Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow ‘investing large military effort to take Donetsk town’; G7 joins EU in oil price cap

Ukrainian forces killed another 510 Russian troops on Friday, bringing the total number of soldiers lost by Russia since the invasion to 90,600.

They also downed another eight drones and managed to take out a tank, according to statistics provided by the Ukrainian general staff of the armed forces.

A total of 7,042 explosive items have been “removed and neutralised” from Kherson oblast, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.

Work to rid the area of mines and other traps has been going on since the Russian retreat from the city last month.

Ukrainian emergency workers say they have surveyed almost 700ha of open territory, 60km of railway tracks and 326 households.

Authorities are urging anyone who returns to Kherson or the area around it to be extremely careful.

Last month, the Guardian reported that ridding Kherson of mines could take years.

Here’s a bit more detail about the oil price cap instituted by the G7 and its allies.

The EU had already agreed on an embargo of seaborne crude oil from Russia in a package of sanctions announced earlier this year.

The G7 and Australia agreement will allow non-EU countries to continue importing seaborne Russian crude oil using western insurance and maritime services as long as they do not pay more a barrel than the agreed limit.

Because the most important shipping and insurance firms are based in G7 countries, the price cap would make it very difficult for Moscow to sell its oil for a higher price.

A senior US Treasury Department official told reporters on Friday that the $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil will keep global markets well supplied while “institutionalising” discounts created by the threat of such a limit.

Under the terms of the deal the price cap will be reviewed in mid-January and every two months after that. It also includes a mechanism that would keep the price cap at least 5% below the market rate.

Security experts from the CSIS thinktank have warned a cap at $60 is toothless since it is above the price of existing Russian oil prices of about $52 a barrel.

It has been estimated that Russian oil is sold at a profit from $40-$45 a barrel, but Russia’s true extraction costs are hard to estimate.

The UK Ministry of Defence has released an update on Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine.

Russian forces continue to invest a large part of their overall firepower on an approximately 15km-long sector of entrenched frontline around the Donetsk oblast town of Bakhmut, the defence ministry says.

In recent days, Russia has likely made small advances on the southern axis of this assault and is likely to be planning to encircle the town.

Russia has prioritised Bakhmut as its main offensive effort since early August 2022. The capture of the town would have limited operational value although it would potentially allow Russia to threaten the larger urban areas of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The statement from the ministry adds that the campaign has been disproportionately costly, relative to these possible gains.

There is a realistic possibility that Bakhmut’s capture has become primarily a symbolic, political objective for Russia.

The G7 and Australia have agreed to cap the price paid for Russian seaborne crude oil at $60 a barrel, hours after EU members overcame internal resistance to reach the same decision earlier in the day.

The EU agreed the price after holdout Poland gave its support, paving the way for formal approval over the weekend.

In a statement, the Group of Seven leading economies and Australia said the price cap would take effect on 5 December or very soon after.

The price cap aims to reduce Russia’s income from selling oil, while preventing a spike in global oil prices after an EU embargo on Russian crude oil takes effect on 5 December.

Poland had pushed in EU negotiations for the cap to be as low as possible in order to squeeze Russian revenues and limit Moscow’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.

The final deal includes a mechanism to keep the oil price cap at least 5% below the market rate.

US officials said the deal was unprecedented and demonstrated the resolve of the coalition opposing Russia’s war.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the price cap would significantly reduce Russia’s revenues.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Jonathan Yerushalmy and I’ll be with you for the next while.

The G7, EU and Australia have agreed to cap the price of Russian seaborne crude oil at $60 a barrel, in a move that could result in Russian oil output falling by 500,000 barrels a day by early 2023.

The decision by the Group of Seven nations and Australia followed an earlier announcement from the EU that the bloc had overcome internal resistance to a $60 a barrel price.

The G7 and Australia said in a statement the price cap would take effect on 5 December or very soon thereafter.

More on this shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:

• The US president, Joe Biden, said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, if he was looking for a way to end the war but that Putin had not yet indicated that. Putin is open to talks on a possible settlement in Ukraine but the refusal of the United States to recognise annexed territories as Russian is hindering a search for any potential compromise, the Kremlin said.

• Up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded in February, according to Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. At certain points in the war, Ukraine said that between 100 and 200 of its forces were dying a day on the battlefield, making Podolyak’s estimate seem conservative. Speaking to Ukraine’s 24 Kanal, Podolyak said they were official figures from Ukraine’s general staff.

• Three people were killed and seven wounded in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson over the past 24 hours, the regional governor said.

• Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said that they would start evacuating some people with reduced mobility from the Russian-occupied town of Kakhovka, on the east bank of the Dnipro River. The evacuations were set to start on Saturday, they said in a Telegram post on Friday.

• Russian troops in Ukraine are deliberately attacking the country’s museums, libraries and other cultural institutions, according to a report issued by the US and Ukrainian chapters of the international writers’ organisation PEN.

• The Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin, has called for Europe to build its own defence capabilities in the wake of the war in Ukraine, saying that without US help Europe is not resilient enough.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to reach an agreement with Russia and Ukraine to create a protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the end of the year, the head of the UN atomic watchdog was quoted as saying. The nuclear plant, Europe’s biggest, provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on backup generators a number of times, Reuters reported.