Closing summary
It’s nearly 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
Much of Ukraine remained without electricity, heat and water two days after a devastating series of Russian missile attacks against civilian infrastructure. The Kyiv mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said 60% of households in the city of 3 million had no power, and there were rolling blackouts around the country. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said basic utilities were gradually being restored, but there were problems with water supplies in 15 regions.
The EU will intensify efforts to provide Ukraine with support to restore and maintain power and heating, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said. In a statement after a phone call with Zelenskiy, she said the EU would provide 200 medium-sized transformers and a large autotransformer from Lithuania, a medium-sized autotransformer from Latvia and 40 heavy generators from the EU reserve in Romania.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said Russian strikes on critical infrastructure had killed at least 77 people since October. Since early October, Russian forces have launched missiles roughly once a week with the aim of destroying the Ukrainian energy grid, crippling the country’s power and heat supply.
Hospital patients are being evacuated from Kherson city because of bombardment by Russian forces, said the governor of the region, Yaroslav Yanushevych. The recently recaptured city in the south of the country faced heavy shelling last night.
Russian strikes damaged a hospital in Zaporizhzhia overnight, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Starukh, said. The attacks come as Russia’s latest barrage shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear plants – one of which is located in Zaporizhzhia – for the first time in 40 years.
All nuclear power stations in the government-controlled part of Ukraine are up and running again and connected to the main electricity grid, the country’s energy provider, Ukrenergo, has said. The UN’s nuclear watchdog confirmed that Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants had been reconnected to the national power grid after completely losing off-site power earlier this week.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has met a handpicked cadre of mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine in a carefully staged encounter meant to calm public anger over mobilisation. While dozens of ordinary mothers have gone public saying they were snubbed by the Kremlin, Putin sat down with a former government official, the mother of a senior military and police official from Chechnya, and other women active in pro-war NGOs financed by the state.
The Russian war effort in Ukraine is characterised by confusion among reservists over eligibility for service and inadequate training and equipment, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In its daily update, the MoD said some reservists were having to serve with “serious chronic health conditions” since they were called up during Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a “partial mobilisation”.
Armenia has asked the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to chair peace talks with Azerbaijan in a fresh challenge to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly loose grip on Russia’s regional allies in the wake of the war in Ukraine. The snub from a traditional ally to Putin comes immediately on the back of his disastrous summit with six former Soviet states.
EU diplomats are meeting this evening to resume talks on whether they can finalise a deal on a price level to cap Russian oil exports, according to a report by Bloomberg. European governments have failed so far to reach a deal on the price level for Russian oil. A G7 proposal for a cap of $65-$70 a barrel is seen as far too high by some, and too low by others.
Germany’s Bundestag is planning to pass a resolution declaring the starvation of millions of Ukrainians under Joseph Stalin a genocide. The resolution, which will be jointly brought to the vote next week by the three governing parties and conservative opposition leaders, aims to serve as a warning to Moscow as Ukraine faces a potential hunger crisis this winter.
Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, travelled to Kyiv on Thursday to meet the Ukrainian leadership and promise the UK’s support for as long as it takes. In his first visit to Ukraine since his appointment as foreign secretary, Cleverly presented a package of support including money for the reconstruction of schools, ambulances, the victims of sexual violence, and grain sales to the world’s poorest markets, such as Sudan and Yemen.
Two Swedish brothers, one who worked for the country’s security police and armed forces, went on trial in Stockholm today accused of spying for Russian intelligence between 2011 and 2021. Payam Kia, 35, and his brother Peyman Kia, 42, could face life sentences if found guilty.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has met mothers of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Around a table laid with tea, cakes and bowls of fresh berries, he told them he shared in their suffering and the entire Russian leadership understood the pain of those who had lost their sons.
Advocates of soldiers’ families and rights groups have said Putin snubbed them for the meeting.
Valentina Melnikova, who has been an advocate for soldiers’ families for more than three decades, told the Guardian that “they didn’t invite us and we of course don’t want to go”.
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