Russia-Ukraine war live: newly enlarged Nato begins large-scale military drills in northern Europe | Ukraine

The Kremlin said a purported recording of German military discussions showed Germany’s armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory.

Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea, prompting officials in Moscow to demand an explanation.

On Saturday, Germany called it an apparent act of eavesdropping and said it was investigating.

“The recording itself says that within the Bundeswehr, plans to launch strikes on Russian territory are being discussed substantively and concretely. This does not require any legal interpretation. Everything here is more than obvious,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

“Here we have to find out whether the Bundeswehr is doing this on its own initiative. Then the question is: how controllable is the Bundeswehr and how much does Scholz control the situation? Or is it part of German government policy?” Peskov said.

“Both (scenarios) are very bad. Both once again emphasise the direct involvement of the countries of the collective west in the conflict around Ukraine.”

Germany is among the Nato countries that have supplied weaponry to Ukraine including tanks.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency launched a cyber-attack attack against the servers of the Russian defence ministry, gaining access to “a bulk of classified service documents,” the agency said.

The main department of intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence wrote on Telegram:

Now the Ukrainian special service has the information protection and encryption software used by the morph, as well as an array of secret service documents of the Russian Ministry of War.

These are orders, reports, orders, reports and other documents that circulated between ＞2,000 structural units of the Russian military service.

The information obtained allows us to establish the complete structure of the system of the Russian Ministry of Defence and its units.

These claims are yet to be independently verified.

Nato will begin large-scale military drills on Monday – which will last nearly two weeks – to defend its newly expanded Nordic territory.

More than 20,000 soldiers from 14 countries will take part in the Norweigan-led Nordic Response 24 exercises in the northern regions of Finland, Norway and Sweden, with the participation of Finland as a Nato member for the first time.

The other participating nations in the exercise that runs through to 15 March reportedly include: Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the US.

“The exercise will demonstrate Nato’s operating capability, cohesion, and will to defend all of the Alliance’s area,” the Finnish military said in a statement.

“As Steadfast Defender 24 will be the most substantial training exercise of Nato in decades, its preparations and those of Nordic Response 24 have been underway now for a number of years already.”

Relations between Moscow and Helsinki deteriorated after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting Finland to drop decades of military non-alignment and join the western military alliance Nato in April 2023.

Russia, with which Finland shares an 830-mile (1,340km) border, swiftly warned of “countermeasures”.

With its bid now ratified by all Nato members, neighbouring Sweden is now finalising formalities to enter the military alliance as its 32nd member – most likely in March.

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

Nato will start an exercise on Monday to defend its newly expanded Nordic territory when more than 20,000 soldiers from 14 countries take part in drills lasting nearly two weeks in the northern regions of Finland, Norway and Sweden.

With over 4,000 Finnish soldiers taking part, the Norway-led Nordic Response 2024 are part of the largest Nato military exercises in decades, called Steadfast Defender 24.

“For the first time, Finland will participate as a Nato member nation in exercising collective defense of the alliance’s regions,” the Finnish Defense Forces said in a statement. We will bring you more on this shortly. In other key developments:

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for Ukraine’s western partners to summon the political will to provide Kyiv with the necessary military supplies or the world will face “one of the most shameful pages of history”. The Ukrainian president issued his appeal as a US package to provide military and other assistance remains blocked by disagreements in Congress. A clearly angry Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said the world had to “react firmly” to ensure that the war becomes a “hopeless” enterprise for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who wants only “war and death.” “The main thing is political will in order to realise this, to secure the level of supplies which will help,” he said. “If this is not the case, it will become one of the most shameful pages of history, if America or Europe loses to Iranian “Shaheds” [drones] or Russian fighter jets.”

• Germany’s defence minister has accused Russia of conducting an “information war” aimed at creating divisions within the country, in his first comments after the publication of an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials. Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea, prompting officials in Moscow to demand an explanation.

• The death toll from a Russian drone strike on an apartment building in Odesa on Saturday rose to 12, after rescue workers found another four bodies. Among the dead was an eight-year-old girl, discovered near the body of her older brother, who had been uncovered earlier, regional governor Oleh Kiper said. The dead also included a mother who was found holding her baby, as well as a toddler and a second baby.

• Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling on residential areas in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. Ukraine’s interior ministry also reported one death and three people injured in the southern Kherson region on Sunday after Russian strikes.

• People were still queueing up to place flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery on Sunday. The pile of floral tributes is growing despite state intimidation as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.

• Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday. Fidan said: “A dialogue for a ceasefire [in Ukraine] should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation [by Russia], but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately.”

• The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners, says it has taken two years to secure a meeting with the UK government, despite him being a British citizen. Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian jail and his wife, Evgenia, told the Observer she only met David Cameron on Friday.

• Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that about 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.

• Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.