Russia-Ukraine war live: US Senate deal to secure fresh funding for Ukraine under threat | Ukraine

Lili Bayer

The US is disappointed Hungary’s ratification of Sweden joining Nato is taking so long, Washington’s ambassador has said, warning that Budapest is “really alone” and that the Hungarian government is pursuing a “foreign fantasy” instead of foreign policy.

After months of delays, Turkey’s parliament approved Sweden’s Nato membership this week. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, signed it off on Thursday, leaving Hungary as the only country in the 31-member alliance that has yet to ratify the Swedish bid.

While the Hungarian government formally supports Sweden’s accession, the country’s parliament has avoided voting on the matter, fuelling frustration among Nato allies and raising questions about the motivations of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

The Hungarian leader routinely criticises his western allies and has been nurturing relationships with Moscow and Beijing.

In an interview at the US embassy in Budapest on Thursday afternoon, the US ambassador, David Pressman, said:

An alliance is only as strong as the commitments that we make to each other and the commitments that we keep.

I think that it’s important that the Hungarian government live up to its commitment, and its commitment has been that it will not be the last ally to ratify Sweden’s accession.

Keeping your word is obviously an important element of trust in any relationship.”

Asked whether Hungary had presented any demands, Pressman said:

The United States is unaware of what is causing the delay by the Hungarian government.

And he was blunt about Washington’s position.

We’re disappointed that this has taken so long. And we look forward to Hungary living up to the commitment it’s made to the United States and to its other allies.

The ambassador also underscored Budapest’s deepening diplomatic isolation, beyond the issue of Sweden’s Nato accession.

“Hungary is really alone – and it doesn’t need to be,” he said, citing Hungarian government decisions such as blocking EU financing for Ukraine, holding talks with Vladimir Putin and resisting efforts to diversify away from Russian energy as “worrying signs”.

Read the full story here:

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has lost an appeal against his arrest, Russian state news agencies report.

The 32-year-old United States citizen was arrested on espionage charges in March last year.

A court in Moscow extended the pretrial detention until the end of March, meaning the journalist will spend at least a year behind bars in Russia.

US consul general, Stuart Wilson, attended the hearing at Lefortovo district court, which took place behind closed doors because authorities say details of the criminal case against the American journalist are classified, Associated Press reports.

In video shared by state news agency Ria Novosti, Gershkovich was shown listening to the ruling, standing in a court cage wearing a hooded top and light blue jeans. He was pictured a short time later walking towards a prison van to leave the court.

Gershkovich was detained while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 2,000km (1,200 miles) east of Moscow.

Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged that the reporter, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

Gershkovich and the Journal deny the allegations, and the US government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Russian authorities haven’t detailed any evidence to support the espionage charges.

The Russian foreign ministry has said it will consider a swap for Gershkovich only after a verdict in his trial. In Russia, espionage trials can last for more than a year.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for US News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. Gershkovich is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, notorious for its harsh conditions.

Analysts have said that Moscow may be using jailed Americans as bargaining chips after US-Russian tensions soared when Russia sent troops into Ukraine. At least two US citizens arrested in Russia in recent years, including WNBA star Brittney Griner, have been exchanged for Russians jailed in the US.

Bipartisan US Senate talks on a border security deal that some have set as a condition for further Ukraine aid are under threat.

“We’re at a critical moment, and we’ve got to drive hard to get this done. And if we can’t get there, then we’ll go to plan B,” senator John Thune, the chamber’s No 2 Republican, told reporters on Thursday.

“For now, at least, there are still attempts being made to try and reach a conclusion that would satisfy a lot of Republicans,” Thune added.

Failure to strike a deal would have global implications, with the Pentagon warning that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of its grinding war with Russia risk running out of ammunition. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the “future of the war in Ukraine” and the “security of our western democracy” depend on Congress reaching an agreement.

Punchbowl News reported that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told Republicans in a private meeting that the time and political will to pass a bipartisan border deal were running out, and that Republicans should not undermine Trump’s intention to focus his White House campaign on immigration.

However, McConnell emphasised his commitment to a border deal and Ukraine aid during a Republican lunch on Thursday, according to lawmakers who attended.

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

A US Senate deal to secure further aid to Ukraine is in danger of collapsing, according to lawmakers.

Funding for Kyiv has been tied to policies to address the flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border. But efforts to deal with the issue has recently encountered growing opposition among Republicans aligned with Donald Trump.

We’ll have more on this shortly, first here’s a round-up of the day’s other key events:

• Russia and Ukraine continue to dispute the circumstances surrounding the crash of a Russian military transport plane in the border region of Belgorod on Wednesday. The crash killed all 74 people onboard. Russia claims the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian PoW who were to be swapped, and that Ukrainian forces shot it down. Ukrainian officials on Thursday did not explicitly deny shooting down the aircraft but said they could not confirm that Ukrainian soldiers on their way to a prisoner exchange were onboard the plane. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, told Reuters the passenger list shared in Russian media of Ukrainian prisoners of war had discrepancies in it. “We found Ukrainian citizens in the list who have already been previously exchanged,” he said.

• Andrey Kartapolov, who heads Russia’s Duma defence committee, told lawmakers on Thursday: “The Ukrainian side was officially warned, and 15 minutes before the plane entered the zone they were given complete information.” Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesperson, Andriy Yusov, insisted that Kyiv had not received either a written or verbal request from Russia to secure airspace around the area of Belgorod, and that two other Russian military transport planes, an An-26 and an An-72, were simultaneously in the airspace.

• A Moscow court has jailed Igor Girkin, a prominent ultra-nationalist critic of Vladimir Putin. A former officer for Russia’s FSB security service, Girkin was arrested last summer in his apartment and charged with “calls for extremism” after months of public criticism in which he accused Putin of failing to pursue the war in Ukraine with enough vigour.

• Darya Trepova, 26, has been jailed for 27 years for delivering a bomb that exploded in the hands of a pro-war military blogger last year, killing him on the spot. The Russian woman was convicted by a St Petersburg court of charges including terrorism in connection with the death of Vladlen Tatarsky. He was killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette that Trepova had presented to him as a gift during a talk he was giving in a St Petersburg cafe.

• Several major Ukrainian state organisations reported cyber attacks on their systems, in the latest wave that a source close to the government blamed on Russian intelligence. Ukraine’s state-run energy company Naftogaz said one of the data centres had been hit by a “large-scale cyberattack”.

• The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly (Pace) in Strasbourg has unanimously adopted a resolution about the fate of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred and deported by Russia. It calls on national parliaments to adopt resolutions “recognising these crimes as genocide” and asks the international community to collaborate with Ukraine to trace and repatriate missing children. The international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant in March 2023 for Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children.

• Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, visited Kyiv, while Vladimir Putin was in Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania. The Kremlin said the visit had not been intended as a message to Nato members.

• Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has responded to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wanting more talks between the two nations over Sweden’s application to join Nato by suggesting the pair meet in Brussels. Orbán had extended an invitation for the discussion to take place in Budapest. The speaker of Hungary’s parliament, László Kövér, has said there is no urgency to resolve the situation, and that attempts by opposition parties to convene an emergency session of parliament to debate it are likely to fail.