Russia-Ukraine war: EU bans drone sales to Belarus and adds state TV presenters to sanctions list – as it happened

It is now approaching 9pm in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Here is a summary of the main stories so far:

• The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is being hindered by Ukraine’s plant life. In its daily intelligence briefing it noted: “Undergrowth regrowing across the battlefields of southern Ukraine is likely one factor contributing to the generally slow progress of combat in the area.”

• Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told Ukrainian national television on Wednesday that Russian forces had ample time to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields during months of occupation. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre,” he said. Danilov restated assertions by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the advances, while slower than hoped, could not be rushed as human lives were at stake. “No one can set deadlines for us, except ourselves … there is no fixed schedule,” he said.

• The EU on Thursday banned drone sales to Belarus and added prominent state TV presenters to its sanctions list over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Minsk’s crackdown on opposition. The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: Today we are also taking further measures against the Belarusian regime as an accomplice in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.

• Polish and Lithuanian leaders held an urgent meeting Thursday in a strategically sensitive area where their Nato nations border Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, warning that they are bracing for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in the area.

• Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office told Reuters on Thursday.

• The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, on Thursday again ruled out supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, saying it was “not a top priority” right now.

• Russia will cut oil exports by 300,000 barrels a day in September, Reuters reports deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday. Russia has already pledged to reduce its oil output by about 500,000 bpd, or 5% of its oil production, from March until year-end.

• Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that authorities in the Kursk region have confirmed that fighters of detachments of the voluntary people’s squad have been supplied with weapons.

• Romania said on Thursday it will clear customs for up to 30 ships waiting to enter the country from Ukrainian ports on the River Danube over the next two days, a sign that trade has not halted despite a Russian attack on Ukraine’s main river port.

• The jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Thursday he expected to be handed a “Stalinist” sentence of about 18 more years in prison. In a tweet, he said: “It’s going to be a huge term. This is what’s called a ‘Stalinist’ term. They asked for 20 years so they will give 18 or something around it.”

• Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdog said on Thursday that it detained an armed forces official accused of helping draft-age men flee the country in exchange for a cash payment, according to AFP. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that the official, who worked in the Kyiv city administration and headed a department in the army, had issued false documents declaring men unfit for military service.

• India will participate in Ukraine peace talks to be hosted by Saudi Arabia on 5 to 6 August, a foreign ministry spokesperson said during a news briefing on Thursday.

• Russia said on Thursday that the BRICS group of countries would be strengthened by adding new members, in its most explicit endorsement yet of the idea of expansion, Reuters reports. The BRICS group of emerging economies currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moscow sees the group as an increasingly important and influential counterweight in global affairs to the US-led west.

• Moscow court fined Apple 400,000 roubles (£3,377) on Thursday for not deleting “inaccurate” content about what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Tass news agency reported.

• Russian forces have made no headway along the frontlines, but are entrenched in heavily mined areas they control, making it difficult for Ukrainian troops to move east and south, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday. Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces had “tried quite persistently to halt our advance in the Bakhmut sector. Without success.”

• Kyiv defended itself against the eighth consecutive nightly drone attack early on Thursday morning, the Kyiv regional military admistration said on Telegram. No damage was recorded in preliminary reports. The Ukrainian air force claimed to have shot down all 154 “Shahed” suicide drones launched overnight.

• Three civilians and four emergency service workers have been injured in a Russian strike on Kherson, according to Ukraine’s state broadcaster. Serhiy Kruk, the head of Ukraine’s state emergency service, posted to social media images of bloodied and injured emergency workers and damaged emergency equipment as a result of what Ukraine claims has been a “double tap” attack near a church.

• Russia claims overnight it downed six drones in the Kaluga region, followed by another in the morning. “There are no consequences for people and infrastructure,” regional governor Vladislav Shapsha said. Kaluga region is to the south-west of Moscow region, and the north-east of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.

• Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face retaliation, including possible deportation or detention, a new US report has said.

• Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to Nato’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister alleged on Thursday.

• Russia has added Norway to its list of foreign states that have committed “unfriendly” acts against Russian diplomatic missions, news agencies reported on Thursday.

• Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said the country is considering the possibility of insuring ships going through a “grain corridor”.

That is it from us, thank you for following along. Come back tomorrow for more live updates. You read more of our reporting on Ukraine here in the meantime.

The Ukrainian internal affairs ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said Ukrainians continue to fight despite being tired and having “PTSD of some sort”.

He claimed that there have been more than 800 missile attacks or air raid alerts on Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

In a tweet, Gerashchenko said:

We live among losses and death. That’s terrible. It’s an inhumane load, and it’s very challenging. Feelings and brains can’t fully process this experience. So our brain requires simplification to cope.

That’s why we might seem or behave in a way that is aggressive, addictive, divide everything into black and white. We’re often very categorical, we think in terms of stamps, we simplify.

But we continue to live and fight. We have to survive. And not just survive, but live. Not to lose the meaning of life.

More from the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Moscow pulling out last month from the Black Sea grain initiative.

He took aim at Russia at the UN security council on Thursday, accusing Moscow of “blackmail” over its recent withdrawal from a key grain deal.

America’s top diplomat, chairing a meeting about food insecurity at the UN’s headquarters in New York, told the 15-member Council that “hunger must not be weaponised” according to AFP.

He singled out Russia, saying its invasion of Ukraine last year had sparked an “assault” on the global food system.

Oleksandr Kubrakov, the Ukrainian minister for communities and territories development and infrastructure, said Ukraine aims to involve more countries to protect port infrastructure

After a meeting with Ukrainian diplomats, initiated by the president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he tweeted:

We had a sincere conversation about key areas of international relations and the implementation of the tasks set by the President.

One of the important milestones is to involve more countries in the recovery process and call on partners to protect port infrastructure.

He also thanked the Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, for his “strong diplomatic position in the world”.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urged all countries at the UN on Thursday to tell Russia to stop using the Black Sea as blackmail after Moscow quit a deal that had allowed Ukraine to safely ship its grain to global markets.

Chairing a UN security council meeting on famine and food insecurity caused by conflict, Blinken said:

Every member of the United Nations should tell Moscow ‘enough’.

Enough using the Black Sea as blackmail. Enough treating the world’s most vulnerable people as leverage. Enough of this unjustified unconscionable war.

Blinken announced that nearly 90 countries had backed a short US-drafted communique in which they commit “to take action to end the use of food as a weapon of war and the starvation of civilians as a tactic of warfare”, Reuters reports.

The EU on Thursday banned drone sales to Belarus and added prominent state TV presenters to its sanctions list over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Minsk’s crackdown on opposition.

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is the closest ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and has allowed his country to be used as a staging post for Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.

The EU has already imposed repeated rounds of sanctions on Minsk over Lukashenko’s brutal repression of the opposition since 2020 and the war in Ukraine, which include blacklisting the Belarusian leader and his family members.

The latest measures target a further 38 regime figures and three state-owned entities, including leading “propagandists” on state television, prosecutors and prison officials.

In a bid to curb the flow of goods to Russia that could be used on the battlefield in Ukraine, the EU banned the export of aircraft engines and drones to Belarus.

In addition the 27-nation bloc tightened restrictions on the sale of semiconductors, camera equipment and other technology that could help Moscow’s war effort.

The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said:

Today we are also taking further measures against the Belarusian regime as an accomplice in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.

Russia jailed two men on charges linked to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine on Thursday, pursuing a sweeping crackdown on dissent since the launch of full-scale hostilities last year.

An entrepreneur known for his pro-Ukraine stance received a one-and-a-half-year sentence for “discrediting” the army, while another man was given six years for treason, AFP reports.

Dmitry Skurikhin, the entrepreneur and activist, was known for covering his store front in the northern village of Russko-Vysotskoye with messages including “peace for Ukraine, freedom to Russia”.

On Thursday, a court in St Petersburg said Skurikhin, 48, had been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Authorities last September launched a probe against the father of five over his anti-war posters.

A second investigation against him was launched after he knelt in front of his store in February holding a sign that read “Sorry Ukraine” to mark the conflict’s first anniversary.

Last year he was also fined for posting a video clip on social media in which he called for an end to Moscow’s campaign.

Skurikhin’s lawyer Dmitry Gerasimov said the activist had spent two months in pre-trial detention before being placed under house arrest.

Speaking to AFP, Gerasimov said that the entrepreneur was “very courageous” in court.

“He did not think he would be jailed,” Gerasimov said. “But he also said, ‘I couldn’t not do it’,” he said, referring to the protest.

Here is a little bit of background on the Finnish foreign and security policy thinktank chief, Mika Aaltola, who said on Thursday he would run for president in Nato’s newest member.

Finns will go to the polls on 28 January next year to elect a president to replace Sauli Niinisto, 74, who is required to retire after leading Finland’s foreign policy for two consecutive six-year terms, Reuters reports.

The president is the commander-in-chief of Finland’s defence forces, represents Finland in Nato meetings and leads foreign policy in cooperation with the government.

Aaltola has never been a member of any political party, but began surging in presidential polls – even topping one last year – in a spontaneous response to his rising popularity as a TV analyst of the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Aaltola said:

We need to unlearn our strategic silence, which I’ve sometimes called strategic haziness. We have a somewhat stoic reputation abroad.

Aaltola wants Finland to remain a strong supporter of Ukraine, to bring its defence spending close to, “if not above”, 3% of its gross domestic product, he said.

He also supports storing US weapons on Finnish soil and building a new Arctic railway line to guarantee Nato access in strategically important northern Finland.

Russia has enlisted over 230,000 additional personnel into the army since the start of the year, Moscow’s deputy security council chairperson, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Thursday.

Moscow has conducted an aggressive military recruitment campaign this year as it seeks to stave off an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and hold territories it has captured during the conflict, AFP reports.

Medvedev, who served as president from 2008-2012, said:

According to the Ministry of Defence, from 1 January to 3 August … a total of more than 231,000 people have been accepted for contract service.

Polish and Lithuanian leaders held an urgent meeting Thursday in a strategically sensitive area where their Nato nations border Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, warning that they are bracing for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in the area.

AP reports that the meeting came two days after two Belarusian helicopters flew briefly at low altitude into Polish airspace, in what was viewed as a provocative move. Both nations on Nato’s eastern flank have increased their border security following the arrival of thousands of Russia-linked Wagner group mercenaries just across their borders in Belarus after an aborted mutiny in Russia in June.

At a news conference with the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said:

Russia and Belarus are increasing the pressure on the borders, increasing the number of their provocations, and we must be aware that the number of these provocations will grow.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry denied that its country’s helicopters entered Poland. Anatoly Glaz, press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, said Thursday that the charge d’affaires of Poland was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Minsk and told that Poland had come to a hasty conclusion.

Glaz said:

We call on the Polish side not to escalate the situation and not use it to militarise the border area.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence tweeted a map showing the latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine. The red areas are Russian controlled and the green arrows show likely Ukrainian advances in their counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating Russian attacks on its agriculture infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office told Reuters on Thursday.

More information to come …

The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, on Thursday again ruled out supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, saying it was “not a top priority” right now.

Ukraine asked Germany in late May to provide it with Taurus air-to-surface cruise missiles which have a range in excess of 500 kilometres (310 miles), but the government has so far rebuffed the request.

During a visit to a mountain infantry brigade in Bavaria, Pistorius said:

We continue to believe that this is not our top priority right now.

Our American allies are not delivering these cruise missiles either.

The concerns about sending “special range” missiles to Ukraine “are obvious”, Pistorius said.

According to AFP, Pistorius stressed that Germany was playing a leading role in helping Ukraine with “air defence, training support, engineering and armoured vehicles”.

“This is our first priority, our core competency,” the minister said, adding that he saw “no urgent need for a decision” on the Swedish-German Taurus weapon system.

Oleh Kiper, governor of Odesa region, has posted to Telegram to say that work is already being undertaken to prepare for the heating season later in the year.

He wrote on Telegram: “Last winter was the hardest in the history of Ukraine. It was especially difficult for our region. We have no illusions about this year either – the enemy will probably attack our energy infrastructure again, so we are preparing carefully.”

He said that “work on improving the physical protection of critical infrastructure facilities in the region continues”.