Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine reportedly attacks Russian-occupied Melitopol with Himars

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Vladimir Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine and shows no restraint in his brutality.

“Whenever I speak with Putin, he says very clearly that for him it is about conquering something,” Scholz said on Saturday at an event in Potsdam, near Berlin. “He simply wants to conquer part of Ukrainian territory with violence.”

Scholz has spoken directly with the Russian president more than most other western leaders since the 24 February invasion of Ukraine. The two last spoke by telephone for an hour on 2 December.

Scholz said it was not clear how many Russian soldiers had died so far in the invasion, but the number could be as high as 100,000.

We have seen the brutality the Russian president is capable of: in Chechnya, where he basically eradicated the whole country; or in Syria. There is no restraint there, it’s as simple as that.

We are of completely different opinions. Nonetheless, I will keep speaking with him because I want to experience the moment where it is possible to get out of this situation. And that’s not possible without speaking with one another.

In his remarks on Saturday, Scholz also defended his government’s aim to raise defence spending to Nato’s goal of 2% of gross domestic output, saying that before German reunification, it had reached as much as 4%.

Nato countries needed to be strong enough that nobody would dare to attack them, he said.

– Reuters

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Our top story this morning is Ukraine has reportedly attacked Russian-occupied Melitopol, according to both the Moscow-installed and exiled Ukrainian authorities of the strategically located city in the country’s south-east.

The pro-Moscow authorities said an attack by western-supplied Himars missiles on Saturday evening killed two people and injured 10, while the exiled Ukrainian mayor said scores of “invaders” were killed.

Here’s a rundown on the other key recent developments in the war:

• Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile, rocket and airstrikes in multiple parts of the country. The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, illegally claimed to have annexed in late September.

• The head of Nato has expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato, according to an interview released on Friday. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

• All non-critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa were without power after Russia used drones to hit energy facilities, local officials said, with much of the surrounding region also affected.

• Iran’s backing for the Russian military is likely to grow in coming months and Moscow will probably offer Tehran an “unprecedented” level of military support in return, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. The ministry’s latest intelligence update said Iran had become one of Russia’s top military backers since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and that Moscow was now trying to obtain more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles.

• Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words. Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties won the 2022 prize in October.

• Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the government would place targeted sanctions on Russia and Iran in response to what it called “egregious” human rights violations.

• Moscow has announced it is banning 200 Canadian officials from entering Russia in response to similar sanctions from Ottawa. The health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce head, Victor Dodig, were among those targeted.

• Boris Johnson has urged western countries to “look urgently” at what more they can do to support Ukraine in the hopes of ending the war against Russia as soon as next year. The former UK prime minister, who was hailed by Zelenskiy as a key ally in the country’s fight against Russia, used an article in the Wall Street Journal to argue that ending the war as soon as possible is “in everyone’s interest, including Russia”.

• Explosions have been reported at Berdiansk airbase in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Three large explosions were heard, as well as smaller ones, near the Russian-occupied city on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

• Ukraine says its southern regions are suffering the worst electricity outages days after the latest bout of Russian attacks on the country’s energy grid. The head of Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said workers were struggling most to restore power in the Black Sea regions of Odessa, which was badly hit on Monday, and around the recently recaptured city of Kherson.

• Putin said Russia could amend its military doctrine by introducing the possibility of a pre-emptive strike to disarm an enemy, in an apparent reference to a nuclear attack. Speaking just days after warning that the risk of nuclear war was rising but Russia would not strike first, Putin said on Friday that Moscow was considering whether to adopt what he called Washington’s concept of a pre-emptive strike.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister said his government was working with the UN’s nuclear watchdog to create a safety zone around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Dmytro Kuleba said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with his Slovak counterpart, Rastislav Káčer, that Kyiv remained “in close contact” with Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency head.

• Russia claimed its proposed safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant was to “stop Ukrainian shelling”. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, also said the US’s withdrawal from a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles was a “destructive” act that created a vacuum and stoked additional security risks.