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Key events
UK embassy guard who spied for Russia jailed for 13 years
A British embassy security guard caught spying for Russia has been sentenced to 13 years and two months by a London court.
David Ballantyne Smith, 58, originally from Paisley in Scotland, gathered secret documents and passed them on to Russian authorities while working as a security guard at the embassy in Berlin. He was caught after an undercover operation in 2021 and has admitted to eight charges under the Official Secrets Act.
Smith pleaded guilty in November to eight offences under the Official Secrets Act, including one charge relating to passing information to Gen Maj Sergey Chukhrov, the Russian military attaché to Berlin, in November 2020.
Hello everyone, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong here taking over the Russia-Ukraine war live blog from Martin Belam. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.
Summary of the day so far …
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, will be the opening speaker on Friday at the three-day Munich security conference as the west faces urgent calls to speed up ammunition production and supplies to Kyiv in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive. The conference is expected to be attended by more than 100 world leaders, and diplomats, including the US vice-president Kamala Harris, and the event will be seen as a key test of the west’s resolve to fight out a grinding, prolonged, expensive war.
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Negotiations will start in a week on extending a UN-backed initiative that has enabled Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia after its invasion, a senior Ukrainian official said on Friday. Yuriy Vaskov said “I think common sense will prevail and the corridor will be extended.”
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Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that the energy grid is working without consumption restrictions today across all of Ukraine, with the exception of Odesa, where “due to damaged infrastructure there are still restrictions” and “power outage schedules are applied.”
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Finland’s parliament will vote on 28 February to approve the necessary legislation that will allow the country to eventually become a member of Nato, Reuters reports the Finnish parliament’s head of foreign affairs committee said on Friday.
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Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said that the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. Zakharova said “[The US] supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence, simply participate directly in the planning of military operations, train Ukrainian armed formations. Now the American warmongers have gone even further: they are inciting the Kyiv regime to further escalate, simply to transfer the war to the territory of our country.”
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Nuland had told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington the US considers that Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, should be demilitarised at a minimum and Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula.
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Facebook allowed exiled Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor with ties to the Kremlin to run ads calling for protests and uprisings against the pro-western government, even though he and his political party were on US sanctions lists.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly.
Ahead of the Munich security conference, Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has reiterated Kyiv’s position that Russia must withdraw from Ukraine as a pre-condition for peace talks.
Reuters reports Podolyak tweeted “For decriminalization of global politics and real global security, the war must end with Ukraine’s victory. Negotiations can begin when Russia withdraws its troops from the territory of Ukraine. Other options only give Russia time to regroup forces and resume hostilities at any moment.”
Finland’s parliament will vote on 28 February to approve the necessary legislation that will allow the country to eventually become a member of Nato, Reuters reports the Finnish parliament’s head of foreign affairs committee said on Friday.
Turkey and Hungary are yet to approve the bids by Sweden and Finland to join the alliance.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said that the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. [See 8.43 GMT]
Tass reports that in her weekly press briefing, Zakharova said:
Once again, we have to state the involvement of the US in the conflict in Ukraine. They supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence, simply participate directly in the planning of military operations, train Ukrainian armed formations.
Now the American warmongers have gone even further: they are inciting the Kyiv regime to further escalate, simply to transfer the war to the territory of our country. Like this, direct strikes. This is what we warned about before, and what we were because of forced to launch a special military operation. Now they, US officials, are talking about it openly.
Nuland had said that the US supported Ukraine striking at targets in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in a move which is not widely recognised by the international community.
Zakharova said “Crimea is reliably protected”, according to the Tass report.
Ukrainian official: Negotiations to extend Black Sea grain export deal will begin next week
Negotiations will start in a week on extending a UN-backed initiative that has enabled Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia after its invasion, a senior Ukrainian official said on Friday.
“Negotiations on extending the grain corridor will begin in a week and then we will understand the positions of all parties,” Ukrainian deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov said during a grain conference in Kyiv organised by the ProAgro agriculture consultancy.
“I think common sense will prevail and the corridor will be extended,” he said.
Reuters reports he said that pressure was being exerted on Russia not only to extend the corridor but also to improve the way it works. “We see that the enemy is starting to put forward new conditions. We understand that it will be difficult – as it was in November,” Vaskov said.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last July allowed grain to be exported from three Ukrainian ports.
The agreement was extended by a further 120 days in November and is up for renewal again in March, but Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal and has asked for sanctions affecting its agricultural exports to be lifted.
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports from Munich:
The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, will be the opening speaker on Friday at the three-day Munich security conference as the west faces urgent calls to speed up ammunition production and supplies to Kyiv in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive.
The conference is expected to be attended by more than 100 world leaders, and diplomats, including the US vice-president Kamala Harris, and the event will be seen as a key test of the west’s resolve to fight out a grinding, prolonged, expensive war. Few are expected to hold out hope of early peace negotiations.
The MSC has had a tradition going back decades of inviting senior leaders from states hostile, or ambivalent, towards the west, but this year has taken the unusual decision to exclude any representatives from Iran or Russia. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has responded to his exclusion by setting a Moscow foreign policy goal of ending the diplomatic monopoly of the west.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, however, will be speaking at the conference and his speech will be watched closely to see how far he is willing to go both in distancing himself from Russia’s invasion and in seeking out a post-Covid new trading relationship with the west. He is expected to meet the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who is likely to urge him to do more to criticise the invasion of Ukrainian sovereign territory. A planned trip by Blinken to Beijing was cancelled over the Chinese spy balloon controversy.
Read more here: Zelenskiy to open Munich summit amid fears of new Russian offensive
In Russia, Tass is reporting some reaction to those comments by US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland about Crimea. She said the US supported Ukrainian strikes on Crimea as legitimate military targets, and that Crimea should be demilitarised at least as part of any solution to the war. [See 8.43 GMT]
Tass quotes Dmitry Novikov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs saying:
Each such statement serves as a pretext for escalation not only in Ukraine, but also around it. An increasing number of states are forced to determine their position in relation to what is actually happening in the centre of Europe. Nevertheless, the more provocative statements are heard, and Nuland’s statement is pure provocation, the further we are from resolving the conflict.
Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne reports that the energy grid is working without consumption restrictions today across all of Ukraine, with the exception of Odesa, where “due to damaged infrastructure there are still restrictions” and “power outage schedules are applied.”
The United States considers that Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, should be demilitarised at a minimum and Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula, under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.
“No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarised,” Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Asked about the dangers of escalation in the Ukraine war, Reuters reports Nuland said Russia had a host of military installations crucial for the conflict. “Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them and we are supporting that,” Nuland said.
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