Ukrainian strike 'destroys railway' to cut off Russia's supplies to Kherson

Today's top stories included: 

• Gazprom says sanctions make restoring Europe's gas supply 'impossible'
• Germany says there is no reason for Moscow not to do so
• The first grains shipment from Ukraine in the war passed its Istanbul inspection and is en route to Lebanon
• Ukraine brushed off claims Putin is ready for a ceasefire

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said he will launch a fact-finding mission into an attack in the front-line Ukranian town of Olenivka that killed prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists.

Russia and Ukraine, who have exchanged blame over the reported deaths of 53 prisoners, both requested an investigation, Guterres told reporters.

He said the terms of reference for the mission, which would need agreement from Russia and Ukraine, were being prepared.

A Syrian ship seized in Lebanon over claims it was carrying grains Russia stole from Ukraine has been released by Tripoli's port authority a week after it docked in the city, Lebanon’s transport minister said in a tweet.

Ali Hamie said the Laodicea, a ship blacklisted by the United States in 2015 for its role in the Syrian conflict, would be allowed to travel onto Syria.

The Lebanese judge who had issued the seizure order for the ship confirmed to Reuters that it would be allowed to leave.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has said that delivery of a turbine needed to keep gas flowing to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was "impossible" due to sanctions on Moscow.

"Sanctions regimes in Canada, in the European Union and in Britain, as well as the inconsistencies in the current situation concerning the contractual obligations of (turbine maker) Siemens make the delivery impossible," the state-owned company said in a statement.

Ukraine's forecast for its wartime 2022 harvest has increased to 65-67 million tonnes of grain from 60 million tonnes, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal has said.

In a Telegram message, he praised farmers for pressing ahead with the harvest despite the war, even in areas where shelling continues.

The first shipment of grains since Ukraine's Black Sea ports were unblocked following a landmark UN treaty left Odesa on Monday, and was today cleared by inspectors to continue from Istanbul to Lebanon.

Italy's parliamentarians have voted through a bill ratifying the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Nato alliance.

The Senate voted by 202 to 13 in favour of the bill, a day after the lower house approved it by a large majority.

The accession needs to be ratified by the parliaments of all 30 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) members before Finland and Sweden can be protected by the Nato defence clause that states that an attack on one member is an attack against all.

Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has backed a £3bn export finance package to help Ukraine fight Russia and the country's future reconstruction, Sky News reports.

UK Export Finance had asked for up to £2.3bn for the financing of military contracts identified by the Ukrainian government and £700m for reconstruction projects.

In a letter to the international trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, he said he backed its request and considered it "essential that we continue supporting the government of Ukraine in any way we can and demonstrating our faith in the future of Ukraine".

Ukraine has brushed off claims that Vladimir Putin wanted a "negotiated solution" aimed at a ceasefire by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Responding to the claim by the Russian President's friend today, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak branded him as a "voice of the Russian royal court".

"If Moscow wants dialogue, the ball is in its court. First - a cease-fire and withdrawal of troops, then - constructive (dialogue)," Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

Russia is creating a new military strike force that will target Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's home town.

Ukraine's southern military command warned Moscow could be preparing a counter attack in southern Ukraine frontline after 53 villages were recaptured in occupied Kherson region on Tuesday.

 The steel-producing city of Kryvyi Rih where the Ukrainian president grew up is about 30 miles from the southern frontline.

The military command said: "(Russia) has begun creating a strike group in the Kryvyi Rih direction. It’s also quite likely that the enemy is preparing a hostile counter-offensive with the subsequent plan of getting to the administrative boundary of Kherson region.

"Ukraine has been trying to ratchet up pressure on Russia’s positions in the strategically important Black Sea region of Kherson and has used Western-supplied long-range weapons to conduct strikes on Russian supply lines and ammunition dumps."

Moscow says it needs assurance that a British subsidiary of Siemens Energy won't turn the Nord Stream 1 pipeline off remotely as part of future sanctions against Russia.

State-owned oil giant Gazprom last week cut flows through the pipeline to 20 per cent of its capacity, blaming Western sanctions for delays to a turbine out for repairs.

German partner Siemens Energy sent the turbine to Canada for a routine overhaul and it is now being stored at a Siemens Energy facility in Mulheim an der Ruhr, in western Germany.

Gazprom has repeatedly said it pressed Siemens Energy for documents and clarification before it is refitted on the pipeline in Russia.

The company specifically wants documents from Siemens Energy proving that the turbine isn't subject to Western sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding: "We need to be sure that it's not under sanctions. We need to be sure that Siemens' British subsidiary in charge of it won't switch it off remotely in the future as part of sanctions."

Ukrainians have told of their disbelief at former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's claims that the West was prolonging the war by supplying their country with weapons to fight Russia.

Journalist Oleksandra Povoroznyk told Byline Times that she had looked up to the left-wing MP, "so you can imagine my disappointment at the moment.

“A lot of people in the West are denying Ukraine any sort of agency by claiming we’re constantly being manipulated by NATO or saying it’s a US proxy war and the West is forcing us to fight. None of these people are actually paying attention to what we’re actually saying. It’s sad and annoying.”

Ukrainian MP, and head of its Foreign Affairs Committee, Oleksandr Merezhko added: “Peace with such persons as Putin or Hitler is impossible. They use it only as a temporary respite to accumulate strength and continue.”

The Swiss government has imposed further sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.

They were in line with the European Union's latest measures on gold and gold products, the cabinet said.

"The new measures primarily concern a ban on buying, importing or transporting gold and gold products from Russia. Services in connection with these goods are also prohibited," a government statement said.

A Russian-installed official in Ukraine accused its forces of repeatedly using Western arms to attack Europe's largest nuclear power plant which is now controlled by Russian forces.

Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the Russian-installed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, said: "We are ready to show how the Russian military is guarding the plant, and how Ukraine, which receives weapons from the West, uses those weapons including drones to attack the nuclear power plant."

The Zaporizhzhia plant, which has two of six reactors operating, has been the subject of repeated warnings from Ukraine, the West and Russia, and was shelled on March 4.

US  Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called Russia's actions around the plant "the height of irresponsibility", accusing Moscow of using it as a "nuclear shield" in attacks on Ukrainian forces.

"Of course the Ukrainians cannot fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving the nuclear plant," he said.

Russia's actions went beyond using a "human shield", Blinken said, calling it a "nuclear shield".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz could reverse his predecessor Angela Merkel's decision to drop atomic energy following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

The leader of the continent's biggest economy raised the possibility of keeping nuclear plants going as he accused Russia of blocking the delivery of a key turbine to throttle gas supplies to Europe.

Standing next to the turbine, Scholz on Wednesday said that extending the lifetime of Germany's three remaining nuclear power plants "can make sense".

Germany faces plunging into its biggest post-war economy crunch this winter if Russian gas supplies are choked and alternative fuel sources fail to plug the gap.

The power stations, which are set to be taken off the grid at the end of the year, were "relevant exclusively for electricity production, and only for a small part of it," Scholz said.

In total, the nuclear fleet accounts for six percent of Germany's electricity output.

The government has said it will await the outcome of a new "stress test" of the national electric grid before determining whether to stick with the long-planned phaseout.

The first shipment of over 26,000 tons of Ukrainian food under a Black Sea export deal was cleared to proceed on Wednesday, towards its final destination in Lebanon, according to the United Nations.

A team carried out a three-hour inspection and confirmed the crew and cargo are authorized and were consistent with the information received by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) before the vessel left Odesa, said a statement from the United Nations Information Service Vienna. 

 Ukraine's 35th marine brigade has shared a photo of a destroyed Russian armoured vehicle.

The aerial footage shows smoke rising from the wrecked Soviet BMP.

The brigade wrote on Facebook: "During the past day, on August 1, occupants tried twice to counterattack the positions of the Marines in the Kherson direction.

"However, the Ukrainian military successfully repelled the attacks of the enemy and did not allow him to realize their intentions.

"In the Donetsk direction, thanks to the skilled and professional actions of our warriors managed to destroy the enemy bmp together with the crew and paratroopers."

The Nord Stream 1 turbine serviced in Canada that is currently in Germany is not affected by sanctions and thus the documents demanded by Russia are not required, said a German government spokesperson.

"We have all the documents that are required from Russia at hand and can deliver at any time," said the spokesperson at a regular government news conference.

The Kremlin has said Russia's Gazprom is awaiting documents that will allow the return of the serviced Nord Stream 1 gas turbine from Germany.

Russia's Gazprom is awaiting documents that will allow the return of the serviced Nord Stream 1 gas turbine from Germany, a Kremlin spokesman said.

Russia has cut gas supplies via the pipeline, a key route feeding Europe with Russian gas, to just a fifth of its capacity, citing technical issues with gas turbines supplied by Siemens Energy.

The first turbine, at the centre of an energy standoff with the West, is being held up in Germany following servicing in Canada and Russia said that documents are needed to show it does not come under Western sanctions.

Earlier on Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russia had no reason to hold up the return of the turbine.

A Russian university rector said to have been jailed to deter criticism of Moscow's war in Ukraine will be granted house arrest.

Sergei Zuyev, the rector of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences - one of Russia's leading non-state universities -  has been behind bars since November.

Moscow's Tverskoy District Court today ruled to transfer him from jail to house arrest in an embezzlement case, saying he had cooperated and compensated for the damage he was accused of causing.

Zuyev's lawyers had long pushed for his release, citing his poor health, with some observers saying his case was part of purges aimed to target members of the country's liberal elite and muzzle independent voices amid Russia's military action in Ukraine.

Vladimir Mau, the rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, was put under house arrest in June on embezzlement charges that stemmed from the investigation of Zuyev.

The probe also involved Marina Rakova, a former deputy education minister who worked alongside Mau.

Russian politician Mikhail Delyagin has accused the German chancellor Olaf Scholz of imitating Hitler on Russian state TV.

The MP wore a badge with the letter 'Z' insignia  to show support of the invasion of Ukraine  in a meeting of the state duma or parliament in March.

He said in a statement: "Now we are at war. Yes we have a special operation in Ukraine, but we have a war with the West."

Russia is deliberately trying to cover-up the devastation caused to its armed forces by US-supplied Himars in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, reports our Brussels correspondent Joe Barnes.

On Tuesday, Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu claimed Russian troops had destroyed six of the precision weapons on the battlefield, as well as a host of other Western-provided systems.

But this was denounced as another desperate ploy by the Kremlin to falsely claim that Kyiv’s use of Himars is shifting the balance of the war.

“We have had no losses at all yet of any of the Himars systems,” Major Andriy Kovalchuk, Ukraine’s south operational command, said in an interview.

You can read Joe's report in full here.

A Russian and Ukrainian team on Wednesday completed an inspection in Istanbul of a cargo ship carrying the first delivery of grain from Ukraine since the Kremlin's invasion, Turkish officials said.

The team of 20 inspectors, which also included UN and Turkish officials, has "completed its inspection work aboard the Razoni," allowing the Sierra Leone-flagged vessel to sail on to its final destination in Lebanon, the Turkish defence ministry said.

A Turkish official said up to three grain ships may now depart Ukraine each day after the first successful run.

A former German chancellor and personal friend of Vladimir Putin says the Russian leader is ready for peace talks, reports our Moscow correspondent Nataliya Vasilyeva.

Gerhard Schroeder was in Moscow last week on a private trip which drew strong condemnation in Europe.

The 78-year-old former German chancellor who served on the board of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft until March said in an interview with the Stern magazine and RTL and NTV on Wednesday: “The good news is that the Kremlin wants to negotiate a solution.”

While he described Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “mistake of the Russian government,” Mr Schroeder said the Kremlin’s “tangible fears of encirclement… unfortunately are justified.”

Russian officials have not commented on Mr Schroeder’s interview, and the Kremlin has recently been rejecting calls to sit down with Kyiv for peace talks. Several world leaders with close personal ties to Mr Putin have tried and failed to get him to cease the hostilities in Ukraine for months, and Mr Schroeder’s meeting with the Russian president is a rare visit by a former Western official to Russia.

Mr Schroeder, who shares at least two decades of close ties to Mr Putin as well as Russia’s state-owned companies, insisted that he saw him in private capacity but did “share a few thoughts with the people involved.”

The 78-year-old politician rejected widespread condemnation of his Moscow trip, saying he was not going to apologise for seeing the man who unleashed a brutal war on a neighbouring country.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has been accused of glorifying war after she retweeted a Ukrainian tweet listing Russia’s war dead – described in an embedded graphic as “eliminated personnel”, before she quickly deleted it.

The original tweet from the Ukrainian defence ministry quoted a Robert Burns poem saying “tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty’s in every blow! Let us do or die!”, and then listed what the Ukrainian government calculates as Russia’s total combat losses so far.

Ms Sturgeon added a strong arm and Ukrainian flag emoji to her retweet along with the hashtags #RobertBurns and #solidarity. At least one of her Scottish National party allies retweeted it too, with a strong arm emoji.

An aid worker and two military volunteers from the UK will be put on trial in Ukraine’s separatist statelet by the same court that sentenced two Britons to death in June, reports our Moscow correspondent Nataliya Vasilyeva.

John Harding, Dylan Healy and Andrew Hill will face trial in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic on charges of fighting in Ukraine as mercenaries, Kremlin-backed separatists said in a statement on Monday citing the local “supreme court”.

In June, the court sentenced Sean Pinner and Aiden Aslin to death after finding them guilty of fighting in eastern Ukraine and killing civilians.

Both men were legally employed by the Ukrainian forces and have family ties in the country, but Russia and the separatists have refused to treat them as normal combatants.

You can read Nataliya's report in full here.

Russia's defence ministry says its missiles have destroyed a depot containing weapons supplied by Poland in Ukraine's Lviv region.

"Air-launched high-precision long-range missiles near the city of Radekhiv in Lviv region destroyed a storage base with foreign-made weapons and ammunition delivered to the Kyiv regime from Poland," the defence ministry said in its daily briefing.

The claims were not immediately independently verifiable. 

Further to our post at 8:54am,  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the Nord Stream 1 turbine has received "all the approvals" it needs for export from Germany to Russia, he said.

Pipeline operators only need to say that "they want to have the turbine and provide the necessary customs information for transport to Russia", Mr Scholz said.

Transferring the missing unit to Russia was "really easy", he added.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has blamed the delayed return of the unit from Canada, where it was being serviced, for the initial reduction in deliveries of gas via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline.

Germany, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, has dismissed the decision to limit supplies as "political".

Deliveries via the undersea energy link were reduced to around 20 percent of capacity in late July, after Gazprom halted the operation of one of the last two operating turbines due to the "technical condition of the engine".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said China is balancing and maintaining neutrality over Russia's war in Ukraine, but that he would like to see Beijing join those opposed to Moscow over the invasion.

He made the comments by video link at an event organised at the Australian National University.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accused Russia of blocking the delivery of a turbine needed to keep gas flowing via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Europe.

"There is no reason why this delivery cannot happen," Mr Scholz said standing next to the turbine.

Moscow only had to say that "they want to have the turbine and provide the necessary customs information for transport to Russia", Mr Scholz added.

The first cargo ship to leave Ukraine since the Russian invasion was anchored at an inspection area in the Black Sea off the coast of Istanbul Wednesday morning, awaiting an inspection.

Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. officials will check if the grain shipment is in accordance with a crucial agreement signed last month by Moscow and Kyiv to unblock Ukraine's agricultural exports and ease the global food crisis.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, loaded up with 26,000 tons of corn, set sail from Odesa Monday. Its final destination is Lebanon.

The ship was anchored off the coast of Istanbul, near the mouth of the Bosporus Straits that connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and on to the Aegean Sea.

More ships from Ukraine are expected to set out in the coming days. Some 27 vessels have been waiting in three Ukrainian ports with cargo and signed contracts, ready to go, according to UN. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the United States had made no approaches to resume talks on a new strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty to replace the so called 2011 "New START" deal.

US President Joe Biden said he was ready to "expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework" to replace New START when it expires in 2026, while President Vladimir Putin said there could be no winners in any nuclear war.

"It has become their habit to announce things over the microphone and then forget about them," Mr Lavrov said. "There have been no approaches to us to restart the negotiation process."

A team of Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkey is due on Wednesday to inspect the first shipment of grain exported from Ukraine since Moscow's invasion under a deal aimed at curbing a global food crisis.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni arrived at the edge of the Bosphorus Strait just north of Istanbul on Tuesday, a day after leaving the Black Sea port of Odessa carrying 26,000 tonnes of maize bound for Lebanon.

It is due to be inspected Wednesday by a team that includes Russian and Ukrainian officials, in accordance with Russia's wish to ascertain the nature of the cargo, the Turkish defence ministry said.

The UN secretary-general's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he hoped for "more outbound movement" on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wished for "regularity" in shipments.

"When one ship leaves the port, there are other ships as well - both those loading and those approaching the port," he said in his nightly address Tuesday.

"Continuity and regularity is the necessary principle. All consumers of our agricultural products need it."

The deal between Moscow and Kyiv to unblock Ukrainian grain exports may offer a way forward to a possible ceasefire in the five-month conflict, said former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

"The good news is that the Kremlin wants a negotiated solution," Schroeder said on Wednesday, adding that he had met Putin in Moscow last week.

"A first success is the grain deal, perhaps that can be slowly expanded to a ceasefire."

Schroeder said solutions to crucial problems such as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, could be found over time, "maybe not over 99 years, like Hong Kong, but in the next generation".

The rail link connecting Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine with Crimea was highly unlikely to be operational due to a Ukrainian strike against a Russian ammunition train, Britain said this morning.

Russian forces were likely to repair the railway line in a few days, although it would remain a vulnerability for Russian forces and their logistical resupply route from Crimea into Kherson, the Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update.

It was likely there would be an increase in civilians attempting to flee Kherson and surrounding areas, as hostilities continued and food shortages worsened, according to the update:

The United States has blacklisted the tycoon owner of the second-largest estate in London and Vladimir Putin's purported girlfriend in the latest round of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

Also hit with US business bans were several other oligarchs believed to be close to the Russian president, four officials Russia has named to administer occupied territories in Ukraine, and around two dozen high technology institutes and companies, including key state-backed electronics entities.

"As innocent people suffer from Russia's illegal war of aggression, Putin's allies have enriched themselves and funded opulent lifestyles," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

"The Treasury Department will use every tool at our disposal to make sure that Russian elites and the Kremlin's enablers are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has cost countless lives."

The US Treasury announced sanctions on:

• Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast widely described as Putin's girlfriend.
• Putin associate and billionaire Andrey Grigoryevich Guryev, who owns the Witanhurst estate, the second-largest estate in London after Buckingham Palace. Guryev is the founder and former deputy chairman of PhosAgro, a major supplier to global fertiliser markets. He and his son were hit with financial sanctions, which ban US businesses – including banks with US branches – from transactions with them, and freeze their assets under US jurisdictions.
• The Treasury also blacklisted Guryev's Caribbean-based 81m (267 feet) yacht Alfa Nero, which puts it at risk of seizure. However, the Treasury said Alfa Nero "has reportedly shut off its location tracking hardware in order to avoid seizure".
• Natalya Popova, the wife of Kirill Dmitriev, the manager of the Russian government's massive sovereign wealth fund. The US Treasury said Popova works for the technology firm Innopraktika, which is run by one of Putin's daughters.
• Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, one of Russia's largest taxpayers, and two subsidiaries of his MMK, which is among the world's largest steel producers, also were hit with sanctions.

In a joint action, the State Department imposed sanctions, including visa restrictions, on oligarchs "running massive revenue-generating companies", including Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pumpyanskiy, Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko and Alexander Anatolevich Ponomarenko.

In addition, nearly 900 Russian officials were placed on a US visa ban list, as were 31 unnamed non-Russian officials who have supported Russia's occupation of Crimea, the State Department said.

"The United States is taking additional actions to ensure that the Kremlin and its enablers feel the compounding effects of our response to the Kremlin's unconscionable war of aggression," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

After the safe arrival in Turkey of the first grain ship, the hope now is for more consistency.

The exports from Ukraine, one of the world's top grain producers, are intended to help ease a global food crisis.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there were about 27 ships in three Ukrainian ports that were ready to go.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said: "Our goal now is to have an orderly schedule so when one ship leaves port there should be other vessels – both those loading and those approaching the port.

For the safe passage deal to stick, there are hurdles to overcome, including clearing sea mines and creating a framework for vessels to safely enter the war zone and pick up cargo.

Known as Europe's breadbasket, Ukraine hopes to export 20 million tonnes of grain held in silos and 40 million tonnes from the harvest now under way, initially from Odesa and nearby Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk.

Turkey has said that the first ship loaded with Ukrainian grain since Russia's invasion more than five months ago was safely anchored off the Turkish coast.

The vessel, the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, was at the entrance of the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea to world markets.

A delegation from the Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul, where Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN personnel work, is expected to inspect the ship at 7am GMT on Wednesday, Turkey's Defence Ministry said.

It is loaded with 26,527 tonnes of corn.

"We hope that there will be some more outbound movement [on Wednesday]," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

Russia has called the Razoni's departure "very positive" news. It has denied responsibility for the world's food crisis, saying Western sanctions have slowed its exports.

A Russian rocket hit an anti-aircraft missile system in the Lviv region of western Ukraine, near the Polish border, Ukrainian authorities said.

There was no immediate word on damage or casualties.

The accuracy and long range of missile systems provided by the West were intended to reduce Russia's artillery advantage, but Ukraine's President said on Tuesday night that despite those supplies, his country's forces could not yet overcome Russian advantages in heavy guns and manpower.

"This is very much felt in combat, especially in the Donbas," Volodymyr Zelensky said.

"It is just hell there.

"Words cannot describe it."

The Russian military has accused the United States of being “directly involved” in the war in Ukraine by providing Kyiv with real-time information that allowed it to launch assaults on Russian targets using US-supplied rocket-launch systems.

The accusation marks a major escalation of rhetoric.

Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian defence ministry, on Tuesday quoted our Telegraph interview with a top Ukrainian intelligence official, who said Britain and the US had helped Kyiv with “minute-to-minute, real-time information of all kinds”.

Konashenkov said the Russian military “has marked it and will keep in mind an official confession” by Maj Gen Vadym Skibitsky, acting deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence.

READ MORE: US is directly involved in the Ukraine war, Russia claims

A Russian diplomat has told the United Nations that the conflict in Ukraine does not warrant Russia's use of nuclear weapons, but Moscow could decide to use its nuclear arsenal in response to "direct aggression" by Nato countries over the invasion.

At a nuclear non-proliferation conference, Alexander Trofimov said Moscow would only use nuclear weapons in response to weapons of mass destruction or a conventional weapons attack that threatened the existence of the Russian state.

"None of these two hypothetical scenarios is relevant to the situation in Ukraine," Trofimov, a senior diplomat in the non-proliferation and arms control department of Russia's foreign ministry, told the UN conference to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

• The Russian military has accused the US of being “directly involved” in the war in Ukraine by providing Kyiv with real-time information that allowed it to launch assaults on Russian targets using US-supplied rocket-launch systems
• Russia has built “phantom bridges” in Ukraine in the hope of evading Western precision weapons systems that have crippled its war efforts in the south of the country
• An aid worker and two military volunteers from the UK will be put on trial in Ukraine’s separatist statelet by the same court that sentenced two Britons to death in June
• Jeremy Corbyn has criticised the UK and the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons, saying “pouring arms in” will only “prolong and exaggerate” the war