Ukraine war live: Russia election begins as China responds to Putin’s nuclear warning

Portugal will contribute 100 million euros ($109 million) to a Czech-led initiative seeking to deliver ammunition to Ukraine from third nations, the country’s defence ministry said.

The ministry said the initiative aimed to quickly deliver the largest possible quantity of ammunition of various calibres, particularly 155 milimetres.

“The use of these munitions on the battlefield has reached extremely high levels, which makes it vital and urgent for Ukraine to obtain additional munitions to respond to Russia’s continued and more intense attacks,” it said in a statement late on Thursday.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that Ukraine was running out of ammunition in its war against Russia’s invasion and that the allies were not doing enough to help Kyiv.

Ammunition supplies have become a critical issue for Ukraine as fighting against Russia’s invasion has entered its third year, descending into grinding artillery battles.

Voters in Russia are heading to the polls in a sham presidential election widely expected to deliver Vladimir Putin at least another six years in office.

The stage-managed vote, which will also take place in parts of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces, will see citizens choose between four candidates – including Putin – between 15 and 17 March.

People were seen casting their ballots at polling stations in Moscow and occupied Ukraine.

The leaders of Germany, France and Poland plan to meet in Berlin Friday to discuss support for Ukraine, seeking to send a signal of unity and solidarity as Kyiv grapples with a shortage of military resources and Russia votes in an election all but certain to extend president Vladimir Putin’s reign.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz is welcoming French president Emmanuel Macron and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk for a summit of the so-called “Weimar Triangle” of the three major European powers, a format that they are trying to revitalize after relations were strained under Poland’s previous nationalist government.

Kyiv’s forces are hoping for more military supplies from Ukraine’s Western partners, but in the meantime, they are struggling against a bigger and better-provisioned Russian army that is pressing hard at some front-line points in Ukraine. The European Union’s plans to produce 1 million artillery rounds for Ukraine have fallen well short, while aid for Ukraine is being being held up in the United States by political differences.

“We must do everything we can to organize as much support as possible for Ukraine,” Scholz said on Wednesday, pointing to the “very practical question of whether there is enough ammunition, whether there is enough artillery, whether there is enough air defense — many things that play a major role.”

Ukrainians living in regions illegally annexed by Russia are being coerced to vote in the presidential election of their wartime occupier, Vladimir Putin — an exercise denounced by Ukraine as an illegitimate effort by Moscow to tighten control over its neighbor.

Polls are open in four annexed regions of Ukraine close to the front line, some of which are not fully in Putin’s control.

Vladimir Putin is poised to sweep to another six-year term in this week’s presidential election, even though Russians are dying in Ukraine in a war grinding through its third year and his country is more isolated than ever from the rest of the world.

The all-but-certain outcome comes through his rigid control of Russia established during his 24 years in power — the longest Kremlin tenure since Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Sergei Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, said on Friday that French president Emmanuel Macron’s remarks about the possibility of sending soldiers from Nato countries to Ukraine were “crazy and paranoid dreams”.

In an address to his nation earlier this week, Mr Macron doubled down on his position of not ruling out sending Nato troops to Ukraine.

Explaining why, he said: “If Russia were to win, the lives of French people would change. We would no longer have security in Europe.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday that a Russian national had been detained in Moscow on suspicion of treason and had confessed to assembling and launching drones on behalf of Ukraine.

In a statement, the FSB said that the man, whom it did not name, had “assembled and launched unmanned aerial vehicles to create false targets in the immediate vicinity of Russian Defense Ministry facilities.”

The Interfax news agency cited a video released by the FSB as saying that the man had worked for the Freedom of Russia Legion, a group of armed pro-Ukrainian Russian exiles.

In recent months, Kyiv has stepped up strikes against economic targets inside Russia, hitting a string of oil refineries and metal plants.

Two people were killed after Russia unleashed its second overnight mass drone attack on Ukraine in two days, authorities in Ukraine said on Friday.

Kyiv’s air force said all 27 Iranian-made drones had been shot down by air defences over seven regions across the country, including around the capital.

Two people were killed in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia when a residential building was damaged in the strike, according to the regional governor.

The air force also said Russian forces had fired eight missiles in eastern and central Ukraine, but offered no further details.

Friday’s attack follows a overnight drone strike on Thursday during which Russian forces targeted civilian infrastructure in northeastern Ukraine.

That attack knocked out television and radio signals in five cities and towns, in an apparent attempt to cut people off from information, officials in Kyiv said.

Russia has carried out regular air strikes on population centres far behind the lines of its two-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

China has slapped down Vladimir Putin after the Russian president said that he was ready for nuclear war.

Beijing said nuclear powers should “jointly seek de-escalation” after Putin said on Tuesday that his country was “ready” from a “military-technical point of view”.

But China’s foreign ministry spokesman stressed that a nuclear war “cannot be won and must never be fought”.

“China believes that all nuclear weapon states need to embrace the idea of common security and uphold global strategic balance and stability,” Wang Wenbin said.

“Under the current circumstances, parties need to take concrete actions and jointly seek de-escalation,” he added.