Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow lays mines at nuclear plant

The scale of Nato’s Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises mark an “irrevocable return” of the alliance to Cold War schemes, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko has claimed.

Nato said on Thursday it was launching its largest exercise since the Cold War involving some 90,000 troops, rehearsing how US troops could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance’s eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a “near-peer” adversary.

“These exercises are another element of the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia,” Mr Grushko told state news agency RIA.

“An exercise of this scale … marks the final and irrevocable return of Nato to the Cold War schemes, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure are being prepared for confrontation with Russia.”

Nato did not mention Russia by name in its announcement. But its top strategic document identifies Russia as the most significant and direct threat to Nato members’ security.

A fire at a terminal of Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek on the Baltic Sea was caused by two explosions, the state RIA news agency reported on Sunday, citing local officials.

The agency said that the fire has since been contained to a 100-cubic-metre fuel depot.

Russian lawmakers have prepared a bill allowing for the confiscation of money and property from people who spread “deliberately false information” about the country’s armed forces, a senior member of parliament said on Saturday.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, said the measure would also apply to those found guilty of what he described as other forms of betrayal. These included “discrediting” the armed forces, calling for sanctions against Russia or inciting extremist activity.

“Everyone who tries to destroy Russia, who betrays it, must face deserved punishment and compensate for the damage inflicted on the country, at the cost of their own property,” Volodin wrote on Telegram.

The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin, a defiant gesture in a country where open criticism of the war is banned.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has issued a decree that my husband has to be there (in Ukraine). I’m interested to know when he will issue a decree that my husband has to be home,” Maria Andreyeva said as campaign workers looked on.

She became involved in a heated exchange with a woman who told her that Russian soldiers in Ukraine were defending the motherland and she should pray for them.

A Russian court in Siberia on Friday sentenced a man to 19 years in prison for shooting a military enlistment officer while prosecutors in St. Petersburg asked for a 28-year sentence for a woman charged in the bombing of a cafe last April that killed a prominent military blogger, reports said.

The developments underscore the authorities’ determination to harshly punish anyone who acts against President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, especially those committing acts of violence, in the run-up to the presidential election in March that the Russian president is all but certain to win.

But even peaceful protesters have been slapped with long prison terms as the Kremlin cracks down on dissent following its invasion of Ukraine, attempting to jail and silence Putin’s critics.

Russia’s top diplomat dismissed the United States proposal to resume a dialogue on nuclear arms control, saying Thursday that it’s impossible while Washington offers military support to Ukraine.

Speaking at an annual news conference, Sergey Lavrov accused the West of fueling global security risks by encouraging Ukraine to ramp up strikes on the Russian territory and warned that Moscow will achieve its goals in the conflict regardless of Western support for Kyiv.

Commenting on a U.S. proposal to resume contacts in the sphere of nuclear arms control, Lavrov said that Moscow has rejected the offer. He said that for such talks to be held, Washington first needs to revise its current policy toward Russia.

French manufacturers have reduced the manufacturing times for some of the weapons systems they supply to Ukraine by half or more, as France increasingly switches away from its previous policy of dipping into its own military stocks to support the war effort against Russia‘s invasion, France’s defense minister said in an interview published Thursday.

“The logic of ceding materiel taken from the armies’ stocks is reaching its end,” the minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in the interview with Le Parisien. “From now on, the solution is to directly connect French defense industries with the Ukrainian army.”

He cited the Caesar self-propelled 155 mm howitzer, made in France by Nexter, as an example of how French defense contractors are adopting a war footing.

NATO will launch next week its biggest military exercises in decades with around 90,000 personnel set to take part in months-long wargames aimed at showing that the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, top officers said Thursday.

The exercises come as Russia’s war on Ukraine bogs down. NATO as an organization is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support, although many member countries send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups, and provide military training.

In the months before President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, NATO began beefing up security on its eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine has targeted an oil facility in the Russian city of St Petersburg, more than 500 miles from the border, in a drone attack.

A Ukrainian military source said the assaults on Vladimir Putin’s hometown were part of a “new phase” of strikes, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky having previously pledged to hit more targets inside Russia this year, with the goal of disrupting life and increasing the pressure on Mr Putin.

Kremlin state media claimed three drones were fired toward St Petersburg in the early hours of Thursday, with the Russian ministry of defence claiming that all had been intercepted. The Ukrainian military source, however, told Reuters: “There are confirmed hits. This is a new stage of work in this region.”

Vladimir Putin is planning to wage information warfare to turn opinion in Europe against Ukraine this year as many European countries gear up for elections, a top US official said.

“Russia is hoping that the number of elections in Europe this year could change what has been a remarkable coalition and disciplined opposition to its war,” said Jamie Rubin, special envoy and coordinator for the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

The GEC is an agency of the State Department whose mission is to counter foreign state propaganda, as well as coordinating the US government’s public communications around counter-terrorism.