Closing summary
It’s nearly 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
Ukraine is to evacuate civilians from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Residents of the two southern regions have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.
The Kremlin said it was concerned by what it claimed to be repeated Ukrainian shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, was rocked by shelling over the weekend, drawing condemnation from the UN nuclear watchdog which said such attacks risked a major disaster.
The head of Russia’s state-run atomic energy agency, Rosatom, warned of the risk of a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia plant. Alexei Likhachev accused Ukraine of being willing to “accept” a “small nuclear incident”, adding that “everything must be done so that no one has in their minds to encroach on the safety of the nuclear power plant.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appealed to Nato members to guarantee the protection of his country’s nuclear power plants from “Russian sabotage”. Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, said the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia plant was a Russian tactic that aimed to disrupt power supplies and “freeze Ukrainians to death”.
The UN nuclear watchdog will conduct an assessment of the Zaporizhzhia plant on Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said the forces behind the shelling of the plant were “playing with fire”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far”. WHO regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P Kluge, called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created to all areas of Ukraine newly recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general office has said its officials have identified four locations where Russian forces tortured detainees in Kherson city. It said Russian forces “set up pseudo-law enforcement agencies” in pre-trial detention centres and a police station before troops withdrew from the southern Ukrainian city earlier this month.
Russian troops have been accused of burning bodies at a landfill on the edge of Kherson during their occupation of the region. Residents and workers at the site told the Guardian they saw Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a stench of burning flesh.
The Kremlin said that it would bring to justice those responsible for the alleged execution of Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine. Russia has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war, citing a video circulating on Russian social media. Ukraine denies the claims. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also said there were no plans to call up more Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine through a second round of mobilisation.
Russian forces launched almost 400 strikes on Sunday in Ukraine’s east as part of a campaign of artillery fire, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Sunday night address. “The fiercest battles, as before, are in the Donetsk region. Although there were fewer attacks today due to worsening weather, the amount of Russian shelling unfortunately remains extremely high,” Zelenskiy said.
Russian forces are constructing defensive positions partially staffed by poorly trained mobilised reservists around the Svatove sector in the Luhansk region in north-eastern Ukraine, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. With Russia’s south-western frontline now more readily defendable along the east bank of the Dnipro River, the Svatove sector is likely now a more vulnerable operational flank of the Russian force, the latest British intelligence report reads.
Forty-five countries and institutions will meet in Paris on Monday to pledge millions of euros of aid for Moldova, as fears mount that it could be further destabilised by the conflict in Ukraine. Moldova, which lies between Ukraine and Romania, has felt the effects of rising food and energy prices as well as an influx of thousands of refugees arriving in the country of about 2.5 million people.
That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today. Thank you for following, I’ll be back tomorrow.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has condemned the shelling of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In a statement after the call, Macron said other nuclear plants at Rovno and Khmelnitski as well as the Nova Kakhovka dam had also been targeted.
He added that President Zelenskiy had thanked France for its continuous support for the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainian leader said he “stressed the need of demilitarisation” at the Zaporizhzhia facility, and said the pair “discussed cooperation on ensuring Ukraine’s energy stability, in particular, protecting the system from air attacks”.
Had a call with @EmmanuelMacron. Informed about the situation on the battlefield and at 🇺🇦 nuclear plants. Stressed the need of demilitarization of #ZNPP. We also discussed cooperation on ensuring Ukraine's energy stability, in particular, protecting the system from air attacks.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 21, 2022
