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Russia will ‘never compromise’ on annexed Ukrainian regions, says KremlinThe Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said that Russia is open to negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine, but insisted Moscow will “never compromise” on what he described as new “territorial realities”.
Speaking to reporters during a regular briefing, Peskov said Moscow will not renounce its claims to four Ukrainian regions that Vladimir Putin annexed in September.
The Russian president signed “accession treaties” formalising Russia’s annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions following Kremlin-orchestrated fake referendums that Ukraine and the west consider illegal.
Peskov said:
There are certain realities that have already become an internal factor. I mean the new territories. The constitution of the Russian Federation exists, and cannot be ignored. Russia will never be able to compromise on this, these are important realities.
He said Moscow was open to talks if Kyiv accepted its control over those regions. Russian forces do not fully control any of the four regions.
Peskov added:
With a favourable state of affairs and the appropriate attitude from the Ukrainians, this can be resolved at the negotiating table. But the main thing is to achieve our goals.
Hello everyone, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong taking over the Russia-Ukraine war live blog from Martin Belam. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.
Summary of the day so far … Russia’s Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg temporarily suspended all flights on Tuesday amid unconfirmed media reports of an unidentified object such as a drone being seen nearby. Some flights were diverted back to Moscow while the airport was shut for about an hour. Russia’s ministry of defence later announced there had been a training exercise between air defences and civilian aviation authorities.
Emergency services put out a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia overnight after a drone was spotted flying overhead, the RIA news agency said on Tuesday. The fire in the Russian town of Tuapse, Krasnador, was reported at 2.30am local time and spread to an area of about 200 sq metres before it was extinguished. “The oil tanks were not affected. There was no spill of oil products. No injuries,” said Sergei Boyko, who leads the local administration.
The Russian ministry of defence has stated that it foiled two attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil using drones overnight. It said: “28 February, at night, the Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar territory and the Republic of Adygea.”
A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning on Tuesday urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry said. “As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast. This information is false and does not correspond to reality.” A similar attack caused commercial radio stations in some Russian regions to send air alarm messages on Wednesday last week.
The military situation is becoming increasingly difficult around the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday as many of Ukraine’s battlefields turn to mud. “In the Bakhmut sector, the situation is constantly becoming more difficult,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly address. “The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions for fortification and defence.” Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces destroyed a Ukrainian ammunition depot near the town – the focal point of Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine – also shooting down four Himars missiles and five drones launched by Ukrainian forces.
The loss of an A-50 Mainstay would be significant as it is critical to Russian air operations for “providing an air battlespace picture”, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in response to earlier claims from Belarusian anti-war partisans to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft on Sunday.
China has “very clearly” taken Russia’s side and has been “anything but an honest broker” in efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, US department of state spokesperson Ned Price said at a news briefing on Monday. China has provided Russia with “diplomatic support, political support, with economic support, with rhetorical support”, he added.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Tuesday pledged support for Kazakhstan’s independence on a trip to boost influence in central Asia.
The airline carrier Wizz Air has announced it will suspend flights to Moldova’s capital, Chișinău, from 14 March because of concerns about the safety of its airspace. In a statement, the company said it had taken the “difficult but responsible” decision to suspend flights because of the “high, but not imminent” risk in Moldova’s airspace.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back with you later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly to continue our live coverage.
Russia says it foiled two attempted attacks by drones overnightThe Russian ministry of defence has stated that it foiled two attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil using drones overnight. It said:
28 February, at night, the Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar territory and the Republic of Adygea.
The UAVs were suppressed by the electronic warfare units of the Russian Federation armed forces. Both drones lost control and deviated from their flight path. One UAV fell in a field, another UAV, deviating from the trajectory, did not harm the attacked civilian infrastructure facility.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Russia claims St Petersburg airspace briefly closed due to ‘air defence exercise’Russian news sources including Tass are carrying a statement from the Russian ministry of defence which claims that the closure of airspace around St Petersburg this morning was part of a training exercise. Tass quotes a ministry statement saying:
On 28 February, the duty forces of the western zone of responsibility for air defence conducted a training session on interaction with civilian air traffic control authorities. During the training, the duty air defence forces worked out the issues of detecting, intercepting and identifying the alleged target of the intruder, as well as interacting with emergency services and law enforcement agencies in the event of an emergency situation.
Unverified media reports in Russia had earlier claimed that the closure was due to an unidentified object being spotted near the airport.
Oleksiy Sorokin of the Kyiv Independent points out how far away the oil depot in Tuapse is from Ukraine’s territory. [See 8.48 GMT]
The oil depot that caught fire in Tuapse, Russia, is 690km southeast from closest Ukraine-controlled territory.
Russians say it was attacked by drones.
— Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa) February 28, 2023 Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted to the Telegram messaging app to celebrate the anniversary of Ukraine applying to become a member of the European Union. He writes:
A year ago, on the fifth day of the full-scale war, we applied for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. We obtained the candidacy. This year is the time to decide on the launch of membership negotiations.
It is with Ukraine that the majestic project of a peaceful, free and united Europe will be complete. We are together in the struggle, and therefore we will be together in victory. Long live Europe. Long live freedom.
Here are some of the latest images from Ukraine sent to us over the news wires.
Ukrainian soldiers stationed at the front in Donetsk. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesCattle from an abandoned herd in the village of Prechistovka, near Vuhledar, on the frontline in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty ImagesDemining officers work to clear mines and unexploded ordnance from the area outside Lyman in the Donetsk region. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesThe Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was kept fully informed about a temporary airspace ban over the city of St Petersburg on Tuesday, the Kremlin said, but it declined to comment further on what caused the hour-long disruption to flights, Reuters reports.
The Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2m roubles (£22k) in Russia on Tuesday over what authorities said was its failure to remove “fake information” about Russia’s actions in Ukraine from the Wikipedia website, Reuters reports.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the president of Ukraine, has posted on Telegram to say that one person was killed and a private residential building was destroyed by shelling this morning in Kherson.
A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning on Tuesday urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry has said.
“As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast,” Reuters reports the ministry said in a statement. “This information is false and does not correspond to reality.”
Among the regions where the fake messages were broadcast was Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move not widely internationally recognised.
On regional TV an image was shown with a symbol of a man running for cover from incoming missiles and a message reading “Everybody to the shelter, now,” according to images posted on social media.
A similar attack caused commercial radio stations in some Russian regions to send air alarm messages last Wednesday.
Tass reports that flights at Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg have been resumed. Flights were stopped after an unknown object was reportedly spotted flying near it.
Russia suspends flights and closes airspace around St PetersburgRussia’s Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg has temporarily suspended all flights on Tuesday, the city government has said, amid unconfirmed Russian media reports of an unidentified object, such as a drone, above the city.
Reuters reports that the government of Russia’s second city said on its official Telegram channel that it had halted all flights at the airport until noon local time (9am GMT). It did not provide a reason for the suspension.
The state-run Tass news agency said airspace within a 200km (124-mile) radius of Pulkovo had been closed until 1.20pm local time (10.20 GMT), citing an unnamed source.
An unconfirmed media report from online Russian news outlet Baza said an unidentified object had been spotted in the sky and that fighter jets had been dispatched to investigate.
Overnight fire extinguished at southern Russian oil depot after drone spotted – reportsEmergency services put out a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia overnight after a drone was spotted flying overhead, the RIA news agency said on Tuesday.
The fire in the Russian town of Tuapse was reported at 2.30am local time (23.30pm Monday GMT) and spread to an area of about 200 sq metres before it was extinguished, Reuters notes a local official said.
“The oil tanks were not affected. There was no spill of oil products. No injuries,” said Sergei Boyko, who leads the local administration.
Tuapse lies on Russia’s southern coast, about 240 km (149 miles) south-east of the Crimean peninsula.
Moscow has reported sporadic incidents at oil and gas infrastructure in regions near Ukraine since the war started a year ago. Russian officials have often blamed Kyiv for sending drones into Russian territory.
Tass reports that the airspace within a radius of 200km (124 miles) of St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport is closed until 10.20am GMT (1.20pm local time).
Russia’s Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg has now temporarily suspended all flights on Tuesday, the city government said on its Telegram channel. Reuters reports that it did not provide a reason. The stoppage will last until 9am GMT (noon local time).
There are also unconfirmed reports on social media that a fire broke out overnight at the oil refinery in Tuapse in Russia’s Krasnodar region. Tuapse sits near the coast of the Black Sea, south of Crimea and north of Sochi. The unconfirmed speculation is that it was struck by a drone attack. Images purportedly from the scene show a pillar of smoke rising into the air, and a fire on the grounds of the refinery.
Reuters is reporting that a number of Russian domestic flights to St Petersburg were turned back to their departure points on Tuesday, according to the Flight Radar flight-tracking website.
At least five flights en route from the capital, Moscow, to St Petersburg had been turned back towards Moscow as of 8am GMT (11am local time), after initially circling in the air, flight paths on Flight Radar showed.
It was not immediately clear why, though Reuters said that an unconfirmed media report from online Russian news outlet Baza claimed an unidentified object had been spotted in the sky and that fighter jets had been dispatched to investigate.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne has offered this round-up of overnight events on its Telegram channel, writing:
At night, Russian troops shelled Sviatohirsk in Donetsk region – they hit a part of the state emergency service. A rescuer was killed and four others were injured. Also at night, the Russian army shelled Zelenivka near Kherson, no people were injured.
Over the past 24 hours, one person was killed and nine others were injured in the shelling by the Russian army in Donetsk region. Three people were injured in the Kherson region.
Russian troops continue to advance in five directions. In the last day, defence forces repelled more than 60 attacks, as well as destroyed 12 drones and struck four areas where the Russian army was concentrated.
The claims have not been independently verified.