Ukraine war live updates: Situation ‘critical’ in Bakhmut as retreat contemplated; Ukraine’s mud could help defending forces

Russia’s foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke “on the move” at a G20 meeting in India, but did not hold negotiations or a meeting, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday.

A senior U.S. State Department official earlier said the pair had spoken for less than 10 minutes on the margins of the conference.

— Reuters

The Kremlin says it is seeking to destroy “terrorists” who it said were behind a drone attack on the border region of Bryansk earlier this week.

“We are talking about an attack by terrorists. Now measures are being taken to destroy these terrorists,” Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday, according to comments reported by state news agency Tass.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had received reports from security agencies about the attack, he said, adding that “we are talking about the events that are unfolding in the Bryansk region in connection with an attack by Ukrainian militants.”

“The security forces report on the actions that the security agencies … are taking to counter terrorists,” he said.

Earlier this week, Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out several drone attacks on its territory, one of which it said had targeted Bryansk which borders Ukraine, although no damage was done and no one was hurt by the attack, a regional official said.

Ukraine has not confirmed it was behind the attacks and, on Wednesday, a Ukrainian official said Kyiv does not strike at Russian territory.

Nonetheless, and despite Russia carrying out numerous drone attacks on Ukraine, Moscow has been up in arms about the incidents with Peskov calling the Bryansk incident a terrorist attack. He said law enforcement agencies were investigating what had happened in Bryansk, “including the need to establish who committed the sabotage.” 

“The details will, of course, all be checked, investigated, it is necessary to establish for certain who [performed] this,” the Kremlin spokesman said, answering the question of whether the Kremlin links the actions of the saboteurs with the Ukrainian authorities.

— Holly Ellyatt

A Russian missile slammed into a five-story apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine on Thursday killing at least four people, Ukrainian officials said.

Rescue workers carried away the wounded on stretchers and clambered through the ruined building looking for survivors after the early-morning strike, a Reuters television crew on the scene said.

The upper floors of the apartment block had been destroyed and cars parked nearby had been crumpled. Fallen debris lay around the building. 

“The people were screaming from under the rubble. It was hard to hear. We were shocked,” Yuliia Kharytenko, a 36-year-old woman who lives in the apartment block, told Reuters.

“We ran out in whatever we were wearing. Our cat is left there, scared. We don’t know if it is alive.”

The Ukrainian state prosecutor’s office said four people had been killed and eight wounded in the attack. Another five were unaccounted for, it said. Seven of those rescued were being treated in hospital, and three of then were in a serious condition, said Anatoliy Kurtev, a senior city council official.

Among those who survived was a 30-year-old man who rescue workers said had been sleeping on a couch at the time of the attack and was trapped under a concrete slab. “For almost three hours rescuers worked to recover him from under the slab. He is alive and well, everything is fine,” said volunteer rescue worker Ivan Zdorovets.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack in a Facebook post, saying Ukraine would drive out the Russian forces who invaded Ukraine in February last year. Moscow did not immediately comment on the events in Zaporizhzhia. It denies deliberately targeting civilians, but has devastated towns and cities across Ukraine in missile and drone strikes.

— Reuters

Rising temperatures in Ukraine that are bringing in the country’s infamous muddy season are beginning to limit cross-country movement, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Thursday — and that could help Ukraine in defending territory.

Thawing winter temperatures and the ensuing muddy conditions, known as “rasputitsa” in Russian and “bezdorizhzhia” in Ukrainian, are well known in Ukraine and thwarted Russian forces (and often Ukrainian forces too) on numerous occasions last year as they tried to traverse the country’s boggy fields and roads early on in the invasion in spring.

The ministry noted that daytime soil temperatures have risen and are now largely above freezing and that warmer than average conditions for the remainder of winter and spring could further reduce cross-country movement.

“Poor CCM [cross country movement] typically provides some military advantage to defending forces,” the ministry said in its intelligence update on Thursday.

“It is almost certain that by late-March, CCM will be at its worst following the final thaw. This will add further friction to ground operations and hamper the off-road movement of heavier armoured vehicles, especially over churned-up ground in the Bakhmut sector,” an area heavily defended by Ukraine’s forces as Russia looks to seize more territory in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Moscow of repressing domestic critics and called on U.N.- mandated investigators to keep documenting Russia’s alleged abuses in the Ukraine war in a speech to the Human Rights Council on Thursday.

Blinken described Russia’s civil society crackdown as a “systematic muzzling” and also urged U.N.-appointed investigators to continue documenting Russia’s Ukraine abuses to provide “an impartial record of what’s occurring, and a foundation for national and international efforts to hold perpetrators accountable”.

His video address comes ahead of an expected speech by a senior Russian official Sergei Ryabkov who is due to appear before the same Geneva-based body for the first time since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.

— Reuters

There will be consequences if countries choose to give weapons to Russia to help it prosecute the war in Ukraine, the Netherlands’ Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra told CNBC Thursday.

“All others should clearly refrain from helping out Russia militarily, that would be a problem if countries, would cross that bridge … that will have a consequences if countries go across that line in my opinion,” Hoekstra told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill.

There have been concerns that China is contemplating giving Russia weapons to help it continue its war in Ukraine, although Beijing has rebuffed those claims. The U.S. has signaled it could impose economic sanctions on China if it does help Moscow.

Speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit taking place in New Delhi, Hoekstra refused to be drawn on whether sanctions could be imposed on China but said he was due to meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this afternoon at the summit. Ukraine would be discussed, he noted, saying “we all are facing the effects of this tremendous crisis for which Russia, and Russia alone, is responsible.”

For his part, Blinken has said he has no plans to meet his Russian and Chinese counterparts at the meeting.

Asked when he believed the war could end, Hoekstra was pessimistic it could come to a conclusion anytime soon.

“I think we have to be realistic here. All of us would want to have a peace on Ukrainian terms, ASAP, but the reality might well be that, that this war will stay with us for a very long time,” he said.

“Just bear in mind that the Russians waged war for nine years in Afghanistan, that they were decades in Eastern Europe. So what I’m saying to the public at home, I would I would like to convey to you as well, we have to be prepared for the long run. And as long as is necessary, we will continue to help out Ukraine.”

— Holly Ellyatt

Tensions higher than ever between the U.S. and Russia, both countries appear to be keeping their distance as Group of 20 (G-20) meeting takes place in New Delhi on Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that he has no plans to meet Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the summit, which comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered a second year last month.

Relations between the U.S. and Russia soured further in recent weeks after President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, the last remaining arms treaty between Moscow and Washington.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it wasn’t surprising that a meeting wouldn’t take place on the sidelines of the G-20 ministerial meeting.

“In my opinion, the position of the United States was clearly and long ago indicated. They are in favor of the escalation of conflicts in principle around the world, diplomacy, unfortunately, they, apparently relegated to the background,” Zakharova told reporters, news agency Interfax reported Thursday.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday called on her Russian counterpart to return to the full implementation of the new START nuclear arms control treaty.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian forces appear to be tightening the noose around the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk, prompting questions in Ukraine over whether a withdrawal by Ukrainian forces must be seriously considered.

Standard Russian units and mercenary fighters belonging to the Wagner Group have been slowly advancing on the industrial city in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks and reports suggest routes into the city are now being cut off.

Both Russia and Ukraine have thrown masses of manpower and equipment into capturing, and defending, Bakhmut, respectively. But given Russian forces are closing in on the city, Ukrainian military analysts are now openly questioning whether a tactical withdrawal should take place before it’s too late.

“I believe that sooner or later, we will probably have to leave Bakhmut. There is no sense in holding it at any cost,” Ukrainian member of parliament Serhiy Rakhmanin said on NV radio late on Wednesday in comments translated by Reuters.

No lines of defense should be allowed to collapse, Rakhmanin said, according to the news agency. “There are two ways to approach this — an organised retreat or simple flight. And we cannot allow flight to take place under any circumstances,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov said in a post on YouTube that “there is a danger that our garrison in Bakhmut will be encircled,” assessing the situation as “critical,” Reuters reported.

“The enemy is attempting to sever the routes used to supply our forces in Bakhmut and halt all movement along them,” he said. “The Russian forces cannot win street battles in Bakhmut or take the city by attacking head-on. The only way they can take the city is to surround it.”

Ukraine’s military said Thursday morning that over the past 24 hours, its forces had repelled more than 170 enemy attacks in the area of Bakhmut and surrounding settlements “where Russian troops are focusing efforts and conducting active offensive operations.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that his forces were under “insane pressure” and said battles around Bakhmut were intensifying day by day. Both sides claim that they are inflicting hundreds of losses on each other on a daily basis.

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, a “war criminal.”

“Mr. Prigozhin, who runs this thing, is in my view a war criminal and maybe that’s inappropriate for me to say as a judge before getting all the evidence, but I think we have more than sufficient evidence at this point for me to feel that way,” Garland testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

During questioning, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., pointed to the bipartisan measure sponsored by himself, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s ranking member, to declare the group a foreign terrorist organization. The Wagner Group is responsible for a deadly attack on the Donbas region of Ukraine and for using prisoners as cannon fodder, according to Garland.

“It’s just unfathomable what they are doing and everything we can do to stop them, we should do,” he said.

— Chelsey Cox

Hungarian President Katalin Novak urged lawmakers on Wednesday to ratify Finland and Sweden’s NATO entry “as soon as possible” as deputies started debating the motions after months of the bills being stranded in parliament.

“It is a complex decision, with serious consequences, so careful consideration is necessary,” Novak said on Facebook.

“My position is clear-cut: in the present situation, the accession of Sweden and Finland is justified. I trust the National Assembly will make a wise decision as soon as possible!” 

— Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to bring “every murderer, terrorist and torturer” to justice.

“We will hold the terrorist state fully accountable for its genocidal war,” Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel, according to an NBC News translation.

“Every murderer, terrorist and torturer will be brought to justice. Historical justice will be restored. Life and Ukraine will prevail,” he added.

Russia has previously said its troops in Ukraine do not deliberately target civilians or commit war crimes.

— Amanda Macias

Russia won’t rejoin the New START nuclear arms control treaty unless the U.S. changes its stance on Ukraine, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last month that Moscow was suspending its participation in the treaty, which puts controls on the nuclear arms production of both the U.S. and Russia, stating that Washington had to show “political will” and “make conscientious efforts” for a general de-escalation of tensions.

“Until the United States changes its behavior, until we see signs of common sense in what they are doing in relation to Ukraine … we see no chance for the decision to suspend START to be reviewed or re-examined,” Ryabkov said, according to comments to Russian news agency Interfax that were translated by Google.

Russia stressed that the suspension was reversible and Ryabkov said Wednesday that discussions on the treaty are being conducted through closed channels currently.

— Holly Ellyatt

The head of Russia’s mercenary troops, who have been fighting for months to capture Bakhmut and surrounding settlements, said Wednesday that Ukraine is putting up fierce resistance to Russian efforts to fully encircle and capture the city in Donetsk.

The founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, denied several Russian reports suggesting Ukrainian security forces had received an order to retreat from Bakhmut saying that, on the contrary, Ukraine was throwing everything it could muster to defend Bakhmut, a city that Russia calls “Artemivsk” or “Artemovsk.”

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine in Artemivsk are adding additional reserves and are trying with all their might to keep the city. Tens of thousands of soldiers of the Ukrainian army are putting up fierce resistance, the bloodshed of the battles is increasing every day,” Prigozhin said in a statement reported by Russian news agency Ria Novosti.

Prigozhin’s forces, made up of standard mercenary fighters and men recruited from Russian jails who were offered a reprieve in return for fighting in Ukraine, have been credited with slow, incremental advances by Russian forces in Donetsk in recent weeks.

Unlike some Russian military officials, Prigozhin has not downplayed the abilities of Ukraine’s fighters and he has been openly critical of the Russian defense ministry’s strategies in Ukraine, ruffling feathers back in Moscow.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russian forces continue to pummel Bakhmut on Wednesday but have not fully surrounded the city, according to Reuters.

The news agency noted Wednesday that it was still able to reach Bakhmut from the west on Monday, saying that was “proof that the city was not yet surrounded despite Russian forces pressing from north and south to close the last remaining routes in.”

According to Reuters, flames and smoke rose into the sky from blazing buildings, and the sounds of gunfire and explosions peppered the air. Ukrainian armored vehicles roared through the streets, it noted, while stray dogs wandered in the mud and destruction wrought on the former industrial city.

Several thousands of civilians remain in the city despite the relentless fighting around them, which has been going on for more than half a year. Russia has thrown thousands of troops into the fighting around Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk that it is determined to capture in a bid to rupture Ukrainian supply lines in the east.

In an update on Facebook Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces do “not stop storming the city of Bakhmut” but said Ukraine’s forces continue to fight back.

— Holly Ellyatt