Russia-Ukraine war: object found near Nord Stream 2 ‘no safety risk’; Bakhmut battle has ‘badly damaged’ Wagner forces – as it happened

It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has made a second visit to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine amid an escalation in the fighting around it. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA director general, was shown around the plant by Russian occupying forces and officials, telling reporters: “It is obvious that military activity is increasing in this whole region, so every possible measure and precautions should be taken so that the plant is not attacked.

• Russia has stopped informing the US about its nuclear activities, including missile test launches, after Moscow suspended its participation in the New Start arms control treaty last month, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said. The White House on Tuesday said the US had told Russia it would cease exchanging some data on its nuclear forces after Moscow’s refusal to do so.

• Russia began exercises with the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system and several thousand of troops, its defence ministry said on Wednesday. Vladimir Putin has aimed to make the Yars missile system, which replaced the Topol system, part of Russia’s “invincible weapons” and the mainstay of the ground-based component of its nuclear arsenal.

• The German government has agreed to send an additional €12bn worth of military support to Ukraine. The Bundestag’s budget committee gave the green light on Wednesday for about €8bn to be spent directly on purchasing weapons and equipment for Ukraine. The other €4bn will go to the German military to replenish stocks. Spain will send six Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine after the Easter holiday, the Spanish defence minister Margarita Robles said on Wednesday.

• An explosion has been reported near a Russian military airbase in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, according to footage shared on social media. The Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, posted to Telegram that “a UAV [drone] was shot down in the Simferopol region” and that there were “no casualties or damage”.

• Ukrainian forces have reportedly shelled the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol, south of the Zaporizhzhia region, and Russian media reported on Wednesday that as a result, the city’s power supply had been cut. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March last year, said on the Telegram messaging app that several explosions had gone off in the city.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner group, has said the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut has “practically destroyed” the Ukrainian army but that his forces have also been “badly damaged”.

• Vladimir Putin has conceded that sanctions imposed on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine could bring about “negative” consequences for the country. Putin, in a televised meeting with the government, insisted Moscow was adapting to the penalties and that unemployment “remains at an all-time low”.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Putin is an “informationally isolated person” who had “lost everything” over the last year of war. “He doesn’t have allies,” Zelenskiy said, adding that it was clear to him that even China was no longer willing to back Russia, despite Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow. Zelenskiy also extended an invitation to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to visit Ukraine. “We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him.”

• Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed 20 Patriot batteries to protect against Russian missiles, and even that may not be enough “as no country in the world was attacked with so many ballistic rockets”. He added that a European nation sent another air defence system to Ukraine, but it didn’t work and they “had to change it again and again”. He did not name the country.

• Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, has urged Russians not to adopt children who she said were “stolen” from her country during the war and deported to Russia. Vereshchuk, posting to Telegram, said orphans had been “stolen in Ukraine” and allegedly given up for adoption in Russia.

• Poland has urged the EU to limit the amount of Ukrainian grain entering the bloc’s market, its prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said, amid anger among farmers over the effect of imports on Polish grain prices.

• Ukraine’s sports ministry has condemned what it said was a partial change of position by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in international competitions as neutrals. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, described the IOC’s decision as “shameful”.

That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. We’ll be back tomorrow. Thank you for following.

29 Mar 202313.54 EDT

Julian Borger

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has made a second visit to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine amid an escalation in the fighting around it.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA director general, was shown around the plant by Russian occupying forces and officials, telling reporters:

It is obvious that military activity is increasing in this whole region, so every possible measure and precautions should be taken so that the plant is not attacked.

“I think it’s no secret that there is a significant increase in the number of troops in the region, and there is open talk about offensive and counter offensives,” he added.

The plant is on the south bank of the Dnieper river, which forms the frontline at a time when Russian forces have attempted to conduct a series of offensives and Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counter-offensive in the coming months.

Grossi was accompanying three IAEA inspectors who will replace an outgoing monitoring team and are due to stay at the site for the next two months, the seventh team to take up the rotating role since the agency’s presence was accepted by Kyiv and Moscow.

The director general is also in Zaporizhzhia to continue efforts to negotiate protections for the plant, which would require the agreement of Ukrainian and Russian forces not to fire in or out of the area.

“There have been different concepts that we have been working on. Initially we were focusing on the possibility of the establishment of a well-determined zone around the plant. Now the concept is evolving and refocusing more on the protection itself and the things that should be avoided,” he said on Wednesday. “It is a work in progress.”

Read the full story here:

The German government has agreed to send an additional €12bn worth of military support to Ukraine, in a further shift away from its traditional pacifist stance.

The Bundestag’s budget committee gave the green light today for about €8bn to be spent directly on purchasing weapons and equipment for Ukraine, approving a request by the German defence ministry and foreign office. The other €4bn will go to the German military to replenish stocks.

About €12bn in total will be released related to the Ukraine conflict over the next decade or so. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the German government has made available more than €14.2bn in support for Ukraine, according to the foreign office.

In a statement, three lawmakers representing the coalition government on the committee said:

With the money, Ukraine can directly buy armaments with the support of the German government.

The move represents a “very important step with which we make it clear that we are supporting Ukraine in the long term in its fight against Putin,” said Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius.

The agreement will allow supplies including armoured vehicles, tanks, and ammunition to be delivered to Ukraine in the coming years, according to a statement from the minister.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has responded to remarks by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov who earlier today said Russia’s “hybrid war” against “hostile states” will continue “for a long time”.

Peskov and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, are both “wrong: the war can be ended diplomatically”, Podolyak posted to Twitter.

He called on Russian forces to immediately withdraw from occupied parts of Ukraine, adding that “a reboot must happen in Moscow for that”.

An explosion has been reported near a Russian military airbase in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, according to footage shared on social media.

The Russian-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, posted to Telegram that “a UAV [drone] was shot down in the Simferopol region”. He added:

It crashed in a field. There were no casualties or damage.

It has not been possible to independently verify his claim.

A letter from a Russian girl who drew anti-war pictures at school, addressed to her father who has reportedly fled house arrest after being sentenced to two years after being convicted of discrediting the armed force, has been made public.

Alexei Moskalyov, a single parent from the town of Yefremov, 150 miles south of Moscow, was detained by police and placed under house arrest at the start of this month. His daughter Masha was moved to a state-run shelter.

On Tuesday, a court spokesperson said Moskalyov had fled house arrest overnight and his whereabouts are currently not known. A human rights lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, has since said Moskalyov had been in touch with him and sent him a copy of a letter that Masha had written him from the children’s home.

The letter reads:

Hi Dad, I really ask you not to get sick and not to worry. Everything is fine with me, I love you very much and know that you’re not guilty of anything. I am always on your side, and everything you do is right.

It ends with “I love you” in English, and the words “you are a hero” inside a heart.

The family said they had faced pressure from police since last April when Masha, a sixth-grader, refused to participate in a patriotic class at her school and made several drawings showing rockets being fired at a family standing under a Ukrainian flag and another that said “Glory to Ukraine!”

School officials at the time summoned the police, who questioned the girl and threatened her father. He was eventually charged with discrediting the armed forces for his social media posts in which he called the Russian regime “terrorists” and described the Russian army as “rapists”.

The high-profile case was criticised by Russian human rights groups and led to an online campaign to reunite father and daughter.

Russian authorities have put a member of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot on a wanted list for criminal suspects, according to an interior ministry database.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is on Russia’s federal wanted list, Russian news outlet Mediazona has reported. The entry said Tolokonnikova faces criminal charges, but it did not specify what the charges are.

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Tolokonnikova left Russia and reportedly lives in the US. She was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian government in 2021.

My colleague Zoe Williams interviewed Tolokonnikova in March last year.

Vladimir Putin has conceded that sanctions imposed on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine could bring about “negative” consequences for the country, but insisted Moscow was adapting to the penalties.

Putin, in a televised meeting with the government, said:

The sanctions imposed against the Russian economy in the medium term could really have a negative impact.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, has shared the clip:

During the meeting, Putin said unemployment in Russia “remains at an all-time low” and that inflation is expected to “drop below 4%” by the end of March after soaring in spring last year.

However the “return to a growth trajectory should not make us feel relaxed”, he said.

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

• Tthe UN’s nuclear agency chief, Rafael Grossi, has said the situation is not improving at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after visiting Zaporizhzhia in an occupied region of Ukraine. While on the Russian-held territory, Grossi told Russian news agencies including Tass that “Obviously, the situation is not improving, on the contrary, hostilities around this territory are intensifying. All possible measures must be taken to protect the station from any attack.”

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner group, has said the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut has “practically destroyed” the Ukrainian army but that his forces have also been “badly damaged”.

• Russia has stopped informing the US about its nuclear activities, including missile test launches, after Moscow suspended its participation in the New Start arms control treaty last month, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said. The White House on Tuesday said the US had told Russia it would cease exchanging some data on its nuclear forces after Moscow’s refusal to do so.

• Russia began exercises with the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system and several thousand of troops, its defence ministry said on Wednesday. Vladimir Putin has aimed to make the Yars missile system, which replaced the Topol system, part of Russia’s “invincible weapons” and the mainstay of the ground-based component of its nuclear arsenal.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Russian president Vladimir Putin is an “informationally isolated person” who had “lost everything” over the last year of war. “He doesn’t have allies,” Zelenskiy said, adding that it was clear to him that even China was no longer willing to back Russia, despite Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow.

• Zelenskiy suggested that Putin’s announcement shortly after Xi’s visit that he would move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, closer to Nato territory, was meant to deflect from the fact that the Chinese leader’s visit did not go well. Putin said the move was a counter to Britain’s decision to provide more depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine. Belarus has pinned the move as being a response to Nato aggression on its borders.

• Zelenskiy extended an invitation to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to visit Ukraine. “We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him. I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have,” he said. The Chinese leader invited Vladimir Putin to visit Beijing this year during a meeting in Moscow earlier this month.

• Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed 20 Patriot batteries to protect against Russian missiles, and even that may not be enough “as no country in the world was attacked with so many ballistic rockets”. He added that a European nation sent another air defence system to Ukraine, but it didn’t work and they “had to change it again and again”. He did not name the country.

• Ukrainian forces have reportedly shelled the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol, south of the Zaporizhzhia region, and Russian media reported on Wednesday that as a result, the city’s power supply had been cut. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March last year, said on the Telegram messaging app that several explosions had gone off in the city.

• Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, has urged Russians not to adopt children who she said were “stolen” from her country during the war and deported to Russia. Vereshchuk, posting to Telegram, said orphans had been “stolen in Ukraine” and allegedly given up for adoption in Russia.

• Spain will send six Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine after the Easter holiday, the Spanish defence minister Margarita Robles said. Spain will repair another four tanks that will be sent “in the near future”, she added.

• Russia’s cyberwar on Ukraine largely failed and Moscow is increasingly targeting Kyiv’s European allies, according to US and French analysts. French defence firm Thales said in a report on Wednesday that Russia was hitting Poland, the Nordic and Baltic countries with an arsenal of cyber weapons aiming to sow divisions and promote anti-war messages.

• Sweden’s foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned Russia’s Stockholm ambassador to complain about a statement on the Russian embassy’s website that said joining Nato made the Nordic nation a “legitimate target”.

• Poland has urged the EU to limit the amount of Ukrainian grain entering the bloc’s market, its prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said, amid anger among farmers over the effect of imports on Polish grain prices.

• Ukraine’s sports ministry has condemned what it said was a partial change of position by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in international competitions as neutrals. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, described the IOC’s decision as “shameful”.

Good afternoon from London, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong still here with all the latest news from the Russia-Ukraine war. I’m on Twitter or you can email me.

Poland has urged the EU to limit the amount of Ukrainian grain entering the bloc’s market, its prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said, amid anger among farmers over the effect of imports on Polish grain prices.

Morawiecki said he had agreed with the leaders of several countries bordering Ukraine to write to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to demand action.

Morawiecki, at a news conference, said:

We demand the use of all regulatory instruments - quotas, tariffs, which will limit or block the import of Ukrainian grain into Poland.

Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, has been forced to find alternative shipping routes through Poland and Romania, after its Black Sea ports were blocked following Russia’s invasion.

But logistical bottlenecks have meant large quantities of Ukrainian grains, which are cheaper than those produced in the EU, have ended up in central Europen countries, Reuters reports.

The influx of Ukrainian grain has damaged prices and sales of local farmers, and caused a major headache for Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party in an election year.

Here are some images we have received from the news wires of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi visiting Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been held by Russian forces for more than a year.

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Ukraine’s sports ministry condemned on Wednesday what it said was a partial change of position by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in international competitions as neutrals.

“The ministry of youth and sports of Ukraine condemns the partial change of the position of the International Olympic Committee regarding the non-admission of Russian and Belarusian athletes,” Reuters reports the Ukrainian ministry said in a statement.

“We have consistently advocated and will continue to insist that under the conditions of the unprecedented unprovoked military aggression of the Russian Federation with the support of the republic of Belarus against Ukraine, which contradicts the principles of the Olympic charter, representatives of aggressor states should not be present at international sports arenas.”

Reuters is carrying a quick snap that the Danish energy agency says that the object found near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline does not pose a safety risk, and is an empty maritime smoke buoy, which is used for visual marking.

Rafael Grossi, the UN’s nuclear agency chief, has told the media in Russia that the situation is not improving at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after visiting Zaporizhzhia in an occupied region of Ukraine.

While on the Russian-held territory, Grossi told Russian news agencies including Tass that “Obviously, the situation is not improving, on the contrary, hostilities around this territory are intensifying. All possible measures must be taken to protect the station from any attack.”

Tass reports that he was shown “objects damaged as a result of shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine”. Russian forces have occupied the plant since March 2022, forcing Ukrainian staff to continue working while under occupation.

Russia has claimed that Ukraine has shelled both the station and the nearby residential area of Enerhodar. Ukraine has claimed that shelling has been by Russian forces.

Grossi previously visited the site in September 2022.

Spain will send six Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine after the Easter holiday, Reuters is reporting the Spanish defence minister, Margarita Robles, as saying.

The German-made battle tanks have not been used since the 1990s, Robles told lawmakers, adding that Spain had repaired them and would test their combat readiness before shipping them to support Ukraine’s efforts to fend off Russia’s invasion.

Spain will repair another four tanks that will be sent “in the near future”, she added.