Ukraine Russia news latest: Putin and Zelensky’s forces ‘tortured prisoners of war’

Prime minister Rishi Sunak said on Tuesday that China posed a threat to Britain but it was also right to have dialogue with Beijing over global challenges such as climate change and the war in Ukraine.

“I’m very clear that China poses a systemic challenge to both our values and our interests and it represents the single biggest state threat to our economic security and that’s why it’s right that we take the steps that are necessary to protect ourselves,” he told Sky News on the sidelines of the G20.

Sunak also said he was hopeful he could meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping while at the summit in Indonesia.

“If we want to solve big global challenges like public health, Russia and Ukraine, fixing the global economy, or indeed climate change, it’s important to have a dialogue and to engage with China as part of solving those challenges,” Sunak said

Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to use his influence over Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, the Spanish government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Sanchez and Xi held a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali on Tuesday.

“The prime minister has urged China’s president to use his influence as a stabilising power to make Putin end the war,” spokesperson Isabel Rodriguez told reporters.

The summit is the first meeting of G20 leaders since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine in February.

Civil servants working for the Russian-installed administration in the Ukrainian city of Nova Kakhovka, next to the huge Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river in Ukraine‘s Kherson region, have left due to intensified shelling, officials said on Tuesday.

“Employees of the Nova Kakhovka city state administration and state and municipal institutions also left the city and were relocated to safe areas in the region,” the city’s Russian-installed administration said.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser accused Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday of blocking peace in Ukraine after Lavrov said Kyiv was dragging out a resolution of the conflict.

“The Russian Federation is the one who invaded Ukraine. The Russian Federation shells our cities. The Russian Federation commits genocide destroying energy infrastructure. But “Ukraine is dragging out the conflict”?

“War still continues only because of Lavrov’s public manipulation and the unwillingness to stop murdering,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

A UN spokesperson said on Tuesday that the sides are still discussing extending a deal allowing Ukraine grain exports in the Black Sea and, with a deadline looming on Saturday, there is nothing clear to announce now.

“Discussions on the continuation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative with all parties are ongoing at various levels. We do not have something to announce at this stage,” said Ismini Palla, U.N. spokesperson for the Black Sea Grain Initiative, in Istanbul.

The initial deal agreed by Russia and Ukraine and brokered by Turkey and the United Nations is set to expire on Nov. 19 but can be extended if all sides agree.

Russia is now engaged in a defensive operation in Ukraine following its withdrawal from the southern city of Kherson, a Western official said on Tuesday, after president Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to reclaim all its occupied territory.

Zelensky visited Kherson on Monday, and has said any peace deal must involve the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

“It’s clear that for now, the Russia occupation of Ukraine is a defensive operation,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said that Russia‘s withdrawal from Kherson had been relatively orderly, and said Russian claims it had evacuated 30,000 troops was likely an exaggeration, estimating that the number was closer to 20,000 personnel.

He said he expected the situation on the battlefield would be broadly static into next year.

“If people are expecting the collapse of forces on either side, we can’t see anything which would indicate that from now through until the end of the year,” the official said.

“Neither side is in such a condition that its forces will collapse.”

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Western countries had tried to “politicise” a joint declaration at the Group of 20 (G20) summit, accusing them pushing to include a line condemning Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine on behalf of all participating countries.

A draft declaration by leaders of the G20, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, said “most” members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, highlighting Russia‘s strong opposition to any language seen to criticise its actions.

“Yes, our Western colleagues tried in every way to make that declaration politicised and tried to push through language that implied condemning the actions of the Russian Federation on behalf of the entire G20, which includes us,” Lavrov said.

“But let’s do this in a fair way and let’s make it clear that, on this topic, we have differences,” Lavrov said.

“Yes, there is a war going on in Ukraine, a hybrid war that the West has unleashed and been preparing for years,” Lavrov said.

The war, which Russia describes as a “special military operation”, has overshadowed the summit despite calls from host Indonesia for unity and to focus on action to resolve global economic problems such as inflation, and food and energy security.

Lavrov, who heads Russia‘s delegation at the summit after the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin was unable to attend, said work on the declaration was nearing completion and that it would be approved after Wednesday’s meeting.

“The declaration in question covers all the areas that have been discussed, including food and energy, healthcare, and digitalisation,” he said.

The Kremlin on Tuesday said it would do “everything possible” to stop the West from seizing its frozen international reserves or “plundering” them to pay for reparations to Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was criticising the United Nations General Assembly’s approval on Monday of a resolution declaring that Russia must make reparations to Ukraine for damage inflicted during the nine-month-old conflict.

The West froze around half – or more than $300 billion – of Russia‘s international reserves after Moscow sent its armed forces into Ukraine in February.

“Russia will do everything possible” to resist Western attempts to “plunder” its reserves, Peskov said on Tuesday.

He accused the West of “racketeering” and of “violating all the foundations and rules of private property and international law”.

He said the moves in the United Nations were an attempt to use the global forum to “formalise robbery”.

Asked whether Russia was ready to participate in the restoration of Ukraine‘s infrastructure damaged during the conflict, Peskov said: “No, that’s out of the question.”

The U.N. resolution, supported by 94 of the assembly’s 193 members with 14 votes against, said Russia “must bear the legal consequences of all of its internationally wrongful acts, including making reparation for the injury, including any damage, caused by such acts”.

The UN Ukraine-based monitoring team based its findings on interviews with more than 100 prisoners of war on each side of the conflict.

The interviews with Ukrainian prisoners of war were conducted after their release, since Russia did not grant access to detention sites, it said.

Russia denies torture or other forms of maltreatment of prisoners of war.

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EU members are set to boost military budgets by up to 70 billion euros ($72.2 billion) by 2025 but a lack of project cooperation and purchases outside the bloc risk undermining efforts to create coherent forces, the European Defence Agency said.

The agency identified several critical gaps EU countries should work together to fill, such as long-distance air transport, aircraft carriers and tankers to provide fuel for war ships and high-end air defence systems.

“Defence planning continues to be done mostly in isolation and … (EU) member states remain unconvinced by European cooperation projects,” it said on Tuesday in its annual review for the bloc’s defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who doubles as head of the EDA, said defence cooperation coupled with increased spending was the only way to ensure Europe had forces capable of responding to any crisis.

Many countries prefer individual purchases of arms and equipment from suppliers outside the EU rather than investing their money in European projects which are seen as more time-consuming and complex, the EDA said.

The agency said that only 18% of all investment in defence programmes involved cooperation between EU countries.

Defence expenditure in the bloc grew by 6% to 214 billion euros in 2021, the agency said, estimating a further increase of up to 70 billion euros by 2025 as many countries aim to spend more on defence after Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine in February.

The figures include only part of Germany’s pledge to spend an additional 100 billion euros on the Bundeswehr, according to EDA, as it is not clear when the money will flow.