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Last year’s gathering took place days before the war began. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders, western leaders in Munich urged President Vladimir Putin not to invade and warned of dire consequences if he did.
This year, leaders will grapple with the consequences of Putin’s decision to ignore their pleas and unleash the most devastating war in Europe since the second world war that has killed countless thousands and forced millions to flee.
Russian leaders will be notable by their absence at the conference, which runs until Sunday, but senior Ukrainian officials are expected to address it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address his priority was to hold off Russian attacks and get ready for an eventual Ukrainian counter-offensive.
“Holding the situation at the front and preparing for any enemy steps of escalation - that is the priority for the near future,” he said.
Nato alliance officials this week discussed the need for more military hardware for Kyiv, and Britain and Poland agreed after their leaders met on Thursday that support should be stepped up.
US officials have advised Ukraine to hold off with any counter-offensive until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training has been provided.
The Ukraine military’s general staff, in a Thursday evening report, said Russia had also shelled more than two dozen eastern and southern settlements.
There was no word from Russia on the missile strikes or shelling, and Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield reports.
World leaders meet in Munich for security conference
Senior politicians and military leaders from around the world are meeting today in Germany, with Ukrainian officials expected to address the security conference.
Bolstered by tens of thousands of reservists, Russia has intensified ground attacks across southern and eastern Ukraine, and, as the first anniversary of its 24 February invasion nears, a major new Russian offensive appears to be taking shape.
Russia rained missiles across Ukraine on Thursday and struck its largest oil refinery. Of at least 36 missiles that Russia fired about 16 were shot down, the air force said, a lower rate than normal.
Ukraine said the barrage included missiles that its air defences cannot shoot down, which will only add urgency to its appeals for more western military support.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and US vice-president Kamala Harris are among many top officials attending the Munich Security Conference.
Summary and welcome
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.
Senior politicians and military leaders from around the world will meet today in Germany for the Munich Security Conference, with Ukrainian officials expected to address gathering.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and US vice-president Kamala Harris are among many top officials attending the meeting.
In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:
Russia fired Grad rockets and barrel artillery at a residential district in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Thursday, killing three men and two women and wounding nine more, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said. Blurred images of the victims were shared on Telegram by the office of the prosecutor, who said the attack was being investigated as a war crime. “Criminal proceedings have been initiated.”
Russia launched a total of 36 air- and sea-based cruise missiles, guided air-to-surface missiles and anti-ship missiles at Ukraine overnight into Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least 16 missiles were shot down by Ukrainian forces, the air force said. Among them, air defences in the south downed eight Kalibr missiles fired from a ship in the Black Sea, the officials said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ruled out giving up any Ukrainian territory in a potential peace deal with Russia. In an interview with the BBC, Ukraine’s leader said conceding land would mean Russia could “keep coming back”. Zelenskiy said a predicted spring offensive had already begun but he believed his country’s forces could keep resisting Russia’s advance until they were able to launch a counter-offensive.
Bakhmut will fall within a couple of months, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has predicted. In an interview with a pro-war military blogger, Yevgeny Prigozhin forecast Bakhmut would be seized in March or April, depending on how many soldiers Ukraine commits to its defence and how well his own troops are supplied.
Russia’s overnight bombardment did not have a major impact on power, Ukraine’s energy minister said. German Galushchenko said Ukraine was meeting consumer demand for the fifth successive day. The national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, said it saw no need to introduce emergency power outages to conserve supplies.
Critical infrastructure was damaged in Russian strikes on the Lviv region in Ukraine’s west, the regional state administration’s head, Maksym Kozytskyi, reported on Telegram, adding there were no casualties.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had returned 101 prisoners of war to Russia following talks, state-run media reported. Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said 100 troops and one civilian had been returned to Ukraine. Nearly all had been defending the southern city of Mariupol before it fell to Russian forces, he said.
Russia has “definitely changed tactics” by using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons to fool Ukraine’s air defences, according to a senior Ukrainian official. The goal of the decoy missiles was to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by offering too many targets, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Associated Press.
Russian sortie rates have increased over the past week following several weeks of quieter activity, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported. Air activity is “now roughly in line with the average daily rate seen since summer 2022”, its latest intelligence update reads.
Russia “continues to introduce large numbers of troops” on to the battlefield in Ukraine, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said. Those troops were “ill-equipped and ill-trained” and, as a result, Russian forces were “incurring a lot of casualties and we expect that that will continue”, he told reporters in Estonia.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to achieve their military aims, according to Gen Mark Milley, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff. In an interview with the Financial Times, Milley said he believed the war would end at the negotiating table. The Pentagon was re-examining its weapons stockpiles and may need to boost military spending after seeing how quickly ammunition has been used during the war in Ukraine, he added.
Belarus will fight alongside ally Russia if another country launches an attack against it, President Alexander Lukashenko has said, adding that he planned to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Friday.
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