A summary of today's developments
Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile, rocket and airstrikes in multiple parts of the country. The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that Russian president Vladimir Putin illegally claimed to have annexed in late September, the Associated Press reported.
The head of Nato has expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato, according to an interview released on Friday. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Iran’s backing for the Russian military is likely to grow in coming months and Moscow will probably offer Tehran an “unprecedented” level of military support in return, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. The ministry’s latest intelligence update said Iran had become one of Russia’s top military backers since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and that Moscow was now trying to obtain more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles.
Heavy fighting has continued in eastern and southern Ukraine, mainly in regions that Russia illegally annexed in September. Associated Press reported Ukraine’s presidential office as saying on Friday that five civilians had been killed and another 13 wounded by Russian shelling in the past 24 hours.
Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel Peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words. Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace prize in October, amid the war in Ukraine that followed Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the government would place targeted sanctions on Russia and Iran in response to what it called “egregious” human rights violations.
Moscow has announced it is banning 200 Canadian officials from entering Russia in response to similar sanctions from Ottawa. The health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce head, Victor Dodig, were among those targeted, Agence France-Presse reported.
Boris Johnson has urged western countries to “look urgently” at what more they can do to support Ukraine in the hopes of ending the war against Russia as soon as next year. The former UK prime minister, who was hailed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a key ally in the country’s fight against Russia, used an article in the Wall Street Journal to argue that ending the war as soon as possible is “in everyone’s interest, including Russia”.
A trio representing the three nations at the centre of the war in Ukraine will receive the Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, showing no sign of giving up the fight against Vladimir Putin and his Minsk ally. Jailed Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, Russian human rights organisation Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL) will be presented with their awards at a formal ceremony in Oslo, Agence France-Presse reports.
Explosions have been reported at Berdiansk airbase in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Three large explosions were heard, as well as smaller ones, near the Russian-occupied city on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Ukraine says its southern regions are suffering the worst electricity outages days after the latest bout of Russian attacks on the country’s energy grid. The head of Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said workers were struggling most to restore power in the Black Sea regions of Odessa, which was badly hit on Monday, and around the recently recaptured city of Kherson.
All non-critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa were without power after Russia used drones to hit energy facilities, local officials said, with much of the surrounding region also affected.
Vladimir Putin said Russia could amend its military doctrine by introducing the possibility of a pre-emptive strike to disarm an enemy, in an apparent reference to a nuclear attack. Speaking just days after warning that the risk of nuclear war was rising but Russia would not strike first, Putin said on Friday that Moscow was considering whether to adopt what he called Washington’s concept of a pre-emptive strike.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said his government was working with the UN’s nuclear watchdog to create a safety zone around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Dmytro Kuleba said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with his Slovak counterpart, Rastislav Káčer, that Kyiv remained “in close contact” with Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency head.
Russia claimed its proposed safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant was to “stop Ukrainian shelling”. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, also said the US’s withdrawal from a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles was a “destructive” act that created a vacuum and stoked additional security risks.
Updated
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has tweeted about an attack by Russian forces in Kherson.
Hospitals, children's centers - the favorite targets of russian terrorists. Today, they proved that they are even lower than terrorists when they hit a maternity ward of a hospital, this time in Kherson. Fortunately, there were no casualties.
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 10, 2022
