Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 597 of the invasion

Russia and Ukraine fighting fierce battles around eastern town of Avdiivka; Finland says ‘state actor’ may be behind damage to gas pipeline

See all our Ukraine war coverage

Russian and Ukrainian forces fought fierce battles around the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka after Moscow launched one of its biggest military offensives in months this week. 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.

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.

Journalist Khaybar Akifi was severely wounded in a drone attack that also 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.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 723

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