Italy, Spain and Greece follow US in closing Kyiv embassies over attack fears
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that Italy, Spain and Greece have all also closed their embassies in Kyiv today.
The US embassy earlier said it had received “specific information” of a potential significant air attack and would be closed.
Suspilne reports that the intelligence indicates a combined drone and missile attack on the capital, and is not thought to be related to Russia’s change in its nuclear doctrine yesterday.
Key events
The air alert in Kyiv has ended.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posted to social media to say that this morning he has spoken to Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk on the phone.
Air alerts have been declared in Kyiv and a number of other regions.
This happens quite regularly during the day, however due to the closure of embassies by the US, Italy, Spain and Greece in anticipation of an attack on Kyiv, there is a heightened sense of alertness.
Andriy Kovalenko, from Ukraine’s national security and defence council has told news agency Ukrinform that Russia was “trying to sow panicky moods” among Ukrainians.
Dan Sabbagh
Dan Sabbagh is in Kyiv for the Guardian
The UK embassy remains open in Kyiv. In a statement, it said:
The UK Embassy in Kyiv remains open. However, the safety of our staff and British nationals in Ukraine is paramount and we keep our embassy posture and travel advice under constant review.
Italy, Spain and Greece follow US in closing Kyiv embassies over attack fears
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that Italy, Spain and Greece have all also closed their embassies in Kyiv today.
The US embassy earlier said it had received “specific information” of a potential significant air attack and would be closed.
Suspilne reports that the intelligence indicates a combined drone and missile attack on the capital, and is not thought to be related to Russia’s change in its nuclear doctrine yesterday.
Russia’s ministry of defence claims it has destroyed two Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that Ukraine lost 400 service personnel on the Kursk front in the last 24 hours. The ministry gave a detailed list of western-supplied Ukrainian equipment it had destroyed. The claims have not been independently verified.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that a man faces up to nine years in prison after being arrested in Kharkiv for helping men eligible to be drafted into the armed forces escape Ukraine. The 43-year-old was paid to help people travel into Moldova.
Many organisations this week have been marking the 1,000 day anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Fundraising platform GoFundMe has announced that since the beginning of the war more than £17m has been raised in the UK for Ukrainian causes, including media outlet the Kyiv Independent raising more than £1.8m to keep publishing during the conflict. More than 200,000 individual donations have been made to appeals mentioning Ukraine during the period.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Reuters reports, has said that Ukraine and Russia should focus on peace and show restraint.
Turkey’s president also said that the US decision to allow longer range Ukrainian strikes on Russia would further escalate the conflict and prompt a Russian reaction. He said he opposed the move.
Erdoğan has repeatedly tried to position Turkey as a mediator in the conflict, and has proposed a peace plan that would involve Ukraine delaying any moves to join Nato for at least ten years and freezing the existing frontlines. That would effectively mean Ukraine conceding territory to Russia, while Russia would have to accept it had not gained full control the four Ukrainian regions it claimed to annex in 2022.
Reuters reports that the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday that it shot down 56 out of 122 drones and two out of six missiles launched by Russia overnight. The claims have not been independently verified.
Kremlin: a ‘freeze’ on conflict in Ukraine is unacceptable
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has reiterated that a “freeze” of the conflict in Ukraine along the existing frontlines would be unacceptable to the Russian Federation.
During his daily press briefing, Peskov declined to comment when asked about the US embassy closing in Kyiv, but said that Russia believed the outgoing Joe Biden administration had shown that it is fully committed to continuing the war in Ukraine and is doing everything possible to achieve that.
Peskov said president Vladimir Putin’s itinerary had not been altered by the decision of the US that Ukraine could use longer range missiles against Russia, but has ordered security checks on critical infrastructure facilities, including the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait.
Russian state-owned news agency Tass is carrying further quotes from Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, about the country’s new nuclear doctrine.
It quotes him saying that the new doctrine was met with “caution” by the west, adding:
They understand that the adjustments announced by Putin largely devalue the efforts of the US and Nato to inflict a strategic defeat on our country, and the planned expansion of the list of grounds for the use of nuclear weapons effectively excludes the possibility of victory over the Russian armed forces on the battlefield.
In its latest operational update, Ukraine’s army has said that on Tuesday there were up to 139 combat engagements on the front lines between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Sergey Naryshkin, who is director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, is being quoted in Russian media as saying that attempts by Nato countries to strike inside Russia will not go “unpunished”.
Local media reports that explosions have been heard in Kherson. This is not uncommon, as the Dnipro river, on which the city lies to the north, marks a frontline between Ukrainian forces and Russian forces, who occupy the southern portion of the Kherson region.
The chief of staff in Belarus, Pavel Muraveiko, has described US moves to allow Ukraine to deploy longer-range missiles and anti-personnel mines as “irresponsible”, Reuters reports.
