A summary of today's developments
Eighteen Ukrainian diplomatic missions in 12 countries have received bloody packages, including animal parts, in what Ukraine has described as a “campaign of terror and intimidation”. Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson from Ukraine’s foreign ministry, said the packages were simultaneously sent from one European country, which he could not disclose while the investigation was ongoing.
Ukrainian authorities in Kherson have urged people on the east of the Dnieper River to evacuate. The governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said that authorities would help people to evacuate during the daytime of Saturday to Monday, according to the Kyiv Independent.
The west should consider how to address Russia’s need for security guarantees if Vladimir Putin agrees to negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said. He said Europe needed to address Putin’s fear that “NATO comes right up to its doors”, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia, as Europe prepares its future security architecture, Reuters reports.
More than 7,000 explosives have been removed from around Kherson, the Ukrainian state emergency service said.
The Ukrainian army has recaptured 13 settlements in the Luhansk region, the eastern-most oblast in the country, according to the head of the regional administration, Serhiy Haidai. He said that artillery was still being fired at the villages by Russian forces. Doctors are due to visit next week and firewood is being organised for residents, Haidai posted on Telegram.
Russian forces are concentrating most of their strength on taking the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk, according to the British ministry of defence.
The price cap on Russian seaborne oil has been adopted by the G7 and Australia, after it was agreed by EU countries. Poland had held out on a lower amount than the $60 a barrel that was agreed. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would “not accept this ceiling”.
Another 510 Russian troops were killed on Friday according to Ukraine, bringing the total killed since the invasion in February to 90,600. A tank and eight drones were also lost by the Russians.
Up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded in February, according to Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. At certain points in the war, Ukraine said that between 100 and 200 of its forces were dying a day on the battlefield, making Podolyak’s estimate seem conservative. Speaking to Ukraine’s 24 Kanal, Podolyak said they were official figures from Ukraine’s general staff.
One person was killed and six were injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine on Friday. Zelenskiy aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said one civilian was killed and four injured in the Donetsk region, one was injured in Kharkiv and another in Kherson.
Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said that they would start evacuating some people with reduced mobility from the Russian-occupied town of Kakhovka, on the east bank of the Dnieper River. The evacuations were to start on Saturday, they said in a Telegram post on Friday.
Russian troops in Ukraine are deliberately attacking the country’s museums, libraries and other cultural institutions, according to a report issued by the US and Ukrainian chapters of the international writers’ organisation, PEN.
The International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to reach an agreement with Russia and Ukraine to create a protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the end of the year, the head of the UN atomic watchdog was quoted as saying. The nuclear plant, Europe’s biggest, provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on backup generators a number of times, Reuters reported.
Ukraine has detained eight people over the theft of a mural painted by the elusive British street artist Banksy from a wall in the Kyiv suburbs, authorities said. The stencil image of a person in a nightgown and gas mask holding a fire extinguisher next to the charred remains of a window in the town of Hostomel went missing on Friday, they said.
Updated
Around mid-October, almost a month after Vladimir Putin called for the partial mobilisation of Russian citizens to fight the war in Ukraine, there was a knock at the door of the Moscow flat that is registered as my official residence in the country.
The family friends who reside there opened the door and were greeted by two officers from the Russian military administration, who asked them whether I was at home. They said I had not been home in more than 20 years.
The mobilisation was declared by Putin on the 21 September, after half a year of strategic failures, senseless deaths and humanitarian atrocities at the hands of the Russian army in Ukraine. There are an estimated 356,520 Russian casualties to date, close to 40% of the entire Russian armed forces.
