A summary of today's developments
An international team of legal advisers has been working with local prosecutors in Ukraine’s recaptured city of Kherson in recent days as they began gathering evidence of alleged sexual crimes by Russian forces as part of a full-scale investigation, Reuters reports. The visit was by a team from Global Rights Compliance, an international legal practice headquartered in The Hague. Their efforts are part of a broader international effort to support overwhelmed Ukrainian authorities as they seek to hold Russians accountable for crimes they allegedly committed during the conflict.
The Ukrainian port of Odesa was not operating on Sunday after the latest Russian attack on the region’s energy system, agriculture minister Mykola Solsky said, but added that grains traders were not expected to suspend exports.
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has said that there needed to be “accountability” for Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. He referred to claims of rape and sexual violence being used as weapons while he was in Kyiv, and that he also heard “very credible claims” that Ukrainian children are being forcibly sent to Russia to be adopted.
Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev has said the country is ramping up production of new-generation weapons to protect itself from enemies in Europe, the United States and Australia, Reuters reports.
A neo-Nazi paramilitary group linked to the Kremlin has asked its members to submit intelligence on border and military activity in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, raising concerns over whether far-right Russian groups are planning an attack on Nato countries. The official Telegram channel for “Task Force Rusich” – currently fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin and linked to the notorious Wagner Group – last week requested members to forward details relating to border posts and military movements in the three Baltic states, which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine has attacked a barracks in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, with some Ukrainian sources claiming scores of Russian casualties. According to witnesses, 10 explosions were heard, although some of those may have been from Russian anti-aircraft systems. Ukrainian officials claimed scores of Russian dead and injured while Russia conceded a handful of casualties.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Vladimir Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine and shows no restraint in his brutality. “Whenever I speak with Putin, he says very clearly that for him it is about conquering something,” Scholz said on Saturday at an event in Potsdam, near Berlin. “He simply wants to conquer part of Ukrainian territory with violence.”
The Ukrainian port of Odesa was not operating on Sunday after the latest Russian attack on the region’s energy system, agriculture minister Mykola Solsky said, but added that grains traders were not expected to suspend exports.
All non-critical infrastructure in Odesa was without power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy facilities, leaving 1.5 million people without power, officials said.
After Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan discussed the Black Sea grain export agreement with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine as both sides seek changes that would boost their exports, president Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter he had “discussed further work & possible expansion of the grain corridor” with Erdogan.
An international team of legal advisers has been working with local prosecutors in Ukraine’s recaptured city of Kherson in recent days as they began gathering evidence of alleged sexual crimes by Russian forces as part of a full-scale investigation, Reuters reports.
The visit was by a team from Global Rights Compliance, an international legal practice headquartered in The Hague.
Their efforts are part of a broader international effort to support overwhelmed Ukrainian authorities as they seek to hold Russians accountable for crimes they allegedly committed during the conflict.
Accusations surfaced soon after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of rape and other abuses across the country, according to accounts Reuters gathered and the U.N. investigative body.
Moscow, which says it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine, has denied committing war crimes or targeting civilians, and the Kremlin denies allegations of sexual violence by the Russian military in Ukraine.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Dec. 9 that a UN Human Rights report about Russian attacks on civilians was based on “rumours and gossip”, and Moscow has accused Ukrainian forces of brutal reprisals against civilians who cooperated with Russian forces.
“We’ve come down here for a three-day mission to support the Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG), and specifically the team investigating conflict-related sexual violence,” said Julian Elderfield, one of the legal advisers who took part in the Kherson visit that ran from Thursday to Saturday.
“(It’s about) asking the right questions, pursuing unique or different lines of investigation that might otherwise not have been pursued by local investigators,” he told Reuters in Kherson.
Reuters reports on influential nationalist Russian blogger Igor Girkin who is reported to have visited the conflict zone.
He is quoted as saying some Russian officers fighting in Ukraine are unhappy with the military top brass and Putin because of the poor execution of the war.
The nationalist and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and organised pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, made his comments in a scathing 90-minute video.
In it Girkin said the “fish’s head is completely rotten” and the Russian military needed reform and to recruit competent people who could lead a successful military campaign.
Some at the mid-levels of the military, Girkin said, were open about their dissatisfaction with defence minister Sergei Shoigu and even Putin.
Girkin said:
It is not just me... people are not blind and deaf at all: people at the mid-level there do not even hide their views which, how do I put it, are not fully complimentary about the president or the defence minister.”
Russia’s defence ministry did not comment on the remarks from Girkin who has repeatedly criticised Shoigu, a close Putin ally, for the battlefield defeats Russia has suffered in the war.
The West, Girkin said, wanted to foment a revolutionary situation in Russia akin to the February Revolution in 1917.
Russia, he said, had a lack of effective tactical missiles and it was unclear if it could produce enough while Russia had failed to establish air superiority due to Ukrainian air defences.
“Our Ministry of Defence has simply slept through the fact that the whole world has moved to new tactical aviation,” he said.
Girkin was convicted in absentia by Dutch judges for murder over his role in the shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew.
Russia, which has repeatedly denied downing the jet, rejected the verdict.
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia passed laws which allow prison terms of up to five years for actions interpreted as discrediting the armed forces, or up to 15 years for disseminating deliberately false information.
Here is some footage of the aftermath of the strike earlier on barracks in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol (see 7.47 am)
Europe is simply switching from dependency on Russian gas to dependency on liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, the RIA news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
European Union countries held emergency negotiations on Saturday as they attempt to line up a deal to cap prices at a forthcoming 13 December meeting of their energy ministers, but states remain split over the plan.
Peskov called the European desire to shake off dependency on Russian gas “absurd” and “frenzied”, Reuters reports.
“They have changed dependency on Russia to dependency on American liquefied natural gas,” RIA quoted Peskov as saying on state television, noting that the dependence was the same, just with “much less reciprocity.
“And now, when the Europeans are losing billions of euros every day, Washington is already earning these billions of dollars,” Peskov said.
More on the phone call between Putin and Erdoğan.
Reuters reports that the pair discussed their two countries’ joint energy projects, especially in the gas sector, Russian news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying.
Two leaders exchanged opinions on the creation of a regional gas hub in Turkey, it added.
The Turkish presidency said on Sunday:
President Erdoğan expressed his sincere wish for the termination of the Russia-Ukraine war as soon as possible.”
In the call, Erdoğan and Putin also discussed grain supplies.
Erdoğan’s office said Ankara and Moscow could start work on exporting other food products and commodities through the Black Sea grain corridor.
Russia has urged the United Nations to push the West to lift some sanctions to ensure Moscow can freely export its fertiliser and agricultural products - a part of the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow says has not been implemented.
The Kremlin said in a statement:
The deal is of complex character, which requires the removal of obstacles for the relevant supplies from Russia in order to meet the demands of the countries most in need.”
The Kremlin said the two also discussed an initiative to create a base in Turkey for exports of Russian natural gas:
The special importance of joint energy projects, primarily in the gas industry, was emphasised.”
Gazprom chief Alexei Miller has held talks with Erdoğan in Istanbul in the past week.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for a 30-kilometre (19-mile) security corridor on Turkey’s border with Syria in a phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Erdogan’s office said Sunday.
Referring to Kurdish militants that Ankara considers terrorists, Erdoğan reiterated the “importance and urgency” of creating the corridor in northern Syria in accordance with a 2019 agreement between Turkey and Russia, the Associated Press reports.
The call came three weeks after Turkey launched air and artillery strikes in Syria and Iraq in response to a bomb attack in Istanbul on 13 November that killed six people and wounded dozens.
The Turkish government has blamed the bombing on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its Syrian affiliate the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
Both groups have denied involvement in the attack.
Updated
It is just gone 2.20pm in Ukraine and here is a summary of events so far:
Two people were killed and another five wounded after Russian troops shelled the southern region of Kherson, the governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said, adding that Russian forces hit a maternity ward, a cafe and an apartment building on Saturday.
Ukraine has attacked the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, with pro-Moscow authorities saying a missile attack killed two people and wounded 10, while the exiled mayor said scores of “invaders” were killed.
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has said that there needed to be “accountability” for Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
A neo-Nazi paramilitary group linked to the Kremlin has asked its members to submit intelligence on border and military activity in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, raising concerns over whether far-right Russian groups are planning an attack on Nato countries.
Russia is ramping up production of ‘most powerful’ weapons, says Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev.
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has said he has not seen anything coming from Russia to suggest Putin is keen to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Vladimir Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine and shows no restraint in his brutality.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence says Russia’s Federal Draft Budget, signed by Vladimir Putin in 2022, stating that more than 9 trillion rubles (US $143bn) will be allocated across “defence, security and law enforcement” in 2023 is likely to be “over-optimistic”.
Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said
Jens Stoltenberg, the head of Nato has expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” he said in an interview on Friday with to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words. Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties won the 2022 prize in October.
Moscow announced it is banning 200 Canadian officials from entering Russia in response to similar sanctions from Ottawa. The health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce head, Victor Dodig, were among those targeted.
Boris Johnson has urged western countries to “look urgently” at what more they can do to support Ukraine in the hopes of ending the war against Russia as soon as next year. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he argued that ending the war as soon as possible is “in everyone’s interest, including Russia”.
Here are some images coming to us over the wires from Ukraine.
Two killed and five injured in southern region of Kherson, governor says
Two people were killed and another five wounded after Russian troops shelled the southern region of Kherson, the governor said on Sunday.
The city of Kherson was recaptured in November by Ukrainian forces during a Kyiv counteroffensive.
On the messaging app Telegram, the governor, Yaroslav Yanushevich, said Russian forces hit a maternity ward, a cafe and an apartment building on Saturday, news agency Agence France-Presse reports.
He added:
The enemy again attacked the residential quarters of Kherson.
Last night, two people were killed due to Russian shelling.”
Yanushevich said five others had been wounded in the city which was attacked with artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, tanks and mortars.
Updated
'There must be accountability' in Ukraine conflict, says UK foreign secretary
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has said that there needed to be “accountability” for Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
He referred to claims of rape and sexual violence being used as weapons while he was in Kyiv, and that he also heard “very credible claims” that Ukrainian children are being forcibly sent to Russia to be adopted.
When asked by Laura Kuenssberg on her BBC show whether Putin should be tried for war crimes he did give not a definitive answer.
He said:
There absolutely must be accountability and that means the soldiers on the ground who are perpetrating these atrocities right up to the very top. There has to be accountability, including Vladimir Putin.
We’ve been supportive of the International Criminal Court, but we recognise there may be other vehicles and we’ll work with our friends, including the Ukrainians, in the international community to look about what an effective accountability framework would look like.
He added:
The message we need to send across the whole globe is that aggression does not pay off, that you cannot benefit by brutalising your neighbour.
Addressing comments made by Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, that there was worry fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato, Cleverly said:
Nato has made it clear that we are a defensive alliance. Nato has never threatened Russia and is not doing so now.
Vladimir Putin has tried to create this narrative, but the bottom line is countries that join Nato do [so] voluntarily, there is no coercision and the alliance is there to protect its member states, not to threaten anybody else.
So there is no inherent need for Nato to be drawn into a conflict and in fact we are trying to ensute that does not happen.
He continued:
Ultimately it is Vladimir Putin who is using the esculatory language. He is the one who has threatened further imperial expansion harking back to … his focus on Russia’s historical empire. So it is him who is being the aggressor.”
Updated
Russia ramping up production of ‘most powerful’ weapons, says Medvedev
Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev has said the country is ramping up production of new-generation weapons to protect itself from enemies in Europe, the United States and Australia, Reuters reports.
Medvedev said on messaging app Telegram:
We are increasing production of the most powerful means of destruction. Including those based on new principles.
Using the term to describe territories of modern-day Ukraine that were part of the Russian Empire under the tsar he added:
Our enemy dug in not only in the Kyiv province of our native Malorossiya.
It is in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and a whole number of other places that pledged allegiance to the Nazi.”
Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, did not provide details of the weapons.
Neo-Nazi Russian militia appeals for intelligence on Nato member states
A neo-Nazi paramilitary group linked to the Kremlin has asked its members to submit intelligence on border and military activity in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, raising concerns over whether far-right Russian groups are planning an attack on Nato countries.
The official Telegram channel for “Task Force Rusich” – currently fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin and linked to the notorious Wagner Group – last week requested members to forward details relating to border posts and military movements in the three Baltic states, which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
The news has prompted questions over who has overall command over the far-right pro-Kremlin groups fighting in Ukraine.
Rusich is closely aligned to the Wagner Group, a military outfit run by a close ally of Vladimir Putin and now leading the Russian offensive to capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, currently the most fiercely contested battle of the conflict.
Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said the “extraordinary” move by Rusich could point to disenchantment with the Kremlin and frustration with how Putin’s war in Ukraine is going.
Read the rest of the report here.
The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly has said he has not seen anything coming from Russia to suggest Putin is keen to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
He was addressing recent reports that Putin had hinted that peace talks could be on the horizon.
Talking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Cleverly said:
I’m not really seeing anything coming from the Russian side that gives me confidence that Vladimir Putin is entering these talks in good faith. The wider rhetoric is still very confrontational.
Cleverly said that, while Britain wanted to see peace talks “sooner rather than later”, he reiterated that it was up to Ukraine to decide the circumstances under which they would be willing to negotiate with Russia.
He added:
Any negotiations need to be real, they need to be meaningful, they can’t just be a fig leaf for Russian rearmament and further recruitment of soldiers.”
Updated
Reuters reports that Russia’s Gazprom said it plans to ship 42.6 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Sunday, a volume largely in line with recent days.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence says Russia’s Federal Draft Budget, signed by Vladimir Putin in 2022, stating that more than 9 trillion rubles (US $143bn) will be allocated across “defence, security and law enforcement” in 2023 is likely to be “over-optimistic”.
The MoD adds that this amount is a “significant” increase compared with previous years and will represent “more than 30 per cent of Russia’s entire budget”.
As a consequence, other parts of Russia’s budget will come under “increasing pressure” to support the war, the MoD says.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 11 December 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 11, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/GQkyvi03uo
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/rcawU7e3qT
The Russian-installed administration of Ukraine’s Kherson region has said it had begun changing locally circulated Ukrainian hryvnia currency into Russian roubles, with hryvnia circulation in Moscow-controlled areas of the region to end on 1 January.
In a video published on Telegram on Saturday by the region’s Moscow-appointed administration, Andrei Peretonkin, head of the Russian central bank’s local branch, said: “For the sake of the convenience of residents and to allow for a smoother integration of the region into the Russian economic space, this week banks in Kherson region began currency exchange operations.”
Previously, the Russian-installed administration had said that both the rouble and hryvnia would be accepted in Kherson region, reports Reuters.
Russian forces took control of most of Kherson region in the early days of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia declared it annexed in September after a referendum condemned by Ukraine and western countries.
Less than two months later, Russian forces withdrew from Kherson city under pressure from a Ukrainian counteroffensive, while continuing to hold most of the region’s territory.
For the latest on the battle for Bakhmut, read the Guardian’s account by Peter Beaumont:
Updated
Viktor Bout, the arms dealer freed by the US in a prisoner swap for American basketball player Brittney Griner, said he wished her good luck on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi where they were exchanged, reports Reuters.
Bout, who spent 14 years in US jail for arms trafficking, money laundering and conspiring to kill Americans, was swapped on Thursday for the basketball star, jailed in Russia this year for bringing cannabis oil when arriving to play for a Russian team.
Russia’s FSB security service released images of the two being led past each other on the tarmac at the airport in Abu Dhabi during the swap, although the video cuts away as they pass and there was no footage showing them interacting.
“I wished her luck, she even sort of reached out her hand to me,” Bout said on Saturday in an interview with Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT.
“Again, it’s our tradition. You should wish everyone good fortune and happiness,” he said, adding that he believed Griner “was positively inclined” towards him.
Speaking to Maria Butina, who herself spent 14 months in US prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and is now a lawmaker and RT presenter, Bout praised the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whose portrait he said he had hung on his cell wall.
Asked about Russia’s war in Ukraine, Bout said he wished that Moscow had been able to launch it sooner.
“If I had the chance and the required skills, I’d join up as a volunteer,” he said.
Griner has not yet spoken publicly. Her wife, Cherelle Griner, said on Thursday their family was now “whole”, and the couple would work to help secure the release of other Americans held abroad, including former US marine Paul Whelan, jailed in Russia on spying charges he denies.
Ukrainian missiles hit barracks in Russian-occupied Melitopol
Ukraine has attacked a barracks in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, with some Ukrainian sources claiming scores of Russian casualties.
According to witnesses, 10 explosions were heard, although some of those may have been from Russian anti-aircraft systems. Ukrainian officials claimed scores of Russian dead and injured while Russia conceded a handful of casualties.
Video footage posted on social media showed what was claimed to be a Russian barracks in the southern city engulfed in a fierce blaze with some claiming the site was being used by the Wagner mercenary group.
Another video showed rescue workers in the ruins with several bodies visible.
The site, a former resort and hotel complex next to a church in the city known as the Hunter’s Halt, was being used as a barracks with most of the casualties apparently in a mess hall when it was hit.
The strike on Melitopol – reportedly with Himars rockets – was one of several overnight on Russian bases. Explosions were also reported overnight in the Russian occupied Crimea, including Sevastopol and Simferopol.
Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine, Scholz says
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Vladimir Putin is determined to conquer parts of Ukraine and shows no restraint in his brutality.
“Whenever I speak with Putin, he says very clearly that for him it is about conquering something,” Scholz said on Saturday at an event in Potsdam, near Berlin. “He simply wants to conquer part of Ukrainian territory with violence.”
Scholz has spoken directly with the Russian president more than most other western leaders since the 24 February invasion of Ukraine. The two last spoke by telephone for an hour on 2 December.
Scholz said it was not clear how many Russian soldiers had died so far in the invasion, but the number could be as high as 100,000.
We have seen the brutality the Russian president is capable of: in Chechnya, where he basically eradicated the whole country; or in Syria. There is no restraint there, it’s as simple as that.
We are of completely different opinions. Nonetheless, I will keep speaking with him because I want to experience the moment where it is possible to get out of this situation. And that’s not possible without speaking with one another.
In his remarks on Saturday, Scholz also defended his government’s aim to raise defence spending to Nato’s goal of 2% of gross domestic output, saying that before German reunification, it had reached as much as 4%.
Nato countries needed to be strong enough that nobody would dare to attack them, he said.
– Reuters
Updated
Summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Our top story this morning is Ukraine has reportedly attacked Russian-occupied Melitopol, according to both the Moscow-installed and exiled Ukrainian authorities of the strategically located city in the country’s south-east.
The pro-Moscow authorities said an attack by western-supplied Himars missiles on Saturday evening killed two people and injured 10, while the exiled Ukrainian mayor said scores of “invaders” were killed.
Here’s a rundown on the other key recent developments in the war:
Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile, rocket and airstrikes in multiple parts of the country. The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, illegally claimed to have annexed in late September.
The head of Nato has expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and Nato, according to an interview released on Friday. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
All non-critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa were without power after Russia used drones to hit energy facilities, local officials said, with much of the surrounding region also affected.
Iran’s backing for the Russian military is likely to grow in coming months and Moscow will probably offer Tehran an “unprecedented” level of military support in return, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. The ministry’s latest intelligence update said Iran had become one of Russia’s top military backers since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and that Moscow was now trying to obtain more weapons, including hundreds of ballistic missiles.
Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski said on Saturday upon receiving the prize on his behalf, speaking his words. Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties won the 2022 prize in October.
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the government would place targeted sanctions on Russia and Iran in response to what it called “egregious” human rights violations.
Moscow has announced it is banning 200 Canadian officials from entering Russia in response to similar sanctions from Ottawa. The health minister, Jean-Yves Duclos, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce head, Victor Dodig, were among those targeted.
Boris Johnson has urged western countries to “look urgently” at what more they can do to support Ukraine in the hopes of ending the war against Russia as soon as next year. The former UK prime minister, who was hailed by Zelenskiy as a key ally in the country’s fight against Russia, used an article in the Wall Street Journal to argue that ending the war as soon as possible is “in everyone’s interest, including Russia”.
Explosions have been reported at Berdiansk airbase in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Three large explosions were heard, as well as smaller ones, near the Russian-occupied city on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Ukraine says its southern regions are suffering the worst electricity outages days after the latest bout of Russian attacks on the country’s energy grid. The head of Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said workers were struggling most to restore power in the Black Sea regions of Odessa, which was badly hit on Monday, and around the recently recaptured city of Kherson.
Putin said Russia could amend its military doctrine by introducing the possibility of a pre-emptive strike to disarm an enemy, in an apparent reference to a nuclear attack. Speaking just days after warning that the risk of nuclear war was rising but Russia would not strike first, Putin said on Friday that Moscow was considering whether to adopt what he called Washington’s concept of a pre-emptive strike.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said his government was working with the UN’s nuclear watchdog to create a safety zone around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Dmytro Kuleba said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with his Slovak counterpart, Rastislav Káčer, that Kyiv remained “in close contact” with Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency head.
Russia claimed its proposed safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant was to “stop Ukrainian shelling”. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, also said the US’s withdrawal from a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles was a “destructive” act that created a vacuum and stoked additional security risks.
