Wife of Ukrainian military’s top intelligence official poisoned; Stoltenberg urges Nato to ‘stay the course’ – as it happened
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Marianna Budanova undergoing treatment in hospital; Nato’s secretary general says it is ‘our obligation’ to supply Ukraine with weapons. This live blog is closed
Ukraine confirms poisoning of intelligence chief's wife
A Ukrainian military intelligence official has confirmed that Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukraine’s intelligence head, Kyrylo Budanov, has been poisoned and is undergoing treatment in a hospital.
Her poisoning was reported earlier by Ukrainian media outlets, which cited unnamed intelligence sources (see earlier post at 09.25).
“Yes, I can confirm the information, unfortunately, it’s true,” Andriy Yusov, an official at the GUR military intelligence agency, told Reuters.
Budanova, who is an adviser to the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, was reportedly hospitalised after her condition deteriorated.
The EU has agreed to more than quadruple its spending on training Ukrainian soldiers to battle Russia, investing close to an extra €200m (£173m), AFP reported.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, urged members of the alliance to “stay the course” in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion, Reuters reported. “It’s our obligation to ensure that we provide Ukraine with the weapons they need,” Stoltenberg told reporters as he arrived for a gathering of foreign ministers from Nato countries at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
A Ukrainian military intelligence official has confirmed that Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukraine’s intelligence head, Kyrylo Budanov, had been poisoned and had been undergoing treatment in a hospital. Her poisoning was reported earlier by Ukrainian media outlets, which cited unnamed intelligence sources.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said military and financial support for Ukraine is of “existential importance” to Europe. In a speech to parliament, he was quoted by AFP as saying: “We will continue with this support as long as it is necessary. This support is of existential importance. For Ukraine … but also for us in Europe. None of us want to imagine what even more serious consequences it would have for us if Putin won this war.”
Moscow’s Lefortovo district court extended the pre-trial detention of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for two months until 30 January 2024, the court’s press service said.
According to AFP, the caretaker Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, is the clear frontrunner to become the next head of Nato. Multiple diplomats put the veteran well ahead of other hopefuls – including the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and Latvia’s top diplomat, Krišjānis Kariņš – to take over next year from Jens Stoltenberg.
EU agrees to more than quadruple its spending on training Ukrainian soldiers
The EU has agreed to more than quadruple its spending on training Ukrainian soldiers to battle Russia, investing close to an extra €200m (£173m), AFP reports.
The 27-nation bloc has so far trained 34,000 Ukrainian personnel for the frontline, making the EU the biggest provider of training for Ukraine’s military
The latest funding increased the amount from the EU’s central European Peace Facility fund for the training by €194m to €255m in total, Brussels said in a statement.
Officials say they were aiming to reach 40,000 Ukrainian troops trained by the EU in the near future.
A Russian businessman has successfully taken legal action to ban a book in Germany about the Kremlin and its spy agencies, in a case that freedom of speech groups have described as an alarming attack on public interest reporting.
Two London-based Russian journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, say they interviewed the businessman, Alexey Kozlov, for their 2019 book The Compatriotsbecause of his family’s historical connections to Soviet intelligence. He has now won a court injunction against the book’s publisher.
Index on Censorship said in a statement that it felt “intimidatory tactics” were being used to silence critics of the Russian regime living abroad. Its statement was backed by 15 other freedom of expression groups including PEN International and Article 19 Europe.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said that Kyiv did not feel any pressure from its partners to start peace negotiations with Russia to put an end to the 21-month-old war, Reuters reports.
Russian shells struck a residential building and private houses on Tuesday, killing four people and injuring at least five, local Ukrainian officials have said.
A five-storey building was hit in the morning in the southern town of Nikopol, the Dnipropetrovsk region governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
“A 63-year-old man was killed. Two women, aged 65 and 63, were injured. There may be people under the rubble,” he wrote on Telegram.
In a separate attack in the afternoon, Russian shelling destroyed at least five private houses in a northern settlement just on the border with Russia, Sumy regional prosecutors reported, according to Reuters.
Two bodies had been recovered from the rubble, and a seven-year-old girl had died in hospital after a car she was in came under fire, the prosecutors said on Telegram.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
Nato allies have put pressure on Turkey to finally approve Sweden’s stalled bid to join the military alliance, AFP reports.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, at a meeting of alliance foreign ministers that Sweden’s application should be ratified “as soon as possible”, his spokesperson said.
“The strength and credibility of our alliance are at stake. We must not lose another day,” France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said.
Turkey and Hungary are the only Nato members yet to ratify Sweden’s bid, more than 18 months after it applied for membership.
The Turkish parliament started this month to debate Sweden’s application to join after Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, launched the process after a deal at a Nato summit in July.
Finland will close its entire border with Russia to travellers for the next two weeks to try to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic country, the government has said.
Last week, Finland shut all but one of its remaining border posts to travellers from Russia, keeping open only the northernmost crossing located in the Arctic.
But this too would now close, allowing only goods transport, the government said, according to Reuters.
In its latest intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russia had made further small advances over recent days on the northern axis of a pincer movement as part of an attempt to surround Avdiivka.
Russian troops have been pressing land and air-based attacks on Avdiivka since mid-October as the focal point of their slow-moving push through eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in the 21-month war.
Posting on X, the MoD wrote:
Since the start of October 2023, Russian forces have moved the frontline forwards up to 2km in this area. Although modest, this advance likely represents one of the greatest Russian gains since spring 2023. It has cost the units involved thousands of casualties.
This operation is gradually bringing Russian troops closer to the Avdiivka coke and chemical plant, where Ukrainian forces maintain one of their main defensive positions.
Although Avdiivka has become a salient or bulge in the Ukrainian frontline, Ukraine remains in control of a corridor of territory approximately 7km wide, through which it continues to supply the town.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires:
A woman hugs her daughter in front of an apartment building after their flat was damaged by recent shelling in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine. Photograph: Reuters
A woman stands inside her apartment, which was damaged by shelling, in Donetsk. Photograph: Reuters
A man stands inside an apartment damaged by shelling in Donetsk. Photograph: Reuters
Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, has pushed back against suggestions that Ukraine needs to change its strategy as the war drags towards a third year, Agence France-Presse reports.
“We have a good strategy, and Ukraine has a good strategy, but we need to implement it,” she said.
It is not for Nato, the EU or anyone else to decide Ukraine’s strategy to defeat Russia, Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said on his way into the Nato meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels.
“We have to assist their strategy. Our strategy has to be Russia losing; for the last time losing in this neighbourhood,” he said, adding that Ukraine had shown how successful it was at “pushing back the Russians”.
Landsbergis said failure to supply Ukraine with enough ammunition was not an option as the consequences would be more wars in Europe.
“If Ukraine is forced to stop for one or the other reason, because it’s not … getting enough weapons, ammunition, technological breakthrough, then it’s our choice. This is our choice … And then we will just have to just start the clock for the next conflict,” he told reporters.
On her way to a Nato meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said it was important that Germany and the rest of the western allies in Nato and the EU continued to increase their support for Ukraine.
She said:
We are making clear here and also at the Nato meeting in Brussels that security and peace in Ukraine is also insurance for peace in Europe and this is why, we, Germany as all our other partners, keeping up increasing our support for Ukraine, because Ukraine is not only defending the peace for its own people are defending us in Europe.
Annalena Baerbock talks to journalists as she arrives to a meeting of foreign ministers at Nato headquarters in Brussels. Photograph: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP
Ukraine confirms poisoning of intelligence chief's wife
A Ukrainian military intelligence official has confirmed that Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukraine’s intelligence head, Kyrylo Budanov, has been poisoned and is undergoing treatment in a hospital.
Her poisoning was reported earlier by Ukrainian media outlets, which cited unnamed intelligence sources (see earlier post at 09.25).
“Yes, I can confirm the information, unfortunately, it’s true,” Andriy Yusov, an official at the GUR military intelligence agency, told Reuters.
Budanova, who is an adviser to the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, was reportedly hospitalised after her condition deteriorated.
Germany and France have come a long way on the FCAS fighter jet programme and MGCS tank system, and will decide who does what for the European defence projects by the end of the year, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has said.
“We will present it in January. We’ll be very far along by then,” Pistorius was quoted by Reuters as saying about the projects.
Jens Stoltenberg urges Nato allies to 'stay the course' in supporting Ukraine
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has urged members of the alliance to “stay the course” in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion, Reuters reports.
“It’s our obligation to ensure that we provide Ukraine with the weapons they need,” Stoltenberg told reporters as he arrived for a gathering of foreign ministers from Nato countries at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
“We just have to stay the course. This is about also our security interests.”
His remarks come as the fate of a $60bn US military aid package proposed by the Biden administration is in limbo due to opposition from some Republicans in Congress.
A proposal by the EU’s foreign policy chief to allocate up to €20bn (£17bn) over four years for military aid to Ukraine has run into resistance among the bloc’s member states, which would have to provide the cash.
