Ukraine Russia war live: Moscow threatens to ‘melt’ Kyiv as PoWs freed in swap

Andrew Feinberg looks at how UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer could soon face a president with a drastically different view of Ukraine’s future as the new PM meets with US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war, with each side releasing 103 people, the Interfax news agency said citing Russia’s defence ministry.

The ministry said the Russian soldiers exchanged on Saturday had been taken prisoner in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian forces captured territory there last month in their first major incursion into Russia.

Senior Russian security official and former president Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia could destroy Ukraine‘s capital Kyiv with non-nuclear weapons in response to the use of Western long-range missiles by Ukraine.

Medvedev said Moscow already had formal grounds to use nuclear weapons since Ukraine‘s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but could instead use some of its new weapon technologies to reduce Kyiv to “a giant melted spot” when its patience runs out.

“Russia is showing patience. After all, it is obvious that a nuclear response is an extremely difficult decision with irreversible consequences,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

He added: “any patience comes to an end.”

“And then that’s it. A giant gray melted spot on the site of the mother city of Russia [Kyiv]. Holy s**t! It’s impossible, but it happened.”

Kyiv is sometimes referred to as the “mother city of Russia” because of its importance to Orthodox Christians in the region.

NATO could have done more to arm Ukraine to try to prevent Russia’s invasion in 2022, the outgoing head of the Western military alliance has said.

“Now we provide military stuff to a war – then we could have provided military stuff to prevent the war,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly newspaper FAS.

Stoltenberg pointed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s reluctance to provide weapons that Kyiv had asked for before Russia’s full-scale invasion because of fears that tensions with Russia would escalate.

“To end this war there will have to be again dialogue with Russia at a certain stage. But it has to be based on Ukrainian strength,” he added.

Former British defence secretary Ben Wallace has said he is “dissapointed” by the “tug of war” discussions between Joe Biden and Keir Starmer about Ukraine.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, he said: “I’m just disappointed that it’s yet again another tug of war around another capability. It goes on and on. It started with anti-tank missiles and anti-air missiles, then tanks.”

“All of that tug of war favours Russia,” he added.

“Ultimately, the people who are suffering are those Ukrainians, of all ages, fighting for their freedom, and in fact, Europe’s freedom.”

Read the full report from David Maddox, Andy Gregory and Andrew Feinberg: