Ukraine-Russia war: Kremlin responds to claim Kyiv may be given nuclear weapons

Russian forces have captured the village of Kopanky in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, the Interfax news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying on Tuesday.

The ministry also said Russian forces had downed three Ukrainian drones near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine.

Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik has been appointed acting commander of Russia’s “South” group of forces, the RBC news outlet cited anonymous sources as saying on Tuesday.

The move follows the dismissal of the previous commander of the group, one of the large army units involved in Russia’s campaign in Ukraine.

A Russian court has ordered the arrest of Catherine Norris Trent, a reporter for the France24 news channel, on a charge of crossing illegally into its western Kursk region, state news agency TASS said on Tuesday.

It said she had entered the region with the Ukrainian military in order to file a report.

Russia has launched criminal cases against a number of Western journalists who have reported from Kursk, where Ukrainian troops broke across the border on 6 August and have carved out a slice of Russian territory.

The proceedings have been launched in absentia, and the orders mean the reporters would be arrested if they set foot inside Russia.

Russia opposes simply freezing the conflict in Ukraine because Moscow needs a “solid and long-term peace” that resolves the core reasons for the crisis, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said that Russia had the initiative on the battlefield.

Naryshkin said Russia was categorically opposed to the “freezing of the conflict”, adding that Russia wanted a long-term peace. Russia is open for talks, Naryshkin said.

Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is “absolutely irresponsible”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.

Peskov said the comments were only attributed to anonymous sources, and those making them do not feel “a shred of responsibility”. The West should listen carefully to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said.

Earlier, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow’s forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.

“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.

The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides front line maps.

Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open source maps.

Russia currently controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80 per cent of Donbas, which comprises of Luhansk and Donetsk, and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3 per cent of the Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.

Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses though Western intelligence estimates to casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.

Josep Borrell has said “you cannot approve the court when it goes against Putin and oppose it when it goes against Netanyahu”, referring to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The comments from the Vice President of the EU Commission comes after some countries rejected the court’s warrant for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest.

Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev has said that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.

“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram on Tuesday.

Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.

“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.

A man charged with Donald Trump’s attempted assassination was apparently messaging British-trained Afghan commandos about recruitment to the Ukraine war just three days before he was arrested at a Florida golf course.

Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested on 15 September after allegedly aiming a powerful AK-47-style assault rifle through the bushes at Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

The 58-year-old former roofing contractor from North Carolina had become fanatical about supporting Ukraine’s right to defend itself from Russia’s invasion. He was said to have contacted the Ukraine’s International Legion with ideas that Ukrainian military personnel described as “delusional”.

In messages linked to Routh’s Whatsapp number and seen by The Independent and investigative newroom Lighthouse Reports, there are discussions with Afghan special forces about how to get to Ukraine to fight.

The extraordinary revelation highlights the desperation of these Afghan commandos who were paid for and trained by the British to fight the Taliban but were left abandoned after Kabul fell in 2021.

Holly Bancroft and May Bulman have the full report:

A Russian man was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison Monday after being found guilty of high treason for a video he sent to Ukraine’s security services, the latest in a series of espionage cases involving the conflict.

The Volgograd District Court said Nikita Zhuravel had been “in disagreement with the political course of the Russian Federation” and entered into correspondence with a representative from Ukraine’s security services online and carried out tasks for him. It did not give details on the tasks.

Zhuravel is already serving a 3 1/2-year sentence for burning a Quran in front of a mosque, which was handed down in February.