Dutch PM says F-16 jets for Ukraine to arrive in two weeks; Moldova accuses Russia of information war against country. This blog is closed

• What we know on day 614

In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said a Russian state-backed private military company (PMC) is specifically attempting to recruit women into combat roles in Ukraine for the first time.

Posting to X, formerly Twitter, the MoD wrote:

Recent social media adverts have appealed for female recruits to join Borz Battalion, a part of Russian PMC Redut, to work as snipers and uncrewed aerial vehicle operators. Redut is likely directly sponsored by the Russian main directorate of intelligence.

In March 2023, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said that 1,100 women were deployed in Ukraine, which would equate to only around 0.3 per cent of its force. As Redut’s advert points out, they currently serve in mostly medical support and food service roles.

Russian losses in Avdiivka may be its worst of 2023, says UK; Ukraine and Netherlands start bilateral agreement talks

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Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of president Vladimir Putin said. It comes after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its post-war reconstruction.

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, the Belarus leader said. Alexander Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched … Seriously stalemate.”

Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka.

Four Ukrainian police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk province.

A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow. In a statement, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”.

The head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, has praised Qatar’s role in facilitating the return of four Ukrainian children from Russian captivity earlier this month.

Ukraine and the Netherlands began talks on a bilateral agreement on security guarantees in Malta, Yermak also announced. It is the sixth country to start bilateral negotiations with Ukraine on security guarantees.

MoD intelligence update says up to eight brigades have been committed to ‘heavy but inconclusive’ fighting

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka.

According to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update on Saturday morning, Russia has probably committed elements of up to eight brigades to the sector where it initiated a “major offensive effort” in mid-October.

Russia loses brigade’s worth of troops in push for Avdiivka, says Zelenskiy; heavy shelling hits Kherson; Macron condemns Orbán’s meeting with Putin

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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claimed that Russian forces had lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops attempting to advance on Ukraine’s eastern town of Avdiivka. Russia began a renewed push to encircle the embattled town in mid-October, trying to overwhelm Ukrainian positions with constant barrages of artillery and waves of troops and fighting vehicles, according to reports.

Russian forces have heavily shelled the centre of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, injuring a number of people and damaging at least 10 buildings, a senior local official and emergency workers said.

The European Council has outlined plans to seize the profits from frozen Russian assets and direct billions of euros to support Ukraine. In a set of formal public conclusions after the culmination of an EU leaders’ summit, it said that “extraordinary revenues held by private entities stemming directly from Russia’s immobilised assets” could be directed to support Ukraine and its recovery.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has condemned the Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán’s recent meeting and handshake with Vladimir Putin. “In the situation we are in with Russia, we should not use these bilateral contacts to negotiate things about ourselves that would weaken our unity [on Ukraine],” Macron said after the EU leaders’ meeting in Brussels.

Russia’s top investigative body has said it had opened a criminal inquiry into the attempted murder of former Ukrainian lawmaker Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russian figure who was reported to have been lined up by Moscow to lead a puppet administration in Kyiv after Russia’s invasion. He is in intensive care after being shot, a Russian official said.

The wives and family of enlisted Ukrainian soldiers have gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to call for the right to voluntarily demobilise after 18 months. “Our servicemen are strong, but they are not robots,” protesters shouted during the rally.

The new Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, has told other EU leaders that €50bn in EU aid to Ukraine should include guarantees that the funds would not be misappropriated, his office said. “Ukraine is among the most corrupt countries in the world,” he claimed.

Ukraine’s president tells British PM brigade’s worth of troops lost trying to encircle embattled city; Putin demands action on weapons trafficking

• Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 611

The Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov has claimed Russia destroyed “at least four” of the Leopard tanks supplied to Ukraine by the west in the Zaporizhzhia region within the past 24 hours.

Zaporizhzhia is one of the regions Russia partly occupies and has claimed to annex.

I think it’s really important that one of the outcomes of this meeting is that we don’t lose focus on Ukraine. Because of all the other things that are happening in the world, and not least in the Middle East, it would be very easy to lose focus on the war in Ukraine – and essential that we don’t do that.

Oleg Tsaryov, who had been tipped to lead a puppet government after Russia’s 2022 invasion, is in a critical condition

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

A Ukrainian politician once said to have been considered for leader of a Kremlin-controlled puppet government in Ukraine is in a critical condition after he was shot twice in an apparent assassination attempt at a sanatorium in Crimea.

Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian figure who played a prominent political role in the 2014 war against the Kyiv government, was shot twice by an unknown assailant, his associates have confirmed.

White House says Russia is executing soldiers who fail to follow orders; Moscow criticises Ukraine-backed peace talks in Malta

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Ukrainian president says military pressure will continue, during video address in Prague that was marred by possible hack attack, says Czech parliament

The Kremlin has rejected speculation about Vladimir Putin’s health, saying the president is fit and well.

In a regular call with reporters, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, , also denied suggestions that the Russian leader was using body doubles, calling them an “absurd hoax”.

Sweden says ‘external force or tampering’ broke cable to Estonia; US seeks forfeiture of Russian-owned yacht worth $300m

Damage to a telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia this month was caused by “external force or tampering”, the Swedish government said.

Three residents of Kherson oblast were arrested for allegedly helping Russian forces target locations for strikes in the city of Kherson, the regional prosecutor’s office announced on Monday, according to the Kyiv Independent.

In an intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russian government spending had become increasingly focused on the costs of its war on Ukraine.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said Vladimir Putin’s Russia “is the most heinous evil the world has witnessed since WWII” and that the Russian president and other “Russian perpetrators must face justice for their crimes”.

Kuleba cited Forbes as reporting that Russia has spent around $167bn (£137bn) on the war between February 2022 and August 2023, with which it could have built almost 24,000 kindergartens across Russia, or more than 4,500 maternity wards, or about 17,000 schools. “Instead, Russian war criminals have bombed Ukrainian kindergartens, maternity wards, schools, and hospitals, destroying almost 120,000 civilian structures in all.”

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has submitted a bill for Sweden’s Nato membership to parliament for ratification, the Turkish presidency said. Turkey and Hungary are the only Nato members yet to ratify Sweden’s membership request.

Trade between Russia and India in the first eight months of 2023 more than doubled from the previous year, reaching a record high of almost $44bn, the Kyiv Independent cited Russian state-run media RIA Novosti as having reported.

The US has sought forfeiture of a $300m superyacht, Amadea, that it says is controlled by sanctioned billionaire Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. The yacht was seized in Fiji and is docked in San Diego. The case is before court in Manhattan. Kerimov and his family are worth $10.7bn, according to Forbes.

A lioness rescued from a zoo in Ukraine could be rehomed in the UK with her cubs. BBC News reported that Aysa was pregnant when she was abandoned at a private zoo in the Donetsk region at the start of Russia’s invasion. She was moved to another facility and gave birth to cubs Teddi, Emi and Santa. All four are temporarily homed at Poznan zoo in Poland.