President Emmanuel Macron called for France and the United States to be “brothers in arms”  at the start of a state visit to the White House, where President Joe Biden and a military honour guard greeted him.

Emphasising the history of the US-France alliance, Macron said, “We bear a duty to this shared history as war returns to the European soil following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. And in light of the multiple crises our nations and our societies face, we need to become brothers in arms once more”.

“France is our oldest ally, our unwavering partner in freedom’s cause,” Biden said, welcoming “the enduring strength and vitality of the great friendship between France and the United States of America.”

Biden added that France and the US were united in “facing down” Russia, which had “shattered peace” in Europe.

Americans fear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could lead to a knock-on effect in Europe and possibly influence China to do something similar in Taiwan, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to a national defence survey, while Americans support the US government sending weapons and providing financial support for Kyiv, they have less trust in their military leadership.

In total, the survey found that 57 percent of respondents said the US needs to continue supporting Ukraine, while 33 percent said they should focus on domestic issues and avoid angering Russia.

The US has sent more than $19bn in military aid to Ukraine this year, which 39 percent of Americans said was the right amount.

European Council President Charles Michel is once again urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to use the country’s “influence” on Russia over its war in Ukraine during a visit to Beijing.

Ukraine took up “a lot of time” during their three-hour meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, where trade, climate, human rights, COVID-19 recovery, Xinjiang and Taiwan, were also discussed, Michel told reporters via video link from Beijing.

“I urged President Xi, as we did at our EU-China summit in April, to use his influence on Russia to respect the UN charter,” Michel said.

President Xi made it clear that China is not providing weapons to Russia and that nuclear threats are not acceptable, the European Council president said.

Here are four maps, which we update daily, charting the latest war developments.

The European Union is discussing a price cap on Russian seaborne oil at $60 per barrel, with a review every two months, yielding to pressure from some countries to lower the lid, diplomats said.

Last week, the Group of Seven nations (G7) proposed a price cap on Russian oil to diminish Moscow’s revenues and its ability to finance its war in Ukraine by $65-70 per barrel.

The cap, if agreed upon, is to take effect from December 5.

Poland, Lithuania and Estonia refused to back the cap at that level, arguing that Russian crude was already trading lower, so the cap would be ineffective.

“The new level under discussion is now $60 per barrel, but talks are continuing,” one EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions said.

Two others confirmed the $60 level, noting no agreement yet.

The Spanish prime minister received a booby-trapped letter last week which was “similar” to one which exploded at Ukraine’s embassy in Madrid, officials said.

Security staff carried out a “controlled explosion” of the mailed item, whose “content was similar” to that found in other letters sent to the Ukrainian embassy, an air force base, the defence ministry and a military equipment firm.

The envelope, “containing pyrotechnic material” and addressed to Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, arrived by regular mail on November 24, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine’s military says it has found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, whose apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

Mykola Danyliuk, a representative of the Ukrainian armed forces’ research unit, told a briefing that missile fragments that fell in the western regions of Lviv and Khmelnytskyi on October 31 had been identified as parts of Kh-55 cruise missiles.

The Soviet Union designed the Kh-55 in the 1970s for use on strategic targets.

But Danyliuk said Russia had not used the Kh-55 in Ukraine before October 31.

“The uniqueness of the missiles discovered was that they were equipped with a non-explosive warhead,” Danyliuk said.

“We can state that the launch of these missiles is intended to … distract the attention of Ukraine’s air defence system and tire it out, while modern Russian rockets … are fired on critical infrastructure objects”.

Danyliuk added that all the Kh-55 missiles discovered had their serial numbers scratched.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met the EU foreign policy head Josep Borrell and called for more sanctions on Russia.

On Twitter, Kuleba wrote: “In Łódź, Josep Borrell and I agreed: total war against Ukraine means total support for Ukraine. I thanked the EU for its continued defence assistance and stressed that next EU sanctions should include those hitting Russia’s missile production industry: it must be put to a halt.”

Air raid alerts were issued across Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone attacks.

“An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” the country’s border service wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s military says Russia pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from Kherson city.

Ukrainian officials stressed that Russia had intensified shelling across the river, knocking out power again in Kherson, where electricity had only begun to be restored.

Since Russia abandoned Kherson last month, the river now forms the entire southern stretch of the front.

Ukrainian officials have previously said Russia pulled back some artillery near the river to safer positions further away, but until now, had stopped short of saying Russian forces were quitting towns.

“A decrease in the number of Russian soldiers and military equipment is observed in the settlement of Oleshky,” the military said, referring to the town opposite Kherson city, on the far side of a destroyed bridge over the Dnieper.

It added that most of the Russian troops in the area were recently mobilised reservists, suggesting that Moscow’s best-trained professional troops had already left the area.

The Russian embassy in Spain has posted a statement on Twitter condemning “any threat or terrorist act” in relation to the five letter bombs sent to government offices, private companies and the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid.

“Any threat or terrorist act, particularly directed at a diplomatic mission, are to be totally condemned,” the statement said.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader of the separatist Donetsk region, says Moscow and Kyiv would hand over 50 prisoners of war (PoWs) each in the latest exchange between the two sides.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Denis Pushilin said the exchange would take place later on Thursday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called recent comments on Ukraine by Pope Francis “un-Christian” and hard to understand.

In an interview with the Jesuit magazine America, the pope said: “Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryati and so on. Certainly, the one who invades is the Russian state. This is very clear.”

Lavrov said such statements were un-Christian and unclear.

“He divided two peoples from the Russian Federation into a category from which you can expect cruelty,” he said.

Ukraine’s defence minister has celebrated Germany’s recognition of the Stalin-era Holodomor (death by hunger) on Ukrainians as genocide. He added that Russia should also be seen as a “terrorist” state.

Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Twitter: “We thank the Bundestag for recognizing the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide of the Ukrainian people. Because it is a fact. We are waiting for Russia to be recognized as a terrorist state. Because this is also a fact.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the United States had created an “existential” threat to Russia from Ukraine.

He said Russia had never walked away from contacts with the United States but had not heard any “substantive ideas” from its US counterparts.

Lavrov also accused NATO of trying to drag India into what he called an anti-Russian and anti-Chinese alliance at a time when he said the West was attempting to squeeze Russian influence out.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused NATO of starting tensions near China in a way that posed risks for Russia.

“The South China Sea is now becoming one of those regions where NATO is not averse, as they once did in Ukraine, to escalating tensions,” Lavrov told a news conference.

“We know how seriously China takes such provocations, not to mention Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, and we understand that NATO’s playing with fire in these regions carries threats and risks for the Russian Federation. It is as close to our shores and to our seas as Chinese territory,” he said.

Lavrov said that is why Russia was developing military cooperation with China and conducting joint exercises.

“The fact that NATO members under the leadership of the United States are trying to create an explosive situation there, in the wake of Europe, is well understood by everyone,” he said.

Lavrov did not provide evidence to back his assertions.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says big problems had accumulated in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make the European security watchdog a natural bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

Lavrov made the comments at the start of a news conference, during which he aired out Russian historical grievances against the West, saying the “reckless enlargement” of NATO had devalued the basic principles of the OSCE.

Ukraine has also been critical of the OSCE, saying Russia should be removed from it following its invasion.

It also objected to the title of an event at a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in the Polish city of Lodz that referred to the organisation being at a crossroads.

The Kremlin has condemned the European Union’s calls to hold a war crimes tribunal over Russia’s actions in Ukraine, saying it would be illegitimate and unacceptable to Moscow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday the EU would try to set up a specialised court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“As for attempts to establish some kind of tribunal: they will have no legitimacy, will not be accepted by us, and we will condemn them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a briefing call with reporters.

The West and Ukraine have alleged multiple counts of Russian war crimes during the nine-month war, including in the town of Bucha.

Spanish police are investigating a letter bomb sent to an airbase outside Madrid, a day after a letter bomb exploded at the Ukrainian embassy, injuring an employee.

Government officials said the explosive package was detected on Wednesday evening at an arms factory in the northern Spanish city of Zaragoza, making grenade launchers Spain has sent to Ukraine.

The blast at the embassy took place when an employee opened a letter addressed to the ambassador. The employee suffered a minor injury.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba quickly ordered the strengthening of the security of all Ukrainian embassies. He also asked his Spanish counterpart to take urgent measures to investigate the attack.

Ukraine dismissed the deputy chief engineer of its Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Moscow’s forces and treason, the Energoatom state nuclear energy company said.

The statement was published a day after Russia said it had promoted the engineer Yuriy Chernichuk to serve as the director of the vast nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine.