Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
The six people killed in a Russian missile strike on a postal distribution centre in Kharkiv district on Saturday were all postal workers, aged between 19 and 42. Of the 17 injured, seven are in a serious condition, and said to be “fighting for their lives”.
The attack was condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Blink, who wrote on X: “The Kremlin’s disregard for life is for all the world to see.”
Mitch McConnell offered a strong endorsement on Sunday of the Joe Biden White House’s $106bn (£87bn) aid proposal to Israel and Ukraine, saying he and the president were essentially “in the same place” on the issue.
Russian forces shot down three missiles targeting the Crimean peninsula on Sunday, a Russian official said. The peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is crucial to Russia’s military offensive, both for supplying troops in southern Ukraine and for carrying out missile strikes from the sea, AFP reports.
It is likely that Russia has suffered 150,000-190,000 permanent casualties (killed or permanently wounded) since the Ukraine war began, according to the latest update from the UK’s Ministry of Defence. If the numbers of temporary wounded (those recovered and due to return to the battlefield) are added, that number rises to 240,000-290,000, the MoD said on X.
Russian forces claim to have foiled several attempts by Ukrainian units to cross the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson over the past day. Russia’s defence ministry has said that what it calls Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance” teams were stopped while trying to cross the river near the villages of Pridniprovske, Tiahynka and Krynky.
Russian forces shelled the town of Kupiansk in Kharkiv region at about 7am on Sunday, hitting residential buildings and injuring three people, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said on Telegram. Russian troops attacked the village of Stanislav in Kherson region overnight on Oct. 22, damaging over 30 houses, though no casualties were reported.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will visit Tehran on Monday for talks with regional counterparts, his ministry’s spokesperson has confirmed. Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported earlier that the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia had been invited to the talks. Western countries have accused Tehran of supporting Russia’s offensive in Ukraine by providing it with large quantities of drones and other weaponry.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has spoken with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to thank Qatar for its humanitarian assistance and mediation in returning home illegally deported Ukrainian children, he said on X.
Ukraine fears a drone shortage due to China’s move to place restrictions on exports, the BBC reports. The war in Ukraine is the first armed conflict to see such extensive use of drones, which are used by both sides. Many of them are commercially made in China and bought off the shelf, and new supplies are vital because of the large numbers lost in the fighting.
Russia’s Gazprom, looking to compensate for the loss of most of its European markets, will supply extra gas to Hungary and China. Hungary is the only member of the EU whose leader, prime minister Viktor Orbán, has maintained friendly ties to Putin and is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open EU accession talks with Ukraine, which would require the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 members.
The British army’s Royal Engineers have trained Ukrainian civilian engineers on how to defend their energy sector from Russian attacks this winter, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.
We’ll be closing this liveblog shortly. Thanks so much for joining us.
Our Israel-Hamas blog is still live:
Mitch McConnell offered a strong endorsement on Sunday of the Joe Biden White House’s $106bn (£87bn) aid proposal to Israel and Ukraine, saying he and the president were essentially “in the same place” on the issue.
McConnell, the powerful Republican leader in the Senate, also rebuffed some of his GOP colleagues in the Senate who have called for a package separating assistance for the two countries, saying it would be “a mistake” during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.
The Republican leader offered significant backing to the White House’s $106bn request, including $14bn in assistance to Israel, $60bn in aid to Ukraine and another $14bn to improve security on the US Mexico border. An additional $10bn would be allocated to humanitarian relief as well as an additional $7bn to the Indio-Pacific region.
Nine Republican senators wrote a letter to McConnell on Thursday saying that Ukraine and Israel aid should not be paired together. “These are two separate conflicts and it would be wrong to leverage support of aid to Israel in an attempt to get additional aid for Ukraine across the finish line,” the group wrote.
McConnell rejected that view on Sunday.
He said during the interview:
I view it as all interconnected. If you look at the Ukraine assistance, let’s – let’s talk about where the money is really going. A significant portion of it’s being spent in the United States in 38 different states, replacing the weapons that we sent to Ukraine with more modern weapons. So we’re rebuilding our industrial base.
No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it’s wonderful that they’re defending themselves.
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