Ukraine war briefing: Gravehawk revealed as new air defence system pledged by Starmer

Ukraine is to receive a new, rapidly developed bespoke air defence system called Gravehawk as part of the support announced by Keir Starmer as he visited Kyiv on Thursday. The system, roughly the size of a shipping container, has been developed by Britain and Denmark to allow the Ukrainians to shoot down aerial threats using retrofitted air-to-air missiles launched from the ground – meaning, according to the British government, that it can “use Ukrainian missiles already in their armed forces’ possession” to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. The British government revealed that two prototypes of Gravehawk were tested in Ukraine in September, with 15 to be sent this year.

Ukraine’s military said on Thursday that it hit a large Russian depot for military fuel at Liskinska in the Voronezh region of Russia with drones, starting a “large-scale fire”. The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, confirmed that several drones “sparked a fire at an oil depot”. Videos posted by witnesses showed a substantial blaze.

A major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region was attacked, a Ukrainian official said on Thursday, without directly claiming Ukrainian responsibility or specifying the consequences of the attack. “The enterprise is one of the main suppliers of explosive materials for the army of the Russian Federation,” said Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation.

France and Norway will meet their commitments on schedule to deliver jet fighters to Ukraine, the two countries’ defence ministers said on Thursday in Oslo. Norway has promised Ukraine six US-made F-16s with deliveries spread out across 2024 and 2025, while France has said it will provide an unspecified number of Mirage 2000-5s during the first quarter of 2025.

A Ukrainian brigade has used ground drones equipped with machine guns and mines to carry out what it claims is the first documented machine-only ground assault in the war with Russia. The Khartiia brigade said last month’s attack in the north-eastern Kharkiv region used assault, mine-laying and mine-clearing vehicles guided by aerial drones. The operation paved the way for a successful infantry advance, the brigade said. “They get as close to their [Russian] dugouts as possible and then explode,” a Ukrainian crew member explained to the Reuters news agency.

Ukraine said on Thursday it had sentenced a former local official to 15 years behind bars on high treason charges for aiding Russian forces. Local media identified him as Oleksandr Kurpil, a deputy of the town of Trostianets in the Sumy region, and said he had been detained in May 2022.

Russia’s rights ombudswoman said on Thursday that she had discussed with her Ukrainian counterpart the search for residents missing from Russia’s Kursk border region after Ukrainian troops seized territory there last August. Ukraine has said that about 2,000 civilians remain in territory it controls, while Russia has put the number reported missing at less than 1,000. Russian ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova called the talks “a big step towards strengthening trust and realising concrete joint actions”. Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets confirmed they “agreed to continue the mutual exchange of information regarding the search for missing persons among prisoners of war”.

Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to slow to 2.7% this year from probably about 3.6% in 2024, deputy economy minister Andrii Teliupa said on Thursday. The forecast is below the 3-4% expected by most Ukrainian analysts and economists. Ukrainian businesses are suffering from staff shortages as tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have been mobilised into the army and millions of refugees remain abroad. Ukraine is also battling an energy crisis as Russia bombards the sector.

A compensation scheme opened on Thursday for Ukrainians who have lost close relatives during Russia’s invasion. Thousands of requests for damages have already been received. The Register of Damages for Ukraine is based in The Hague and is designed to function as a record of all eligible claims seeking reparation for the damage, loss and injury over the Russian full-scale invasion. Created by the Council of Europe and joined by the EU, the register will ultimately work out a financial total with a view towards extracting reparations from Moscow.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, are due to meet on Friday in Russia and sign a strategic cooperation agreement. Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow, Kazem Jalali, as saying the cooperation agreement would not include a mutual-defence clause like Moscow’s pacts with North Korea and Belarus. Ukraine said in 2024 that Russia had launched more than 8,000 Iran-developed Shahed drones since the invasion. Kyiv first accused Iran of supplying the drones to Russia in autumn 2022.