Russia-Ukraine war live: Poland’s decision to send warplanes puts pressure on Kyiv’s allies | Ukraine

The White House said Thursday that talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be a “good thing,” but warned Beijing against taking a “one-sided” view of the conflict.

“We think it would be a very good thing if the two of them talk,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters when asked about a Wall Street Journal report that the Ukrainian leader is set to talk with Xi for the first time since Chinese-ally Russia invaded.

“We support and have supported” contact, Kirby said. But he cautioned against a Chinese push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, saying it would simply help Russian aggression.

There has been no confirmation of a call to Zelensky by Xi. However, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba talked by phone Thursday.

Xi is also reported to be preparing a trip to Moscow to speak with his ally President Vladimir Putin.

Kirby said the United States has not confirmed that a Putin-Xi summit will take place but urged Beijing to avoid seeking a resolution to the war that would “reflect only the Russian perspective.”

He said China’s highlighting of the need for a ceasefire “sounds perfectly reasonable,” but would effectively “ratify Russia’s conquest.”

“It would, in effect, recognize Russia’s gains” and “constitute another, continued violation of the UN Charter,” he said.

Russian forces occupying swaths of Ukraine are currently under intense pressure from Western-armed Ukrainian troops.

A ceasefire would allow Moscow to “further entrench its positions in Ukraine, to rebuild their forces… and retrain them so that they can restart attacks at a time of their choosing,” Kirby said.

A durable peace “can’t be one-sided and it has to absolutely include and be informed by Ukrainian perspectives and Ukrainian decisions,” he said.

Western nations are debating whether to send fighter jets to Ukraine, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Danish TV2 on Thursday.

“This is something we’re discussing in the group of allied countries. It’s a big wish from Ukraine,” she said.

Denmark is “open” to the idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine to help its war effort against the Russian invasion, the Danish defence minister said on Friday, according to state broadcaster DR.

“I won’t rule out that at some point it may be necessary to look at the contribution of fighter jets,” acting Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said.

The Danish air force has purchased 77 F-16 jets since the 1970s, according to the armed forces. Around 30 of them are currently in operation, according to local media reports.

Poland’s president said Thursday that his country plans to give Ukraine around a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets, which would make it the first Nato member to fulfill the Ukrainian government’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes.

President Andrzej Duda said Poland would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes “within the next few days” and that the rest needed servicing and would be supplied later. The Polish word he used to describe the total number can mean between 11 and 19.

Poland was also the first Nato nation to provide Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks. On Wednesday, Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said some other countries also had pledged MiGs to Kyiv, but did not name them. Both Poland and Slovakia had indicated they were ready to hand over their planes, but only as part of a wider international coalition doing the same.

Germany appeared caught off guard by Duda’s announcement.

“So far, everyone has agreed that it’s not the time to send fighter jets,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters. “I don’t have any confirmation from Poland yet that this has happened.”

The White House called Poland’s providing Ukraine fighter jets a sovereign decision and lauded the Poles for continuing to “punch above their weight” in assisting Kyiv.

But the US administration stressed that Poland’s move would have no bearing on President Joe Biden, who has resisted calls to provide US F-16s to Ukraine.

“There’s no change in our view with respect to fighter aircraft at this time,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “That is our sovereign decision. That is where we are, other nations can speak to their own” decisions.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.

Our top story this morning: Poland’s announcement that it will be sending four warplanes to Ukraine in the coming days, making it the first country to do so, puts pressure on the allies to supply Ukraine with fighter jets. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Danish TV2 on Thursday that western nations are debating whether to send fighter jets to Ukraine. But German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “So far, everyone has agreed that it’s not the time to send fighter jets,”.

Poland’s decision to give Ukraine the MiG-29 fighter jets was a “sovereign decision”, the White House said, and would not prompt Joe Biden to supply Kyiv with American F-16 aircraft.

Poland was the first NATO nation to provide Ukraine with German-made Leopard 2 tanks.

We’ll have more on this shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:

• Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published on Thursday. The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Mariupol which killed hundreds of people. Its head said the team was following the evidence and that there were “some aspects which may raise questions” about possible genocide. Russia dismissed the report.

• The Pentagon released a video showing the moments before a Russian fighter crashed into a US Reaper drone after spraying it with jet fuel on Tuesday morning over the Black Sea. The declassified footage shows an Su-27 Flanker jet making two exceptionally close passes of the un-crewed drone, spraying fuel in front of it, a harassment tactic that US experts say has not been seen before.

• The Kremlin said a decision on whether to retrieve the downed US Reaper drone from the Black Sea would come from the Russian military. “If they deem it necessary to do that in the Black Sea for our interests and for our security, they will deal with that,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

• Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, told state-owned news agency Tass that he did not see any signs Ukraine was withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying on Thursday: “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult – that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units.”

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he and senior Chinese diplomat Qin Gang had discussed the “significance of the principle of territorial integrity” during a phone call today. “I underscored the importance of [Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s] peace formula for ending the aggression and restoring just peace in Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

• Qin told Kuleba that China “hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.

• The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, is expected to visit the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow as soon as next week, and to subsequently hold a virtual meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

• Polish authorities say they have detained nine members of a Russian spy ring who they say were gathering intelligence on weapons supplies to Ukraine and making plans to sabotage the deliveries. Six people have been charged with preparing acts of sabotage and espionage, and charges are being prepared against the other three.

• The UN called for a 120-day renewal of a deal allowing the safe export of grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports ahead of a deadline later this week. In response to remarks by UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the deal “is being extended for 60 days”.

• Vladimir Putin has told his country’s leading billionaires that Russia is facing a “sanctions war”. In an address to Russia’s business elite, the president urged them to invest in new technology, production facilities and enterprises to help Russia overcome what he said were western attempts to destroy its economy.