Summary of the day
Here are all the key developments in the Russia-Ukraine war today:
Schools in the Russian city of Kursk are switching to online classes, local authorities said, after an attempted Ukrainian incursion into the region.
Ukraine pounded targets in Russia with dozens of drones and rockets in a sweeping attack that inflicted serious damage on a major oil refinery and sought to pierce the land borders of the world’s biggest nuclear power with armed proxies.
Russia said its forces prevented incursions from Ukraine on Tuesday and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers, after Ukraine-based armed groups said they had launched cross-border raids.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine strategy will be put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house on Tuesday as political tensions rage in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections.
Denmark will provide a new military aid package including Caesar artillery systems and ammunition to Ukraine worth around 2.3 billion Danish crowns ($336.6 million).
The United States is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine that could be worth as much as $400 million, two US officials told Reuters.
European Union countries are set to agree on a new 5 billion euro ($5.46 billion) top-up to a fund used to finance military shipments to Ukraine, the Financial Times reported.
Thanks for following. I’m closing the blog for the rest of the day, but we will reopen it tomorrow morning.
European Union countries are set to agree on a new 5 billion euro ($5.46 billion) top-up to a fund used to finance military shipments to Ukraine, the Financial Times has reported, citing four officials briefed on the discussions.
Ukrainian Security Service said on Tuesday it has uncovered one of the largest networks in the country allegedly spreading pro-Russian “informational sabotage”, coordinated by a cleric of the minority Moscow-linked church.
Reuters reports:
Kyiv officials said Moscow planned to step up its informational war this spring, spreading disinformation in an attempt to divide Ukrainian society in the third year of its invasion.
The SBU agency said it has exposed 15 members of the network linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), detaining four of them, including the cleric of a Kyiv-based temple of the minority Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
SBU said on its Telegram channel.:
It is one of the largest FSB networks that has been operating in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
The group was involved in spreading pro-Kremlin narratives aimed at destabilising society and inciting religious hatred, according to the agency.
The church describes itself as independent, saying it cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, which supports Moscow’s war in Ukraine. A government commission has ruled that the church is still canonically linked to Russia.
The international Red Cross movement is under pressure to take action against the Russian Red Cross (RRC) over close links between the group and the Kremlin’s war and propaganda machine, The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker writes.
The evidence includes the RRC president’s central role in a pro-Putin “patriotic” organisation, senior RRC staff who speak of the impossibility of peace with “Ukrainian Nazis”, and RRC participation in military training for children.
There are also allegations, revealed in leaked Kremlin documents obtained by the Estonian publication Delfi and shared with a consortium of outlets including the Guardian, that the Kremlin plans to replace the work of the international Red Cross on Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine by funding new, puppet Red Cross organisations.
n response to the previous publication of some of these allegations, the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) said it was “reviewing the claims closely”. It is now under pressure from donor governments to take action against the RRC.
Updated
US preparing new military aid package for Ukraine
The United States is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine that could be worth as much as $400 million, two US officials have told Reuters.
This would be the first such move in months as additional funds for Kyiv remain blocked by Republican leaders in Congress.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an announcement was expected later on Tuesday.
One of the officials said that the funding for this package is from credits refunded to the Pentagon for recent purchases.
Separately, leaders of US intelligence agencies urgently pressed members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday to approve additional military assistance for Ukraine, saying it would not only boost Kyiv as it fights Russia but discourage Chinese aggression.
CIA Director Williams Burns told the House of Representatives’ Intelligence committee’s annual hearing on Worldwide Threats to US security:
That has consequences for American interests that go ... directly to our interests in the Indo-Pacific.
That kind of an outcome will stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership, and they’re going to undermine the faith that our partners and allies in the Indo Pacific have in our reliability.
Updated
Russia’s elite is expecting President Vladimir Putin to reshuffle government positions to bring in younger people after what it sees as the formality of his resounding election victory this weekend, four sources close to the authorities have told Reuters.
In control of all state levers and with no serious political competitors, Putin - in power as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999 - is widely expected to win what will be his fifth presidential term and another six years in power.
The four sources, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said they expected younger people to be brought into more senior government positions, including perhaps as deputy ministers and heads of ministerial departments, and for an older generation of government officials to be demoted or retire after the election.
One of the sources said ministerial portfolios were being reviewed too and that the reshuffle was expected to take place in May.
Changes at major state corporations, state energy behemoths and in Russia’s more than 80 regional governorships are also seen as possible, the sources said. The Kremlin says it never comments on planned personnel changes ahead of time.
At a time when Russia is waging war with Ukraine and needs continuity, two of the sources said they did not expect Putin to change his defence and foreign ministers, however.
“You don’t change horses mid-stream,” said the first source, who added that it would be surprising if Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, 68, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who turns 74 later this month, did not keep their posts.
In office since 2020, Mikhail Mishustin, the 58-year-old technocratic prime minister, is also expected to keep his job, they said. So is Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, three sources said.
Planned changes at the top of major ministries and in security agencies will only take place after the end of what Putin calls his special military operation in Ukraine, the first source said.
Denmark unveils new military aid package
Denmark will provide a new military aid package including Caesar artillery systems and ammunition to Ukraine worth around 2.3 billion Danish crowns ($336.6 million), the Danish Defence Ministry has said in a statement.
In Russia, Tass has reported that the foreign ministry has imposed sanctions on 347 people from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which it claims are “hostile figures”.
Tass quotes the ministry claiming:
The hostile policy of the Baltic states towards Russia, active lobbying by Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia for sanctions measures against our country, interference in the internal affairs of Russia, persecution of the Russian-speaking population, a barbaric campaign for the mass demolition of monuments to Soviet liberating soldiers, rewriting history, glorifying Nazism, as well as the criminal line pursued to pump the Kyiv regime with weapons require retaliatory measures against those involved in these atrocities.
Germany’s military still lacks sufficient equipment and personnel despite a €100bn (£85bn / $109bn) special fund set up after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces said on Tuesday.
Reuters reports Eva Högl said “Despite the remarkable efforts, it remains to be said that substantial improvements in personnel, equipment and infrastructure are still a long way off.”
Germany is in the second year of the “Zeitenwende” policy, announced by chancellor Olaf Scholz just days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is designed to deliver a more assertive foreign policy backed by more military spending.
Here are the latest images coming out of Belgorod, Russia, which according to local authorities was hit by Ukrainian drones this morning.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the day so far:
Schools in the Russian city of Kursk are switching to online classes, local authorities said, after an attempted Ukrainian incursion into the region.
Ukraine pounded targets in Russia with dozens of drones and rockets in a sweeping attack that inflicted serious damage on a major oil refinery and sought to pierce the land borders of the world’s biggest nuclear power with armed proxies.
Russia said its forces prevented incursions from Ukraine on Tuesday and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers, after Ukraine-based armed groups said they had launched cross-border raids.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine strategy will be put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house on Tuesday as political tensions rage in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections.
Schools closed in Kursk after attempted Ukrainian incursion
Schools in the Russian city of Kursk are switching to online classes after an attempted Ukrainian incursion into the region, the TASS news agency cited local authorities as saying.
Ukraine-based armed groups claimed on Tuesday they had crossed the border into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, while Russia said it had prevented such incursions. The Kursk region also came under attack from Ukrainian drones overnight.
Updated
Russia’s foreign ministry has summoned Switzerland’s ambassador over the Swiss parliament’s approval of motions authorising the government to work on a way to seize and transfer Russian assets to fund reparations for Ukraine.
Russia summoned Ambassador Krystyna Marty Lang to protest at the narrowly passed Swiss motions which authorised the Swiss government to work on creating a reparations mechanism in international law for a country illegally attacked.
The foreign ministry said:
Russia strongly condemns this step by the Swiss authorities that grossly violates the fundamental principles and norms of international law regarding state immunity.
Any encroachment on Russian state property under the guise of any far-fetched ‘reparative mechanism’ would be nothing more than theft at the state level.
The ministry said Russia would retaliate if the Swiss plan was implemented. The Swiss foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Switzerland said last year that it had frozen an estimated 7.7 billion Swiss francs ($8.81 billion) in financial assets belonging to Russians under sanctions designed to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that Russian forces have taken control of the village of Nevelske in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the RIA news agency reported.
A Russian Il-76 military transport plane crashed in the Ivanovo region northeast of Moscow on Tuesday with 15 people on board, the Interfax news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying.
Another agency, TASS, cited the ministry as saying one of the plane’s engines had caught fire, causing the crash. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.
Updated
Reuters has the full report on the drone strikes:
Ukraine pounded targets in Russia on Tuesday with dozens of drones and rockets in a sweeping attack that inflicted serious damage on a major oil refinery and sought to pierce the land borders of the world’s biggest nuclear power with armed proxies.
Russia and Ukraine have both used drones to strike critical infrastructure, military installations and troop concentrations in their more than two-year war, with Kyiv hitting Russian refineries and energy facilities in recent months.
Russia said Ukrainian proxies had sought to cross the Russian border in at least seven attacks which Russian forces had repelled. The Russian-speaking Ukrainian proxies said they had breached the border, a claim denied by Russia.
In one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia to date, Russia said it had downed 25 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions including Moscow, Leningrad, Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, Tula and Oryol. Many more drone attacks were reported.
Russian officials reported attacks on a slew of energy facilities, including a fire at Lukoil’s LKOH.MM NORSI refinery and a drone destroyed on the outskirts of the town of Kirishi, home to Russia’s second largest oil refinery.
Gleb Nikitin, governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, posted a picture of a fire truck beside the NORSI refinery and said emergency services were working to put out a blaze there.
He said on Telegram:
A fuel and energy complex facility was attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles.
Industry sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the main crude distillation unit (AVT-6) at NORSI was damaged in the attack, which means that at least half of the refinery’s production is halted. Lukoil declined to comment.
NORSI refines about 15.8 million tonnes of Russian crude a year, or 5.8% of total refined crude, according to industry sources.
Striking Russian oil facilities is a problem for President Vladimir Putin as he faces off against the West over Ukraine, with domestic gasoline prices sensitive ahead of a March 15-17 presidential election.
The Kremlin said the Russian military was doing everything necessary and that what it calls its military operation in Ukraine would continue.
European Union leaders are ready to respond with new and significant measures against Iran amid reports that Tehran may transfer ballistic missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine, draft conclusions of a summit to be held next week said.
The draft text, seen by Reuters, said:
The European Council calls on third parties to immediately cease providing material support to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Reports that Iran may transfer ballistic missiles and related technology to Russia for use against Ukraine are very concerning.
The European Union is prepared to respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant measures against Iran.
Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters, deepening the military cooperation between the two countries, which are both under US sanctions.
The conclusions also said the leaders would call on High Representative Josep Borrell and the Commission to prepare further sanctions against Belarus, North Korea and Iran.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine strategy will be put to a symbolic vote in parliament’s lower house on Tuesday as political tensions rage in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections.
AFP reports:
Following a debate, the National Assembly lower house will hold a non-binding vote on the government’s Ukraine strategy including a bilateral security agreement signed by Macron and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky last month.
While the vote will be symbolic, it will give political parties an opportunity to publicly express their positions in relation to Macron’s strategy on the conflict as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretches into its third year.
After a meeting between the president and party leaders last week, some of them said Macron’s stance on Ukraine had caused concern.
With the support of the conservative Republicans party (LR), the outcome of the vote could offer backing to Macron’s strategy.
In France’s polarised political landscape, Russia’s war against Ukraine has emerged as a major hot-button topic.
Macron has been seeking to hammer home the importance of greater support for Ukraine, which is running out of ammunition, insisting that Europe’s security is at stake.
The situation in the Black Sea has eased for the German fleet, the VDR shipowners’ association said, adding German ships that were stuck there have been already released.
VDR also said there were some 2,000 Ukrainians and roughly 3,000 Russian sailors in the German merchant fleet and shipping companies were having trouble paying the Russians due to sanctions.
Russia denies that Ukraine-based groups entered territory
Russia said its forces prevented incursions from Ukraine on Tuesday and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers, after Ukraine-based armed groups said they had launched cross-border raids.
The Russian defence ministry said Ukrainian “terrorist formations” backed by tanks and armoured combat vehicles tried to invade in three separate directions in Russia’s Belgorod region at about 3 am Moscow time.
It said that four more attacks by Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance groups” were repulsed around five hours later in Russia’s Kursk region.
Responsibility for the raids was claimed by at least two Ukraine-based armed groups - the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion - which purport to be made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin.
The Legion said in a Telegram post:
We will take our land from the regime centimetre by centimetre.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence, told Ukraine’s 24 Channel the groups were conducting the operation on Russian territory independently of Ukraine. He said a third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps, was also participating in the operation.
Reuters could not independently confirm any of the parties’ accounts or how many people had been killed or wounded. Russia said it had used aviation, missile forces and artillery to repel the attacks.
The incidents took place three days before the start of voting in a Russian presidential election in which Vladimir Putin is set to extend his rule by six more years.
In a reference to the vote, the Freedom of Russia Legion posted on social media:
The people will vote for whom they want, not for whom they have to. Russians will live freely.
Ukraine separately pounded targets across Russia on Tuesday with at least 25 drones and nine rockets, setting a major oil refinery on fire.
Asked about those attacks and the border incidents, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
Our military is doing everything necessary, the air defence systems are working.
Updated
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi has said there is no direct safety issue from Ukrainian staff being barred from accessing the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Ukraine has called a “grave concern”.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Grossi said in an interview with Reuters:
The situation is not sustainable in the long term. At the same time, in the present configuration in shutdown, the staff that is there can do the job.
He responded: “Not directly” when asked whether there were any safety issues arising from the staff who are banned from the plant.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, formerly controlled by Ukrainian state-owned company Energoatom, was seized by Russian forces during its invasion of Ukraine two years ago and continues to be on the frontline of the war.
Last week, the IAEA’s Board of Governors voted to demand Russia withdraw from the plant and that it be returned to the control of Ukrainian authorities.
Although some Ukrainian staff currently work alongside Russians to operate the plant, some Ukrainians have been barred from the plant for refusing to sign new Russian contracts.
Grossi has put the number of holdouts at around 100. Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko has said that was “another Russian lie” and the real number was 380, adding that the lack of staffing meant the situation was “moving to (a) nuclear accident”.
“This is a matter of a bit of subjectivity,” Grossi said on Tuesday when explaining the discrepancy of the numbers.
The comments came after Grossi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other issues.
Grossi said Putin confirmed his cooperation in ensuring the safety of the plant during their talks.
The IAEA gave a technical assessment of the current situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant and discussed potential future plans for restarting it given its current condition, Grossi said, without elaborating on further details.
US President Joe Biden is meeting Poland’s president and prime minister today to show solidarity for Ukraine in its battle against Russian invaders and discuss ways to increase funding for Nato against the ongoing threat from Moscow.
The meeting at the White House between Biden and Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk comes amid a campaign by Biden to overcome Republican hardliners in Congress who are stalling $95 billion for Ukraine weaponry and aid to Israel.
Noting the three leaders will coordinate ahead of the annual Nato summit, to be held July 9-11 in Washington, the White House said:
The leaders will reaffirm their unwavering support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s brutal war of conquest.
A White House official said the three leaders would celebrate the 25th anniversary of Poland joining Nato and will discuss “deepening our defence relationship which has grown closer over the past two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Duda set the stage for the talks by writing an opinion article for the Washington Post calling for each Nato ally to increase defence spending from 2% to 3% of GDP because Russian President Vladimir Putin has switched the Russian economy to war mode and is allocating 30% of the annual budget to arm itself.
He wrote:
A return to the status quo ante is not possible. Russia’s imperialistic ambitions and aggressive revisionism are pushing Moscow toward a direct confrontation with NATO, with the West and, ultimately, with the whole free world.
Updated
The main crude distillation unit (AVT-6) at Russia’s NORSI refinery is damaged which means that at least half of the refinery’s production is halted, industry sources have told Reuters.
European Union leaders will back a change to the lending policy of the European Investment Bank, so that the huge European government-owned lender can finance defence projects, draft conclusions of the leaders’ summit next week say.
The executive European Commission called on the EIB last week to change its lending policy, which now explicitly excludes lending for purely military projects, to help Europe ramp up its defence production following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But some EU governments, especially neutral countries, have been reluctant, concerned that financing defence could hurt the EIB’s top credit rating and not address the problem, which they say is not a lack of funding, but of long-term contracts.
The draft conclusions, seen by Reuters, say:
Increasing defence readiness will contribute to enhancing the Union’s sovereignty and will require additional efforts to ... improve the European defence industry’s access to public and private finance, including through the European Investment Bank by inter alia reconsidering the definition of dual use goods and the defence industry lending policy.
Ukraine-based armed groups, purporting to include Russians, say they have launched incursion into Russia
At least two Ukraine-based armed groups purporting to be made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin launched an incursion across Russia’s western border on Tuesday, according to their social media pages.
The Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion both announced on their Telegram pages that they had launched attacks into Russia from Ukraine.
The Freedom of Russia Legion said in its Telegram post:
We will take our land from the regime centimetre by centimetre.
Reuters could not independently verify the claims.
Russian officials could not be immediately reached for comment on the claims on Tuesday.
In the past, Russian officials have cast the groups as puppets of the Ukrainian military and US Central Intelligence Agency, which Moscow says is trying to foment chaos in Russia.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence, told Ukraine’s 24 Channel the groups were conducting the operation on Russian territory independently of Ukraine.
Yusov said a third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps, was also participating in the operation.
The legion’s post appeared to refer to the upcoming Russian election, which will take place this weekend, stating:
The people will vote for whom they want, not for whom they have to. Russians will live freely.
The Freedom of Russia legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps have previously claimed responsibility for other cross-border raids into Russia from Ukraine.
Updated
Russia, China and Iran have begun joint navy drills in the Gulf of Oman, Russia’s defence ministry said, adding that the exercise focused on protection of maritime economic activity.
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
A fleet of Ukrainian drones has targeted Russia, causing explosions and fires at fuel refineries, cutting electricity supplies and reaching Moscow and beyond, according to reports from Russian authorities.
Russian fuel facilities in Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions were on fire on Tuesday after drone attacks, local governors and media said. Air defence systems reacted to 25 drones launched by Ukraine over several Russian regions, RIA state news reported, citing Russia’s defence ministry. It was not immediately clear whether all the drones were destroyed.
Nizhny Novgorod is nearly 1,000km from the Ukrainian border and lies about 400km to the east of Moscow. Oryol is about 150 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Reuters reports that at least two Ukraine-based armed groups purporting to be made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin launched an incursion across Russia’s western border on Tuesday, according to their social media pages.
The Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion both announced on their Telegram pages that they had launched attacks into Russia from Ukraine, though the news agency could not independently verify the claims.
In other key developments:
The international Red Cross movement is under pressure to take action against the Russian Red Cross (RRC) over close links between the group and the Kremlin’s war and propaganda machine.
Russian troops’ advance in Ukraine “has been stopped”, according to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, with the situation along the front at its best in three months. Zelenskiy, in an interview with France’s BFM television, said Ukraine had improved its strategic position despite shortages of weaponry, but suggested the situation could change without new supplies.
It comes after Russia captured Avdiivka and then advanced into nearby villages. In the past week, Ukraine’s military has been saying that Russian forces are no longer advancing and Ukrainian troops have improved their position. Zelenskiy noted Ukrainian shootdowns of Russian warplanes and sinking of targets in the Black Sea. “We have recovered in our situation in the east.”
The EU is pushing to fast-track to Ukraine €2bn-€3bn this year in profits from frozen Russian assets, the Financial Times has reported.
China is providing economic and security assistance to the Vladimir Putin’s war effort by supporting Russia’s industrial base, according to an annual assessment by US intelligence agencies.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, has called for Europe to boost its defence production. CNN has reported that Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery shells a month, or about 3 million a year, in contrast to the US and Europe, which together can generate about 1.2m annually for Ukraine, according to a senior European intelligence official.
Ukraine summoned the Vatican’s envoy to Kyiv after Pope Francis suggested Ukraine should consider raising “the white flag” against Russia. “Due to the statements of Pope Francis the Apostolic Nuncio was invited to the ministry of foreign affairs of Ukraine,” the ministry said, adding the envoy, Visvaldas Kulbodas, was told Kyiv was “disappointed with the words of the pontiff regarding the ‘white flag’.”
