Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin’s forces ‘double’ artillery and air attacks on Donetsk

Meanwhile Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania were elected for the 2024-2026 period.

The Executive Council is made up of 41 member states. It states its mission is to “achieve a world permanently free of chemical weapons and to contribute to international security and stability, general and complete disarmament, and global economic development.”

President Zelensky welcomed the decision saying that international body had no place for “terrorists” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Here’ is the latest map of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to war monitoring think-thank the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine and the European Union cannot be “taken hostage” by Polish truckers blockading the Polish-Ukrainian border in protest at competition from Ukrainian hauliers, the European Commissioner for Transport said on Wednesday.

The round-the-clock blockade in Medyka and three other border crossings, which started on Monday, extends a protest that has left over a thousand lorries stranded for days in queues that stretch for miles.

Transport commissioner Adina Valean said the situation was “unacceptable”.

Polish truckers complain they are losing out to Ukrainian companies which offer cheaper prices for their services and which are transporting goods within the EU, rather than just between the bloc and Ukraine.

“There is no good faith in finding a solution… and there is nearly a complete lack of involvement from Polish authorities… who are supposed to enforce the law at that border,” Valean said.

“While I support the people’s right to protest, the entire EU, not to mention Ukraine, a country currently at war, cannot be taken hostage by blocking our external borders.”

Four police officers were killed and another 18 people wounded in a Ukrainian HIMARS strike on a police station in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Kherson region on Tuesday, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

TASS quoted a local police spokesperson as saying that five police officers had been critically wounded in the strike on a facility in the village of Yuvileine.

Reuters could not independently verify the report but fighting in the Kherson region has heated up in recent months, with Ukrainian forces making a number of incursions on the Russian-held eastern bank of the Dnipro river, which divides the province.

Former U.S. marine Paul Whelan has been attacked by another inmate in a Russian prison while serving a 16-year sentence on espionage charges, Russia‘s prison service said on Wednesday.

Whelan, who denies spying on Russia, was punched in the face and forced to defend himself at a sewing workshop in a high security penal colony southeast of Moscow, his brother Dave Whelan said in a statement.

“A new prisoner blocked part of the production line and Paul asked him to move out of the way. After repeated requests, the prisoner hit Paul in the face, breaking Paul’s glasses in the process, and attempted to hit him a second time,” Dave Whelan said.

“Paul stood up to block the second hit and other prisoners intervened to prevent the prisoner continuing the attack on Paul.”

Arrested in 2018 in Russia, Paul Whelan was convicted of espionage in 2020 and handed a 16-year sentence.

Dave Whelan said the incident took place on Tuesday afternoon. He thought his brother was a target because he was an American and anti-American sentiment was “not uncommon among the other prisoners”.

Furloughed workers at Volkswagen’s former plant in Russia are being offered redundancy, according to the union representing them.

The plant, in Russia’s Kaluga region south of Moscow, has annual production capacity of 225,000 cars, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought work to a standstill. The plant will remain idle until at least March 2024, the trade union added.

Under the furlough scheme being offered by the new owners, who took over the plant in May, the staff are currently paid two thirds of their salary.

They are now being offered three months’ pay if they quit, with bonuses for those who have been employed there for a long time.

Only a few of the remaining staff of around 3,600 people have taken up the new owners on their offer so far, Elena Kryukova, head of the MPRA trade union’s plant committee, told Reuters.

A Russian court has ordered a man to be jailed for 10 days after he used his finger to write “No to War” on a snow-covered turnstile.

According to court papers, the incident happened on November 23 at the entrance to an ice-skating rink at Moscow’s Gorky Park.

The man, named as Dmitry Fyodorov, was sentenced the following day after being detained by the police.

Police decided his actions could amount to a civil offence under a law which targets anyone deemed to have acted publicly to discredit Russia’s armed forces, a crime which in his case was punishable by a fine.

New laws cracking down on dissent were brought in soon after President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 in what he called a “special military operation.”

For those opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine, speaking out in public has since become a risky thing to do and critics say nearly 20,000 people have been detained and over 800 criminal cases opened.

The Ukrainian military has claimed the number of Russian casualties since the beginning of the ward has reached 327,580.

In its latest update, they added that 5,538 Russian tanks and 10,312 Russian armored combat vehicles had been destroyed.

Vladimir Putin will not consider ending his invasion of Ukraine until he knows the result of the 2024 US presidential election, a senior official from the Joe Biden administration has said.

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