The Kremlin has said it will rejoin the UN-administered grain export corridor from Ukraine, after pulling out over the weekend after a drone attack on Russian warships in the port of Sevastopol.
Moscow’s humiliating climbdown came two days after a large convoy of ships moved a record amount of grain in defiance of Russia’s warnings that it would be unsafe without its participation, and after high-level diplomatic contacts between Turkey – one of the guarantors of the scheme with the UN – and Russia.
The Russian defence ministry said it had received written guarantees from Kyiv not to use the Black Sea grain corridor for military operations against Russia. “The Russian Federation considers that the guarantees received at the moment appear sufficient, and resumes the implementation of the agreement,” the ministry statement said.
Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be seen as having successfully called the Russian bluff to blockade Ukrainian ports or even sink civilian cargo ships carrying grain abroad. The Turkish leader had said exports of grain from Ukraine would continue with or without Russian approval and appears to have brokered the Russian climbdown.
In a phone conversation, Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked Erdoğan for his role in restoring the deal. The Turkish president replied that the ability of Russia and Ukraine to sell grain was of “critical importance”.
Separately, Moscow said it would summon the UK ambassador to Russia, Deborah Bronnert, over its accusation that “British specialists” were involved in the Sevastopol attack. Russia has, without providing evidence, repeatedly blamed the UK for Saturday’s audacious attack, in which a swarm of drones attacked Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
The governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, told Ukraine’s Hromadske TV that Kyiv region is once again becoming an “outpost” in Russia’s strategy to target the capital. Earlier Kuleba gave an update on the energy situation in the region on the Telegram messaging service, saying 16,000 homes remain without electricity.
Kuleba also warned that the attacks could cut the heating supply as it too relies on electricity. He said there are 750 points in the Kyiv region to which residents can go to get warm, be fed and access water. He said they were also preparing 425 underground shelters in case of a nuclear attack and they would be ready by mid-November.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region that borders Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine’s east, said five people were injured this morning in the city of Vovchansk following Russian shelling.
Denis Pushilin, the self-styled leader of the chiefly unrecognised Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), has been quoted by Russia’s RIA Novosti agency as saying that pro-Russian forces in occupied Donetsk are making some territorial gains in the Vuhledar direction.
Russian security services in Crimea claim to have foiled a plot to sabotage energy supplies in the region by Ukraine’s security service and have detained a man over it.
Russia has said it is fully committed to preventing nuclear war, and that avoiding a clash among countries that have nuclear weapons is its highest priority. In a statement, the country’s foreign ministry said: “In implementing its policy on nuclear deterrence Russia is strictly and consistently guided by the tenet that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Switzerland has introduced sanctions against an Iranian firm and three army members after the country sold drones to Russia as part of its war effort in Ukraine.
Details have been published of the damage caused to the Nord Stream gas pipeline by explosions at the end of September. Nord Stream AG said that about 250 metres (820 feet) of the pipeline in the Baltic Sea was “destroyed”, according to Agence French-Presse (AFP).
Poland will build a razor-wire fence on its border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, its defence minister said on Wednesday. Construction of the temporary 2.5-metre (8ft) high and 3-metre deep barrier will start immediately, Mariusz Błaszczak told a news conference.
Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, said he was counting on Hungary to ratify the Nordic country’s Nato application after he had talked on the phone with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, visited Kyiv on Wednesday, where he met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba. As part of its latest aid package, Spain is donating 30 ambulances to Ukraine.
Two Russian oligarchs and business partners of Roman Abramovich have been added to the UK government’s sanctions list in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, whom the UK government said were “known to be business associates” of the former Chelsea FC owner, were on Wednesday among four new Russian steel and petrochemical tycoons added to the sanctions list.
The US has information that indicates North Korea is secretly supplying Russia with artillery shells, according to the White House spokesperson, John Kirby. Kirby, who specialises in national security, told a virtual briefing that North Korea was trying to hide the shipments by funnelling them through the Middle East and North Africa.
In an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, Boris Johnson said that he did not think Vladimir Putin would use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and doing so “would immediately tender Russia’s resignation from the club of civilised nations”.
The Russian occupying government in the Kherson oblast has moved its administration further south to Skadovsk, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces has said. Russia told civilians on Tuesday to leave an area along the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, a major extension of an evacuation order that Kyiv says amounts to the forced depopulation of occupied territory.
On Tuesday Russian forces launched four missile and 26 airstrikes, and carried out 27 multiple launch rocket system attacks on more than 20 settlements, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said.
The Ukrainian government on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Yuriy Vitrenko as chief executive of the state energy company Naftogaz. In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, Naftogaz said Vitrenko would remain in the role until 3 November, but gave no further details.
