Russia-Ukraine war: Russia accused of demolishing Mariupol theatre ‘to hide war crimes’ – as it happened | Ukraine

It’s nearly 9pm in Kyiv. That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. Here’s where things stand:

• President Vladimir Putin has ordered his country’s defence industry chiefs to ensure the Russian army gets all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs “in the shortest possible timeframes” to fight in Ukraine. Putin’s remarks came just days after he pledged to give his army anything it asks for in a meeting with Russia’s top military officials.

• Russian forces have started demolishing a theatre in occupied Mariupol in southern Ukraine that was the site of a deadly airstrike believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor. Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said the move was an “attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by Russians”.

• Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high” and compared US-Russia relations to an “ice age” in comments reported by the Russian state-owned Tass news agency. The Kremlin on Thursday accused the US of fighting a proxy war against Russia, after Washington boosted military support for Ukraine and hosted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House and Congress.

• Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region more than 60 times on Thursday, according to the head of the region’s military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych. Two civilians were killed by Russian shelling on the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine Friday morning, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

• Two people were injured after a car bomb exploded in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in south-eastern Ukraine, according to a local pro-Moscow official. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province, described the incident as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “militants of the Kyiv regime” to the Russian state media. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, wrote on Telegram that eyewitnesses reported a car was “blown up”.

• The Kremlin has claimed that Russia has made significant progress towards “demilitarising” Ukraine – one of the initial goals of Russia’s invasion 10 months ago. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, was asked during a briefing about comments by President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine’s military-industrial complex “if not completely reset to zero, is getting there fast”.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a video on Friday saying he was back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office. We are working toward victory,” he said in the video posted to his Telegram channel.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to the White House confirmed that Ukraine and the US are “strategic partners” for the first time in history, the Ukrainian leader’s most senior adviser has said. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainan president’s office, told the Guardian that the trip on Wednesday had cemented Zelenskiy’s bond with the US president, Joe Biden – and with senior US Republicans.

• North Korea’s foreign ministry denied a media report it had supplied munitions to Russia, calling it “groundless,” and denounced the US for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency reported. The White House yesterday said the Wagner Group took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, a sign of the group’s expanding role in the war. The Canadian government said Pyongyang’s transaction with the Wagner Group “clearly violates international law and UN security council resolutions”.

• The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said on Friday that shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had “almost stopped”. Speaking on Russian state television, governor Yevgeny Balitsky said Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant, and that it would never return to Ukrainian control.

• A Russian opposition politician has filed a legal challenge over President Vladimir Putin’s use of the word “war” to describe the conflict in Ukraine. Putin on Thursday publicly acknowledged the situation as a “war” for the first time since he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February, after 10 months of calling his campaign a “special military operation”.

• Ukraine plans to open new embassies in 10 African countries, its president has announced, with the aim of increasing Kyiv’s presence in Africa and strengthening trade ties. There are also plans to develop a “Ukraine-Africa trade house” with offices in the capitals of “the most promising countries” on the African continent, Zelenskiy added.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered his country’s defence industry chiefs to ensure the Russian army gets all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs “in the shortest possible timeframes” to fight in Ukraine.

The Russian leader was speaking at the start of the meeting with defence industry officials gathered from across the country in the city of Tula, a centre for Russian arms manufacturing.

Putin said:

The most important key task of our military-industrial complex is to provide our units and frontline forces with everything they need: weapons, equipment, ammunition, and gear in the necessary quantities and of the right quality in the shortest possible timeframes.

It’s also important to perfect and significantly improve the technical characteristics of weapons and equipment for our fighters based on the combat experience we have gained.

He added that he was looking forward to their “proposals on addressing the problems that are inevitable in this large piece of work and how we will move forward and make sure there are fewer of them”.

Putin’s remarks came just days after he pledged to give his army anything it asks for in a meeting with Russia’s top military officials. Speaking in Moscow at the closing session of the expanded board of the ministry of defence on Wednesday, he said there were no “funding restrictions” for the military. He added:

The country, the government will give everything that the army asks for. Everything.

Russia is expected to dramatically increase its spending on the military in the next two years, as Putin signals that he is preparing for a prolonged and costly war with Ukraine.

Earlier this month, he said the conflict could turn into a “long-term process”, and the Kremlin shows no intention of climbing down from its maximalist goals of regime change in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to the White House confirmed that Ukraine and the US are “strategic partners” for the first time in history, the Ukrainian leader’s most senior adviser has said in an interview on his return home.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainan president’s office, told the Guardian that the trip on Wednesday had cemented Zelenskiy’s bond with the US president, Joe Biden – and with senior US Republicans, despite “dirty” comments made by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The summit and press conference between the two leaders this week demonstrated “how deeply in personal attitude President Biden feels everything which is connected to Ukraine”, Yermak said, and that the US was “a real leader of the free world and democracy”.

Yermak’s emphasis on the personal links forged by the surprise visit, the first time Zelenskiy had been outside Ukraine since the start of the war, comes despite a failure to immediately obtain the US Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and long-range army tactical missile system ATACMS that Ukraine has said it needs to defeat Russia.

But it demonstrates a belief in Kyiv that Ukraine must emphasise the moral dimension of its fight against the invading Russian army and its faith in its relationship with the US to unlock more and more of the military aid it badly needs as the war heads towards its first anniversary in February.

Yermak, who was by Zelenskiy’s side during the trip, said:

It’s [the] first time in history that Ukraine and [the] United States are close as strategic partners. There is a very warm, very friendly relationship, [a] personal relationship between [the] two presidents.

As well as the meeting with Biden, Yermak highlighted meetings Zelenskiy had with US congressional leaders, including those with senior Republicans Mitch McConnell, the senate minority leader, and Kevin McCarthy, the leading candidate to become House speaker next month.

Read the full story here:

Like many Ukrainian refugees, Yuliia Kashperenko will spend Christmas away from home this year.

She feels upset at the thought of being away from her family and friends in Ukraine, but comforted to know she will spend the holiday with her host and their children in south London.

Kashperenko, 25, arrived the UK in October, leaving her parents behind in the Kyiv region. “With this family, I feel like I’m with my family,” she says.

I realise it’s better to stay here. I’m in a safe place with good people.

The Ukrainian government advised refugees not to go home over Christmas, because of fears the country’s energy infrastructure would not be able to deal with the demand, meaning many will spend the holiday apart from loved ones.

Ukrainians traditionally celebrate Christmas on 7 January, according to the Julian calendar, but after Russia’s invasion the country’s Orthodox church is allowing its congregations to observe the 25 December date instead, in a move toward the west.

Kashperenko, who worked in the media and as a copywriter in Ukraine, arrived in London after applying to the Homes for Ukraine scheme. She fled because she was worried about attacks on the capital and being forced to survive the winter without power. “I understood that Russia was going to destroy cities and energy systems,” she says.

Read the full story here:

Russian forces have started demolishing a theatre in occupied Mariupol in southern Ukraine that was the site of a deadly airstrike believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor.

Petro Andryushchenko accused the occupying authorities of attempting to cover up the Russian bombing of the theatre, which was being used as an air raid shelter when it was hit on 16 March.

An investigation by Amnesty International into the Mariupol theatre strike concluded that Russian forces committed a war crime by deliberately targeting the building despite knowing hundreds of civilians were sheltering there.

Video posted on social media appears to show diggers demolishing the last remaining walls of the theatre.

Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said the move was an “attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by Russians”.

The Russian occupying authorities were planning to leave the front of the theatre intact and destroy the rest of the structure, to build a new theatre “on the bones of Mariupol’s people”, Andryushchenko said.

It’s 6pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high” and compared US-Russia relations to an “ice age” in comments reported by the Russian state-owned Tass news agency. The Kremlin on Thursday accused the US of fighting a proxy war against Russia, after Washington boosted military support for Ukraine and hosted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House and Congress.

• Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region more than 60 times on Thursday, according to the head of the region’s military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych. Two civilians were killed by Russian shelling on the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine Friday morning, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

• Two people were injured after a car bomb exploded in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in south-eastern Ukraine, according to a local pro-Moscow official. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province, described the incident as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “militants of the Kyiv regime” to the Russian state media. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, wrote on Telegram that eyewitnesses reported a car was “blown up”.

• The Kremlin has claimed that Russia has made significant progress towards “demilitarising” Ukraine – one of the initial goals of Russia’s invasion 10 months ago. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, was asked during a briefing about comments by President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine’s military-industrial complex “if not completely reset to zero, is getting there fast”.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a video on Friday saying he was back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office. We are working toward victory,” he said in the video posted to his Telegram channel.

• North Korea’s foreign ministry denied a media report it had supplied munitions to Russia, calling it “groundless,” and denounced the US for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency reported. The White House yesterday said the Wagner Group took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, a sign of the group’s expanding role in the war. The Canadian government said Pyongyang’s transaction with the Wagner Group “clearly violates international law and UN security council resolutions”.

• The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said on Friday that shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had “almost stopped”. Speaking on Russian state television, governor Yevgeny Balitsky said Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant, and that it would never return to Ukrainian control.

• A Russian opposition politician has filed a legal challenge over President Vladimir Putin’s use of the word “war” to describe the conflict in Ukraine. Putin on Thursday publicly acknowledged the situation as a “war” for the first time since he ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February, after 10 months of calling his campaign a “special military operation”.

Lorenzo Tondo

If one battle more than any other has defined the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine, it is the three-month siege of Mariupol’s steelworks this spring, and the harrowing experience of its last defenders.

Holed up in Azovstal, one of Europe’s largest metal-producing plants, hundreds of outnumbered, outgunned, wounded and emaciated Ukrainian soldiers, and more than 1,000 civilians, resisted one of Moscow’s fiercest military attacks for more than 80 days.

“No one came out of there unchanged,” says Oksana, an Azovstal employee who asked not to give her full name.

They were one person when they went in, and another person when they came out.

Soon after the Russian invasion in late February, Mariupol was one of the first major cities to be encircled. Viewed as a key Kremlin objective, the city was the scene of a siege that the Red Cross has defined as “apocalyptic”. The outskirts of the city became the site of a mass grave, and the bodies of many more men, women and children were either dumped in the streets or remain buried beneath the rubble.

Ukrainian authorities estimate that 22,000 people died during the fighting. Some survivors took refuge in the Azovstal steelworks, an industrial site covering an area of about four square miles, including a network of underground tunnels.

With the civilians were about 3,000 soldiers, many of whom were members of the notorious Azov brigade, which, at its inception in 2014, included far-right volunteers, some with neo-Nazi affiliations. In recent years the brigade has been fully integrated into the Ukrainian military, but for President Vladimir Putin it was the perfect propaganda opportunity to convince the public that his narrative about the “nazification” of Ukraine was true, and that his army would hunt them down like rats. Never would Putin have imagined that the last defenders of Mariupol would defy his plan for so long.

Cut off from the world and low on food, the defenders of Azovstal were holed up in the tunnels of the steelworks for over two months while the Russians launched rockets and incendiary bombs at the site.

Read the full story by my colleague Lorenzo Tondo here:

Two civilians have been killed by Russian shelling on the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine this morning, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

In a post on Telegram, it said:

According to the investigation, in the morning of December 23, two local residents of the city of Kherson were killed in another shelling by Russian military personnel. Residential buildings and critical infrastructure were damaged.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said Russian shelling of the Korabelnyi district in Kherson killed one person.

The victim, a male, “sustained fatal mine blast injuries”, Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram.