Russia-Ukraine war live: number of civilians killed ‘considerably higher’ than 6,884 known, says UN

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Russia retaliated on Tuesday against a price cap on its oil imposed by Western countries, while its forces were involved in heavy fighting around the bombed-out ghost town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Despite an intensification in the fighting the frontline in eastern Ukraine remains little changed, with neither side making any major advances, said Britain’s Ministry of Defence and Ukraine military analysts.

Moscow will ban oil sales to countries that abide by the price cap that was imposed on 5 December, President Vladimir Putin decreed.

The price cap, unseen even in the times of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, is aimed at crippling Moscow’s military efforts in Ukraine – without upsetting markets by actually blocking Russian supply.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has released a count of the number of civilian casualties in Russia’s war on Ukraine so far, saying that 6,884 people are known to have died in Ukraine, including 429 children, between 24 February 2022 to 26 December 2022.

The agency says that the actual figure is likely to be “considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration.”

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments as they happen.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says that since the start of the war, at least 6,884 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, including 429 children. However, the agency believes that the actual figures are “considerably higher”.

We’ll have more on this story shortly.

In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has signed a decree that bans the supply of oil and oil products to nations participating in an imposed cap from 1 February 2023 for five months. The Group of Seven major powers, the European Union and Australia agreed this month to a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil effective from 5 December.

Ukrainian forces appear to have edged closer to recapturing the key-Russian controlled city of Kreminna in Luhansk province. The regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said fighters in part of the city controlled by Russian command were forced to retreat to Rubizhne, a town a few miles to the south-east, as a result of Ukrainian military pressure.

Heavy fighting continues in the east and south of the country amid no sign of imminent peace talks. Recapturing Kreminna and nearby Svatove could open the way for Kyiv to launch an offensive on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, two cities Ukraine lost in the summer. The Guardian could not independently confirm the battlefield developments.

Russian troops continued to focus their efforts on capturing the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, Britain’s defence ministry said in its daily military briefing on Tuesday.

Russia’s military has moved many of its warplanes from Engels airbase to other locations after strikes on the crucial airbase, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force. Three Russian servicemen were killed on Monday after a Ukrainian drone attack on the airbase, which lies deep inside Russian territory, according to Russia’s defence ministry.

Putin’s comments that he was “ready to negotiate with all parties” involved in the conflict in Ukraine are part of a deliberate information campaign aimed at misleading the west into making concessions, according to analysts. The US thinktank Institute for the Study of War said the Russian president did not offer to negotiate with Ukraine on Saturday, contrary to some reporting.

The bodies of 42 Ukrainian servicemen who died while fighting have been returned to Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian government. Work on bringing back the bodies of Ukraine’s fighters “does not stop for a day”, Oleh Kotenko, the commissioner for missing persons, said.

Vladimir Putin met his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, twice in the past 24 hours to “finalise many issues”, Belarusian state-owned Belta news agency reported. The meetings took place in St Petersburg, over breakfast on Tuesday at the Russian Museum, as well as at an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) yesterday evening, it reported.

A Russian sausage tycoon who reportedly criticised the war in Ukraine has died after falling from the third-floor window of a luxury hotel in India. The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was discovered just two days after his friend and another local Russian politician, Vladimir Bidenov, was found dead in the same hotel after an apparent heart attack.