Russia-Ukraine war live: Britain ‘prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets’ – as it happened | Ukraine | The Guardian

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that he would discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and that talks with other Russian authorities had been “tense”, Russian news agencies reported.

State news agency RIA cited Grossi has saying that he had been able to assess the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, Reuters reports.

Grossi is visiting Russia, and is due to meet Putin in the southern city of Sochi. He has held talks with Russia’s state nuclear energy company, its defence ministry, and foreign ministry.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that international criminal court arrest warrants issued for two of its commanders in Ukraine had no significance for Russia, and was a “provocation”.

In separate news, she said that Moscow had never wanted conflict with Nato, the US, or Ukraine, but that threats made against it would not go unanswered, Reuters reports.

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency is responsible for an attack on the Mikhailovsky iron ore plant in Russia’s Kursk region, a source in GUR told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Russian officials and the plant’s owner, Metalloinvest, said earlier that two drones had struck a fuel tank at the enterprise, one of Russia’s largest iron ore plants.

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, called on Russians to join an election day protest at noon on 17 March to vote against president Vladimir Putin or spoil their ballots, Reuters reports.

Britain 'prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets in UK'

Britain is prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets in the UK on the basis that Russia will be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine at the end of the war, the UK foreign secretary David Cameron has said.

He said the assets would be used as surety for the payment of the reparations.

The plan is more radical than proposals discussed in the European Union for Ukraine to be given only the windfall profits from the Russian central bank assets being held by the West. The annual windfall profits are estimated at $4bn.

Cameron told peers on Tuesday night:

There is an opportunity to use something like a syndicated loan or a bond that effectively uses the frozen Russian assets as a surety to give that money to the Ukrianians knowing that we will recoup it when reparations are paid by Russia. That may be a better way of doing it. We are aiming for the maximum amount of G7 and EU unity on this but if we cannot get it I think we will have to move ahead with allies that want to take this action.

Cameron said he did not think the bond plan would undermine the reputation of the City of London in any way.

It is the first time Cameron has spoken about the proposal openly in such detail, and probably underscores the political support the plan has in the US, but not the EU.

The plan would be especially helpful to Ukraine if the US Congress continues to block an extension of aid to Ukraine since it would provide Ukraine with a new source of funds to buy armaments, and fund its budget deficit.

The G7 has been debating for over a year whether the Russian central bank assets frozen at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine could also be seized without undermining faith in the international financial system.

The EU estimates around €260bn in Central Bank of Russia assets have been immobilised in the form of securities and cash in the jurisdictions of the G7 partners, the EU and Australia, with more than two-thirds of those immobilised in the EU.

Belgium is thought to have control of as much as 190bn of the assets, housed in its Euro clear financial clearing house, and is the most reluctant to follow the kind of radical plan set out by Cameron. It says it is already facing a series of court cases mainly in Russia, and its stance has the backing of France and Germany.

The US Treasury, initially reluctant to seize Central Bank assets due to the assumed sanctity of sovereign state assets, has warmed to the idea of a bond. The US is estimated to have $40 to $60bn worth of Russian assets, and the UK closer to £25bn, but no official figure has been disclosed.

The strength of the proposal is that seized assets would be deemed to have been returned to Russia after the payment of reparations. The proposal’s weakness is that it assumes Ukraine will win a military victory and a defeated Moscow will be prepared to pay reparations for the damage it caused to Ukraine, something that now seems unimaginable.

Vladimir Putin has already retaliated by seizing the assets of some US companies operating in Russia.

It is estimated Ukraine needs €100bn a year to fight off the Russian invasion, and another €50bn a year for reconstruction.

Similar appropriations of state assets have happened before, most notably the UN-sanctioned US seizure of billions of dollars of Iraqi funds that were earmarked for reparations for Kuwait in the after the 1990 invasion. Russia would veto any UN move to endorse seizure of its assets

The foreign secretary said he did not think the Russian President Vladimir Putin would stop at Ukraine, saying“ if we allowed Russian any form of win in Ukraine Moldova would be at risk and some of the Baltic states would be at risk.”

Russia does not recognise the arrests warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) for two Russian commanders, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

The Kremlin said Russia was not party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC – and that the process at the court was closed, Reuters reports.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sergei Kobylash and Viktor Sokolov for suspected war crimes in Ukraine, saying there were reasonable grounds to believe that the two were responsible for “missile strikes carried out by the forces under their command against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023”.

Russian president Vladimir Putin will meet International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi today in the southern Russian city of Sochi, the Kremlin said.

After the first attack on the iron ore plant in Russia, Metalloinvest said in a statement:

Today, as a result of a drone attack in the Zheleznogorsky district, a fuel tank at the fuel and lubricants warehouse of the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant caught fire.

There were no casualties. The necessary measures are currently being taken to extinguish the fire.

A second Ukrainian drone struck the Mikhailovsky GOK iron ore refinery in Russia’s Kursk region, shortly after an earlier attack at the plant, regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram.

He said there were no casualties from either of the strikes, according to Reuters.

This comes as a Ukrainian drone struck a fuel tank at one of Russia’s largest iron ore plants, though no one was injured and the plant was working as normal, Russian officials and the owner of the plant said.

Unverified video footage on Russian Telegram channels showed plumes of black smoke soaring into the sky in the Kursk region and damage at the Mikhailovsky GOK iron ore plant which is owned by Metalloinvest, Russia’s largest iron ore producer.

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of the latest developments to start with:

Emmanuel Macron has urged Ukraine’s allies not to be “cowards” in supporting its fight against the Russian invasion. He “fully stood behind” remarks made last week not ruling out the deployment of western troops.

“We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards,” the French president said on a visit to the Czech Republic.

• Speaking after meeting his Czech counterpart, Petr Pavel, Macron asked: “Is this or is it not our war? Can we look away in the belief that we can let things run their course? I don’t believe so, and therefore I called for a strategic surge and I fully stand behind that … We want no escalation, we’ve never been belligerent.”

• Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Macron’s quotes were not helpful. “We don’t need really, from my perspective at least, discussions about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.”

• Pavel, a former Nato general, said the west would not cross “the imaginary red line” by getting involved in combat operations but suggested Nato countries could, for instance, train Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine, which would be “no violation of international rules”.

• Macron met Pavel to discuss the Czech plan to buy ammunition for Ukraine outside Europe. Macron said France backed the plan and also supported using earnings from frozen Russian assets in Europe to fund Ukraine’s defence while not touching the capital.

• Ukraine has sunk a Russian warship near the Kerch strait in occupied Crimea in a further blow to Moscow’s naval power and its control over the Black Sea. Kyiv’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, said it attacked the Sergei Kotov on Tuesday using naval drones. The vessel, which was on patrol, suffered damage to the stern, right and left sides, then sank, said the HUR.

• The international criminal court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian military figures deemed responsible for missile attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023. They are for Lt Gen Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash of the Russian armed forces and Adm Viktor Kinolayevich Sokolov of the Russian navy.

• David Slater, the former US air force employee charged with sharing classified Ukraine war information on a foreign dating website, has pleaded not guilty at a court appearance in Omaha, Nebraska.

• The European Commission has proposed a new €1.5bn defence industry programme, which would be financed from the EU budget for the period between 2025 and 2027. The new programme calls on the 27 EU member states to procure at least 40% of their defence equipment collectively by 2030.

• Ukrainian authorities are pressing up to 10 EU member states to allow the extradition of criminals to Ukraine including suspects involved with the Wagner group and those accused of large-scale corruption.

• Russia has strengthened its military forces in its north and west to counter what the government perceives as a buildup of Nato forces, its defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said. In response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Finland has joined Nato and Sweden is on the point of doing so. Nato is this week conducting a military exercise called Nordic Response 2024 which it says will involve more than 20,000 soldiers in Norway, Finland and Sweden and will focus on collective defence.