Summary
The time in Kyiv is 9pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s headlines:
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy claims Russia has launched 8,000 air strikes and fired 4,500 missiles throughout the war. He vows the attacks will not break Ukraine’s spirits as “to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky”.
At least four people have been killed and 10 wounded in the latest attack from Russian troops, Ukraine has said. Several towns neighbouring the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant across the Dnieper River were hit by shelling, a statement from the presidential office said.
Ukraine has shot down more than 300 Iranian Shahed-136 ‘kamikaze’ drones so far, an air force spokesperson, Yuriy Ihnat, told a briefing on Friday. The drones have become a key weapon in Russia’s arsenal during its war in Ukraine and have often been used in the past month to target crucial energy infrastructure.
Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that the “partial mobilisation” Russia announced in September was complete. Speaking at a meeting with president, Vladimir Putin, broadcast on state television, Shoigu said that 82,000 mobilised recruits were in the conflict zone, with a further 218,000 in training.
The United States will provide $275 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine, including arms, munitions and equipment from US Department of Defense inventories, secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said. “We are also working to provide Ukraine with the air defense capabilities it needs with the two initial US-provided Nasams ready for delivery to Ukraine next month and we are working with allies and partners to enable delivery of their own air defense systems to Ukraine,” Blinken said.
Assets belonging to Russian and Belarusian individuals seized by Ukraine could be used for the country’s massive post-war reconstruction effort, finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, was quoted as saying. The government has frozen Russian and Belarusian assets in Ukraine worth some 44 billion hryvnias ($1.21 bn) since the start of Moscow’s invasion, according to the Economic Security Bureau, a state agency.
The US and its allies condemned Russia for wasting the time of the UN security council and spreading conspiracies by again raising its accusation that the US has ‘military biological programmes’ in Ukraine. “How much more of this nonsense do we have to endure?” the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, asked the council.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he had received a phone call from his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Friday and that he had demanded Tehran stop sending weapons to Russia. Ukraine and its western allies have accused Iran of sending ‘kamikaze’ drones to Russia which have then been used to devastating effect by Russian forces in strikes targeting Ukrainian infrastructure. Iran denies the charge.
Russia has bolstered its troops with “mobilised reservists” west of the Dnieper River, the UK’s MoD says. Over the past six weeks, its ground forces have transitioned to a “defensive posture” on the frontline, likely due to being “severely undermanned” and “poorly trained”.
The EU appoints Polish general Piotr Trytek to lead a new training operation with Ukrainian troops. Trytek, 51, was chosen by the bloc as part of its pledge to step up military support for Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff visits the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Kherson. Sergei Kiriyenko stopped at the ferry port where hundreds of people were being removed after a warning from authorities.
A Russian official’s threat to “strike” western satellites aiding Ukraine has raised concerns among space lawyers and industry executives about the safety of objects in orbit. No country has carried out a missile strike against an enemy’s satellite.
The UN nuclear inspectors are expected to reach conclusion on “dirty bomb”. Investigators are being sent to two locations in Ukraine where Russia alleged the activities were taking place, and are expected to reach a conclusion “in days very fast”.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Ukraine live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Updated
The United States will provide $275 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine, including arms, munitions and equipment from US Department of Defense inventories, secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Friday.
“We are also working to provide Ukraine with the air defense capabilities it needs with the two initial US-provided Nasams ready for delivery to Ukraine next month and we are working with allies and partners to enable delivery of their own air defense systems to Ukraine,” Blinken said.
Updated
An apartment block lies in ruins after being hit by a Russian missile in Zaporizhzhia oblast.
Assets belonging to Russian and Belarusian individuals seized by Ukraine could be used for the country’s massive post-war reconstruction effort, finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, was quoted as saying.
The government has frozen Russian and Belarusian assets in Ukraine worth some 44 billion hryvnias ($1.21 bn) since the start of Moscow’s invasion, according to the Economic Security Bureau, a state agency.
“We are currently looking for the resources necessary for [our] critical recovery,” Marchenko told Ukraine’s Suspilne public broadcaster, mooting the creation of a special liquidation fund as one budgetary source for the reconstruction.
“Money seized on the territory of Ukraine from Russian and Belarusian citizens can be involved in this fund,” he added, without elaborating.
Updated
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he had received a phone call from his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Friday and that he had demanded Tehran stop sending weapons to Russia.
Ukraine and its western allies have accused Iran of sending ‘kamikaze’ drones to Russia which have then been used to devastating effect by Russian forces in strikes targeting Ukrainian infrastructure. Iran denies the charge.
“I demanded Iran to immediately cease the flow of weapons to Russia used to kill civilians and destroy critical infrastructure in Ukraine,” Kuleba said in a tweet.
Today, I received a call from Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, during which I demanded Iran to immediately cease the flow of weapons to Russia used to kill civilians and destroy critical infrastructure in Ukraine.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) October 28, 2022
Updated
Canada will sell a government-backed, five-year bond to raise money for Ukraine and it will impose new sanctions on 35 Russian individuals, including Gazprom executives, prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said.
“Canadians will now be able to go to major banks to purchase their sovereignty bonds which will mature after five years with interest,” Trudeau told an annual meeting of the Congress of Ukrainian Canadians in Winnipeg.
“These funds will go to support the government of Ukraine so they can continue to support the Ukrainian people,” he said.
Canada has one of the world’s biggest Ukrainian diasporas outside of countries that border Ukraine, and the community has lobbied Ottawa to impose increasingly strict sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February, Reuters reported. Trudeau did not say when the bonds would go on sale.
The proceeds will “help the [Ukrainian] government continue operations, including providing essential services to Ukrainians, like pensions, and purchasing fuel before winter,” a statement said.
The equivalent of the income raised will be channelled “directly to Ukraine” through an International Monetary Fund administered account, the statement said.
Trudeau also announced new sanctions on 35 senior officials of energy sector entities, including Gazprom “and its subsidiaries,” according to a statement, plus six other “energy sector entities”.
“We will continue to tighten the screws on anyone abetting this illegal invasion,” Trudeau said.
Updated
Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that the “partial mobilisation” Russia announced in September was complete.
Speaking at a meeting with president, Vladimir Putin, broadcast on state television, Shoigu said that 82,000 mobilised recruits were in the conflict zone, with a further 218,000 in training.
Updated
Dozens of Iranians have gathered in Kyiv in protest of Iran’s government allegedly delivering drones to Russia.
The demonstrators gathered in the city’s Maidan Square holding signs reading “the Iranian people stand with Ukraine”, and waving both countries’ national flags.
Ukraine and the west have accused Iran of supplying Russia with military equipment to use in attacks against citizens – claims which Iran has rejected.
Updated
A former Russian president has told Elon Musk to pull his internet service Starlink in Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, was congratulating the businessman on his recent takeover of Twitter when he made the request.
“Good luck in overcoming political bias and ideological dictatorship on Twitter. And quit that Starlink in Ukraine business,” he said.
Good luck @elonmusk in overcoming political bias and ideological dictatorship on Twitter. And quit 👋 that Starlink in Ukraine business
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) October 28, 2022
Starlink has proved vital for Ukraine’s communications with officials praising the program, which Musk previously said costs $20m per month.
Musk and Medvedev last month shared an exchange in which the billionaire asked the Russian official how things were going in Bakhmut – a strategic town in the east Donbas region – to which he replied: “See you in Moscow on Victory Day!”
Updated
At least four killed and 10 wounded in attacks near Zaporizhzhia power plant
At least four people have been killed and 10 wounded in the latest attack from Russian troops, Ukraine has said.
Several towns neighbouring the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant across the Dnieper River were hit by shelling, a statement from the presidential office said.
Dozens of residential buildings were damaged and power lines cut leaving thousands without a supply.
Updated
Damaged flats at a residential building are seen in Nikopol, Ukraine.
Updated
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has plunged Europe into an era of insecurity, Germany said, a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, predicted a “dangerous” decade ahead.
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is from a wing of Germany’s Social Democrats that long argued for closer economic ties to Moscow, said the invasion had ruptured those hopes.
“When we look at the Russia of today, there is no room for old dreams,” he said, referring to the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s dream of a “common European home”.
“It has also plunged us in Germany into another time, into an insecurity we thought we had overcome: a time marked by war, violence and flight, by concerns about the expansion of war into a wildfire in Europe,” he said.
“Harder years, rough years are coming.”
Germany, which has joined European sanctions against Russia and weapons deliveries to Ukraine, has recorded the arrival of more than a million Ukrainian refugees and warned of possible energy shortages this winter after cuts in Russian gas supplies, Reuters reported.
Updated
In a war, there are many fronts and many forms of resistance. Ievgen Klopotenko, a Ukrainian chef, is fighting his war with soup.
In defiance of the Russian cruise missile and drone attacks that have hit Kyiv recently, Klopotenko was last week presiding over his bustling city centre restaurant. On the menu were dishes such as beetroot and herring salad with smoked pear from the Odesa region, venison from the Carpathians, and a dessert named “Kherson is Ukraine”.
Alongside a citrus semifreddo, the pudding included watermelon that he had bought last season in Kherson and fermented. The region, which Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed last month but is now the site of fierce fighting, is famous for the fruit.
And, of course, Klopotenko was serving borscht. In this case, with a touch of plum jam to balance out the sourness of the beetroot. For a hint of smokiness, it had been cooked slow and low in a wood-fired oven, as if “under a duvet”.
Updated
Ukraine has shot down more than 300 Iranian-made drones - spokesman
Ukraine has shot down more than 300 Iranian Shahed-136 ‘kamikaze’ drones so far, an air force spokesperson, Yuriy Ihnat, told a briefing on Friday.
The drones have become a key weapon in Russia’s arsenal during its war in Ukraine and have often been used in the past month to target crucial energy infrastructure.
Iran has denied Ukrainian and western accusations that it is supplying drones to Russia.
Updated
Standing in the dark beside the wreckage of a downed drone, Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed that widespread Russian attacks on power plants would not break Ukrainian spirits.
The Ukrainian president made his daily address outside after Russia aimed missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles at Ukraine’s electricity generating network over the last two weeks, causing major damage and triggering blackouts.
“Shelling will not break us – to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky. We are not afraid of the dark,” Zelenskiy said.
The US and its allies condemned Russia for wasting the time of the UN security council and spreading conspiracies by again raising its accusation that the US has ‘military biological programmes’ in Ukraine.
“How much more of this nonsense do we have to endure?” the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, asked the council.
Russia has previously raised at least twice at the security council the issue of biological weapons programmes in Ukraine – while Washington and Kyiv say they do not exist. Russia is pushing for a formal inquiry.
Updated
Summary
It’s 1pm in Kyiv – here are the day’s events so far.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy claims Russia has launched 8,000 air strikes and fired 4,500 missiles throughout the war. He vows the attacks will not break Ukraine’s spirits as “to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky”.
The US dismisses Russian accusations it is helping Ukraine engage with banned biological weapons. It claims Russia is attempting to “distract from the atrocities” being carried out in Ukraine, calling the allegations “pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence”.
Russia has bolstered its troops with “mobilised reservists” west of the Dnieper River, the UK’s MoD says. Over the past six weeks, its ground forces have transitioned to a “defensive posture” on the frontline, likely due to being “severely undermanned” and “poorly trained”.
The EU appoints Polish general Piotr Trytek to lead a new training operation with Ukrainian troops. Trytek, 51, was chosen by the bloc as part of its pledge to step up military support for Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff visits the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Kherson. Sergei Kiriyenko stopped at the ferry port where hundreds of people were being removed after a warning from authorities.
A Russian official’s threat to “strike” western satellites aiding Ukraine has raised concerns among space lawyers and industry executives about the safety of objects in orbit. No country has carried out a missile strike against an enemy’s satellite.
The UN nuclear inspectors are expected to reach conclusion on “dirty bomb”. Investigators are being sent to two locations in Ukraine where Russia alleged the activities were taking place, and are expected to reach a conclusion “in days very fast”.
Russia claims only 3% of food exported under the UN-brokered Black Sea export deal has gone to the poorest countries. Several tonnes of grain have left blockaded Ukrainian ports since the contract was signed, however, Russia says Ukraine has failed to deliver humanitarian food assistance.
The US is sceptical of Putin’s claim to have no intention of using nuclear weapons. Putin had played down a nuclear standoff insisting Russia had not threatened to use nuclear weapons, and had only responded to nuclear “blackmail” from western leaders.
That’s all from me, Zaina Alibhai, today. My colleague Tom Ambrose will continue to bring you the latest from Ukraine.
Updated
Only 3% of food exported under a UN-brokered deal has gone to the poorest countries, Russia has claimed.
Since the Black Sea grain export contract was signed in July, several tonnes of corn, wheat, sunflower products, barley, rapeseed. and soya have left the blockaded Ukrainian ports.
However, Russia has accused Ukraine of failing to deliver humanitarian food assistance. “The geography of the recipients of these cargoes has turned out to be completely inconsistent with the initially declared humanitarian objectives,” a statement read.
“Needy states such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, (and) Afghanistan have received just 3% of food, mostly from the World Food Programme.”
Russia has previously complained of problems with the export deal raising fears it could pull out altogether unless its demands are met.
Updated
Russia has fired 4,500 missiles throughout Ukraine war, Zelenskiy says
The war in Ukraine has seen Russia launch more than 8,000 air strikes and fire 4,500 missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed.
Standing beside the wreckage of a downed Iranian drone, he vowed that Putin’s attacks on power plants would not break Ukrainian spirits.
Russia had aimed dozens of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles at Ukraine’s electricity network causing widespread power cuts over the last two weeks, with Ukraine shooting down 23 drones in the last two days alone.
“Shelling will not break us – to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky. We are not afraid of the dark,” Zelenskiy said.
Updated
The US has dismissed accusations from Russia that its defence department was helping Ukraine engage with banned biological weapons.
Calling the allegations “pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence”, the US claimed Russia was attempting to “distract from the atrocities” being carried out in Ukraine.
“Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. The United States does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States,” the US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
Russia’s United Nations ambassador said the country would pursue an investigation that both the US and Ukraine violated the convention prohibiting use.
Updated
Russia probably using ‘mobilised reservists’ by Dnieper River, MoD says
Russia has probably bolstered its troops with “mobilised reservists” west of the Dnieper River, the UK’s ministry of defence has said.
The region encompasses most of Kherson, a strategically important Russian-held city braced for a counter-offensive from Ukrainian troops.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 28 October 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) October 28, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/OGqWfuBLL0
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/yNo37EBZo9
Over the past six weeks, Russian ground forces have transitioned to a “defensive posture” on the frontline, probably due to being “severely undermanned” and “poorly trained”, the MoD’s daily intelligence update stated.
It added that even if Russia were to consolidate its defensive lines across Ukraine, its operations would still remain vulnerable.
Updated
The European Union has appointed a Polish general to lead a new training operation with Ukrainian troops.
Piotr Trytek, commander of Poland’s 11th armoured cavalry division who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was chosen by the bloc as it sought to step up military support for Ukraine.
“It is a huge responsibility but also recognition of Poland’s position in the international arena,” the country’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, said.
The announcement follows the launch of the EU’s military assistance mission which will be headquartered in Belgium, with command centres in Poland and Germany.
Updated
President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff has visited the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Kherson.
Sergei Kiriyenko, the former head of the nuclear power company Rosatom, stopped at the ferry port from where hundreds of people were being evacuated, the governor of Crimea said.
“The work on organising the departure of residents has been completed,” Sergei Aksyonov added.
Russia is braced for a Ukrainian offensive in Kherson and urged residents to evacuate. Men who remain in the city have been invited to join a local militia.
Kiriyenko, one of the most powerful officials in the Kremlin, also met with staff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Updated
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleagues in the UK will be taking you through the latest for the next while.
Here is a summary of recent developments:
Updated
Japan is expected to announce a huge stimulus package to cushion the economy from the impact of a weak yen and inflation, though the central bank refused to budge from the ultra-loose policy that has hammered the currency, AFP reports.
The spending package is expected to include measures to encourage wage growth and support households with energy bills, which have spiked since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ahead of cabinet approval for the relief measures, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government would “seek swift approval” of an extra budget worth ¥29.1tn (around $200bn).
Prices are rising in Japan at their fastest rate in eight years, although the 3% inflation rate remains well below the sky-high levels seen in the United States and elsewhere.
The yen has also lost more than a fifth of its value against the dollar this year, prompting authorities to intervene to prop up the currency.
Updated
UK should match Norway’s 78% North Sea oil and gas tax, thinktank says
A Norway-style windfall tax on energy companies could raise £33.3bn extra by 2027, plugging a hole in government finances and helping keep energy bills low, analysis has found.
The new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is looking at extending the “sunset clause” in the energy profits levy by two years beyond 2025 as a result of the booming profits fossil fuel companies have been recording owing to the war in Ukraine.
But the environmental thinktank Green Alliance says he could go one step further and increase the levy by 13 percentage points, to 78%, which would match Norway’s tax rate on North Sea oil and gas firms. Currently, the UK government has put an extra levy of 25% on the firms, on top of the existing 40% tax, bringing the total tax to 65%.
Increasing it further to match Norway would raise an additional £6.6bn a year until 2027, the thinktank says, making up 17% of the £40bn-a-year fiscal hole, or equivalent to annual spending on policing and fire services:
A Russian official’s threat this week to “strike” western satellites aiding Ukraine highlights an untested area of international law, raising concerns among space lawyers and industry executives about the safety of objects in orbit, Reuters reports.
“Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike,” a senior foreign ministry official Konstantin Vorontsov told the United Nations, reiterating Moscow’s position that western civilian and commercial satellites helping Ukraine’s war effort was “an extremely dangerous trend”.
No country has carried out a missile strike against an enemy’s satellite. Such an act during the war in Ukraine could sharply escalate tensions between Russia and the United States.
“This threat has brought us to a brink that we’ve never been to before,” said Michelle Hanlon, co-director of the University of Mississippi School of Law’s Air and Space Law program. “There’s always been a sense that this could happen, but never has somebody actually said that they might do that out loud.”
Ukraine’s military relies heavily on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for broadband internet beamed from its low-Earth orbiting Starlink satellite network. US firms like Maxar are capturing images of the war from satellites in orbit. And tens of thousands of communications devices in Ukraine rely on the US satellite communications giant Iridium’s satellite network.
Under the laws of armed conflict, a Russian strike on a private US company’s satellite could be seen as an act of war to which the US could respond, Hanlon said.
White House spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday that any attack on US infrastructure would be met with a response but he did not go into detail.
“The legal aspects of all this are really murky at the moment,” said Brian Weeden, a space policy analyst at the Secure World Foundation. “We don’t have any examples of wartime uses of force against satellites.”
Updated
UN nuclear inspectors expect to reach conclusion on dirty bomb claim ‘very fast’
The UN nuclear chief said Thursday he is sending inspectors to two locations in Ukraine where Russia alleged that activities related to the possible production of “dirty bombs” was taking place and expects them to reach a conclusion “in days very fast.”
Rafael Grossi said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would be traveling this week to the two sites, which are under IAEA safeguards, following a written request from the Ukrainian government.
Russia’s UN ambassador alleged in a letter to Security Council members this week that Ukraine’s Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv and Vostochniy Mining and Processing Plant “have received direct orders from Zelenskyy’s regime to develop such a dirty bomb.”
The envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, said that information was from Russia’s Ministry of Defense. He said the ministry reported that work on a dirty bomb, which uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste in an effort to sow terror, is “at their concluding stage.”
Grossi said: “The purpose of this week’s safeguards visits is to detect any possible undeclared nuclear activities and materials related to the development of ‘dirty bombs.”’
Biden sceptical of Putin claim to have no intention of using nuclear weapon
US President Joe Biden expressed scepticism on Thursday about Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s comment that he had no intention of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Putin, in a speech earlier in the day, played down a nuclear standoff with the West, insisting Russia had not threatened to use nuclear weapons and had only responded to nuclear “blackmail” from Western leaders.
“If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it? Why is he talking about the ability to use a tactical nuclear weapon?” Biden said in an interview with NewsNation.
“He’s been very dangerous in how he’s approached this,” Biden said.
Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly said in recent weeks that Russia could use nuclear weapons to protect its territorial integrity, remarks interpreted in the West as implicit threats to use them to defend parts of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
In an interview earlier on CNN, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said it was possible Russia was considering the use of a so-called dirty bomb and was setting up a pretext to blame Ukraine. But he said the United States still had not seen any signs that was necessarily the case.
“They often blame others for that which they are doing themselves or about to do. So that’s why we have to take that seriously,” Kirby said of Putin‘s allegations.
“I’ll also tell you that we’re not seeing any signs, even today, that the Russians are planning to use a dirty bomb or to even make preparations for that.”
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be taking you through the latest for the next few hours.
US President Joe Biden expressed scepticism about Putin’s comment that he had no intention of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. “If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it?,” Biden said in an interview with NewsNation.
And the UN nuclear chief said Thursday he is sending inspectors to two locations in Ukraine where Russia alleged that activities related to the possible production of “dirty bombs” was taking place and expects them to reach a conclusion “in days very fast.”
Rafael Grossi said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would be traveling this week to the two sites, which are under IAEA safeguards, following a written request from the Ukrainian government.
We’ll have more on these stories shortly. In the meantime here are the other key recent developments:
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the war in Ukraine is part of Russia’s wider struggle against western domination. “We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two,” he said.
Putin said he ordered his defence minister to call top Nato commanders this week over the potential detonation of a “dirty bomb” in Ukraine. Putin claimed that Russia knew “about an incident with a so-called ‘dirty bomb’ being prepared”, and that Russia knew “where, generally, it was being prepared” in a speech near Moscow on Thursday. He gave no evidence of the alleged plot.
Fighting on the ground appears to have slowed in recent days, with Ukrainian officials saying tough terrain and bad weather had held up their main advance in the southern Kherson province. On Thursday a close ally of Putin, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, said 23 of his soldiers had been killed and 58 others wounded in a Ukrainian artillery attack this week in Kherson region. After the attack, Chechen forces carried out a revenge attack and killed about 70 Ukrainians, he claimed.
Ukrainians living in and around Kyiv have been told of a “sharp deterioration” in the region’s electricity supply after a fresh wave of Russian strikes aimed at sapping public morale as the country’s cold winter approaches.
Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine’s occupied region of Zaporizhzhia ordered phone checks on local residents on Thursday, announcing the implementation of military censorship under Putin’s martial law decree.
Moscow has said that provisions of the Black Sea grain deal to ease Russian agricultural and fertiliser exports were not being met, and that it was yet to make a decision on whether the agreement should be extended. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that the west had not taken sufficient steps to ease sanctions on Russia’s logistics, payments and insurance industries to facilitate Russia’s exports.
The United States has not seen anything to indicate that Russia’s ongoing annual ‘Grom’ exercises of its nuclear forces may be a cover for a real deployment, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday. “We haven’t seen anything to cause us to believe, at this point, that is some kind of cover activity,” Austin told reporters.
An oil depot in the Russian-occupied city of Shakhtarsk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk, was engulfed in flames overnight on Wednesday. The city’s Russian-installed mayor, Alexander Shatov, claimed the fire was caused by Ukrainian shelling of the railway station.
The US is sending Ukraine a new $275m package of weapons and other aid, in a move to bolster the effort to drive Russian forces out of key areas in the south as the winter closes in, US officials said on Thursday.
Ukrainian authorities say they will launch a criminal case against Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, accusing her of enabling the abduction and forced adoption of thousands of vulnerable Ukrainian children.
Russian journalist and Putin’s rumoured goddaughter has fled to Lithuania, intelligence services in Vilnius said, after police in Moscow raided one of her homes. Ksenia Sobchak is the daughter of the former mayor of St Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, whom Putin has previously described as his mentor.
