Russia-Ukraine war live: Germany says Kremlin’s claim it is planning war with Russia is ‘absurd’

Germany says Kremlin's claim it is planning war with Russia is 'absurd'

Kate Connolly

Germany’s ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry on Monday in order to explain the leaked discussion between senior military personnel about sending weapons to Ukraine.

Alexander Graf Lamsdorff arrived at the foreign ministry without responding to journalists’ requests for comment, according to reports on Russian news agencies.

Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, has accused Russia of waging “an information war” against Germany, by intercepting and then leaking a sensitive meeting among high-level military officers of the German military or Bundeswehr.

Russia has accused Germany, backed by its allies, of planning an all-out war on Russia.

Boris Pistorius gives a statement at the defence ministry in Berlin after alleged leaks of secret Ukraine war talks. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the leaked discussions showed that the appetite for war in Europe “still remains very very high”, and the aim was to ensure “Russia’s strategic defeat on the battlefield”.

The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev commented that: “Germany is planning a war with Russia”.

Pistorius dismissed the reactions as: “completely absurd”, accusing Moscow of wanting to sow distrust and discord in Germany.

In the telephone conference, four officers, including the head of Germany’s air force, Ingo Gerhartz, prepare for a discussion with defence minister Pistorius about the possible deployment of Taurus missiles to Ukraine, coming to the conclusion that a speedy delivery and the use of the missiles in the immediate future would only be possible if German soldiers were involved.

Taurus training for Ukrainian soldiers in order to avoid putting German soldiers on Ukraine soil, was a possibility, but would take months of preparation. The officers also discussed the possibility of using the missiles to destroy the Russian-built bridge connecting the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula and Russia.

Last week, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, ruled out the sending of Taurus missiles because he said the operation would involve sending German troops to Ukraine. He said: “German soldiers can at no point and in no place be linked with the targets that this (Taurus) system reaches. Not even in Germany.”

As the German government struggles to deal with the fallout from the leak, with questions asked about the security of its internal communications and speculation over what other discussions Russia has been able to listen in on, defence policy experts said the intercepted communication was clearly meant to undermine Germany’s Ukraine strategy.

Roderich Kiesewette, the opposition Christian Democrats’ defence expert, said that Russia had leaked the meeting at this moment in time in order to specifically: “undermine a German Taurus delivery”. He suggested the leak was carried out “in order to divert public conversation away” from other issues, including the death of Alexei Navalny.

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Russia’s supreme court has upheld a ruling barring opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin from running in this month’s presidential election, Nadezhdin said.

Nadezhdin was barred from standing when the Central Election Commission said it had found irregularities, including names of dead people, in the list of supporters’ signatures he had presented in support of his candidacy.

Nobody expected Nadezhdin, a centre-right candidate who has called himself a “principled opponent” of the war, to win even if he was allowed to participate, given Vladimir Putin’s total dominance and control of the state.

But his campaign has captured people’s attention because of his outright opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin is set to secure another six-year term in the 15-17 March vote, which would keep him in the Kremlin until at least 2030.

Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and deputy chairman of its security council, said Ukraine belonged to Russia and tensions between Washington and Moscow were worse than during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the RIA news agency reported.

Medvedev said in a public lecture that American special forces and military advisers were already waging war against Russia, according to Reuters.

Kremlin says German army discussing plans to launch strikes on Russia

The Kremlin said a purported recording of German military discussions showed Germany’s armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory.

Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea, prompting officials in Moscow to demand an explanation.

On Saturday, Germany called it an apparent act of eavesdropping and said it was investigating.

“The recording itself says that within the Bundeswehr, plans to launch strikes on Russian territory are being discussed substantively and concretely. This does not require any legal interpretation. Everything here is more than obvious,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

“Here we have to find out whether the Bundeswehr is doing this on its own initiative. Then the question is: how controllable is the Bundeswehr and how much does Scholz control the situation? Or is it part of German government policy?” Peskov said.

“Both (scenarios) are very bad. Both once again emphasise the direct involvement of the countries of the collective west in the conflict around Ukraine.”

Germany is among the Nato countries that have supplied weaponry to Ukraine including tanks.

Russian attacks against Ukraine killed one person and injured 21 over the past day, according to regional authorities.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Russia targeted a total of nine Ukrainian oblasts – Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Kharkiv. Casualties were reported in the latter four regions.

A total of 16 people, including a 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, were injured in Kurakhove, Donetsk oblast, after Russian forces dropped a 500-kilogram guided missile on the roof of a residential building, Ukraine’s National Police said.

The attack damaged 15 apartment buildings, according to authorities.

Russia also hit the city of Pokrovsk with an Iskander-M missile, injuring three people, police said. Four multi-apartment buildings, 12 cars, and roads were damaged, the statement read.

One person was killed in Kherson oblast as a result of Russian attacks, said Oleksandr Prokudin, the regional governor.

Russian troops launched 10 strikes against multiple settlements in Kherson oblast, damaging around 16 houses, nine apartment buildings, and administrative buildings in Kherson, Prokudin noted.

In Kharkiv oblast, Russian troops shelled the city of Vovchansk and attacked the village of Velykyi Burluk with guided aerial bombs, according to governor Oleh Syniehubov. Five houses and a warehouse were damaged, he said.

A 60-year-old man sought medical help after a Russian attack on the villages of Kruhliakivka and Petropavlivka in the Kupiansk district, the governor reported.

A Russian artillery strike against Nikopol district in Dnipropetrovsk oblast injured a 51-year-old woman, governor Serhii Lysak said.

On the evening of 3 March, a Russian kamikaze drone attacked Nikopol, damaging the post office, a private house, and a car, according to the report.

The Kremlin said it had nothing to say about the funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which drew thousands of people to Moscow’s streets last week.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters the Kremlin had “nothing more to say on this subject” when asked about it.

Crowds of people chanted “Putin is a murderer” and “No to war” as they marched, under heavy police presence, to the Borisovsky cemetery where Navalny, 47, was lowered into the ground on Friday to the strains of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

Russian authorities claim Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died suddenly after a walk. His widow has accused Putin of murdering him.

Ukraine's military intelligence claims cyber-attack on Russian defence ministry

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency launched a cyber-attack attack against the servers of the Russian defence ministry, gaining access to “a bulk of classified service documents,” the agency said.

The main department of intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence wrote on Telegram:

Now the Ukrainian special service has the information protection and encryption software used by the morph, as well as an array of secret service documents of the Russian Ministry of War.

These are orders, reports, orders, reports and other documents that circulated between ＞2,000 structural units of the Russian military service.

The information obtained allows us to establish the complete structure of the system of the Russian Ministry of Defence and its units.

These claims are yet to be independently verified.

A railway bridge near the Russian city of Samara has been rocked by an explosion, the RIA news agency reported.

Located on the Volga river in Russia’s southwest, the Samara region is one of the country’s heavy industry hubs.

The incident, which happened around 6am, was reportedly caused by an explosive device.

The bridge and the adjacent railway connection were used by Russia to transport military cargo, according to the main department of intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence.

Russia has in recent months reported a series of attacks on its industrial and logistics infrastructure which it blamed on Ukraine.

No casualties have been reported, but traffic over the bridge has been suspended, the Russian Railways said, describing the incident as “illegal interference”. These claims are yet to be independently verified by the Guardian.

Newly enlarged Nato begins large-scale military drills in northern Europe

Nato will begin large-scale military drills on Monday – which will last nearly two weeks – to defend its newly expanded Nordic territory.

More than 20,000 soldiers from 14 countries will take part in the Norweigan-led Nordic Response 24 exercises in the northern regions of Finland, Norway and Sweden, with the participation of Finland as a Nato member for the first time.

The other participating nations in the exercise that runs through to 15 March reportedly include: Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the US.

“The exercise will demonstrate Nato’s operating capability, cohesion, and will to defend all of the Alliance’s area,” the Finnish military said in a statement.

“As Steadfast Defender 24 will be the most substantial training exercise of Nato in decades, its preparations and those of Nordic Response 24 have been underway now for a number of years already.”

Relations between Moscow and Helsinki deteriorated after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting Finland to drop decades of military non-alignment and join the western military alliance Nato in April 2023.

Russia, with which Finland shares an 830-mile (1,340km) border, swiftly warned of “countermeasures”.

With its bid now ratified by all Nato members, neighbouring Sweden is now finalising formalities to enter the military alliance as its 32nd member – most likely in March.

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for Ukraine’s western partners to summon the political will to provide Kyiv with the necessary military supplies or the world will face “one of the most shameful pages of history”. The Ukrainian president issued his appeal as a US package to provide military and other assistance remains blocked by disagreements in Congress. A clearly angry Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said the world had to “react firmly” to ensure that the war becomes a “hopeless” enterprise for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who wants only “war and death.” “The main thing is political will in order to realise this, to secure the level of supplies which will help,” he said. “If this is not the case, it will become one of the most shameful pages of history, if America or Europe loses to Iranian “Shaheds” [drones] or Russian fighter jets.”

Germany’s defence minister has accused Russia of conducting an “information war” aimed at creating divisions within the country, in his first comments after the publication of an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials. Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea, prompting officials in Moscow to demand an explanation.

The death toll from a Russian drone strike on an apartment building in Odesa on Saturday rose to 12, after rescue workers found another four bodies. Among the dead was an eight-year-old girl, discovered near the body of her older brother, who had been uncovered earlier, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. The dead also included a mother who was found holding her baby, as well as a toddler and a second baby.

Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling on residential areas in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. Ukraine’s interior ministry also reported one death and three people injured in the southern Kherson region on Sunday after Russian strikes.

People were still queueing up to place flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery on Sunday. The pile of floral tributes is growing despite state intimidation as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.

Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday. Fidan said: “A dialogue for a ceasefire [in Ukraine] should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation [by Russia], but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately.”

The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners, says it has taken two years to secure a meeting with the UK government, despite him being a British citizen. Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian jail and his wife, Evgenia, told the Observer she only met David Cameron on Friday.

Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that about 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.

Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.

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