Live news updates: Microsoft says it disrupted cyber attacks by Russian state-backed hacking group

Reserve Bank of India: The RBI makes its monetary policy announcement. The Indian central bank is forecast to hold its benchmark interest rate steady at 4 per cent and the reverse repurchase rate at 3.35 per cent. The RBI will also release its financial stability report.

Other central banks: The Reserve Bank of Australia also releases a report on financial stability, while Japan publishes figures on its current account balance.

Markets: US stocks steadied on Thursday, with Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 stock index closing up 0.4 per cent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which fell 2.2 per cent on Wednesday, rose 0.1 per cent. On Friday, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained more than 0.5 per cent in early trading, while Japan’s Topix rose 0.2 per cent.

Nato will offer Ukraine new and heavier weaponry, after Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba appealed for more weapons to prepare for a new offensive by Russia in the country’s east.

The mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro recommended the evacuation of women, children and the elderly from the city, after Ukraine’s military warned that Russian troops were regrouping and preparing an offensive in the Donbas region.

The Ukrainian military has called on residents in Donetsk, Luhansk and the north-eastern Kharkiv region to leave “while they still have the chance”.

The UN voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council, following western outrage over the reported atrocities in Bucha.

The EU is set to approve a fresh package of Russian sanctions on Thursday and will discuss an embargo on oil imports next week.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson pledged to provide £30mn to Poland to support Ukrainian refugees.

The World Health Organization’s European head said it is preparing contingencies for “chemical assaults” in Ukraine.

Economic developments:

• The US moved to punish Russian airlines, including Aeroflot, Azur Air and Utair, for violating export controls

• Russian aluminium producer Rusal called for an investigation into war crimes in Bucha

• Shell expects to take a hit of up to $5bn following withdrawal from Russia

• Levi’s chief warned that Moscow could grab its famous jeans trademark after company suspended operations 

• EU banks pushed Brussels for clarity on how to implement EU sanctions on Russia and complained of a “misalignment” with equivalent measures imposed by the US and UK 

• US federal agencies are sharing intelligence with foreign banks to bolster defences against potential Russian cyber attacks 

• In stock markets, Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 0.2 per cent. The US benchmark S&P 500 edged up 0.4 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.1 per cent in mid-day trading

• Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, fell 0.3 per cent to $100.81 a barrel

Military developments:

• Russia admitted it suffered “significant” casualties during its invasion of Ukraine

• Turkey’s efforts to mediate peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv were stalled by growing evidence of atrocities against Ukrainian civilians committed by Russian forces

Russian and Ukrainian military claims cannot be independently verified.

Microsoft said it uncovered attempts by a Russian state-backed hacking group to hack into US and EU government institutions to conduct cyber espionage in support of Russia’s ground invasion of Ukraine.

In a blog post on Thursday, Microsoft said it had disrupted cyber attacks, which it attributed to Strontium, a hacking group linked to Russia’s military intelligence. These targeted US and EU government bodies and think tanks “involved in foreign policy” as well as Ukrainian institutions such as media organisations, it said.

“We believe Strontium was attempting to establish long-term access to the systems of its targets, provide tactical support for the physical invasion and exfiltrate sensitive information,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice-president of customer, security and trust wrote in the post.

It is unclear whether any of the attempts to breach the unnamed victims were successful.

Microsoft said that on Wednesday it obtained a court order that authorised the company to take control of seven internet domains being wielded by Strontium to conduct the attacks, thereby preventing further hacking attempts.

Microsoft said that since the invasion of Russia, the company “observed nearly all of Russia’s nation-state actors engaged in the ongoing full-scale offensive against Ukraine’s government and critical infrastructure”.

The US Senate has confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson for a seat on the Supreme Court, making her the first black female justice to join America’s highest court in a big win for President Joe Biden, who championed her nomination.

The final vote in the upper chamber of Congress to seal Jackson’s confirmation occurred on Thursday afternoon, with 53 senators — including all 50 Democrats and three Republicans — backing her lifetime appointment to the court, and 47 voting against it.

Jackson, currently a judge on the powerful US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, will replace the retiring liberal justice Stephen Breyer, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by former president Bill Clinton and will officially retire at the end of the court’s current term later this year. Jackson’s confirmation to the nine-member body will not alter its ideological make-up. At the moment, the Supreme Court is tilted towards conservative justices, who hold six seats, compared with just three for liberals appointed by Clinton and Barack Obama.

Still, her ascent to the Supreme Court is historic, not just because she is the first black woman to reach the highest level of the US judiciary, but also because she will be the first justice who has served as a public defender.

Read more on Jackson’s appointment to the Supreme Court here

Aluminium producer Rusal became the first Russian company to publicly call for a thorough and impartial investigation into the alleged war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and an early end to the conflict in Ukraine.

“Reports from the Ukrainian city of Bucha shocked us. We believe that this crime should be thoroughly investigated,” Rusal’s Dutch chair Bernard Zonneveld said in a statement published on the company’s website.

Zonneveld, a former investment banker, called for an objective and impartial investigation and “severe” punishment for the perpetrators “no matter how hard it may seem in the context of ongoing information war”. 

A civilian massacre in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv came to light following Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian capital and its surrounding areas. Kyiv has accused Russia of the killings, supported by witness statements to independent journalists. Moscow has said the massacre was staged by Ukrainian forces.

“Despite the brutality of the current events in Ukraine in themselves, such incidents make this terrible tragedy all the more traumatic. We all wish an early end to this fratricidal conflict, which destroys lives, families and entire cities. And we want those responsible for such crimes to be punished appropriately,” Zonneveld said.

Zonneveld’s statement came weeks after Rusal’s largest shareholder Oleg Deripaska, who had to give up control of the company after US sanctions against him in 2018, called for peace.

Read more on Rusal’s call for a Bucha war crimes probe