Russian commander of Kherson acknowledges forces under pressure – as it happened – The Guardian

From 7h ago

Citizens being ‘evacuated’ in Kherson as commander of Russian forces says situation in Ukraine ‘tense’

Pjotr Sauer

The new commander of the Russian army in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, said on Tuesday that civilians were being “resettled” from the Russian-occupied southern city of Kherson, describing the military situation in Ukraine as “tense.”

“The enemy continually attempts to attack the positions of Russian troops,” Surovikin said in his first televised interview since his appointment last week, adding that the situation was particularly difficult around the occupied southern city of Kherson.

“Further actions regarding Kherson will depend on the developing military and tactical situation, which is not easy, and difficult decisions cannot be ruled out,” he said.

Surovikin’s statements come amid Ukraine’s ongoing counter-assault against Russia in which Kyiv has recaptured 450 square miles of land since late August.

Shortly after Surovikin’s statements, the Russian-installed head of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said that some civilians were being “evacuated” in anticipation of a “large-scale offensive.”

Updated at 14.39 EDT

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Russia will likely need two to four years to rebuild its military to the strength before the Ukraine war, Estonia’s defence minister said Tuesday, urging continued pressure to keep Moscow in check.

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On a visit to Washington, Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur predicted a long war and urged the West to stand with Ukrainians until they achieve victory for “the free world”, AFP reports.

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As Russia turns to suspected Iranian kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine, Pevkur said he has heard accounts that Moscow’s arsenal has been so drained that it is using its S-300 air defence system as ordinary missiles and that Russian shells have exploded in the air because they are too old.

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“What more or less the consensus is is that it takes two to four years for Russia to restore some capabilities or even the same capabilities they had” before the war, he told a roundtable with State Department and Pentagon correspondents.

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Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Thursday that Russia no longer sees a need to maintain a diplomatic presence in the west, The Daily Beast reports.

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“There is neither point nor desire to maintain the previous presence in Western states. Our people work there in conditions that can hardly be called human,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

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“Most importantly, there’s no work to do since Europe decided to shut off from us and sever any economic cooperation. You can’t force love,” Lavrov added.

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Here is a summary of the key developments over the last few hours:

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\n

• The new commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine made a rare acknowledgment of the pressures they are under from Ukrainian offensives, as Russia stepped up a pre-winter campaign to hit energy infrastructure. The situation in areas Russia claims to have annexed was “tense,” said Sergei Surovikin, a Russian general named this month to take charge of its forces. Russian troops in some areas were under continuous attack, he said.

\n

• The Russian-appointed governor of Kherson announced the evacuation of four towns in the region.

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• Russian air strikes have destroyed 30% of Ukraine’s power stations since 10 October, causing massive blackouts across the country, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

\n

• Russian strikes hit a power plant in Kyiv, killing three people, as well as energy infrastructure in Kharkiv in the east and Dnipro in the south. A man sheltering in an apartment building in the southern port city Mykolaiv was also killed and the northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr was without water or electricity.

\n

• Ukraine’s foreign minister said he was proposing a formal cut in diplomatic ties with Tehran after a wave of Russian attacks using what Kyiv says are Iranian-made drones. Iran has denied supplying drones and Russia has denied using them. But senior Iranian officials and diplomats told Reuters that Iran has promised to provide Russia with surface to surface missiles as well as drones.

\n

• Nato said Ukraine would receive anti-drone defence systems in coming days.

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• Russia’s Duma has indefinitely stopped broadcasting live plenary sessions to protect information from “our enemy”, a leading lawmaker said.

\n

• Zelenskiy urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia.

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• The west should listen carefully when President Vladimir Putin talks about using nuclear weapons but should remember that it is more useful for him to threaten their use than to go ahead, the head of Norway’s armed forces told Reuters.

\n

• Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company accused Russia of “kidnapping” two senior staff at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine

\n

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Ukraine’s state nuclear energy agency has accused Russia of detaining two senior employees at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, AFP reports.

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Energoatom said Russian forces on Monday “kidnapped” the head of information technology Oleg Kostyukov and the plant’s assistant general director Oleg Osheka and “took them to an unknown destination”.

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Energoatom called on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi “to make every effort” to secure their release.

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Russian troops captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at the beginning of March.

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The IAEA, which has experts at the nuclear site, announced that Valeriy Martyniuk had been released.

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Grossi welcomed his release while expressing “deep concern” at the two new detentions at the nuclear plant.

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“This is another concerning development that I sincerely hope will be resolved swiftly,” he said.

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The IAEA statement said Grossi was continuing consultations on securing a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the site.

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The new commander of the Russian army in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, said on Tuesday that civilians were being “resettled” from the Russian-occupied southern city of Kherson, describing the military situation in Ukraine as “tense.”

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“The enemy continually attempts to attack the positions of Russian troops,” Surovikin said in his first televised interview since his appointment last week, adding that the situation was particularly difficult around the occupied southern city of Kherson.

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“Further actions regarding Kherson will depend on the developing military and tactical situation, which is not easy, and difficult decisions cannot be ruled out,” he said.

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Surovikin’s statements come amid Ukraine’s ongoing counter-assault against Russia in which Kyiv has recaptured 450 square miles of land since late August.

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Shortly after Surovikin’s statements, the Russian-installed head of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said that some civilians were being “evacuated” in anticipation of a “large-scale offensive.”

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\n

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his troops to take more prisoners hours after Ukraine and Russia carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps so far, exchanging 218 detainees.

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• A fresh wave of explosions hit several cities across Ukraine with energy facilities among the critical infrastructure targeted. Zelenskiy claimed since October 10, Russian strikes have “destroyed” a third of power stations causing nationwide blackouts.

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• Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, appealed to residents to try and conserve electricity. He advised households to stock up on drinking water as the strikes had also affected the city’s water supply.

\n

• Two people were killed and another wounded following an attack on an energy facility in the city. Kyiv’s prosecutor’s office announced it had opened an investigation into a possible “violation of the laws and customs of war”.

\n

• The UK’s defence secretary Ben Wallace hastily cancelled an appearance before the Commons defence committee for an urgent trip to Washington DC. There he met his counterpart at the Pentagon to discuss recent developments in Ukraine.

\n

• The Kremlin said it had “no information” on whether Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones were used in large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities this week.

\n

• Western officials shared concern Iran may extend its help to Russia beyond the supply of hundreds of drones to more sophisticated surface to surface missiles.

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• Russian president Vladimir Putin has no plans to end military mobilisation in Russia as the target of 300,000 has not yet been reached. While some regions including the capital had completed the process others had a way to go.

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• The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly described the latest strikes in Ukraine as “desperate acts” from a man “losing a war”. He too flew to the US to discuss a response to Russia’s aggression.

\n

• Ukraine received €2bn in financial assistance from the European Union, the first tranche of a €5bn package of support. The aid will be used to “cover urgent budgetary expenses, in particular for the social and humanitarian spheres”, prime minister Denys Shmyhal said.

\n

• The bodies of five children were exhumed in the city of Lyman, which had been until recently occupied by Russian forces. The three girls and two boys – all who had died from shrapnel wounds – were between the aged of one and 14.

\n

• Ukraine’s foreign minister announced he will submit a proposal to Zelenskiy to cut diplomatic ties with Iran as he called on EU foreign ministers to impose sanctions on Iran for helping Russia “carry out terror against Ukrainians”.

\n

• Germany’s interior minister sacked the country’s cybersecurity chief, following allegations he had turned a blind eye to a firm with links to Russian security circles. Arne Schönbohm, the president of the German Federal Office for Information Security, was released from his duties with immediate effect.

\n

• More than 400 infrastructure targets across Ukraine were damaged in Putin-orchestrated attacks. Russian strikes have hit 408 targets – 45 of them energy stations and more than 180 civilian buildings – since 10 October.

\n

• The death toll from a military jet crash in the Russian town of Yeysk rose to 15, including three children. The SU-34 figher bomber crashed into a nine-storey residential building on Monday evening, with Russia’s investigative committee putting the collision down to a “technical malfunction”.

\n

• A United Nations commission found Russian forces were responsible for the “vast majority” of human rights violations in the beginning of its war in Ukraine. Abuses were also committed by Ukrainian troops during this time, including cases of people who were out of action being shot, tortured or wounded.

\n

• Nato will deliver air defence systems to Ukraine in the coming weeks to help the country defend itself against Russian drone attacks.

\n

• The UK’s prime minister Liz Truss spoke to French president Emmanuel Macron about the recent attacks orchestrated by Russia, and their coordinated response.

\n

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Russian strikes have left more than 1,100 villages and towns in Ukraine without power after targeting energy facilities across the country, Kyiv has said.

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Vladimir Putin’s troops have launched around 190 attacks using missiles, kamikaze drones, and artillery in 16 regions including the capital, Ukraine’s emergency services said.

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More than 70 people have been killed and 240 more injured in the assaults.

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“For now, 1,162 settlements in Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovogod, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Lugansk, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions remain cut off from electricity,” spokesperson Oleksandr Khorunzhyi told a briefing.

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\n

• Nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed by Russian drone and missile attacks in the past eight days, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, as his office warned of a “critical” power situation nationwide. Zelenskiy accused Russia of engaging in “terrorist attacks” affecting a significant proportion of the country’s critical infrastructure and wreaking havoc on electricity and other utility supplies.

\n

• Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the presidential office, said energy infrastructure and power supply were targeted overnight in an eastern district of Kyiv, where two people were killed, and in the cities of Dnipro and Zhytomyr.

\n

• Two “objects of critical infrastructure” were damaged in Kyiv, said the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and electricity and water supply in “many houses” in west Kyiv was “partially limited”. The mayor appealed to residents to conserve electricity, and said houses experiencing reduced water pressure should use water as “economically as possible”.

\n

• All of Zhytomyr was without electricity and water after a double missile strike on an energy facility, said the mayor, Serhiy Sukhomlyn. Hospitals were running on backup power, he said.

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• Klitschko said a fifth person, an elderly woman, had been found dead after a wave of drone attacks in the centre of Kyiv on Monday morning. She died after a residential building was hit.

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• Russia has been targeting Ukraine with a mixture of missiles and, more recently, Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, rebranded as Geran-2 by the attackers. Iran denies supplying the drones to Russia, while the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he did not have any information about their origin. “Russian equipment with Russian names is being used,” Peskov said.

\n

• Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has announced he is submitting a proposal to the president’s office to cut diplomatic ties with Iran.

\n

• The German ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, has called for sanctions against Iran over the allegations the country has supplied weaponry to Russia, a claim Tehran denies.

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• Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has sacked the country’s cybersecurity chief, following allegations he had turned a blind eye to a firm with with links to Russian security circles. Arne Schönbohm, the president of the German Federal Office for Information Security, was released from his duties with immediate effect.

\n

• A preliminary investigation of damages on the two Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Danish part of the Baltic Sea show that the leaks were caused by “powerful explosions”, Copenhagen police said in a statement.

\n

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Philip Oltermann reports from Berlin for the Guardian:

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Germany’s interior minister has sacked the country’s cybersecurity chief, following allegations he had turned a blind eye to a firm with with links to Russian security circles.

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Arne Schönbohm, the president of the German Federal Office for Information Security, was released from his duties with immediate effect on Tuesday, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported citing security circles.

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A spokesperson for interior minister Nancy Faeser confirmed that Schönbohm would be barred from his office, after “necessary public trust in the neutrality and impartiality of his leadership as president of the most important German cybersecurity agency has been damaged”.

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Schönbom, who has since 2016 been in charge of the agencies overseeing the government’s computer and communication security, has come under scrutiny after his links to a Russian company in a previous job were highlighted by Jan Böhmermann, a German comedian, in a late-night satire show.

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You can read more of Philip Oltermann’s report from Berlin here: German cybersecurity chief sacked following reports of Russia ties

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Ukraine’s foreign minister has announced he is submitting a proposal to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to cut diplomatic ties with Iran.

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Amid claims Iran had supplied weapons to Russia, Dmytro Kuleba insisted it bore full responsibility for destruction across Ukraine.

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Kyiv would send an official note to Israel calling for immediate air defence supplies and cooperation, he said.

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Kuleba has also called on foreign ministers in the European Union to impose sanctions on Iran for helping Russia “carry out terror against Ukrainians”.

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The bodies of five children have been exhumed in the city of Lyman, which had been until recently occupied by Russian forces.

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Ukraine’s ministry of defence said the three girls and two boys – all whom had died from shrapnel wounds – were between the aged of one and 14.

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At least 425 children had been killed by Russia since the start of the war, it added.

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Vladimir Putin’s troops withdrew from Lyman a day after the Russian president announced the annexation of Donetsk at the beginning of October.

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\n

• Russian forces carried out new airstrikes on Ukrainian energy facilities on Tuesday, causing several explosions in an area of northern Kyiv where there is a thermal power station. Dnipro, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr were also targets.

\n

• City mayor Vitali Klitschko said today’s attack was on “critical infrastructure” in northern Kyiv, and urged resident to conserve electricity and stockpile drinking water.

\n

• Serhiy Sukhomlyn, mayor of Zhytomyr said “the city has no light or water at the moment. Hospitals are on back-up power.”

\n

• In Mykolaiv, a Russian missile struck an apartment building. The missile completely destroyed one wing of the building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire crew pulled the dead body of a man from the rubble, a witness said.

\n

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said: “Since 10 October, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country”. Describing the Russian strikes on power supplies as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”, Zelenskiy said there was “no space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime”.

\n

• The death toll from yesterday’s attack on a central district of Kyiv has risen to five. Klitschko said the body of another resident – an elderly woman – had been pulled from the rubble of a building destroyed in an explosion.

\n

• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that Moscow has “no information” on whether Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones were used in large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities this week.

\n

• Oleh Synyehubov, the governor of Kharkiv, said on “Tuesday at around 8.30am, the enemy launched eight rockets at Kharkiv from the Russian city of Belgorod” but there were no casualties.

\n

• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, said a man has been injured after Ukrainian forces shelled a railway station within Russia.

\n

• UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has hastily cancelled an early afternoon appearance before the Commons defence committee for an urgent trip to Washington DC, prompting speculation as to the purpose of the sudden visit.

\n

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That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Zaina Alibhai will be with you shortly.

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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said on Twitter that “since 10 October, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country”.

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Describing the Russian strikes on power supplies as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”, Zelenskiy said there was “no space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime”.

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Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian infrastructure. Some areas of Kyiv are without electricity and water.

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Russian forces carried out new air strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities on Tuesday, causing several explosions in an area of northern Kyiv where there is a thermal power station.

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Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the presidential office, said there had been three Russian strikes on an unspecified energy facility. City mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack was on “critical infrastructure” in northern Kyiv, where Reuters witnesses saw thick smoke rising into the sky.

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Neither official said whether the thermal power station had been hit. They also gave no casualty details.

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Tymoshenko said two airstrikes hit an energy facility in the south-eastern city of Dnipro, causing “serious damage”, presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram.

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“There is a fire raging and serious destruction,” regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said of the strike on Dnipro.

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An airstrike left the northern city of Zhytomyr without water and electricity supplies, its mayor said, and a Reuters witness said a Russian missile struck an apartment building in the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv.

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The missile completely destroyed one wing of the building in the downtown area, leaving a large crater.

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Vitali Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv, has posted to Telegram to report “explosions again in Kyiv in the morning”.

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He said that the target was an object of critical infrastructure in the Desnianskyi district.

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A fresh wave of explosions is being reported in several cities across Ukraine, a day after Russia launched drone strikes on multiple cities in Ukraine.

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It is shortly before 9am Kyiv time, and strikes have been reported by authorities in Kryvyi Ri, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.

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In Mykolaiv, the attack has totally destroyed one wing of an apartment building. At least one man died in the attack, according to a witness who spoke to Reuters.

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In Dnipro, strikes targeted energy infrastructure, causing “serious damage” according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office.

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There were few details about the attacks on Kryvyi Ri and Kharkiv, but we will have more on the situations in these cities soon.

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A Russian missile struck an apartment building in the southern Ukrainian port city Mykolaiv, in one of three explosions heard there in the early hours of Tuesday, a Reuters witness said.

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The missile completely destroyed one wing of the building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire crew pulled the dead body of a man from the rubble, the witness said.

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Russian strikes on Dnipro have hit energy infrastructure causing “serious damage”, Deputy Head of President’s Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, has just said on Telegram.

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The head of the Kharkiv regional military administration has announced that Russia is launching strikes on the city of Kharkiv, as well as the region. He has ordered residents to remain in shelters, saying:

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“Attention, residents of Kharkiv and the region: the Russian occupiers are striking. Stay in shelters!”

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The head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, has just posted on Telegram confirming an explosion in the city – Zelenskiy’s home town – on Tuesday morning. He said:

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\n

Around 06:30 in the morning, the occupation-terrorist forces struck the northern part of Kryvyi Rih. As for the consequences of the explosions, I will not comment on the situation yet.

The anxiety continues. Repeated attacks are possible – you are in shelters during an air alert.

\n

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Earlier on Tuesday morning, he issued an air raid alert and announced that missiles were incoming.

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Speaking to the press at Stanford University on Monday, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said that the war in Ukraine had brought the “post-Cold War world to an end”. Blinken went on to say that what would come to define competition between world powers now was technology:

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\n

We are at an inflection point. The post-Cold War world has come to an end, and there is an intense competition underway to shape what comes next. And at the heart of that competition is technology. Technology will in many ways retool our economies. It will reform our militaries. It will reshape the lives of people across the planet. And so it’s profoundly a source of national strength.

\n

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Asked about Russia’s use of Iranian drones, he said that it was a “sign of increased desperation”:

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\n

We’re seeing these drones, as you said. What are they doing? They’re attacking civilians. They’re attacking critical infrastructure like power plants, hospitals, the things that people need in their daily lives that are not military targets. And it is a sign of increased desperation by Russia, but it’s also a sign of the levels that they will stoop to and that we’ve seen repeatedly when it comes to targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. We want to make sure we’re doing everything possible to help Ukrainians defend themselves against this aggression, even as they’re pushing the Russians back from territory that Russia seized.

\n

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia, Reuters reports.

Zelenskiy made his remarks hours after the two sides carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps so far, exchanging a total of 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women.

“I thank everyone involved in this success, and I also thank all those who replenish our exchange fund, who ensure the capture of enemies,” he said in an evening address.
“The more Russian prisoners we have, the sooner we will be able to free our heroes.

Every Ukrainian soldier, every front-line commander should remember this.”

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Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy chief of staff, said there were 12 civilians among the freed women.

“It was the first completely female exchange,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, adding that 37 of the women had been captured after Russian forces took the giant Azovstal steelworks in the port city of Mariupol in May.

One of the women, medic Viktoria Obidina, said that up until the last moment the group had no idea they would be exchanged. Obidina had been with her young daughter when Mariupol fell but the two then became separated.

“I will go to see my daughter. I want to see her so bad,” she told reporters.

Separately, Ukraine’s interior ministry said some of the women had been in jail since 2019 after being detained by pro-Moscow authorities in eastern regions. Earlier, the Russian-appointed head of one of the regions said Kyiv was freeing 80 civilian sailors and 30 military personnel.

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The death toll from a Russian military jet that crashed into a residential building shortly after taking off near the border with has reportedly climbed to at least 13 people, according to Russian news agency Interfax, which cited a senior official.

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Video and photographs uploaded to social media on Monday showed a residential building engulfed in flames in Yeysk, a port and resort town in Russia located just south of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol across the Sea of Azov.

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Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be taking you through the latest for the next few hours.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia.

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Meanwhile the death toll from a Russian military jet that crashed into a residential building shortly after taking off near the border with has reportedly climbed to at least 13 people, according to Russian news agency Interfax, which cited a senior official.

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• Moscow stepped up attacks across Ukraine on Monday, killing four people and cutting off power in a series of kamikaze drone strikes in the capital. Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, said Russia launched five strikes in Kyiv, as well as attacks against energy facilities in Sumy and the central Dnipropetrovsk regions, knocking out electricity to hundreds of towns and villages.

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• Ukraine announced that more than 100 prisoners have been swapped with Russia in what it said was the first all-female exchange with Moscow after nearly eight months of war. “The more Russian prisoners we have, the sooner we will be able to free our heroes. Every Ukrainian soldier, every frontline commander should remember this,” Zelensky said.

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• In the south, Ukrainian troops have been pushing closer and closer to the large city of Kherson, just north of Crimea. Kherson is one of four regions in Ukraine that Moscow recently claimed to have annexed.

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• Ukraine’s foreign minister called on the European Union to sanction Iran for providing Russia with kamikaze drones that killed at least four civilians in Kyiv on Monday.

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• Iran said again on Monday that it had not provided Russia with drones to use in Ukraine. “The published news about Iran providing Russia with drones has political ambitions and it is circulated by western sources. We have not provided weaponry to any side of the countries at war,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said. The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would look for “concrete evidence” about the participation of Iran in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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• The European Union has agreed to create a mission to train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers. It will also provide a further €500m to help buy weapons. An EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday approved the two-year training mission, which will involve different EU forces providing basic and specialist instruction to Ukrainian soldiers, in Poland and Germany. Officials hope the mission, which is expected to cost €107m, will be up and running by mid November.

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• Israeli officials refused to comment on comments from Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, that Tel Aviv is preparing to supply military aid to Ukraine. In a Telegram message on Monday, Medvedev, currently deputy chair of Russia’s security council, warned Israel against arming Kyiv, calling it a “a reckless move” that would “destroy relations between our countries”. Israel has tried to maintain a neutral stance, as it relies on Russia to facilitate its operations against Iranian-linked actors in Syria.

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• Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state TV journalist who staged an on-air protest against the war in March, has fled the country, according to her lawyer.

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This blog is now closed. You can find our latest coverage of the war in Ukraine here.

Estonia’s Defence Minister, Hanno Pevkur, also said that Western sanctions had especially hurt Russia’s production of airplanes and maintenance of helicopters by depriving the country of key components.

“When we can find new ways on how to impact Russia with the sanctions, for sure we need to do that,” Pevkur said.

Pevkur, who met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, warned that Russia still had the capacity to conduct attacks, including on NATO members such as Estonia.

However, he played down the possibility of a nuclear strike, an option threatened by Russian President Vladimir Putin as he proclaimed the annexation of Ukrainian territory.

Russia has already “put the fear onto Ukraine” with its conventional attacks, Pevkur said.

“I don’t see any positive, additional added value to Russia” of a nuclear strike, he said.

“The only thing – what can happen is that they would lose their silent supporters like China or some others because of that.”

Estonia defence minister says Russia will need two to four years to rebuild military

Russia will likely need two to four years to rebuild its military to the strength before the Ukraine war, Estonia’s defence minister said Tuesday, urging continued pressure to keep Moscow in check.

On a visit to Washington, Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur predicted a long war and urged the West to stand with Ukrainians until they achieve victory for “the free world”, AFP reports.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur speaks to reporters in Washington, DC, on 18 October 2022. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

As Russia turns to suspected Iranian kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine, Pevkur said he has heard accounts that Moscow’s arsenal has been so drained that it is using its S-300 air defence system as ordinary missiles and that Russian shells have exploded in the air because they are too old.

“What more or less the consensus is is that it takes two to four years for Russia to restore some capabilities or even the same capabilities they had” before the war, he told a roundtable with State Department and Pentagon correspondents.

Updated at 19.38 EDT

Russian foreign minister says Moscow sees no need for diplomatic presence in the west

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Thursday that Russia no longer sees a need to maintain a diplomatic presence in the west, The Daily Beast reports.

“There is neither point nor desire to maintain the previous presence in Western states. Our people work there in conditions that can hardly be called human,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“Most importantly, there’s no work to do since Europe decided to shut off from us and sever any economic cooperation. You can’t force love,” Lavrov added.

Updated at 19.23 EDT

In case you’re just joining us, Russia announced the evacuation of civilians from a key southern Ukrainian city on Tuesday as it acknowledged the situation for its troops on the ground in Ukraine was “tense” in the face of a counter-offensive.

General Sergey Surovikin, who has been in charge of operations in Ukraine for the past 10 days, said the army was preparing to evacuate civilians from the city of Kherson.

Kherson is one of the four regions in Ukraine that Moscow recently claimed to have annexed.

It was the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces after the Kremlin launched its invasion on 24 February.

But Ukrainian forces mounted a counter-offensive in the south towards the end of the summer and have been pushing increasingly closer to the city.

“The Russian army will above all ensure the safe evacuation of the population” of Kherson, Surovikin told state television Rossiya 24, describing the situation as “very difficult”:

Summary

Here is a summary of the key developments over the last few hours:

• The new commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine made a rare acknowledgment of the pressures they are under from Ukrainian offensives, as Russia stepped up a pre-winter campaign to hit energy infrastructure. The situation in areas Russia claims to have annexed was “tense,” said Sergei Surovikin, a Russian general named this month to take charge of its forces. Russian troops in some areas were under continuous attack, he said.

• The Russian-appointed governor of Kherson announced the evacuation of four towns in the region.

• Russian air strikes have destroyed 30% of Ukraine’s power stations since 10 October, causing massive blackouts across the country, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

• Russian strikes hit a power plant in Kyiv, killing three people, as well as energy infrastructure in Kharkiv in the east and Dnipro in the south. A man sheltering in an apartment building in the southern port city Mykolaiv was also killed and the northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr was without water or electricity.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister said he was proposing a formal cut in diplomatic ties with Tehran after a wave of Russian attacks using what Kyiv says are Iranian-made drones. Iran has denied supplying drones and Russia has denied using them. But senior Iranian officials and diplomats told Reuters that Iran has promised to provide Russia with surface to surface missiles as well as drones.

• Nato said Ukraine would receive anti-drone defence systems in coming days.

• Russia’s Duma has indefinitely stopped broadcasting live plenary sessions to protect information from “our enemy”, a leading lawmaker said.

• Zelenskiy urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia.

• The west should listen carefully when President Vladimir Putin talks about using nuclear weapons but should remember that it is more useful for him to threaten their use than to go ahead, the head of Norway’s armed forces told Reuters.

• Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company accused Russia of “kidnapping” two senior staff at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine

Updated at 18.29 EDT

US president Joe Biden is expected to announce Wednesday that he is releasing more oil from the US strategic reserve as part of a response to recent production cuts announced by nations in OPEC+.

The announcement marks the continuation of an about face by Biden, the Associated Press reports, who has tried to move the US past fossil fuels, to identify additional sources of energy to satisfy US and global supply as a result of disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and production cuts announced by the Saudi Arabia-led oil cartel.

The strategic reserves are at their lowest levels since 1984 after Biden in March announced the release of 180 million barrels over six months.

The White House has responded to the prospective loss of 2 million barrels a day – 2% of global supply – by saying that Saudi Arabia sided with Russian president Vladimir Putin and threatening consequences for OPEC+’s decision.

Updated at 18.19 EDT

Hi, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be taking you through the latest developments in Ukraine for the next while. If you have any questions, or see any news you think we may have missed, you can let me know on Twitter here.

Ukraine accuses Russia of ‘kidnapping’ two nuclear plant workers

Ukraine’s state nuclear energy agency has accused Russia of detaining two senior employees at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, AFP reports.

Energoatom said Russian forces on Monday “kidnapped” the head of information technology Oleg Kostyukov and the plant’s assistant general director Oleg Osheka and “took them to an unknown destination”.

Energoatom called on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi “to make every effort” to secure their release.

Russian troops captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant at the beginning of March.

The IAEA, which has experts at the nuclear site, announced that Valeriy Martyniuk had been released.

Grossi welcomed his release while expressing “deep concern” at the two new detentions at the nuclear plant.

“This is another concerning development that I sincerely hope will be resolved swiftly,” he said.

The IAEA statement said Grossi was continuing consultations on securing a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the site.

Updated at 17.44 EDT

The new commander of Moscow’s army in Ukraine has announced that civilians were being “resettled” from the Russian-occupied southern city of Kherson, describing the military situation as “tense”, write Dan Sabbagh and Pjotr Sauer.

“The enemy continually attempts to attack the positions of Russian troops,” Sergei Surovikin said in his first televised interview since being appointed earlier this month, adding that the situation was particularly difficult around the occupied southern city of Kherson.

Surovikin’s statements on Tuesday come amid Ukraine’s fierce counter-assault in Kherson, a region in the south of Ukraine that Moscow claimed to have annexed last month after staging a sham referendum.

Updated at 17.42 EDT

Iran has sent trainers to occupied Ukraine to help Russians overcome problems with the fleet of drones that they purchased from Tehran, current and former US officials briefed on the classified intelligence told the New York Times.

According to the newspaper, Iranian trainers are operating from a Russian military base in Crimea where many of the drones have been based since being delivered from Iran.

Updated at 17.42 EDT

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow’s widespread use of Iranian-made drones in recent attacks on his country was a symbol of the Kremlin’s “military and political bankruptcy”.

“The very fact of Russia’s appeal to Iran for such assistance is the Kremlin’s recognition of its military and political bankruptcy,” Zelenskiy said in his daily address.

But, he added “strategically, it will not help them anyway”.

“It only further proves to the world that Russia is on the path of defeat and is trying to draw someone else into its accomplices in terror,” Zelenskiy said.

He didn’t commit to a proposal from his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, on Tuesday that Kyiv cut diplomatic ties with Iran, AFP reports.

“We will definitely ensure an appropriate international reaction to this,” Zelenskiy said, referring to the use of the drones.

Kyiv and its western allies have accused Moscow of using Iranian-made drones in attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks. The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had no knowledge of its army using such weapons.

Tehran said it was ready for talks with Kyiv to clarify the “baseless” claims that Iran is providing Russia with the drones.

Updated at 17.07 EDT

The United States, Britain and France plan to raise the issue of Iranian weapons transfers to Russia during a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, diplomats told Reuters.

Updated at 16.38 EDT

Kyiv accused the Red Cross of “inaction” over Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia, saying a lack of visits to detained soldiers and civilians meant they were vulnerable to being tortured.

“Unfortunately, at each exchange, we see that the International Committee of the Red Cross’s inaction has led to our prisoners of war and civilian hostages being tortured daily by hunger, by electrocution,” Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said in a presidential statement.

He said the organisation was not fulfilling its mandate to visit military and civilian prisoners in conflict zones.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked for an ICRC team to visit.

The presidency’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said: “Ukraine expects and demands from the ICRC the appropriate determination to gain access to Ukrainian prisoners in Olenivka”.

“We do not see that the ICRC is working to protect our prisoners,” Yermak said.

The ICRC told AFP that it shared Kyiv’s frustration.

“We know that behind it there’s the anguish of families at not knowing the fate of their loved ones,” a spokesman said.

“We reiterate that we will never stop demanding access to all prisoners of war until we can see them several times where they are held,” he added.

Updated at 16.31 EDT

Julian Borger

The Republican leader in the House of Representatives has said that Congress would not “write a blank cheque to Ukraine” if his party wins next month’s midterm elections, stoking fears in Kyiv that the flow of military equipment could be cut off.

However, another senior Republican said he thought the Ukrainians should “get what they need”, including longer-range missiles than those the Biden administration has so far been prepared to supply. Analysts say the mixed messages reflect an internal debate between traditional national security conservatives and the Trumpist wing of the party, where pro-Russian sentiment is much stronger.

Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, told the Punchbowl News website on Tuesday: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank cheque to Ukraine.”

Updated at 16.08 EDT

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