless it receives a delayed package of financial support from the European Union, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday.

Zelenskiy spoke during a visit to Estonia while on a wider tour of the Baltic region as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is nearing its second anniversary.

The Kremlin accused the United States on Thursday of trying to pressure European countries into backing what it said was an illegal idea to seize frozen Russian assets to help finance the rebuilding of Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.

RIA said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a US media report which suggested that the Biden administration had in principle backed proposed US legislation to facilitate such a seizure.

“They (the US) are trying to put pressure on the Europeans. There is a very paradoxical situation here because the main body of our assets is in Europe and not in America,” RIA quoted Peskov as saying.

Europe will face “inevitable” legal consequences if it gives in to American pressure, he added.

RIA also cited Peskov as saying that Moscow had not been informed of the development.

Peskov was responding to a Bloomberg report published on Wednesday that US President Joe Biden’s administration is backing legislation that would allow it to seize some of the frozen Russian assets to help pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine.

Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria signed an agreement on Thursday on a joint plan to clear mines floating in the Black Sea as a result of the war in Ukraine, following months of talks between the NATO allies.

Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler, his Romanian counterpart Angel Tilvar and Bulgaria’s Deputy Defence Minister Atanas Zapryanov signed a memorandum of understanding in Istanbul to form a trilateral initiative to clear the explosives.

“With the start of the war, a threat of floating mines in the Black Sea has arisen. To combat it…we agreed to form a Black Sea mine counter-measures task group,” Guler said at the signing ceremony.

Sea mines have posed a threat to Ukraine’s export routes via the Black Sea since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and several commercial ships have been hit, including a bulk carrier heading to the River Danube port to load grain in December.

Three minehunting ships from each country and one command control ship, will be assigned to the initiative, a Turkish defence ministry official said.

Naval commanders of the three countries will form a committee to run the operation, Guler said, adding that it might include other Black Sea states after the war in Ukraine ends.

Guler said Turkey viewed potential contributions to this initiative by non-Black Sea NATO allies as “valuable” but that it will only be open to ships of the “three littoral allied countries.”