Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia claims Ukraine shelling Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and says there is ‘no prospect for peace talks’ | Russia

It’s 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• A drone attack has set an oil storage tank on fire at an airfield in Kursk, the Russian region’s governor, Roman Starovoyt, has said. Video footage posted on social media showed a large explosion lighting up the night sky followed by a substantial fire at the airfield 175 miles (280km) from the Ukrainian border.

• The drone attack came a day after Ukraine appeared to launch audacious attacks on two military airfields deep inside Russian territory. For Kyiv the strike represented an unprecedented operation to disrupt the Kremlin strategy of trying to cripple the Ukrainian electrical grid to provoke a humanitarian catastrophe in a country on the verge of winter.

• Shelling by Ukrainian forces killed at least six civilians in the Russian-controlled city on Tuesday, according to the Russian-installed head of the separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Alexey Kulemzin. The head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian shelling had killed a deputy in the self-proclaimed republic’s People’s Council, Maria Pirogova.

• Russian and Ukrainian authorities confirmed the exchange of 120 people in a prisoner swap. According to the Russian defence ministry, 60 servicemen were returned from “Kyiv-controlled territory”. Ukraine received 60 prisoners in return, said Andrii Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, said.

• Ukraine’s health ministry has asked regional authorities to consider suspending non-essential surgeries and hospitalisations due to power blackouts. In a statement, the ministry said hospitals were continuing to provide emergency care but that planned surgeries should be temporarily suspended to ease the load on the medical system amid potential future blackouts.

• Russia has launched strikes overnight on Zaporizhzhia region, according to Oleksandr Starukh, the head of Zaporizhzhia’s regional military administration, who posted photographs on Telegram in the early hours of Tuesday. The strikes damaged critical infrastructure and residential buildings, he said. At this stage there were no injuries or fatalities.

• Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said that Ukraine was continuing to shell the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, deliberately creating the threat of a possible nuclear catastrophe. Shoigu said Russian forces were taking “all measures” to ensure the safety of the power plant, Europe’s largest, in the face of what he called “nuclear terrorism” from Kyiv.

• Russia’s defence ministry has said it has deployed mobile coastal defence missile systems on a northern Kuril island, part of a strategically located chain of islands that stretch between Japan and the Russian Kamchatka peninsula. Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a territorial row that dates to the end of the second world war, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

• The Kremlins spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he agreed with comments by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, about the need for lasting peace in Ukraine, but that Moscow does not see the prospect of talks “at the moment”. He added that in order for talks to happen with potential partners, Russia would need to fulfil the goals of its “special military operation”.

• A Ukrainian presidential adviser has said that Iran has so far not delivered ballistic missiles to Russia and may not do so, as a result of diplomatic pressure and Iran’s own internal political turmoil. Mikhailo Podolyak told the Guardian that Russian forces currently had enough of its own cruise missiles in its stockpile for “two or three” more mass strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure like the salvo fired on Monday.

• A US national who was arrested by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine in the summer has been released and is residing without documents in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. Suedi Murekezi, 35, told the Guardian he had been unable to leave Donetsk after spending more than four months in different prisons and basements in Russian-occupied Ukraine because he did not have any identity papers.

• Senior EU officials have vowed to ensure Ukraine gets €18bn in financial aid, after Hungary vetoed the release of the funds. Earlier Viktor Orbán’s government was accused of “holding hostage” funds for Ukrainian hospitals and “cynical obstructionism” after Hungary confirmed on Tuesday that it would block €18bn of aid for Ukraine. The move by the Orbán government is widely seen as an attempt to gain leverage in separate disputes over Hungary’s access to €13bn EU funds.

• Ukrainian embassies have received more “bloody packages”, according to its foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, in what Kyiv has described as a “campaign of terror and intimidation”. Over the past week, Ukraine said its diplomatic missions in countries across Europe had been targeted with packages soaked in liquid with a distinctive smell and containing animals’ eyes.

• The number of Russian-affiliated oil tankers “going dark” to avoid being tracked in the south Pacific has doubled in recent months in a sign of clandestine means being deployed to avoid sanctions. By switching off their tracker systems on the high seas, the ships can quietly transfer oil on to tankers without links to Russia so as to avoid their oil exports being flagged.

• Latvia has revoked a broadcast licence for TV Rain, the independent Russian TV station broadcasting from exile, following a scandal over its coverage of the war in Ukraine. The channel had been charged with failing to provide Latvian subtitles in its coverage and for having displayed a map that showed Crimea, the peninsula occupied by Russian forces in 2014, as part of Russia.

Ukraine’s health ministry has asked regional authorities to consider suspending non-essential surgeries and hospitalisations due to power blackouts as a result of Russian missile strikes targeting the country’s critical infrastructure.

In a statement, the ministry said hospitals were continuing to provide emergency care but that planned surgeries should be temporarily suspended to ease the load on the medical system amid potential future blackouts.

Earlier we reported that the chair of Latvia’s broadcasting regulator, Ivars Abolins, said it had cancelled the licence of the exiled Russian independent television station, TV Rain, “in connection with the threat to the national security and public order”.

TV Rain, or Dozhd in Russian, moved to broadcasting from Latvia in July, when it was forced to shut its Moscow studio after accusations by Russia’s communications watchdog that it was spreading “deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel” in Ukraine.

The station was earlier this month fined €10,000 by the Latvian regulator for displaying a map of Russia which included the occupied Crimea peninsula.

It was also forced to apologise to viewers and fired a presenter, Alexei Korostelyov, on Friday for comments he made on air, after he said he hoped that the station’s efforts would help provide Russian soldiers with basic equipment and amenities.

The network, which was founded in 2010 as the main opposition channel in Russia, has also been accused of failing to ensure Latvian language translation, local media reported.

Abolins told reporters today that Latvia’s counterintelligence and internal security service had informed his office that the station represented a threat to the country’s security.

TV Rain dismissed the accusations as “unfair and absurd” and said its programmes could still be seen on YouTube, which is where most of its audience watches its content.

Its founder, Natalya Sindeeva, posted a video this afternoon describing Korostelyov’s firing as “the worst thing we could have done in that situation”.

The move comes as Latvia faces a growing rift between the country’s Latvian majority and its Russian-speaking minority. A quarter of the population of two million in Latvia are Russian speakers.

The charity Reporters without Borders called the move a “serious blow to freedom of information”.

Several other Russian newsrooms have also found refuge in the Latvian capital, including Novaya Gazeta Europe and Deutsche Welle’s Moscow branch. The city has also hosted independent news website Meduza since 2014.

The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the move showed foreign states were no freer than Russia. He told reporters today:

Some always think that elsewhere is better than home. And some always think that freedom is elsewhere and there is no freedom at home. This is one of the clearest examples that demonstrate the fallacy of such illusions.

It’s 6pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• A drone attack has set an oil storage tank on fire at an airfield in Kursk, the Russian region’s governor, Roman Starovoyt, has said. Video footage posted on social media showed a large explosion lighting up the night sky followed by a substantial fire at the airfield 175 miles (280km) from the Ukrainian border.

• The drone attack came a day after Ukraine appeared to launch audacious attacks on two military airfields deep inside Russian territory. For Kyiv the strike represented an unprecedented operation to disrupt the Kremlin strategy of trying to cripple the Ukrainian electrical grid to provoke a humanitarian catastrophe in a country on the verge of winter.

• Shelling by Ukrainian forces killed at least six civilians in the Russian-controlled city on Tuesday, according to the Russian-installed head of the separatist-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Alexey Kulemzin. The head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian shelling had killed a deputy in the self-proclaimed republic’s People’s Council, Maria Pirogova.

• Russian and Ukrainian authorities confirmed the exchange of 120 people in a prisoner swap. According to the Russian defence ministry, 60 servicemen were returned from “Kyiv-controlled territory”. Ukraine received 60 prisoners in return, said Andrii Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, said.

• The power deficit caused by the latest wave of Russian airstrikes on Ukraine will be significantly reduced by Tuesday evening, the Ukrainian energy minister, German Galushchenko, said in televised comments. Missile strikes across Ukraine on Monday destroyed homes and knocked out power in some areas.

• Russia has launched strikes overnight on Zaporizhzhia region, according to Oleksandr Starukh, the head of Zaporizhzhia’s regional military administration, who posted photographs on Telegram in the early hours of Tuesday. The strikes damaged critical infrastructure and residential buildings, he said. At this stage there were no injuries or fatalities.

• Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said that Ukraine was continuing to shell the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, deliberately creating the threat of a possible nuclear catastrophe. Shoigu said Russian forces were taking “all measures” to ensure the safety of the power plant, Europe’s largest, in the face of what he called “nuclear terrorism” from Kyiv.

• Russia’s defence ministry has said it has deployed mobile coastal defence missile systems on a northern Kuril island, part of a strategically located chain of islands that stretch between Japan and the Russian Kamchatka peninsula. Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a territorial row that dates to the end of the second world war, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

• The Kremlins spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he agreed with comments by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, about the need for lasting peace in Ukraine, but that Moscow does not see the prospect of talks “at the moment”. He added that in order for talks to happen with potential partners, Russia would need to fulfil the goals of its “special military operation”.

• A Ukrainian presidential adviser has said that Iran has so far not delivered ballistic missiles to Russia and may not do so, as a result of diplomatic pressure and Iran’s own internal political turmoil. Mikhailo Podolyak told the Guardian that Russian forces currently had enough of its own cruise missiles in its stockpile for “two or three” more mass strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure like the salvo fired on Monday.

• A US national who was arrested by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine in the summer has been released and is residing without documents in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. Suedi Murekezi, 35, told the Guardian he had been unable to leave Donetsk after spending more than four months in different prisons and basements in Russian-occupied Ukraine because he did not have any identity papers.

• Senior EU officials have vowed to ensure Ukraine gets €18bn in financial aid, after Hungary vetoed the release of the funds. Earlier Viktor Orbán’s government was accused of “holding hostage” funds for Ukrainian hospitals and “cynical obstructionism” after Hungary confirmed on Tuesday that it would block €18bn of aid for Ukraine. The move by the Orbán government is widely seen as an attempt to gain leverage in separate disputes over Hungary’s access to €13bn EU funds.

• Ukrainian embassies have received more “bloody packages”, according to its foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, in what Kyiv has described as a “campaign of terror and intimidation”. Over the past week, Ukraine said its diplomatic missions in countries across Europe had been targeted with packages soaked in liquid with a distinctive smell and containing animals’ eyes.

• The Russian state-owned bank VTB said it was hit by an “unprecedented cyber-attack from abroad”, which it said was the largest cyber-attack in its history. In a statement, it said it was repelling the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and that an analysis indicated it was a “planned and large-scale” attack.

• The number of Russian-affiliated oil tankers “going dark” to avoid being tracked in the south Pacific has doubled in recent months in a sign of clandestine means being deployed to avoid sanctions. By switching off their tracker systems on the high seas, the ships can quietly transfer oil on to tankers without links to Russia so as to avoid their oil exports being flagged.

• The Latvian broadcasting regulator cancelled the licence of Russian independent television station TV Rain on Tuesday, the regulator’s chairman said. “In connection with the threat to the national security and public order, [the regulator] has made a decision this morning to annul the broadcast licence of TV Rain”, Ivars Abolins said on Twitter, adding the broadcasts will cease on Thursday.

American man ‘trapped’ in Donetsk despite release from prison

Pjotr Sauer

A US national who was arrested by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine in the summer has been released and is residing without documents in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk.

Suedi Murekezi, 35, was detained on 10 June by Russian occupying forces in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, where he had been living for more than three years.

After spending more than four months in different prisons and basements in Russian-occupied Ukraine, he told the Guardian on Monday that he had been released by the Moscow-backed Donetsk separatists on 28 October.

Murekezi said he had been unable to leave Donetsk because he did not have any identity papers.

In a phone interview from the city of Donetsk, the capital of the Russian-annexed Donetsk region, Murekezi said:

I am very happy to be free. But I don’t know what to do next. The Russians never gave me back my passport, and I feel trapped here.

Murekezi spent most of his time in two different jails with a group of international foreign fighters, including the British nationals Aiden Aslin, John Harding, Andrew Hill and Dylan Healy, who returned to the UK after a prisoner swap in September.

But unlike the foreign fighters, Murekezi and his close friends and relatives said he did not participate in any fighting in Ukraine, to where he moved about four years ago, eventually settling in Kherson.

“It became clear early on to the Russian authorities that I had nothing to do with the fighting, but they just kept me in jail anyway,” he said.

Read the full story here:

Daniel Boffey

The number of Russian-affiliated oil tankers “going dark” to avoid being tracked in the south Pacific has doubled in recent months in a sign of clandestine means being deployed to avoid sanctions.

By switching off their tracker systems on the high seas, the ships can quietly transfer oil on to tankers without links to Russia so as to avoid their oil exports being flagged.

A $60 (£50) a barrel ceiling on purchases of Russian oil came into force on Monday. Companies in the EU, the UK, US, Canada and Japan as well as Australia are banned from providing services enabling maritime transport, such as insurance, in cases where the price cap has been breached.

The G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US – provide insurance services for 90% of the world’s cargo while Greece, an EU member state, is a major player in the shipping industry.

The cap is aimed at maintaining the flow of oil to countries such as China, India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which have not banned Russian oil imports, while maintaining economic pressure on the Kremlin.

A traffic jam of oil tankers built up in Turkish waters on Monday as Turkey’s government demanded proof of insurance cover.

Read the full story here: