Russia-Ukraine war live: Russian strikes on infrastructure more infrequent due to missile shortage, says UK | Ukraine

Russia is probably limiting its missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure because of its limited supply of cruise missiles, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says.

In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russia had increased its forces in Ukraine with tens of thousands of reservists since October, easing personnel shortages, but that “a shortage of munitions highly likely remains the key limiting factor on Russian offensive operations”.

It said that just sustaining defensive operations along Russia’s lengthy front line required a significant daily expenditure of shells and rockets.

Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles.

Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.

The United States has called on Vladimir Putin to acknowledge reality and withdraw troops from Ukraine after the Russian president finally called the conflict a “war”.

Agence France-Presse reported that since Putin ordered the invasion in February, Russia has officially spoken of a “special military operation” and imposed a law that criminalises what authorities call misleading terminology.

But at a news conference on Thursday, Putin used the word “war” as he said that he hoped to end it as soon as possible.

A State Department spokesperson said on Friday:

Since February 24, the United States and rest of the world knew that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ was an unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine. Finally, after 300 days, Putin called the war what it is.

As a next step in acknowledging reality, we urge him to end this war by withdrawing his forces from Ukraine.

The State Department said that, whatever Putin’s terminology, “Russia’s aggression against its sovereign neighbour has resulted in death, destruction and displacement”.

The people of Ukraine no doubt find little consolation in Putin stating the obvious, nor do the tens of thousands of Russian families whose relatives have been killed fighting Putin’s war.

A Russian court earlier this month sentenced an opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, to eight-and-a-half years in prison under the new law over his “false information” about the war.

Yashin had spoken of a “massacre” in Bucha, the town near Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv where the bullet-ridden bodies of Ukrainians in civilian clothes with hands tied behind their backs were discovered after Russian forces retreated.

An opposition legislator critical of the invasion, Nikita Yuferev, on Friday said he was seeking legal action against Putin for spreading “fake news” over his “war” reference.

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. It’s 9am in Kyiv. Here’s a snapshot of the latest developments on this Saturday 24 December 2022.

• Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s defence industry chiefs ensure its army gets all the weapons, equipment and military hardware it needs “in the shortest possible timeframes” to fight in Ukraine. The Russian president also called for their proposals on “addressing the problems that are inevitable” and how to “make sure there are fewer of them”. Putin’s comments in the city of Tula, a centre for Russian arms manufacturing, came just days after he pledged to give his army anything it asked for in a meeting with Russia’s top military officials.

• Russian forces have been demolishing a theatre in occupied Mariupol in southern Ukraine that was the site of a deadly airstrike believed to have killed hundreds of civilians, according to an aide to the city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor. Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, said the move was an “attempt to hide forever the evidence of the deliberate killing of Ukrainians by Russians”. Video posted on Ukrainian and Russian websites on Friday showed heavy equipment taking down much of the building. An Amnesty International investigation concluded the Russian attack was a war crime.

• Iran is seeking to expand the supply of advanced weapons to Russia, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency has said, according to local media. The warning from David Barnea comes after the US this month expressed alarm over a “full-scale defence partnership” between Tehran and Moscow.

• Russian forces shelled the recently liberated Kherson region 61 times on Thursday, killing one person and injuring two, said the head of the eastern Ukrainian region’s military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych. About half the strikes hit Kherson city, striking residential blocks, educational institutions and private houses, he said, while a kindergarten was also affected. Two civilians were killed in shelling of the city on Friday morning, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

• Two people were injured after a car bomb exploded in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in south-eastern Ukraine, according to a local pro-Moscow official. Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province, described the incident as a “terrorist attack” carried out by “militants of the Kyiv regime” to Russian state media. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, wrote on Telegram that witnesses said a car was “blown up”.

• Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, has described the discovery of a German intelligence official suspected of working for Russia as “alarming”, amid fears the offical had access to sensitive information from western allies. The man, an employee of the BND foreign intelligence agency identified as Carsten L, was arrested on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing state secrets to Russia, German prosecutors said.

• Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned the risk of a clash between the US and Russia was “high” and compared US-Russia relations to an “ice age” in comments reported by Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency. The Kremlin accused the US of fighting a proxy war against Russia.

• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted a video saying he is back at work in Kyiv after his landmark visit to Washington this week. “I am in my office – we are working toward victory,” he said in the video, posted to his Telegram channel on Friday.

• Zelenskiy’s visit to the White House confirmed that Ukraine and the US are “strategic partners” for the first time in history, the Ukrainian leader’s most senior adviser has said. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainan president’s office, told the Guardian the trip had cemented Zelenskiy’s bond with the US president, Joe Biden, and senior US Republicans.

• The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said shelling of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had “almost stopped”. Speaking on Russian state television, governor Yevgeny Balitsky said on Friday that Russian troops would not leave the nuclear plant – Europe’s largest – and it would never return to Ukrainian control.

• Ukraine estimates its grain harvest fell by about 40% year-on-year due to the Russian invasion, a representative for the country’s industry told Agence France-Presse. “We expect a grain harvest of 65-66 million tonnes” by the end of the year, the head of the Ukrainian Grain Association, Sergiy Ivashchenko, said on Friday, after a record harvest of 106m tonnes last year. “The main reason is the war,” which immediately led to fuel shortages and hindered sowing, he said.

• Ukraine plans to open new embassies in 10 African countries, Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced, with the aim of increasing Kyiv’s presence in Africa and strengthening trade ties. There were also plans to develop a “Ukraine-Africa trade house” with offices in the capitals of “the most promising countries” on the African continent, he added.