Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air defence shot down 34 of 35 Russian drones launched in a major overnight attack on 12 Ukrainian regions, the air force said on Thursday.
Russia launched Iranian-made Shahed drones in several waves from about 8pm (1800 GMT) to 3.30am the air force said on Telegram, targeting Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy among others.
Air alerts in many Ukrainian regions in the centre, southeast and north lasted for hours. There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties.
In other developments:
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Ukraine’s armed forces were taking up a more defensive posture, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest analysis of the conflict, after their summer counteroffensive failed to achieve a significant breakthrough against Russia’s army and as winter weather sets in after almost 22 months of war. “In recent weeks, Ukraine has mobilised a concerted effort to improve field fortifications as its forces pivot to a more defensive posture along much of the frontline,” the MoD said.
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Russia’s tax revenue from exports of oil and petroleum products fell by 32% after a price ceiling was enacted by the US and its allies to restrict funding for its war in Ukraine, US authorities said Wednesday. In a statement published by the Treasury department, the allies also announced that rules surrounding the price cap would be tightened.
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Kyiv plans to produce a million FPV (first-person-view) drones, widely in demand on the frontline, and more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones next year, according to Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries. “All production facilities are ready, and contracting for 2024 begins,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, said on Telegram messenger on Wednesday. The figure includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 600 miles(1,000km), he said.
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The international rules-based system needs urgent and fundamental change if it is not to collapse, the Estonian foreign minister has said, calling for “a new global conversation” to begin on how to reform the UN and the international criminal court. Writing in the Guardian, Margus Tsahkna said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had highlighted flaws in the system that risk fatally undermining people’s faith in it.
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Moldova plans to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Russia-aligned trade and political body, by the end of 2024, parliamentary foreign policy committee head Doina Gherman said on Wednesday. The announcement followed a gradual drawdown of Moldova’s participation in the bloc since Russia invaded Ukraine.
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The former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has put her name forward to stand in a Russian presidential election in March that Vladimir Putin is expected to win by a landslide. Duntsova, 40, is calling for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
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A Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 4.6bn roubles ($50.84m) for failing to delete so-called “fake” information about the conflict in Ukraine and other topics, the Tass news agency reported. The Ria news agency said the fine had also been imposed due to Google failing to remove “extremist content” and the distribution of what Russia calls “LGBT propaganda”.
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German federal prosecutors said on Wednesday they were aiming to seize hundreds of millions of euros from an unnamed Russian bank as part of a western crackdown over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “The aim of these proceedings is to seize more than €720m deposited by a Russian financial institution in a bank account in Frankfurt am Main due to a suspected attempt to violate embargo regulations” under German law, the prosecutors office said.
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The Kremlin has said there is no current basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and that Kyiv’s proposed peace plan was absurd as it excluded Russia. “We really consider that the topic of negotiations is not relevant right now,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
Key events
Hungary believes EU funding to Ukraine must not be granted from the EU’s budget and there should be a “sensible” timeline set for any financing for Ukraine, prime minister Viktor Orbán told a briefing on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Orban said:
I am convinced that to give Ukraine 50 billion euros from the EU budget for five years … That’s a bad decision.
The Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, has met his newly appointed counterpart in Poland to discuss a cargo blockage by Polish lorry drivers on their shared border.
The drivers have been blocking the border for more than a month to demand the reintroduction of restrictions to enter the EU for their Ukrainian competitors.
The Ukrainian ministry said:
We held the first meeting with the newly appointed minister of infrastructure of Poland, Dariusz Klimczak, in Warsaw.
It added in separate comments to Agence France-Presse that the meeting had taken place one day earlier.
We discussed several issues in the transport sector but the main topic was the unblocking of the border.
Kubrakov said the meeting had allowed for both parties to explain their positions and the Ukrainian side had presented data that undermined Polish arguments.
“It is important to come to a common understanding of the figures and data on traffic and on market share held by our and Polish carriers,” he said.
Here are some of the latest images from the news wires.
Germany will provide an additional €88.5m (£76.6m) to help strengthen the resilience of the Ukrainian energy system as Russia targets its infrastructure, the foreign and economy ministries have said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The economy ministry is contributing €54.3m via the state-owned bank KfW and the foreign ministry €34.2m to the Ukraine energy support fund, the statement says, Reuters reports.
Ukraine World, an English-language multimedia news site, has posted a graphic of the approximate Russian losses since the start of the war.
It cites general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine. The claims have not been independently verified.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air defence shot down 34 of 35 Russian drones launched in a major overnight attack on 12 Ukrainian regions, the air force said on Thursday.
Russia launched Iranian-made Shahed drones in several waves from about 8pm (1800 GMT) to 3.30am the air force said on Telegram, targeting Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy among others.
Air alerts in many Ukrainian regions in the centre, southeast and north lasted for hours. There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties.
In other developments:
-
Ukraine’s armed forces were taking up a more defensive posture, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest analysis of the conflict, after their summer counteroffensive failed to achieve a significant breakthrough against Russia’s army and as winter weather sets in after almost 22 months of war. “In recent weeks, Ukraine has mobilised a concerted effort to improve field fortifications as its forces pivot to a more defensive posture along much of the frontline,” the MoD said.
-
Russia’s tax revenue from exports of oil and petroleum products fell by 32% after a price ceiling was enacted by the US and its allies to restrict funding for its war in Ukraine, US authorities said Wednesday. In a statement published by the Treasury department, the allies also announced that rules surrounding the price cap would be tightened.
-
Kyiv plans to produce a million FPV (first-person-view) drones, widely in demand on the frontline, and more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones next year, according to Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries. “All production facilities are ready, and contracting for 2024 begins,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, said on Telegram messenger on Wednesday. The figure includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 600 miles(1,000km), he said.
-
The international rules-based system needs urgent and fundamental change if it is not to collapse, the Estonian foreign minister has said, calling for “a new global conversation” to begin on how to reform the UN and the international criminal court. Writing in the Guardian, Margus Tsahkna said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had highlighted flaws in the system that risk fatally undermining people’s faith in it.
-
Moldova plans to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Russia-aligned trade and political body, by the end of 2024, parliamentary foreign policy committee head Doina Gherman said on Wednesday. The announcement followed a gradual drawdown of Moldova’s participation in the bloc since Russia invaded Ukraine.
-
The former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has put her name forward to stand in a Russian presidential election in March that Vladimir Putin is expected to win by a landslide. Duntsova, 40, is calling for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
-
A Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 4.6bn roubles ($50.84m) for failing to delete so-called “fake” information about the conflict in Ukraine and other topics, the Tass news agency reported. The Ria news agency said the fine had also been imposed due to Google failing to remove “extremist content” and the distribution of what Russia calls “LGBT propaganda”.
-
German federal prosecutors said on Wednesday they were aiming to seize hundreds of millions of euros from an unnamed Russian bank as part of a western crackdown over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “The aim of these proceedings is to seize more than €720m deposited by a Russian financial institution in a bank account in Frankfurt am Main due to a suspected attempt to violate embargo regulations” under German law, the prosecutors office said.
-
The Kremlin has said there is no current basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and that Kyiv’s proposed peace plan was absurd as it excluded Russia. “We really consider that the topic of negotiations is not relevant right now,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
