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Russia-Ukraine War Live: Russian Offensives Near Frontline Village Failed, Says Ukraine’s Military

Russian offensives on Yahidne not successful, say Ukrainian armed forcesUkraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his forces had captured Yahidne. On Friday, he had claimed control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

But the Ukrainian bulletin said attacks were continuing, citing “unsuccessful offensives” near six settlements, including Yahidne and Berkhivka, in the Donetsk region, which Moscow claims to have annexed.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports of either side.

Ukraine’s Sunday bulletin said Russian forces had shelled the areas of 22 settlements along that part of the frontline in Donetsk over the past day, while Ukraine had repelled 71 in Donetsk and elsewhere along the frontline.

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British MPs travel to Ukraine to deliver aid

Luke Harding

A group of MPs were on their way back to London on Sunday after an epic road trip delivering aid to Ukraine.

The cross-parliamentary group set off from Dover and drove across Europe to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Two Labour MPs – Alex Sobel and Anna McMorrin – made the journey together with their Conservative counterparts Kevin Foster and Scott Benton.

The group delivered medical equipment and de-mining tools. They dropped off a generator at a village close to the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv and the Belarus border.

A group of MPs delivering aid to Ukraine. Photograph: Alex Sobel“A lot of parliamentary groups go on trips and have meetings. We didn’t feel that was appropriate for Ukraine. We wanted to provide practical support, and to show that MPs could go above and beyond,” Sobel said.

The trip was made to coincide with the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The UK parliamentary delegation to Kyiv included Tory MPs Bob Seely and Alicia Kearns, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee. Sobel – the MP for Leeds North West – and McMorrin, who represents Cardiff North, attended Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s press conference on Friday.

Asked if this bipartisan model could be repeated elsewhere, Sobel said: “People will be surprised on how many things we can agree on.”

The MAD Foundation charity organised the trip.

Michael Savage

More than a third of British adults have donated to help the humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine, according to polling that reveals the vast majority of the public remain concerned about the conflict a year on.

With charitable drives for those plunged into dire need by the war continuing, a poll commissioned by Christian Aid revealed that 37% of the adult population in the UK had made some kind of donation. Eighty-one per cent said they remain concerned about the impact of the conflict.

According to Christian Aid, 17.7 million Ukrainians are in need of aid and more than 13 million people are unable to return to their homes one year on from the invasion. Emergency assistance has reached more than 770,000 people affected by the war. John Sentamu, the former archbishop of York who is chair of Christian Aid, said the British public had shown an “overwhelming generosity to the Ukrainian people”.

“Vladimir Putin’s invasion has unleashed terrible violence and caused untold suffering to millions of innocent people,” Sentamu said. “We have seen how homes have been destroyed, families torn apart, and innocent people subjected to atrocious violence and trauma.

“I am not surprised that so many people across our isles remain worried about the war. We must remember every prayer, every gift, every action is bringing hope to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.

“Christian Aid is therefore urging actors not to give up searching for a just and lasting peace for Ukraine and to ensure the conflict does not cut support for other crises across the globe.”

Russian offensives on Yahidne not successful, say Ukrainian armed forcesUkraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday his forces had captured Yahidne. On Friday, he had claimed control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

But the Ukrainian bulletin said attacks were continuing, citing “unsuccessful offensives” near six settlements, including Yahidne and Berkhivka, in the Donetsk region, which Moscow claims to have annexed.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports of either side.

Ukraine’s Sunday bulletin said Russian forces had shelled the areas of 22 settlements along that part of the frontline in Donetsk over the past day, while Ukraine had repelled 71 in Donetsk and elsewhere along the frontline.

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia.

“In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.

The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass.

The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.

A Ukraine military official says a fresh push to retake seized territory is planned for spring, saying Kyiv’s forces will “not stop until we get our country back to its 1991 borders”.

Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, told a German newspaper group on Sunday:

One of our strategic military objectives is to try to drive a wedge into the Russian front in the south, between Crimea and Russian territory.

Beyond that, he said, “the objective of our counter-offensive is to liberate all the occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea”.

Reuters also reported that Skibitsky raised the possibility of future Ukrainian strikes on “arms depots or military equipment on Russian territory, for example around the city of Belgorod, from where attacks on Ukraine are launched”.

Isobel Koshiw has filed this report on Ukrainian civilians regularly being caught up in poorly targeted Russian attacks:

Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a local GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it.

A Guardian team on the scene assessed the rockets shells likely came from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.

Local residents look at the impact site of a rocket attack in a residential district on the outskirts of Kramatorsk on Saturday. Photograph: Ed Ram/The GuardianA woman in her 60s, who lived in the neighbouring house, was injured and quickly whisked away by an ambulance, according to eyewitnesses.

A neighbour who lived opposite and declined to give her name said:

She came out of her house screaming and then fell on the ground.

The impact of the rocket also tore down the electricity line, cutting power to the surrounding neighbourhood, according to neighbours who came out to see the devastation.

Poorly targeted attacks like these have been a regular occurrence for those living along the frontlines, particularly in Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk, where the fighting has been consistently heavy since the invasion started. Since the summer, Ukrainian officials have reported Russia using imprecise weapons in an attempt to hit Ukrainian military bases and equipment behind the frontlines which have resulted in a steady stream of civilian deaths.

A woman on her phone at the scene of the Russian rocket strike on Kramatorsk’s outskirts. Photograph: Ed Ram/The GuardianOn 14 January, Russia launched an anti-ship missile, weighing a whopping 5,800kg, which hit and destroyed an entire section of an apartment block in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. At least 46 people died and dozens more were injured.

Oleksiy Yakovlenko, the head doctor at the main civilian hospital for the Donbas region, told the Guardian that the recent concentration of fighting in six areas of the region had led to a decrease in the number of civilian casualties but the numbers remained high.

If a month ago, we were receiving around 100s patients every day, now it’s in the dozens.

Finance chiefs of the world’s largest economies have strongly condemned Moscow for its war on Ukraine, with only China and Russia itself declining to sign a joint statement on Saturday.

India, which as chair of the Group of 20 economies was hosting a meeting in the city of Bengaluru, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war but western nations insisted they could not back any outcome that did not include a condemnation, Reuters reported.

The lack of consensus among G20 members meant India resorted to issuing a “chair’s summary and outcome document” in which it simply summed up the two days of talks and noted disagreements.

India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitaraman, centre, and officials at the G20 summit. Photograph: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty ImagesMost members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” it said, citing disruption of supply chains, risks to financial stability and continuing energy and food insecurity.

“There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” it said, referring to measures put in place by the United States, European countries and others to punish Russia for the invasion and to starve it of revenues.

The outcome was similar to that of a G20 summit in Bali last November when host Indonesia also issued a final declaration acknowledging differences.

Wagner and Kyiv make conflicting claims on control of eastern village

Peter Beaumont

Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said forces of his Wagner group had captured the village of Yahidne, just north of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday.

But Ukrainian military reports issued a day after the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggested that villages near the key town remained under Kyiv’s control.

Reuters could not independently confirm Prigozhin’s claim, made in a short audio message, or the report by the Ukrainian military’s general staff.

However, other sources reported that Russian forces had entered Yahidne as the situation around Bakhmut appeared to grow more perilous for its Ukrainian defenders.

Russian forces have been trying to take the now shattered Donbas city for seven months, inching forward at a glacial pace to try to encircle it with a narrowing corridor for Ukrainian defender.

According to accounts from the Bakhmut area, while Russian forces were bogged down to the south of the city, to the north they had advanced over a kilometre into the outskirts of Yahidne. Large assaults were also being reported to the south-west towards Ivanivske in the direction of the T0504 highway with the aim of cutting access to the city from the west.

Ukrainian troops in the town reported that the Russian tactic appeared to be the familiar one of throwing large groups of troops against their defences.

Ukrainian troops prepare to fire a self-propelled howitzer near Bakhmut on Saturday. Photograph: Marko Đurica/ReutersCommenting on the current Russian tactics last week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said the Russians aim was to wear down Ukraine’s defences by sheer weight of numbers, even if that meant taking huge casualties.

Recent footage from Bakhmut showed Ukrainian armoured vehicles pouring autocannon and machine-gun fire into Russian positions.

With the situation in Bakhmut described as difficult, the head of Ukraine’s land forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, visited the sector on Saturday to consult with commanders.

The Bakhmut sector is one of six areas where Russian forces have been expended increased effort in the past three weeks as part of a stepped-up offensive along the eastern front that has yet to produce any significant gains.

While western analysts suggest the capture of Bakhmut would be used as a propaganda victory by the Kremlin, many are sceptical that the city’s fall – and after so many losses – would offer a significant advantage.

Opening summaryHello and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton bringing you the latest developments.

Yevgeny Prigozhini says his Wagner mercenary group has captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Yahidne, near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut.

However, Ukrainian military reports issued on Saturday suggested villages near the city remained under Kyiv’s control.

Reuters said it could not independently confirm Prigozhin’s claim or the report by the Ukrainian military’s general staff.

On Friday, Prigozhin said Wagner had taken control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

More on this story soon.

In other key developments as it approaches 9am in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s energy minister says the country has been able to amass some power reserves and that there will be no more outages to ration electricity if there are no new Russian strikes, after months of power cuts.

Thousands of people have taken part in a demonstration in central Berlin to protest against giving more weapons to Ukraine, urging the German government to instead pave the way for negotiations with Vladimir Putin. In London, Marina Litvinenko – the widow of a defector poisoned in London – led calls for a Ukrainian victory in the war at a demonstration of several hundred outside the Russian embassy.

A meeting of finance chiefs of the Group of 20 leading economies has ended without a consensus, with Russia and China objecting to the description of the war in Ukraine in a final document. In a statement at the end of the meeting in Bengaluru, the G20 chair, India, said a statement demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine was endorsed by all members except Moscow and Beijing.

The French president has said China’s engagement in peace in Ukraine is a “good thing”. Emmanuel Macron told reporters he would visit China in early April, in part to seek Beijing’s help with ending the war. “China must help us put pressure on Russia so that it never uses chemical or nuclear weapons,” he said.

The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine, according to US officials. They said it did not appear Beijing had made a final decision yet, CNN reported, but Russia-China negotiations about the price and scope of the equipment were ongoing.

Poland’s largest oil company, PKN Orlen, has stopped receiving oil via the Druzhba pipeline from Russia, its CEO, Daniel Obajtek, has said. Orlen said it could fully supply its refineries via sea and that consumers would not be affected by the halt. Russian oil accounts for about 10% of Polish supply.

Explosions have reportedly been heard in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, according to Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the city’s exiled mayor. The explosions were reported in the location of a large Russian military personnel cluster, he said, adding: “It’s a good trend.” Ukraine’s armed forces have in recent days claimed strikes on Mariupol, previously thought to be outside the effective range of Ukrainian missiles.

A resident sits in front of Mariupol apartment blocks destroyed in the fighting. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has dismissed as “unrealistic” China’s proposal to end the conflict. Podolyak posted on Twitter that Beijing should not “bet on an aggressor who broke [international] law and will lose the war”. President Zelenskiy has cautiously welcomed China’s 12-point proposal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory.

Russia appears to have run out of its current stock of Iranian-made drones and will seek to resupply, the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest update says. Russia most likely saw the drones as “useful decoys which can divert Ukrainian air defences from more effective Russian cruise missiles”, it said.

The European Union has agreed to impose a 10th package of sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, just in time for a self-imposed deadline to mark the first anniversary of the war. The latest round of sanctions tackled the banking sector, advanced technologies and Russia’s access to technology that could be used for civilian and military purposes, said the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.

Joe Biden has ruled out “for now” sending American advanced fighter jets to Ukraine, saying Volodymyr Zelenskiy “doesn’t need F-16s now”. The US president told the American Broadcasting Company “there is no basis upon which there is a rationale, according to our military now, to provide F-16s” to Ukraine.

The Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, said he and Vladimir Putin spoke for a long time on Friday. Lukashenko’s remarks to reporters came as China’s foreign ministry confirmed he is expected to visit China on Tuesday.

A former commander of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been arrested after allegedly attacking a police officer in Oslo, according to Norwegian prosecutors. Andrey Medvedev, who has been living in Norway in January since he fled from Russia, was allegedly detained in the early hours of Wednesday after a fight outside a bar in the Norwegian capital.

Thousands of tickets for the Eurovision song contest are to be allocated to Ukrainians who have been forced from their homes and are living in the UK. The UK government also announced £10m in funding to “help ensure the event truly showcases Ukrainian culture”.

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