Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Kerch bridge explosion
Peter Beaumont and Pjotr Sauer wrote about the explosion on Kerch Bridge, which, before Russia’s invasion was used by 15,000 cars a day.
“Long threatened, the hated $4bn Russian symbol of Moscow’s occupation of Crimea – one that Russia had boasted was impossible to attack – had been blown up”, they wrote.
“The symbolism of the moment – a day after Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday and just over a week after he announced the illegal annexation of four more Ukrainian territories amid huge pomp in Moscow – was lost on nobody.”
Putin called the attack on the bridge an “act of terrorism” and retaliated with strikes on civilian targets in towns and cities across Ukraine in the days that followed.
Russia targets Kyiv and other cities in strikes
Peter Beaumont, Charlotte Higgins and Artem Mazhulin covered the attacks launched on Monday morning on civilian targets in cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv, during which cruise missiles and armed drones rained down on parks, playgrounds, power stations and other civilian targets, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 100.
“Watching the clean-up in Shevchenko Park, which was already under way early on Monday afternoon, was Tetiana Kononir, who lives nearby. ‘I don’t know what’s in his head, what’s in his heart,’ she said. ‘This only unites us even more. He will never defeat us. He will never put us on our knees.’”
In their analysis of Putin’s attacks, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer wrote that the Russian president’s mass strikes were “a desperate answer to his military’s critics at home, to the fact that Russia’s invasion is failing, and to his own wounded pride after the Crimean Bridge, a pet project, was rocked by an explosion.”
Pjotr also profiled Sergei Surovikin, the new unified Russian battlefield commander in Ukraine, who has a ruthless reputation.
How likely is nuclear Armageddon?
Julian Borger took a level-headed look at the prospect of Putin choosing the nuclear option, as Joe Biden warned of the greatest threat since the Cuban missile crisis six decades ago.
“Even if he did issue the launch order, he has no guarantee it would be carried out,” Borger wrote. And Putin is unlikely to issue the order if his primary goal is to remain in power, which it appears to be. “Nor can he be absolutely sure that the weapons and their delivery systems would work.”
Later in the week, Biden released a new national security strategy (NSS) which, as Julian Borger wrote, warned that the US would need to deter two major nuclear weapons powers within the decade, pointing to Russia’s arsenal, as well as an expanding Chinese stockpile.
The blueprint warns that, “Russia’s conventional military will have been weakened, which will probably increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning.”
In a foreword, Biden makes a distinction between the types of threats posed by Moscow and Beijing, writing, “Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown.”
He describes China as “the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective”.
The G7 held crisis talks with Zelenskiy
During crisis talks, Zelenskiy asked G7 leaders to supply more air defence systems and for an international monitoring mission on the Belarusian border. His request for monitoring came amid mounting fears that Minsk is being drawn ever further into the Kremlin’s war, Peter Beaumont and Julian Borger reported.
Andrew Roth and Daniel Boffey looked into the likelihood of Belarusian President, Aleksandr Lukashenko, entering a war that, at the moment, Russia is losing. Lukashenko has said that Belarus and Russia will deploy a joint military group, and that thousands of Russian troops will be arriving in his country in the coming days for drills.
In response to Zelenskiy’s speech at the meeting, G7 leaders issued a statement saying they would “stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes”.
But, Patrick Wintour wrote, the leaders sidestepped imposing a price cap on Russian oil – the country’s largest source of income, and best way to fund its war in Ukraine.
“The latest G7 statement made only the most passing general comment about ‘continuing to cooperate to ensure energy security and affordability across the G7 and beyond,’” Wintour reported. Zelenskiy had urged the meeting to impose a tough price cap, calling for “zero profit for the terrorist state”.
Putin weaponises the cold
Winter is closing in on Ukraine and with it “perhaps the worst-ever period for our country”, Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv said, as he addressed local and international journalists in a building off the western Ukrainian city’s cobbled Rynov Square. Daniel Boffey was there and wrote about Putin’s efforts to weaponise winter –including by launching missile strikes on energy infrastructure.
Boffey reported that the “draughty state of the region’s 6,000 bomb shelters has been raised as a particular concern”, with Sadovyi urging residents to make sure that shelters had heaters and firewood.
“It will save us from freezing. Any repairs [to the electricity grid] will need a day or two or three and we need to survive in the meantime. We need to survive the weapon of the enemy: which is cold, fear and destruction.”
Russia evacuates Kherson, stoking fears city will become new frontline
After an appeal from the Russian-installed head of the Kherson region, Moscow announced it would evacuate Kherson city, raising fears the occupied city at the heart of the southern Ukrainian oblast will become a new frontline in the war.
Marat Khusnullin, a Russian deputy prime minister, told state television on Thursday that residents would be helped to move away from the region in southern Ukraine, which remains only partly occupied by invading troops due to a successful Ukrainian counterattack in recent months.
Daniel Boffey covered the news, writing that officials in Kyiv have spoken of their hopes of reaching the regional capital of Kherson by Christmas, despite Putin’s recent announcement that the oblast had been “annexed” into Russia alongside Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk.
On Wednesday, Ukraine boasted gains near the city, claiming that five settlements in the Beryslav district in the north-east of the Kherson region – Novovasylivka, Novogrygorivka, Nova Kamyanka, Tryfonivka, Chervone – had been taken from Russian forces over the course of the day.
Saudi Arabia decides to cut oil production, angering US
The relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia continued to deteriorate on Thursday as the two countries traded barbs over the decision to cut oil production, with Washington accusing Riyadh of coercing other members of the Opec+ cartel, and Riyadh suggesting the Biden administration tried to get the decision delayed by a month.
Archie Bland looked at why the US was so upset by the decision, writing, “When Joe Biden gave Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, a fist bump in Jeddah in July, it was viewed as a moment of excruciating realpolitik: Biden, who had vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state over the assassination of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was instead palling around with the man believed to have ordered the hit. Today, that gambit appears to have failed – and the relationship is in tatters.”
Bland also looks at why Prince Mohammed would risk one of Riyadh’s most crucial alliances to help the beleaguered Russian regime – and what the news will mean for oil prices and Russia’s ability to prosecute the war.
