Ukraine-Russia war: Putin’s troops disguised as Ukrainians in assault on key city

Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Olaf Scholz had a “detailed and frank exchange of views” on Ukraine in their first phone call since 2022, the Kremlin has said.

According to the Kremlin, the Russian president set out the same position he has been stating for months – that any peace deal must address Moscow’s security interests and be based on “new territorial realities”, a reference to the fact that Russian troops now control a fifth of Ukraine.

Mr Putin also spoke of an “unprecedented degradation” in relations between the two countries, for which he blamed unfriendly actions by Germany, the Kremlin claimed, following Russia’s decision to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine in 2022.

Mr Putin claimed in June that the war could end if Kyiv gave up its Nato ambitions and handed over the entirety of four regions claimed by Russia. Ukraine rejected those conditions as tantamount to surrender and merely enabling Russia to regroup before mounting another attack on Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin has told Germany’s Olaf Scholz that Russia is ready to look at energy deals if Berlin is interested, the Kremlin has said, following their first phone conversation since December 2022.

A readout from the Kremlin claimed: “It was emphasised that Russia has always strictly fulfilled its treaty and contractual obligations in the energy sector and is ready for mutually beneficial cooperation if the German side shows interest in this.”

Germany was heavily reliant on Russian gas before the war, but direct shipments ceased when the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea were blown up in 2022.

Germany and other European Union countries have imposed successive waves of sanctions on Russia over the war and taken steps to wean themselves off their dependence on Russian oil and gas.

Ukraine’s SBU security service has detained a special operations forces unit commander accused of disclosing plans of operations behind enemy lines to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.

“The aggressor was most interested in intelligence on sabotage and reconnaissance raids by Ukrainian special forces behind the front line in the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimean directions,” the SBU said in a statement.

The alleged “mole”, whose rank corresponded to lieutenant colonel, had access to information on planned routes, weapons and targets, according to the statement. Russian forces planned to use the intelligence to eliminate special forces soldiers on the front line and in the Russian-occupied south.

The SBU said Russia’s military intelligence “activated” the unit commander in the spring of this year but that he was recruited prior to Moscow’s invasion in February 2022 through his acquaintances in Russia.

Ukraine’s top military leadership aided with the case and the suspect could face life in prison on treason charges, according to the SBU.

Donald Trump has said his administration would focus on ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“We’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It’s gotta stop. Russia and Ukraine’s gotta stop,” he said during an event in Florida.

The US president-elect expressed regret over the deaths caused by the war, “whether they’re soldiers or they’re people sitting in towns”. “We’re going to work it.”

During his campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly said he could quickly end the fighting in Ukraine but did not offer details of how he would accomplish that.

Any further Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system could trigger another wave of mass displacement as winter approaches, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine has warned.

Civilians are now more vulnerable than at any other winter during the conflict due to Russian strikes on its energy system and donor fatigue, warned Matthias Schmale, who said that around two thirds of Ukraine’s domestic energy production is currently offline due to Russian strikes.

“The real concern is if they were to target the energy sector again, this could be a tipping point…for further mass movements, both inside the country and outside the country,” Mr Schmale told reporters in Geneva.

Any further displacement would add to the 3.6 million that are currently displaced within Ukraine and the more than 6 million who have fled across its borders to escape the conflict since February 2022.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban has claimed that European Union sanctions against Russia will “destroy” the bloc’s economy.

Mr Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the EU, has broken with the majority of European leaders and vocally opposed such sanctions.

Speaking on state radio on Friday, the hard-right leader claimed the EU’s sanctions regime “should be reviewed, because with such a policy of sanctions, energy prices will not come down”.

He added: “It will be painful for those who argued for sanctions. Not for us, because we will see this as a victory, but the other camp has to change because otherwise it will destroy the European economy.”

A senior Russian naval officer has been killed in a car bombing in occupied Crimea – the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel.

Russian investigators said an unnamed serviceman was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated on Wednesday in the port city of Sevastopol – the primary headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – and that the killing was being treated as terrorism.

In what will be a blow to the morale of Russian military leaders, a source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said shortly after the blast that the explosion had killed naval captain Valery Trankovsky – in a hit orchestrated by the SBU.

Describing the hit as legitimate and in line with the customs of war, the source called Trankovsky “a war criminal” for ordering missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets, including repeated attacks on Odesa and a missile strike that killed 29 people and injured more than 200 others in the city of Vinnytsia in July 2022.

On Wednesday, Moscow’s forces – including soldiers disguised as Ukrainian troops – attacked the Kharkiv city of Kupiansk in four waves, but were repelled, Ukraine’s general staff said.

“They partially entered the suburbs, the industrial zone, and were destroyed by our troops,” Mr Besedin said. “There were assault actions using heavy armoured vehicles, there were attempts to bring in infantry.”

A map updated daily by Ukrainian war monitor DeepState, known to have close ties to the defence ministry, appears to corroborate these claims. It shows the entire city under Ukrainian control with Russian forces pushing towards its northern outskirts.

Our foreign affairs reporter Tom Watling has more details: