Ukraine Russia war latest news: Wagner chief says Putin has ‘cut him off’ over arms call

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has accused Russian president and his boss Vladimir Putin of cutting him off over repeated requests for replenishing his forces fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“To get me to stop asking for ammunition, all the hotlines to offices, to departments etc have been cut off from me. But the real humdinger is that they’ve also blocked agencies from making decisions [related to Wagner],” the private Russian military’s leader said on Telegram.

Rishi Sunak has said new support measures for Ukraine agreed between the UK and France are designed to put Kyiv in the “strongest possible position” to negotiate a ceasefire.

The Prime Minister and French President Emmanuel Macron used the UK-France summit to sign off on jointly training Ukrainian marines and supplying weapons to the country in its fight against Russia’s invading forces.

During a press conference in Paris, the leaders said the immediate priority was to bolster Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces and allow them to “mount a successful counter-offensive”.

Russia has launched a huge wave of missile strikes across Ukraine, killing a number of civilians and forcing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant off the electrical grid for hours.

It is the first search mass attack in weeks, with the strikes including the use of hypersonic cruise missiles – one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons which travel at such speed they can evade air defences.

“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them,” said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done.”

In all Russia was said to have fired 81 missiles, with Ukraine’s military saying that 34 cruise missiles were successfully shot down, as well as four of the eight Iranian-made Shahed drones that were sent. Eight guided missiles did not reach their target. Ukraine said six hypersonic missiles had been fired, with Russia’s Defence Ministry confirming their use.

The capital Kyiv, Kharkiv and the Black Sea port of Odessa were all struck as air raid sirens rang out across the nation while explosions were also reported in the northern city of Chernihiv and the western Lviv region, as well as in Dnipro, Lutsk and Rivne.

Among the projectiles fired were six Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic ballistic missiles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which are difficult to intercept because they reportedly travel at up to ten times the speed of sound, which is around 8,000mph.

Russia has used hypersonic missiles since the earliest stages of the conflict, claiming to have destroyed a fuel depot in the Black Sea city of Mykolaiv and an underground ammunition store in western Ivano-Frankivsk in the opening skirmishes.

Ukraine has confirmed that those targets were struck but did not specify what weapons were used.

My colleague Joe Sommerlad reports:

Hackers took over Russian state media on Thursday to tell listeners to rush to nuclear bomb shelters and take anti-radiation pills.

Radio and television broadcasts in Moscow and the western Sverdlovsk area were interrupted with a phony warning of a missile strike on the country.

The Kremlin blamed the false alarm, which told listeners to take potassium iodine, put on gas masks and seek shelter, on a cyber attack.

William Mata has the full story:

Wildlife groups are calling for Britain to ban the transportation of eels to Russian conservation projects because of fears they are being sold on to China for food.

The alarm was sounded after a consignment of half a million eels were moved to Kaliningrad. Charities have said that the profits Russia has made from these sales could be funding the Ukraine war.

Multi-member organisation Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), which represents the RSPCA, CPRE and the Marine Conservation Society, has called for action from Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs).

Conservation has been required with the European eel population falling by 90 per cent in the past four decades despite hundreds of millions of baby, or glass, eels arriving each year.

Ukraine has fought back courageously against Mr Putin’s warped bid to restore territory lost to Moscow with the collapse of the Soviet Union and has continued to defy the odds by defending itself against Russian onslaughts with the help of Western military aid.

Battle tanks from the US, Britain and Germany are now being supplied for the first time and Mr Zelensky toured London, Paris and Brussels in early February 2023 to request fighter jets be sent as well in order to counter the Russian aerial threat, a step the allies appear to have reservations about making, although Joe Biden has since visited Kyiv in a gesture of solidarity.

Much of the fighting has been concentrated around the key eastern city of Bakhmut of late, with bombardments and heavy artillery fire taking place as Russian forces ramp up a major new offensive with the one-year anniversary of the war looming.

Thomas Kingsley and Joe Sommerlad report:

In the year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has been the figurehead of what he initially termed a “special military operation”. Russia’s president might have prepared the political ground with a show of collective responsibility – few will forget how he solicited the support of key ministers live on TV just hours before ordering the invasion – but he has fronted the invasion ever since, often alone, and it is he who will answer to history.

From the start, Russia’s military action tended to be seen as an old-fashioned war launched by an old-fashioned autocrat. As such, it was as surprising as it was shocking to all those who believed such wars to be over, at least in Europe. The scenes that have dominated our television screens ever since have been tragically reminiscent of black-and-white newsreel showing battles for the very same cities during the Second World War.

But the supposedly old-fashioned autocrat who gave the orders for this war is a more complicated figure than many think.

Russia has launched a huge wave of missile strikes across Ukraine, killing a number of civilians and forcing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant off the electrical grid for hours.

It is the first search mass attack in weeks, with the strikes including the use of hypersonic cruise missiles – one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons which travel at such speed they can evade air defences.

“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them,” said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done.”

In all Russia was said to have fired 81 missiles, with Ukraine’s military saying that 34 cruise missiles were successfully shot down, as well as four of the eight Iranian-made Shahed drones that were sent. Eight guided missiles did not reach their target. Ukraine said six hypersonic missiles had been fired, with Russia’s Defence Ministry confirming their use.

Chris Stevenson has the full story:

Ukrainian officials ordered a Russian-aligned wing of the Orthodox Church to leave a monastery in Kyiv, Reuters reports.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) accepted the authority of the patriarch of Moscow until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The Moscow patriarch, Kirill, has supported the invasion.

The Ukrainian culture ministry reported that it had been ordered to leave the 980-year-old Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, noting in a statement that it had “violated the terms of the agreement regarding the use of state property.”

The UOC has until 29 March to vacate the premises, though noted in a Facebook post that the action was “obviously biased and grossly violate[s] legal norms.”