Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow demands west recognises annexations before peace talks – as it happened

We are now closing the blog. Here is a summary of today’s events:

• Up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded in February, according to Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. At certain points in the war, Ukraine said that between 100 and 200 of its forces were dying a day on the battlefield, making Podolyak’s estimate seem conservative. Speaking to Ukraine’s 24 Kanal, Podolyak said they were official figures from Ukraine’s general staff. He said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would make the total public “when the right moment comes”.

• Three people were killed and seven wounded in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson over the past 24 hours, the regional governor said.

• Vladimir Putin is open to talks on a possible settlement in Ukraine but the refusal of the United States to recognise annexed territories as Russian is hindering a search for any potential compromise, the Kremlin said. US president Joe Biden said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak to Putin if the Kremlin chief was looking for a way to end the war but that Putin had not yet indicated that.

• Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said that they would start evacuating some people with reduced mobility from the Russian-occupied town of Kakhovka, on the east bank of the Dnieper River. The evacuations were set to start on Saturday, they said in a Telegram post on Friday.

• European Union member states have agreed to put a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian oil after Poland, which was holding out, gave the green light to the deal. In an effort to reduce the Kremlin’s income from fossil fuels, the EU has agreed to limit the amount that can be paid for seaborne oil to diminish Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.

• Russian troops in Ukraine are deliberately attacking the country’s museums, libraries and other cultural institutions, according to a report issued by the US and Ukrainian chapters of the international writers’ organisation PEN.

• Germany is aiming to deliver seven Gepard tanks that had been destined for the scrap pile to Ukraine this spring, adding to 30 of the air-defence tanks that are already being used to fight against the Russian army, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.

• The Finish prime minister, Sanna Marin, has called for Europe to build its own defence capabilities in the wake of the war in Ukraine, saying that without US help it is not resilient enough.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to reach an agreement with Russia and Ukraine to create a protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the end of the year, the head of the UN atomic watchdog was quoted as saying. The nuclear plant, Europe’s biggest, provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on back-up generators a number of times, Reuters reported.

• The United States is reportedly working with two Middle Eastern countries to shift advanced Nasams air defence systems to Ukraine in the next three to six months. Kyiv received two of the eight approved deliveries of Nasams in early November.

• Russia’s withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River last month has provided the Ukrainian armed forces with opportunities to strike additional Russian logistics nodes and lines of communication, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has suggested. This threat is likely to have prompted Russian logisticians to relocate supply nodes, including rail transfer points, further south and east, the latest British intelligence report states.

• Russia tested a new missile defence system rocket, its defence ministry said today. The missile was launched from the Sary Shagan testing range in Kazakhstan. Other than saying the test was successful, the ministry gave few other details.

• The chief economic adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called on BP to exit Russia entirely after the fossil fuel firm was offered a £580m dividend by the oil giant Rosneft. Oleg Ustenko has written to BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, to demand the British company cuts ties with the state-controlled Russian firm nine months after announcing its intention to leave the country.

• The Archbishop of Canterbury has said there must be “no way we force peace” in Ukraine. Justin Welby added that the need for support is going to be “very long term”, the Press Association reported.

• US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron presented a united front on Ukraine with Biden saying he would talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin if he is willing to end the war and only in consultation with Nato allies. “I’m prepared to speak with Mr Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he’s looking for a way to end the war. He hasn’t done that yet,” Biden told a news conference at the White House with Macron on Thursday.

• Biden and Macron pledged to hold Russia accountable for “widely documented atrocities and war crimes” in Ukraine. Biden said their support would continue in the face of Russian aggression. In a joint statement, the leaders said: “Intentionally targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure constitutes war crimes whose perpetrators must be held accountable.”

• Ukrainian refugees will spend a further five months on a ship which has been accommodating them since June this year, the Scottish Government has confirmed.

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Ukrainian refugees will spend a further five months on a ship which has been accommodating them since June this year, the Scottish Government has confirmed.

MS Victoria, which is docked in Leith, Edinburgh, will continue to provide “safe accommodation for displaced people” until June 2023 with the option to extend.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, however, accused the Scottish Government of “quietly” extending the contract, according to reports by LBC on Friday.

On Friday evening, Mr Cole-Hamilton told the PA news agency:

This isn’t a new life, it’s a new limbo. Ukrainian refugees deserve a long-term solution.

I spoke to aid workers, working in Lviv, connecting Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Scotland with homes and routes out of Ukraine, who have described the Scottish Government as being humiliatingly underprepared.

They wanted the kudos of throwing open their doors but they did none of the groundwork.

I don’t think when these Ukrainians are fleeing unimaginable atrocities at the hands of the Russians, I don’t think they dreamed about a very crowded passenger ship.”

Appropriate long-term accommodation is yet to be identified.

Minister with Special Responsibility for Refugees from Ukraine Neil Gray said:

We do not want people to spend any longer than is absolutely necessary in temporary welcome accommodation, however, we know from speaking to those on board the MS Victoria that it is a safe environment that has built a powerful sense of community.

We’ve extended the contract with the MS Victoria to continue to safely accommodate arrivals from Ukraine. Work continues to match people in temporary accommodation with hosts and matching teams are operating on board both ships.”

2 Dec 202213.32 EST

Alex Lawson

European Union member states have agreed to put a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian oil after Poland, which was holding out, gave the green light to the deal.

In an effort to reduce the Kremlin’s income from fossil fuels, the EU has agreed to limit the amount that can be paid for seaborne oil to diminish Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.

The price cap also aims to avert a surge in global oil prices after the EU’s embargo on Russian crude takes effect on 5 December.

Warsaw had held out on approving the deal in order to examine an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap below the market price – having pushed in negotiations for the cap to be as low as possible.

Poland’s ambassador to the EU, Andrzej Sadoś, said on Friday that the mechanism in the final deal would keep the price cap at least 5% below the market rate.

However, security experts from the CSIS thinktank have suggested a cap at $60 is toothless since it is above the price of existing Russian oil prices of about $52 a barrel.

It has been estimated that Russian oil is sold at a profit from $40-45 a barrel, but Russia’s true extraction costs are hard to estimate.

The cap is expected to be formally announced on Sunday, and oil embargoes in the EU and G7 will begin next week.

Read the full report here.

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Russian troops in Ukraine are deliberately attacking the country’s museums, libraries and other cultural institutions, according to a report issued by the US and Ukrainian chapters of the international writers’ organisation PEN.

The report stated:

Culture is not collateral damage in the war against Ukraine; it’s a target, a central pillar of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for the war.

Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukrainian culture and language simply don’t exist. By targeting art museums, music halls, libraries, theaters and historical sites, he attempts to make it so.”

PEN cited Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture as saying that 529 “cultural heritage and cultural institutions” have been destroyed or damaged since the war started. The figure includes both sites of national importance and cultural venues in towns and villages, the report said.

The list includes the bombing in March of a theatre in Mariupol, where hundreds of people were sheltering. Around 600 people died in the attack, according to an Associated Press investigation.

The PEN report said Russian soldiers have also seized and destroyed Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian-language books from public libraries in occupied regions.

However, it acknowledged “it is not always possible to determine if the bombings of cultural sites are deliberate or the result of Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.”

PEN Ukraine said it has documented 31 civilian writers, artists and other cultural workers killed in Russian attacks this year, and that some other cultural figures have died while fighting with Ukrainian forces.

American author and publisher Dave Eggers, part of the PEN delegation that presented the report, said:

The irony of Putin’s attempts to erase the culture and heritage of Ukraine [is it] has only enriched their culture and made the world pay attention and be far more interested in Ukrainian writers and traditions.”

2 Dec 202212.29 EST

Andrew Roth

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The Kremlin thought it would sweep across Ukraine and take Kyiv in a matter of days.

Now, more than nine months into its disastrous war with Ukraine, the new Russian strategy of targeting the infrastructure that brings light, heat and water into millions of Ukrainian homes has revealed Russia’s own weakness and its desperation in the face of a defiant Ukrainian resistance.

Russia’s impotence – and the scale of the destruction wrought by Moscow against territory it considers its own – has leaked back into official statements, even as the Kremlin seeks to leave Ukraine in a dire state on the cusp of a bitter winter.

At moments, Russian officials have compared the destruction in Ukrainian cities and its strategy to that of the second world war, nearly portraying the strategy as one of scorched earth.

At a press conference on Thursday, the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was given a tough question about Russia’s shelling of Kherson, a city it claimed to annex in September and then fled from in November, and now regularly shells from across the banks of the Dnipro River.

“How can you justify missile attacks on the civilian population, infrastructure, depriving people of access to water and electricity, including in the area of Kherson, which Russia considers its territory?” he was asked.

“The city of Stalingrad was our territory,” replied Lavrov, referring to the modern city of Volgograd that was stage to the deadliest battle of the second world war. “We hit the Germans such that they ran away from there.”

Moscow’s current strategy stands in stark contrast to Russia’s initial plan: a shock-and-awe strike on Kyiv and other cities that would let them take over the country and its key infrastructure within weeks.

Read the full analysis here.

Russian oil output could fall by 500,000 to 1m barrels per day early in 2023 after the European Union imposes a ban on seaborne imports from Monday, two sources at major Russian producers have told the Reuters news agency.

The estimate is at the lower end of market analysts’ forecasts of the combined impact of the ban and a proposed price cap on Russian oil, although the sources said the true level would depend on several factors yet to be settled.

They requested anonymity to discuss sensitive market dynamics connected with the conflict in Ukraine that Russia calls a “special military operation”, Reuters said.

Alexei Kokin of Otkritie brokerage broadly agreed with their assessment of the likely impact of Western measures on Russian output.

It’s roughly the same as the volume of seaborne supplies to the EU in recent weeks. I don’t think they (Russian producers) will be able to divert that elsewhere.

The west wants to squeeze Russia’s finances to reduce its ability to fund the conflict. Exports of crude, gas and oil products account for the majority of Russia’s revenues, which have stayed high as disruption to production and sales following western sanctions has been more than offset by high prices on international markets.

Russia’s budget revenues from oil and gas jumped by over a third in the first 10 months of the year. Before the Ukraine conflict began on 24 February, Russia exported around 8m bpd of oil and oil products.

Turkey expects a “clear picture” on the war by next spring, its foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said, as fighting continued and Putin indicated he was open to negotiations. According to Reuters, he said:

Now Ukraine is advancing on the ground, retaking some of their occupied territories. But Russia in return is deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure. So life is getting difficult for Ukrainians particularly, and for all of us.

I think before the spring time we will have clear picture about ceasefire or truce or negotiation table. But we will not give up. As Turkey we will continue our efforts.

Russia’s war against Ukraine became more complicated with the fighting on the ground getting heavier, Cavusoglu said, adding that some Western countries should do more to get two sides to the negotiation table.

Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president, has urged the UK and other western nations not to allow themselves to become accustomed to her country’s plight.

Speaking to the Times, she has said:

It is quite understandable that the west is tired. However, this phrase, I hear it quite a lot — war fatigue — is quite a dangerous phrase for us because that is exactly what our adversary wants. They expect people to forget and the world to get tired of the sad news and for Ukraine to disappear from the front pages. They would then feel they had the permission to do what they want.

As winter draws in, she accused the Russians of trying to terrorise Ukrainians into believing they will not be able to survive.

It would be wrong to say these things don’t scare us, they do, but we know we must endure this. The winter is treacherous and that is what they are counting on, it’s not the first time they are using the force of nature against the civilian population.

She also detailed how she has cut off all contact with any Russian relative or acquaintance, telling the paper:

Of course, Putin is to blame but without the support of the Russian people he couldn’t have done it on such a scale … I have relatives [in Russia], but we don’t communicate. Those relationships have ended completely … There will be no point in returning to those dialogues, when your own life and children’s and your family’s is in great danger and people don’t even ask if you are still alive, I think such relationships are over.

UN-appointed investigators are looking into whether Russia’s attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine amount to war crimes, one of the inspection team said on Friday.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure since early October, causing blackouts and leaving millions without heating as temperatures plummet, Reuters reported.

Russia says the assaults do not target civilians and are meant to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight and push it to negotiate – though Kyiv says such attacks are a war crime.

“Part of the analysis that we are engaged in at present … is whether the attacks constitute war crimes,” Pablo de Greiff told a news conference, speaking from Kyiv.

If they do, the team would work out what it “can do in order to make a contribution to the accountability for such crimes,” he added.

The three-member commission of inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council in March has already concluded that Russia committed war crimes in areas it occupied in Ukraine.

Moscow regularly dismisses such accusations as a smear campaign.

2 Dec 202209.27 EST

Julian Borger

When Alina Trebushnikova woke up on Thursday morning, the light was on and she knew the day had already got off to a bad start.

The electricity in her neighbourhood of Novomoskovsk had returned in the middle of the night and that meant it would not be on for much longer. As a result, the little house would be colder and darker for much of the day.

It gets dark by 4pm in Ukraine now and temperatures hover just below zero after nightfall. Next week a deep frost is expected and the days will grow even shorter, as Ukrainians approach their hardest winter since the second world war.

Alina’s husband, Oleksii, was away at his construction job and would only return long after dark. Their two boys, nine-year-old Ilia and Yakov, three years younger, were at the home of Alina’s parents, who have a wood stove, independent of the vagaries of the grid.

Alina is 31 and has lived in Novomoskovsk since she was seven, when her parents moved out of a block of flats in nearby Dnipro to live closer to the earth, as they put it. She now spends most of her days alone with Polina, born three months ago, while making food for the family, juggling with limited light, heat and ingredients.

Spanish police have cordoned off the area surrounding the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid after it received a “bloody package” similar to the ones sent to other embassies abroad, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said.

This comes after a spate of six letter bombs targeted high-profile targets in Spain related to the war in Ukraine, including the United States’ embassy, prime minister Pedro Sánchez, the defence minister, an arms manufacturer, an airbase and a European satellite centre.

On Friday, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said several of the country’s embassies abroad have received “bloody packages” containing animal eyes.

Companies who break EU sanctions against Russia face fines of at least 5% of their worldwide turnover, under proposals put forward by the European commission.

The plan, which needs approval from the European parliament and the EU’s 27 member states before it can take effect, also said individuals breaking EU sanctions would face potential jail terms of at least five years, Reuters reports.

Breaking sanctions on Russia is already a criminal offence in some EU countries, but in others it is treated as an administrative offence and penalties vary across the bloc. The Justice commissioner Didier Reynders said the proposed rules would bring clarity, adding:

Too many gaps still remain between member states when it comes to the punishment of violation of EU sanctions.

Several Ukrainian embassies abroad have received “bloody packages” containing animal eyes, Ukraine’s foreign ministry has said, after a series of letter bombs were sent to sites in Spain including Ukraine’s embassy in Madrid.

The packages, soaked in a liquid with a distinctive colour and smell, were sent to Kyiv’s embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, to general consulates in Naples and Krakow, and the consulate in Brno, spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.