Ukraine’s supplies of spare parts for its battered electricity grid are running out amid sustained Russian bombing. European companies are being asked to urgently donate surplus kit to help the country get through the winter, after the latest step in Russian bombings targeting power plants and substations resulted in power cuts lasting 48 hours or more across the country.
Air raid alerts were issued across all Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday after warnings by officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile attacks. There were no immediate reports of any new strikes, and Kyiv sounded the all clear after about 10 minutes of air raid warnings.
Ukraine’s state energy operator, Ukrenegro, has said it is still struggling to restore full power nearly a week after Russian missile strikes damaged energy facilities across the country. The power deficit was running at 30% as off 11am local time (09:00 GMT) on Tuesday, Ukrenegro said in a statement, a slight rise from yesterday after emergency shutdowns at several power plants and an increase in consumption as winter sets in.
The jailed Belarusian senior opposition leader, Maria Kolesnikava, has been taken to the intensive care of a hospital in the city of Gomel, according to reports. Belarusian opposition politician, Viktor Babariko, posted to Telegram that Kolesnikova, one of the most prominent opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko, was taken to hospital on Monday for unknown reasons.
Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily. Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, but neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces have made a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.
Russian forces continue to shell residential infrastructure and housing in the recently liberated city of Kherson, according to Ukraine’s military. In its update on Monday, US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian troops were digging trenches and fortifying their positions in preparation for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern Kherson.
Ukraine has detained a deputy head of newly liberated Kherson’s city council on suspicion of aiding and abetting Russian occupation forces, Ukraine’s state prosecutor has said. The official, who was not named in the statement, cooperated with the occupation authorities and helped with the functioning of public services under the Russians, according to the prosecutor.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance will not pull back in its support for Ukraine, calling on partners to pledge more winter aid for Kyiv as it braces itself for more cold and darkness due to Russian attacks on infrastructure. Nato foreign ministers meeting in Bucharest are focusing on ramping up military assistance for Ukraine such as air defence systems and ammunition, even as diplomats acknowledge supply and capacity issues, but also discuss non-lethal aid.
The US is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted on to abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the west struggles to meet demand for more arms. US and allied military inventories are shrinking, according to Ukraine’s armed forces general staff.
Ukrainian forces damaged a rail bridge north of the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol that has been key to supplying Russian forces, Ukraine’s armed forces said.
Russians are sporadically shelling cities with no apparent strategic aim other than to cause casualties. The Guardian visited a residential district in Dnipro, where a series of houses were destroyed by a fragmentation warhead, designed to inflict maximum casualties.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said 329 children are considered missing in Ukraine, while 12,034 have been deported to Russia. According to the Ukrainian government’s children of war portal, 440 children have been killed as a result of Russia’s war and 851 children are reported as injured.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s wife has called for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the country’s leaders to be put on trial in a specially created war crimes court. Olena Zelenska called for British support in creating a Nuremberg-style tribunal for Russian leadership for ordering the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the bloodshed that followed it.
Russia has “unilaterally postponed” talks with the US aimed at resuming nuclear weapons inspections in Cairo this week, a US state department spokesperson confirmed. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Moscow had been left with “no other choice” but to cancel nuclear weapons talks with the US, state-run news agencies reported. He said it was unlikely any meeting would take place this year. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, accused the US of “the highest level of toxicity and hostility” and of “a pathological desire to harm our country”.
The G7 group has agreed to set up a network to coordinate investigations into war crimes, as part of a push to prosecute suspected atrocities in Ukraine. In a joint declaration, G7 justice ministers said member countries would ensure there is a central national contact point in each state for the prosecution of international crimes.
Pope Francis has sparked fury in Russia over an interview in which he suggested that Chechen and Buryat members of its armed forces showed more cruelty in Ukraine than ethnic Russian soldiers. He said soldiers from Buryatia, where Buddhism is a major religion, and the Muslim-majority Chechnya republic, were “the cruellest” while fighting in Ukraine.
Germany’s justice minister, Marco Buschmann, said his country contributed to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine by “adhering” to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Buschmann also said Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure constituted a “terrible war crime”, adding that he was “certain that at the end, we will see war crimes cases at the International Criminal Court against senior Russian leadership too”.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has confirmed that a Zambian national who died in Ukraine had been fighting for his group. Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda, 23, “died a hero” fighting with Russian forces, Prigozhin said on Telegram. The admission by Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, comes two weeks after Zambia demanded an urgent explanation from Moscow over the death of its citizen.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has said Beijing is ready to “forge a closer partnership” with Moscow to “maintain international energy security”. “China is willing to work with Russia to forge a closer energy partnership, promote clean and green energy development and jointly maintain international energy security and the stability of industry supply chains,” Xi was cited by state-owned broadcaster CCTV as writing.
The Ukraine war hotline between Russia and the US has been used once, according to a Reuters source. The communications line was created at the start of the war. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the US initiated a call on the “deconfliction” line to communicate its concerns about Russian military operations near critical infrastructure in Ukraine.
