President Zelensky has welcomed indications he has received in the last few days that attempts will be made to hold Russia legally accountable for crimes committed in Ukraine.

Speaking in his nightly address, he said he had received “strong signals from our partners, and concrete agreements regarding the inevitability of holding Russia accountable for aggression, for terror against Ukraine and its people”.

“Every Russian attack on … every corner of our state will have concrete legal consequences for the terrorist state. We have to restore justice,” he said.

On Friday, it was announced that a body called the Register of Damages Caused by Russian Aggression to Ukraine will be set up in The Hague to keep a record of the damage to Ukrainian households, businesses, and infrastructure caused by the war.

Addressing the Munich security conference on Saturday, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, also said the US had formally determined that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

In his own speech, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said that “we must see justice through the [international criminal court]” and “consider together how to ensure that Russia pays” towards the reconstruction of Ukraine.

The US government has had conversations with Elon Musk about the use of Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said.

SpaceX this month said it had taken steps to prevent Ukraine’s military from using the company’s Starlink service to control drones, saying it was “never never meant to be weaponized”.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, due to air on Sunday, Blinken was questioned about whether the US had asked Musk, who serves as Starlink’s chief executive, to remove the restrictions.

“Well, I can’t share any conversations we’ve had other than to say we’ve had conversations,” he said.

SpaceX has privately shipped truckloads of Starlink terminals to Ukraine, allowing its military to communicate by plugging them in and connecting them with the nearly 4,000 satellites SpaceX has so far launched into low-Earth orbit.

Russia has attempted to jam Starlink signals in the region, though SpaceX countered by hardening the service’s software, Musk has said.

France wants Russia to be defeated in Ukraine but it does not want to “crush” it, president Emmanuel Macron has told paper Le Journal du Dimanche.

“I do not think, as some people do, that we must aim for a total defeat of Russia, attacking Russia on its own soil,” Macron said in an interview published on Saturday.

“Those observers want to, above all else, crush Russia. That has never been the position of France and it will never be our position.”

Macron has drawn criticism from some Nato allies for delivering mixed messages regarding his policy on the war between Ukraine and Russia, with some considering Paris a weak link in the western alliance. On Friday, Macron urged allies to step up military support for Ukraine.

Blinken warns China’s Wang Yi against aiding Russia in a meeting

The US believes China may be about to provide lethal aid to help Russia in the war in Ukraine prompting a direct warning from the US secretary of state Antony Blinken to China’s top diplomat not to take the step.

Blinken made the warning to the Chinese state councillor Wang Yi on Saturday evening at a meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference during which he also rebuked China over the use of an alleged spy balloon over US soil. In a blunt meeting he also urged China to stop helping Russia evade the impact of sanctions.

China’s trade with Russia is increasing and it has been purchasing Russian oil, but probably below the $60 per barrel price cap imposed by the EU and G7 group of states.

Blinken told US networks that the US had information China was considering whether to give Russia assistance, possibly including guns and weapons, for the Ukraine war. He made clear to Wang that “would have serious consequences in our relationship”.

“There are various kinds of lethal assistance that they are at least contemplating providing, to include weapons,” Blinken said, adding that Washington would soon release more details.

Wang told Blinken the United States must “face up to and resolve the damage” to bilateral relations “caused by the indiscriminate use of force”, according to a brief statement on Sunday by China’s foreign affairs ministry.

Russia’s ambassador to the US on Sunday responded to the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, who accused Russia of crimes against humanity during its nearly year-long invasion of Ukraine.

Harris made the comments a day earlier at the Munich security conference where, five days before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, western leaders are assessing Europe’s worst conflict since the second world war.

“We regard such insinuations as an unprecedented attempt to demonise Russia in the framework of the hybrid war unleashed against us,” Anatoly Antonov said on the Russian embassy’s Telegram account.

“There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks by Washington is to justify its own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis.”

The UN-backed Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine says it has identified war crimes but has not concluded whether they amount to crimes against humanity.

Organisations supported by the US Agency for International Development have documented more than 30,000 war crimes incidents since the invasion, according to the US government. Ukrainian officials said they were investigating the Thursday shelling of the city of Bakhmut as a possible war crime.

Summary

Hello, this is Christine Kearney bringing you the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Moscow has responded to Joe Biden’s presidential administration announcing, at the Munich security conference, the US’s formal conclusion that Russia has committed crimes against humanity during its nearly year-long war against Ukraine.

The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said: “In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine … there is no doubt: these are crimes against humanity.”

Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the US, responded on Sunday: “There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks by Washington is to justify its own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis.”

About 40 heads of state and government as well as politicians and security experts from nearly 100 countries – including the US, Europe and China – are attending the three-day conference to discuss Europe’s security situation amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In other developments at 9am in Kyiv and 10am in Moscow:

• China’s senior diplomat Wang Yi, one of the few external politicians able to influence Russia, announced that China would launch its peace initiative on the anniversary of the war, and has been consulting Germany, Italy and France on its proposals. China had “neither stood by idly nor thrown fuel on the fire” regarding the crisis in Ukraine, he said.

• Western leaders have reacted nervously to the Chinese peace plan for Ukraine due to be revealed this week, but cautiously welcomed the move as a first sign that China recognises the war cannot be regarded solely as a European affair.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned Wang Yi of consequences should China provide material support to Russia’s invasion, saying in an interview after the two met that Washington was concerned Beijing was considering supplying weapons to Moscow. The top diplomats met at an undisclosed location on the sidelines of the Munich conference.

• The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, called on the west to “double down” on its military support to Ukraine. “When Putin started this war, he gambled that our resolve would falter,” he said. “But we proved him wrong then, and we will prove him wrong now.” He also offered to help other countries that were willing to send aircraft to Ukraine now.

• The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said there was “no doubt” that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Harris also warned that any Chinese support for Russia in its war in Ukraine would reward aggression.

• Ukraine must win its battle against Russia’s invasion, said Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, warning that a Russian victory might embolden Moscow to attack other countries. Pistorius said he assured the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that Germany and its allies would help Kyiv “for as long as it takes”.

• The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said the EU wants to work with the defence industry to quicken and scale up the production of ammunition, both for the Ukrainian military and to replenish stocks at home. It follows warnings from Kyiv that its forces need more supplies quickly.

• Poland is ready to support Ukraine with its MiG jets, but only if a broader coalition is formed with the United States as a leader, said the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.

• The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said it is becoming “increasingly difficult” for the Russian government to “insulate the population” from the reality of the war. Air raid alerts were in place across much of western and southern Ukraine early on Saturday, with Ukrainian officials reporting that Russia fired four Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea.

• Two people were injured in a strike on the western city of Khmelnytskyi, according to the local mayor.

• One civilian was reported killed in shelling in the eastern city of Vovchansk, a few miles from the Russian border.

• Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had captured Hrianykivka, a village in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region that is well to the north of most significant fighting. A briefing note from Ukraine’s general staff later on Saturday said the village was being shelled, but made no mention of an assault.

• The number of Russian soldiers killed since the invasion has reached 142,270, according to the Ukrainian military. A day earlier the UK’s defence ministry said as many as 60,000 Russian forces may have been killed in just under a year. The MoD said the casualty rate “has significantly increased since September 2022 when ‘partial mobilisation’ was imposed”.

• Most of Ukraine has power despite a series of major Russian attacks on the generating system, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday, praising the work done by repair crews. Russia has carried out repeated waves of attacks on key infrastructure, at times leaving millions of people without light, heating or running water.