Russia-Ukraine war live: Russian ambassador warns of ‘high’ risk of clash with US | Ukraine

The Kremlin has claimed that Russia has made significant progress towards “demilitarising” Ukraine – one of the initial goals of Russia’s invasion 10 months ago.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, was asked during a briefing about comments by President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine’s military-industrial complex “if not completely reset to zero, is getting there fast”.

Peskov told reporters:

It can be stated that there is significant progress towards demilitarisation.

The Russian president said yesterday that “all armed conflicts end through negotiations” – implying that Ukraine would ultimately be forced to cede territory in exchange for peace.

He also dismissed US supplies of Patriot missiles to Ukraine as old and said Russia’s missile systems would be able to shoot it down.

Putin said:

The Patriot air defence is outdated. An antidote will always be found … Russia will knock down the Patriot system.

Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has been quoted by the state-owned Tass news agency as saying that the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high”.

Antonov was quoted comparing the state of US-Russia relations to an “ice age” and that it was hard to say when talks between the two sides could resume.

Washington needed time “to realise the futility of its policy towards Moscow”, Antonov told the Russian state-run news agency.

He said:

Strictly speaking, today it is difficult to say when this dialogue – a dialogue on strategic stability – can be resumed. We did not freeze it, we did not declare a proxy war against the US, we did not throw the entire NATO military-industrial machinery into Ukrainian territory to fight the Russian Federation.

Talks on prisoner swaps had been “effective” and would continue, he added.

Hello everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here again, taking over the live blog from Tom Ambrose to bring you all the latest news from the Russia-Ukraine war. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.

The time in Kyiv is nearly 1pm. Here is a round-up of the main news stories of the day so far:

• North Korea’s foreign ministry denied a media report it supplied munitions to Russia, calling it “groundless,” and denounced the United States for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency reported on Friday. Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun reported earlier that North Korea had shipped munitions, including artillery shells, to Russia via train through their border last month and that additional shipments were expected in the coming weeks.

• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posted a video on Friday saying he was back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office. We are working toward victory,” he said in the video posted to his Telegram channel.

• A senior Russian diplomat has said talks on security guarantees for Russia cannot take place while Nato instructors and “mercenaries” remain in Ukraine, and while western arms supplies to the country continue. In an interview with the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, Alexander Darchiev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s North America department, said talks would be premature “until the flood of weapons and financing for the [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskiy regime stops, American and Nato servicemen/mercenaries/instructors are withdrawn”.

• Russia’s ambassador to the United States said on Friday that the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high”, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported. TASS cited Anatoly Antonov as saying that it was hard to say when talks on strategic dialogue between the two sides could resume, but that talks on prisoner swaps had been “effective” and would continue.

• The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said on Friday that shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had “almost stopped”. Speaking on Russian state television, governor Yevgeny Balitsky said Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant, and that it would never return to Ukrainian control.

• Australia’s financial intelligence agency has warned Russian paramilitary groups are soliciting cryptocurrency donations to buy weapons and that Australians have donated to terrorist organisations overseas. Senior executives at Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) also said cryptocurrency has become a “standard part of the money-laundering tool kit” for organised crime groups in Australia.

• Air raid sirens were sounding shortly before 7am in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, the regional governor Vitalli Kim indicated on Telegram, in a series of posts saying, “Air alarm”. Kherson governor Yaroslav Yanushevych also posted an air raid alarm, but shortly afterwards said that the alert was over.

• The White House announced a further $1.85bn in aid including, for the first time, Patriot air defence missiles to protect Ukraine’s infrastructure, already crippled by Russian attacks.

• The US is imposing fresh sanctions on 10 Russian naval entities over Russian operations against Ukrainian ports, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said. Six of the entities targeted in the latest sanctions were designated for operating or having operated in both the defence and related material sector and the marine sector of the Russian economy, the US state department said on Thursday.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the Patriot air defence the US was supplying to Ukraine was an old weapons system that Russia would be able to “knock down”. “The Patriot air defence is an outdated system,” Putin told reporters in Moscow, adding that Russia’s S-300 system outperformed it.

• A Russian-installed official in a part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region controlled by Russian forces was killed on Thursday in a car bomb attack, according to the pro-Moscow local administration. Andrei Shtepa, the pro-Russian head of the village of Lyubimovka in the Kherson region, reportedly died after a car blew up, it said, blaming “Ukrainian terrorists”. The report has not been able to be independently verified.

• German authorities said they arrested an employee of the country’s foreign intelligence service on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing information to Russia. The suspect, a German citizen identified only as Carsten L, was arrested in Berlin on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in a statement. It comes just days after Austria said it had identified a 39-year-old Greek citizen it suspected of spying for Russia.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for the time being. My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, posted a video on Friday saying he was back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week.

“I am in my office. We are working toward victory,” he said in the video posted to his Telegram channel.