The foreign ministry in Kyiv said on Wednesday that Moscow had failed to win support for its invasion of Ukraine at the Brics summit it is hosting, where Putin faced direct calls to end the conflict from some of his closest and most important partners. “The Brics summit, which Russia planned to use to split the world, has once again demonstrated that the world majority remains on the side of Ukraine in its quest to guarantee a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace,” the ministry said. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, told the summit that there must be “no escalation of fighting” in Ukraine, saying: “We must adhere to the three principles of ‘no spillover from the battlefield, no escalation of fighting and no adding oil to the fire by relevant parties’, so as to ease the situation as soon as possible.”
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called for “avoiding escalation and initiating peace negotiations”. Without referring to any specific conflict, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, also issued a call for peace: “We support dialogue and diplomacy, not war.” In private talks, Vladimir Putin welcomed offers by several of the Brics leaders to mediate in Ukraine, even as he told them his forces were advancing, said his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, according to Russian state media.
North Korean troops would be legitimate military targets – “fair game” – if they engaged in combat in Ukraine, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday. The US has said for the first time that it has seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia, and South Korean lawmakers have said about 3,000 soldiers have been sent to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with Kim Jong-un’s regime promising to provide a total of about 10,000 troops by December.
Alexander Lukashenko – the Belarusian president, who has stayed in power by running a client state of Russia – said in interviews broadcast on Wednesday that Putin deploying any foreign forces in the Ukraine conflict would inevitably lead to an escalation, possibly involving Nato troops. Lukashenko claimed it was “rubbish” that North Korean troops were going to fight in Ukraine: “Knowing his character Putin would never try to persuade another country to involve its army in Russia’s special operation in Ukraine … [it] would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict if the armed forces of any country, even Belarus, were on the contact line.” That would prompt Ukraine’s allies to point to foreign involvement “so Nato troops would be deployed to Ukraine”.
Ukrainian authorities have announced the mandatory evacuation of children and their families from Borova in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv, where Russian forces have been making advances. The governor of the Donetsk region earlier said all children had been removed from the frontline town of Myrnograd and just several dozen remained in the nearby transport hub of Pokrovsk – the main target of Russian advances. Authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed alongside Donetsk and two others, said two men aged 40 and 73 had been killed in a drone attack.
The Biden administration is trying to provide Ukraine with US$10bn in military aid as part of its $20bn commitment under a $50bn loan coordinated with the G7 and EU, the White House National Security Council said on Wednesday. Joe Biden, the US president, said: “We will provide $20bn in loans to Ukraine that will be paid back by the interest earned from immobilised Russian sovereign assets. Make no mistake: Russia will not prevail in this conflict … tyrants will be responsible for the damages they cause”. The US plans to disperse $10bn by December as economic aid, but needs US lawmakers’ approval for a further $10bn, the White House national security council has said on Wednesday.
Romania scrambled two F-16 fighter jets after detecting what were probably two drones breaching its national airspace, the Romanian defence ministry said late on Wednesday. It was the third such incident in less than a week. Two signals were picked up by radar less than one hour apart flying above the south-eastern counties of Constanta and Tulcea, the latter bordering Ukraine across the Danube River. The pilots did not see either drone before losing the signals, the ministry said.
