Russia-Ukraine war latest news: Zelenskiy says defence lines holding against onslaught; Russian controls imposed in Kherson, says mayor – live

• 10.06am GMT 10:06 ICC launches war crimes investigation over Russian invasion
• 9.51am GMT 09:51 'This is genocide of Ukrainian people' - Mariupol city council
• 9.32am GMT 09:32 Zelenskiy says defence lines holding against Russian onslaught
• 7.32am GMT 07:32 Summary
• 7.16am GMT 07:16 Russian advance on Kyiv has made little progress, UK intelligence report
• 6.02am GMT 06:02 Soaring oil price threatens 'stagflationary shock' – analyst
• 5.20am GMT 05:20 Russian controls imposed in Kherson, says mayor

09:32

Ukraine’s defence lines were holding against the Russian attack, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in his latest video on Thursday, adding there had been no respite in Moscow’s shelling of Ukraine since midnight.

“We have nothing to lose but our own freedom,” Zelenskiy said, adding Ukraine was receiving daily arms supplies from its international allies.

He said it had been two years since Ukraine recorded its first Covid case: “It’s been a week now that another virus attacked,” he said of Russia’s invasion.

As reported by Reuters, Zelenskiy said Russia’s changing tactics and shelling of civilians in cities proved Ukraine was successful in resisting Moscow’s initial plan of claiming a quick victory through a land assault.

It comes as the UN human rights office has said 227 civilians had been killed and another 525 injured in Ukraine since Russia’s military invasion began a week ago.

Updated at 9.41am GMT

A missile or bomb hit a Bangladeshi-owned cargo ship at the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Olvia, killing one of its crew members, and efforts were under way to rescue the others from the vessel, the state-run ship’s owner said on Thursday.

“The ship came under attack and one engineer was killed,” Pijush Dutta, executive director of Bangladesh Shipping Corp, told Reuters.

“It was not clear whether it was a bomb or missile or which side launched the attack. The other 28 crewmen are unharmed,” he said without providing further details.

The Bangladesh-flagged Banglar Samriddhi had been stuck at the port of Olvia after Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February and had been hit by a missile, a Bangladesh foreign ministry official said earlier on Thursday.

Crowds of Ukrainians formed a barrier on Wednesday between Russian forces and a nuclear plant in the city of Enerhodar, blocking their advance.

Footage shared on social media by a Ukrainian official shows people – some holding Ukrainian flags – assembled in front of and around barricades of cars, trucks, tires and sandbags.

Enerhodar is home to Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.

Ukraine’s southern port of Mariupol is surrounded by Russian troops, interior ministry adviser Anton Herashchenko said on Thursday.

“The occupiers want to turn it into besieged Leningrad,” he said, referring to Nazi Germany’s siege of the then-Soviet city, where about 1.5 million people died during two years of blockade.

The European Union will take additional steps against Russia if the situation on the ground in Ukraine deteriorates, the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Thursday.

The bloc is also preparing in case of Russian retaliation, including diversifying the bloc’s energy supplies, Reuters reported.

“Our aim is to cut the Kremlin’s capacity to wage war on its neighbours,” Von der Leyen said after a meeting with the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis.

“We need to get independent from Russian gas, oil and coal. Our resolve to go forward in this case is stronger than ever,” she added.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said he believes some foreign leaders are preparing for war against Russia and that Moscow would press on with its military operation in Ukraine until “the end”.

Lavrov also said Russia had no thoughts of nuclear war, according to a Reuters report.

Offering no evidence to back up his remarks in an interview with state television, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, he also accused the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an ethnic Jew, of presiding over “a society where Nazism is flourishing”.

He said he had no doubt that a solution to the crisis in Ukraine would be found, and a new round of talks were about to start between Ukrainian and Russian officials.

But he said Russia’s dialogue with the west must be based on mutual respect, accused Nato of seeking to maintain supremacy and said that while Russia had a lot of good will, it could not let anyone undermine its interests.

Moscow would not let Ukraine keep infrastructure that threatened Russia, he said. Moscow could also not tolerate what he said was a military threat from Ukraine, he said, adding that he was convinced that Russia was right over Ukraine.

“The thought of nuclear is constantly spinning in the heads of western politicians but not in the heads of Russians,” he said. “I assure you that we will not allow any kind of provocation to unbalance us.”

Russia did not feel politically isolated, and the question of how Ukraine lives should be defined by its people, he added.

The situation in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv is “difficult but under control”, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Thursday.

Klitschko said there were no casualties overnight and that nighttime explosions were Ukrainian air defences striking down incoming Russian missiles, Reuters reported.

He said a heating system site damaged by Russian shelling on Wednesday would be fixed during the day.

Leyland Cecco

Every weekend for most of her youth, while other children were out playing, Natalia Toroshenko attended Ukrainian school, studying the country’s geography, language, its history and national heroes.

“Ukraine, and being Ukrainian, is a deep part of me,” she said. “I wasn’t born there, but it’s my ancestral homeland.”

Toroshenko grew up in Montreal, thousands of kilometres away from the country her father had left to flee famine and conflict. But, she like many other Ukrainian Canadians, has maintained strong connections to the country – and watched horrified as family and friends are trapped in war.

Canada is home to 1.4 million people of Ukrainian descent – the world’s second largest Ukrainian diaspora after Russia. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians farmed the country’s west. The spires of their churches still dot rural landscapes and large cities. Prominent community leaders and politicians are of Ukrainian ancestry, including Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland.

Those cultural and political ties are particularly prominent in the Canadian Prairies, where generations of Ukrainians have braided their culture and history into the vast landscape.

China has denounced a report that it asked Russia to delay invading Ukraine until after the Beijing Winter Olympics as “fake news” and a “very despicable” attempt to divert attention and shift blame over the conflict.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin also repeated China’s accusations that Washington provoked the war by not ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.

“We hope the culprit of the crisis would reflect on their role in the Ukraine crisis, take up their responsibilities, and take practical actions to ease the situation and solve the problem instead of blaming others,” Wang told reporters at a daily briefing.

“The New York Times report is purely fake news, and such behaviors of diverting attentions and shifting blames are very despicable,” Wang said. The article cited a “western intelligence report” considered credible by officials.

“The report indicates that senior Chinese officials had some level of direct knowledge about Russia’s war plans or intentions before the invasion started last week,” the Times wrote.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on 4 February, hours before the Games’ opening ceremony. Following that, the sides issued a joint statement in which they declared “friendship between the two states has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation”.

Aubrey Allegretti

A war crimes investigation has been launched into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after an unprecedented number of countries backed the move and Boris Johnson called the military intervention “abhorrent”.

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor for the international criminal court (ICC), said he would begin work “as rapidly as possible” to look for possible crimes against humanity or genocide committed in Ukraine.

The referral for investigation by 39 countries – including the UK – will shave several months off the process because it allows Khan to bypass the need to seek the approval of the court in The Hague.

It came as Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, braced for a siege and the Russian defence ministry claimed it was in “complete control” of Kherson, a southern port city near the Crimean peninsula.

Khan said an “advanced team” of investigators was already travelling to Ukraine.

The British lawyer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the push for an inquiry by so many countries “allows us to jump-start investigations” and came on top of “evidence of international concern over events on the ground in Ukraine”.

Philip Oltermann

Germany is planning to deliver a further 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine following a volte-face on its previously restrictive stance on exporting lethal weapons, German media reported on Thursday morning.

The shoulder-fired “Strela” surface-to-air rockets, which once belonged to the old arsenal of the National People’s Army of Soviet-controlled East Germany, have been approved for export by Germany’s economic ministry but still await formal approval by the federal security council.

The anti-aircraft missiles follow 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles that the German government announced over the weekend would be dispatched to Ukraine.

In addition, the government of Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has green-lighted the delivery of weapons from Netherlands and Estonia that once belonged to East Germany.

Meanwhile, the German foreign mMinister, Annalena Baerbock, called on Thursday for an urgent inquiry to investigate what she called human rights violations committed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

“We must stand up to this attack. Human rights are universal,” Baerbock said in a video message to the UN human rights ccouncil.

Baerbock added that “we urgently need a commission of inquiry on Ukraine to investigate all violations of human rights that have been committed by Russia since its military aggression. We must stand strong on accountability.”

David Batty

A new UK visa scheme for the extended family members of British Ukranians comes into force from Friday, the Home Office has announced.

The announcement came as security minister Damian Hinds denied there was a delay to the scheme, announced on Wednesday, which he said would help a “couple of hundred thousand” refugees.

“There is absolutely no suggestion of any kind of delay here - people need help now,” he told Sky News.

Asked how many visa applications had been submitted since last Wednesday, Hinds said: “So far a relatively small number - I can’t give you an exact number - but we expect that to grow rapidly.”

The announcement was welcomed by British Ukrainians who have been trying to arrange visas for extended family fleeing the Russian invasion.

Roman Lytwyniw, 25, who travelled to the Polish town of Przemyśl, near the border with Ukraine, to bring his 80-year-old grandmother back to the UK, said the family had been in limbo for two days, with embassy and Home Official officials unable to help with her visa application.

Lytwyniw, a violinist from London, told the Guardian: “I’m not seeing anything yet from that [announcement]. Yesterday, they told me that I’m going to have to reapply for a visa because we didn’t meet the eligibility requirements.

“I’ve just been to the British embassy here and they’ve told me that the best thing to do would be to travel to either Rzeszow or Warsaw. Because that’s where the nearest visa application centres are.”

A petition calling on the UK government to waive visa requirements for Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion has now been signed by more than 100,000 people.

Daniel Boffey

EU leaders are expected to discuss and seek to find a common position on Ukraine’s membership application when they gather in Paris next Thursday for an informal summit, officials have said.

Leaders will discuss “timing or the conditions”, with positions currently widely diverging among the 27 capitals.

Georgia and Moldova are also expected to make formal applications “by the end of the week”, EU officials said.

The EU must prepare for the arrival of millions of refugees as they flee war in Ukraine, the bloc’s top home affairs official said on Thursday.

She added that she expected governments to agree a temporary protection scheme in the coming days.

“Already, almost one million are here,” the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said, with women and children entering the European Union via Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, which all have land borders with Ukraine.

Reuters reported that the bloc’s interior ministers were set to agree in principle at a meeting on Thursday to automatically grant those fleeing Ukraine a residence permit and access to employment, social welfare and housing for up to three years, they said.

“Putin’s terrible war of aggression has had terrible consequences for people in Ukraine,” the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said as she arrived at the Brussels meeting.

“Today it is about all EU members agreeing on a policy to be able to provide help in a non-bureaucratic way.”

The protective measures, once formally approved by EU governments in the coming week, will be granted to Ukrainians and those who had long-term residency or refugee status in Ukraine without them having to go through lengthy asylum procedures.

Mariupol city council said Russia was constantly and deliberately shelling critical civilian infrastructure in the southern Ukrainian port, leaving it without water, heating or power and preventing bringing supplies or evacuating people.

“They are breaking food supplies, setting us up in a blockade, as in the old Leningrad,” the council said in a statement, reported by the Reuters news agency.

“Deliberately, for seven days, they have been destroying the city’s critical life-support infrastructure. We have no light, water or heat again.”

The council said it was seeking to create a humanitarian corridor for the city, as well as trying to restore infrastructure.

“We are being destroyed as a nation. This is genocide of Ukrainian people,” it said.

Daniel Boffey

Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, has said the UK has followed the EU’s lead but that the government needs to heed British public opinion and go further.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

The UK is now following our lead... I think even parties who accepted funding from oligarchs should understand that they need to change course.

Because, if I don’t misunderstand the mood in the UK, that’s what the British public want.

On Wednesday, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, had questioned why Igor Shuvalov, formerly Vladimir Putin’s deputy prime minister, who now sits on the Russian security council, was not on the UK’s sanctions list but does appear on the EU equivalent.

Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny named Shuvalov as the owner of two luxury apartments in Whitehall Court.

Damian Hinds, a minister in the Home Office, told the Today programme that “it is not a competition” when asked about the apparent failure of the UK government to go as far as its EU allies.

Rebecca Ratcliffe

A call by the Ukrainian embassy in Thailand for foreign volunteers to help fight against the Russian invasion has reportedly prompted dozens of inquiries.

A Ukrainian embassy official told BenarNews that 40 people had turned up in person to ask about travelling to the country, while up to 100 people called to express interest on Wednesday.

The embassy posted an appeal made by Volodymyr Zelenskiy for “friends of peace and democracy” to help Ukraine fight Russia. The statement, posted on its Facebook page, stated: “There is no greater contribution which you can make for the sake of peace.”

The notice has reportedly struck a chord with Thais who participated in the pro-democracy protests that peaked in 2020. Among them is Chanaphong Phongpai, 28, who visited the Ukrainian embassy on Wednesday and spoke to Reuters about his reasons for wanting to fight for Ukraine.

“They (Ukrainians) are also fighting for democracy and is now invaded by a superpower and a tyrant, so I asked myself what I can do for them,” he said.

Thai government spokesperson Ratchada Thanadirek told Reuters that there is no law preventing Thai citizens from joining foreign volunteer forces, but cautioned that people should consider the grave danger they could face on the ground.

The Ukrainian embassy did not immediately respond to a request by the Guardian for comment. It has also set up bank accounts for people to donate in Thai baht.

The Thai prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, has declined to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, echoing the stance of many south-east Asian countries, which have issued mostly restrained statements on the matter.

However, on Wednesday night Thailand was among 141 member states voted for a resolution deploring Russia’s actions and calling for the immediate withdrawal of its force.

Luke Harding

Ukrainian scientists have signed an open letter urging colleagues around the world to cut off collaboration with Russia.

They are calling for an international boycott of scientific events inside Russia and say Russian researchers should be banned from accessing databases. More than 3,000 academics have signed the petition.

Dmytro Chumachenko, an associate professor at the national aerospace university in the city of Kharkiv, now under Russian attack, shared the petition and asked his western colleagues to sign it.

It reads:

The Russian Federation has committed an insidious and completely shameful military attack on our country! In 2022, cruise missiles with cluster munitions and vacuum bombs that are banned in the civilized world are destroying residential areas, kindergartens, and hospitals in the very center of Europe!

As of today, the number of dead civilians counts in hundreds (of which 16 are children), and thousands are wounded. The President of the Russian Federation threatens the world with nuclear weapons, which will obviously start the World War III.

The armed forces and citizens defend Ukraine to the end! The whole world gives a worthy rebuff to the aggressor through the imposition of sanctions. At the same time, we believe that in this situation the progressive world scientific community should have its say.

That is why we need your support right now. In our opinion, in the 21st century and 2022, perhaps the best answer to tanks, multiple rocket launchers, and rockets is closed access to high technologies, innovations, scientific research, and information support.

Ukraine’s defence lines were holding against the Russian attack, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in his latest video on Thursday, adding there had been no respite in Moscow’s shelling of Ukraine since midnight.

“We have nothing to lose but our own freedom,” Zelenskiy said, adding Ukraine was receiving daily arms supplies from its international allies.

He said it had been two years since Ukraine recorded its first Covid case: “It’s been a week now that another virus attacked,” he said of Russia’s invasion.

As reported by Reuters, Zelenskiy said Russia’s changing tactics and shelling of civilians in cities proved Ukraine was successful in resisting Moscow’s initial plan of claiming a quick victory through a land assault.

It comes as the UN human rights office has said 227 civilians had been killed and another 525 injured in Ukraine since Russia’s military invasion began a week ago.