Ukraine-Russia war latest: Norway fears Putin could invade it next as Moscow claims gains in Zaporizhzhia – UK Times

Russia’s defence ministry claims its forces have captured the rural settlement of Zaliznychne in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, according to the Russian state news agency RIA.

The defence ministry did not provide any evidence to support its claim.

The Zaporizhzhia region has been facing heavy attack from Russia, with a one-year-old boy, two women and a man injured after a drone strike overnight yesterday.

Later in the day, Russia-backed officials said one of two external power lines supplying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine had been cut as a result of a Ukrainian attack.

They claimed that heat supply to residential buildings and social facilities in Enerhodar has been temporarily suspended.

The European Union says it is working on its own “sustainable peace plan” that could help force Russia’s hand and bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she was “very grateful” for US diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine but that Ukraine’s European allies would have to agree to any future peace agreement.

“Everybody around the table, including the Russians and the Americans, needs to understand that you need Europeans to agree (to have a peace deal),” Kallas said, speaking to reporters in Brussels.

“And for that, we also have conditions. And we should put the conditions, not on Ukrainians, who have been already pressured a lot, but on the Russians,” she said.

Europe, Kallas said, needs to push for concessions from Moscow, such as limiting its armed forces.

“If they put out the maximalist demands, we should also put out the maximalist demands.”

This comes amid reports that the bloc is discussing a plan that could give Ukraine partial membership in the bloc as early as next year and that Kyiv has been pushing for accession to the EU as part of a future deal with the Kremlin.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday there was no date set yet for the next round of peace talks on Ukraine, but said the negotiations were likely to happen soon.

Russia, Ukraine and the United States met last week in Abu Dhabi for a second round of trilateral talks. They yielded no major breakthrough though 314 prisoners of war were exchanged, the first such swap since October.

Norway cannot ignore the possibility of a future Russian invasion over nuclear assets stationed in the far north, the Nordic nation’s army chief warned.

“We don’t exclude a land grab from Russia as part of their plan to protect their own nuclear capabilities, which is the only thing they have left that actually threatens the United States,” Gen Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s chief of defence, told The Guardian.

Gen Kristoffersen said that while Russia does not have conquest goals in Norway in the same way as it has proceeded in Ukraine or other former Soviet nations, its nuclear arsenal located on the Kola peninsula could motivate Moscow for an invasion.

The peninsula, a short distance from the Norwegian border, hosts nuclear submarines, land-based missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft.These assets could be deployed by Russia if it launches a bigger conflict with Nato elsewhere.

“We don’t take that off the table, because it’s still an option for Russia to do that in order to make sure that their nuclear capabilities, their second strike capabilities, are protected. That’s sort of the scenario in the high north that we plan for,” the senior defence official said.

The International Olympic Committee’s decision banning Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych from using a helmet with images of Ukrainian sportspeople killed during the war was “profoundly wrong”, prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

“More than 650 Ukrainian athletes will never stand on an Olympic stage. They were killed by Russians,” Svyrydenko said in a post on X.

“Against this reality, the decision to ban the helmet of our athlete… is profoundly wrong. Remembering the dead is not politics. It is dignity,” she said.

Heraskevych said he will defy an IOC ban and compete in his “helmet of remembrance” honouring those killed in the war with Russia. The 27-year-old has been training in Italy with the helmet showing 24 images of dead Ukrainian athletes, but the IOC said he could not do so in the competition starting tomorrow due to a rule banning any political statements in the fields of play.

He could instead wear a black armband, it said.

Volodymyr Zelensky assembled his top military officers yesterday to discuss shortcomings in air defence and other aspects of protecting civilians from attack nearly four years into Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Speaking in his nightly video address, Zelensky assessed how local authorities in Ukraine’s cities were tackling the aftermath of massive Russian attacks, particularly in ensuring high-rise apartments had power and heating. He again singled out for criticism officials in the capital Kyiv.

Zelenskiy said he held long discussions with the military’s Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief of the general staff, Andrii Hnatov, and defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

“Many changes are happening right now in the work of air defence. In some regions, the way teams operate, interceptors, mobile fire units, the entire small air defence component is being practically rebuilt completely,” Zelensky said.

“But this is only one element of defence that requires changes. Changes will happen,” he said.

A Russian strike killed four people, including three small children, in a town west of Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv, the regional governor said in the early hours today.

Oleh Syniehubov said the three children, aged one and two, died along with a 34-year-old man in the house where they were staying in the town of Bohodukhiv.

A woman aged 74 was also injured in the Russian attack.

Russia’s FSB security service has detained a third suspect over an attempt last week to kill a senior military intelligence officer, Vladimir Alexeyev, Russian news agency Interfax quoted the FSB as saying on Tuesday.

Alexeyev was shot in an alleged assassination attempt on Friday, and is currently recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery.

Lyubomir Korba, a Russian citizen who Moscow says was working under Kyiv’s instructions, was previously detained in Dubai and is now in detention in Russia.

Ukraine denies all involvement in the attack, which comes following a spate of killings of senior military officers in Moscow last year that were linked by Russia to Ukraine.