Closing summary
It’s 9pm in Kyiv and Moscow. That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine war blog today.
Here’s where we stand:
Ukraine’s army boasted of territorial gains near the strategically vital southern city of Kherson on Wednesday. Five settlements in the Beryslav district in the north-east of the Kherson region – Novovasylivka, Novogrygorivka, Nova Kamyanka, Tryfonivka, Chervone – were said to have been taken from Russian forces over the day.
Nato allies delivered new air defence systems in the wake of Russia’s recent missile attacks across the country. Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, lauded the arrival of the first of four Iris-T defence systems from Germany and an “expedited” delivery of sophisticated National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (Nasams) from the US.
A Russian nuclear strike would “almost certainly” trigger a “physical response” from Ukraine’s allies and potentially from Nato, a senior NATO official has said. Any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow would have “unprecedented consequences” for Russia, the official was quoted by Reuters as saying.
At least seven people were killed and eight injured in a Russian strike on a crowded market in the town of Avdiivka, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region said. “There is no military logic in such shelling - only an unbridled desire to kill as many of our people as possible and intimidate others,” Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
President Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready to resume gas supplies via one link of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that remains operational. The ball was in the EU’s court on whether it wanted gas supplied via the pipeline, Putin said in an address to the Russian Energy Week international forum.
The head of the Russian state-owned gas monopoly supplier, Gazprom, has warned Europe of the consequences of renouncing Russian gas. There is “no guarantee” that Europe would survive winter based on its current gas storage capacity, Alexei Miller said, adding that gas in Germany’s underground storage would be enough for between two- and two-and-a-half months.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has appealed to citizens and businesses to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts. People are being asked to reduce power consumption from 5pm to 10pm across Ukraine by 25% in order to stabilise the power system, which had been damaged by Russian missile attacks.
External power has been restored to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Rafael Grossi had warned earlier that the loss of off-site power at the facility, Europe’s largest, was “deeply worrying”. Energoatom, the Ukrainian state-owned company that manages the ZNPP, has accused Russian forces occupying it of refusing a convoy of company vehicles carrying diesel to refuel the plant’s generators after shelling of a substation in the Dnipropetrovsk region caused the plant to lose power.
Eight people have been detained over the weekend’s attack on the Crimea bridge, and Russia’s security forces have named a senior figure from Ukraine as being behind them. A senior Ukrainian official dismissed the investigation as “nonsense”.
A crowdfunding appeal that was launched after Russian attacks on cities across the country on Monday has raised $9.6m (£8.7m) in 24 hours for the purchase of kamikaze drones for the Ukrainian armed forces. An initial 50 Ram II drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with a 3kg explosive payload, designed and built by Ukrainian companies, will be bought with the money, along with three control stations.
President Putin will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in what is likely to be a “very interesting” meeting in Kazakhstan tomorrow, where the Turkish leader may propose ideas for peace in Ukraine, the Kremlin has said. The Russian and Turkish presidents are expected to meet in Kazakhstan’s capital tomorrow on the sidelines of a regional summit.
President Joe Biden has said he believes Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who badly misjudged his prospects of occupying Ukraine. The US president told CNN on Tuesday that he believed his Russian counterpart had underestimated the ferocity of Ukrainian defiance in the face of invasion, but does not believe he would resort to using a tactical nuclear weapon.
Ukraine’s ministry of reintegration has confirmed that 37 Ukrainian children who were illegally deported to Russia have now returned home. The children had been deported from the Russian-occupied territory of Kharkiv region in August, it said in a statement on Facebook.
The Kremlin has denied a report that Elon Musk spoke with President Vladimir Putin before publishing his “peace plan” for Ukraine that would have seen territory permanently handed over to Russia. In a mailout sent to Eurasia Group subscribers, Ian Bremmer said the Tesla CEO had told him that Putin was “prepared to negotiate”. Musk has also denied the report.
Russian nuclear strike would trigger a 'physical response' by Nato, says official
A Russian nuclear strike would “almost certainly” trigger a “physical response” from Ukraine’s allies and potentially from Nato, a senior NATO official has said.
Any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow would have “unprecedented consequences” for Russia, the official was quoted by Reuters as saying.
It would “almost certainly be drawing a physical response from many allies, and potentially from Nato itself,” the official said.
The official added that Moscow was using its nuclear threats mainly to deter the alliance and other countries from directly entering its war on Ukraine.
