Conservative backbencher Alicia Kearns tweeted on Thursday that the Government should consider cyber attacks on Russia if Mr Putin does not withdraw troops. The prime minister did confirm that 1,000 more troops would be put on alert in the UK if Russia were to invade although Downing Street is likely to follow the lead set by Nato. Russia has gradually built up a force of close to 190,000 troops around the Ukrainian border over the last few weeks but maintained that it had no intention to invade – until last night.
The temporary “Nightingale” hospitals built to deal with Covid would be reopened – and the makeshift mortuaries nearby. Kyiv has not denied the claims outright, but officials have appeared to question whether its POWs were on board. Turkey’s parliament ratified Sweden’s Nato membership on Tuesday after more than a year of delays that upset western efforts to show resolve over Russia’s war in Ukraine. The US did not green light the transaction until Turkey’s instruments of ratification of Sweden’s membership had arrived in Washington, a US official said, highlighting the highly sensitive nature of the negotiations, AFP reports.
Russia threatens 'military response' after UK gives long-range missiles to Ukraine
Those remaining have again been urged to leave Ukraine immediately - if they judge it is safe to do so. A source told BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley the meeting was "tempestuous" and ended early after Ms Truss said the ambassador should be "ashamed" of Russia's behaviour in Ukraine, adding that the Kremlin had lied repeatedly. "Because this act of wanton and reckless aggression is an attack not just on Ukraine, it's an attack on democracy and freedom in eastern Europe and around the world." In a pre-recorded TV statement, Mr Johnson stressed that Ukraine was "not some faraway country of which we know little". The UK "cannot and will not just look away" at Russia's "hideous and barbaric" attack on Ukraine, Boris Johnson has said.
Nato is unwilling to send troops into Ukraine itself although the UK has supplied around 2,000 anti-tank missiles to the country. Putin already sent in “peacekeeping troops” to two separatist regions of Ukraine on Monday – prompting the West to issue a string of sanctions against Russia – but went even further early Thursday morning when he declared war on Ukraine. Opposition leaders including Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer criticised the initial package of sanctions for being too soft.
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After all, we do know the plane came down - and Ukraine has the capacity for that. Everyone we called for information told us, "not yet", or "we're checking information" or "just wait". They quoted the Defence Ministry in Moscow claiming that dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war had been on board the flight, on their way to a prisoner exchange. There are shooting wars and there are information wars and countries that are fighting do battle on both fronts. President Biden's virtual meeting with President Putin earlier this week was a start and will be followed up by more talks with other Nato members. He said the security situation in Europe was without precedent since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
- Convoys have also entered the eastern Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, and moved into the Kherson region from Crimea - a territory that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
- Since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the UK has sanctioned around 183 individuals under the Russia sanctions regime.
- Ukrinform reports the director of the Kharkiv human rights group, Yevhen Zakharov, has said that about 530 religious buildings in Ukraine have been damaged during the course of war.
- But be we warriors or wimps, now is the time to start facing up to the prospect, says Ed Arnold, a European Security Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
- Moscow has claimed its forces have taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser said that more than 40 soldiers had died and dozens more were wounded, but this has not been independently confirmed. Martial law - which means the military takes control temporarily - has been imposed across the whole of Ukraine and traffic jams built up as people fled the capital city of Kyiv. Ukraine has imposed martial law across the country, meaning the military has taken control temporarily, and traffic jams have built up as people attempt to flee Kyiv. The UK's Ministry of Defence said Russian forces based in Belarus were advancing towards Ukraine's capital Kyiv. Russian military vehicles are reported to have breached Ukraine's border in a number of places, in the north, south and east, including from Belarus. He said the UK and allies will launch a "massive package" of sanctions to "hobble" Russia's economy.
But later on Thursday President Zelensky said Ukraine had suffered losses and a lot of aircraft and armoured vehicles had been destroyed. There have also been reports of troops landing by sea at the Black Sea port cities of Mariupol and Odesa in the south. BBC correspondents heard loud bangs in the capital Kyiv, as well as Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. He urged Ukrainian soldiers in the combat zone to lay down their weapons and go home, but said clashes were inevitable and "only a question of time". Russia did not want to occupy Ukraine, he said, but would demilitarise and "de-Nazify" the country. In recent days, some Russians opposed to what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine have queued up in the cold to offer their signatures in his support.
- On Tuesday night President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 500 missiles and drones against Ukraine in just five days.
- It's promising to deploy British forces to eastern European members of the Nato military alliance if Russian troops cross Ukraine's borders.
- There is a sense in the upper echelons of the British military that many politicians and most of the public have not grasped the threat they see.
The UK is providing additional military support to eastern Nato member states and will support Ukrainians in their defence of their homeland, he added. On Wednesday, the UK announced a package of sanctions against Russia as part of a co-ordinated Western response to the crisis. Mr Putin also urged Ukrainian soldiers in the combat zone in the east of the country to lay down their weapons and return to their homes, warning that Moscow's response would be "instant" if anyone tried to take on Russia. At least seven people are known to have been killed by Russian shelling, including civilians.
Transcarpathia [Zakarpattia], everything that was and is part of the Romanian nation must return to its state borders,” he said. Nato must expect Russian missile strikes on European cities, a senior general has said. Ukraine has changed its strategy towards “active defence” in recent weeks after its much-vaunted summer counter-offensive failed to achieve major gains. In its latest defence intelligence briefing, the MoD said Russia has lost 2,600 tanks and 4,900 armoured vehicles in Ukraine so far. Prominent Russian Telegram channels Baza and 112 said a drone attacked the Slavenft-Yanos oil refinery in Yaroslavl at 7am local time (4am GMT). It also called for the arrest of journalist Dmitry Nizovtsev and Anna Biryukova, the ACF’s head of public opinion research.
- Storm Shadow is a long-range, air-launched cruise missile developed by British Aerospace and a French company, which carries a 450kg conventional warhead to a range of up to 200 miles (300km).
- Ukraine has not seen attacks as heavy as this since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.
- And he added that any intervention from outside powers to resist the Russian attack would be met with an "instant" and devastating response.
- The prospect of further UK sanctions against Russia comes a day after the prime minister announced that five Russian banks had had their assets frozen and three Russian billionaires would have travel bans imposed.
Russian forces struck the settlement of Maly Burluk on 17 January with an aerial bomb, Synegubov said. If the deal collapses, it could leave congressional leaders with no clear path to approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. They said Moscow did not ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past prisoner exchanges. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been highly critical of the EU's financial and military aid for Ukraine and has maintained close ties with Russia. A spate of Ukraine-linked attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure have reportedly led Moscow's energy ministry to propose restricting flights over energy facilities. Meanwhile, Indian thinktank Observer Research Foundation's Russia expert, Nandan Unnikrishnan, said India was unlikely to sign "any major military deal" with Russia because it would cross a red line with the US.
The UK stands with Ukraine, its democratically-elected government and its brave people at this awful time. The UK government is providing a range of economic, humanitarian and defensive military assistance to Ukraine, and is imposing additional sanctions on Russia and Belarus. One ex senior minister suggested to me that there was a generational divide between those who had lived with the threat of the Cold War era, and those who had not. The former minister, currently a serving Conservative MP, pointed out that the prime minister grew up without that existential threat. There is a sense in the upper echelons of the British military that many politicians and most of the public have not grasped the threat they see. It is the duty of the military to analyse that threat, and they still might be proved wrong.
Russia says Ukrainian prisoners of war were onboard the Russian military plane that crashed on Wednesday morning, the AP reports. He said his family earned £76,000 in 2022 and called for public officials to disclose their incomes as part of transparency efforts. https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-is-china-saying-about-ukraine.html said there was no fire, no casualties and anti-air defences had shot the drone down. Regional governor Mikhail Yevrayev said there was no fire, no casualties and anti-air defences had shot the drone down.
Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, this month repeated that the UK wants to increase defence spending from 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% in the future. With an election looming, the military is hoping politicians make further pledges over defence spending. Labour has avoided making any firm spending commitments, but has criticised cuts to the size of the army and promised to launch a defence review if elected. “The British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force and there is absolutely no suggestion of a return to conscription,” the MoD said, adding that £50bn was being invested in the military during the current year. In his speech, Sanders said the cold war peace dividend was over, noting that “over the last 30 years, the army has been halved in size; in the last 12 years, we’ve absorbed a 28% reduction”. Recruitment remained a challenge, he said, although applications to join were “the highest in six years”.