Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin says there’s no need for more ‘massive strikes’

The situation in the liberated Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine was “just as terrible” as it was in the reclaimed towns of Irpin and Bucha, president Volodymyr Zelensky has said – hinting at evidence of more Russian war crimes.

Russia was accused of genodical intent after images and footage emerged documenting the killing and abuse of Ukrainian civilians from the northern town of Bucha in April.

International outrage over the so-called Bucha massacre was reignited several weeks later after terrifying accounts of underground confinement, violence, shootings and summary executions against civilians in Irpin, another Kyiv suburb, began to dominate headlines.

Mr Zelensky gave no further details in comments made in a video link with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Russia has vehemently denied its forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Diplomats from Germany, Denmark and Sweden have been summoned by Russia to complain that representatives from Moscow and Gazprom had not been invited to join an investigation into ruptures of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

“Russia will obviously not recognise the pseudo-results of such an investigation unless Russian experts are involved,” Moscow’s foreign ministry said.

The cause of the ruptures in the Nord Stream pipelines, which run under the Baltic Sea, remains unclear, but European Union countries have pointed to sabotage.

A multi-storey residential building in the Russian city of Belgorod has been damaged by shelling from Ukrainian armed forces, the region’s governor said on Thursday.

He said an apartment had been struck and shared a picture appearing to show rubble next to a partially collapsed portion of a building.

There has been no information about casualties or injuries, so far, he added. Belgorod is about 40 km (25 miles) away from the Ukrainian border.

Turkey is the most reliable route to deliver gas to the EU, president Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, before proposing to build a “supply hub” there.

Speaking at a bilateral meeting with Mr Erdogan, Mr Putin said energy supplies from Russia to Turkey were in “full flow” and in accordance with requests.

The war in Ukraine is part of a larger crusade by Russia against the west and liberal democracy, German chancellor Olaf Scholz in a speech on Thursday.

“(Russian President) Vladimir Putin and his enablers have made one thing very clear: this war is not only about Ukraine. They consider their war against Ukraine to be part of a larger crusade, a crusade against liberal democracy,” he said in a recorded speech at the Progressive Governance Summit in Berlin.

The UN resolution condemning Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian territories was “anti-Russian” and achieved using “diplomatic terror”, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has declared.

On Wednesday, the UN general assembly overwhelmingly condemned Russia’s move to annex four partially occupied regions in Ukraine, calling on all countries not to recognise it.

Swathes of pharmacies across Finland have seen their stocks of iodine tablets run dry after health officials recommended people stock up amid fears a nuclear incident could occur due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Nordic country’s health ministry announced the new recommendation on Tuesday that households buy a single dose of iodine – which can protect the thyroid from radiation – in an oblique acknowledgement of a potential nuclear event in Ukraine, to the nation’s south.

When announcing the new recommendations, however, it did not mention the ongoing Russian invasion, nor did it disclose where such nuclear accidents could potentially take place.

Residents in Ukraine’s Kherson region have been urged to evacuate by its Russian-installed governor amid fighting between Russian and advancing Ukrainian forces.

In a video statement on the Telegram app, Vladimir Saldo also publicly asked for Moscow’s help in transporting civilians into Russia.

Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia formally incorporated into its territory this month, a move denounced by Kyiv and the West as an illegal annexation.

Several people hved been arrested during a foiled attack on the TurkStream gas pipeline on Russian territory, the Kremlin has claimed.

Russia said it is stepping up security on the TurkStream pipeline, which carries Russian gas to Turkey, amid unexplained ruptures on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea and an oil leak on the Druzhba pipeline in Poland.

President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan did not discuss ways to resolve the conflict in Ukraine during a bilateral meeting on Thursday, according to the Kremlin.

“The topic of a Russian-Ukrainian settlement was not discussed,” news agency RIA cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.