Ukraine official: Russia preparing attacks against Ukraine’s infrastructure as winter approaches

Russia is preparing to attack Ukraine’s critical infrastructure once the temperatures drop, according to Ukraine’s national security and defence council secretary, Oleksiy Danilov.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Speaking on the Ukrainian TCH TV Channel, Danilov said Russia is preparing attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure once the temperatures get lower.

He said:

The Russian Federation is preparing to do us harm once winter temperatures come.

They will attempt to strike at our critical infrastructure facilities, which ensure daily activities.

Danilov said Ukraine was prepared, adding that most of the country’s critical infrastructure was “under control,” and foreign partners were providing additional air defences.

Last year, Russian forces began conducting mass missile strikes against Ukraine’s infrastructure in early October.

The UK Ministry of Defence said last week that Russia is stockpiling its missiles to target the Ukrainian energy infrastructure in winter.

Ukraine president warns against expecting too much success too quickly

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said: “The modern world is set up in such a way that it becomes accustomed to success too quickly. When the full-scale aggression began, many in the world did not think Ukraine would endure,” in his nightly video address on Tuesday.

Zelenskiy has previously rejected criticism, mainly from western sources, that the counteroffensive against Russia was proceeding too slowly, saying the war was not akin to a Hollywood movie set.

Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were gearing up for fresh attacks in different sections of the front, but there has been little movement along the 1,000km frontline in recent months.

Ukraine’s president applauded Ukrainian offensive moves that have restricted the operations of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, but he said no one should expect rapid success stories in repelling Russia’s 20-month-old invasion.

Zelenskiy also said a meeting with senior commanders had looked at sectors engulfed by the fiercest fighting, including the key areas of Avdiivka and Kupiansk where Russia has been on the offensive in recent weeks.

Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the military administration in Avdiivka, said the shattered eastern city was bracing for another wave of the attacks it had been withstanding since mid-October.

Russian accounts of the fighting said Moscow’s forces had conducted successful attacks near the town of Bakhmut – an area largely destroyed and captured by Russian forces in May. Reuters could not verify accounts of fighting from either side.

UN human rights group believes missile strike that killed 59 in Hroza launched by Russia

The United Nations human rights office has found “reasonable grounds” to conclude a missile strike that killed 59 people in a cafe in the Ukrainian village of Hroza was launched by Russia’s armed forces, the office said on Tuesday.

“Today, we are publishing a report into the events of Oct. 5 that concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe that the missile was launched by Russian armed forces,” Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, told reporters in Geneva.

She added that “there was no indication of military personnel or any other legitimate military targets at or adjacent to the cafe at the time of the attack.”

Ukraine said a Russian missile hit a cafe in the village in the Kharkiv region this month as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Moscow denies targeting civilians in its invasion, a position it repeated in relation to the strike on Hroza.

A view of the area as police and military experts working at a site of a Russian strike, in the village of Hroza, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine 5 October 2023. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Opening summary

Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary of some of the latest developments.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has spoken at a Beijing defence forum on Monday, claiming that Moscow was ready for talks on the post-conflict settlement of the Ukraine crisis, and on further “coexistence” with the west, but that western countries needed to stop seeking Russia’s strategic defeat. The conditions for talks had not yet been met, he said.

He accused the west of promoting an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region, Russian state media reported, saying the west’s “ostentatious desire for dialogue” was covering up a build-up of forces in that region.

Shoigu also appeared to play down Russia’s decision to revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, claiming it did not mean the end of the agreement, and that Russia was not lowering its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

“We are only seeking to restore parity with the United States, who have not ratified this treaty,” Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Shoigu as saying. “We are not talking about its destruction.”

In other developments:

• Russia says it has shot down 36 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula. There were claims in local media outlets that a fire at an oil refinery in the early hours of Sunday had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone. Ukraine has said it shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched from Russia overnight.

• State media in Russia has reported that more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Yuzhno-Donetsk over the past 24 hours. The 58th motorised infantry, 79th air assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 128th territorial defence brigade were reportedly involved in the attack by Russian troops.

• Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

• Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of Vladimir Putin said. The comments were made after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its postwar reconstruction.

• Ukraine and Russia are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus president, said. Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched … seriously stalemate.”

• Four Ukrainian police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk oblast.

• A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow. In a statement, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”. Ukraine’s deputy minister Mykola Tochytskyi has said his country aims to hold a global “peace summit” of world leaders this year.

• A mob in Russia’s mostly Muslim region of Dagestan has stormed the airport in Makhachkala in search of Jewish passengers arriving from Israel, after reports emerged that a flight from Tel Aviv was arriving in the city. There were reports of some injuries at the airport, while some passengers were forced to take refuge in planes or hide in the airport for fear of being attacked.

• About 2,000 Ukrainians ran a 1km race on Sunday in Kyiv, wearing bibs displaying the name of a person instead of a number. Each runner chose one person to whom they dedicated their run. Spouses, children, friends, siblings, neighbours, and colleagues ran for someone they knew who either was killed, taken captive or injured during the war.

Belarus leader says ‘situation is now seriously stalemate’

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, the authoritarian leader of Belarus has said.

Alexander Lukashenko, who is an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched. People are dying”.

“There are enough problems on both sides and in general the situation is now seriously stalemate: no one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position,” he said.

In other news:

• A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow, which condemned it. In a statement afterwards, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”. It follows similar meetings in Jeddah and Copenhagen, with the Ukrainians hoping to eventually hold a summit at the level of heads of state.

Delegates at the weekend meeting discussed its peace formula for ending the war with Russia in St Julian’s, Malta. Photograph: Ministry For Foreign And European Affairs And Trade Of Malta/Reuters

• Russia’s forces around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka have “likely suffered” some of its highest casualty rates of 2023 so far, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update.

• The report follows the Ukrainian president’s claims on Friday that Russian forces lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops attempting to advance on Avdiivka.

• The head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, has praised Qatar’s role in facilitating the return of four Ukrainian children from Russian captivity earlier this month.

• Ukraine and the Netherlands began talks on a bilateral agreement on security guarantees in Malta, Andriy Yermak also announced. It is the sixth country to start bilateral negotiations with Ukraine on security guarantees.

• Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Mykola Tochytskyi, has pointedly accused Russia of having a history of “provoking” and “stoking” hybrid conflicts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

• “We warned that turning a blind eye to [Russian] violation of international peace and security would fuel conflicts in the world,” Tochytskyi said, amid the Israel-Hamas war. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously expressed fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel could threaten military support for Ukraine.

• Russia’s foreign ministry claimed a Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia, damaging its walls.

Russian losses around Avdiivka probably the worst of 2023, says UK

Here are today’s casualty numbers, from Ukraine’s armed forces. The figures have not been independently verified.

Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday that Russia had lost 298,420 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion last year. It said Russia suffered 740 casualties in the last day.

And here is the UK’s ministry of defence’s intelligence update from earlier this morning, where it said that Russia’s forces around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka have “likely suffered” some of its highest casualty rates of 2023 so far.

Summary of the day so far …

It has just gone 1pm in Kyiv. Here are the latest headlines …

• The White House has claimed Russia is executing soldiers who fail to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire. The White House national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said it was a development that security officials believe reflected Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its invasion. “It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters. “But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”

• Russia has said it thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack near a nuclear plant in the south of the country, where two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste. The defence ministry said air defences foiled “an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack” when they intercepted a drone late on Thursday near the settlement of Kurchatov in the southern region of Kursk. Kurchatov is home to the Kursk nuclear power station, which said in a separate statement that an attempt to attack it with three drones had been thwarted.

• A fire station has been struck in the Ukrainian city of Izyum, damaging equipment and injuring eight people.

• The Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov has claimed Russia destroyed “at least four” of the Leopard tanks supplied to Ukraine by the west in the Zaporizhzhia region within the past 24 hours.

• Arriving at the EU’s summit in Brussels, the European Council president, Charles Michel, said he expected leaders to discuss Ukraine, adding that there was broad support for financial assistance to the country.

• Irish leader, Leo Varadkar, said “Because of all the other things that are happening in the world, and not least in the Middle East, it would be very easy to lose focus on the war in Ukraine – and essential that we don’t do that.”

• Viktor Orbán, has told Hungarian state radio that the EU’s strategy over the war in Ukraine “has failed”, and the bloc should create a plan B, as the Ukrainians will not win on the frontline. In comments likely to infuriate Kyiv, Orbán said he saw no reason for Hungary, which shares a border with Ukraine, sending any taxpayers’ money to the EU budget for financial support for Ukraine.

• The UK’s Ministry of Defence has noted that “The Russian airforce’s long range aviation fleet of heavy bombers has not conducted air launched cruise missile strikes into Ukraine for over a month, one of the longest gaps in such strikes since the conflict began”. It suggests this may be because operationally the Russian air force needed to replenish cruise missiles stocks.

• The Russian ambassador to the US has criticised Washington for its latest round of support for Ukraine. Anatoly Antonov said “The provocative and inflammatory actions of the US in the international arena are more like adding fuel to the fire than efforts to counter the further incitement and spread of bloody conflicts. It’s high time to stop senseless multibillion-dollar injections into the bankrupt Kyiv regime.”

• Newly elected US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that funding to support Ukraine and Israel should be handled separately, suggesting he will not back President Joe Biden’s $106 billion aid package for both countries. Johnson, speaking in an interview on Fox News, said he had concerns about Ukraine funding in general. “We want to know what the object is there, what is the end game in Ukraine.”

Slovakia halts military aid to Ukraine

Slovakia’s new populist prime minister, Robert Fico, has said his three-party coalition government was ending military aid to its eastern neighbour Ukraine, fulfilling one of his central campaign pledges.

Fico told MPs on Thursday before heading to a summit of EU leaders in Brussels that Slovakia would “no longer supply weapons to Ukraine”, but would continue to send humanitarian aid to its war-torn neighbour.

“I will support zero military aid to Ukraine … An immediate halt to military operations is the best solution we have for Ukraine. The EU should change from an arms supplier to a peacemaker,” the new prime minister added.

He also said he would “not vote for any sanctions against Russia unless we see analyses of their impact on Slovakia. If there are to be such sanctions that will harm us, like most sanctions have, I can see no reason to support them.”

The country had previously been a staunch supporter of Kyiv since Russia’s invasion February last year, donating ammunition and weaponry its fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets, and opening its borders for refugees fleeing the war.

The previous caretaker government suspended military aid earlier this month after Fico’s Smer-SD party won a 30 September election on a pledge to halt further supplies, oppose sanctions on Moscow and block Ukraine’s potential Nato membership.

Fico, who was forced to resign in 2018 amid huge popular protests after the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancee, was formally sworn in on Wednesday as Slovakia’s prime minister, his fourth stint in the office.

Analysts expect the country to move closer to the nationalist policies of Hungary, whose illiberal leader, Viktor Orbán, Fico has said he admires – although many question how far he will follow through on his campaign rhetoric.

Smer finished first in last month’s ballot with 23% of the vote and formed a coalition with Hlas, a more moderate breakaway party led by Fico’s former deputy Peter Pellegrini, and the ultra-nationalist, pro-Russian Slovak National party (SNS).

Russian parliament passes withdrawal from global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests

Russia’s parliament has completed the passage of a law that withdraws Moscow’s ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, Reuters reports.

The upper house, the Federation Council, approved the law by 156 votes to zero today after the lower house, the Duma, had also passed it unanimously. It will now go to Vladimir Putin for signing.

The Russian president had urged lawmakers to make the change to “mirror” the position of the US, which signed but never ratified the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT).

Russia says it will not resume nuclear testing unless Washington does, but arms control experts are concerned it may be inching towards a test that the west would perceive as a threatening escalation in the context of the Ukraine war. Ukraine has accused Russia of stepping up “nuclear blackmail”.

Though it has never formally come into force, the CTBT has made nuclear testing a taboo – no country except North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion this century.

Arms control experts say a test by either Russia or the US could trigger a new arms race at a moment of acute international tension, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. They say if one country tested, the other would probably do the same and others such as China, India and Pakistan could follow.

CNN published satellite images last month showing Russia, the US and China have built new facilities at their nuclear test sites in recent years.

The US energy department said last week it conducted a
chemical explosion at its nuclear test site in Nevada “to improve the US’s ability to detect low-yield nuclear explosions around the world”.

Speaking to Russian lawmakers before Wednesday’s vote, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said the Nevada blast was “undoubtedly a political signal”.

“As our president said, we must be on alert, and if the US moves towards the start of nuclear tests, we will have to respond here in the same way,” he added.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he will keep up military pressure on Russian-occupied Crimea

The Ukrainian president has vowed to maintain military pressure on Russian-occupied Crimea.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s comments came in a video address to a security conference in Prague on Tuesday that was marred by technical glitches and a possible hacking, Reuters reports.

Kyiv has ramped up strikes on Russian forces in the Black Sea and Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Moscow in 2014, as Ukrainian forces press on with a near five-month counteroffensive.

In remarks disrupted by technical faults, including one that intermittently modulated his voice to a higher pitch, Zelenskiy said the “illusion” of Russia’s domination of Crimea and the Black Sea had been shattered.

He said:

The Russian (Black Sea) fleet is no longer able to operate in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually fleeing from Crimea. And this is a historic achievement.

Ukrainian attacks in and around Crimea have included strikes on a Russian airbase on the peninsula, a Black Sea fleet command post in Sevastopol, and the only bridge linking Crimea to Russia.

“We have not yet gained full fire control over Crimea and surrounding waters, but we will,” Zelenskiy told a meeting of the Crimea Platform, a diplomatic initiative he launched in 2021. “This is a question of time.”

A spokesperson for the Czech parliamentary speaker said the website for the event, which brought together lawmakers from various countries, “had come under a hacking attack” but did not specify by whom.