Russia Ukraine war live: Putin-backed think tank says Kremlin should consider nuclear blast to warn West

Russian air defences downed eight ATACMS missiles over the Sea of Azov and intercepted eight drones over the Black Sea near Crimea on Thursday, the TASS news agency cited its defence ministry as saying.

Earlier, a Russia-installed official in Crimea said missile debris damaged two ferries near the city of Kerch and movement on the ferry line there had been suspended.

Separately, the Russian authorities said car traffic had also been suspended on the key Crimea bridge linking the peninsula with Russia.

Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed seven Russia-launched missiles and 32 drones overnight, its air force commander said this morning.

On the Telegram messaging app the official said Russia had launched a total of 51 missiles and drones.

The Swedish government has said it will donate military aid to Ukraine worth £962m in the largest help package Sweden has so far donated.

“It consists of equipment that is at the top of Ukraine’s priority list,” deputy prime minister Ebba Busch said.

It includes air defence, artillery ammunition and armoured vehicles.

Sweden’s defence minister Pal Jonson reiterated that the country has ruled out for now sending any Swedish-built JAS 39 Gripen jets to Ukraine, saying the focus on the Ukrainian side is on implementing the F-16 programme.

Mr Jonson said Sweden “is still working on possibly being able to contribute with the Gripen system later”.

The donation also includes two Swedish-made SAAB ASCC airborne early warning and control airplanes, which Mr Jonson said would have the “greatest effect on the Ukrainian air defence” because they would complement and reinforce the promised donations of American F-16 fighter jets.

“You can identify incoming cruise missiles, you can identify drones and identify targets both on land and at sea,” he said.

“The overall assessment is that a donation of the ASCC 890 radar reconnaissance and command aircraft would be the most impactful for the Ukrainian Air Force right now,” Mr Jonson added.

The United States has accused China’s leadership of supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine and warned that Beijing could face further sanctions in response from the United States and other Nato countries.

Speaking to reporters on a visit to Brussels, US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell said there was an urgent need for European and Nato countries “to send a collective message of concern to China about its actions, which we view are destabilizing in the heart of Europe.”

The Biden administration has stepped up warnings about China’s support for Russia and issued an executive order in December that threatened sanctions on financial institutions helping Russia skirt Western sanctions.

Mr Campbell said he had briefed Nato’s main political decision-making body, the North Atlantic Council (NAC), about US concerns on Tuesday.

He said Chinese support was helping Moscow reconstitute elements of its military, including long-range missile, artillery and drone capabilities, and its ability to track battlefield movements.

“What we’ve seen from China to Russia is not a one-off or a couple of rogue firms involved in supporting Russia,” Mr Campbell said. “This is a sustained, comprehensive effort that is backed up by the leadership in China that is designed to give Russia every support behind the scenes.”

Mr Campbell said the Chinese actions had created capacities for Russia not only on the battlefield in Ukraine, but to be “able to pose a strategic challenge to others in Europe. “We see this as a matter of utmost urgency,” he said.

Search and recovery teams have identified 19 bodies at a hardware store hit by Russian bombs last weekend in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said yesterday.

Mr Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app that recovery work was now complete. The dead in Saturday’s attack included two minors.

“This was not a simple matter,” Mr Klymenko said. “The search for the dead was conducted round-the-clock in the ash with special equipment and they were promptly identified with the help of a DNA laboratory,” he said.

Dogs were deployed and residents submitted 16 requests to investigate the fate of missing relatives.

Russia made no comment on the incident, but says it does not target civilian sites in the more than two-year-old war.

Kharkiv, which withstood a Russian advance in the early weeks of the conflict, has been increasingly targeted by strikes in recent weeks. A missile attack on Saturday targeted a city centre district, with 25 people injured.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that American weapons being delivered to Kyiv were helping stabilise the front line in Ukraine amid intensifying Russian attacks and that Washington would “adapt and adjust” its support.

The top US diplomat travelled to the Moldovan capital Chisinau, holding talks with pro-Western President Maia Sandu on the first stop of a brief European tour aimed at solidifying support for Kyiv among Nato allies and neighbouring countries.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned of the threat of a global conflict if Kyiv’s Western allies allow it to use weapons they have supplied to strike inside Russia, something Ukraine’s government is urging its partners to permit.

The US has said it does not encourage or enable the use of US weapons for direct attacks on Russia, but Mr Blinken said it would “adjust and adapt” when asked at a press conference about Washington’s current position on the matter.

“I think what you’ve seen over the two plus years, as the nature of the battlefield has changed, as the locations, the means that Russia is employing changed, we’ve adapted and adjusted to that … That’s exactly what we’ll do going forward,” he said.

Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has accused Russia of openly threatening other countries with destabilisation to weaken a peace summit next month.

But Ukraine was countering Russia’s attempts to weaken the summit, the president said.

“Russia can no longer thwart the summit, although it works hard to achieve such a goal,” he posted on social media.

“Russia puts pressure on leaders and openly threatens various countries with destabilisation. This is one of the consequences of the world giving the terrorist state too much time.

“Unfortunately, evil knows how to adapt and is now using all its resources to divide the world and prevent the world from forcing Russia to make peace.”

China could arrange a peace conference in which Russia and Ukraine would participate, the RIA news agency cited Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.

Mr Lavrov said such a move would be a continuation of Beijing’s efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.

“We share (China’s) position that the root causes of the conflict need to be addressed in the first place and legal interests of all parties need to be protected, with subsequent agreements based on the principle of equal and indivisible security,” Mr Lavrov said in an interview with the agency.

“Let me underscore again, this entails respecting realities on the ground, which reflect the will of people living there.”

China, however, is accused of providing Russia with lethal aid for use in its war against Ukraine.

British defence secretary Grant Shapps last week suggested that British and US intelligence contradicts Beijing’s previous attempts to present itself as a moderating influence on Moscow and president Xi Jinping government is instead helping to arm Russia.

Russian forces launched a series of missiles on Kharkiv today, Ukraine’s second largest city, injuring at least four people and damaging infrastructure, local officials said.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said four people had been injured, a gas pipeline had been damaged and many windows had been broken.

Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said eight missiles had been fired at the city, a frequent Russian target in recent weeks. A community just north of the city had also been hit.

In the aftermath of the strikes, air raid alerts remained in force throughout the country.