UK foreign secretary: we are exposing "malign attempts" by Russia to "threaten our democratic processes" The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, is in Washington today, where he is expected to later give a press conference alongside the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Cameron, the UK’s former prime minister, has issued a statement about the UK government’s allegation of Russian hacking efforts. PA Media reports that he said: Russia’s attempts to interfere in UK politics are completely unacceptable and seek to threaten our democratic processes. Despite their repeated efforts, they have failed. In sanctioning those responsible and summoning the Russian ambassador today, we are exposing their malign attempts at influence and shining a light on yet another example of how Russia chooses to operate on the global stage. We will continue to work together with our allies to expose Russian covert cyber activity and hold Russia to account for its actions.” Summary of the day It is approaching 6pm in Kyiv and in Moscow. Here are the latest headlines. The human rights commissioner of Ukraine’s parliament has said that the officially confirmed number of Ukrainian children deported by Russia now stands at over 19,540. Speaking at a human rights conference in Kyiv, Dmytro Lubinets said “this is against the background of the Russian Federation continuing to deport more and more groups of Ukrainian children from our state every day”. In March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forced deportation of children. The UK’s government has said it has levelled “appropriate sanctions” after summoning the Russian ambassador following accusations that groups linked to the Russian FSB had been hacking prominent British figures as part of attempts to “meddle in British politics”. UK deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden said Russia was “behind sustained hostile cyber operations aimed at interfering in parts of the UK democratic processes. This has included members of parliament, civils servants, thinktanks, journalists and NGOs”. The former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, has confirmed he was one of the figures targeted. Four occupied regions of Ukraine that were “annexed” by the Russian Federation in late 2022 are expected to participate in Russia’s presidential election next year, after the date was set for 17 March. Russia’s Federation council confirmed the date this morning, with Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, saying a decision will be made by 12 December on whether occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson will take part. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has not yet announced whether he will run, however the 71-year-old is widely anticipated to secure a fifth term and remain in power until at least 2030. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an online statement urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin, saying “Putin views this election as a referendum on approval of his actions. A referendum on approval of the war. Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood.” A driver was killed and grain infrastructure damaged by a Russian drone attack on Ukrainian grain infrastructure near the Danube River, the governor of Odesa region said on Thursday. Ukraine’s air force said 18 Shaheds were launched at the southern Odesa and Khmelnytskyi regions in western Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the rest of the EU by threatening to block Ukraine membership talks unless it releases withheld funds to Hungary, MEPs have said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the EU,” said Pedro Marques, vice-president of the Socialist and Democratic group that represents 142 MEPs. “It is a wake-up call for the leaders that we cannot continue allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by some authoritarian leader,” he added. Ukraine aims to bypass a border blockade by truck drivers in Poland by bringing in lorries on train platforms, an official from the national railways company said on Thursday. Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday that cold weather had pushed power usage 2.7% above forecast levels, causing a deficit in the power system. It said the deficit was being filled by imports from Poland, Slovakia and Romania. On Wednesday Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine. The vote increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid. Before the vote, President Joe Biden pleaded with Republicans, warning that a victory for Russia over Ukraine would leave Moscow in position to attack Nato allies and could draw US troops into a war. “If [Russian President] Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said. Putin would attack a Nato ally, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said. “We can’t let Putin win,” he said. Russia’s ambassador to the US has described Biden’s words as “unacceptable”. Thank you for reading today, we will shortly be closing this live blog. Reuters reports that the US has also imposed cyber-related sanctions on Andrey Korinets and Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko, the two men who were named by the UK’s foreign office earlier today as being involved in targeted cyber-attacks against prominent figures in British politics. Andrey Korinets is also known as Alexey Doguzhiev. Members of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s team have said they placed a number of billboards up in Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities reading “Russia” and “happy new year,” with links and QR codes leading to the website of their campaign against the Russian president, titled Russia without Putin. The Associated Press found that some of the billboards already had been taken down. Ukraine aims to bypass a border blockade by Polish truck drivers by bringing in lorries on train platforms, Interfax Ukraine news agency has quoted an official from the national railways company as saying on Thursday. Protests by Polish truckers started last month against the terms of EU access for Ukrainian lorries. They blocked the main land corridors into Ukraine, leading to higher prices for fuel and some food items as well as delays to drone deliveries to the Ukrainian army. “Now we have a loaded train standing at the crossing with Hrubeshuv (on the Ukrainian-Polish border). We already have 23 loaded container wagons with lorries,” Valeriy Tkachov, the deputy director of the commercial department at the railway, was quoted as saying. Reuters reported he said the Ukrainian and Polish sides were harmonising technical issues. “As soon as this test train passes and all is well, we will launch this on a mass scale,” Tkachov said. Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent. She writes: Viktor Orbán cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the rest of the EU by threatening to block Ukraine membership talks unless it releases withheld funds to Hungary, MEPs have said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the EU,” said Pedro Marques, vice-president of the Socialist and Democratic group that represents 142 MEPs. “It is a wake-up call for the leaders that we cannot continue allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by some authoritarian leader,” he added. “At a moment in which the US Congress has just outvoted a proposal by Joe Biden to continue to support Ukraine, we cannot put ourselves in a situation where the Ukrainians see that we are also not capable of continuing to assist them. “It also not acceptable, from my point of view, that anyone gets the perception that at the end of next week, Orbán got his way and got his €30bn [£25.7bn] in exchange for allowing the EU to continue to assist Ukraine. It is simple: we cannot trade money for values. It’s not acceptable.” His comments came before a meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Orbán in Paris over dinner on Thursday. He is expected to tell Orbán that to block the opening of talks with Ukraine will undermine the EU’s strategy to fight Vladimir Putin. “This is a test of Europe’s strategic autonomy,” said a diplomatic source. Orbán’s dissent will send a signal to Putin “but also to the Americans”. Marquez said the EU also needed to abandon its rule that decisions on enlargement should be unanimous, something that is supported by other member states. “When you join the EU it means you are a democratic country. I guess we did not foresee that democracy could be corrupted from the inside,” he said. A Russian court has extended the custody of two lawyers of the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny until 13 March, it said in a statement on Thursday. The lawyers, Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev, have been charged with being members of an extremist group, Reuters reports. The US president, Joe Biden, reaffirmed his commitment to Ukraine and called on Congress to “stand against the tyranny of Putin, stand for freedom”. In a tweet, he wrote: History will judge us harshly if we turn our back on freedom’s cause in Ukraine. We can’t let Putin win. The Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who had said he wanted to challenge Vladimir Putin in the presidential election in March, had his pre-trial detention extended for six months on Thursday, a Moscow court said. Reuters reports that Girkin is accused of “public calls to commit extremist activity”. Girkin was arrested in July. He is a former battlefield commander of Russia’s proxy forces in east Ukraine who was convicted by a Dutch court over the shooting down of MH17. His armed intervention, backed by Russia, marked the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine. Girkin had become a popular Telegram blogger and commentator on the war. Like other pro-war nationalists, he had been critical of the Russian military’s bungling of the invasion, calling top generals ineffective and criticising the president and other top officials. He had called for Putin’s downfall, saying Russia “could not survive another six years” of his rule. UK foreign secretary: we are exposing "malign attempts" by Russia to "threaten our democratic processes" The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, is in Washington today, where he is expected to later give a press conference alongside the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Cameron, the UK’s former prime minister, has issued a statement about the UK government’s allegation of Russian hacking efforts. PA Media reports that he said: Russia’s attempts to interfere in UK politics are completely unacceptable and seek to threaten our democratic processes. Despite their repeated efforts, they have failed. In sanctioning those responsible and summoning the Russian ambassador today, we are exposing their malign attempts at influence and shining a light on yet another example of how Russia chooses to operate on the global stage. We will continue to work together with our allies to expose Russian covert cyber activity and hold Russia to account for its actions.” It is understood that there are hundreds of victims of attempted hacks by Russia across the UK, many being widely recognisable names – with personal email accounts being targeted, not just official emails. PA Media reports that foreign office minister Leo Docherty said that impersonation attempts and “false accounts” had been made to compromise email accounts in the public sector and wider civil society to create a “believable approach seeking to build a rapport before delivering a malicious link”. MPs in London were told sanctions would be imposed on two members of hacking group Star Blizzard after a National Crime Agency investigation. They were named by the Foreign Office as Andrey Stanislavovich Korinets, also known as Alexey Doguzhiev, and FSB intelligence officer Ruslan Aleksandrovich Peretyatko. Docherty said the Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office to be told “these actions have consequences”. It is understood the ambassador was unavailable when summoned and officials instead met with a senior member of the Russian government to express concerns over the attempts to interfere in democratic processes. The Russian embassy in London is yet to comment on the allegations, although yesterday it issued a fiery statement condemning a new round of sanctions on Russians connected with the war on Ukraine, calling them “illegitimate unilateral restrictions” and describing the announcement as “yet another act of poorly staged drama” by the UK. Here are some of the latest news images sent over the news wires to us from Ukraine.