Russia-Ukraine war live: Russian parliament moves to rescind ratification of nuclear test ban treaty; Putin in Beijing to meet Xi | Ukraine
Russian assault on Avdiivka reported to be weakening
A days-long attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam, Kyiv officials said on Monday.
Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian general staff said. That compared with up to 60 attacks a day in the middle of last week, according to Vitalii Barabash, the head of the city administration. The slackening suggests the Russian effort to capture Avdiivka has “deflated”, Barabash said.
A Washington-based thinktank broadly concurred with that assessment. “Russian forces continued offensive operations aimed at encircling Avdiivka … but have yet to make further gains amid a likely decreasing tempo of Russian operations in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War said in analysis published late on Sunday.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told a UN security council meeting last Friday that the ramped-up attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.
With the looming onset of wintry conditions that will limit military operations, both sides have been seeking battlefield breakthroughs that could invigorate their efforts and raise morale.
Ukrainian officials have said their troops are holding out against fierce Russian efforts to wrest control of Avdiivka, a heavily fortified city.
Avdiivka lies in the northern suburbs of the city of Donetsk, in a region of the same name that Russian forces partially occupy. Avdiivka’s location grants Ukrainian forces artillery advantages over the city and could serve as a springboard for them to liberate Donetsk.
Key events
World leaders are gathering in Beijing for China’s belt and road initiative forum, the third such event since the trademark global development drive was launched by China’s president, Xi Jinping, a decade ago.
Here are some pictures of the summit – which is expected to host representatives from over 130 countries – on its first day:
Vladimir Putin faces no real competition ahead of next year’s election, his spokesperson said on Tuesday, adding that there could be “no rivals” to the longtime leader.
Putin has led Russia since the turn of the century, winning four presidential elections in a system where political opposition has become virtually nonexistent.
“We have repeatedly said that President Putin is undoubtedly the number one politician (and) statesman in our country,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies, according to AFP.
“In my personal opinion … he has no rivals at the moment and cannot have any in the Russian Federation,” Peskov, who is accompanying Putin on his trip to China, added.
Putin has not yet officially announced whether he will run in the forthcoming presidential election, expected in March 2024, but has said he will comment by the end of the year.
Presidential elections in Russia are officially set by parliament and held every six years. The term of office was lengthened from four years previously.
There may be a second round if no candidate is able to secure more than 50 percent of the vote, but this has never happened in practice, as Putin has been pronounced victor by wide margins.
Rights groups say national elections in Russia have largely become a rubber stamp for Putin and the ruling party.
Reuters has more information on Russia’s parliament taking the first steps towards revoking the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (see earlier post at 11.42).
Parliament’s lower house, the Duma, voted by 412 to zero, with no abstentions, to approve the withdrawal of the ratification in the first of three readings.
While Russia is revoking ratification, it has said it will remain a signatory to the CTBT and continue to supply data to the global monitoring system which alerts the world to any nuclear test.
But parliament speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, a member of Vladimir Putin’s security council, said Russia may go further and would keep the US guessing about its intentions.
He said:
Our vote is a response to the state department. And what we will do next – whether we remain a party to the treaty or not, we will not tell them.
We must think about global security, the safety of our citizens and act in their interests.
Russia’s move was a wake-up call for Washington after the “rudeness” of its failure to ratify the CTBT for the past 23 years, Volodin said.
A Russian court fined Zoom Video Communications $1.18m for operating in Russia without opening a local office, the RIA news agency reported.
Moscow has clashed with foreign technology companies over content, censorship and data, with the dispute having intensified after Russia launched its full-scale invasion into Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian parliament moves to rescind ratification of nuclear test ban treaty
The lower house of the Russian parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill revoking the ratification of a global nuclear test ban treaty, the Associated Press reports.
The State Duma voted unanimously to rescind the ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT), in the first of three required readings. The final vote is scheduled for later this week.
The CTBT, adopted in 1996, bans all nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, although it has never fully entered into force.
There are widespread concerns that Russia could move to resume nuclear tests to try to discourage the west from continuing to offer military support to Ukraine.
The US signed the CTBT in 1996 but the Senate did not ratify the treaty. Successive US administrations, however, have observed a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said last week Moscow would resume nuclear tests only if Washington did so first.
Speaking in Sochi this month, Vladimir Putin made several references to nuclear weapons.
He said he was “not ready to say now whether we really need or don’t need to conduct tests”, adding: “As a rule, experts say, with a new weapon – you need to make sure that the special warhead will work without failures.”
Thousands of Ukrainians who fled to the UK after the Russian invasion are at risk of homelessness if ministers go ahead with plans to end funding for a scheme set up to help them, parliament’s spending watchdog has said.
Funding and sponsorship arrangements for more than 130,000 people helped under the Homes for Ukraine scheme are due to end in March. Many of these people face losing their homes when this funding dries up, according to an investigation by the National Audit Office.
“As more sponsorship arrangements come to an end, the risk of homelessness is likely to increase,” its report says.
You can read the full story here:
The jailed Russian politician Alexei Navalny condemned the arrest of three of his lawyers as he stood trial in the prison where he was being held, Russian media at the hearing said on Tuesday.
Lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Lipster – who have defended Navalny – were detained last week, Agence France-Presse reports.
Navalny said:
Of course these are outrageous and illegal acts.
He said the lawyers were “persecuted for their professional activity”.
Nobody is allowed to see me. I am completely isolated from information
He said it was part of an intensifying campaign to further isolate him and that he saw it as a sign that his team was acting “correctly” in the face of “these disgusting authorities.”
Navalny said the lawyers were targeted for their “professional activity” and that it was part of a campaign to further isolate him since he had his sentence extended to 19 years this summer.
The three lawyers were remanded in pre-trial detention until at least 13 December.
Luke Harding
A convoy of British ambulances has arrived in Lviv in western Ukraine and will be delivered to hospitals on the frontline.
Five vehicles donated by the charity Medical Life Lines Ukraine are being sent to the southern city of Kherson – which is under intense Russian attack – as well as the towns of Kupiansk and Vorozhba in the war-torn north-east of the country. Since last year’s full-scale invasion the group has donated 43 vehicles. More than £400,000 has been raised.
The five ambulances were handed over to Ukraine’s health ministry.
Volunteer drivers who set off from south-west London brought medical supplies, including mobility aids and vitamins.
The ministry has previously asked for children’s dressing up clothes and dog food, given to rescue dogs searching for people buried in collapsed buildings.
“We are doing this because we can,” the group’s leader Daniel Whitehead told the Guardian on Tuesday.
“Ordinary people can do things that make a difference to the lives of people in Ukraine who desperately need help. Ukrainians are suffering. It’s a moral duty.”
Drivers raise £7,000 each towards the cost of buying an ambulance. Two of the models were 4-x4s, which can cope with muddy backroads.
Volunteers came from the UK, France and the US, Whitehead said, adding: “We’ve been amazed by the level of support.”
The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said on Tuesday that Washington had asked Moscow via the UN to not revoke its ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
President Vladimir Putin, who earlier this month suggested that Russia revoked ratification of the 1996 treaty because the US had not ratified it, said he was not ready to say whether or not Russia would resume nuclear testing, Reuters reports.
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved revoking the ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty in the first of three readings on Tuesday.
The vote was passed by 412 votes to zero, with no abstentions. Vyacheslav Volodin said Russia was revoking the treaty because of the irresponsible attitude of the US to global security, Reuters reports.
Hungary had never wanted to oppose Russia and sought to forge close ties, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, told Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, in comments broadcast via a translator on Russian state television.
Orbán told the Russian president that Hungary was trying to salvage bilateral relations amid wider international tensions, as the two leaders met in China before the start of an international belt and road initiative forum, Reuters reports.
Vladimir Putin held talks in China on Tuesday with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
According to Reuters, Putin told Orbán in a televised meeting:
Despite the fact that in today’s geopolitical conditions the opportunities for maintaining contacts and developing relations are very limited, nevertheless it can only cause satisfaction that our relations with many European countries are maintained and developed. One of these countries is Hungary.
Russia’s defence ministry on Tuesday said two Tu-95 strategic bombers had carried out a seven-hour flight over the Sea of Japan, accompanied by Su-35 fighter jets, the RIA news agency reported.
According to Reuters, the flight was carried out in strict accordance with international airspace rules, RIA cited a lieutenant general as saying.
The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected western claims that North Korea was supplying weapons to Russia, the Tass news agency cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying.
The White House on Friday said North Korea recently provided Russia with a shipment of weapons, calling it a troubling development and raising concerns about the expanded military relationship between the two countries.
The British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson last month said Britain was urging the DPRK to cease arms negotiations with Russia, Reuters reports.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping may discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during their meeting in Beijing this week, Russia’s Ria news agency quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
Russia is revoking ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty because the irresponsible attitude of the US to global security, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament said on Tuesday.
The Russian parliament will debate revoking the ratification later on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
Russian assault on Avdiivka reported to be weakening
A days-long attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam, Kyiv officials said on Monday.
Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian general staff said. That compared with up to 60 attacks a day in the middle of last week, according to Vitalii Barabash, the head of the city administration. The slackening suggests the Russian effort to capture Avdiivka has “deflated”, Barabash said.
A Washington-based thinktank broadly concurred with that assessment. “Russian forces continued offensive operations aimed at encircling Avdiivka … but have yet to make further gains amid a likely decreasing tempo of Russian operations in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War said in analysis published late on Sunday.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told a UN security council meeting last Friday that the ramped-up attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.
With the looming onset of wintry conditions that will limit military operations, both sides have been seeking battlefield breakthroughs that could invigorate their efforts and raise morale.
Ukrainian officials have said their troops are holding out against fierce Russian efforts to wrest control of Avdiivka, a heavily fortified city.
Avdiivka lies in the northern suburbs of the city of Donetsk, in a region of the same name that Russian forces partially occupy. Avdiivka’s location grants Ukrainian forces artillery advantages over the city and could serve as a springboard for them to liberate Donetsk.
Putin arrives in Beijing for Belt and Road forum
Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping, in only his second known trip abroad since The Hague-based international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March.
Putin was greeted at the airport by the Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao.
The visit marks Putin’s first official trip outside the former Soviet Union this year, after visiting Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, earlier this month.
The forum centres on the belt and road initiative, a grand plan launched by Xi a decade ago that he hopes would build global infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes. Putin has praised the initiative, saying it is a platform for international cooperation, where “no one imposes anything on others”.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Kyiv officials have said that a days-long attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam. Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian general staff said.
Elsewhere, Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to attend the Belt and Road forum. It will be the Russian president’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the international criminal court issued a warrant for him in March over the deportation of children from Ukraine.
More on both of those stories shortly, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main news.
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Russia hopes to break through Ukrainian defences in the Kupiansk-Lyman sector of the frontline in north-eastern Ukraine, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said on Monday, according to Reuters. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi was shown in video footage telling soldiers the situation on the north-eastern frontline had “significantly escalated” and the Russian military wanted “revenge” by retaking territory it once occupied.
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Russia’s drones are mostly sourced from China and Moscow will spend more than $618m on a new national project to make them itself, Russia’s finance minister, Anton Siluanov, has said. “The task is that 41% of all drones by 2025 should have the label ‘Made in Russia’. Today, drones are mainly from the People’s Republic of China.”
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Ukraine has called for Russia to be excluded from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), warning the body faces a “slow death” if Moscow remained a member. The OSCE was founded to ease tensions between east and west during the cold war, and helps its members coordinate on issues such as human rights and arms control.
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Moscow can expect more diplomatic pressure from the 57-nation OSCE, according to the chief diplomat of North Macedonia, which holds that body’s rotating presidency. Its foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, on Monday urged Russia to cease its attacks on Ukraine and withdraw its forces.
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The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said support for Ukraine remained a “top priority” for the US and Europe, reaffirming the Biden administration’s commitment to support Kyiv “for as long as it takes”. Yellen told reporters that Joe Biden would submit a supplemental funding request for Ukraine and Israel “as soon as we have a functional House of Representatives”.
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