Russia-Ukraine war live: Finland MPs to vote on Nato bid; Blinken warns central Asia against ignoring Russian aggression

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Today is officially the first day of spring in Ukraine. Politico journalist Nika Melkozerova has marked the day with a moving three-word sentence:

Other journalists are posting photographs of the sunrise, as one aspect of the war – the cold, which Putin has ruthlessly weaponised by destroying energy infrastructure – is going to get easier.

Russia aims to strengthen censorship laws

Russia brought new law amendments to parliament on Wednesday that further strengthen the country’s censorship laws, envisaging up to 15 years in jail for discrediting the armed forces and voluntary military organisations such as the Wagner group.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said that “any public dissemination of knowingly false information about the forces” will be punishable, according to the amendments to the criminal code, Reuters reports.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s Duma. Photograph: Icana News Agency/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

“As well as public actions aimed at discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, volunteer formations, organizations and persons who are facilitated in the implementation of tasks assigned to the … Armed Forces,” would be punishable, Volodin wrote on the Telegram messaging platform.

“This initiative will protect everyone who today is risking their lives to ensures the security of the country and our citizens … The punishment for violators will be severe.”

The punishment envisages fines of up to ₽5m (about $66,580), correctional or forced labour up to five years, as well as imprisonment up to 15 years.

Blinken and Lavrov arrive in India for G20 meeting

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken was due in New Delhi on Wednesday alongside Russia’s Sergei Lavrov for a G20 meeting, AFP reports, with Ukraine and tensions with China set to overshadow attempts by host India to forge unity among the world’s top economies.

A meeting was seen as unlikely between the two men, who have not been in the same room since a G20 meeting in Bali in July when, according to western officials, the Russian foreign minister walked out.

They last met individually in January 2022, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. The two men have spoken by phone since but about other issues and not the war.

Lavrov arrived late Tuesday in India – which has not condemned the war – and will use his G20 attendance to lay into the West, according to the Russian foreign ministry.

Western countries want to “take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from its hands,” the ministry’s English-language statement said.

“The destructive policy of the US and its allies has already put the world on the brink of a disaster, provoked a rollback in socioeconomic development and seriously aggravated the situation of the poorest countries,” it added.

Nikopol attacked eight times overnight – Ukrainian official

Russia has launched heavy artillery on Nikopol overnight, targeting four villages, the head of Dnipropetrovsk regional council, Mykola Lukashuk, said on Telegram.

“The Russian army attacked the Nikopol district eight times. Four communities came under enemy fire from heavy artillery: Nikopolska, Marganetska, Myrivska, and Chervonogrigorivska. Fortunately, there were no casualties,” Lukashuk wrote.

A gas line, electricity grid and “transport enterprise” were among the targets.

Blinken warns central Asia against ignoring Russian aggression

The Biden administration on Tuesday pledged to support the independence of the five Central Asian nations, in what the AP calls a not-so-subtle warning to the former Soviet states that Russia’s value as a partner has been badly compromised by its year-old war against Ukraine.

In Kazakhstan for meetings with top Central Asian diplomats, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said no country, particularly those that have traditionally been in Moscow’s orbit, can afford to ignore the threats posed by Russian aggression to not only their territory but to the international rules-based order and the global economy. In all of his discussions, Blinken stressed the importance of respect for “sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”

The Central Asian states have hewed to a studied position of neutrality on Ukraine, neither supporting Russia’s invasion nor US and western condemnations of the war.

“Ever since being the first nation to recognise Kazakhstan in December of 1991, the United States has been firmly committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Kazakhstan and countries across the region,” Blinken said after meeting in Astana with the foreign ministers of the so-called C5+1 group, made up of the US and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Finland MPs to vote on Nato bid

Finnish MPs will vote this afternoon on speeding up the Finland’s Nato ascension process.

Both Finland, which has one of Europe’s longest borders with Russia, and Sweden dropped their decades-long policies of military non-alignment and applied to join Nato in May last year in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

But facing fewer diplomatic hurdles than Stockholm, Helsinki wants to move forward even before Finland’s general elections in April, as public opinion also supports membership.

Finland and Sweden have the backing of all but two of Nato’s 30 members, the holdouts being Hungary and Turkey.

Passing a bill means that Finland can act swiftly even if the ratifications come in before a new government has been formed.

“The time is now to ratify and to fully welcome Finland and Sweden as members,” Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday during a visit to Finland. The legislation is expected to pass easily, after the initial membership bid in May was supported by 188 of the 200 members in parliament.

While passing the bill does not mean that Finland will automatically join Nato after ratification by Turkey and Hungary, it puts in place a deadline for how long it can wait for its neighbour.

The government’s chancellor of justice, Tuomas Poysti, said that after the bill is approved by the parliament, the president can wait a maximum of three months to sign it.

Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, told reporters last week that he intended to sign the law as soon as it is approved by parliament but that it could wait until up to the April elections for “practical reasons”.

Air raid alarm sounds in Mykolaiv region

An air raid warning was issued for the Mykolaiv region a few minutes ago, the regional governor, Vitaly Kim, said on Telegram. It is shortly before 8am in Ukraine.

Summary and welcome

Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments for the next while.

Our top story this morning: Finnish MPs are scheduled to vote on speeding up the country’s Nato bid on Wednesday afternoon.

Both Finland, which has one of Europe’s longest borders with Russia, and Sweden dropped their decades-long policies of military non-alignment and applied to join Nato in May last year in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

And on a visit to Kazakhstan, US National secretary of state Antony Blinken has warned the leaders of central asian nations against relying on Russia.

“In our discussions today, I reaffirmed the United States’ unwavering support for Kazakhstan, like all nations, to freely determine its future, especially as we mark one year since Russia lost its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a failed attempt to deny its people that very freedom,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi.

We’ll have more on these stories shortly. In the meantime here are the other key recent developments:

• The US does not expect Russia to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the near term, a US undersecretary of defence has said. Describing the frontlines as a “grinding slog”, Colin Kahl told a House of Representatives hearing: “I do not think that there’s anything I see that suggests the Russians can sweep across Ukraine and make significant territorial gains anytime in the next year or so.”

• A military drone targeted a gas facility in the Moscow region, according to a senior Russian official, and photos of the wreckage suggested it was Ukrainian-made, indicating a rare attempted strike hundreds of miles behind Russian lines. The alleged attack was one of several reports of successful or attempted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strikes in at least four regions of Russia.

• Russia’s Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg temporarily suspended all flights amid reports of an unidentified object such as a drone being seen nearby. Some flights were diverted back to Moscow while the airport was shut for about an hour. Russia’s defence ministry later announced there had been a training exercise between air defences and civilian aviation authorities.

• The Russian defence ministry said it stopped two attempted Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil using drones. It said: “28 February, at night, the Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar territory and the Republic of Adygea.” The claims were not independently verified.

• Emergency services put out a fire at an oil depot in southern Russia after a drone was spotted flying overhead, the RIA news agency said. The fire in the Russian town of Tuapse, Krasnador, was reported at 2.30am local time and spread to an area of about 200 sq m before it was extinguished. “The oil tanks were not affected. There was no spill of oil products. No injuries,” said Sergei Boyko, who leads the local administration.

• A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the emergencies ministry said. “As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast. This information is false and does not correspond to reality.” A similar attack caused commercial radio stations in some Russian regions to send air alarm messages on Wednesday last week.

• Vladimir Putin has told the FSB security service to step up its intelligence activity and stop “sabotage groups” getting into Russia. In a speech to FSB officials, Putin instructed the agency to strengthen its activity to counter what he described as growing espionage and sabotage operations against Russia by Ukraine and its western allies. He also admitted that FSB members had been killed in Ukraine.

• The intensity of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces around the eastern city of Bakhmut continued to increase, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.

• Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of Putin, arrived in Beijing for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

• China had “very clearly” taken Russia’s side and had been “anything but an honest broker” in efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, the US department of state spokesperson Ned Price said at a news briefing. China had provided Russia with “diplomatic support, political support, with economic support, with rhetorical support”, he added.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has reiterated the Biden administration’s concern that China is considering providing lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Speaking after a meeting with leaders in the Kazakh capital, Astana, Blinken warned that Beijing would face “implications and consequences” if it decided to provide such support.

• Ukraine will become a Nato member in the “long term”, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said. The Nato chief stressed that the immediate priority was Ukraine remaining an independent country in the face of the Russian invasion. He said Finland and Sweden joining was a “top priority” and that the Nordic countries have had the “quickest accession process in Nato’s modern history”.

• Russia is open to negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said, but he insisted Moscow would “never compromise” on what he described as new “territorial realities”. Speaking to reporters during a regular briefing, Peskov said Moscow would not renounce its claims to four Ukrainian regions that Putin annexed in September.