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Russia trying to ‘freeze’ war before renewed assault, says Stoltenberg
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Russia is attempting to “freeze” the fighting in Ukraine over the winter to prepare its forces for a renewed assault early next year.
The conditions for a peaceful settlement to the war are “not there now”, the Nato chief said at an event hosted by the Financial Times, after weeks of speculation over the potential for diplomatic talks. He said:
The conditions [for talks] are not there now because Russia has shown no sign of engaging in negotiations which are respecting the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
It is for Ukrainians to decide when the time is right to start to negotiate and to agree the conditions. Most wars and most likely also this war will end at the negotiating table.
Stoltenberg urged Nato allies to continue sending weapons to Kyiv over the winter because, he warned, Russia was seeking a “break” in the fighting to prepare for a spring offensive. He said:
What we see now is that Russia is attempting to try to freeze this war, at least for a short period of time, so they can regroup, repair and recover, and try to launch a bigger offensive next spring.
Ukraine had “momentum”, he continued, adding that he “cannot go into the specific systems that we are now considering”. He said:
The paradox is that the more we want a peaceful, negotiated solution, ensuring that Ukraine prevails, the more urgent it is that we provide military support to Ukraine.
Key events
Here are some of the latest images we have received from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where temperatures are below zero.
Officials have warned that half of the Kyiv region will be without electricity in the coming days, after a fresh wave of Russian missile attacks on Monday.
Russia trying to ‘freeze’ war before renewed assault, says Stoltenberg
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said Russia is attempting to “freeze” the fighting in Ukraine over the winter to prepare its forces for a renewed assault early next year.
The conditions for a peaceful settlement to the war are “not there now”, the Nato chief said at an event hosted by the Financial Times, after weeks of speculation over the potential for diplomatic talks. He said:
The conditions [for talks] are not there now because Russia has shown no sign of engaging in negotiations which are respecting the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
It is for Ukrainians to decide when the time is right to start to negotiate and to agree the conditions. Most wars and most likely also this war will end at the negotiating table.
Stoltenberg urged Nato allies to continue sending weapons to Kyiv over the winter because, he warned, Russia was seeking a “break” in the fighting to prepare for a spring offensive. He said:
What we see now is that Russia is attempting to try to freeze this war, at least for a short period of time, so they can regroup, repair and recover, and try to launch a bigger offensive next spring.
Ukraine had “momentum”, he continued, adding that he “cannot go into the specific systems that we are now considering”. He said:
The paradox is that the more we want a peaceful, negotiated solution, ensuring that Ukraine prevails, the more urgent it is that we provide military support to Ukraine.
16 dead in Donetsk road accident – pro-Russia official
A road accident in the temporarily occupied eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk has left 16 people dead and several injured, according to a Russian-backed official and state media.
The accident involved a minibus and a truck, whose passengers included soldiers, and took place between Torez and Shakhtarsk, emergency services told the Russian state-owned news agency Tass.
They were cited by Tass as saying:
On the Shakhtersk-Torez highway, a truck carrying military personnel collided with a minibus. Sixteen people died, three victims were hospitalised.
The truck driver was among the dead, the news agency reported, adding that the cause of the accident had not yet been established.
Writing on Telegram, Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said:
A tragedy on the T-0517 highway claimed the lives of 16 people, among them were some of our defenders.
Summary
The time in Kyiv is 1pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s news so far:
The US said it had not “enabled” Ukraine to carry out strikes inside Russia, after a spate of drone attacks on military-linked facilities deep within Russian territory. Kyiv did not directly claim responsibility but neither did it criticise the action, which killed three people and damaged long-range bombers and a fuel depot, according to reports from Russia. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said: “We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.”
Belarus plans to move military equipment and security forces on Wednesday and Thursday in what it says are checks on its response to possible acts of terrorism, the state BelTA news agency reported on Wednesday. “During this period, it is planned to move military equipment and personnel of the national security forces,” the news agency cited the country’s security council as saying.
The Kremlin has said a US military aid spending bill providing $800m to Ukraine approved by lawmakers on Tuesday was “provocation towards our country”. The Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorises the additional spending for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, an increase of $500m over President Joe Biden’s request earlier this year.
Oleksandr Starukh, the Zaporizhzhia regional governor, said on Telegram that Russia launched drone and missile strikes on two villages overnight, injuring a 15-year-old girl and two other people. The Guardian has not been able to verify the reports independently.
Ukraine’s culture minister has called on western allies to boycott Russian culture, urging a halt to performances of the music of Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers until the end of the war. Writing in the Guardian, Oleksandr Tkachenko argues that such a “cultural boycott” would not amount to “cancelling Tchaikovsky”, but would be “pausing the performance of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion”.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited troops close to frontlines in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Addressing service personnel later in the presidential palace in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had spent the day with troops in Donbas, theatre of the heaviest battles, and in Kharkiv region, where Ukrainians have retaken swaths of territory from Russian forces.
Poland is preparing to deploy the German Patriot air defence system on its territory, after Berlin refused to place the system in Ukraine, Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, said on Twitter. Germany last month offered Poland the Patriot system to help secure its airspace after a stray missile crashed and killed two people in Poland.
Europe is likely to scrape through this winter without cutting off gas customers despite reduced Russian supplies, but even adjusting to colder homes and paying more may not be enough in coming years, analysts have told AFP. Russia’s progressive reduction of gas supplies to Europe via pipeline triggered a bidding war for liquefied natural gas (LNG), sending prices sharply higher.
Shelling by Ukrainian forces killed at least six civilians in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk on Tuesday, according to the Russian-installed head of the separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Alexey Kulemzin. The head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian shelling killed a deputy in the self-proclaimed republic’s People’s Council, Maria Pirogova.
Dmytro Zhyvytsky, the governor of Sumy region on the Russian border, said several people were wounded when Russian forces fired 226 shells on seven communities during the day.
The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin met senior officials on Tuesday to discuss “domestic security”, and Russia was taking “necessary” measures to fend off more Ukrainian attacks. One of the attacks struck the key Engels airfield in the Saratov region, where Russia keeps some of its strategic nuclear bombers.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for the moment. My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly to continue bringing you all the latest from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The Kremlin has said a US military aid spending bill providing $800m to Ukraine approved by lawmakers on Tuesday was “provocation towards our country”.
The Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorises the additional spending for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, an increase of $500m over president Joe Biden’s request earlier this year.
Charlotte Higgins
Ukraine’s culture minister has called on western allies to boycott Russian culture, urging a halt to performances of the music of Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers until the end of the war.
Writing in the Guardian, Oleksandr Tkachenko argues that such a “cultural boycott” would not amount to “cancelling Tchaikovsky”, but would be “pausing the performance of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion”.
He argues that such a step is right given that the war is “a civilisational battle over culture and history” in which Russia is actively “trying to destroy our culture and memory” by insisting that the two states constitute a single nation.
Many cultural figures in Ukraine have said the Russian state is actively instrumentalising its artistic heritage during the conflict. Billboards in Russian-occupied Kherson, for example, showed images of Pushkin, with text referring to the Russian poet’s link with the city.
The US said it had not “enabled” Ukraine to carry out strikes inside Russia, after a spate of drone attacks on military-linked facilities deep within Russian territory.
“We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told reporters.
More now on Europe’s energy crisis, via AFP:
Sky-high energy prices have caused numerous factories, particularly in Germany’s chemicals sector, which was highly dependent upon cheap Russian gas, to halt operations. But European nations were able to fill their gas reservoirs and no one has been cut off yet.
“Until February, the very idea of Europe without Russian energy was seen as impossible,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel thinktank in Brussels.
“What was impossible became possible.”
A warm autumn that allowed many consumers to put off turning on their heating also helped put Europe in better position for the winter. Overall, the reduction in EU gas consumption by consumers and industry was about 25% in October compared with the 2019-21 average for the month, according to calculations by Bruegel.
In Germany, where half of households use gas for heat, data shows consumption down by 20-35% depending on the week.
“That’s much more than anyone expected,” said Lion Hirth, a professor of energy policy at the Hertie School in Berlin.
“And that’s completely contradictory to the talk that we’ve been hearing from doomsday talkers saying, people just don’t respond. People just keep heating. People don’t change their behaviour. People don’t respond to prices.”
Poland is preparing to deploy the German Patriot air defence system on its territory, after Berlin refused to place the system in Ukraine, Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, said on Twitter.
Germany last month offered Poland the Patriot system to help secure its airspace after a stray missile crashed and killed two people in Poland.
The minister later asked Germany to send the fire units to Ukraine instead, Reuters reported.
“After talking to the German defence ministry, I was disappointed to accept the decision to reject Ukraine’s support. Deploying the Patriots to the western Ukraine would increase the security of Poles and Ukrainians,” Blaszczak tweeted on Tuesday evening.
“So we proceed to working arrangements for placing the launchers in Poland and connecting them to our command system.”
Po rozmowie z 🇩🇪MON,z rozczarowaniem przyjąłem decyzję o odrzuceniu wsparcia 🇺🇦. Rozmieszczenie Patriotów na zachodniej 🇺🇦 zwiększyłoby bezpieczeństwo Polaków i Ukraińców. Przystępujemy więc do roboczych ustaleń ws. umieszczenia wyrzutni w 🇵🇱i wpięcia ich w nasz system dowodzenia
— Mariusz Błaszczak (@mblaszczak) December 6, 2022
Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia region overnight
Oleksandr Starukh, the Zaporizhzhia regional governor, posted on Telegram a short while ago to say that Russia launched drone and missile strikes on two villages overnight, injuring a 15-year-old girl and two other people.
The Guardian has not been able to verify the reports independently.
Thousands of Russian tourists have found a friendly holiday destination on Venezuela’s Isla de Margarita, a tropical gem with white-sand shores and turquoise waters, AFP reports.
Years of political and economic turmoil in Venezuela have frightened off most tourists, with western nations warning citizens not to travel there. So for thousands of Russians seeking sun-soaked holidays, but faced with visa and flight restrictions over the Ukraine war, it is a match made in Caribbean heaven.
President Nicolás Maduro, who sees tourism as a secret weapon to revitalise an economy showing timid signs of recovery after years of hyperinflation and a currency in freefall, has signed a deal with Russia, a strong ally, to receive 100,000 tourists by 31 December.
In the past two months, 3,000 Russian tourists have taken advantage of a new direct flight between Moscow and Isla de Margarita with Russia’s Norwind Airlines.
In news about some of the far-reaching implications of the war in Ukraine, China’s exports and imports shrank at their steepest pace in at least two and a half years in November, Reuters reports, as feeble global and domestic demand, Covid-led production disruptions and a property slump at home piled pressure on the world’s second-biggest economy.
Beijing is moving to ease some of its stringent pandemic-era restrictions, but outbound shipments have been losing steam since August as surging inflation, sweeping interest rate increases across many countries and the Ukraine crisis have pushed the global economy to the brink of recession.
The downturn was much worse than markets had forecast, and economists are predicting a further period of declining exports, underlining a sharp retreat in world trade as consumers and businesses slash spending in response to central banks’ aggressive moves to tame inflation.
Exports contracted 8.7% in November from a year earlier, a sharper fall from a 0.3% loss in October and marked the worst performance since February 2020, official data showed on Wednesday. They were well below analysts’ expectations for a 3.5% decline.
Belarus to move military equipment to ‘check response to terrorism’
Belarus plans to move military equipment and security forces on Wednesday and Thursday in what it says are checks on its response to possible acts of terrorism, the state BelTA news agency reported on Wednesday.
“During this period, it is planned to move military equipment and personnel of the national security forces,” the news agency cited the country’s Security Council as saying.
“The movement of citizens (transport) along certain public roads and areas would be restricted and the use of imitation weapons for training purposes is planned.”
There was no information on what parts of the country could be affected, Reuters reports.
Belarus has said it will not enter the war in neighbouring Ukraine, but President Alexander Lukashenko has in the past ordered troops to deploy with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, citing threats to Belarus from Kyiv and the West.
Ukraine has been warning for months that it fears that Belarus and Russia could be planning a joint incursion across Ukraine’s northern border.
Last week, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Viktor Khrenin, to discuss military cooperation.
Europe is likely to scrape through this winter without cutting off gas customers despite reduced Russian supplies, but even adjusting to colder homes and paying more may not be enough in coming years, analysts have told AFP.
Russia’s progressive reduction of gas supplies to Europe via pipeline triggered a bidding war for liquefied natural gas (LNG), sending prices sharply higher.
If certain countries like France and Spain froze prices for consumers, others like Belgium let suppliers more or less pass along the higher costs.
If previously natural gas was cheap and plentiful, it is now scarce and expensive.
The European wholesale reference price used to fluctuate little, hovering around 20 euros per megawatt hour. This year, it shot as high as €300 before dropping back to around €100.
“It’s the most chaotic time I’ve witnessed in all of those years,” Graham Freedman, a European gas analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, told AFP.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited troops close to front lines in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
Addressing servicemen later in the presidential palace in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had spent the day with troops in Donbas, theatre of the heaviest battles, and in Kharkiv region, where Ukrainians have retaken swaths of territory from Russian forces.
“Thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives so that the day might come when not a single occupying soldier will remain in our land and when all our people will be free,” Zelenskiy said.
Blinken: US has not ‘enabled’ Ukraine strikes inside Russia
The United States said Tuesday it hadn’t “enabled” Ukraine to carry out strikes inside Russia, after a spate of drone attacks on military-linked facilities deep within Russian territory. Kyiv did not directly claim responsibility but neither did it criticise the action, which killed three people and damaged long range bombers and a fuel depot, according to reports from Russia.
“We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters.
Washington has held back from supplying Ukraine forces with long-range ATACMS missiles that could strike inside Russia out of fears it could lead to a direct confrontation between Russian forces and those of the US and Nato.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest news as it happens for the next few hours.
It’s nearly 8am in Kyiv, here’s where things stand:
The US said Tuesday it hadn’t “enabled” Ukraine to carry out strikes inside Russia, after a spate of drone attacks on military-linked facilities deep within Russian territory. “We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters.
Russia said it had been hit hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine by what it said were Soviet-era drones – at Engels air base, home to Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, and in Ryazan, a few hours’ drive from Moscow, on Monday. Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the strikes but nonetheless celebrated them. The strikes killed three people and damaged long range bombers and a fuel depot, according to reports from Russia.
Shelling by Ukrainian forces killed at least six civilians in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk on Tuesday, according to the Russian-installed head of the separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Alexey Kulemzin. The head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian shelling had killed a deputy in the self-proclaimed republic’s People’s Council, Maria Pirogova.
Dmytro Zhyvytsky, the governor of Sumy region on the Russian border, said several people were wounded when Russian forces fired 226 shells on seven communities during the day.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited troops close to front lines in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Addressing servicemen later in the presidential palace in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had spent the day with troops in Donbas and in Kharkiv region. “Thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives so that the day might come when not a single occupying soldier will remain in our land and when all our people will be free,” Zelenskiy said.
The Kremlin said Putin met senior officials Tuesday to discuss “domestic security” and said that Russia was taking “necessary” measures to fend off more Ukrainian attacks. One of the attacks struck the key Engels airfield in the Saratov region, where Russia keeps some of its strategic nuclear bombers.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he agreed with comments by Blinken about the need for lasting peace in Ukraine, but that Moscow does not see the prospect of talks “at the moment”. He added that in order for talks to happen with potential partners, Russia would need to fulfil the goals of its “special military operation”.
Russian and Ukrainian authorities confirmed the exchange of 120 people in a prisoner swap. According to the Russian defence ministry, 60 servicemen were returned from “Kyiv-controlled territory”. Ukraine received 60 prisoners in return, Andrii Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, said.
Ukraine’s health ministry has asked regional authorities to consider suspending non-essential surgeries and hospitalisations due to power blackouts. In a statement, the ministry said hospitals were continuing to provide emergency care but that planned surgeries should be temporarily suspended to ease the load on the medical system amid potential future blackouts.
US lawmakers agreed to provide Ukraine at least $800m in additional security assistance next year, according to a summary of an $858bn defense policy bill unveiled on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
At least 20 oil tankers queuing off Turkey face more delays to cross from Russia’s Black Sea ports to the Mediterranean as operators race to adhere to new Turkish insurance rules added ahead of a G7 price cap on Russian oil, Reuters reported citing industry sources. The disruption in tanker traffic was not the result of the price cap on Russian oil agreed by a coalition of G7 countries and Australia, an official with the group said.
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