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Kyiv region and Zaporizhzhia struck – reports
Russian forces reportedly struck the Kyiv region overnight, according to local media reports and regional officials.
The Kyiv regional governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, did not disclose the location of the attack but said that rescue workers were onsite. Posting an update via the Telegram messaging app, he wrote:
The Russians terrorise the Kyiv region at night. We have several arrivals in one of the communities of the region.
Rescuers and all emergency services are on the scene. The elimination of the fire and the consequences of the impact is ongoing.”
The Kyiv city state administration issued air raid alerts around midnight on Wednesday, urging residents to seek shelter.
Russian forces also reportedly hit the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in what is believed to be another overnight attack.
The acting mayor of Zaporizhzhia, Anatoly Kurtev, reported that Russian forces struck the city as well as its surrounding area, causing a fire.
Key events
Ukraine prepares for possible future attack launched from Belarus
Ukraine has boosted its forces in the northern region near Belarus to counter any possible renewed Russian attack across the border, Kyiv’s general staff has said. Oleksii Hromov, the deputy head of the general staff’s main operations directorate, said:
At the current time the creation of a strike force [in Belarus] is not observable. [But] there are and will be threats. We are reacting, we have already increased our troops in the northern direction.
Belarus is Russia’s main ally in the conflict and has allowed Russian forces to use its territory as a springboard to attack Ukraine.
We reported earlier on the Russian threat to commercial satellites. Here’s a little more detail. Last year, Moscow launched an anti-satellite missile to destroy one of its own satellites, thereby demonstrating its offensive space capability.
Konstantin Vorontsov, the deputy director of the foreign ministry’s department for non-proliferation and arms control, told the United Nations the United States and its allies were trying to use space to enforce western dominance. Reading from notes, he said the use of western satellites to aid the Ukrainian war effort was “an extremely dangerous trend” and told the United Nations First Committee:
Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.
He claimed the west’s use of such satellites to support Ukraine was “provocative”.
We are talking about the involvement of components of civilian space infrastructure, including commercial, by the United States and its allies in armed conflicts.
Vorontsov did not mention any specific satellite companies, though Elon Musk said earlier this month that his rocket company SpaceX would continue to fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, citing the need for “good deeds”.
Russian forces struck the power grid in central regions of Ukraine overnight and further electricity supply restrictions are possible, the Reuters news agency quotes the grid operator Ukrenergo as saying.
Russia has stepped up its strikes on crucial Ukrainian infrastructure including the power grid in recent weeks, leaving millions without electricity or heating for lengthy periods of time as winter approaches.
Commercial satellites from the United States and its allies could become legitimate targets for Moscow if they became involved in the war in Ukraine, a senior Russian foreign ministry official has threatened.
According to the Russian news agency Tass, Konstantin Vorontsov, the deputy director of the foreign ministry’s department for non-proliferation and arms control, said:
Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike. We are talking about the involvement of components of civilian space infrastructure, including commercial, by the United States and its allies in armed conflicts.
Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands, undermined the post-Covid global economic recovery and triggered the gravest confrontation with the west since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Estonia has called on the UK’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to commit to raising defence spending amid the war in Ukraine.
Sunak has not matched a pledge by his predecessor Liz Truss to boost defence spending from 2% to 3% of GDP by 2030, having previously described such targets as “arbitrary”. Asked in a BBC interview if Nato countries should aim to spend 3% of GDP on defence, the Estonian foreign minister Urmas Reinsalu said: “Absolutely.”
He also said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “gamechanger”, adding:
Autocrats are investing in weapons. They believe in (the) power of arms. To defend our values – the rules-based order – we need also to invest in the weapons.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed Ukrainian forces have downed almost 250 Russian helicopters throughout the course of the war.
Zelenskiy made the claim in his latest national address on Wednesday night:
The total number of downed Russian helicopters is already approaching 250.
The Russian occupiers have already lost as much equipment – aircraft and other – as most of the world’s armies simply do not have and will never have in service.
Russia will not be able to recover these losses. I thank all our fighters for such a gradual and irreversible demilitarisation of the enemy.”
Moscow’s announcement earlier this week that its city mayor would coordinate the “development of security measures” in Russia’s regions will likely lead to greater involvement of regional officials and a closer interlinking of regional governors into Russia’s national security system, according to the latest British intelligence report.
It is a further measure to organise society and the greater involvement of regional officials is likely designed to deflect public criticism away from the national leadership as Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to be under pressure, the UK Ministry of Defence report reads.
However, it will “likely make it more difficult for the Kremlin to insulate Russian society from the effects of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine,” according to the ministry.
An oil depot in the Russian-occupied city of Shakhtarsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region is reportedly on fire, according to local media reports.
The Moscow-appointed city administrative head, Vitaly Khotsenko, told Russian state news agency Tass that 12 fuel reservoirs were damaged near the railway station as a result of shelling by Ukrainian troops.
The city’s mayor, Alexander Shatov, claimed Ukrainian troops shelled the Shakhtarsk railway station causing the fire, according to the outlet.
Ukraine prepares for bitter urban fighting for Kherson
The prospect of bitter urban fighting for Kherson, the largest city under Russian control, has come closer as Ukraine’s forces have drawn ever closer in their campaign in the south that has seen Russian forces driven back.
With Russian-installed authorities encouraging residents to flee to the east bank of the Dnieper River, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said there was no sign Russian forces were preparing to abandon the city.
Arestovych said in an online video late on Tuesday:
With Kherson everything is clear. The Russians are replenishing, strengthening their grouping there.
It means that nobody is preparing to withdraw. On the contrary, the heaviest of battles is going to take place for Kherson.”
Before-and-after satellite imagery to track Ukraine cultural damage
The United Nations is using before-and-after satellite imagery to systematically monitor the cultural destruction inflicted on Ukraine by Russia’s war, announcing it will launch its tracking platform publicly within weeks.
The platform, to be launched by the UN’s culture agency Unesco, will assess the impact on Ukraine’s architecture, art, historic buildings and other cultural heritage.
An initial list found damage to 207 cultural sites since the Russian invasion began eight months ago, including 88 religious sites, 15 museums, 76 buildings of historical and or artistic interest, 18 monuments and 10 libraries.
Kyiv region and Zaporizhzhia struck – reports
Russian forces reportedly struck the Kyiv region overnight, according to local media reports and regional officials.
The Kyiv regional governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, did not disclose the location of the attack but said that rescue workers were onsite. Posting an update via the Telegram messaging app, he wrote:
The Russians terrorise the Kyiv region at night. We have several arrivals in one of the communities of the region.
Rescuers and all emergency services are on the scene. The elimination of the fire and the consequences of the impact is ongoing.”
The Kyiv city state administration issued air raid alerts around midnight on Wednesday, urging residents to seek shelter.
Russian forces also reportedly hit the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in what is believed to be another overnight attack.
The acting mayor of Zaporizhzhia, Anatoly Kurtev, reported that Russian forces struck the city as well as its surrounding area, causing a fire.
Summary and welcome
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments as they unfold over the next few hours.
Russian forces reportedly struck the Kyiv region and the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia overnight, according to local media reports and regional officials.
Ukrainian troops are poised to battle for the strategic southern Kherson region, which Russia appears to be reinforcing with more troops and supplies.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, hinted that there would be good news from the front but he gave no details in his latest national address.
If you have just joined us, here are all the latest developments:
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is said to have monitored drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces involving multiple launches of ballistic and cruise missiles. The defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, reported to Putin that the exercise was intended to simulate a “massive nuclear strike” by Russia in retaliation for a nuclear attack. The drills were seen as a continuation of Moscow’s unfounded dirty bomb claims.
The prospect of bitter urban fighting for Kherson came closer as Russian-installed authorities told residents to move to the east bank of the Dnieper River. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said there was no sign Russian forces were preparing to abandon the city.
Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russian forces in Kherson was proving more difficult than it was in the north-east because of wet weather and the terrain, Ukraine’s defence minister said.
About 70,000 civilians had left their homes in Kherson province in the space of a week, a Moscow-installed official, Vladimir Saldo, told a regional TV channel.
Ukraine is advising refugees living abroad not to return until the spring amid mounting fears over whether the country’s damaged energy infrastructure can handle winter. With a third of the country’s energy sector compromised, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, warned: “The networks will not cope … You see what Russia is doing. We need to survive the winter.”
About 1,000 bodies – including civilians and children – have been exhumed in the recently liberated Kharkiv region, media reports say. This includes the 447 bodies found at the mass burial site in Izium.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said he did not believe Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, would use nuclear weapons. Putin has said repeatedly that Russia has the right to defend itself using any weapons in its arsenal, which includes the world’s largest nuclear stockpile.
Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, held a phone call with his Indian and Chinese counterparts and raised Russia’s purported concerns about the possible use of a “dirty bomb” by Ukraine, Shoigu’s ministry said. It followed calls between Shoigu and Nato defence ministers on the topic. There is no evidence to support Russia’s “dirty bomb” claim.
The UN culture agency, Unesco, has said it is using before-and-after satellite imagery to monitor the cultural destruction inflicted by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and would make its tracking platform public soon. Unesco said it had verified damage to 207 cultural sites including religious sites, museums, buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, monuments and libraries.
The United Nations’ aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said he was “relatively optimistic” that a UN-brokered deal allowing Black Sea grain exports from Ukraine would be extended beyond mid-November. Griffiths travelled to Moscow with senior UN trade official Rebeca Grynspan this month for discussions with Russian officials on the deal, which also aims to facilitate exports of Russian grain and fertiliser to global markets.
The remains of a US citizen killed in fighting in Ukraine were released to Ukrainian authorities and would soon be returned to the person’s family, a US state department spokesperson said.
The European Union could introduce a gas price cap this winter to limit price spikes if countries give Brussels a mandate to propose the measure.
EU regulators are considering extending easier state-aid rules that allow governments to support businesses affected by the war in Ukraine to the end of 2023, and with bigger amounts permitted, the competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, has said. The more flexible rules were introduced in March and revised in July.
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