Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders, White House says | Ukraine
Russia executing soldiers who disobey orders, says White House
Helen Livingstone
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
The White House has claimed Russia is executing soldiers who fail to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.
White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said it was a development that security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its invasion.
“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters.
“But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”
In other developments:
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Newly elected US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that funding to support Ukraine and Israel should be handled separately, suggesting he will not back President Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package for both countries. Johnson, speaking in an interview on Fox News, said he had concerns about Ukraine funding in general. “We want to know what the object is there, what is the end game in Ukraine.”
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The US ambassador to Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukrainian pilots were undergoing training in the United States on F-16 fighter aircraft, a key element on Kyiv’s wish list. The US approved sending F-16s fighter jets to Ukraine from the Netherlands and Denmark in August once pilot training is completed. “Ukrainian pilots are now training with the Arizona Air National Guard on F-16s,” ambassador Bridget Brink said on social media.
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Russia criticised Ukrainian-backed peace talks set to be held in Malta this weekend, warning any discussions without its participation would be counterproductive. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the upcoming meeting had “nothing to do with the search for a peaceful resolution” and criticised Malta for hosting what she called a “blatantly anti-Russian event.”
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Dossiers of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine were presented to German federal prosecutors at the start of a campaign to use the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring war criminals to justice. The cases were filed on Thursday morning by the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), representing 16 survivors and the families of victims in three separate war crimes cases.
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The US has announced additional security assistance for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion valued at $150m (£124m), the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Pentagon said. The latest package “utilizes assistance previously authorised for Ukraine during prior fiscal years,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
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Russian lawmakers backed a record increase in military spending to fund Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine, in a first reading of the bill Thursday. Defence spending will account for almost a third of all outlays in 2024 – up 68% to 10.8tn rubles ($115bn).
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Ukraine denied reports by Ukrainian and British firms that the new Black Sea export corridor had been suspended. “The information regarding the cancellation or unscheduled stoppage of the temporary #Ukrainian-corridor for the movement of civilian vessels from and to the ports of the Big Odesa (region) is false,” deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media.
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Russia’s FSB security service said it had killed a man while foiling what it said was the latest of several Ukraine-inspired murder and sabotage plots against its soldiers. The FSB said it had “neutralised” a suspect during an attempted arrest after discovering a plot to blow up an enlistment building in the city of Tver, north-west of Moscow, the Tass news agency reported.
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Finland is working with Beijing to find out more about a Chinese ship likely linked to damage of an undersea gas pipeline, prime minister Petteri Orpo said. Finnish police have recovered an anchor, believed to be from a Chinese vessel, that appears to have caused the breach in the Baltic Sea Balticconnector pipeline to Estonia this month.
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Ukraine said it planned to evacuate hundreds of children from communities near the north-eastern city of Kupiansk, as Russia steps up assaults in the area. Kyiv’s forces recaptured Kupiansk and the surrounding areas of Kharkiv region in September 2022, but Moscow has since pushed back in a bid to move the frontline west ahead of the winter.
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Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said he was proud to keep communications open with Moscow after angering fellow EU leaders by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin last month. “We keep open all the communication lines to the Russians. Otherwise, there will be no chance for peace,” Orbán told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. “This is a strategy. So we are proud of it.”
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Slovakia’s new populist prime minister, Robert Fico, said his three-party coalition government was ending military aid to its eastern neighbour Ukraine, fulfilling one of his central campaign pledges. He said he had spoken to the head of the European Commission about his government’s move at a meeting before the bloc’s summit in Brussels.
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A Stockholm court acquitted a Russian-Swede accused of passing western technology to Russia’s military, ruling that while he did export the material his actions did not amount to intelligence gathering. Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence against Sergei Skvortsov, a 60-year-old dual national who has lived in Sweden since the 1990s running import-export companies.
Key events
Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov has claimed that Russia destroyed “at least four” of the Leopard tanks supplied to Ukraine by the west in the Zaporizhzhia region within the last 24 hours.
Zaporizhzhia is one of the regions which Russia partly occupies and has claimed to annex.
Lili Bayer
The Irish leader, Leo Varadkar, has said as he arrived in Brussels for an EU summit that there was still a need to focus on Ukraine. He said:
I think it’s really important that one of the outcomes of this meeting is that we don’t lose focus on Ukraine. Because of all the other things that are happening in the world, and not least in the Middle East, it would be very easy to lose focus on the war in Ukraine – and essential that we don’t do that.
Russia claims Ukraine attempted to attack Kursk nuclear plant with drones
Russia has said it thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack near a nuclear plant in the south of the country, where two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste.
Reuters reports that the defence ministry said air defences foiled “an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack” when they intercepted a drone late on Thursday near the settlement of Kurchatov in the southern region of Kursk.
Kurchatov is home to the Kursk nuclear power station, which said in a separate statement that an attempt to attack it with three drones had been thwarted. Tass quotes it as saying:
The Kursk nuclear power plant is operating as normal. We confirm that on the evening of 26 October, an attack by three enemy unmanned aerial vehicles on the Kursk nuclear power plant was stopped. This event did not affect the operation of the station.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Lili Bayer
Arriving at the EU’s summit in Brussels this morning, the European Council president, Charles Michel, said he expected leaders to discuss Ukraine, adding that there was broad support for financial assistance to the country.
Asked about Hungary and Slovakia – both of which have expressed qualms about funding for Kyiv – the council chief said the EU needed to make sure decisions were made by consensus and that the function of summits was to make sure leaders convince, argue and, at the end, find unity.
In its latest intelligence report on the war in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has noted that:
The Russian airforce’s long range aviation fleet of heavy bombers has not conducted air launched cruise missile strikes into Ukraine for over a month, one of the longest gaps in such strikes since the conflict began.
It suggests this may be because operationally the Russian air force needed to replenish cruise missiles stocks.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that overnight it intercepted a Ukrainian drone over the territory of the Kursk region. There were no reports of any damage or casualties.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the main news overnight has been an attack on the fire station in Izyum. It reports:
At night, Russia attacked the fire station in Izyum, Kharkiv region: eight rescuers were injured, 13 pieces of equipment were damaged.
It also reports that overnight Ukraine claims to have shot down five out of six Shahed drones launched by Russia.
The Russian ambassador to the US has criticised Washington for its latest round of support for Ukraine. Tass quotes Anatoly Antonov as saying:
The provocative and inflammatory actions of the US in the international arena are more like adding fuel to the fire than efforts to counter the further incitement and spread of bloody conflicts.
It’s high time to stop senseless multibillion-dollar injections into the bankrupt Kyiv regime. Stop showing a disregard for the opinions of your citizens and indifference to the ever-new victims dying from American weapons.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the UN has so far recorded more than 22,000 civilians casualties, including in excess of 7,000 deaths.
Orbán: EU strategy on Ukraine ‘has failed’
Reuters reports that Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has told Hungarian state radio that the EU’s strategy over the war in Ukraine “has failed”, and the bloc should create a plan B, as the Ukrainians will not win on the frontline.
In comments likely to infuriate Kyiv, Orbán said he saw no reason for Hungary, which shares a border with Ukraine, sending any taxpayers’ money to the EU budget for financial support for Ukraine.
Russia executing soldiers who disobey orders, says White House
Helen Livingstone
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
The White House has claimed Russia is executing soldiers who fail to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.
White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said it was a development that security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its invasion.
“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters.
“But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”
In other developments:
-
Newly elected US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that funding to support Ukraine and Israel should be handled separately, suggesting he will not back President Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package for both countries. Johnson, speaking in an interview on Fox News, said he had concerns about Ukraine funding in general. “We want to know what the object is there, what is the end game in Ukraine.”
-
The US ambassador to Ukraine said on Thursday that Ukrainian pilots were undergoing training in the United States on F-16 fighter aircraft, a key element on Kyiv’s wish list. The US approved sending F-16s fighter jets to Ukraine from the Netherlands and Denmark in August once pilot training is completed. “Ukrainian pilots are now training with the Arizona Air National Guard on F-16s,” ambassador Bridget Brink said on social media.
-
Russia criticised Ukrainian-backed peace talks set to be held in Malta this weekend, warning any discussions without its participation would be counterproductive. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the upcoming meeting had “nothing to do with the search for a peaceful resolution” and criticised Malta for hosting what she called a “blatantly anti-Russian event.”
-
Dossiers of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine were presented to German federal prosecutors at the start of a campaign to use the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring war criminals to justice. The cases were filed on Thursday morning by the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), representing 16 survivors and the families of victims in three separate war crimes cases.
-
The US has announced additional security assistance for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion valued at $150m (£124m), the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Pentagon said. The latest package “utilizes assistance previously authorised for Ukraine during prior fiscal years,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
-
Russian lawmakers backed a record increase in military spending to fund Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine, in a first reading of the bill Thursday. Defence spending will account for almost a third of all outlays in 2024 – up 68% to 10.8tn rubles ($115bn).
-
Ukraine denied reports by Ukrainian and British firms that the new Black Sea export corridor had been suspended. “The information regarding the cancellation or unscheduled stoppage of the temporary #Ukrainian-corridor for the movement of civilian vessels from and to the ports of the Big Odesa (region) is false,” deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media.
-
Russia’s FSB security service said it had killed a man while foiling what it said was the latest of several Ukraine-inspired murder and sabotage plots against its soldiers. The FSB said it had “neutralised” a suspect during an attempted arrest after discovering a plot to blow up an enlistment building in the city of Tver, north-west of Moscow, the Tass news agency reported.
-
Finland is working with Beijing to find out more about a Chinese ship likely linked to damage of an undersea gas pipeline, prime minister Petteri Orpo said. Finnish police have recovered an anchor, believed to be from a Chinese vessel, that appears to have caused the breach in the Baltic Sea Balticconnector pipeline to Estonia this month.
-
Ukraine said it planned to evacuate hundreds of children from communities near the north-eastern city of Kupiansk, as Russia steps up assaults in the area. Kyiv’s forces recaptured Kupiansk and the surrounding areas of Kharkiv region in September 2022, but Moscow has since pushed back in a bid to move the frontline west ahead of the winter.
-
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said he was proud to keep communications open with Moscow after angering fellow EU leaders by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin last month. “We keep open all the communication lines to the Russians. Otherwise, there will be no chance for peace,” Orbán told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. “This is a strategy. So we are proud of it.”
-
Slovakia’s new populist prime minister, Robert Fico, said his three-party coalition government was ending military aid to its eastern neighbour Ukraine, fulfilling one of his central campaign pledges. He said he had spoken to the head of the European Commission about his government’s move at a meeting before the bloc’s summit in Brussels.
-
A Stockholm court acquitted a Russian-Swede accused of passing western technology to Russia’s military, ruling that while he did export the material his actions did not amount to intelligence gathering. Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence against Sergei Skvortsov, a 60-year-old dual national who has lived in Sweden since the 1990s running import-export companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/27/russia-ukraine-war-live-russia-executing-soldiers-who-refuse-to-follow-orders-white-house-says Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders, White House says | Ukraine