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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
10:05 p.m.: Russia said on Wednesday it had banned entry to more than 50 Irish officials including premier Micheal Martin in response to Western sanctions over Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
Among those listed was deputy premier Leo Varadkar, who is set to take back the premiership from Martin next month.
It also included Simon Coveney, who is Ireland's foreign and defense minister, and Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe as well as a number of other ministers and lawmakers.
The Russian foreign ministry said the measures against the 52 figures were taken following Ireland's support of EU sanctions against Russia.
In response, Coveney tweeted that Ireland "will be making no apology for being on the side of international law, the U.N. Charter, the side of Ukraine & the right side of history."
9 p.m.: The top U.S. general on Wednesday said Ukraine's chances of any near-term, outright military victory were not high, cautioning that Russia still had significant combat power inside Ukraine despite suffering battlefield setbacks since its invasion in February, Reuters reported.
Ukraine has vowed to keep the pressure on Russian forces until it reclaims control of all occupied territory. Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces recaptured the strategic southern city of Kherson, stoking optimism about Kyiv's broader military prospects heading into winter.
Still, U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged caution.
Milley added that the United States would support Ukraine in defending itself for as long as it takes, comments echoed by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the same event.
8:17 p.m.: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he believes an agreement allowing for Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea will remain in place beyond its Saturday expiration, according to news reports.
Erdogan told reporters at the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, that there were ongoing talks about extending the deal, and that he planned to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin upon returning from the summit.
The United Nations and Turkey brokered deals with Ukraine and Russia in July to allow for Ukraine to export grain from its Black Sea ports with vessels screened in Turkey, and for Russia to export food and fertilizer.
The U.N. says about 11 million tons of grain and foodstuffs have been exported to 42 countries since the deal began.
7:32 p.m.: Belarus said Wednesday it had shot down a reconnaissance drone approaching from Ukraine, the latest incident along a border that Russia used to launch its military operation in Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
Belarus said Wednesday the drone it shot down was "equipped with a video camera" and being used to film its border defenses.
Minsk shot down another drone over the southeastern region of Gomel earlier this month, the state-run news agency Belta has reported.
6:55 p.m.: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Ukraine's allies on Wednesday to share "all the data" held on the missile that landed in Poland, which Kyiv insists was fired by Russia, a claim contradicted by Warsaw, Agence France-Presse reported.
Two people were killed on Tuesday when at least one missile hit the village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border, during a mass Russian bombardment aimed at civilian infrastructure inside Western-backed Ukraine.
Poland announced Wednesday the projectile likely originated from Ukraine's air defenses.
"We want to establish all the details, each fact. That's why we need ... access to all the data that our partners have and the site of the explosion," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
6 p.m.: Around 50 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in a long-range Ukrainian artillery attack, Kyiv's military said on Wednesday in a rare instance of Ukraine claiming to have inflicted major casualties in a single incident, Reuters reported.
In a Facebook post, the armed forces general staff said Russia suffered the losses on Tuesday when Ukrainian forces shelled the village of Denezhnykove, 70 km behind front lines in the eastern province of Luhansk.
It gave no further detail. The Russian defense ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and Reuters was unable to independently verify the Ukrainian military's account.
5:05 p.m.: Hungary on Wednesday said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's insistence that a missile that landed in Poland was fired by Russia irresponsible as Washington endorsed Poland's conclusion the projectile likely originated from Kyiv's air defenses.
"In such a situation, world leaders speak responsibly," Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, told reporters.
"The Ukrainian president, by immediately accusing the Russians, was wrong, it's a bad example," he said, praising the cautious attitude of Poland and the United States.
4 p.m.: Hungary’s chief diplomat says the flow of oil in a pipeline taking Russian oil across Ukraine to Central European countries has resumed after repairs, The Associated Press reported.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto says that heavy Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure Tuesday halted the supply to several countries in Central Europe.
Szijjarto said Wednesday that repairs on the Druzhba, or “Friendship,” pipeline had allowed oil to begin flowing again, albeit at low pressure.
The pipeline is one of the world’s longest. It takes Russian oil into Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia and other countries.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted the energy supply to other countries in the region. Moldova also reported massive power outages on Tuesday after the Russian strikes downed a key power line to the small nation.
3:12 p.m.: Finnish gas grid operator Gasum said on Wednesday an arbitral tribunal had ruled it was not obligated to pay Russian gas supplier Gazprom in rubles.
Gasum in May took Gazprom to arbitration after the Russian group had demanded that Gasum paid in rubles for gas after Europe imposed sanctions on Moscow over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Gazprom shortly after stopped natural gas flows to Finland, Reuters reported.
"According to the award, Gasum is not obligated to pay in rubles nor through the proposed payment procedure," Gasum said in a statement on Wednesday.
Gasum, which has a long-term natural gas supply contract with Gazprom, said the arbitral tribunal also mandated the two companies to continue negotiations over the dispute.
Gazprom was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.
2:30 p.m.: The governor of a province in western Ukraine says it will take up to a year to fully restore the power grid after Russia’s massive missile barrage on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.
The Governor of Lviv province, Maksym Kozytskyy, said Wednesday that though power is back up for around 95% of the province, only 30% of consumers can use electricity at the same time due to capacity limits.
Kozytskyy said the province was better prepared for the latest Russian attack on the grid. Engineers were able to work with the help of diesel generators, and substations in the region had been equipped with additional protective shields.
Also, a large number of cars with loudspeakers were quickly deployed to inform local people about what was happening, he said.
2:05 p.m.: Poland had started to bolster its air defenses long before a stray missile landed just inside its border on Tuesday, but a robust shield for the skies along NATO's eastern flank is still a long way off after decades of neglect following the Cold War, Reuters reported.
The missile that hit Poland appears to have been fired by Ukraine's air defenses rather than a Russian strike, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.
But while it may have been a technical error that can happen in any conflict, the incident underlines the urgent need for NATO to plug gaps in its defenses because even mistakes like this could lead to a dangerous escalation.
"It was only a question of time for such an accident to happen," an air defense expert from a NATO country, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "It could also have been a stray Russian missile flying the wrong way, due to a technical or human error."
1:25 p.m.: The United States has not seen anything that contradicts Poland's preliminary assessment that a missile which landed within its borders on Tuesday was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
"Whatever the final conclusions may be, it is clear that the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia, which launched a barrage of missiles on Ukraine specifically intended to target civilian infrastructure," Watson said, adding that Ukraine had every right to defend itself.
1:10 p.m.:
12:45 p.m.: Ukraine's largest telecom operator Kyivstar has resumed coverage for more than half of Kherson city after Russia retreated from the region, and is working to help services across the country withstand intensified bombing, Reuters quoted a senior executive as saying on Wednesday.
Kherson is the main city of the region of the same name - one of four Ukrainian regions Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September he was incorporating into Russia.
Ukrainian telecom operators are working with western companies such as Ericsson (ERICb.ST) and Nokia (NOKIA.HE) to keep their network running.
Chief Technology Officer Volodymyr Lutchenko told Reuters in an interview from Lviv the company was installing mobile sites with diesel generators, battery backup and Starlink connections.
Elon Musk's SpaceX activated Starlink over Ukraine after Russia's invasion in February, allowing Ukrainians to hook up to the internet in places out of reach of the domestic telecoms system.
12:30 p.m.:
12:15 p.m.: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog says there will be more consultations this week and next on his calls for Ukraine and Russia to agree to a safety zone around Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, The Associated Press reported.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been urging agreement on such a zone for over two months.
Repeated shelling around Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant has contributed to it being disconnected from the grid on several occasions and fueled fears of a potential catastrophe.
Grossi said Wednesday that the main issues under discussion involve military equipment and the radius of the zone. He said in Vienna that the IAEA’s proposal is “very feasible.”
Grossi added that “what we are proposing is very simple: don’t shoot at the plant, don’t shoot from the plant” and that there are “not that many” points that are still in doubt.
He said an agreement would reflect a “very serious political commitment of both sides to stop doing something that is still taking place, and I’m not attributing anything.”
12:05 p.m.:
11:50 a.m.: "I can't stop staring at our boys here," said Valentyna Moroz, who lived through Russia's eight-month occupation of Kherson, standing in the sun on the central Freedom Square this week, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
After Russian troops withdrew, Kherson's residents were deprived of water, electricity, and mobile-phone connections, but the atmosphere in the 18th-century port city -- the only regional capital the invading forces had captured since Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February -- was decidedly euphoric.
Moroz, a 67-year-old pensioner who has spent almost all her life in Kherson after leaving Crimea as a teenage orphan, was simultaneously crying and smiling widely. "These are tears of joy -- I got my home back," she said.
The city center, the site of dramatic acts of resistance in the early weeks of the invasion, was again full of people. During a prolonged period of widespread fear and grave danger, many had rarely left their homes, but now they were greeting each other enthusiastically, with cries of "Glory to Ukraine," "Glory to the heroes," and "Kherson is Ukraine.”
11:35 a.m.:
11:20 a.m.: The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) released a statement Wednesday saying that a team of its medical personnel, water engineers, and risk specialists who work with mines and explosive ordnance, have traveled to Ukraine’s southern city Kherson and carried out an assessment of humanitarian conditions there following the withdrawal of occupying Russian forces.
"There are immense needs in Kherson, but we also saw incredible resilience from the people, volunteers and health professionals who have persevered through great difficulty and are facing very harsh conditions,” Stephan Sakalian, the head of the ICRC’s delegation in Ukraine, said in the statement.
The ICRC delivered medical supplies. food parcels and hygiene kits, and assisted local water service providers, the statement said.
The team also met with the Kherson branch of the Ukrainian Red Cross as well as local authorities to better understand and address those most critical needs, it added.
11:00 a.m.:
10:45 a.m.: The expulsion of more than 400 suspected Russian spies from across Europe this year has struck the "most significant strategic blow" against Moscow in recent history and taken Vladimir Putin by surprise, Britain's domestic spy chief said.
Reuters reports that in his annual update on the threat to Britain, Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum said a massive number of Russian officials had been expelled from across the world including over 600 from Europe of which more than 400 were judged to be spies.
"This has struck the most significant strategic blow against the Russian Intelligence Services in recent European history," he said in a speech at MI5's London headquarters on Wednesday. "And together with coordinated waves of sanctions, the scale has taken (Russian President) Putin by surprise."
10:20 a.m.: Both Poland and the United States would have to agree to Ukraine taking part in the investigation into a missile that landed in a village in southeastern Poland, the Polish president said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
"The proceedings are conducted by Polish and American experts and if anyone was to be allowed to take part in these proceedings it would need at least the agreement of both parties," Andrzej Duda told a news conference.
10:10 a.m.: Britain will not make a judgement about a missile which exploded in Poland until there are full details, foreign minister James Cleverly said on Wednesday, although he said the incident was ultimately a result of Russia's aggression towards Ukraine, according to Reuters.
Poland and NATO have said the missile, which killed two near Poland's border with Ukraine on Tuesday, was likely a stray fired by Ukraine's air defenses rather than a Russian strike.
"Poland will lead the investigation to establish exactly what has happened and the UK stands ready to provide any practical or technical assistance," Cleverly told parliament.
"In the meantime, we are not going to rush to judgement. Our response will always be led by the facts."
Cleverly said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was right to say that what happened in Poland was not Ukraine's fault, and Russia bore ultimate responsibility.
10:00 a.m.:
9:40 a.m.: Ukraine’s Operational Command South says the Ukrainian army is shelling the left bank of the Dnieper River, where the Russian military recently dug in after retreating from the southern city of Kherson, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
It said on its Facebook page that Ukrainian forces carried out more than 50 strikes around the Kinburn Spit, in Mykolaiv province, which is currently under the control of the Russian army.
The spit is said to be a key site for Russian electronic warfare and of strategic importance for coordinating Russian shelling of the right bank of the Dnieper River and southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces also destroyed ammunition depots in Nova Kakhovka and Oleshky on the Dnieper’s left bank, Operational Command South said.
In the eastern Donetsk province, the Russian army shelled seven towns and villages, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Heavy fighting is underway in the region for the city of Bakhmut.
Over the previous 24 hours, four civilians were killed and seven were wounded in the region. “Every day of the war raises the question of survival for those who are forced to live for months in basements without light and heat, fleeing from Russian shelling,” Kyrylenko said on Ukrainian TV.
9:25 a.m.:
9:00 a.m.: A resident of the Polish border village where a missile landed says the two victims of the blast were men around 60 years of age, The Associated Press reported.
Kinga Kancir, from the village of Przewodow in eastern Poland near Ukraine, said Wednesday both men worked at the village grain-drying facility.
“One was a guard, who guarded everything there, the other one was the tractor driver” who transported all the grain, Kancir, 24, told The Associated Press.
The men were killed by a missile that landed Tuesday in the village. NATO officials say the blast appears to have been an accident, not an attack on Poland by Russia.
“One of the victims was our neighbor who lived across from our apartment bloc,” Kancir said. “The other one lived in the neighboring village.”
She said there is “fear, anxiety” in the village about what the future might hold.
8:50 a.m.:
8:35 a.m.: Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko says homes in the Ukrainian capital are still getting heating, despite Russian attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
That’s because Kyiv’s critical infrastructure facilities are equipped with generators and fuel in case of outages.
Klitschko said on his Telegram channel Wednesday that the previous day’s Russian missile barrage caused mass blackouts.
He said the grid has been “stabilized,” but provided no further details.
8:15 a.m.: Ukraine wants access to the site of an explosion in eastern Poland which Western officials say was probably caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile, a senior Ukrainian defense official said on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said Ukraine wanted a joint study of Tuesday's incident with its partners and to see the information that provided the basis for its allies' conclusions.
Kyiv is "completely open to a comprehensive study of the situation," he wrote on the council's official Facebook page.
8:05 a.m.: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made opening remarks at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting Wednesday.
7:50 a.m.: The Kremlin is offering rare praise for the United States, applauding President Joe Biden’s “restrained” reaction to reports about a Russian-made missile landing in Poland, according to The Associated Press.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dismissed much of the reaction to the missile hit as “hysterical, frenzied.”
NATO allies are investigating how and why a missile that Poland said was Russian-made came down in Polish farmland, killing two, on Tuesday, amid a large-scale bombardment of Ukraine targets by Moscow’s forces.
Biden said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “We’ll see.”
Elsewhere, officials expressed alarm that the war could be escalating and spread to neighboring countries.
Peskov said that “high-ranking officials from different countries made statements without having any idea what happened exactly, what caused it, and so on.”
Asked to comment on Tuesday’s barrage of strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Peskov said that “objects that directly or indirectly have to do with military infrastructure” were targeted.
7:40 a.m.:
7:35 a.m.: After a missile strike killed two people in Poland, the incident raised global alarm this week that Russia's war in Ukraine could spill into neighboring countries.
Reuters published this explanatory feature about NATO's Articles 4 and 5, looking at whether the Ukraine war could trigger its defense obligations.
7:15 a.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak affirmed their strong support for Ukraine on Wednesday as they met for talks that included the blast that took place in Poland and challenges posed by China, the White House said.
The two leaders, who met on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Indonesia, would fully support Poland’s investigation of the Tuesday blast, the White House said in a statement.
Biden said earlier the missile that killed two people in Poland was probably not fired from Russia.
According to U.S. officials, initial findings suggested that the missile that hit Poland was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile, the Associated Press reported.
7:00 a.m.: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says a missile blast in Poland that killed two people near the border with Ukraine was probably not an attack by Russia, The Associated Press reported.
He said Wednesday it was likely a Ukrainian air defense missile that went astray.
“An investigation into this incident is ongoing and we need to await its outcome. But we have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack,” Stoltenberg told reporters after emergency talks between NATO envoys.
Stoltenberg said that NATO has “no indication that Russia is preparing action” against any member of the 30-nation military alliance.
But he said that the incident happened because of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“This is not Ukraine’s fault, Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” he said.
6:40 a.m.:
6:25 a.m.: Establishing a no-fly zone would pose a threat of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, Reuters reported quoting a German government spokesperson, after a missile blast in Poland near the Ukrainian border killed two people on Tuesday.
The spokesperson rejected this and said, "Together with all our allies we are agreed that we want to avoid a further escalation of this war in Ukraine."
Berlin will offer support to the Polish air defense, a spokesperson for the defense ministry said at a regular news conference on Wednesday.
The NATO meeting following Tuesday's blast was not based on article 4 of the alliance's founding treaty, under which members can bring any issue of concern for discussion, a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
6:10 a.m.: Poland’s President Andrzej Duda says there is no evidence a missile that hit Poland near its border with Ukraine was an “intentional attack,” The Associated Press reported.
Duda said Wednesday that the landing of the Russian-made missile in a rural area, killing two people, was mostly likely an accident.
“It was not an attack on Poland,” Duda said, adding that Tuesday’s incident involved “most probably a Russian-made missile.”
“We have no proof at this point to suggest the missile was fired by the Russian side,” Duda said. He added: “There is high probability that it was a missile used for anti-missile defense, meaning it was used by Ukraine’s defense forces.”
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” Duda said.
Even so, he said the ultimate responsibility lies with Russia, which launched a barrage of missile attacks on Ukraine on Tuesday.
6 a.m.: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday G-20 leaders agreed to push Russia towards de-escalation in the Ukraine conflict and expressed hope China could play a bigger mediation role in the coming months in that respect.
5:33 a.m.: Pope Francis condemned on Wednesday the latest wave of missile attacks on Ukraine, calling for a ceasefire to avert the risk of escalation of the conflict and asking God to "hurry up" to end it, Reuters reported.
He spoke at his general audience in St Peter's Square as NATO allies investigated unconfirmed reports that an explosion in a Polish village near the border with Ukraine was caused by stray Russian missiles. He did not mention the incident.
"I learned with pain and concern of a fresh and even fiercer missile attack on Ukraine, which caused deaths and damage to much civilian infrastructure," Francis said in Italian.
"Let us pray so that the Lord converts the hearts of those who still bet on war and make the desire for peace prevail in martyred Ukraine in order to avoid escalation and to open the path to a ceasefire and dialog," he said. A few minutes later, in other comments on Ukraine, he added, "We can pray for Ukraine saying, if you will, 'Hurry up, Lord.'"
Russia launched 110 missiles and 10 Iranian-made attack drones at Ukraine on Tuesday, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy said the main target of the missile flurry was energy infrastructure, as before, though he added that only 10 intended targets in all had been hit.
The attacks had left millions of Ukrainians without energy in 16 of its 24 regions including Kyiv, the U.N. humanitarian office, OCHA said.
Last month, Francis, for the first time, directly begged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the "spiral of violence and death" in Ukraine. He has been mentioning Ukraine in nearly all his public appearances and has several times said the crisis was risking the use of nuclear weapons, with uncontrollable global consequences.
5 a.m.: Sweden will deliver new military aid worth $287 million (3 billion crowns) to Ukraine, its biggest package of defense material to date which included an air defense system, Reuters reported quoting Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
Previous arms contribution by Sweden, which has applied to join NATO along with neighboring Finland, has ranged from simple equipment such as helmets and body armor to rocket-propelled grenades and missiles.
"It's a bigger military support package than all eight previous packages combined," Kristersson told a news conference. "It's the single largest we've done, and we follow exactly the Ukrainian priority list of what they themselves think they need just now."
Defense Minister Pal Jonson said the new package of military equipment included an air defense system and ammunition from the stockpiles of its armed forces, much needed to defend Ukraine against a fierce onslaught of Russian missiles in recent weeks.
Sweden's previous Social Democrat government, which lost to Kristersson's right-wing coalition in elections in September, had agreed several tranches of aid to Ukraine, both military and humanitarian, worth well over 1 billion crowns.
The Archer artillery system has been high on the Ukrainian wish list for some time but was not included in the fresh aid package, though Jonson did not rule it out for the future and said more support would be forthcoming.
Kristersson also said the government was closely following developments concerning the explosion in Poland near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday and that more information was needed to gain a clearer picture of what happened.
4:35 a.m.: Russia's defense ministry said on Wednesday that its strikes on Ukraine on November 15 were no closer than 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Polish border, Reuters reported citing state-owned RIA news agency.
NATO member Poland's president said earlier that Poland had no concrete evidence showing who fired a missile that struck a Polish grain facility some 6 kilometers (4 miles) inside the border with Ukraine and killed two people.
A NATO source said U.S. President Joe Biden had informed G-7 and NATO partners that the blast in Poland had been caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile.
4:25 a.m.: The Druzhba oil pipeline can likely be restarted within a short time as the pipeline itself had not been damaged, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a video message posted on the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto Facebook page.
Szijjarto also said, after talking with the Polish foreign minister, that Hungary was waiting further information from Poland on the results of their investigation into the blast that occurred in Poland near the Ukrainian border.
4:07 a.m.: The attacks in Ukraine during the G-20 summit in Indonesia this week shows Russian President Vladimir Putin's contempt towards international rules, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday.
Sanchez also entirely blamed Russia for the crises on the food and energy markets in a news conference following the closure of the summit, Reuters reported.
3:32 a.m.:
3:06 a.m.:
2:47 a.m.: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that he believed a deal expiring Saturday that allows Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea would remain in place.
"I am of the opinion that it will continue. There's no problem there," Erdogan told a press conference at the G-20 summit in Bali, according to Agence France-Presse.
2:13 a.m.: As VOA's Patsy Widakuswara reported, on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden told reporters that it was unlikely that a deadly explosion in eastern Poland was from a missile fired from Russia.
"We agreed to support Poland’s investigation into the explosion in rural Poland near the Ukrainian border," Biden told reporters. "And I’m going make sure we figure out exactly what happened."
2:05 a.m.:
1:25 a.m.: U.S. President Joe Biden and his British counterpart Rishi Sunak called Russian President Vladimir Putin's targeting of Ukrainian civilians "barbaric" on Wednesday at a G-20 summit in Bali, Agence France-Press reported.
"At a moment when world leaders here in Bali are seeking to make progress on world peace, Putin is striking civilian targets — children, women. I mean, it's almost — my words, not yours — barbaric," Biden said at a meeting with Sunak.
The British prime minister, meeting Biden for the first time since taking office, said: "I agree with your words — barbaric."
1:03 a.m.:
12:29 a.m.: France is planning its biggest ever military exercise involving 12,000 troops, including NATO allies, in the first half of next year, a commander at the chiefs of staff said Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse.
The scenario calls for a major conflict with an unspecified foreign state to be played out, said Yves Metayer, commander of the troop deployment division at the French chiefs of staff.
The wargames, called Orion, will involve European NATO allies Germany, Britain, Belgium, Italy and Spain as well as the United States.
Between late February and early May, 7,000 troops will play out a sequence involving naval operations in the Mediterranean, and an amphibian and airlift operation in southern France.
12:03 a.m.: Germany on Tuesday completed construction of its first floating terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven as it scrambles to secure more LNG and move away from Russian pipeline gas, Reuters reported.
Federal economy minister Robert Habeck said that Wilhelmshaven would become functional around the turn of the year, as would a second floating terminal at the Brunsbuettel North Sea port.
The new port infrastructure there will be equipped to switch to imports of low-carbon energy sources such as hydrogen in the future, said Lower Saxony environment minister Christian Meyer.
Germany relied on Russia for nearly a third of its gas last year but Berlin, which aims to halt any remaining Russian flows by the summer of 2024, in May started fast-tracking FSRU applications and related ones for more permanent, onshore LNG reception terminals at some sites.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
