Russia-Ukraine war live: Luhansk governor denies Russian claims of breakthrough in the region

Germany’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, has criticised the Swiss government for refusing to send ammunition for Gepard tanks to Ukraine.

Habeck said he “cannot understand” why Switzerland does not provide Gepard ammunition to Kyiv, in an interview with Die Zeit.

Switzerland has previously vetoed requests from Spain, Denmark and Germany who wanted to send Swiss-made armoured vehicles, ammunition and anti-aircraft guns to help Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Switzerland’s War Materials Act does not allow the export of war materials if the destination country is involved in an internal or international armed conflict.

Stoltenberg also urged Turkey to ratify the Nato applications of Finland and Sweden at the same time, during his press conference just now.

He added that, ultimately, it “is a Turkish decision”.

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The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, attends a news conference during a defence ministers’ meeting at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. Photograph: Johanna Geron/Reuters

Switzerland has said the seizing of private Russian assets would undermine the country’s constitution.

In a statement, the Swiss government cited the findings of a working group set up by the Federal Office of Justice.

The group concluded that “the expropriation of private assets of lawful origin without compensation is not permissible under Swiss law” and that the confiscation of frozen private assets “is inconsistent with the federal constitution and the prevailing legal order and violates Switzerland’s international commitments”, the statement reads.

It added:

Support for Ukraine will continue, independent of the discussions on frozen assets.

Switzerland froze financial assets worth 7.5bn Swiss francs (£6.74bn) under sanctions against Russians in response to its invasion of Ukraine, the state secretariat for economic affairs said in December.

Nato allies have not reached conclusions on a new pledge for defence spending, Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting with defence ministers in Brussels.

He said it was “obvious that we need to spend more”, and that member states should commit to spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence.

Nato defence ministers have taken steps to further strengthen the alliance’s deterrence and defence, Stoltenberg says.

The move “reflects the reality that we live in a more dangerous world with Russia’s aggressive behaviour, persistent terrorism and the challenges posed by China”, he says.

Stoltenberg says Nato will coordinate improvements in protection of critical under-sea infrastructure, referring to the sabotage of the North Stream pipelines last September.

Allied support for Ukraine is consuming an “enormous quantity” of ammunition and depleting its stocks, he says.

Nato countries are increasing the production of 155 mm artillery rounds and needed to ramp up that production even further to help Ukraine, he added. “Artillery shells 155 are increasing,” he said.

He added:

Yes, things are happening but we need to continue, we need to step up even more. This is now becoming a grinding war of attrition and a war of attrition is a war of logistics.

Russia is sending heavy equipment and mobilised troops into the Luhansk region but Ukrainian forces continue to defend the eastern Ukrainian region, its governor, Serhiy Haidai, has said.

The Russian defence ministry claimed earlier its troops had broken through two fortified lines of Ukrainian defences on the eastern front of Luhansk. It said Ukrainian troops had retreated in the face of Russian attacks, but did not say in which part of the region.

In a statement posted to Telegram, the Russian ministry said:

During the offensive … the Ukrainian troops randomly retreated to a distance of up to 3 km (1.9 miles) from the previously occupied lines. Even the more fortified second line of defence of the enemy could not hold the breakthrough of the Russian military.

Haidai said Russia’s claims that Ukrainian troops had pulled back “does not correspond to reality”. He said:

There is a lot of shelling, the aviation is already connected. The attacks are coming from different directions in waves. We see that they are transferring mobilised people (to the front), we also see that there is more (heavy) equipment.

The situation in Luhansk remains difficult, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said earlier today, without mentioning any retreats in eastern Ukraine. It said:

Over the past day, units of the Defence Forces of Ukraine repelled attacks by the (Russian) occupiers in the Nevskyi, Kreminna and Bilohorivka districts.

It has not been possible to verify either side’s battlefield reports.

Hello everyone, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong taking over the live blog from Martin Belam. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.

Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, is speaking at a news conference after a meeting of defence ministers at the military alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

“Time is of the essence” and Kyiv has a “window of opportunity to tip the balance”, Stoltenberg says, adding that he welcomed the new pledges of support made by Nato allies, “including more weapons and military training”.

The European Commission has called for a ban on the export of vital technology to Russia worth €11bn to further weaken the Kremlin’s war effort, cementing what EU officials have called the bloc’s toughest ever sanctions.

Unveiling the EU’s 10th round of sanctions against Russia since last February’s invasion, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU was targeting industrial goods that Russia needs, such as electronic components for drones and helicopters; spare parts for trucks and jet engines; construction equipment such as antennas or cranes that could be turned to military uses.

For the first time the EU will also impose a ban on seven Iranian companies selling high-tech goods to Russia, although it was not immediately clear how this would be enforced. Von der Leyen said this should act as a strong deterrent to other companies and traders. The bloc has already imposed asset freezes on any bank accounts held in the EU by Iranian state-linked entities involved in selling drones to Russia.

The EU’s top diplomats are meeting on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the latest sanctions plan, with the aim of getting measures into law by 24 February, the first anniversary of the Russian invasion.

But a leaked version of the latest proposals seen by the Guardian shows the EU has not answered Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plea to blacklist Russia’s nuclear industry in Europe.

For weeks, EU officials had played down the possibility of action to sanction the Russian nuclear industry, a move Hungary – a Rosatom client – has threatened to veto. Nonetheless when Ukraine’s president met EU leaders last Thursday, he urged this step, describing it as “a moral question”.

The EU’s latest sanctions will also put further restrictions on Russian exports believed to generate revenues for the Russia state, from roses to chemicals to pipes and tubes.

The bloc also aims to close loopholes, for example to stop Russian oligarchs using non-Russian private jet charter companies, or from seeking to hide their assets.

The latest proposals will also add more Russians and Ukrainians working for Russia in the occupied territories to the sanctions list. Set to be targeted are more Russian politicians, propagandists, as well as judges in occupied Ukraine cooperating with Russian authorities.

Von der Leyen said:

We now have in place the toughest sanctions ever issued by the European Union and we have to ensure that they are strictly applied.

• Ukrainian forces claim to have repelled some Russian attacks in the eastern region of Luhansk but the situation there remains difficult, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said on Wednesday.

• Russia said earlier on Wednesday that its troops had broken through two fortified lines of Ukrainian defences on the eastern front. The Russian defence ministry said Ukrainian forces had retreated in a disorganised fashion, leaving behind equipment in the face of Russian attacks in the Luhansk region.

• At least 6,000 children from Ukraine have attended Russian “re-education” camps in the past year, with several hundred held there for weeks or months beyond their scheduled return date, according to a new report published in the US. Russia has also unnecessarily expedited the adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine in what could constitute a war crime, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report found. The report was funded by the US state department.

• Nato defence ministers are meeting today in Brussels, where the alliance’s head Jens Stoltenberg urged Western countries to boost supplies to Ukraine. Nato countries should spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defence, said the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, ahead of the meeting, while the UK’s defence minister Ben Wallace again ruled out sending jet fighters to Ukraine in the short term.

• Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the west has reached “the point of no return” in turning Ukraine into “a Russophobic military foothold”, and that the future of Russia’s foreign policy is to end the dominance of the west in international life. Lavrov was addressing Russia’s state Duma.

• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that foreign journalists from unfriendly nations will not get media accreditation for Vladimir Putin’s presidential address to the federal assembly on 21 February.

• The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday the EU will propose sanctions targeting for the first time Iranian economic operators involved in the Russian war in Ukraine.

• Journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been sentenced to six years in prison in Russia for “distributing false information about the Russian army” after she posted on social media about the attack on the drama theatre in Mariupol. She has also been banned from journalism for five years.

• The delivery of German-made battle tanks to Ukraine came “a bit too late”, vice chancellor Robert Habeck said in an interview with Die Zeit.

• The UN’s humanitarian aid and refugee agencies said Wednesday they are seeking $5.6bn (£4.6bn) to help millions of people in Ukraine and countries that have taken in fleeing Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion of their country nearly a year ago.

• Support among the US public for providing Ukraine weaponry and direct economic assistance has softened as the Russian invasion nears the one-year mark, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 48% say they favour the US providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favour nor opposed.

That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later on. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly.

The delivery of German-made battle tanks to Ukraine came “a bit too late”, the vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, said, since time was running short ahead of an expected Russian offensive.

“With the decision to send the tanks we are doing what we can,” Reuters report he told newspaper Die Zeit in comments published on Wednesday. “A bit too late, but it’s done … Everyone is expecting a terrible Russian offensive … Time is pressing.”

The journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been sentenced to six years in prison in Russia for “distributing false information about the Russian army” after she posted on social media about the attack on the drama theatre in Mariupol. She has also been banned from journalism for five years.

She was first taken into custody in April 2022, and then had been placed under house arrest since November. The BBC Russian language service reported that she had posted on the “No Censorship” telegram channel, which talked about the deaths of people hiding in the Mariupol Theatre. Russia has repeatedly denied that its airstrike hit the theatre in Mariupol.

A little more detail on the court appearance of Maria Ponomarenko, the journalist who has been sentenced to six years in jail in Russia today. [See 10.29 GMT]

Reuters reports, via RusNews where Pnomarenko worked, that in court she said “Patriotism is love for the motherland, and love for one’s motherland should not be expressed by encouraging crime.”

Ponоmarenko then went on to say “Attacking your neighbour is a crime. If it is a war – then call it a war. This is a state crime against the army – it is like spitting on the graves of veterans.”

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the west has reached “the point of no return” in turning Ukraine into “a Russophobic military foothold”, and that the future of Russia’s foreign policy is to end the dominance of the west in international life.

The state-owned Tass news agency quotes him saying that the west’s policy for had been “many years of containment of Russia” including expanding Nato’s borders and “the transformation of fraternal Ukraine into anti-Russia, into a Russophobic military foothold.”

He accused Germany, France and Poland of sanctioning “a bloody coup d’état in Kyiv in February 2014 under frankly Nazi, racist slogans.”

Explaining Russia’s policy, he said:

In our updated foreign policy concept, we will talk about the need to end the west’s monopoly on the formation of the framework of international life, which should henceforth be determined not in its selfish interests, but on a fair, universal basis of a balance of interests, as required by the UN Charter, which enshrines the principle of the sovereign equality of all states.

Lavrov was speaking to Russia’s state Duma.

It would be better for all Nato countries if Sweden and Finland join the alliance together, not one after the after, Finland’s defence minister, Mikko Savola, said on Wednesday.

“It’s better for Finland, better for Sweden and also for Nato that we both become members as soon as possible,” Reuters reports Savola said before a meeting with colleagues from Nato countries and Sweden in Brussels.

“It is better for the planning, we have really close cooperation with Sweden, which is our closest partner.”

Yesterday Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that it was more important that the countries joined quickly, rather than necessarily together.

The membership bids have been ratified by all of Nato’s members except Hungary and Turkey. Ankara has demanded that both countries take a tougher line against the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the European Union.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday the EU will propose sanctions targeting for the first time Iranian economic operators involved in the Russian war in Ukraine.

“For the first time we are also proposing to sanction Iranian entities including those linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,” Von der Leyen told European lawmakers in Strasbourg, Reuters reports.

Von der Leyen said the 10th package of sanctions, worth a total of €11bn euros (£9.75bn / $11.79bn), would target new trade bans and technology export controls, including drones, helicopters and missiles.

The UN’s humanitarian aid and refugee agencies said Wednesday they are seeking $5.6bn (£4.6bn) to help millions of people in Ukraine and countries that have taken in fleeing Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion of their country nearly a year ago.

Associated Press report the bulk of the joint appeal – $3.9bn (£3.2bn) – is for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which aims to help more than 11 million people by funneling funds through more than 650 partner organisations.

Refugee agency UNHCR, meanwhile, is seeking $1.7bn (£1.4bn) to help 4.2 million refugees who have fled to 10 host countries in eastern and central Europe.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been speaking in Russia’s state Duma, and so far he has said that Russia’s foreign policy concept is aimed at ending western dominance in the world.

More details soon …

Ukrainian forces claim to have repelled some Russian attacks in the eastern region of Luhansk but the situation there remains difficult, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said on Wednesday.

Russia said earlier on Wednesday that its troops had broken through two fortified lines of Ukrainian defences on the eastern front. The Russian defence ministry said Ukrainian forces had retreated in a disorganised fashion, leaving behind equipment in the face of Russian attacks in the Luhansk region.

Zelenskiy’s office made no mention of any retreats, Reuters reports, but said “The situation in the region remains difficult.”

Neither sets of claims have been independently verified.

Luhansk is one of the partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that foreign journalists from unfriendly nations will not get media accreditation for Vladimir Putin’s presidential address to the federal assembly on 21 February. Tass quotes Peskov saying:

As for the president’s message to the federal assembly, foreign media representing friendly countries will be accredited there. We will not invite foreign media from unfriendly countries there.

Peskov went on to say that media from unfriendly nations could watch the address on television.

Here are some of the latest images sent to us from Ukraine across the news wires.

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A view of a destroyed bridge spanning the Oskil river in Kharkiv region. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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Kherson international airport marked with the Z symbol after being used as a logistics hub and base by the Russian military during occupation. Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

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A wrecked Soviet-era plane in the aircraft graveyard at Kherson international airport. Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

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An abandoned Russian military position in Kherson region. Photograph: Scott Peterson/Getty Images

Nato countries should spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defence, said the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, on Wednesday as Nato defence ministers gathered in Brussels.

“Just spending two percent will not be enough. It must be the basis for everything that follows. The German government is debating that right now and will soon reach an agreement,” Pistorius told the media, Reuters reports.

The British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, is doing a media round of UK outlets from Brussels, and said on Sky News that allies could help Ukraine more quickly by supporting their position on the ground rather than focusing on the provision of jets.

Wallace has argued that fighter jets require a “very substantial pit crew” and that Britain could provide more immediate support through the provision of long range weapons and anti-aircraft missiles.

“I think we can help Ukraine sooner by delivering the effects they need on the battlefield rather than the platform specific request,” Reuters report he said.

The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, spoke to the BBC from Brussels this morning about the prospect of sending fighter jets to Ukraine, as the country’s politicians have requested. He said:

I don’t think it’s going to be in the next few months, or even years, that we are going to necessarily hand over fighter jet, because they are very different weapons systems to you know, handheld anti-tank missiles.

These aircraft come with not only huge sort of capability challenges, you know, you just can’t learn to fly in a week or two, it will take a long time.

But also they come with a pit crew like a Formula One team, you know, they come with hundreds of engineers and pilots. And that’s not something you can just generate in a few months, and we’re not going to deploy 200 RAF personnel into Ukraine at a time of war.

So the reality is what we’re saying is that we have to plan not only for the fight at the moment, where we help Ukraine through seeing off Russia’s illegal invasion, but we have to help Ukraine with its long term resilience, in making sure that after this war, Ukraine is able to defend itself for the long run.

Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne has posted this summary of the last 24 hours to its Telegram channel. It reports:

• The Russian Federation lost approximately 690 of its soldiers in the war against Ukraine, the general staff of the armed forces reported. The total combat losses of the Russian Federation since 24 February are estimated to be almost 140,000.

• On 14 February, Russian shelling in Donetsk region left one person dead and another injured.

• The Kherson region was shelled 38 times yesterday: a medical facility and residential buildings were damaged. Two people were injured.

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Martin Belam will bring you the latest for the next while.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has not mentioned any significant setbacks in Luhansk in its morning update on Wednesday.

The Kremlin has intensified attacks across a swathe of southern and eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, and a major new offensive has been widely anticipated.

Russia’s main effort has been focused on the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk province adjacent to Luhansk.

The General Staff said Ukrainian units had repelled attacks in the areas of more than 20 settlements, including Bakhmut as well as Vuhledar – a town 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Bakhmut.

More now on that poll from AP.

US president Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that the United States will help Ukraine for “as long as it takes”. Privately, administration officials have warned Ukrainian officials that there is a limit to the patience of a narrowly divided Congress — and American public — for the costs of a war with no clear end. Congress approved about $113bn in economic, humanitarian and military spending in 2022.

The poll shows 19% of Americans have a great deal of confidence in Biden’s ability to handle the situation in Ukraine, while 37% say they have only some confidence and 43% have hardly any.

Views of Biden’s handling of the war divide largely along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 40% say they have a great deal of confidence in Biden to handle the situation, 50% have some confidence and 9% have hardly any. Among Republicans, a large majority (76%) say they have hardly any confidence. Those numbers are largely unchanged since last May.

The upper chamber of Russia’s parliament will hold extraordinary meeting on 22 February, RIA Novosti news agency reported on Wednesday, citing a senior lawmaker.

The head of a Federation Council committee, Vyacheslav Timchenko, told RIA the meeting would focus on adoption of laws on the integration of four regions into the Russian Federation.

Last year Moscow moved to annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in Ukraine in a move condemned by most countries of the United Nations as illegal.

RIA quoted a source as saying that State Duma, a lower chamber, will gather in the morning on 22 February while Federation Council’s extraordinary session will start at 12:00 GMT.

President Vladimir Putin will deliver his annual address to the federal assembly – a joint meeting of Russia’s two houses of parliament – on 21 February.

Support among the American public for providing Ukraine weaponry and direct economic assistance has softened as the Russian invasion nears the one-year mark, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

48% say they favour the US providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favour nor opposed. In May 2022, less than three months into the war, 60% of US adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.

Americans are about evenly divided on sending government funds directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favour and 38% opposed, with 23% saying neither. The signs of diminished support for Ukraine come as President Joe Biden is set to travel to Poland next week to mark the first anniversary of the biggest conflict in Europe since the second world war.

At least 6,000 children from Ukraine have attended Russian “re-education” camps in the past year, with several hundred held there for weeks or months beyond their scheduled return date, according to a new report published in the US.

Russia has also unnecessarily expedited the adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine in what could constitute a war crime, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report found. The report was funded by the US state department.

Since the start of the war nearly a year ago, children as young as four months have been taken to 43 camps across Russia, including in Moscow-annexed Crimea and Siberia, for “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education”, said the report.

In at least two of the camps, the children’s return date was delayed by weeks, while at two other camps, the return of some children was postponed indefinitely.

Russian authorities sought to provide a pro-Moscow viewpoint to children through school curricula as well as through field trips to patriotic sites and talks from veterans, the report found:

Related: Thousands of Ukrainian children put through Russian ‘re-education’ camps, US report finds

Nato defence ministers are meeting today in Brussels, where the alliance’s head Jens Stoltenberg urged Western countries to boost supplies to Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Stoltenberg urged members of the transatlantic military alliance to ramp up ammunition production for Ukraine as he warned Vladimir Putin was preparing for new offensives and attacks.

“We see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace. What we see is the opposite, he is preparing for more war, for new offensives and new attacks,” Stoltenberg said.

Stoltenberg said the question of supplying fighter jets to Ukraine was on the agenda but “not the most urgent issue now”.

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A general view of the first day of the Nato defence ministers’ meeting on 14 February 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Instead, he said, “the urgent issue right now is to deliver what has always been promised”, namely armoured vehicles, including German Marders and US Bradleys, Leopard battle tanks and others. “We need the training, we need the equipment, we need the ammunition and that’s exactly what allies are now providing and will be a top issue at the meetings today here at Nato.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was in a hurry to achieve as much as it could with its latest offensive before Kyiv and its allies could gather strength.

“That is why speed is of the essence. Speed in everything – adopting decisions, carrying out decisions, shipping supplies, training. Speed saves people’s lives, speed brings back security,” he said in an evening video address.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments for the next few hours.

Our top stories this morning. Nato members will meet for a second day in Brussels to discuss sending supplies to Ukraine.

Nato defence ministers met on Tuesday to discuss the war and stockpiles, after which Zelenskiy said Russia was in a hurry to achieve as much as it could with its latest push before Ukraine and its allies could gather strength.

“That is why speed is of the essence,” he said in an evening video address.

“Speed in everything – adopting decisions, carrying out decisions, shipping supplies, training. Speed saves people’s lives, speed brings back security, and I thank all our partners who realise that speed is important.”

And at least 6,000 children from Ukraine have attended Russian “re-education” camps in the past year, with several hundred held there for weeks or months beyond their scheduled return date, according to a new report published in the US.

More on these stories shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:

• Russia has lost “strategically, operationally and tactically”, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of America’s joint chiefs of staff, has said. Speaking at a joint news conference with US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin, Milley said Russians were “paying an enormous price on the battlefield” in Ukraine.

• Lloyd Austin has said he expects Ukraine to conduct an offensive against Russia in the spring. Speaking at a news conference following a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group, Austin said Russia is introducing a number of new troops to the battlefield but that many are ill-trained and ill-equipped. Russia has “inflicted a year of tragedy and terror” on its neighbour Ukraine, he said.

• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday that supplying Ukraine with fighter jets was not a focus at the moment but would certainly be discussed. Securing Ukraine’s airspace is the priority, he told Germany’s ARD television. “Only when the skies over Ukraine remain safe over the next three, four months, then you can talk about all other further steps,” he said.

• Ukrainian forces have reportedly blown up a bridge near the eastern city of Bakhmut, in a sign they may be planning to retreat from the area. Ukraine denies it intends to leave Bakhmut, despite six months of heavy fighting. The capture of Bakhmut would give Russia a significant symbolic boost ahead of the first anniversary of the war.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group whose mercenaries have been fighting for months to take the eastern city of Bakhmut, has said the battle is far from over. In a Telegram post, Prigozhin said Ukraine was reinforcing with up to 500 new fighters a day. “Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance and grinding, the meat grinder is working,” he said, adding “We will not be celebrating in the near future.”

• Russian forces have made incremental progress in the last day or two in their assault on the Ukrainian city of Bahkmut but it is unclear if it will fall, the White House has said. John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, added that if Bakhmut were to fall to the Russians “it would not have a strategic impact on the overall war”.

• A British national has died in Ukraine, the UK government has said. The identity of the individual is not yet known, but their family has been informed. They are believed to be the eighth British national to have died in Ukraine since the war began last February.

• One Ukrainian worker was killed and many have been hurt in recent days trying to repair the power network following Russian airstrikes, according to energy minister German Galushchenko. Russia unleashed a wave of airstrikes on Friday, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and causing emergency power outages for millions of people. In a statement, Galushchenko and Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergy said the country was producing enough energy to meet consumers’ needs.