Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday he would only order his troops to fight alongside ally Russia if another country launches an attack against Belarus, the state-run Belta news agency reported.

Lukashenko, who has repeatedly denied claims from Kyiv and the West that his country could be dragged further into the war in Ukraine on the side of Moscow, also said he planned to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

“I am ready to fight with the Russians from the territory of Belarus in only one case: If even one soldier comes onto the territory of Belarus to kill my people,” Belta quoted Lukashenko as telling a news conference on Thursday. “If they commit aggression against Belarus, the response will be the most severe, and the war will take on a completely different nature.”

Russia used Belarus as a staging post for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, launching its failed offensive on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv from the country.

A flurry of military activity and joint air force drills between Russia and Belarus earlier this year rekindled concerns that Minsk could be preparing to take a more active role in the conflict.

Russia’s decision to cut crude oil production by 500,000 barrels per day reflects its inability to sell all of its oil, Ben Harris, a US treasury department assistant secretary, said on Thursday.

Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexander Novak last week said it would voluntarily cut production beginning next month following the start of Western price caps on Russian oil and oil products on 5 February. The move to cut around five per cent of output temporarily pushed up global prices.

“They cut back on production because they just couldn’t sell it (the oil), not because they wanted to weaponise oil and refined products,” Ms Harris said in remarks at the Argus Americas Crude Summit.

The cut follows embargoes and sanctions, including an unprecedented $60 a barrel price cap on its crude, by Western countries to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have pushed for lowering the crude oil cap.

Russia’s monthly budget revenues from oil and gas fell 46 per cent in January to their lowest level since August 2020 under the impact of Western sanctions on its most lucrative export, according to finance ministry data.

The cap sought to maintain market stability and to drive down Russian revenue, both of which have been achieved, Harris said.
There have been no American companies involved in trading Russian oil above the price cap, he said.

During a visit to Kyiv on Thursday, the Labour leader said he had a “very constructive meeting” with Mr Zelensky to discuss military support and the need to prosecute Russia’s leaders for “war crimes”.

With his party well in front of the Tories in the opinion polls, Sir Keir also stressed he was committed to Kyiv’s cause if he enters No 10 after the next general election.

Read the details in this report from our political correspondent Adam Forrest:

A top U.S. trade official said on Thursday that export controls placed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine have slowly reduced the supply of materials that Moscow can use to rebuild its war machine.

The U.S. and a coalition of 37 other countries imposed unprecedented export controls on Russia over the past year in response to its unprovoked assault on Ukraine, and more actions are in the works.

Alan Estevez, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, said Russia is working hard to evade those controls, but that the goods that are being smuggled in cannot replace everything that needs to be resupplied.

“Evasion techniques are not going to get you the scale you need to reconstitute your military over time,” Estevez said in an interview with Reuters.

Estevez’s comments come amid reports of new ways of getting tech to Russia.

A senior military official in Russia heavily involved in funding Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has reportedly plummeted 16 storeys to her death in St Petersburg.

The body of Marina Yankina was found on the pavement below an apartment building in the city’s Kalininsky district shortly before 8am on Wednesday morning, according to local reports.

My colleague Andy Gregory has more:

Even as leading diplomats from around the world gather in Munich today to survey a European security landscape since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow leaders will be notable by their absence.

The conference has sometimes served as a barometer of relations between Russia and the West, most notably in 2007 when Putin attacked the United States in a speech now widely seen as a harbinger of a far harsher stance against liberal democracies.

Conference chair Christoph Heusgen, a veteran German diplomat, said organisers had not invited any Russian officials as Mr Putin had “broken with civilisation”.

By contrast, a US delegation of record size is expected at the conference, including vice president Kamala Harris, secretary of state Antony Blinken and a third of the US Senate.

“We expect a signal of unity from the transatlantic community,” Mr Heusgen told reporters this week.

Discussions at the conference will also highlight a rude awakening for Western leaders – the war has made clear that much of the rest of the world does not see things their way.

Efforts to get African, Asian and Latin American leaders to isolate Moscow have often floundered, due to Russian diplomatic and economic clout – and anger in the Global South that the West has shown far less interest in conflict and injustice there.

Other big international issues will also feature at the conference, particularly relations between the West and China.

Top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi is expected to attend and Mr Blinken is considering meeting him there, in what would be their first face-to-face talks after the United States shot down what it said was a Chinese spy balloon and other flying objects.

The defence secretary Ben Wallace has admitted that Western allies need to “ramp up” production of ammunition to support Ukraine as it faces increasingly intense assault by Russia‘s forces.

Moscow has been bombarding the frontlines in the east Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The two areas make up what is known as the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, which Russia is keen to control. Ukraine says that the situation is “difficult”.

Read more about his remarks in this report:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged filmmakers to take sides in what he termed a battle between freedom and tyranny, drawing a parallel in his speech opening the Berlin Film Festival between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Berlin Wall.

Zelenskiy recalled his own experience as an actor, urging colleagues to “break the fourth wall” by directly addressing their audiences.

“For many years Potsdam Square was divided by the Berlin Wall,” he said via video link. “Today Russia wants to build the same wall in Ukraine: a wall between us and Europe, to separate Ukraine from its own choice for its future.”

Now in its 73rd year, the Berlinale owes its reputation as the most political of the main film festivals to its origins as a divided city on the front lines of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.

World Athletics will look at the issue of Russian athletes competing while the Ukraine war continues only after it has been decided whether the country has cleaned up its act on doping sufficiently to be reinstated, Sebastian Coe said today.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is facing a major backlash after opening the door for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to compete at next year’s Olympics in Paris despite the ongoing military action in Ukraine.

The Russian Athletics Federation (RAF) has been banned from athletics since 2015 as a result of the country’s widespread doping, although some athletes from Russia were allowed to compete at the last two Summer Olympics as neutrals.

Mr Coe said doping would still take precedence when the governing council meets next month to decide whether the RAF has made sufficient progress along its “road map” to warrant reinstatement.

“The Council will discuss the roadmap for reinstatement but specifically around the egregious attack on the integrity of our sport through doping,” he told reporters at the world cross-country championships in Bathurst, New South Wales.

“Only on the basis of that conversation, or that discussion, would we move on to the second discussion.”

That said, Mr Coe thought it unlikely that the blanket ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes imposed last year, including a suspension of the option to compete as a neutral, would be lifted.

“The council last February made (a) judgment (on) the situation in Ukraine and the inability of Ukrainian athletes to be competing openly and fairly and with the kind of integrity that we demand in our competitions,” he added.

“It was decided by the council it was inconceivable that Russia athletes (could compete) … So the council will make a decision about whether that position that we decided upon in February still pertains …

“But, as far as I’m concerned, the principles still sit there.”

Leading politicians, military officers and diplomats from around the world gather in Munich today to survey a European security landscape transformed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz, French president Emmanuel Macron and US vice president Kamala Harris are among many top officials attending the Munich Security Conference, a major annual global gathering focused on defence and diplomacy.

Senior Ukrainian officials are also expected to address the conference, which begins on Friday and runs until Sunday at the luxury Bayerischer Hof hotel in the southern German city.

Last year’s conference took place just days before the war began. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders, Western leaders in Munich urged president Vladimir Putin not to invade and warned of dire consequences if he did so.

This year, leaders will grapple with the profound consequences of Mr Putin’s decision to ignore their pleas and unleash the most devastating war in Europe since World War Two that has killed countless thousands and forced millions to flee.

“If Putin wins in Ukraine, the message to him and other authoritarian regimes is that force is rewarded,” NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said this week.

“That would make the world more dangerous. And all of us more vulnerable,” said Mr Stoltenberg, speaking ahead of a meeting of the alliance’s defence ministers, who pledged to ramp up military supplies to Kyiv even as they admitted their own munitions stockpiles have been badly depleted by the war.