We’re now closing the blog. Here is a summary of events today:
Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – his first visit to the country since taking office.
Sunak announced that Britain will provide a £50m air defence package for Ukraine, including anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter Iranian-supplied drones.
Zelenskiy thanked Sunak, for his support and tweeted: “With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said at least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 837 have also been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion.
Five people were injured in a Russian strike on a humanitarian station in southern Ukraine, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said.
Nine people, including four children, have died after a suspected gas explosion in a residential building in Russia’s Sakhalin island, the local governor said.
Kyiv is in a “critical situation” with power shortages while the country faces hours-long blackouts, officials say, amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm, DTEK, said.
Ukrainian forces could be in Crimea by the end of December, the country’s deputy defence minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, has said.
The UK Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence update on the war Ukraine. Russia made its largest single-day issuance of debt in history on Wednesday, it said.
Moscow has not officially contacted Kyiv about peace negotiations, but Russia would have to completely withdraw its forces for talks to take place, Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential chief of staff said.
The first passenger train to the recently liberated Kherson city has arrived from Kyiv for the first time since Russian troops occupied the southern Ukrainian city.
The funeral took place on Saturday of a Polish man who was one of two victims killed when a missile crashed into a grain storage facility in the Polish village of Przewodow.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said China and Russia are seeking a world where force is used to resolve disputes and he vowed the United States will continue to defend humanitarian principles and international law.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering. “Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Asia-Pacific leaders added their voices on Saturday to international pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, issuing a summit statement saying “most” of them condemned the war.
A Polish man who was killed this week by a missile near the Ukrainian border had worked hard to shelter Ukrainian refugees in the early days of the war, locals said.
Two grain drying facility workers were killed on Tuesday when a missile crashed into the tiny village of Przewodów earlier this week while Russia was firing missiles into Ukraine. Polish authorities say it was a Ukrainian air defence weapon that went astray; Kyiv has called for further investigation.
Residents said the man was who was buried on Saturday had played a big role when the village of barely 440 people mobilised in the early days of the war to help Ukrainian refugees, Reuters reports.
Stanislaw Staszczuk, a local official from the nearby district centre of Dołhobyczów said the man …
… was very engaged from the very beginning. He was driving, bringing all the necessities, food, diapers, wipes and all the other necessary items.”
The deceased man has been referred to as Boguslaw W in Polish media. They have refrained from publishing both men’s surnames to protect their families’ privacy. The other victim, known as Bogdan C, is due to be buried on Sunday.
Boguslaw W had prepared three rooms where Ukrainian families stayed early in the war, in a building at the Argocom grain storage facility near where the missile landed.
Federico Viola, the grain facility’s Italian owner said:
We hosted lots of people, 150 or maybe 200, the rotation was huge until the end of May or early June and (Boguslaw W) was very involved.”
Viola added that when the news of Boguslaw W’s death emerged, messages of grief and support from Ukrainians he had hosted poured in.
Updated
Here are some pictures coming to us over the newswires from Ukraine.
Updated
Here is a map showing the latest developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said China and Russia are seeking a world where force is used to resolve disputes and he vowed the United States will continue to defend humanitarian principles and international law.
Austin told the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada:
Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right, where disputes are resolved by force, and where autocrats can stamp out the flame of freedom.
He added:
There are still rules in war. And if a big power can flout those rules, it encourages others to defy international law and international norms.
We are determined to defend those rules – and especially the bedrock principle of noncombatant immunity.”
Austin said Moscow’s efforts to gain support from countries such as Iran and North Korea create new security challenges for the United States and its allies.
Russia has turned to Iran and North Korea to help its assault on Ukraine, including using Iranian drones to kill Ukrainian civilians,” he said.
He added that Ukraine is facing a tough winter ahead and that Moscow may again turn to nuclear sabre-rattling as it suffers losses on the battlefield, pledging that the US and its allies would meet those challenges, Reuters reports
“Russia’s invasion offers a preview of a possible world of tyranny and turmoil that none of us would want to live in,” he said.
Updated
More details from Rishi Sunak’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv today.
In a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, Sunak said:
I am here today to say that the UK will continue to stand with you... until Ukraine has won the peace and security it needs and deserves.
The British leader announced a new air defence package worth £50 million ($60 million).
This comprises “125 anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter deadly Iranian-supplied drones, including dozens of radars and anti-drone electronic warfare capability,” according to a Downing Street statement.
It follows more than 1,000 new anti-air missiles announced by the British defence secretary earlier this month, reports Reuters.
Sunak added:
In years to come we’ll tell our grandchildren of your story, how proud and sovereign people stood up in the face of an appalling onslaught, how you fought, how you sacrificed, how you prevailed.
In response, Zelenskiy praised a “meaningful and useful visit for both our countries,” after discussing with Sunak “the possibilities of protecting European and Ukrainian energy security” and “our capabilities in protecting the Ukrainian sky, as well as defence cooperation in general”.
On Twitter, Zelenskiy said “with friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory”.
Updated
Five people were injured in a Russian strike on a humanitarian station in southern Ukraine, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the presidential administration, said the attack took place in the town of Bilozerka, just west of the city of Kherson, which Ukrainian troops retook from Russian forces last week. He said the centre had been handing out bread, Reuters reports.
The United Nations has said more than 16,000 civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion. Moscow has denied targeting civilians.
Updated
Moscow has not officially contacted Kyiv about peace negotiations, but Russia would have to completely withdraw its forces for talks to take place, a top Ukrainian official has said.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential chief of staff, said:
We have not any official application from the Russian side about … negotiations.”
He added that any talks not based on Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity within the limits of its internationally recognised borders are “not acceptable”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Yermak added:
The first steps it’s necessary to do from the Russian side is to withdraw all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.”
He was speaking in English via video link at the Halifax International Security Forum which is taking place in Canada.
His remarks come a day after Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, dismissed the idea of a “short truce” with Russia, saying it would only make things worse.
Updated
My colleague Lorenzo Tondo has the full report from Rishi Sunak’s surprise visit to Ukraine today.
Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his first visit to the country since taking office.
Zelenskiy posted a video on Saturday showing him meeting Sunak in the capital. “During today’s meeting, we discussed the most important issues both for our countries and for global security,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
A No 10 spokesperson said:
The prime minister is in Ukraine today for his first visit to Kyiv to meet President Zelenskiy and confirm continued UK support.
Following in the footsteps of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Sunak has pledged that UK support for Ukraine in the fight against Russia will remain steadfast.
The prime minister, who has spoken to Zelenskiy on more than one occasion since entering Downing Street, used his appearance at the G20 this week to join with allies and other western leaders to condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Sunak’s arrival was accompanied by the announcement of a £50m package of defence aid comprising 125 anti-aircraft guns and technology to help Ukraine counter Iranian-supplied drones, including radars and anti-drone technology.
Here is a clip of Rishi Sunak’s surprise visit to Kyiv where he met the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Rishi Sunak said it was “deeply humbling” to be in Kyiv during his surprise visit to Ukraine today.
He said he was “proud of how the UK stood with Ukraine from the very beginning”, adding:
I am here today to say the UK and our allies will continue to stand with Ukraine, as it fights to end this barbarous war and deliver a just peace.
While Ukraine’s armed forces succeed in pushing back Russian forces on the ground, civilians are being brutally bombarded from the air. We are today providing new air defence, including anti-aircraft guns, radar and anti-drone equipment, and stepping up humanitarian support for the cold, hard winter ahead.
It is deeply humbling to be in Kyiv today and to have the opportunity to meet those who are doing so much, and paying so high a price.
Updated
UK to provide £50m air defence package for Ukraine
Rishi Sunak has announced that Britain will provide a £50m air defence package for Ukraine, including anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter Iranian-supplied drones.
In a statement, Sunak said:
We are today providing new air defence, including anti-aircraft guns, radar and anti-drone equipment, and stepping up humanitarian support for the cold, hard winter ahead.
Zelenskiy: Britain and Ukraine ‘know what it means to stand up for freedom’
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has thanked Rishi Sunak, for his support after Britain’s prime minister made his first visit to Kyiv.
In a tweet, Zelenskiy said the UK and Ukraine both “know what it means to stand up for freedom”. He said:
With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory.
Thank you, @RishiSunak. With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom 🇺🇦🇬🇧 https://t.co/9oFfswxp3K
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 19, 2022
The video of the meeting shows Sunak stepping out of a car and being greeted by Zelenskiy as snow fell in Kyiv before chatting during a walk around before sitting down for talks.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he and Sunak “discussed the most important issues both for our countries and for global security” (see also 1.35pm).
Alongside the post on Telegram, he also shared a video of the two meeting in Kyiv.
Updated
Rishi Sunak travels to Kyiv for first meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Rishi Sunak, the new British prime minister, met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv today.
It was the first meeting of the two leaders.
A Number 10 spokesperson said that Sunak had travelled to Ukraine to meet Zelensky and “confirm continued UK support”.
Sunak tweeted:
Britain knows what it means to fight for freedom.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) November 19, 2022
We are with you all the way @ZelenskyyUa 🇺🇦🇬🇧
Британія знає, що означає боротися за свободу.
Ми з вами до кінця @ZelenskyyUa 🇺🇦🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/HsL8s4Ibqa
Updated
More from Kherson (see also 11.25am), where there is huge relief but residents say they cannot escape reminders of the eight months spent living under Russian occupation.
A week after the city was liberated, people are missing, mines are everywhere, there is a shortage of electricity and water, daily and nightly explosions and many shops and restaurants and closed, reports the Associated Press.
The city’s population has dropped from about 300,000 before the war to about 80,000 now, but it is slowly coming back to life.
“Even breathing became easier. Everything is different now,” said Olena Smoliana, a pharmacist.
“If we survived the occupation, we will survive this without any problems,” said Yulia Nenadyschuk, 53.
“You couldn’t say anything out loud, you couldn’t speak Ukrainian,” said her husband, Oleksandr, 57. “We were constantly being watched, you couldn’t even look around.”
Updated
Ukrainian forces ‘could be in Crimea by end of December’, says minister
Ukrainian forces could be in Crimea by the end of December, the country’s deputy defence minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, has said.
In an interview with Sky News, Havrylov said the entire war with Russia could be over by the spring, and said Ukrainian troops would continue to fight through the winter despite harsh conditions and freezing temperatures.
Asked if the recent recapture of Kherson city made other goals feel more likely, such as retaking Crimea, Havrylov said:
It’s only a matter of time and, of course, we would like to make it sooner than later.
An unexpected event inside Russia, such as the sudden collapse of Putin’s regime, could enable Ukraine to take back Crimea by the end of the year, he said.
I think Russia can face a black swan in their country, inside Russia and it can contribute to the success of us with Crimea.
Ukrainian troops could “step in Crimea” by the end of December, he said, adding that the scenario was “possible” and “not excluded”.
When asked what the unforeseen “black swan” event could be, he suggested that the Russian leader might “disappear for example due to some reason” or “ somebody from his circle, something happens, or maybe a combination of a very disillusioned society in terms of their losses”.
Havrylov said he believed the probability of a nuclear attack by Russia to be low but would not stop his country’s troops from fighting, adding:
Yeah, it would be drama. For everybody it will be just - God knows what scenario - but it [a tactical nuclear strike] is not [a] threat which will stop us from... continuing our war.
As when the war could come to an end, Havrylov said it was important to be prepared for a long fight if Russia is able to reinforce. He said:
Of course, in this case, the war will take some time. But my feeling is that by the end of the spring, this war will be over.
He added that peace talks with Moscow could only happen if Russian troops were prepared to “leave every inch of Ukraine”, including the Crimean peninsula that President Vladimir Putin annexed in 2014.
There is a decision inside the society in Ukraine that we are going up to the end. It doesn’t matter what kind of scenario is on the table. People paid a lot of blood, a lot of efforts to what we have already achieved. And everybody knows that any delay or frozen conflict is only the continuation of this war against the existence of Ukraine as a nation.
Updated
Russia’s recent surge in missile strikes across Ukraine is partly aimed at overwhelming and exhausting Ukraine’s supplies of air defences, a senior Pentagon official has said.
Colin Kahl, the US undersecretary of defence for policy, said Moscow hoped to dominate the skies above Ukraine by forcing Kyiv to use all its much-needed supplies.
He said:
We know what the Russian theory of victory is, and we’re committed to making sure that’s not going to work by making sure that the Ukrainians get what they need to keep their air defenses viable.
Updated
Ukrainians urged to consider leaving country to save energy
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.
Russian missile strikes have crippled Ukraine’s energy system, with authorities warning that Kyiv could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.
With temperatures plummeting and the capital seeing its first snow earlier this week, officials have been racing to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure since the war began.
In an interview with the BBC, Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of the energy firm DTEK, said Ukraine’s electricity system becomes less reliable with each Russian attack.
Reducing electricity consumption is the key to keeping it running, Timchenko said. He said:
If they can find an alternative place to stay for another three or four months, it will be very helpful to the system.
He said Ukrainians should view leaving the country as a way of helping their country win the war against Russia.
If you consume less, then hospitals with injured soldiers will have guaranteed power supply. This is how it can be explained that by consuming less or leaving, they also contribute to other people.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said about 10 million people were without power, describing the electricity situation in more than a dozen regions as “very difficult”.
Updated
The first passenger train to the recently liberated Kherson city has arrived from Kyiv for the first time since Russian troops occupied the southern Ukrainian city.
Illia Ponomarenko of the Kyiv Independent shared a video of local residents waiting at the platform to greet the train:
The first train coming to Kherson from Kyiv following the liberation day.
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) November 19, 2022
Note it how local folks are meeting it! pic.twitter.com/9I9RrDG0ec
In a post posted on Telegram, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, wrote:
The first train left for Kherson! This is our victory train! There are 200 passengers in the carriages who bought tickets ‘to victory’ as part of the joint initiative by Ukrzaliznytsia and UNITED24.
He added that the train to Kherson would depart from the capital on even-numbered days and return from Kherson on odd-numbered days, adding:
Just like this train, we will return everything for a normal life to Kherson!
Ukraine’s defence ministry tweeted last night that Kherson’s train station was the first building to have its power restored, after the city’s electricity and water supply was cut off as the Russians fled.
Kherson railway station is the first building in town with electricity. pic.twitter.com/jJUF0dYoX2
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 18, 2022
Updated
At least 437 Ukrainian children killed in war, says prosecutor general
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said at least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 837 have also been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion.
The eastern Donetsk region was the most affected, with 423 children killed or injured, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Officials said the figures were “not final” as they were still verifying information from zones of active fighting, liberated areas and territory still occupied by Russian forces.
The statement reads:
As of the morning of November 19, 2022, 1,274 children were affected in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression. According to the official reports by juvenile prosecutors, 437 children were killed and 837 sustained injuries of varying severity.
Updated
What happened next to the Ukrainians defending Snake Island?
In his 12 years in the frontier service, Bohdan Hotskiy saw many wild places. He thought his home, Ukraine, was the most beautiful country in the world: it had sea and mountains, forests and steppes, marshes and lakes. All was perfect, and so complete that Hotskiy – a 29-year-old captain – never felt the inclination to go abroad. Why bother? “We have everything,” he tells me when we meet in the Ukrainian town of Izmail, close to the border with Romania.
It is high summer. We sit outside on a bench in a central park, not far from the Danube River and Izmail’s port. Hotskiy is dressed in military uniform and holds a Kalashnikov. He is a modest and diffident person, tall and a little awkward, his dark hair receding into an arrow shape. At times Hotskiy seems reluctant to talk about his recent experiences, giving staccato answers to my questions. His story is remarkable, a tale of survival and dispossession.
Hotskiy tells me that as a teenager he wanted to join an elite service. He became a border guard, rose up the ranks and last year received an order to move to a new maritime location. He was to command a force of 28 men. They were being sent to a strategically important mini-territory 22 miles from Ukraine’s southern coast. It was a rocky outpost in the Black Sea; an ancient place known in Ukrainian as Ostriv Zmiinyi. English translation: Snake Island.
The island was associated with legends. The Greeks knew it as White Island, after its rock formations, or – as one story had it – the colour of its serpents. It was also associated with warriors. According to mythology, it was where the spirit of Achilles went after his death at Troy. In some versions, Helen of Troy joined him. Sailors were advised not to sleep there, lest they anger the gods.
In the modern age, rival powers contested the island: the Ottomans, the Russian empire and the Germans. A lighthouse was built in the 19th century on the spot where a temple to Achilles once stood. There were wrecks from the first and second world wars – a Russian destroyer, sunk in 1917 by a German mine; a Soviet submarine, resting at a depth of 35 metres; and a grain ship that had been bound for Europe. Latterly, the island was home to a small population of Ukrainian frontier service staff.
Updated
Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering.
“Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.
Any conspiracy theories about "🇺🇦 surrender" or West's secret negotiations with Putin do not take into account "small detail". Ukrainians. Such arrangements cannot be implemented. Ukraine will not kneel to Russians. It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) November 19, 2022
Updated
The UK Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence update on the war Ukraine. Russia made its largest single-day issuance of debt in history on Wednesday, it said.
The update continues:
This is important for Russia as debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defence spending, which has increased significantly since the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s declared “national defence” spending for 2023 is planned at approximately RUB 5tn ($84bn, or £70.6bn), an increase of more than 40% on the preliminary 2023 budget announced in 2021, it adds.
Debt issuance is expensive during periods of uncertainty. The size of this auction highly likely indicates the Russian Ministry of Finance perceives current conditions as relatively favourable but is anticipating an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment over the next year.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 19 November 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) November 19, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/QETLoujAbb
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Q0kqdha4pT
Updated
Nine people, including four children, have died after a suspected gas explosion in a residential building in Russia’s Sakhalin island, the local governor said.
The suspected gas explosion took place in a brick building built in the 1980s in the village of Tymovskoye, Russian state-owned Tass news reported.
Preliminary information reportedly pointed to a gas leak, with emergency services cited as saying that a 20-litre gas cylinder connected to a cooking stove had blown up.
Russia’s investigative committee said it was investigating the cause of the disaster.
Updated
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the area around the Black Sea port of Odesa and more than a dozen other regions are grappling with power shortages following relentless Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
The Ukrainian president said on Friday in his nightly video address:
The situation with power supplies is difficult in 17 regions and in the capital. Things are very difficult in Kyiv region and the city of Kyiv, Odesa region and also Vynnitsia and Ternopil [areas in western and south-western Ukraine].
Reuters also reported that the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said earlier that Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure had crippled half of the country’s energy system.
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine, with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to 2 million more in the Kyiv region. Odesa, the focal point of Ukraine’s agriculture exports, is the third most populous city, with about 1 million.
Emergency blackouts were occurring in those areas, Zelenskiy said. Other areas were subject to “stabilisation” blackouts according to a schedule.
With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first winter snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardments of the war on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure during the past month.
This is from the Financial Times’ Christopher Miller:
Millions of Ukrainians and huge sections of Kyiv still without power tonight. Some neighborhoods and city blocks in the capital have been without electricity for nearly 24 hours straight. And the snow has started falling. ❄️ pic.twitter.com/Zu80JYFGh8
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) November 18, 2022
Updated
The Hungarian prime minister’s objection to a mammoth European Union aid package for Ukraine has drawn accusations Budapest is trying to “blackmail” Brussels into handing over billions in threatened funds.
Viktor Orbán, Moscow’s closest ally in the EU, said on Friday he was against the bloc taking out joint loans to finance a proposed €18bn ($18.6bn) package to keep Kyiv’s government operating in the face of Russia’s invasion, Agence France-Presse reported.
Orban instead called for a sum to be given that would be “equitably” split between the EU’s 27 member nations and leave Budapest on the hook for just €170m.
Orban’s declaration came as the long-standing scourge of Brussels is embroiled in a row over the EU executive’s refusal to release to Hungary €5.8bn in post-Covid recovery funds.
The European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – many MEPs and some EU capitals oppose releasing the cash before Hungary makes concrete progress on addressing alleged corruption and shortcomings in the rule of law.
Budapest is also facing an unprecedented case from the EC that could see another €7.5bn in EU funds suspended.
Updated
At least six killed in Russian attacks on south-east Ukraine
Russian forces unleashed the breadth of their arsenal to attack Ukraine’s south-east, employing drones, rockets, heavy artillery and warplanes that killed at least six civilians and wounded six others, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
Associated Press reported that in the Zaporizhzhia region, part of which remains under Russian control, artillery pounded 10 towns and villages.
The death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a residential building in the city of Vilniansk on Thursday climbed to 10 people, including three children.
In Nikopol, located across the Dnipro River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, 40 Russian missiles damaged several high-rise buildings, homes and a power line.
In the wake of its humiliating retreat from the southern city of Kherson, Moscow intensified its assault on the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its forces took control of the village of Opytne and repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the settlements of Solodke, Volodymyrivka and Pavlivka.
The city of Bakhmut – a key target of Moscow’s attempt to seize the whole region of Donetsk – remains the scene of heavy fighting, the regional governor said.
Updated
Asia-Pacific leaders added their voices on Saturday to international pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, issuing a summit statement saying “most” of them condemned the war.
Apart from substituting the name of the organisation, the statement was word-for-word the same as a G20 declaration issued last week after a summit in Indonesia
The 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum issued a joint declaration after a day and half of talks in Bangkok criticising the conflict and the global economic turmoil it has unleashed.
The summit communique was agreed by all Apec members, including Russia and China – which has refrained from public criticism of Moscow for the invasion – but includes a number of diplomatic fudges.
It said:
Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.
There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.
Updated
Kyiv power shortages 'critical' amid Ukraine blackouts
The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv is in a “critical situation” with power shortages while the country faces hours-long blackouts, officials say, amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Heavy artillery and missile fire have interrupted electricity supplies to as much as 40% of the country’s people at the onset of winter, Associated Press reported.
Ukraine’s electricity grid chief said freezing temperatures were putting additional pressure on energy networks.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Ukrenergo’s chief executive, told Ukrainian state television:
We understand that the enemy wants to destroy our power system in general, to cause long outages. We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.
The capital of Kyiv is already facing a “huge deficit in electricity”, mayor Vitali Klitschko told AP. About 1.5-2 million people – around half of the city’s population – were periodically plunged into darkness as authorities switch electricity from one district to another, he said.
It’s a critical situation.
But he added that Russia’s attempts to make Ukraine think about giving up “won’t work”.
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Here’s a brief look at the latest developments as it approaches 9.15am in Kyiv.
Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, the government in Kyiv has said, as authorities warned that the city could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.
With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the war. The UN says Ukraine’s electricity and water shortages threaten a humanitarian disaster.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the idea of a “short truce” with Russia, saying it would only make things worse. “Russia is now looking for a short truce, a respite to regain strength,” the Ukrainian president said in remarks broadcast at the Halifax International Security Forum. “Someone may call this the war’s end, but such a respite will only worsen the situation.”
Hundreds of Ukrainians were detained and abducted in Kherson after Russia seized the province, in evidence of a planned campaign, a Yale University group researching war crimes has said. The Conflict Observatory said it had documented 226 extrajudicial detentions and forced disappearances in Kherson. About a quarter of that number were allegedly subjected to torture and four died in custody.
The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline. The footage appears to show Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie face down. One of the men, as he emerges from the building, appears to turn his gun on Ukrainian soldiers. The footage suggests all the Russians were killed in the violence that followed.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, talked with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and they congratulated each other for the extension of a UN-brokered grains deal, Erdoğan’s office said. Erdoğan told Zelenskiy the “extension of this understanding to the negotiation table” would benefit all parties.
The Dutch government will summon the Russian ambassador in the Netherlands over Russia’s response to the verdict in the trial over the 2014 shooting down of passenger flight MH17, news agency ANP reported, citing the foreign minister, Wopke Hoekstra. Russia has criticised the Dutch court’s decision to convict two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader.
Ukrainian experts were working at the site in the border area of south-eastern Poland where a missile killed two people, said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. He wrote on Twitter that Ukraine would continue “open and constructive” cooperation with Poland over the incident.
Poland will not grant a Russian delegation visas to attend an Organisation for Security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Lodz on 1 and 2 December. “We are not giving them visas,” said Łukasz Jasina from the Polish foreign ministry.
Vladimir Putin discussed creating a Turkish “gas hub” with Erdoğan, the Kremlin said on Friday. “Particular attention is paid to the prospects of implementing the initiative, launched by the Russian president in October and supported by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
Ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group said some members condemned the war in Ukraine and also pledged to keep supply chains and markets open. “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” their joint statement read, adding that Apec was not the forum to resolve security issues.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, has said two more bodies have been recovered in Vilniansk in the Zaporizhzhia region. “Thus nine people have already been found dead from the rockets of Russian terrorists who fired at residential buildings yesterday,” he said on Telegram. The claims have not been independently verified.
The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia appeared to be preparing defences for further major Ukrainian breakthroughs in Donetsk province.
Construction of a planned barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia will start early next year, Finnish border guard officials said, amid concerns over Europe’s changing security environment.
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