Russia says Ukrainian forces have crossed the River Dnipro but face "hell fire" and death Ukrainian troops are trying to push back Russian forces along the Dnipro River in southern Kherson region, the military said on Wednesday, calling for operational “silence” along what it described as a “fairly fluid” frontline. Ukraine said on Tuesday it had secured a foothold on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the vast river, for the first time confirming an advance that could open a new line of attack towards occupied Crimea. A Russian-installed official, Vladimir Saldo, said Moscow’s military had pinned down Ukrainian forces who crossed on to the river’s eastern bank and was raining “hell fire” on them. “Our additional forces have now been brought in. The enemy is trapped in (the settlement of) Krynki and a fiery hell has been arranged for him: bombs, rockets, heavy flamethrower systems, artillery shells, and drones,” Saldo said. “They (the Ukrainians) are sitting in basements and run from one basement to another at night. In the last two or three days alone, total enemy losses have totalled about a hundred fighters.” A Ukrainian advance on the Russian-held side of the Dnipro, a formidable natural barrier, would be a big setback for Russia’s occupation troops on the western side of a 1,000 km frontline. These reports have not yet been independently verified. Closing summary The Czech Republic has frozen property owned by Russia on Czech soil, it was announced. Jan Lipavský, the Czech foreign minister, said: “At my suggestion, the government today approved the freezing of Russian state assets in the Czech Republic. The commercial activities from which Russia finances the murder of Ukrainians ends here.” Russia said that Ukrainian accession to the US-led Nato military alliance would be unacceptable, according to Reuters. “Whether in parts or in any form, Ukraine’s accession to Nato is unacceptable for Russia,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, told reporters. A Russian missile killed two emergency workers in southern Ukraine as they put out a fire from an attack only minutes earlier, Ukrainian officials said. At least seven other people were injured in the strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, in which Russian forces fired three missiles in about half an hour, according to the regional governor, Yuriy Malashko. Nato has announced it will buy six Boeing aircraft to replace its ageing fleet of Awacs surveillance planes, bolstering the alliance’s capabilities to track the threat from Russia, AFP reported. Hungary has sought a review of the EU’s policy towards Ukraine, disagreeing with Germany, Lithuania, Finland and Ireland, who backed bringing Kyiv closer to the bloc more quickly and granting it more aid. Russia said for the first time that some Ukrainian troops had established positions on the Russian-held side of the Dnipro River. Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-installed governor of the part of Kherson region that Moscow controls, acknowledged in a statement that Ukrainian forces had managed to cross the river, but said they were taking heavy losses. Ukraine’s state railway said it had restricted grain deliveries to Odesa, one of the country’s key Black Sea ports, because of repairs. Vladimir Putin is likely to announce his presidential candidacy before the end of 2023, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said. Posting on Telegram, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote: We are interested in a strategic partnership between Ukraine and the states of the African continent. Our relations should be based on mutual respect, respect for territorial integrity, sovereignty, language and traditions. Thank you to journalists from 11 African countries for our conversation and attention to Ukraine. I believe that in defense against aggression, in defence of international law, the world majority will always be with Ukraine. Prague freezes Russia’s property on Czech territory The Czech Republic has frozen property owned by Russia on Czech soil, AFP reports. “All countries that haven’t yet done so should follow suit,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Russian money should be used for Ukraine’s recovery instead of murder and destruction.” Jan Lipavský, the Czech foreign minister, said: At my suggestion, the government today approved the freezing of Russian state assets in the Czech Republic. The commercial activities from which Russia finances the murder of Ukrainians ends here. Here are some of the latest images coming from the newswires: A report in the Wall Street Journal has said that Ukrainian marines were reinforcing positions in three villages on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, including armoured Humvees and at least one infantry-fighting vehicle, and had cut off one road that Russians used to resupply troops in the area. Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, wrote on Telegram that Russia attacked Nikopolshchyna in the morning, hitting the “Marganets community” with heavy artillery. He said no one died or was injured. Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.5% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, when it shrunk 3.5%, the state statistics service Rosstat estimated on Wednesday. Russia’s economy is on course to recover this year from a 2.1% drop in GDP in 2022, as the west imposed sweeping sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. In the first quarter of this year, GDP decreased 1.8% and grew 4.9% in the second, Reuters reports. The EU has proposed banning the export of machine tools and machinery parts that Russia uses to make weapons targeting Ukraine, documents seen by Bloomberg reveal. The proposal is contained in the EU’s 12th sanctions package, which also includes a ban on diamonds, the outlet reported. A German publisher has announced a stop to the sale of books authored by a leading journalist and Russia expert after an investigation showed he had received at least €600,000 (£522,000) in undisclosed offshore payments from companies linked to an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. Hubert Seipel, an award-winning film-maker and author, admitted receiving support for his work on two books charting the Russian leader’s rise to power and offering portrayals described as sympathetic to him. The information emerged from the Cyprus Confidential project, based on a cache of 3.6m offshore records leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Germany’s Paper Trail Media, which shared access with the Guardian and other reporting partners. Russia said that all vessels, including Russian ones, had free passage through the Baltic Sea and said that any attempt to violate international law on the free movement of shipping was dangerous, Reuters reports. Denmark will be tasked with inspecting and potentially blocking tankers carrying Russian oil through its waters under new EU plans, the Financial Times reported (see earlier post at 13.42). “I’ll just remind you … that all vessels, including Russian ones, have the right to free passage through the Baltic Straits,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, told reporters. “Any actions that contradict this violate international law,” she said. “And you know how dangerous that is.” Russia says Ukrainian Nato membership is unacceptable in any form Russia has said that Ukrainian accession to the US-led Nato military alliance would be unacceptable, in part or in any other form, according to Reuters. “Whether in parts or in any form, Ukraine’s accession to Nato is unacceptable for Russia,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, told reporters. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Nato secretary general, has put forward a proposal for Ukraine to join the military alliance without the territories controlled by Russia. Rasmussen has said the cause of Ukraine’s Nato membership cannot be deferred again next year. He said: “The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato. We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of Nato.” Russia’s foreign ministry has said that the EU’s 12th sanctions package against Russia is part of a “hybrid war” waged by the west, Reuters reports. “Due to the endless sanctions flow against Russia, the EU has become Washington’s ‘useful idiot’,” Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry said. Zakharova said the US was using Europe as a “stick” in what she cast as Washington’s “anti-Russian” policy. Zakharova said the new sanctions would achieve nothing and said the west’s sanctions had damaged the EU itself. Water-related violence surged to an all-time high in 2022 – driven in large part by Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israeli attacks against Palestinian water resources in the West Bank. At least 228 water conflicts were documented in 2022 – an 87% rise since 2021, according to research by the Pacific Institute shared exclusively with the Guardian. Summary of the day so far... A Russian missile killed two emergency workers in southern Ukraine as they put out a fire from an attack only minutes earlier, Ukrainian officials have said. At least seven other people were injured in the strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, in which Russian forces fired three missiles in about half an hour, according to the regional governor, Yuriy Malashko. Nato has announced it will buy six Boeing aircraft to replace its ageing fleet of Awacs surveillance planes, bolstering the alliance’s capabilities to track the threat from Russia, AFP reported. Hungary has sought a review of the EU’s policy towards Ukraine, disagreeing with Germany, Lithuania, Finland and Ireland, who backed bringing Kyiv closer to the bloc more quickly and granting it more aid. Russia said for the first time that some Ukrainian troops had established positions on the Russian-held side of the Dnipro River. Vladimir Saldo, the Russia-installed governor of the part of Kherson region that Moscow controls, acknowledged in a statement that Ukrainian forces had managed to cross the river, but said they were taking heavy losses. Ukraine’s state railway said it had restricted grain deliveries to Odesa, one of the country’s key Black Sea ports, because of repairs. Vladimir Putin is likely to announce his presidential candidacy before the end of 2023, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said. Denmark will be tasked with inspecting and potentially blocking tankers carrying Russian oil through its waters under new EU plans, the Financial Times has reported, citing three unidentified sources. Russia sends about a third of its seaborne oil exports, or 1.5% of global supply, through the Danish straits, so any attempt to halt those supplies would send oil prices higher and could trigger a confrontation with Russia. The FT said Denmark would look for tankers carrying Russian oil that did not have western insurance, a step that would hit Russian oil export income hard while snarling up the entire Russian oil production and refinery business. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he has spoken with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. He said they discussed defence cooperation and the need to speed up the adoption of the 12th EU package of sanctions on Russia, among other things. In September, Meloni told a prank caller posing as an African leader that there was “a lot of tiredness” over the war in Ukraine and that she had some ideas up her sleeve on how to “find a way out”. Russian missile kills two emergency workers in southern Ukraine as they put out fire, say officials A Russian missile killed two emergency workers in southern Ukraine on Wednesday as they put out a fire from an attack only minutes earlier, Ukrainian officials said (this is an update from an earlier post at 11.48). At least seven other people were injured in the strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, in which Russian forces fired three missiles in about half an hour, the regional governor, Yuriy Malashko, said. He said a civilian facility had been hit but gave no details, and said that homes and cars nearby had been damaged. Rescue workers had rushed to the scene after the first strikes but another attack followed, the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, wrote on Telegram. “Employees of the State Emergency Service were already at the scene in a matter of minutes. Then the [Russian] invaders struck again,” he said, adding that the two men killed were aged 31 and 34. He said the injured included three emergency workers and four civilians. These claims are yet to be independently verified. Nato to modernise surveillance jets in face of Russia threat Nato has announced it will buy six Boeing aircraft to replace its ageing fleet of AWACS surveillance planes, bolstering the alliance’s capabilities to track the threat from Russia, AFP reports. “The production of the six new Boeing E-7A Wedgetail aircraft is set to begin in the coming years, with the first aircraft expected to be ready for operational duty by 2031,” Nato said. Nato said the joint acquisition by its members represented one of the alliance’s “biggest-ever capability purchases”, but did not give the overall cost. The jets will be operated centrally by the alliance, likely out of its Geilenkirchen airbase in Germany, with intelligence shared among the 31 members. “Equipped with a powerful radar, the aircraft can detect hostile aircraft, missiles and ships at great distances and can direct Nato fighter jets to their targets,” the alliance said. Hungary seeks review of the EU"s policy towards Ukraine Hungary has sought a review of the EU’s policy towards Ukraine, disagreeing with Germany, Lithuania, Finland and Ireland that backed bringing Kyiv closer to the bloc more quickly and granting it more aid. Hungary is the main stumbling block to a decision by EU leaders next month to start formal membership talks with Ukraine once it meets all conditions, and assign €50bn in aid for Kyiv from the bloc’s budget through 2027. Those decisions require unanimity of the 27 countries in the bloc. But Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán – who has complained that Ukraine had curbed the rights of Hungarian minority – has since said the bloc’s strategy of sending money and military aid to Ukraine has failed, and that he opposed starting membership negotiations with Kyiv. “We need a period of reflection and a strategic discussion on the policy of the European Union towards Ukraine,” Hungary’s European affairs minister, János Bóka, was quoted by Reuters as saying. Until such discussion, Budapest would not support any EU decisions to advance Ukraine’s accession process or further aid for Kyiv, he said.