Closing summary
In Kharkiv and parts of the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, 200,000 residents have gone without electricity since last Friday’s attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure. Emergency power outages have also reportedly been introduced in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, sacked the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council and replaced him with the head of his foreign spy agency on Tuesday in a new shake-up that follows the overhaul of the military high command last month. No reason for the changes was given.
Nato is considering shooting down Russian missiles that stray too close to its borders, Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Andrzej Szejna, told Polish media outlet RMF24. Szejna said that “(Russia) knew that if the missile moved further into Poland, it would be shot down. There would be a counterattack.” Poland’s armed forces said that Russia violated Poland’s airspace at 4:23am (0323 GMT) on Sunday morning with a cruise missile launched at targets in western Ukraine.
The director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Bortnikov, said, without evidence, that the US, Britain and Ukraine were behind Friday’s Moscow concert hall attack, in which at least 139 people were killed, state news agency Tass reported. He was also quoted as saying that the number of accomplices in the concert hall attack would increase past the current number of 11 detainees. Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a close Putin ally, has said that Ukraine was “of course” behind Friday’s deadly attack on the Moscow concert hall, despite Kyiv denying any involvement in the shooting, which Islamic State has claimed responsibility for.
A Russian court on Tuesday remanded an eighth suspect in custody over the attack on the Moscow concert hall, officials said. The court’s press service said the latest suspect to be remanded was a man originally from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, AFP reported. Officials said he was ordered to be held in detention until at least 22 May, without detailing the exact accusations against him.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, accused by Russia of spying, has had his pre-trial detention extended by three months to 30 June, a Moscow court said. The latest decision to extend Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention “feels particularly painful, as this week marks one year since Evan was arrested and wrongfully detained,” Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador, said. “Evan’s case is not about evidence, due process, or rule of law. It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends, as the Kremlin is also doing in the case of Paul Whelan.”
Russia is trying to expand its forces in the north-west of the country, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update, adding that most of Russia’s troops remain dedicated to fighting in Ukraine.
Ukrainian security officers arrested two people suspected of acting on behalf of Russia as they tried to blow up a railway line used to supply weapons to the east for Kyiv’s war effort, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Tuesday. The detainees, identified as residents of the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, planted an explosive device by the line in central Poltava region and planned to detonate it remotely, but they were caught red-handed by SBU officers, the statement said.
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Updated
Hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity after attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure
In Kharkiv and parts of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, 200,000 residents have gone without electricity since last Friday’s attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.
“Very serious damage to the power system makes it impossible to connect all people and houses to the grid and there are parts of the city where blackouts last 4-6 hours,” Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, told state television.
“Today underground transport is already working, however … (other) electric transport is not working today in Kharkiv,” he said.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of Ukrenergo, which operates Ukraine’s transmission lines, told a televised news briefing in Kharkiv the company had a plan to restore power supply.
“It’s still hard to guarantee any timeline, but we’re talking about a period of 7-10 days, maybe two weeks when we can restore normal power supplies to the city. Provided there is no new destruction,” he said.
Emergency power outages have also been introduced in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, Reuters reported.
Deputy Odesa governor Serhiy Kropyva told national television 23,000 residents were without electricity as of Tuesday noon while “the transport system was almost completely restored”.
He said the maritime Black Sea transport corridor continued to function despite the attacks.
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