G7 foreign ministers have agreed on the need for a coordination mechanism to help Ukraine repair, restore and defend its critical energy and water infrastructure, a senior US state department official has said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday that he had agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that grain sent under the Black Sea export deal should go to poor African countries for free. “In my phone call with Vladimir Putin, he said ‘Let’s send this grain to countries such as Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan for free’ – and we agreed,” Erdogan said in a speech to businesspeople in Istanbul.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting China, and while there has urged Putin to extend the Black Sea grain deal when it expires on 19 November.
Dmitry Medvedev, long-term ally of Vladimir Putin, current deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, and previously both president and prime minister of Russia, has issued a broadside this morning claiming that Russia’s war has “a sacred purpose” and that “The goal is to stop the supreme ruler of hell, no matter what name he uses – Satan, Lucifer or Iblis.”
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, has said 450,000 residents in the Ukrainian capital are without electricity on Friday morning. “This is one and a half times more than in previous days,” he said, adding the power system is overloaded.
The UN nuclear watchdog said Thursday it had found no sign of undeclared nuclear activity at three sites in Ukraine that it inspected at Kyiv’s request, in response to Russian allegations that work was being done on a “dirty bomb”. “Our technical and scientific evaluation of the results we have so far did not show any sign of undeclared nuclear activities and materials at these three locations,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement, adding that environmental samples taken would be analysed.
In southern Ukraine, a Russian-installed occupation official said Wedensday Moscow was likely to pull its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River, signalling a huge retreat that, if confirmed, could be a major turning point in the war. “Most likely our units, our soldiers, will leave for the left [eastern] bank,” said Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy civilian administrator of the Kherson region, in an interview with Solovyov Live, a pro-Kremlin online media outlet.
Ukraine said it was wary that Moscow could be setting a trap by feigning a pull-out from the Kherson region and maintained its forces were still fighting in the area. Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, said it could be a Russian trap. “This could be a manifestation of a particular provocation, in order to create the impression that the settlements are abandoned, that it is safe to enter them, while they are preparing for street battles,” she said in televised comments. “We continue fighting, also in the Kherson direction, despite the fact that the enemy is trying to convince us that they are leaving the settlements and creating the effect of a total evacuation.”
US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, said Thursday he believes that Ukrainian forces are able to retake Kherson, calling their work “methodical” and “effective”.
Ukraine has described the forced relocation of its citizens in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as “deportations” and “war crimes”. Russian authorities in Kherson have been relocating civilians, claiming it is for their safety as Ukrainian forces move closer. One week after Russian authorities relocated 70,000 civilians from the right bank of the Dnipro River to the left bank, Russian authorities said they were moving 70,000 civilians from the left bank to be “temporarily resettled deep into the Kherson region, as well as to other regions of the Russian Federation,” citing “possible damage to the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station”.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has again been disconnected from the power grid after Russian shelling damaged the remaining high voltage lines, leaving it with just diesel generators, Ukraine nuclear firm Energoatom said Thursday. The plant, in Russian hands but operated by Ukrainian workers, has 15 days’ worth of fuel to run the generators, Energoatom said.
Due to low morale and reluctance to fight, Russian forces have probably started deploying units threatening to shoot their own retreating soldiers, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. An intelligence report released early this morning described these Russian units as “barrier troops” or “blocking units” used to compel offensives.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, has said that yesterday in Izium a 69-year-old man was blown up by a mine and hospitalised with moderate injuries. In a message on Telegram, he said that in the last day Ukrainian forces had neutralised “471 explosive objects” in the region.
The Russian ambassador to the UK has claimed UK special forces were involved in a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow’s Black Sea fleet. Andrei Kelin told Sky News: “We perfectly know about [the] participation of British specialists in [the] training, preparation and execution of violence against the Russian infrastructure and the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. We know that it has been done.” Kelin added: “This is a warning actually that Britain is too deep in this conflict. It means the situation is becoming more and more dangerous.”
Another 107 Ukrainian service personnel were freed from Russian captivity in a prisoner of war swap, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed. “Many of them were wounded, and very seriously,” he said in his latest national address.
Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a one-time payment of 195,000 roubles (£2,800) for contract soldiers and those who have been mobilised to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Thursday. Last week Moscow said the “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 reservists was over but conceded there had been problems
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has confirmed that he will not attend the G20 summit taking place in two weeks in Bali if Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation will be participating in the conference.
US embassy officials in Russia visited jailed basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday. The White House said officials were continuing to work toward a prisoner swap offer with Russia for the release of Griner – but elaborated no further on what that meant, or how soon that could take place.
