We are closing this blog now but you can read all our coverage about Ukraine here.
A summary of today's developments
At least ten people have been killed and an estimated 58 wounded on Saturday by a Russian strike on the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson, hours after Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned of a new wave of Russian attacks over Christmas.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the attack in Kherson is more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with more defence systems.
Zelenskiy said it was “terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure”.
Workers in Russian-occupied Mariupol have begun dismantling the theatre in the southern city, subject to a protracted siege earlier this year where hundreds were killed in an airstrike.
Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.
A Ukrainian official has called for Iranian drone and missile factories to be destroyed because of their use by Russia in the war. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Iran “blatantly humiliates the institution of international sanctions”.
The Netherlands has pledged €2.5bn ($2.7bn) to help Ukraine in 2023, with most of the money earmarked for military aid.
Russian troops have attacked settlements near Bakhmut, a city in the east of Ukraine, with tanks, mortars, cannon and rocket artillery in the past 24 hours. The Ukrainian general staff of the armed forces said that three missile strikes, 10 airstrikes and 62 multiple launch rocket system attacks had taken place.
The rock band Pink Floyd has raised $600,000 for Ukraine with the song Hey Hey Rise Up.
A major Russian shipyard that specialises in building non-nuclear submarines said its general director had died suddenly on Saturday after 11 years in the job, but gave no details.
Admiralty Shipyards, based in the western port of St Petersburg, announced the death of Alexander Buzakov in a statement. He had been in the job since August 2012, Reuters reports.
His main achievement, it said, had been preserving and strengthening the shipyard’s order books for modern non-nuclear submarines, surface ships and deep water vehicles.
Tass news agency said the shipyard is building improved Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles.
In April, Moscow said it used a diesel submarine in the Black Sea to strike Ukrainian military targets with Kalibrs.
Yaroslav Yanushevych, governor of the Kherson region, said in televised remarks that 55 people were wounded after the shelling in Kherson, 18 of them in grave condition including a 6-year-old child.
Saturday marks 10 months since the start of the Russian invasion.
The rock band Pink Floyd has raised $600,000 for Ukraine with the song Hey Hey Rise Up.
Rock band Pink Floyd announced it has raised the funds with the song Hey Hey Rise Up. The song features vocals by Andriy Khlyvniuk, Ukrainian lead vocalist of Boombox, from his viral video singing a folk song in central Kyiv during first day of the full-scale invasion.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) December 24, 2022
Death toll rises to 10 after Kherson strikes
A Russian strike on Ukraine’s recently recaptured city of Kherson has killed at least 10 people, wounded another 58 and left bloodied corpses on the road, authorities said.
The Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych told national television the death toll had risen to 10, up from seven reported earlier, Interfax Ukraine news agency said.
Fresh from a trip to the US seeking weapons to resist the 10-month Russian invasion, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy published photos showing streets strewn with burning cars, smashed windows and bodies, Reuters reports.
“Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’. But this is not sensitive content – it is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he wrote.
“These are not military facilities ... It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”
Updated
The UK’s ministry of defence has just tweeted this message to remember the troops fighting in Ukraine.
"Your courage and tenacity to defending your country is a shining example to all of us"
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 24, 2022
As we settle down for Christmas this year, let us keep those courageous men and women fighting to defend their country in our thoughts.
Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Lsikm0Ov49
Summary
As the time approaches 6pm in Kyiv on Christmas Eve, here’s a round-up of todays news as eight people have been killed in a Russian shelling attack.
At least eight people have been killed and another 58 wounded on Saturday by a Russian strike on the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson, hours after Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned of a new wave of Russian attacks over Christmas.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, has said the attack in Kherson on Saturday is more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with more defence systems.
Zelenskiy said it was “terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure”.
Workers in Russian-occupied Mariupol have begun dismantling the theatre in the southern city, subject to a protracted siege earlier this year where hundreds were killed in an airstrike.
Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.
A Ukrainian official has called for Iranian drone and missile factories to be destroyed because of their use by Russia in the war. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Iran “blatantly humiliates the institution of international sanctions”.
The Netherlands has pledged €2.5bn ($2.7bn) to help Ukraine in 2023, with most of the money earmarked for military aid.
Russian troops have attacked settlements near Bakhmut, a city in the east of Ukraine, with tanks, mortars, cannon and rocket artillery in the past 24 hours. The Ukrainian general staff of the armed forces said that three missile strikes, 10 airstrikes and 62 multiple launch rocket system attacks had taken place.
Updated
At least eight people were killed and another 58 wounded on Saturday by a Russian strike on the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson, hours after Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned of a new wave of Russian attacks over Christmas.
“On a weekend, on the eve of Christmas, the Russians attacked the city centre. They attacked the market, shopping centre, residential buildings, administrative buildings – the places where the most people are,” said Yaroslav Yanushevich, the governor of the region.
Shortly after, Zelenskiy described the attacks as an act of “terror.”
“Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content’. But this is not sensitive content – it is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskiy wrote.
“These are not military facilities … It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”
Yuriy Sobolevskyi, the deputy chair of the regional council, said the missile landed next to a supermarket by the city’s Freedom Square.
“There were civilians there, each of whom lived their own life, went about their own business,” he said, noting the presence of a girl selling phone sim cards, others unloading items from a truck, and passersby.
Russia did not immediately comment on Saturday’s strike. On Friday, Putin told Russia’s defence industry chiefs to provide the army with “everything it needs”.
The liberation of Kherson last month marked a major battlefield gain for Kyiv – reconquered after the Russians retreated to the east bank of the Dnipro River.
However, since then inhabitants have been faced with constant Russian shelling, forcing hundreds of locals to flee.
“The Russians first came to Kherson, looted it and killed a lot of people. Now that they have fled, they are still trying to destroy it,” Konstantin, a resident from Kherson said.
“But there is no panic. People are just filled with rage towards Russia.”
Elsewhere on Saturday, the Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko travelled to Moscow for a series of meetings with senior Russian officials, including his counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko’s visit comes days after Putin made a rare trip to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, as fears grow in Kyiv that Moscow is pushing its closest ally to join a new ground offensive against Ukraine.
Experts remain sceptical about the chance of Belarusian troops, considered relatively weak, entering Ukraine, even if Putin is pushing for it.
In a report on Friday, the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) thinktank said that it “continues to assess that a renewed large-scale Russian invasion from Belarus is unlikely this winter”.
The chief of the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR), Kyrylo Budanov, said on Friday that Russia was trying to divert Ukrainian forces from the south-east by setting up a feint in Belarus.
Updated
This dispatch comes from a Reuters’ reporter in Russian-occupied Mariupol, as workers begin the process of taking down the theatre where hundreds of people died in March in a Russian airstrike.
It was the cultural heart of a Ukrainian city, but it turned into a symbol of death.
Today the Mariupol Drama Theatre, where hundreds of civilians were killed in a Russian airstrike on 16 March, is reduced to a roofless, rubble-filled shell.
The facade still stands, crowned by a Greek-style pediment where the sculpted figures of a group of performers, some with musical instruments, remain intact.
But Reuters reporters who visited the Russian-controlled city on Saturday were able to confirm that authorities are demolishing and clearing what is left of the smashed rear portion of the building – about half of the original structure.
Drone footage showed an excavator reaching high into the air to claw down chunks of masonry, which collapsed to the ground in clouds of dust. A yellow bulldozer was in motion nearby.
The bombing of the theatre – now entirely fenced off behind a tall white screen – was part of a protracted Russian siege of the southern port city, which held out for more than two months but was left with most of its buildings in ruins.
Civilians had taken refuge in the theatre and the Russian word for “Children” had been painted on the ground in large white letters, clearly visible from the air.
Russia denies targeting civilians. At the time, its defence ministry accused the Azov regiment, a unit of Ukraine’s armed forces, of blowing up the theatre.
Ukrainian officials said at least 300 people were killed in the bombing, though some estimates said the toll was higher.
They say the clearing of the site is part of an attempt by Russia to remove the evidence.
“Now the memories of hundreds of thousands of Mariupol residents and evidence of the genocide of Ukrainians are being taken to … landfill,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the exiled mayor of Mariupol, posted on social media on Saturday.
“Rage. Just Rage,” he wrote.
Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the theatre’s director, Igor Solonin, as saying that the demolition concerned “only that part of the building that is impossible to restore”. It said plans called for reconstruction to be complete by the end of 2024.
Two Russian soldiers and two Russian mercenaries have jailed after admitting torturing Ukrainian veterans.
A court in Poltava said they had been found to have violated the “laws and customs of war” according to the Kyiv Independent, citing the Kharkiv oblast prosecutor’s office.
They were found to have brutally tortured three war veterans in the village of Borova, in northeast Kharkiv oblast.
The four pleaded guilty to the charges and have been sentenced to 11 years in prison with the right of an appeal.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov has said the attack in Kherson on Saturday is more evidence that Ukraine needs to be supplied with more defence systems.
On Twitter he said: “Ukraine will be able to prevent such tragedies if it has more means of counter-battery warfare, more artillery and more long-range ammunition.”
Eight people are reported to have died, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office. The shelling hit one of the city’s busy district on Christmas Eve. More than 50 are said to have been injured.
Ukraine will be able to prevent such tragedies if it has more means of counter-battery warfare, more artillery and more long-range ammunition.
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) December 24, 2022
Thus, russian murderers will be punished and driven out from Ukraine.
2/2 https://t.co/sYEUf4imT5
Russian troops have attacked settlements near Bakhmut, a city in the east of Ukraine, with tanks, mortars, cannon and rocket artillery in the past 24 hours.
The Ukrainian general staff of the armed forces said that three missile strikes, 10 airstrikes and 62 multiple launch rocket system attacks had taken place.
“In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy used tanks, mortars, cannon and rocket artillery to open fire on 25 settlements, including the Donetsk region’s Spirne, Berestove, Soledar, Bakhmut, Klishchiivka, Chasiv Yar, Stupochky, Bila Hora, Dyliivka and Opytne,” a daily update posted on Facebook said.
The area in Donetsk is hotly contested between Ukrainian forces, trying to defend the city and gain ground in the east, and Russian forces that have forced a months-long battle to try to take it.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the frontline city this week. He said: “Since May, the occupiers have been trying to break our Bakhmut, but time goes by and Bakhmut is breaking not only the Russian army, but also the Russian mercenaries who come to replace the wasted army of the occupiers.”
Updated
Eight people confirmed dead after Kherson shelling
At least eight people are now said to have been killed in the Russian shelling of Kherson city.
The office of the prosecutor general said that residential areas had been targeted. “As a result, at least eight civilians were killed,” a post on Telegram said.
Yaroslav Yanushevich, governor of the region said 58 had been injured.
“On a weekend, on the eve of Christmas, the Russians attacked the city center. They attacked the market, shopping center, residential buildings, administrative buildings – the places where the most people are,” he said.
He added that homes, civic buildings and motor vehicles were damaged.
An update on the Kherson attack from Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the president of Ukraine.
Posting on Telegram he said that 35 people were now known to have been injured, alongside the five killed. 16 of the 35 were in a serious condition, he said.
Another person was killed in a mortar attack on Kharkiv on Saturday, a 72-year-old man, with a 74-year-old woman taken to hospital with shrapnel injuries.
Air raid sirens have sounded again in the wider Kherson region on Saturday, along with Kyiv, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and seven other oblasts.
Updated
Zelenskiy: Attacks on Kherson are 'terrorism'
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the shelling on Kherson that has killed five and injured 20 others is “terrorism”.
Posting photographs of the aftermath of the attacks, including casualties lying on the street, he said: “The terrorist country continues bringing the Russian world in the form of shelling of the civilian population. Kherson. In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city.
“These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.
”The world must see and understand what absolute evil we are fighting against.”
Updated
Russian attacks on Kherson kill five and injure 20
Russian attacks on Kherson on Friday killed five people and injured 20 more, including a six-year-old girl.
The governor of Kherson oblast Yaroslav Yanushevych said she was in a serious condition.
“The girl was taken to hospital with multiple shrapnel wounds,” he said via Telegram.
He said that the Kherson region was shelled 74 times with artillery.
#Russian invaders continue to shell #Kherson. pic.twitter.com/zfSG3S6ar5
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) December 24, 2022
Ukraine has announced it has killed another 480 Russian troops, according to its latest casualty figures.
The daily publication by the general staff of the armed forces of Ukraine said 101,430 Russian service personnel had been killed since the invasion began in February.
It also added another tank, eight drones, eight armoured personnel vehicle and four artillery systems to its battlefield totals.
The figures have not been independently verified by the Guardian, and differ from the totals announced by the Kremlin.
A dispatch here from Associated Press’ reporter in Kyiv ahead of the first Christmas Day since the Russian invasion in February.
Just a year ago, Sophia Square in Kyiv was all about the big Christmas tree and thousands of lights spreading over the plaza. These final days of 2022, in the middle of a war that has ravaged the country for 10 months, a more modest tree stands there, its blue and yellow lights barely breaking the gloom of the square that is otherwise dark apart from the headlights of cars.
In recent months, Russia has been targeting the energy infrastructure, aiming to cut electricity and heating to Ukrainians, as the freezing winter advances. And although the Ukrainian government tries to move as fast as it can, it’s been practically impossible to restore power for every single person in the country, including the more than 3 million residents of the capital.
There are days when streets in Kyiv’s downtown have light, but the authorities have imposed some restrictions and scheduled power cuts, meaning that there’s no traditional gleaming city during the Christmas season.
But even in these gloomy moments, some people have decided to show their determination and rescue whatever they can these holidays – like the Christmas tree, still standing proud even if it doesn’t have the brightness of recent years.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, announced the installation of the Christmas tree, saying it was going to be named the “Tree of Invincibility.”
“We decided that we wouldn’t let Russia steal the celebration of Christmas and New Year from our children,” he said. The name, he added, was “because we Ukrainians cannot be broken.”
The “Tree of Invincibility” was inaugurated on 19 December, the same day that Russia launched a drone attack against Kyiv, but damaged only a power plant that didn’t caused a massive blackout in the city.
Unlike previous years, when along with the tens of thousands of bulbs, Sophia Square was full of music and cheerful people, now the only noise on the plaza is the sound of a generator powering the lights of the 12-meter (40 foot) tree. On top of it, there is no star of Bethlehem’s but instead a trident, Ukraine’s symbol.
Before Kyiv’s government decided to install the tree, there was some debate about whether it was appropriate in a year that brought so many tragedies and horrors. Similar discussions happened all across the country, and some regions decided not have trees.
But now, some people do like the initiative.
“We are grateful that we can see at least something in such times,” said Oleh Skakun, 56, during the unveiling of the tree on Monday.
He said that every 19 December, his wife’s birthday, they used to go to see the Christmas tree in the southern city of Kherson, not far from their home. Not this year, because their house, on the left bank of the Dnieper river, is occupied by Russian forces, and they had to flee in August to Kyiv.
But despite their sadness, Skakun said that they wanted to keep the tradition of visiting a Christmas tree.
“Twenty Russians live in my house now; they tortured people, they tortured my son,” said Larysa Skakun, 57. “But we came here to cheer up a bit, to see the people, the celebration”, she added in tears.
Among other cities that also decided to install a Christmas tree is Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city that for months was on the edges of the frontline and constantly attacked by Russian missiles. There, instead of placing it on a square, it has been erected inside the main subway station.
But for some Ukrainians, it’s hard to celebrate anything this Christmas.
Anna Holovina, 27, came to Sophia Square to see the tree, but said that she keeps thinking of her home town in the Luhansk region, occupied by Russian forces since 2014.
“I feel sadness. I feel pain. I don’t feel the holiday at all,” she said. “My family is in Kyiv, but my home town has been occupied for the eighth year now.”
A Ukrainian official has called for Iranian drone and missile factories to be destroyed because of their use by Russia in the war.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Iran “blatantly humiliates the institution of international sanctions”.
Podolyak said that Iran was planning to boost missile and drone supplies for Russia.
In a tweet, he said that plants should be “liquidated” and suppliers “arrested”.
The Netherlands has pledged €2.5bn ($2.7bn) to help Ukraine in 2023, with most of the money earmarked for military aid.
“Nearly two billion is intended for military support”, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, told a press conference in the Hague on Friday.
Agence France-Presse reported him as saying the would go towards humanitarian aid, rebuilding infrastructure as well as ensuring accountability.
The exact use of the contribution depends on the needs of Ukrainians and therefore on the course of the war.
The Dutch government said support for reconstruction was designed to help rebuild hospitals, housing, energy and agricultural infrastructure, as well as demining work.
Last week the Dutch defence minister, Kajsa Ollongren, said the Netherlands had provided nearly €1bn in military support to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country last February.
Rutte tweeted earlier on Friday:
As long as Russia continues its war against Ukraine [the Netherlands] will provide assistance ... Military, humanitarian and diplomatic. Ukraine can rely on the Netherlands.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned Ukrainians that Russia could launch more strikes over Christmas, urging them to “pay attention to air raid alarms, help one another and look out for one another”.
The Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address on Friday:
With the holiday season fast approaching, the Russian terrorists could again step up their activities. They have no regard for Christian values or any values for that matter.
Reuters also reported that Zelenskiy, switching to Russian, warned that “citizens of Russia must clearly understand that terror never goes without a response”. He did not elaborate.
He said he had met his top commanders to review the military situation and that his government was “preparing for various scenarios of action by the terrorist state – and we will respond”.
Russian strikes on infrastructure more infrequent due to missiles shortage – UK MoD
Russia is probably limiting its missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure because of its limited supply of cruise missiles, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says.
In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russia had increased its forces in Ukraine with tens of thousands of reservists since October, easing personnel shortages, but that “a shortage of munitions highly likely remains the key limiting factor on Russian offensive operations”.
It said that just sustaining defensive operations along Russia’s lengthy front line required a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets.
Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles.
Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 24 December 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 24, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/pCnQtNmhAj
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/z4gjnDuyON
Updated
US urges Putin to 'acknowledge reality' after ‘war’ reference
The United States has called on Vladimir Putin to acknowledge reality and withdraw troops from Ukraine after the Russian president finally called the conflict a “war”.
Agence France-Presse reported that since Putin ordered the invasion in February, Russia has officially spoken of a “special military operation” and imposed a law that criminalises what authorities call misleading terminology.
But at a news conference on Thursday, Putin used the word “war” as he said that he hoped to end it as soon as possible.
A State Department spokesperson said on Friday:
Since February 24, the United States and rest of the world knew that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ was an unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine. Finally, after 300 days, Putin called the war what it is.
As a next step in acknowledging reality, we urge him to end this war by withdrawing his forces from Ukraine.
The State Department said that, whatever Putin’s terminology, “Russia’s aggression against its sovereign neighbour has resulted in death, destruction and displacement”.
The people of Ukraine no doubt find little consolation in Putin stating the obvious, nor do the tens of thousands of Russian families whose relatives have been killed fighting Putin’s war.
A Russian court earlier this month sentenced an opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, to eight-and-a-half years in prison under the new law over his “false information” about the war.
Yashin had spoken of a “massacre” in Bucha, the town near Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv where the bullet-ridden bodies of Ukrainians in civilian clothes with hands tied behind their backs were discovered after Russian forces retreated.
An opposition legislator critical of the invasion, Nikita Yuferev, on Friday said he was seeking legal action against Putin for spreading “fake news” over his “war” reference.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. It’s 9am in Kyiv. Here’s a snapshot of the latest developments on this Saturday 24 December 2022.
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s defence industry chiefs ensure its army gets all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs “in the shortest possible timeframes” to fight in Ukraine. The Russian president also called for their proposals on “addressing the problems that are inevitable” and how to “make sure there are fewer of them”. Putin’s comments in the city of Tula, a centre for Russian arms manufacturing, came just days after he pledged to give his army anything it asked for in a meeting with Russia’s top military officials.
Russian forces have been demolishing a theatre in occupied Mariupol in southern Ukraine that was the site of a deadly airstrike believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor. Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said the move was an “attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by Russians”. Video posted on Ukrainian and Russian websites on Friday showed heavy equipment taking down much of the building. An Amnesty International investigation concluded the Russian attack was a war crime.
Iran is seeking to expand the supply of advanced weapons to Russia, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency has said, according to local media. The warning from David Barnea comes after the US this month expressed alarm over a “full-scale defence partnership” between Tehran and Moscow.
Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region 61 times on Thursday, killing one person and injuring two, said the head of the eastern Ukrainian region’s military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych. About half the strikes hit Kherson city, striking residential blocks, educational institutions and private houses, he said, while a kindergarten was also affected. Two civilians were killed in shelling of the city on Friday morning, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
Two people were injured after a car bomb exploded in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in south-eastern Ukraine, according to a local pro-Moscow official. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province, described the incident as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “militants of the Kyiv regime” to Russian state media. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, wrote on Telegram that witnesses said a car was “blown up”.
Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has described the discovery of a German intelligence official suspected of working for Russia as “alarming”, amid fears the offical had access to sensitive information from western allies. The man, an employee of the BND foreign intelligence agency identified as Carsten L, was arrested on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing state secrets to Russia, German prosecutors said.
Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high” and compared US-Russia relations to an “ice age” in comments reported by Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency. The Kremlin accused the US of fighting a proxy war against Russia.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted a video saying he is back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office – we are working toward victory,” he said in the video, posted to his Telegram channel on Friday.
Zelenskiy’s visit to the White House confirmed that Ukraine and the US are “strategic partners” for the first time in history, the Ukrainian leader’s most senior adviser has said. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainan president’s office, told the Guardian the trip had cemented Zelenskiy’s bond with the US president, Joe Biden, and senior US Republicans.
The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had “almost stopped”. Speaking on Russian state television, governor Yevgeny Balitsky said on Friday that Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant – Europe’s largest – and it would never return to Ukrainian control.
Ukraine estimates its grain harvest fell by about 40% year-on-year due to the Russian invasion, a representative for the country’s industry told Agence France-Presse. “We expect a grain harvest of 65-66 million tonnes” by the end of the year, the head of the Ukrainian Grain Association, Sergiy Ivashchenko, said on Friday, after a record harvest of 106m tonnes last year. “The main reason is the war,” which immediately led to fuel shortages and hindered sowing, he said.
Ukraine plans to open new embassies in 10 African countries, Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced, with the aim of increasing Kyiv’s presence in Africa and strengthening trade ties. There were also plans to develop a “Ukraine-Africa trade house” with offices in the capitals of “the most promising countries” on the African continent, he added.
