Ukraine Russia war – latest news: Putin’s troops step up attacks as Zelensky warns of more losses for Moscow

The European Commission has proposed confiscating Russian assets frozen as punishment for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in order to pay for regeneration of the war-torn country.

“We have blocked €300bn of the Russian Central Bank reserves and we have frozen €19bn of Russian oligarchs’ money,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive body said in a statement.

She said that in the short term the EU and its partners could manage the money and invest it, with proceeds going to Ukraine as compensation for war damage.

“We will work on an international agreement with our partners to make this possible. And together, we can find legal ways to get to it,” she said.

She also said that the EU was proposing to set up a specialised court, backed by the United Nations, “to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression”.

A large oil storage tank was on fire early this morning in Russia’s Bryansk region, according to a local governor.

The tank was located in the Surazh district in the north of the region. Bryansk region borders with Ukraine’s northeast.

Governor Alexander Bogomaz said the fire had spread across 19,000 square feet.

More than 80 fire fighters and 30 fire engines were sent to tackle the blaze, Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported.

There were no reports of casualties and the governor did not mention a potential cause for the fire. the fire was under control by around 6am, Mr Bogomaz said.

The Independent was not able to immediately verify the reports.

Nato foreign ministers will today seek to reassure fragile countries in proximity to Russia over fears of instability due to the war on their neighbour.

“The reason we are having this gathering is a signal from us on how important it is to create stability not just for Nato countries but beyond,” Netherlands foreign minister Wopke Hoekstra said on arrival for a second day of talks in Bucharest.

Ministers yesterday pledged more help to Ukraine to repair war-battered energy infrastructure and restated a committment to one day offer alliance membership to the country.

The Kremlin is likely “acting preemptively to prevent greater domestic dissent” as the war in Ukraine remains unresolved and “increasingly impacts Russians’ everyday lives”, the British defence ministry said today.

The ministry pointed to Moscow’s approved amendments to the 2012 ‘Foreign Agents Law’, in July this year, stating that these have been widely used to “repress opponents of the regime.”

The new measures are scheduled to come into force starting tomorrow, the ministry said.

Under the 2012 law, ‘foreign agents’ are defined as “individuals or organisations who have received financial support from abroad.”

The amendments will extend the definition to those which are merely under undefined ‘influence or pressure’ of foreign actors, the ministry noted.

It added that the ministry of justice will also have the “power to publish the personal details and addresses of designated ‘foreign agents’, almost certainly placing them at risk of harassment.”

“The new laws will further extend the repressive powers available to the Russian state. This continues a trend since Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, but which has dramatically accelerated since the invasion of Ukraine,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

Ms Marin made the comments today in Auckland on the first-ever visit by a Finnish prime minister to New Zealand and Australia. Among the aims of the visit are improving diplomatic relations and trade ties.

“We need hard power when it comes to Ukraine,” Marin told reporters when asked what soft-power influence smaller countries like Finland and New Zealand could exert.

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Vladimir Putin’s forces are firing unarmed cruise missiles designed to carry nuclear warhead towards Ukraine to exhaust Kyiv’s air defence, a US military official has said.

“It’s certainly something that they’re trying to do to mitigate the effects of the air defense systems that the Ukrainians are employing,” the US military official said, responding to the assertion by the Britain’s military intelligence which said that Russia was “likely” removing nuclear warheads from cruise missiles and firing the unarmed munitions into Ukraine.

The Pentagon has said that Russia’s surge in missile strikes in Ukraine is partly designed to exhaust Kyiv’s supplies of air defenses and finally achieve dominance of the skies above the country.

For that reason, the US and other allies have focused on providing air defense supplies for Ukraine. That ranges from everything from legacy Soviet-era systems to more modern, Western ones.

The British ministry’s intelligence update cited open source imagery showing wreckage of an air-launched cruise missile fired at Ukraine that seemed to have been designed in the 1980s as a nuclear delivery system.

Officials in Belarus held a state funeral for its foreign minister Vladimir Makei who died suddenly at age 64, triggering speculation about possible foul play in his death after he leaned toward Western countries.

Belarusian authorities didn’t give the cause of Makei’s death on Saturday. He wasn’t known to suffer from any chronic illness.

Some media and observers alleged without offering evidence that Makei could have been poisoned by security agencies of Belarus’ main ally Russia, which has warily watched Makei’s efforts to negotiate a rapprochement with the West.

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Ukrainian military has countered Russian attacks around six settlements on the eastern front over the past day, army officials said today.

The attacks also targetted Russian artillery systems and shot down three Orlan-10-type drones, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said

These Russian attacks have been repelled near Stelmakhivka in Luhansk oblast and Bilohorivka, Marinka, Bakhmutske, Pervomaiske, and Nevelske in Donetsk oblast.

At least 15 strikes were carried out by the Ukrainian aviation on Russian areas of concentration of personnel, weapons and military equipment and two strikes on the positions of Russia’s anti-aircraft missile systems, officials said today.

Temperatures in Kyiv continued to dip as snow covered the Ukrainian capital region last night, leaving millions stripped of electricity connection to struggle to heat their homes.

Around 985,500 customers in Kyiv were without power, an official from the power company said on Facebook. Another electricity provider said the city would have emergency power cuts today.

Russia has been carrying out huge attacks on Ukraine‘s electricity transmission and heating infrastructure roughly weekly since October, in what Kyiv and its allies say is a deliberate campaign to harm civilians, a war crime.

However, Ukrainian officials have succeeded in restoring electricity in half of Kherson city yesterday, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.

A large oil storage tank was set ablaze this morning in Russia’s Bryansk region, a local governor said.

Governor Alexander Bogomaz said that the fire and rescue teams have been dispatched and are on the site

The fire had spread across 1,800 square metres (19,000 square feet), Mr Bogomaz said.

The tank was located in the Surazh district in the north of the region. Bryansk region borders with Ukraine‘s northeast.

The cause of the fire is not immediately known. There are also no preliminary reports of casualties.