At least two people were killed in the biggest Russian strikes on Ukraine since 15 August. The massive Russian attack hit at least six cities across Ukraine and wounded at least 21. The attack, carried out on the International Day of Peace, coincided with the United Nations general assembly summit in New York, where Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy had delivered a speech and presented a Ukrainian “peace formula”.
The strikes damaged energy infrastructure in central and western Ukraine, Ukrainian national grid operator Ukrenergo said. It said on the Telegram messaging app that the attacks caused electricity shutdowns in five regions – Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Rivne, and Kharkiv.
Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi said on the Telegram messaging app that the Russian missiles were launched in several waves from 10 Russian warplanes, and that Ukrainian air defences shot down 36 out of 43 missiles launched.
A Ukrainian intelligence source has claimed to Reuters that Ukraine’s security service and navy struck the Saky airbase in Russian-occupied Crimea overnight, inflicting “serious damage”. Earlier, Russia’s defence ministry said it had shot down 19 drones over Crimea and the Black Sea. Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea in 2014.
Poland said Wednesday it will no longer arm Ukraine and instead focus on its own defence, as the two allies clashed at a key moment in Kyiv’s fightback against the invasion by Russia. In a mounting row over grain exports from Ukraine, Poland summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest remarks at the UN by Zelenskiy. Polish government spokesperson Piotr Müller on Thursday said Poland will only be carrying out previously agreed supplies of ammunition and armaments, including those resulting from the contracts signed with Ukraine.
Slovakia and Ukraine’s agricultural ministers have agreed to set up a licensing system for trading in grains, which would allow a ban on imports of four Ukrainian commodities to Slovakia to be lifted once the system is set up, Reuters reports the Slovak Agriculture Ministry said on Thursday.
Ukraine’s agricultural minister, in a phone call with his counterpart from Poland, has agreed to work out a solution to a trade dispute that is in the interests of both countries, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Thursday.
Zelenskiy, addressing the UN security council on Wednesday, said there had been 574 days of “pain, losses and struggle” since Russia’s invasion of his country. He said peoples and governments had lost confidence in the UN’s ability and willingness to defend sovereign borders and that the UN had been “ineffective” but that it was “capable of more”.
Zelenskiy called for the UN general assembly to be given power to overcome the veto power held by Russia, calling it a “necessary step”. He said: “It is impossible to stop the war because all efforts are vetoed by the aggressor, or those who condone the aggressor.”
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of “selectively” turning to UN norms and principles on a case-by-case basis “based on their parochial geopolitical needs”. Speaking at the UN’s security council, he said this had resulted in the “shaking of global stability” and the “exacerbation of new hotbeds of tensions” that risked global conflict.
More than a dozen European countries, as well as Australia and Canada, asked the world court on Wednesday to decide whether it has jurisdiction in a case brought by Kyiv alleging that Russia abused the genocide convention to provide a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine brought the case to the international court of justice (ICJ), the highest UN court for disputes between states, days after Russia launched a full-scale war on its smaller neighbour on 24 February last year.
Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, in a lengthy set-piece speech to the UN general assembly, accused the US of fanning the flames of violence in Ukraine, prompting protests from Israel’s representative to the UN.
Belgium is considering whether to supply its F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, prime minister Alexander De Croo said at the sidelines of the UN general assembly.
Russia has “deliberately and repeatedly” targeted medical facilities in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, causing damage to children’s hospitals, maternity wards and a regional clinic, according to a new study.
The Swedish investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage last year is at a sensitive stage and the investigator, Mats Ljungqvist, hopes to conclude it before the end of the year, he told Reuters on Wednesday.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, reported on Wednesday that three settlements in the region had lost power as a result of cross-border shelling by Ukrainian armed forces, and that one woman had been wounded. He later reported that a man had been killed and another wounded by shelling near the village of Maksimovka.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met on Wednesday for more than an hour with Zelenskiy and discussed ways to achieve a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. “We had a good conversation about the importance of paths to building,” Lula posted on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, after their meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly.
