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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EST.
8:14 p.m.: A senior U.S. envoy has expressed strong concern about the activities of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner and its attempts to recruit soldiers in Serbia and elsewhere in the world, The Associated Press reported.
U.S. State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said he voiced these concerns during talks in Belgrade Thursday with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Wagner Group, owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, reportedly has been active in dozens of mostly African states, working with governments on pro-Russian propaganda and other military and political projects.
The group has boasted about its presence in Serbia, the only European state besides Belarus which has not joined international sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine.
7:20 p.m.:
6:15 p.m.: Huddled in an underground shelter in war-battered east Ukraine, Oleksander and Lyudmila Murenets spend more time together these days than at any other point in their four decades of marriage, Agence France-Presse reports.
The tension is starting to show.
"You talk a lot," Oleksander, 68, sneered at Lyudmila, 66, on a recent morning as she tried to explain how much water is required to make homemade vodka.
Later, when Lyudmila corrected his attempt to say "thank you" to a foreign visitor, Oleksander cut her off completely. "Who is the boss of this house?" he said.
These flare-ups have become routine after 10 months in the cramped basement of their apartment block in Siversk, a former front-line town that was shelled almost beyond recognition and where windows still rattle day and night from artillery booms.
5:27 p.m.:
4:20 p.m.: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut and Soledar in the east would be armed with everything they need to keep Russian troops at bay in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, Agence France-Presse reported.
Kyiv said earlier its troops were fighting to retain control of the now-battered industrial towns in the east, which Russian mercenaries claimed earlier this week to have taken.
The Kremlin has made capturing the Bakhmut -- and Soledar with it -- its primary objective after nearly one year of fighting, having been forced to abandon more ambitious goals such as seizing the capital Kyiv.
"I want to emphasize that the units defending these cities will be provided with ammunition and everything necessary, on time and without interruption," Zelenskyy said in a statement after a meeting with senior military officials.
3:18 p.m.: As the European Union thinks about injecting more subsidies into its industry to counter U.S. efforts to ramp up its green technologies sector, fears only increase that the continent’s giants will profit at the cost of the small member states, The Associated Press reported.
And if the EU’s approval of subsidies to counter the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine are anything to go by, such fears are justified.
Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, warned Thursday about the need to preserve a balance to make sure that Germany and France don’t strong-arm smaller member states and boost their national powerhouses will billions in subsidies that others simply don’t have.
It would fundamentally threaten the EU’s cherished “single market” where all industries from the 27 nations, be they from wealthy Germany or poorer Bulgaria, can compete as much a possible on an equal footing.
The EU’s response to the U.S. subsidies imbedded in the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act must avoid “a competition on who can provide the most state aid” within the EU, Swedish Industry Minister Ebba Busch said. “We would have a situation where we would distort competition on the internal market, and particularly, disadvantage the smaller states within the union.”
2:30 p.m.: Russia on Thursday released a U.S. citizen who had crossed into its Kaliningrad exclave in the first weeks of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine last February, former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, who met with the man at the border in Poland, said in a statement, according to Reuters.
U.S. Navy veteran Taylor Dudley, 35, was backpacking in Europe when he crossed the Polish-Russian border in April, Jonathan Franks, a lawyer who represents families of Americans detained overseas, said in an email to reporters.
Dudley's circumstances while in Russia were unclear and his case had not been previously publicized.
The U.S. State Department was aware of reports that an American citizen had been deported from Russia, said a spokesperson who declined to comment further on the case, citing privacy considerations.
Russia's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Polish foreign ministry declined to comment on the case.
2:05 p.m.: In Odesa, a volunteer brigade does what it takes to protect their homeland. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian shells have been a part of daily life in the city of Odesa. But a determined set of locals is fighting back, from hairdressers to police officers who are part of a territorial defense effort. VOA’s Anna Kosstutschenko has this report.
1:45 p.m.: Burst riverbanks, thick mud and waterlogged fields could be seen for miles around northwest Ukraine's border with Belarus on Thursday, making the prospect of a Russian assault from across the border unlikely for now despite recent warnings from Kyiv, Reuters reported.
Ukrainian officials have warned of a new looming Russian assault, with Belarus to the north named as one possible launchpad, as Moscow seeks to revive its faltering invasion.
Russia and its close ally Belarus have beefed up their joint military grouping in Belarus and plan to hold joint aviation drills there from next Monday.
Against this backdrop, the borderland's thick forests and treacherous swamps are guarded by the Volyn territorial defense brigade, one of hundreds of Ukrainian units recruited from local people willing to defend their communities.
1:05 p.m.:
12:30 p.m.: A court in Russia's southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don has sentenced Crimean Tatar activist and religious cleric Raif Fevziyev to 17 years in prison on charges of plotting to seize power and organizing the activities of a terrorist group, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
Fevziyev, an imam of a Muslim community in Crimea, has rejected all of the charges, saying the case against him was fabricated by Russian police.He was arrested along with four other Crimean Tatar activists by Russia-installed police in Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula last August after their homes were searched.
Ukrainian officials condemned the arrests of Fevziyev and four other Crimean Tatars at the time with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling the move "a blatant violation of human rights."
On January 11, the same court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced five Crimean Tatars to lengthy prison terms on charges of being members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir religious group that is banned in Russia but is legal in Ukraine.
Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they describe as a campaign of repression by the Russian-imposed authorities in Crimea who are targeting members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.
12:10 p.m.: People, parcels, and a dog: there is a volunteer connecting Moldova and Ukraine. Bogdan Ovsienco, a businessman from Chisinau, Moldova, has been volunteering since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He goes to Ukraine several times a week and carries passengers and parcels in both directions. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this story.
11:35 a.m.: A congress of Ukrainian judges on Thursday appointed the last of eight new members to an important judicial oversight body, a move experts and officials have said is critical to Kyiv's push to reform its judiciary, Reuters reported.
The European Union made cleaning up the courts one of its main recommendations when it offered Ukraine the status of candidate member last June, four months after Russia's invasion.
The selection of the new members to the High Council of Justice (HCJ) means the body can resume its work overseeing the appointment, dismissal and disciplining of judges.
11:05 a.m.:
10:40 a.m.: President Vladimir Putin's defense minister has appointed Russia's most senior general, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, 67, to lead its war in Ukraine, the most dramatic in a series of senior command changes since Russia invaded in February, Reuters reported.
Many of the nationalist war bloggers who have license from the Kremlin to criticize the conduct of the war have blamed Gerasimov for the fact that a superpower military - supposedly modernized and expensively re-equipped in the last 15 years - has failed so signally to subjugate its much smaller neighbor.
Critics in Ukraine, the West and even inside Russia cast the Russian armed forces as naive, poorly prepared and equipped, slow to react, and riven by disparate and often distant command structures.
Supporters of the defense ministry say Russia often performs poorly at the start of wars, and that many of the problems that have become apparent in supply, technology and command over the past 10 months have been or are being resolved.
Gerasimov played key roles in Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and in Russia's game-changing military support for President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian Civil War. The U.S. State Department sanctioned him the day after the invasion of Ukraine, saying he was one of three senior Russians alongside Putin who were directly responsible for the war.
By putting Gerasimov in direct command, Putin can send a signal to the West about his determination to win the war, reinforce the standing of the army relative to Prigozhin and Kadyrov's militias and, not least, make his top general more accountable for the day-to-day conduct of the invasion.
10 a.m.:
9:35 a.m.: The British government said on Thursday that a small number of people who were granted so-called "golden visas" for millionaire investors might have obtained their wealth through corruption or organized crime, Reuters reported.
The government last year scrapped the visas, which offered a route to residency for those investing at least 2 million pounds ($2.43 million), days before the invasion of Ukraine amid government concerns about the inflow of illicit Russian money.
The government first commissioned the visa's review in 2018 after the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain. After keeping the findings secret for years, the government released details of that investigation to parliament on Thursday.
"The review of cases identified a small minority of individuals connected to the Tier 1 (Investor) visa route that were potentially at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity, and/or being engaged in serious and organized crime," Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a written statement to parliament.
The flow of tens of billions of pounds in investment helped London preserve its position as one of the world's top financial capitals. But the government has been concerned by the source of some of the wealth, particularly in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
9:10 a.m.: Russia’s war in Ukraine has wrought a devastating toll on civilians and shattered civilian life in much of the country, Human Rights Watch said Thursday in its World Report 2023. “Russian forces have committed apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, summary executions, and enforced disappearances. They have carried out indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure, leaving millions of civilians periodically without electricity, water, and heat as winter temperatures plunged,” Human Rights Watch said.
8:45 a.m.: Widespread opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates the strength of a unified response against human rights abuses, and there are signs that power is shifting as people take to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction in Iran, China and elsewhere, a leading rights group said Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
A “litany of human rights crises” emerged in 2022, but the year also presented new opportunities to strengthen protections against violations, Human Rights Watch said in its annual world report on human rights conditions in more than 100 countries and territories.
“After years of piecemeal and often half-hearted efforts on behalf of civilians under threat in places including Yemen, Afghanistan, and South Sudan, the world’s mobilization around Ukraine reminds us of the extraordinary potential when governments realize their human rights responsibilities on a global scale,” the group’s acting executive director, Tirana Hassan, said in the preface to the 712-page report.
8:15 a.m.:
7:50 a.m.: A Russian-installed official in Ukraine's Donetsk region said on Thursday that "pockets of resistance" remained in the Ukrainian town of Soledar, undermining claims that the town had been taken by Russian forces, Reuters reported.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the powerful head of the Wagner private military group whose soldiers are fighting to capture the town, had said on Wednesday that Soledar was under the "complete control" of Russian forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ridiculed those claims, and independent analysts say fighting is likely ongoing in the town.
"At the moment, there are still some small pockets of resistance in Soledar," Andrei Bayevsky, a military figure and Russian-installed local politician, said in an online broadcast.
7:30 a.m.: The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Thursday that aid workers are reaching Ukrainians living near the front lines with lifesaving assistance.
7:10 a.m.: Russia could raise the upper age limit for citizens to be conscripted into the armed forces as soon as this spring as part of Moscow's plans to boost the number of Russian troops by 30%, Reuters reported, quoting a senior lawmaker.
President Vladimir Putin gave his backing in December to defense ministry proposals to raise the age range for mandatory military service to cover Russian citizens aged 21-30, rather than the current range of 18-27.
The chairman of the Russian parliament's defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, said in an interview with the official parliamentary newspaper that Russia could raise the upper age limit for conscription to 30 for this year's spring draft. But only after a one-to-three year "transition period" would the lower limit be raised from 18 to 21 years, Kartapolov said.
6:55 a.m.:
6:40 a.m.: The scale of alleged torture and detentions by Russian forces in Kherson is beginning to emerge, Reuters reported Thursday.
Oksana Minenko, a 44-year-old accountant who lives in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, said she was repeatedly detained and tortured by occupying Russian forces.
Her husband, a Ukrainian soldier, died defending Kherson’s Antonivskyi bridge on the first day of full-scale war, she said. During several interrogations in the spring, Russian forces submerged her hands in boiling water, pulled out her fingernails and beat her in the face with rifle butts so badly she needed plastic surgery, according to Minenko.
Reuters wasn’t able to independently corroborate individual accounts shared by Minenko and other Kherson residents but they fit with what Ukrainian authorities and international human rights specialists have said about conditions and treatment during detention, including detainees being blindfolded and bound, subject to beatings and electric shocks and injuries, including severe bruising and broken bones, forced nudity and other forms of sexual violence.
The Kremlin and Russia’s defense ministry didn’t respond to Reuters’ questions, including about alleged torture and unlawful detentions. Moscow, which has said it is conducting a “special military operation" in Ukraine, has denied committing war crimes or targeting civilians.
6:15 a.m.:
6 a.m.: Ukraine said Thursday its forces were fighting to retain control of Soledar, a town in the eastern Donetsk region, but the situation remained "difficult."
"The fiercest and heaviest fighting is continuing today in the area of Soledar," Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported.
"Despite the difficult situation, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting stubbornly," she added.
Russian mercenary group Wagner claimed earlier this week its forces had captured Soledar, but the defense ministry in Moscow said fighting was ongoing and Ukraine denied any full takeover.
Both sides have conceded heavy losses in the fight for Soledar and the nearby town of Bakhmut, a key military objective for Russia's troops.
Malyar claimed during the press conference Thursday that Russian forces were "suffering heavy losses".
Russia wants to gain control of the entire eastern Donetsk region which it claimed to have annexed last year, despite not having complete military control over it.
Its capture of Soledar would allow Russia to sell a much-needed victory back home after months of humiliating setbacks.
But observers of the conflict have said Soledar itself — a salt mining town with an estimated pre-war population of over 10,000 people — is of little strategic importance.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said this week that Bakhmut — and with it Soledar — could be a launching pad to retake the city of Donetsk, a Russian stronghold since 2014.
5:40 a.m.:
5:15 a.m.: Russia questioned on Thursday whether Sweden had "something to hide" over explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, as it slammed Stockholm for not sharing information in the ongoing investigations into the blasts.
Swedish and Danish authorities are investigating four holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines which link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea and have become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis.
According to Reuters, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Sweden's refusal to engage with Russian prosecutors was "confusing" and said Moscow had a right to know the details of the probe into the explosions, which occurred last September.
Moscow proposed to Stockholm the establishment of a joint investigation into the blasts, which could see three of the four lines of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas projects put permanently out of use. But both Sweden and Denmark have rejected the idea of Russian participation.
At a briefing in Moscow on Thursday, Zakharova suggested there were reasons for that decision.
"Maybe Russian investigators, conducting an objective investigation, could come to an inconvenient conclusion... about who conducted this act of sabotage, terrorism. About who thought it up, and who carried it out," she told reporters.
Zakharova said Sweden was "concealing" facts about what it had discovered in the investigation, suggesting that "the Swedish authorities have something to hide".
Sweden and other European investigators say the attacks were carried out on purpose, but they have not said who they think was responsible. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed the explosions on Western sabotage.
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to carry Russian gas to Germany, was completed in September 2021, but was never put into operation after Berlin shelved certification just days before Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in February.
4:55 a.m.:
4:40 a.m.: Russia is building up its forces in Ukraine but Ukrainian forces are holding out in fierce fighting for control of the eastern town of Soledar, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
She told a news briefing that the number of Russian military units in Ukraine had risen to 280 from 250 a week earlier.
"They (the Russians) are moving over their own corpses," Malyar said of the fighting for Soledar. "Russia is driving its own people to the slaughter by the thousands, but we are holding on."
4 a.m.: Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova said on Thursday that both Moscow and Kyiv are interested in future contacts between their rights commissioners, Reuters cited the TASS news agency as reporting.
Following a meeting this week in Turkey with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Lubinets, Moskalkova said she believed Ukraine had adopted a pragmatic approach to ongoing discussions between the two sides, TASS reported.
At that meeting, the pair agreed the latest prisoner exchange between the two sides, with each releasing another 40 captured fighters.
"They have taken a pragmatic approach and are ready for dialog," Moskalkova said on Thursday, speaking of her Ukrainian counterparts.
"We already have concrete results on the search for missing people, and [the] return of children to their families. I hope the dialog is continued. The most important thing is that it should not be politicized, but based exclusively on humanitarian and human rights principles," TASS quoted her as saying.
3:45 a.m.:
3:30 a.m.:
3:10 a.m.: "Each additional watt of electricity they manage to wring into the power grid defies Russian President Vladimir Putin's nearly 11-month invasion," The Associated Press reported about Ukrainian power plant workers, who are keeping the nation’s power grid working through "bravery, dedication, ingenuity and dwindling stocks of spare parts."
2:50 a.m.:
2:30 a.m.: Reuters reported that Russia's Gazprom said it would ship 35.5 million cubic meters of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Thursday, in line with similar levels reported in January 2023, but around 15% down on daily shipments seen in the final months of 2022.
2 a.m.:
1:30 a.m.:
1:10 a.m.: The past year has seen a litany of human rights crises across the world, from Ukraine to China to Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch says in its latest annual report, released Thursday. The authors also say, however, that new champions of human rights have emerged. Henry Ridgwell reports:
12:30 a.m.:
12:01 a.m.: Forces from Russia's Wagner Group on Wednesday found the body of one of two British voluntary aid workers reported missing in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing the private military firm.
The firm did not mention the name of the dead man but said documents belonging to both Britons had been found on his body.
A photo posted alongside the statement appeared to show passports bearing the names of Andrew Bagshaw and Christopher Parry, the two missing workers.
Ukrainian police said on Monday they were looking for the pair who went missing in east Ukraine, the scene of heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Ukrainian police said the two left the city of Kramatorsk for the town of Soledar on Friday morning and were reported missing on Saturday evening after contact with them was lost.
Some information in this report came from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press.
