Ukraine news – live: Kyiv’s army announces withdrawal from last major city in Luhansk
Ukrainian fighters have spent weeks trying to defend Lysychansk after the fall of neighbouring Sievierodonetsk
Ukraine’s military has confirmed its withdrawal from Lysychansk, the last major city in Luhansk free of Russian control, after Moscow said Vladimir Putin had been told that the region had been “liberated”.
Following reports that Russian forces had encircled the stronghold amid a fierce battle for its control, Ukraine’s office of the general staff announced that after “heavy fighting” they pulled back to protect their troops.
An adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky earlier conceded that Lysychansk might fall to Russia – but had assumed the conclusion of the gruelling fight would not arrive until Monday.
Ukrainian fighters have spent weeks trying to defend Lysychansk and to keep it from falling to Russia, as neighbouring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago.
Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine’s state emergency service probing the bombing of a shopping mall in Kremenchuk found up to 29 body fragments in the wreckage. The bombing had claimed 21 lives while 66 were injured.
Russian president Vladimir Putin had said that troops intended to hit a weapons depot nearby, denying that the mall was a target.
Putin downplays Ukraine grain blockage
Vladimir Putin has denied that Moscow was blocking Ukrainian grain exports and questioned the impact of missing Ukrainian agricultural goods on the world food market.
“We do not prevent the export of Ukrainian grain. The Ukrainian military has mined the approaches to their ports, no one prevents them from clearing those mines and we guarantee the safety of shipping grain out of there,” Putin said, speaking alongside visiting Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Putin repeated Russia’s assertion that Western sanctions are to blame for problems on the global food market and rising prices.
He also downplayed Ukraine‘s impact on the global market, saying there were only 5 million tonnes of wheat currently stuck in the country.
“This is a quantity which does not affect the world markets in any way,” he added, saying it represented just 0.5 per cent of global production.
Reuters
UK ‘underspend’ on climate crisis to be used to bolster military aid for Ukraine
The UK’s expanded £1bn commitment to military aid for Ukraine will be partly funded through underspending on climate finance, the business minister Kwasi Kwarteng has said.
Following the British government’s announcement it would nearly double support to Ukraine to help stave off the Russian invasion, Mr Kwarteng tweeted: “My department has contributed to the effort by surrendering climate finance and foreign aid underspends.”
The admission comes a month after The Independent revealed the UK government failed to deliver almost a quarter of a billion pounds in green projects aimed at hitting net zero emissions even as Boris Johnson urged governments around the world to drastically raise their investment in tackling the climate crisis.
Our environment correspondent Harry Cockburn reports:
UK ‘underspend’ on climate crisis to be used to bolster military aid for Ukraine
Britain has failed to deliver £250m of projects designed to help hit net zero emissions
Ankara seeks intensified efforts for lasting Ukraine ceasefire
Efforts must be intensified for a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan has said.
He was speaking at a news conference in Madrid at the end of a Nato summit on Thursday.
Watch: Russian oil transfers off England's coast
Russian strikes more than double in fortnight, Kyiv claims
Missile strikes have more than doubled over the last fortnight, figures show.
It comes a Ukrainian brigadier general said on Thursday that Moscow was using inaccurate Soviet-era missiles for more than half of the attacks.
General Oleksii Hromov estimated that 68 civilian sites had been hit in the second half of this month.
Putin can hold onto power in Russia if he backs down over Ukraine, Boris Johnson says
Vladimir Putin still has a way to get out of the war in Ukraine without losing his grip on power in Moscow, Boris Johnson has suggested.
Ever since Russia’s invasion of its neighbour on 24 February, Mr Johnson has made clear that, while supporting Ukraine’s efforts to drive Putin’s troops out of the country, he was not seeking regime change in the Kremlin.
He has previously been critical of Western leaders, like France’s Emmanuel Macron, who have suggested that Putin must be offered a ladder to climb down to allow him to end the conflict without losing face.
Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has the story:
Putin can hold onto power in Russia if he backs down over Ukraine, Boris Johnson says
Russian president has sufficient support at home to tell his people that he is halting conflict ‘in the interests of peace’
Boris Johnson plays down Putin’s nuclear threats
Boris Johnson has played down the estimated 35 nuclear threats made by president Vladimir Putin since the start his military operation - insisting instead that he would be able to overcome Ukrainian resistance by conventional means.
In an interview marking the end of the Nato summit in Spain, Mr Johnson told LBC’s Nick Ferrari : “I think it’s very, very important that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be side-tracked by this kind of sabre-rattling.
“Because fundamentally, what Putin is trying to do is to reframe this as about Russia versus Nato.
“It’s not. It’s about his attack on an entirely innocent country, with conventional weapons, with artillery, bombardments with planes, shells and so on.
“And it’s about the Ukrainians’ right to protect themselves. That is what this is about.
“And what we had today at Nato was, yet again, the alliance being tested, being asked, being interrogated. Are we resolved? Are we determined? Will we give the Ukrainians the means to protect themselves?
“And the answer was absolutely yes and, if anything, the strength of the unity is greater than it was before.”
Vladimir Putin loses his 57th colonel in just four months of war
Vladimir Putin has lost another colonel - the 57th in just four months of war, as fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine.
Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Kislyakov, 40, was buried on Thursday with full military honours in his hometown in the Moscow region.
Kislyakov, commander of a prestigious unit of Russian paratroopers, is the 57th known colonel to have been killed since president Putin ordered his troops to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Thomas Kingsley has more:
Vladimir Putin loses his 57th colonel in just four months of war
Russia has also lost at least 12 generals during the conflict
Watch: Liz Truss says Putin's 'rhetoric' and its threat towards Nato should be ignored
Boris Johnson’s 2030 military spending pledge ‘feeble’, say senior Tories
Boris Johnson sought to heal a cabinet rift by promising to hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Britain’s economic output by the end of the decade.
The prime minister wrapped up the Nato summit in Madrid with a pledge that could see more than £55bn added to military budgets this decade, following Ben Wallace’s pleas for more money.
However, senior Conservatives said the PM’s ambition remained “feeble” and the target too far off, given the gravity of the immediate threat from Vladimir Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
Adam Forrest reports:
Boris Johnson’s 2030 military spending pledge ‘feeble’, say senior Tories
PM commits to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP by the end of decade
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