Closing summary
It’s nearly 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The second mass strikes in days has been launched by Russia across Ukraine, with at least 70 rockets fired at several regions on Friday morning. So far authorities have said three people died and several injured, including three children, when one of the rockets hit a residential building in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipro region.
The mass strikes appeared to be a continuation of the Kremlin’s attempt to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo said energy consumption had fallen by 50% as a result of the attacks. The company said Russia had hit thermal power plants, hydroelectric plants and substations of main networks. Ukrenergo said it will take longer to repair the national grid and restore power than it did after previous Russian missile attacks, with priority given to “critical infrastructure facilities”.
Energy infrastructure was hit across the country, resulting in complete outages in Ukraine’s eastern and central regions of Kharkiv and Poltava. Nine power facilities in the country were damaged by Friday’s strikes, Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said. The mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said the missile strikes caused “colossal” damage to infrastructure and left the city without power, heating and water. A senior Ukrainian presidential official said emergency power shutdowns were being brought in across the country.
The Kyiv city administration said Ukraine’s capital had withstood “one of the biggest rocket attacks” launched by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine nearly 10 months ago. The administration said Ukrainian air defence forces shot down 37 of “about 40” that entered the city’s airspace. There were water disruptions in every district, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and local people reported immediate power outages.
At least eight people were killed and 23 injured by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine, Russia’s state Tass news agency reported on Friday, citing an unidentified source in the emergency services. The shelling destroyed a building in the village of Lantrativka and some people were trapped under rubble, Tass said. The head of the “people’s militia” in Luhansk also claimed there were civilian casualties as a result of Ukrainian shelling on the town of Svatove on Friday morning.
The White House has said the next security assistance package for Ukraine was coming and it was expected to include more air defence capabilities for the country. Russia’s foreign ministry warned this week that if the US delivered sophisticated Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine, such systems and any crews that accompany them would be a legitimate target for the Russian military. Washington rejected the threat.
EU states should buy arms jointly to replenish stocks after supplying Ukraine, said the bloc’s defence agency, warning the US may not always be able to shield Europe from threats. “The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine demonstrates our capability shortfalls,” said Jiří Šedivý, chief executive of the European Defence Agency. The agency was in talks with European arms firms about boosting production, he said, as well as with countries about clubbing together to buy equipment and ammunition.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she welcomes the agreement by EU leaders on the ninth package of sanctions against Russia. EU leaders agreed on Thursday to provide €18bn in financing to Ukraine next year as well as to a fresh package of sanctions, which will designate nearly 200 more people and bar investment in Russia’s mining industry, among other steps. The Kremlin said it would study the latest package of EU sanctions and then formulate its response.
President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Friday. The Kremlin said Putin gave “fundamental assessments” of the conflict in Ukraine during the call, at Modi’s request. The Indian leader’s office was cited as saying that he had reiterated his call for dialogue and diplomacy as the only way forward in the conflict.
Putin will visit Belarus for talks with the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, on Monday. The pair will discuss Russian-Belarusian integration “as well as current topics on the international and regional agenda”, the Kremlin said. Putin and Lukashenko will hold a one-on-one meeting in which they will “give priority to security issues and exchange views on the situation in the region and the world”, Belarusian state-owned news agency Belta said, without mentioning Ukraine.
Senior Ukrainian officials say Putin is preparing for a major new offensive in the new year, despite a series of humiliating battlefield setbacks for Russia in recent months. In an interview with the Guardian, Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said that while Ukraine was now able to successfully defend itself against Russia’s missile attacks targeting key infrastructure, including the energy grid, evidence was emerging that the Kremlin was preparing a broad new offensive.
Russia is to double the number of test launches of its intercontinental ballistic missiles to eight next year from four in 2022, the commander of strategic rocket forces was quoted as saying. Sergei Karakayev told the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that the eight test flights would be scheduled from two launch sites – one near Murmansk in the north, the other near Volgograd in the south.
Polish prosecutors are investigating a “violent release of energy” at the national police headquarters amid media reports that the chief of police fired a grenade launcher in his office. Poland’s interior ministry said on Thursday that Jarosław Szymczyk, the police commander in chief, was injured and taken to hospital when a present he received during a visit to Ukraine exploded at police headquarters in Warsaw.
Fifa has reportedly rebuffed a request by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to share a message of world peace before the kickoff at the World Cup final on Sunday. Talks between Ukraine and Fifa are still under way, a source told CNN, adding that Zelenskiy’s office was surprised by the governing body’s response.
Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has reportedly ordered an audit into the progress of the war in Ukraine. A source told BBC Newsnight that the audit, known as a data-driven assessment, is designed to assess the progress of the war and the significance of the UK’s military contributions to Ukraine.
A Russian businessman believed to be a close ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, has been taken to hospital in Central African Republic (CAR) after an “assassination attempt”, the RIA Novosti news agency has reported, citing the local Russian embassy. Dmitry Sytii, who officially works as head of the “Russian House” culture centre in CAR’s capital, Bangui, had sanctions imposed on him by the US in September 2020 for his alleged links to Wagner Group, a private military group that has deployed more than 1,000 fighters in the unstable country to fight rebels.
A Russian businessman believed to be a close ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, has been taken to hospital in Central African Republic (CAR) after an “assassination attempt”, the RIA Novosti news agency has reported, citing the local Russian embassy.
Dmitry Sytii, who officially works as head of the “Russian House” culture centre in CAR’s capital, Bangui, had sanctions imposed on him by the US in September 2020 for his alleged links to Wagner Group, a private military group that has deployed more than 1,000 fighters in the unstable country to fight rebels.
The Russian embassy in Bangui did not immediately comment on the circumstances of the alleged assassination attempt.
Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch under US sanctions who has led Russia’s recent push into Africa, said in a statement published on Friday that Sytii received a mailed parcel containing an explosive that detonated in his hands.
“At the moment, the life of Dmitry Sytii hangs in balance. Russian doctors are doing everything possible in the Bangui hospital to save him,” Prigozhin said in a statement posted by his catering company, Concord, that described Sytii as a “Patriot of Russia and Central African Republic”.
Prigozhin, without providing evidence, claimed that the assassination attack was coordinated from France.
I have already contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation so that it initiates the procedure for declaring France a state sponsor of terrorism, as well as conducting a thorough investigation of the terrorist methods of France and its western allies – the United States and others.
The French foreign ministry in a statement denied any involvement.
Western officials say that Prigozhin and his companies are the spearhead of an ambitious – if opportunistic – effort by Russia to extend its influence in more than a dozen African states, often at the expense of France.
