Russia-Ukraine war: Putin vows to continue attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure; 20,000 Ukrainians in Russian detention – live

Explosions have been heard at Berdiansk airbase in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Three large explosions were heard, as well as smaller ones, near the city on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

Emergency services have been reported as making their way to the scene. No casualties have been reported.

Russia has used the 35th anniversary of the historic signing of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to criticise the US for withdrawing from the agreement in 2019.

At the time, the then US president Donald Trump gave his reason for doing so as “developing our own military response options,” to Russia’s missiles.

Nato allies later backed the US by issuing a statement attributing responsibility for the treaty’s demise to Russia.

When the treaty was signed in 1987, the agreement between the US and the Soviet Union to reduce their nuclear arsenals was hailed by some commentators as a significant step towards a non-nuclear world.

This is how the Guardian reported the historic event.

Vladimir Putin has vowed to continue attacking Ukrainian energy systems despite global criticism of strikes that have left millions without electricity and water at the start of winter.

“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighbouring country. Yes, we do that. But who started it?” Putin said at an awards ceremony in the Kremlin, according to Agence France-Presse, adding that the criticism would “not interfere with our combat missions”.

He presented the strikes as a response to a blast on Moscow’s bridge to annexed Crimea and other attacks, accusing Kyiv of blowing up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power plant and not supplying water to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

“Not supplying water to a city of more than a million people is an act of genocide,” Putin said.

He accused the west of “complete silence” on this and of bias against Russia.

“As soon as we move and do something in response, there is uproar and clamour spreading through the whole universe,” he said.

Russia has faced claims that its attacks on Ukraine’s energy systems and infrastructure amount to war crimes.

The EU plans to tighten up sanctions on Russia’s military and industrial complex, pro-Kremlin media and Russian nationalist groups fighting in Ukraine, according to leaked papers.

The EU’s ninth set of restrictive measures on Russia since February’s invasion of Ukraine seek to close gaps in previous rounds, with further sanctions on 169 entities “which might contribute to the technological enhancement of Russia’s defence and security sector”, according to a draft text seen by the Guardian. These companies will face restrictions on their ability to buy from Europe so-called dual-use goods – civilian products that can be turned to military purposes.

Previous EU sanctions have already imposed sweeping bans on hi-tech equipment, but this package adds items that were missed off the list such as generators, toy drones, laptops, cameras and lenses.

According to a separate paper, four pro-Kremlin TV companies will lose their licence to broadcast in the EU, including NTV, Rossiya 1, Pervyi Kanal and REN TV, home to some of Russia’s high-profile talkshows featuring strident pro-war commentators.

A total of eight individuals are facing personal sanctions, meaning a travel ban and freeze on any assets held in the EU, including Russian officials said to be involved in the illegal transfer and adoption of Ukrainian children in Russia, as well as the leaders of rightwing nationalist groups.

In a largely symbolic move, six entities will see any EU assets frozen, including nationalist groups such as the Russian Imperial Legion, the Russian Imperial Movement and Taskforce Rusich.

Unlike previous rounds of sanctions, the cost for EU countries is relatively small. Some ideas, such as a ban on the once lucrative trade in Russian diamonds, are conspicuous by their absence.

The measures now have to be agreed by all 27 member states before coming into force.

Speaking at the White House, Joe Biden formally announced the release of Brittney Griner from detention in Russia and pledged to continue working to bring home another American jailed in the country.

“Moments ago, standing together with her wife, Cherelle, in the Oval Office, I spoke with Brittney Griner,” Biden said.

She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances. Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.

He thanked officials in his administration who had worked for her release, as well as the United Arab Emirates, “because that’s where she landed”. The president said “the past few months have been hell” for Griner, her family and her teammates.

He also mentioned the case of Paul Whelan, another American, whose release from Russia he said he was working on. “We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who’s been unjustly detained in Russia for years.”

For live developments on the release of Griner, do follow our US politics live blog with my colleague Chris Stein:

Around 10,000 Ukrainian service personnel and roughly the same number of Ukrainian civilians are believed to be being held in Russian detention facilities, according to Oleksandr Kononenko, who oversees human rights in the security and defence sector on behalf of Ukraine’s parliament.

Konenenko said the civilians were being detained illegally as prisoners of war because of their alleged association with the Ukrainian army or state.

Kononenko said:

These are the total number of confirmed people who are classed as ‘missing under special circumstances’, we do not have the exact figures. Russia has not given the International Committee for the Red Cross access [to the information].

Though the ICRC has not been given full access, it has been able to visit some Ukrainian prisoners. On Thursday, the ICRC made a rare announcement that it had visited one Russian facility and that it planned to visit another this week.

“ICRC teams are reaching out to families of prisoners of war to share updates from their loved ones. Most updates are short notes of love and personal news,” read the ICRC statement.

In July, Oleh Kotenko, who is in charge of wartime missing people within the Ukrainian ministry for the occupied territories, put the total number of Ukrainian service personnel believed to be held by Russia at significantly less – 7,200.

Kotenko said that although Ukraine had not heard from some of those reported missing, they were believed to be alive and in captivity.

After Ukraine pushed Russian forces out of parts of Kharkiv and Kherson region, it has announced several prisoner swaps. The regularity of the swaps probably indicate that Ukraine detained Russian prisoners during their offensives.

The former US marine Paul Whelan is still in Russian custody, his lawyer said, after news that Brittney Griner was released in a prisoner swap with the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Dialogue on a possible prisoner swap for Whelan is ongoing, his lawyer said.

Whelan was convicted by a Russian court in 2020 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in a Russian high-security prison. He denied the charges.

Joe Biden has tweeted that he has spoken to Brittney Griner, following the announcement that she has been released from Russian detention.

In a tweet, he posted pictures of him meeting with Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, at the White House.

The US basketball star Brittney Griner has been released from Russian detention in a prisoner swap for the convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, US officials have confirmed.

Griner was sentenced to nine years behind bars in Russia after being convicted on drug charges. A two-time Olympic gold medallist and champion, she was arrested on 17 February, a week before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, at a Moscow airport while in possession of vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, which is banned in Russia.

Bout, known as “the merchant of death”, was one of the world’s most wanted men before his 2008 arrest on multiple charges related to arms trafficking.

For almost two decades, he was one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, selling weaponry to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.

Here are some of the latest images we have received from Ukraine.

The Kremlin has said the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine, which Russia annexed in 2014, was vulnerable to attacks by Ukrainian forces after officials there said they had shot down a drone near a key naval base.

The Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, the largest city in annexed Crimea, said this morning that Russia’s fleet shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Black Sea.

Speaking to reporters during his regular briefing, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said:

There are certainly risks because the Ukrainian side continues its policy of organising terrorist attacks. But, on the other hand, information we get indicates that effective countermeasures are being taken.

His comments came after President Vladimir Putin recently made a visit to the Kerch bridge, the key link between annexed Crimea and mainland Russia which was partially destroyed by an explosion in October.

The Russian-installed head of occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said last month that he had ordered “fortification works to ensure the safety of Crimeans” to be built on the peninsula after recent attacks.

Speaking during his briefing with reporters today, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia is still set on seizing parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that President Vladimir Putin claimed as his own.

The Russian leader announced he had annexed four Ukrainian regions – Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk – after holding fake referendums in order to claim a mandate for his territorial claims.

However Moscow does not have full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed, and Peskov appeared to set a limit on the Ukrainian territory that Russia now sought to claim.

Asked whether Russia planned to incorporate any more territories beyond the four regions, he replied:

There is no question of that. At least, there have been no statements in this regard. But there is nevertheless a lot of work ahead to liberate the territories; in a number of new regions of the Russian Federation there are occupied territories that have to be liberated.

I mean part of the Donetsk Republic, as well as what became part of the Russian Federation, and then was re-occupied by Ukrainian troops.

My colleague Peter Beaumont is in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, amid worsening wintry conditions.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has called on Russia to answer for “atrocities” committed by its forces in Ukraine.

Thomas-Greenfield was responding to a report by the UN’s human rights office, published yesterday, that found that at least 441 civilians were killed by Russian forces during the first weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented summary executions and attacks in dozens of towns across three regions, and warned the actual number of victims in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions was likely to be much higher.

The report covered the beginning of Moscow’s invasion on 24 February until early April, and gathered evidence from 102 towns and villages in Ukraine.

It said:

The acts in question were committed by Russian armed forces in control of these areas and led to the deaths of 441 civilians (341 men, 72 women, 20 boys and 8 girls).

Many of the bodies documented in the report bore signs that the victims may have been intentionally killed, the report said. Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in what it calls a “special military operation”.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the US’s withdrawal from a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles was a “destructive” act that created a vacuum and stoked additional security risks.

The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty had kept nuclear missiles off European soil for more than three decades, but the treaty expired in 2019 after the US and Russia failed to agree on how to keep it alive.

Speaking on the 35th anniversary of the signing of the treaty by the US president, Ronald Reagan, and Soviet general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, Zakharova said:

The INF treaty had an indefinite life and was able to provide predictable restraint in the missile sphere for many years to come.

Russia has claimed that its proposed safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was to “stop Ukrainian shelling”.

Both sides have accused each other of shelling the plant, which is Europe’s biggest nuclear power station. There are fears the attacks could cause a nuclear accident.

Russia seized it shortly after its invasion in February. The International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog has called for a demilitarised safety zone around the plant.

The Red Cross has visited Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war in the past week, and it hopes that inspections can become more frequent.

Since the Russian invasion the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has seen hundreds of prisoners on both sides of the conflict. However its president, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, said access had been “sporadic”.

“My expectation is that these visits lead to more regular access to all prisoners of war,” the statement cited Spoljaric Egger as saying, according to Reuters.

“While the recent visits are important progress, the ICRC must be granted unimpeded access to see all prisoners of war repeatedly and in private, wherever they are held.”

The ICRC carried out a two-day visit to Ukrainian PoWs this week, according to Reuters. It also visited Russian PoWs last week. The UN human rights office said in November that its monitors had not been allowed access to Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia.