Ukraine Russia war: Putin’s Black Sea fleet forced to retreat – live

Up to 151 ships have used Kyiv’s new shipping lane in the Black Sea since it was set up in August, a senior Ukrainian government official said.

Yuriy Vaskov, deputy minister for renovation and infrastructure, said a total of 4.4 million metric tonnes of cargo, including 3.2 million tonnes of grain had been shipped via the corridor so far.

Thousands of children from Ukraine aged between six and 17 years old have been forcefully transferred to 13 facilities across Belarus since Russia‘s invasion last year, a study by Yale University has found.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health found that the transfer of 2,442 children was “directly overseen” by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko – a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president in March, accusing him and Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Russian forces destroyed two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles over the Black Sea, the Russian defence ministry claimed.

It comes as Russia intensified its strikes on Ukrainian ports overnight, including Odessa. The Ukrainian air force said it downed nine out of 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones over Mykolayiv and Odessa.

“Fighters, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were involved in the repulse of the air attack. As a result of combat work, nine enemy attack UAVs were destroyed within Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions,” the Ukrainian air force said.

The Kremlin hopes President Vladimir Putin would run in the March election for another term as Russian president, a move that would keep Putin in power until at least 2030, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already been in power for longer than any other Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure. Putin turned 71 on 7 October.

“Putin has not yet announced his intention to run but I sincerely want to believe that he will do that, and I have no doubt that he will win the elections. I have no doubt that he will continue to be president,” he said.

Ukrainian troops have conducted a “series of successful operations” on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson region and established several bridgeheads, Kyiv’s military said.

In a statement, the Ukrainian Marines said on their Facebook page that they were continuing to carry out operations on the eastern side of the river. Russia conceded for the first time this week that Ukrainian troops had crossed the river.

The Ukrainian military liberated the city of Kherson, the regional centre, and the area around it on the western bank of the Dnipro in November 2022. The river, a formidable natural barrier, became the dividing line on much of the southern front.

Ukraine has downed nine out of 10 Russian Iranian-made Shahed drones over Mykolayiv and Odessa, according to the country’s air force.

“Fighters, anti-aircraft missile units and mobile fire groups were involved in the repulse of the air attack. As a result of combat work, nine enemy attack UAVs were destroyed within Mykolaiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi regions,” the air force said.

It comes as Russia intensified its strikes on Ukrainian ports overnight, including Odessa. On Thursday, British foreign secretary Lord Cameron visited the port city and inspected damage to the Transfiguration Cathedral.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it had secured a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro “against all odds”, in a potentially major setback for Russian occupation forces in the south where Kyiv is trying to open a new line of attack.

Imports of diamonds and liquid petroleum gas from Moscow were among commodities set to be banned as per a proposal by the European Commission as the bloc looked to tighten implementation of a price cap on Russian oil as part of new sanctions.

The sanctions – 12th such by the European Union on Russia for invading Ukraine – is set to be discussed on Friday and will include import bans on a number of metals and a ban on the transit through Russia of goods and technologies that could bolster Moscow’s industrial strength, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Kim Sengupta returns to Kamianka in eastern Ukraine – the scene of one of the most extraordinary exchanges he has witnessed during the 21-month war – to hear about the struggle to rebuild amid accusations of Russian collusion and vast destruction.

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A Russian court on Thursday convicted an artist and musician for replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans and sentenced her to seven years in prison, Russian media reported.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, has been held in her home city of St. Petersburg since April 2022 on charges of spreading false information about the military.

She was arrested a month after Russia adopted a law effectively criminalizing any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin’s official line. The legislation has been used in a widespread crackdown on opposition politicians, human rights activists and ordinary Russians critical of the Kremlin, with many receiving lengthy prison terms.