At least four people have been killed and three others hospitalised after a series of “kamikaze” drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a dead woman was recovered from the rubble of a house in Shevchenkiv district, where an explosion has occurred as a result of a drone attack. He identified two other victims as “a young couple, a husband and wife who were expecting a child. The woman was six months pregnant”. Another person is under the rubble, he added. Search and rescue operations are ongoing. Earlier, Kitschko said 18 people had been rescued, and that there had been five explosions after 28 drones had been directed at the city.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal said: “Today, Russia again attacked civilian and energy facilities in Ukraine. Apartment building in Kyiv is among the terrorists’ targets. People are injured. The world’s response to these crimes must be clear: more support for Ukraine and more sanctions against the aggressor.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said after the new wave of drone attacks that Russia should be expelled from the G20 group.
Iran said again on Monday that it had not provided Russia with drones to use in Ukraine. “The published news about Iran providing Russia with drones has political ambitions and it is circulated by western sources. We have not provided weaponry to any side of the countries at war,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.
EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would look for “concrete evidence” about the participation of Iran in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The European Union has agreed to create a mission to train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers and will also provide a further €500m to help buy weapons for the war-torn country under Russian attack. EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday approved the two-year training mission, which will involve different EU forces providing basic and specialist instruction to Ukrainian soldiers, in locations in Poland and Germany. Officials hope the mission, which is expected to cost €107m, will be up and running by mid November.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, has posted to Telegram to say that the night in the Ukrainian-controlled area of the region “passed relatively calmly”. Maksym Marchenko, governor of Odesa, has said that overnight air defences in his region shot down six kamikaze drones.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, has said that one person has died and two people have been wounded by Russia strikes on the region in the last 24 hours.
The regional governor of the eastern region of Sumy, Dmytro Zhyvytsky, has said that three people were killed and nine more injured in a rocket attack this morning.
Russian news agency Tass is reporting that buses are once again allowed to cross the Crimea bridge, which was damaged in an attack a few days ago.
The UK Ministry of Defence says in its latest update that Russia is “likely” facing more acute logistical challenges as a result of the Kerch bridge bombing on 8 October. “A large queue of waiting cargo trucks remains backed up near the crossing,” the ministry reports.
Denis Pushilin, the self-styled leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in occupied eastern Ukraine has announced a swap of 110 prisoners will take place on Monday.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has said the partial mobilisation will be completed in Russia’s capital from 2pm on Monday.
The operator of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) has said it has again been disconnected from external power supply as a result of Russian shelling.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on remarks from Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, that Tel Aviv is preparing to supply military aid to Ukraine. In a Telegram message on Monday, Medvedev, currently deputy chair of Russia’s security council, warned Israel against arming Kyiv, calling it a “a reckless move” that would “destroy relations between our countries”. Despite numerous attempts from Kyiv to buy Israeli aerial defence systems since the war broke out, Israel has tried to maintain a neutral stance in the seven-month-old invasion, as it relies on Russia to facilitate its operations against Iranian-linked actors in Syria.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state TV journalist who staged an on-air protest against the war in March, has fled the country according to her lawyer.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its economic fallout have thrown 4 million children into poverty across eastern Europe and central Asia, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, has said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Sunday a “very severe” situation persists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with the “most difficult” fighting near the town of Bakhmut. The attacks came as Russia’s war in Ukraine nears the eight-month mark.
Pro-Kremlin officials on Sunday blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack that struck the mayor’s office in Donetsk, a city controlled by the separatists, while Ukrainian officials said Russian rocket strikes hit a town near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other targets.
More than 30 settlements across Ukraine have been hit by Russian strikes in the last day, according to the Ukrainian military. Two schools in the southern Zaporizhzhia region were reportedly destroyed in the strikes, which targeted civilian areas.
The Ukrainian military said the estimated number of Russians killed since the start of the war has reached 65,000. Sunday morning’s update from the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said the death toll had risen by 300 over the last 24 hours.
In Ukraine, 423 children have been killed since the start of the invasion the office of the Ukrainian prosecutor general said. It added that a further 810 children had been injured in the conflict and that the highest number of child casualties were in the regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kyiv.
Ukraine has succeeded in maintaining its energy stability after Russian attacks last week that targeted key parts of its infrastructure, Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal said. In a post on Facebook, Shmyhal said that in the first three days of the week, Russia launched up to 130 missile and drone strikes against civilian and energy facilities, particularly in the capital, Kyiv.
Russia is “probably incapable of producing advanced munitions at the rate they are being expended”, according to the latest update from the UK Ministry of Defence. The ministry said attacks like those launched across Ukraine on 10 October, in which Russia fired over 80 cruise missiles, represent a “further degradation of Russia’s long-range missile stocks, which is likely to constrain their ability to strike the volume of targets they desire in future”.
US and allied security officials believe Iran has agreed to provide Russia with surface-to-surface missiles and attack drones intended for use in Ukraine. The topic is due to be discussed by EU foreign ministers in a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. In a statement, the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, “emphasised that the Islamic republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine”.
The Belarusian defence ministry has said just under 9,000 Russian troops will be stationed in Belarus as part of a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders. Last week, the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said his troops would be deployed with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border as part of a “joint grouping”, citing what he said were threats from Ukraine and the west.
