Ukraine-Russia war – live: Kremlin claims Britain helped plan missile strike on Crimea on Black Sea Fleet’s HQ

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) have suggested a fresh Russian offensive would be ‘unlikely’ as they deploy fresh troops to their ‘overstretched’ front line.

The MoD says that following the creation of Russia’s 25th Combined Arms Army (25 CAA), which was reportedly seen in Ukraine for the first time in August, Moscow has deployed them to reinforce under-defended areas on the frontline. They suggest that this makes a fresh offensive from Russian forces unlikely, as they were not deployed en masse to one area.

New Russian units are reported to be fighting on the front in a sector west of Severodonetsk and Kreminna, along the border between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the MoD say.

Ukraine has said it will not play in tournaments involving Russian teams after soccer European governing body, UEFA, announced plans to reinstate Russia’s Under-17 sides to European competitions.

In a statement released late on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Association of Football (UAF) urged UEFA to reconsider its decision and urged other countries not to play against Russian teams.

UEFA decided after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that all Russian teams – national or club sides – would be suspended from participation in its competitions.

But UEFA said on Tuesday that “children should not be punished for actions whose responsibility lies exclusively with adults”, and that Russian U-17 sides would be readmitted to UEFA competitions “in the course of this season”.

“UAF strongly condemns today’s UEFA decision on the return of U-17 teams from the Russian Federation to international competitions,” the UAF said, urging UEFA to stick to its blanket ban on Russian teams.“UAF confirms that we will not take part in any competitions with the participation of Russian teams, and appeal to other UEFA member associations to boycott possible matches with the participation of teams from the Russian Federation, subject to their admission.”

England’s Football Association reacted to UEFA’s decision on Tuesday by saying its youth teams would not play against Russia.

Several hundred members of Russia’s Wagner private mercenary group have returned to eastern Ukraine to fight but are not having a significant impact on the battlefield, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Since Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August, the Kremlin has sought to bring the group under tighter state control. Russian military bloggers have reported that some Wagner fighters have been returning to Ukraine.

“We have recorded the presence of a maximum of several hundred fighters of the former Wagner PMC (private military company),” Serhiy Cherevatyi, military spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern district said.

He added that Wagner fighters were scattered in different places, were not part of a single unit, and had had no significant impact, Reuters reports.

“They do not constitute any integral, systematic, organized force,” Cherevatyi said. “As they say – game over. These are pathetic remnants, nothing good awaits them here.”

New pictures from the Donetsk region in Ukraine show the destruction caused by recent Russian attacks.

Suspilne, Ukraine’s national broadcaster, said on Wednesday that Russia attacked six cities in the region since Tuesday morning.

It wrote: “The Russian army destroyed 22 residential buildings, a bus station, trade pavilions, an enterprise and a hangar.”

Former Wagner Group troops have allegedly left Belarus and returned to the frontline in Donetsk according to local news reports.

RBC Ukraine reported on Wednesday that roughly 500 of the 8,000 Wagner fighters stationed in Belarus are returning to Ukraine’s eastern front, according to the spokesperson of the Eastern Grouping of Forces, Illia Yevlash.

“Former members of the Wagner private military company are now actually present in the territory of the Eastern Grouping of Forces,” Mr Yevlash said.

“They are taking part in the fighting. Specifically, they are coming from the territory of Belarus, where they had their camps. They are now being disbanded.”

It was also noted in local reports that some former Wagner soldiers had departed for Africa.

Mr Yevlash also said that Russia’s Defense Ministry is renegotiating contracts with these mercenaries to serve either as combatants or instructors.

However, he emphasized that Wagner fighters do not pose a “significant threat” since the death of their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August under mysterious circumstances.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) say they have detained two men on suspicion that they assisted Russian forces in their missile attacks on Kyiv last week.

The SBU said in a statement on Wednesday: “SBU cyber specialists detained two Russian agents who adjusted the Russian air attack on Kyiv on the night of September 21 this year.

“It has been established that on the eve of this date, the detainees sent the Russians coordinates for a strike on the city. The main targets of the enemy attack were the capital’s critical infrastructure, including energy generating enterprises.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram: “This is a good signal to all traitors: There will be retribution.”

Russia have begun constructing a railway linking occupied Ukrainian cities to Russia, Ukrainian officials claim.

According to Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the exiled mayor of Mariupol, Russia has begun building the railways that will link Mariupol, Volnovakha and Donetsk to Russia if completed.

He said in a Telegram post: “The occupiers are trying to build a direct railway connection with Mariupol, Volnovakha and Donetsk. Now it’s not just talk, they have started the construction of a railway bridge near the village of Hranitne over the Kalmius River.

“If successful, this will make it possible to include the existing Mariupol-Aslanove-Kalchik-Volnovakha branch in direct communication with Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don.”

He added that if the railway is completed it would allow Russia to transport supplies to the occupied regions in southern Ukraine without relying on the Crimea bridge, which has come under increasing attacks by Ukraine in recent months.

Ukrainian children in the southern Zaporizhzhia region have been evacuated ahead of frontline fighting that’s expected on the frontline.

“We have fulfilled the task set by the Ukrainian government… and evacuated all children and their families” from five towns, Yevgen Myronenko, the deputy head of the region, was quoted by local media as saying.

Local media cited regional officials as saying a total of 59 children had been removed from the towns. Evacuations of children usually take place ahead of expected fighting in the area.

General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, who is leading the counteroffensive in the south, said last weekend that Ukraine’s army had broken through Russian lines in Zaporizhzhia.

UEFA made two moves toward partially reintegrating Russia into European soccer on Tuesday despite the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The European soccer governing body decided to try reintroducing Russian under-17 teams into its competitions this season. That’s an easing of a blanket ban on national and club teams from international play imposed within days of the Russian invasion starting in February 2022.

UEFA said it was “aware that children should not be punished for actions whose responsibility lies exclusively with adults and is firmly convinced that football should never give up sending messages of peace and hope.”

Read more from The Independent below:

Russia have hit back at Hillary Clinton following her comments on Putin’s NATO expansion concerns.

Hillary Clinton mocked Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for his concerns about Nato’s expansion and said the Russian president “brought it on himself” with his invasion of Ukraine.

“Defending democracy in Ukraine, expanding Nato – just as an aside, too bad Vladimir, you brought it on yourself,” the former US secretary of state said, prompting laughter and applause.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin responded to her remarks by reminding her of her 2009 gaffe, when she sought to “reset” relations with Russia with a button mislabelled as “overload” in Russian.

Asked about her remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It is clear that this was probably not a deliberate mistake, but very telling.”

He added: “It is probably necessary to remind Mrs Clinton of the numerous waves of NATO expansion and the approach of the alliance’s military infrastructure to our borders.”

You can read more about this from The Independent below: