Russia-Ukraine war live: Fighting intensifying around Avdiivka, officials say, as Russia launches biggest offensive in months | Ukraine

Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:

• Russian forces have continued to pummel the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka from the ground and air on Friday, the fourth day of intense fighting in the biggest offensive by Russian forces in months. Ukraine said its forces were holding their ground but Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said the town was under constant attack from air, artillery and large numbers of troops.

• Video posted on social media by Maskym Zhorin, a Ukrainian military commander, showed smoke pouring from the shells of shattered, abandoned apartment buildings in the eastern town of Avdiivka. Empty streets were littered with rubble and smashed installations

• Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary for energy resources said Russia would never again be viewed as a reliable energy supplier, a day after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow because of its war in Ukraine. Speaking at an online briefing ahead of next week’s US-Japan Energy Security Dialogue, Pyatt also said the United States and its partners in the Group of 7 were committed to denying Russia any energy revenues

• Norway, Europe’s largest gas supplier, is closely monitoring the progress of a probe into unexplained damage on a Baltic Sea gas pipeline, having already stepped up security at its energy installations after the Nord Stream blasts last year.

• Finland said it could not exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday the US would support Finland and Estonia as they probed the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline and parallel Estlink telecommunications cable between the two countries.

• The International Olympic Committee on Thursday suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for recognising regional organisations from four territories annexed from Ukraine. Russia’s National Olympic Committee denounced the decision, calling it counterproductive and politically motivated.

• Ukraine claims it has thwarted an attempt overnight by a Russian saboteur group to cross its north-eastern border in the Sumy region, Serhiy Naev, commander of the joint forces of the armed forces of Ukraine, said on Thursday. “The saboteurs tried to cross the state border of Ukraine and intended to move further towards one of the civilian critical infrastructure facilities,” he wrote on Telegram. The eight-member group was repelled by Ukrainian fire, he said.

• Russia expects its military and defence cooperation with Kyrgyzstan to expand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin said during a visit to a Russian airbase near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in his first trip outside Russia since the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

• French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning of an exiled Russian journalist who staged a high-profile protest against the war in Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up a placard reading “Stop the war” on Russian television last year, became unwell after opening the door to her apartment in Paris and finding a powdered substance, AFP reported.

• The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday recognised the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a “genocide”. The text on the 1932-33 “Holodomor” was voted through almost unanimously with 73 votes in favour and one against at the meeting in Strasbourg, which followed a similar resolution approved by the European Parliament in December.

• Romanian authorities said Thursday they had found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine on to a Nato member country.

• US military officials displayed what they said were pieces of Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine to UN member states on Thursday – evidence, according to the Pentagon, of growing ties between Iran and Russia. Tehran has denied western accusations that it is supplying Russia with large quantities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), some armed, to use in its invasion of Ukraine.

• The UN human rights council on Thursday extended the mandate of its rapporteur on rights violations in Russia by a year, in a second diplomatic defeat for Moscow in three days. The UN’s top rights body adopted a resolution brought by several European countries to prolong Bulgarian human rights expert Mariana Katzarova for another year by 18 votes to seven.

• Khaybar Akifi, a journalist, was severely wounded in a drone attack that killed his four-year-old daughter and his wife’s parents in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, several media officials said. The head of state television channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, said Akifi was in a coma.

Charlotte Higgins

My colleague Charlotte Higgins in Kharkiv has this report on the Kharkiv opera house and how its company of performers continues to perform, often for troops and volunteers, in war-torn city on the Ukraine frontline.

On 1 March last year, during a ferocious bombing campaign against the city, Russia hit Kharkiv’s main Svobody (Freedom) Square, severely damaging the city hall. Buildings for blocks around were affected – including the opera house. As the bombings continued over the following days and weeks, it had many of its windows blown out, was mauled by shrapnel, and hit by debris from intercepted missiles.

Ukraine successfully defended Kharkiv. But missile strikes, though less intense than during those first spring months of 2022, continue almost daily in Ukraine’s second city, with air raid alarms frequent and visits to bomb shelters routine for residents.

Unlike Kyiv, Kharkiv is not protected by a Patriot air defence system capable of shooting down missiles as they approach. Duhinov was speaking two days after two S300 missiles exploded in the city at about 11pm, and the day before a major attack in which six hit the southern suburbs just after 5.30am. And in early October, the Russians hit the city centre, a few blocks from the opera house, killing a 10-year-old boy and his grandmother.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, much of the opera house’s company was evacuated, said Duhinov. Ballet dancers, opera singers and orchestral musicians, plus backstage staff – about 250 people in total – got out to Lithuania. They have been touring ever since, in Slovakia, Italy, France, Belgium and Moldova, earning as much income as they can.

In Kharkiv, a tiny handful of the company is in situ: 20 musicians, 16 chorus members, four dancers and nine operatic soloists. Ten of the company are serving in the army. One member of the technical department has been killed on the frontline.

In this, the 148th season of the company, the tiny core of remaining artists is battling on in Kharkiv to bring live music, song and dance to the city – it is “the only company that’s working and bringing concerts to Kharkiv”, said Duhinov.

“Our mission No 1 is to preserve the company and the theatre,” he said. “If the artists don’t work they lose their skills. They are like athletes – they need to keep in training.”

Read the full story here:

Norway, Europe’s largest gas supplier, is closely monitoring the progress of a probe into unexplained damage on a Baltic Sea gas pipeline, having already stepped up security at its energy installations after the Nord Stream blasts last year.

Sunday’s incident in the Gulf of Finland, when a pipeline and a data cable were damaged due to “outside activity” according to Finnish authorities, has stoked concerns about the security of energy supply in the wider Nordic region, Reuters reports.

Norway exported more than 120 billion cubic metres of gas in 2022 to the European Union and Britain, mainly via a system of 22 pipelines spreading over more than 8,800 km (5,470 miles).

A spokesperson for Gassco, which operates Norway’s gas pipeline network, said:

We are now in close dialogue with the relevant security authorities and are following the situation closely to assess relevant security measures.

There have been no reported incidents in Norway, the spokesperson added.

On Wednesday, Norwegian police said it had increased patrols around onshore installations on the west coast, which include the Mongstad oil terminal and two gas processing plants, Kollsnes and Kaarstoe.

“The security level has been raised since the events of last year, and still is,” said a spokesperson for oil lobby group Offshore Norge, referring to the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.

Still, the undersea infrastructure is so vast it is very difficult to protect.

On Thursday, after a two-day Nato meeting during which the Baltic Sea incident was discussed, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said:

We speak about thousands of kilometres of cables or pipelines.

Of course there is no way to have military presence along all these pipelines and infrastructure all the time.

Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary for energy resources said Russia would never again be viewed as a reliable energy supplier, a day after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow because of its war in Ukraine.

Speaking at an online briefing ahead of next week’s US-Japan Energy Security Dialogue, Pyatt also said the United States and its partners in the Group of 7 were committed to denying Russia any energy revenues, Reuters reports.

The US on Thursday imposed the first sanctions on owners of tankers carrying Russian oil priced above the G7’s price cap of $60 a barrel, in an effort to close loopholes in the mechanism.

Pyatt told reporters:

It’s very clear to me that Russia is never again going to be viewed as a reliable energy supplier.

In the case of our G7 partners in particular, we are also committed to work jointly to deny Russia future energy revenues, and target in particular investments and projects growing Russia’s future energy revenue.

Russia has played down the impact of Western sanctions, saying they are used by the United States to eliminate Moscow as a competitor in global energy supplies.

Asked about purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by some Asian countries, Pyatt said that unlike oil, gas exports were not covered by Western sanctions “so this is a matter of how different countries accommodate their energy mix and seek to reduce their exposure to Russia, to Russian supplies”.

Video posted on social media by Maskym Zhorin, a Ukrainian military commander, showed smoke pouring from the shells of shattered, abandoned apartment buildings in the eastern town of Avdiivka. Empty streets were littered with rubble and smashed installations, Reuters reports.

Kyiv says Moscow has redirected many soldiers and large amounts of equipment to the Avdiivka area, showing it can hit back over four months into a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south that has encountered stiff Russian resistance.

Ukrainian special operations forces said Kyiv’s troops had “foiled the plans of the crazed enemy, repelled all attacks and held their positions”.

Avdiivka, which is home to a big coking plant in the south-west of the Donetsk region and lies just northwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk, has become a symbol of resistance, holding out against Russian troops who invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and helping ensure Moscow has been unable to gain full control of the region even though it says it has annexed it.

Ukrainian forces had been defending Avdiivka since long before last year’s invasion, holding the line against Russian-backed militants who took control of territory in east Ukraine in 2014 after Russian forces seized Crimea. Just over 1,600 residents of a pre-war population of 32,000 remain, but shelling ruled out a mass evacuation, Barabash said.

The attack on Avdiivka is one of the few big offensives Moscow has launched in months as its troops focus on holding back Kyiv’s counteroffensive, which has made slow progress through vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified trenches.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in areas including Avdiivka but gave few details.

Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern group of forces, said Russia saw Avdiivka as an opportunity to win a significant victory and “turn the tide of fighting”.

He said:

Today the capture or encirclement of Avdiivka is probably the most it can achieve at this stage.

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

Fierce fighting has been reported around the eastern town of Avdiivka after Moscow launched one of its biggest military offensives in months this week.

On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces were holding their ground on the third day of battle, but municipal officials said the Russian attacks were relentless.

Ukrainian officials described scenes of destruction in and around the town amid round-the-clock Russian attacks. “Everything is so difficult and tense. For three days, there as been no letup in battles, day or night,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of the city’s military administration, told Espreso TV.

“The enemy is using all available means: artillery, grad (missile launchers), mortars and everything else. We are not talking about isolated strikes. No one counts them any longer. This is endless shelling.”

Avdiivka has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, holding out against Russian troops who invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and helping ensure Moscow has been unable to gain full control of the region even though it says it has annexed it.

In other key developments:

• Finland said it could not exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday the US would support Finland and Estonia as they probed the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline and parallel Estlink telecommunications cable between the two countries.

• The International Olympic Committee on Thursday suspended the Russian Olympic Committee for recognising regional organisations from four territories annexed from Ukraine. Russia’s National Olympic Committee denounced the decision, calling it counterproductive and politically motivated.

• Ukraine claims it has thwarted an attempt overnight by a Russian saboteur group to cross its north-eastern border in the Sumy region, Serhiy Naev, commander of the joint forces of the armed forces of Ukraine, said on Thursday. “The saboteurs tried to cross the state border of Ukraine and intended to move further towards one of the civilian critical infrastructure facilities,” he wrote on Telegram. The eight-member group was repelled by Ukrainian fire, he said.

• Russia expects its military and defence cooperation with Kyrgyzstan to expand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin said during a visit to a Russian airbase near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in his first trip outside Russia since the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

• French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning of an exiled Russian journalist who staged a high-profile protest against the war in Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up a placard reading “Stop the war” on Russian television last year, became unwell after opening the door to her apartment in Paris and finding a powdered substance, AFP reported.

• The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday recognised the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin a “genocide”. The text on the 1932-33 “Holodomor” was voted through almost unanimously with 73 votes in favour and one against at the meeting in Strasbourg, which followed a similar resolution approved by the European Parliament in December.

• Romanian authorities said Thursday they had found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine on to a Nato member country.

• US military officials displayed what they said were pieces of Iranian drones recovered in Ukraine to UN member states on Thursday – evidence, according to the Pentagon, of growing ties between Iran and Russia. Tehran has denied western accusations that it is supplying Russia with large quantities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), some armed, to use in its invasion of Ukraine.

• The UN human rights council on Thursday extended the mandate of its rapporteur on rights violations in Russia by a year, in a second diplomatic defeat for Moscow in three days. The UN’s top rights body adopted a resolution brought by several European countries to prolong Bulgarian human rights expert Mariana Katzarova for another year by 18 votes to seven.

• Khaybar Akifi, a journalist, was severely wounded in a drone attack that killed his four-year-old daughter and his wife’s parents in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, several media officials said. The head of state television channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, said Akifi was in a coma.