Ukraine live blog: ++ Russia wants to move troops to the Finnish border ++

Russian President Putin wants to move troops to the border with Finland. In an interview he also referred to the arsenal of Russian nuclear weapons. Thousands demonstrated for Ukraine in Slovakia. All developments in the live blog.

Several people have been killed and injured in nightly Russian drone and bomb attacks in Ukraine. In the city of Sumy in the north of the country, a residential building was badly damaged, the regional administration said on Telegram. “According to preliminary information, ten people were rescued from the rubble, eight of whom suffered injuries of varying severity. Unfortunately, there is also one death.”

30 apartments in the five-story building were damaged, half of which were completely destroyed. The Sumy regional administration had previously announced that five minor children were injured in a bomb attack in the Velyka Pysarivka district late on Tuesday evening.

In the small town of Myrnohrad, in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, two people were killed and another five injured by nighttime shelling, the region’s governor, Vadym Filaschkin, wrote on Telegram. A 13-year-old was rescued from the rubble of the house uninjured.

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes his country is prepared for nuclear war. In an interview with the state news agency RIA and the Rossiya-1 channel, he said that from a military-technical point of view, his country was ready to use nuclear weapons if the existence of the Russian state was threatened.

Its nuclear weapons are more modern than those of other countries. According to Putin, the US is currently renewing its nuclear forces. This does not mean that they are ready to start a nuclear war, but there are efforts in certain circles in Washington to not only explore the possibilities of the new warheads on the computer, but to check them in real tests. “We know about it. And we will look,” said Putin. He did not provide any evidence to support his claims about the US plans.

Asked whether he had ever considered using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, Putin replied that there was no need. He expressed confidence that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine and assured that the door to negotiations was open. However, firm guarantees from the West are required for an agreement.

Putin recently warned the West against deploying troops in Ukraine and threatened to use nuclear weapons.

In the Russian Ryazan Oblast, south of Moscow, an oil refinery caught fire after a Ukrainian drone attack, according to the responsible governor Malkov. Several people were injured, Malkow said on Telegram. The fire has now been extinguished. According to the state news agency Tass, two people were taken to a hospital in the city of Ryazan. The oblast of the same name does not border Ukraine.

According to Russian sources, Ukrainian forces have attacked several areas in Russia with drones for the second night in a row. In total, Russian forces intercepted and destroyed 58 Ukrainian drones, according to the Defense Ministry. Of these, more than 30 drones over the Voronezh Oblast, as the responsible governor Alexander Gusev announced on Telegram. There is minor damage to buildings from falling debris.

Voronezh borders Ukraine, as does Belgorod. There, falling drone debris is said to have damaged a gas supply line and there are also said to have been power outages. According to authorities, at least four Ukrainian drones were intercepted over Kursk.

After a Russian rocket attack on his native town of Kryvyi Rih with several deaths, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced retaliation. “We will inflict losses on the Russian state in response,” Zelensky said in his evening video address. “You in the Kremlin must learn that terror will not go unpunished for you,” he warned. “Nothing will cure these patients of their ills, but they will feel the losses.”

According to the Ukrainian military, two residential buildings were hit and set on fire in the rocket attack on Kryvyi Rih late on Tuesday afternoon. By evening, helpers had recovered at least three dead people from the rubble. Another 38 people were injured, including ten children.

Russian President Vladimir Putin considers Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO to be a mistake. “This is an absolutely meaningless step (for Finland and Sweden) from the point of view of protecting their own national interests,” Putin said in an interview with the Russian state news agency RIA and state television Rossiya-1. “We had no troops there (on the Finnish border), now they will be there. There were no destruction systems there, now they will be moved there.”

The Russian parliament has criticized the German discussion about the supply of “Taurus” cruise missiles to Ukraine. Such developments could lead to Germany entering the war and the Bundestag must counteract this, according to a published appeal by the State Duma in Moscow. The MPs also expressed doubts that Chancellor Olaf Scholz really opposed the use of the weapons. It was said that there are already a number of facts about the use of Western weapons.

At a meeting with US President Joe Biden, Polish President Andrzej Duda insisted that NATO commit its members to even higher defense spending in the future. He also called on the US to provide further support to Ukraine, which is being attacked by Russia. “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has clearly shown that the United States plays and should continue to play the leading role in the field of security,” Duda said at the White House.

But other allies would also have to take more responsibility for the security of the defense alliance. “That’s why I believe it is necessary for all NATO countries to increase their defense spending from two to three percent of gross domestic product.” The current target is two percent. Duda said this would have been appropriate ten years ago. But now more is needed, given the all-out war that Russia has started behind NATO’s eastern border. Poland itself spent 3.9 percent of its gross domestic product on armaments last year. The country feels threatened by Russia and is currently rearming massively.

Several thousand people demonstrated against the Slovak government and its foreign policy. The organizer of the rally on Freedom Square in front of the government office in Bratislava was the “Peace of Ukraine” initiative, which advocates decisive military support for the neighboring country attacked by Russia.

The protesters accused the three-party government led by left-wing nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico of “pro-Russian politics”. One of the initiative’s spokesmen, Rastislav Kalnovic, said in his speech: “It is essential to emphasize that we refuse to be collaborators of belligerent Russia. We refuse to be partners of a totalitarian regime.”

After Fico took office in October, Slovakia stopped state arms deliveries to Ukraine. The populist is also campaigning for negotiations with Russia.

A close confidant of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in Russian custody, has been violently attacked while in exile in Lithuania. “Leonid Volkov was just attacked in front of his house,” said Kira Jarmisch, who was Navalny’s spokeswoman until his death. Among other things, Volkov, who is one of the best-known Russian opposition figures, was attacked with tear gas and a hammer.

“Someone broke a car window and sprayed tear gas into his eyes. Then the attacker started attacking Leonid with a hammer,” Jarmisch described the attack on the online service X. The spokeswoman did not provide any information about where Volkov lives. But the independent Russian online media Mediazona reported that the opposition figure is in Lithuania.

The Lithuanian police, for their part, confirmed, according to the Deli news website, that “a Russian citizen was attacked in front of his house.” Volkov was one of Navalny’s closest confidants and, among other things, former chief of staff. He also headed the anti-corruption foundation founded by the Kremlin critic until 2023.

According to Ukrainian reports, three people were killed in a Russian attack on the city of Kryvy Rih. Kyiv has its 1,000th. There has been an air alert since the outbreak of war a good two years ago.