Putin may have wanted Skripal dead over what he knew, UK officials believe

Ex-spy had information about Putin’s ‘embezzlement’ of profits from metals production, intelligence official says

Vladimir Putin may have ordered the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal because the former Russian spy harboured secret information about the Russian president’s “criminal embezzlement” of profits from metals production, the UK government believes.

A leading intelligence official on Russia has said he took “at face value” Skripal’s assertions that secrets he knew about how Putin may have made money led to the nerve agent attack on him in Salisbury.

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Zelenskyy comments about Russian-held territory ‘a major concession’, says ex-UK ambassador – as it happened

This blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled Saturday to his country’s border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad to inspect progress in the construction of military fortifications along the eastern frontier, calling it “an investment in peace.”

“The better the Polish border is guarded, the more difficult it is to access for those with bad intentions,” Tusk said at a news conference near the village of Dabrowka as he stood in front of concrete anti-tank barriers.

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Trump picks Keith Kellogg to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia

Retired US army general and former Pence aide tapped for newly conceived role to negotiate amid ongoing war

Donald Trump has picked Keith Kellogg to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a newly conceived role given the ongoing war between the two countries.

Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired US army lieutenant general, would start in the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its third year.

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Power cuts in Ukraine after Russia’s biggest drone attack yet

Moscow is pushing hard on eastern frontline amid uncertainty as to how Trump taking office will affect war

Russia launched its biggest ever drone attack on Ukraine on Monday night and Tuesday morning, sending a reported 188 drones into the country against various targets, resulting in power cuts in part of western Ukraine and damage to residential buildings outside Kyiv.

Russian forces are pushing hard along the frontline in the east of the country, amid uncertainty as to how the dynamics of the war might change once Donald Trump takes office in January. Russia also vowed “retaliatory actions” for fresh Ukrainian strikes on military targets inside Russia that used long-range missiles sent by the US.

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Ukrainian boxing champ Wladimir Klitschko calls out Rogan for ‘repeating Russian propaganda’

Olympic gold medalist argues in video that podcaster’s remarks about war in Ukraine is result of Putin-led plot

The podcaster Joe Rogan is “repeating Russian propaganda” about the war in Ukraine, the former world heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko charged in remarks on social media, adding that Rogan should invite him on his podcast to discuss the issue “like free men”.

“I listen to your latest podcast,” said Klitschko, whose brother Vitali Klitschko was also a world champion boxer and is now mayor of Kyiv.

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Russia-Ukraine war: more than 20 injured in Russian attack on Kharkiv – as it happened

Casualties include 14 people who have been sent to hospital

Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent

An ultranationalist, Moscow-friendly Nato critic is set to face a centre-right candidate in the runoff of Romania’s presidential elections after a shock first-round result that has upended the country’s politics and could jeopardise its support for Ukraine.

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China unnerved by Russia’s growing ties with North Korea, claims US official

Comments part of debate over whether Beijing backs Kim Jong-un’s decision to send troops to fight in Ukraine

China is increasingly uncomfortable about North Korea’s engagement with Russia and finds the growing cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow unnerving, Kurt Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state has said.

He was leaning into a growing debate among the US’s security partners in Asia on whether China supports the decision of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to send 10,000 troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine. It is said the North Korean troops are now inside Russia.

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Trump depends on the EU and UK to act as peacemakers more than he thinks

The US doesn’t need to spend more on Ukraine. Britain can bring funding to the table – and help Trump reboot alliances

With Donald Trump the very meaning of words is up for negotiation. What does he really mean when he promises to “build a wall”? When he pledges to end the Russo-Ukrainian war in one day?

His supporters say they don’t take him literally but seriously – but who decides what “serious” is? The very ambiguity can be part of Trump’s appeal. There’s something exhilarating in the sense one is in an exclusive negotiation with the president to define reality. It’s as if he’s welcoming you backstage from the reality show of politics to the discrete board room where meaning is made.

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Huge election year worldwide sees weakening commitment to act on climate crisis

Among sweeping rightwing electoral victories across the globe, the ‘big loser of the elections has been climate’

An unprecedented year of elections around the world has underscored a sobering trend – in many countries the commitment to act on the climate crisis has either stalled or is eroding, even as disasters and record temperatures continue to mount.

So far 2024, called the “biggest election year in human history” by the United Nations with around half the world’s population heading to the polls, there have been major wins for Donald Trump, the US president-elect who calls the climate crisis “a big hoax”; the climate-skeptic right in European Union elections; and Vladimir Putin, who won another term and has endured sanctions to maintain Russia’s robust oil and gas exports.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskyy urges ‘firm and decisive’ international response to ‘latest act of Russian madness’ – as it happened

This live blog is now closed. For the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, read our full report:

Russia’s use of an experimental hypersonic missile to hit Ukraine was a “terrible escalation” in the war, German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on Friday.

The deployment of the new weapon showed “how dangerous this war is”, Scholz said in a speech, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). He added:

That (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has now also used a medium-range missile to strike Ukrainian territory is a terrible escalation.”

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Putin says Russia will use experimental missile again after Ukraine strike

Ukrainian president calls testing of nuclear-capable weapon on his country’s territory an ‘international crime’

Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch more strikes using an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile as Ukraine decried the testing of the nuclear-capable weapon on its territory as an “international crime”.

Speaking at a defence conference on Friday, Putin contested US claims that Russia possessed only a “handful” of the high-speed ballistic missiles, saying that the military had enough to continue to test them in “combat conditions” and would put them into serial production.

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Seoul says Russia sent air-defence missiles to North Korea in return for troops

Kremlin dispatched weapons as payment for 10,000 troops deployed to support war in Ukraine, says South Korean official

Russia has sent air defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of troops from the North to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea have said.

The shipments were the latest expression of a deepening alliance that allies and enemies fear could fuel the escalation of the war in Ukraine, geopolitical tensions in Asia, and potentially even global nuclear arms proliferation.

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UN chief calls for de-escalation after Russian strike on Ukraine – as it happened

UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson says Russia’s use of a new ballistic missile is ‘yet another … worrying development’. This blog is now closed

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has issued a statement on X after Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with a new experimental mid-range ballistic missile.

The Russian leader has “admitted” to taking a step “toward escalating and expanding this war” by using a new ballistic missile on Ukraine, Zelenskyy wrote.

Putin struck our city of Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s largest cities. This is a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war — a cynical violation of the UN Charter by Russia.

Putin alone started this war—an entirely unprovoked war — and he is doing everything to prolong it, now for over a thousand days.

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Putin says Russia fired experimental ballistic missile into Ukraine

President says missile was in reply to Kyiv’s strikes in Russia with western missiles, and appears to directly threaten US and UK

Vladimir Putin has said Russia fired an experimental ballistic missile at a military site in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning, and that Moscow “had the right” to strike western countries that provided Kyiv with weapons used against Russian targets.

The Russian president, speaking during an unannounced televised address to the nation, appeared to directly threaten the US and UK, who earlier this week allowed Ukraine to fire western-made Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Doubts cast over Kyiv claim that Russia launched intercontinental ballistic missile – as it happened

UK intelligence services say they are ‘urgently’ looking into Ukraine’s claim, which has been reportedly denied by a Western official

Full story: Russia fired intercontinental ballistic missile at Dnipro, says Ukraine

Hungary announced overnight it is to install an air defence system in the north-eastern part of the country as the threat of an escalation of the Ukraine-Russia war is “greater than ever”, its defence minister said.

Reuters quotes Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky from a video he posted on Facebook saying:

We still trust that there will be peace as soon as possible, through diplomacy instead of a military solution. However, to prepare for all possibilities, I ordered the recently purchased air control and air defence systems and the capabilities built on them to be installed in the north-east. The threat of the escalation of the Ukraine-Russia war is greater than ever.

This is another frankly provocative step in a series of deeply destabilising actions by the Americans and their allies in the North Atlantic alliance in the strategic sphere.

This leads to undermining strategic stability, increasing strategic risks and, as a result, to an increase in the overall level of nuclear danger.

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Zelenskyy welcomes US decision to give landmines to Ukraine amid criticism from aid groups – Russia-Ukraine war as it happened

This live blog is now closed. You can read all our Ukraine war coverage here:

In a television interview in France, foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s approval of a new nuclear doctrine yesterday as rhetoric, and, Reuters reports, said “We are not intimidated.”

The change in nuclear doctrine yesterday lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, with a significant development being that Russia says it now considers a nuclear response justified if it is on the receiving end of aggression by a non-nuclear power that is being aided by a nuclear power.

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Ukraine allies criticise G20 statement for not naming Russia’s role in conflict

Scholz, Starmer, Trudeau and Macron among leaders who say communique finalized by Lula ‘not strong enough’

Ukraine’s western allies have criticised the final G20 communique as inadequate for failing to highlight Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in 2022 as the conflict enters its 1,000th day.

The final agreed text from the summit in Brazil was significantly weaker than that of the previous year, only highlighting humanitarian suffering in Ukraine and the importance of territorial integrity.

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Moscow says first Ukrainian attack on Russia with US-made missiles signals west wants to escalate conflict – Russia-Ukraine war live

Russian foreign minister says his country will do everything possible to avoid nuclear war after Ukraine fires Atacms into Russia for first time

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday approved an updated nuclear doctrine, Reuters reports the document posted on the government’s website showed.

In a key section of the document, Russia has expanded the list of criteria that require a nuclear response to include “aggression by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear country”. Such actions, the doctrine says, will be considered a joint attack.

In addition, a nuclear response from Russia is possible in the event of a critical threat to its sovereignty, even with conventional weapons, in the event of an attack on Belarus as a member of the Union State, [or] in the event of a massive launch of military aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, other aircraft and their crossing the Russian border.

Each time these discussions about an individual weapon type are considered, freighted with great significance, the reality has been they’ve only made an incremental difference in the battlefield. From Ukraine’s perspective, it is better to have them than not, but ultimately, no single weapon type is decisive in a complex war like this.

Each of these weapons comes along months, maybe years, after Ukrainians asked for them. It’s quite an agonising process. They are clearly military useful, they have a psychological and deterrent effect but in terms of an actual destructive effect, not so much.

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Ukraine fires US-made Atacms missiles into Russia after ban lifted by Biden

First such use of missiles came hours after Vladimir Putin lowered Moscow’s threshold for using nuclear weapons

Ukraine has fired US-made long-range missiles into Russia for the first time since the Biden administration lifted restrictions on their use, drawing a warning from Moscow that it would respond “accordingly”.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched six US-made Atacms missiles targeting the south-western Bryansk region overnight. Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy did not directly confirm the Bryansk attack but said: “We now have Atacms, Ukrainian long-range capabilities, and we will use them.”

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