Closing summary
It’s nearly 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The head of Ukraine’s national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has described the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks as “colossal”. Volodymyr Kudrytskyi also dismissed calls to evacuate civilians from some cities worst hit by energy shortages as “inappropriate”.
Ukrainians are likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said, as the government started free evacuations for people in Kherson to other regions. Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been damaged by Russian attacks, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said, leaving millions of people without electricity and water as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing.
Russia’s Gazprom has threatened to cut its gas flows to Europe via Ukraine as early as next week. In a statement, the Russian state-owned energy giant said some gas flows being kept in Ukraine were actually meant for Moldova, and accused Kyiv of obstructing the delivery of 52.52m cubic metres from transiting to Moldova.
Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.
Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in south-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said. Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, gave no further details of the attack on Orihiv, about 70 miles east of the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station which has been shelled in the past few days.
The EU will give a further €2.5bn (£2.2bn) to Ukraine for the reconstruction of the country, the head of the bloc’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced. Zelenskiy said he was “grateful” and that the aid would make “a strong contribution to the stability of Ukraine on the eve of a difficult winter”.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has warned his country must be prepared for the situation in Ukraine to escalate. This could include the destruction of infrastructure, he added while speaking at a conference in Berlin.
Russians have murdered, tortured and kidnapped Ukrainians in a systematic pattern that could implicate top officials in war crimes, the US state department’s ambassador for global criminal justice said Monday. There is mounting evidence that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russian forces have been deployed”, said the US ambassador at large, Beth Van Schaack.
Ukraine will summon the ambassador of Hungary to demand an apology after its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, appeared in public wearing a scarf depicting some Ukrainian territory as part of Hungary, the foreign ministry said.
The Polish president spoke to a hoax caller pretending to be France’s Emmanuel Macron on the night that a missile hit a village near the Ukrainian border, his office has admitted. “Emmanuel, believe me, I am extra careful,” Duda tells the caller in a recording of the call posted on the internet. “I don’t want to have war with Russia and believe me, I am extra careful, extra careful.”
Ukrainian refugees in the UK are experiencing difficulties accessing private rented accommodation because they are unable to secure guarantors or references, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.
The World Health Organization has warned that Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far”. The WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created to all areas of Ukraine newly recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.
Russian troops have been accused of burning bodies at a landfill on the edge of Kherson during their occupation. Residents and workers at the site told the Guardian they saw Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a stench of burning flesh.
Canada has announced new sanctions against Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko’s administration for supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The foreign ministry said it would sanction 22 more Belarusian officials as well as 16 Belarusian companies involved in military manufacturing, technology, engineering, banking and railway transportation.
The officials included some who were “complicit in the stationing and transport of Russian military personnel and equipment involved in the invasion of Ukraine”.
In a statement, the Canadian foreign minister Mélanie Joly accused Lukashenko’s regime of “letting its territory serve as a launching pad for Russia’s egregious attacks against Ukraine”.
By doing so, Belarus was “enabling the Russian regime’s human rights violations in places such as Bucha, Izium and Mariupol and contributing to the pain and suffering of millions around the globe that has resulted from President Putin’s weaponization of food and energy”, she continued.
Russian-installed officials in the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, said Russian air defences were activated after two drones were shot down.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Kremlin-installed governor of the Sevastopol, said on Telegram:
There is an attack with drones. Our air defence forces are working right now.
Two drones had “already been shot down”, he said. No civilian infrastructure had been damaged, he added, urging people to stay calm.
Sevastopol is the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. In October, Russia blamed Ukraine for an attack on the port using air and marine drones.
Russia threatens to reduce gas flows to Europe via Ukraine next week
Russia’s Gazprom has threatened to cut its gas flows to Europe via Ukraine as early as next week.
In a statement, the Russian state-owned energy giant said some gas flows being kept in Ukraine were actually meant for Moldova, and accused Kyiv of obstructing the delivery of 52.52m cubic metres from transiting to Moldova.
It said:
The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom ... for transit to Moldova via Ukraine is more than the physical volume transmitted at the border of Ukraine with Moldova.
It went on to say that would “begin reducing gas supply” on Monday 28 November if the “transit imbalance through Ukraine for Moldovan consumers persists”.
The Ukraine pipeline is the last remaining pipeline still bringing Russian natural gas to western Europe after Gazprom shut off its flows via Nord Stream 1.
Ukraine has denied the allegations, saying that all the gas volumes bound to Moldovan consumers have been transferred “in the full amount”.
Updated
Officials from Iran and Ukraine have met to discuss allegations that Russia is using Iranian-made attack drones in Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson.
Earlier this month, Iran acknowledged for the first time that it supplied Moscow with drones but said they were sent before the war in Ukraine. Russia denies its forces have used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine.
Oleg Nikolenko told CNN:
Such an expert meeting did take place. I cannot disclose the details, but I can assure you that the Ukrainian side continues to take the most drastic measures to prevent the use of Iranian weapons by Russia for the war against Ukraine.
He added:
Ukraine has informed Iran that the consequences of complicity in the Russian aggression will be incommensurable with the potential benefits of cooperation with Russia.
Here are some images we have received from the frontline in Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainians are bracing for what is expected to be the hardest winter in the country’s history.
The Ukrainian cold is coming and with it a nightmare for millions as they face it without electricity, water or heating.
#Kyiv, now.#Ukraine #war #Russia #invasion #winter #snow pic.twitter.com/aEiEe4lwwD
— Lorenzo Tondo (@lorenzo_tondo) November 22, 2022
Ukrainian authorities have warned citizens not to head into the woods without consulting the military, because Russian troops may have left behind mines, tripwires and unexploded shells.
But with the price of firewood rising, many have no choice but to take the risk. If a mine doesn’t kill them, the cold might.
While people living in houses can burn wood – if they can get it – those who live in flats often rely on old Soviet centralised heating systems. The Russians have bombed many of the country’s thermal power plants, which used to pump hot water into the flats’ radiators.
Summary of the day so far
It’s 6pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:
The head of Ukraine’s national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has described the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks as “colossal”. Volodymyr Kudrytskyi also dismissed calls to evacuate civilians from some cities worst hit by energy shortages as “inappropriate”.
Ukrainians are likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said, as the government started free evacuations for people in Kherson to other regions. Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been damaged by Russian attacks, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said, leaving millions of people without electricity and water as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing.
Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.
Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in south-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said. Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, gave no further details of the attack on Orihiv, about 70 miles east of the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station which has been shelled in the past few days.
The EU will give a further €2.5bn (£2.2bn) to Ukraine for the reconstruction of the country, the head of the bloc’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced. Zelenskiy said he was “grateful” and that the aid would make “a strong contribution to the stability of Ukraine on the eve of a difficult winter”.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has warned his country must be prepared for the situation in Ukraine to escalate. This could include the destruction of infrastructure, he added while speaking at a conference in Berlin.
Russians have murdered, tortured and kidnapped Ukrainians in a systematic pattern that could implicate top officials in war crimes, the US state department’s ambassador for global criminal justice said Monday. There is mounting evidence that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russian forces have been deployed”, said the US ambassador at large, Beth Van Schaack.
Ukraine will summon the ambassador of Hungary to demand an apology after its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, appeared in public wearing a scarf depicting some Ukrainian territory as part of Hungary, the foreign ministry said.
The Polish president spoke to a hoax caller pretending to be France’s Emmanuel Macron on the night that a missile hit a village near the Ukrainian border, his office has admitted. “Emmanuel, believe me, I am extra careful,” Duda tells the caller in a recording of the call posted on the internet. “I don’t want to have war with Russia and believe me, I am extra careful, extra careful.”
Ukrainian refugees in the UK are experiencing difficulties accessing private rented accommodation because they are unable to secure guarantors or references, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.
The World Health Organization has warned that Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far”. The WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created to all areas of Ukraine newly recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.
Russian troops have been accused of burning bodies at a landfill on the edge of Kherson during their occupation. Residents and workers at the site told the Guardian they saw Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a stench of burning flesh.
Good afternoon from London. I’m Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments from the war in Ukraine. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.
Updated
The Japanese government has announced it will provide Ukraine with generators and solar lanterns as emergency grant aid worth an equivalent of $2.57m (£2.16m).
In a statement, it said:
The large-scale blackout has occurred in various areas of Ukraine caused by destruction of a large part of energy infrastructure facilities.
While the winter gets colder and days get shorter every day in Ukraine, the aid has significant importance as winterisation support for those who cannot use heating facilities and lighting equipment due to the blackout.
Japan will continue to “support and stand by” the people of Ukraine “who are facing hardship”, it added.
Updated
Perched as it is in an upmarket neighbourhood overlooking the scenic Vondelpark, it is not hard to imagine why a Russian billionaire would have been interested in the 1879 five-storey Amsterdam property with a lush private garden.
That billionaire was Arkady Volozh, a co-founder of Russia’s biggest search engine, Yandex. He bought the £3m house in 2019, becoming one of the dozens of wealthy Russians who have invested in property in the Dutch capital.
But since October, the mansion, which had been undergoing extensive refurbishment, has been taken over by a group of squatters, who issued a statement saying they had done so in a protest against Volozh’s reported ties to the Kremlin, and the wider housing crisis in Amsterdam.
Last Wednesday, a Dutch court ruled the squatters did not have to vacate the property.
When the Guardian visited the house, it was hung with banners criticising the war in Ukraine. The Guardian was refused entry to the apartment by one of the squatters, who declined to give her name, citing security issues.
Lighting a cigarette, the squatter said she was relieved by the judge’s verdict. “The law is finally on our side,” she smiled.
A video message recorded by the Ukrainian Nobel peace laureate, Oleksandra Matviichuk, has been beamed on to the building of the Red Bull Formula One racing headquarters outside London, appealing to the world champion driver Max Verstappen to use his influence to persuade Red Bull to pull out of Russia.
Unlike many global brands, Red Bull has refused to cut ties with Putin’s Russia and the energy drink is still on sale in supermarkets across the country.
She said:
This is a message to Max Verstappen and all Red Bull athletes. My name is Oleksandra Matviichuk, I am a Ukrainian human rights defender and head of the Centre for Civil Liberties. I know that driving a Formula One racing car is dangerous, but for millions of people it’s very dangerous just to be in Ukraine. I am in Kyiv and we, like other Ukrainian cities, are constantly being shelled by Russian rockets.
Max, you are a leading brand ambassador of Red Bull. Can you please ask them: why is Red Bull still on sale in Russia while so many global brands have pulled out? Why do Red Bull still continue to help Russia to finance this war? I ask for your support to convince Red Bull to stop their business in Russia.
I do believe that Red Bull must abandon Russian money but not people.
I do believe that western companies must abandon Russian money, but not people. This is a message to Max Verstappen and all Red Bull athletes. #StandWithUkraine https://t.co/XdC1ZEysUh
— Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina) November 22, 2022
Updated
The Polish president spoke to a hoax caller pretending to be France’s Emmanuel Macron on the night that a missile hit a village near the Ukrainian border, his office has admitted.
In a seven-and-a-half minute recording of the call posted on the internet by Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus, Polish president Andrzej Duda can be heard speaking in English to the caller, who attempts to put on a French accent.
The call, the second time in recent years that the pranksters from Russia have succeeded in getting through to Duda, came on an evening when the world feared that the conflict in Ukraine could spill beyond its borders, Reuters reported.
“Emmanuel, believe me, I am extra careful,” Duda tells the caller. “I don’t want to have war with Russia and believe me, I am extra careful, extra careful.”
Duda’s office wrote on Twitter:
After the missile explosion in Przewodow, during the ongoing calls with heads of state and government, a person claiming to be French president Emmanuel Macron was connected.
During the call, President Andrzej Duda realised from the unusual way the interlocutor conducted the conversation that there might have been an attempted hoax attempt and ended the conversation.
Updated
Germany ‘must be ready for an escalation in Ukraine’, warns Scholz
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has warned his country must be prepared for the situation in Ukraine to escalate.
Speaking at a conference in Berlin hosted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Scholz said:
In view of the development of the war and Russia’s visible and growing failures ... we must be ready for an escalation.
This could include the destruction of infrastructure, he added.
Scholz visited China earlier this month to meet its president, Xi Jinping, a trip he said was worth it alone for spelling out the two countries’ joint stance against using nuclear weapons.
In the first visit by a G7 leader to China since the Covid pandemic, Scholz pressed Xi to prevail on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine.
In a readout of the meeting by Chinese state media, Xi agreed that both leaders “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” over Ukraine, though he refrained from criticising Russia or calling on Moscow to withdraw its troops.
Updated
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, has claimed Russia is preparing for a second round of mobilisation in January, with plans to draft up to 700,000 reservists.
Moscow called up more than 300,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine in September, a move that prompted hundreds of thousands of Russian men to flee the country to avoid being conscripted.
In a tweet, Gerashchenko said – without providing evidence – that those 300,000 men who had already been drafted had been killed, wounded or demoralised.
Russia is getting ready for 2nd wave of mobilization in January. The plan is to draft 500,000-700,000. The 300,000 drafted before - already killed/wounded/demoralized.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) November 22, 2022
Russians are starting to be quietly unhappy about authorities - they can't understand losses in praised army.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday that it was not discussing calling up more Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine through a second round of mobilisation.
Updated
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he was “grateful” to the EU and the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, after she announced a further €2.5bn in aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskiy said the aid would make “a strong contribution to the stability of Ukraine on the eve of a difficult winter”.
🇺🇦 received another tranche of #EU macro-fin aid worth €2.5 billion. A strong contribution to the stability of 🇺🇦 on the eve of a difficult winter. Grateful to the EU & @vonderleyen for solidarity and support. Waiting for the approval of €18 billion macro-fin program for 2023.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 22, 2022
Updated
Ukrainian refugees in the UK are experiencing difficulties accessing private rented accommodation because they are unable to secure guarantors or references, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.
The ONS surveyed nearly 3,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s invasion of their country to live in the UK under two visa schemes.
The assessment looked at opinions and experiences of those arriving in the UK under the family and “homes for Ukraine” sponsorship schemes.
The schemes allow Ukrainian nationals and their family members to come to the UK to live with a named sponsor who can provide accommodation for a minimum of six months.
Most respondents say they live with a sponsor – 59% compared with 17% who are renting from a private landlord.
However, the ONS said 45% of respondents had experienced barriers to accessing private rented accommodation with “not having a guarantor or references” being the most common reason.
Ukraine’s power grid destroyed on ‘colossal’ scale after Russian strikes
The head of Ukraine’s national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has described the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks as “colossal”.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive officer of Ukrenergo, told a briefing that practically no thermal or hydroelectric stations had been left unscathed by the Russian attacks.
Kudrytskyi said:
The scale of destruction is colossal. In Ukraine there is a power generation deficit. We cannot generate as much energy as consumers can use.
He said Ukrainians could face long power outages but that his company wanted to help provide the conditions for people to stay in the country through winter.
Ukraine had enough fuel reserves after building them up before Russia’s invasion, he said, and was working hard to repair damaged infrastructure but was hoping to secure some spare parts abroad.
He dismissed the need to evacuate civilians, after Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Monday the evacuation of residents from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
People from the two southern regions, which were shelled regularly by Russian forces in the past months, have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.
Asked about the proposals to evacuate some cities worst hit by energy shortages, Kudrytskyi said such calls were “inappropriate”.
Updated
Ukraine will summon the ambassador of Hungary to demand an apology after its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, appeared in public wearing a scarf depicting some Ukrainian territory as part of Hungary, the foreign ministry said.
Orbán was pictured attending a football match wearing a scarf which the newspaper, Ukrainska Pravda, said showed a map of “Greater Hungary” including territory that is now part of the neighbouring states of Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban appeared in public with a scarf depicting a map of "Greater Hungary".
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) November 22, 2022
This map includes the current territories of Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/QCYErb5tx0
In a statement on Facebook, ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said:
The promotion of revisionism ideas in Hungary does not contribute to the development of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and does not comply with the principles of European policy.
He added that Ukraine wanted an apology and a rebuttal of any Hungarian claims on Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine receives €2.5bn in assistance from EU
The EU will give a further €2.5bn (£2.2bn) to Ukraine for the reconstruction of the country, according to the head of the bloc’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen.
The @EU_Commission is disbursing a further €2.5 billion for Ukraine.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 22, 2022
We are planning €18 billion for 2023, with funding disbursed regularly.
For urgent repairs and fast recovery leading to a successful reconstruction.
We will keep on supporting 🇺🇦 for as long as it takes. pic.twitter.com/X2bVI5PKe9
Updated
Here are some images we have received from Kyiv, where authorities have warned that millions could face power cuts at least until the end of March amid relentless Russian strikes.
Updated
The Kremlin on Monday said it was not seeking a change of government in Ukraine.
When asked by a reporter if one of the goals of a “special military operation” was regime change in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov replied:
No [it is not], the president has already spoken about this.
The Kremlin has shifted its stated goals in Ukraine throughout the conflict.
When Putin announced his “special military operation”, he said in a speech that his country’s aim was to “demilitarise and denazify Ukraine,” indicating his maximalist goals in this war: toppling the government of Ukraine’s elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
However, as Russia’s invasion faltered, Putin dramatically scaled back his ambitions, declaring his goal in Ukraine to be the “liberation of Donbas”.
Over the past few weeks, the Kremlin has repeatedly said that its goals in Ukraine could also be achieved through negotiations.
Other senior Russian officials, however, have continued to push for regime change in Ukraine. Earlier this month, former president Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow should “completely dismantle” Ukraine’s political regime.
Updated
Summary
The time in Kyiv is 1pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s main stories so far:
Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv early on Tuesday as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex that was raided is a Ukrainian cultural treasure and the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church known as the Moscow Patriarchate, Reuters reported.
Ukrainians are likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said on Monday, as the government started free evacuations for people in Kherson to other regions. Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been damaged by Russian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, leaving millions of people without electricity and water as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing.
Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in south-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said. Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, gave no further details of the attack on Orihiv, about 70 miles east of the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station which has been shelled in the past few days.
Russians have murdered, tortured and kidnapped Ukrainians in a systematic pattern that could implicate top officials in war crimes, the US state department’s ambassador for global criminal justice said Monday. There is mounting evidence that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russian forces have been deployed”, said the US ambassador at large, Beth Van Schaack.
The Ukrainian government has been offering people in the recently liberated city of Kherson, which remains mostly without electricity and running water, free evacuations to regions with better infrastructure, as well as free accommodation. “Given the difficult security situation in the city and infrastructure problems, you can evacuate for the winter to safer regions of the country,” the deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia has reiterated that it is not seeking a change of government in Ukraine. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said his country “does not intend the ‘special operation’ to change the government in Ukraine”, Sky News reports.
The Kremlin said that no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia seized shortly after its invasion, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the UN nuclear watchdog which said such attacks risked a major disaster.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will in coming days meet the mothers of soldiers amid fierce fighting in Ukraine, the Vedomosti newspaper reported, citing three unidentified sources in the presidential administration. Russia celebrates Mother’s Day on 27 November. The Kremlin has not officially announced any Putin meetings with soldiers’ mothers.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will soon be able to add New Zealand to the list of parliaments he has addressed, after Wellington agreed to a request to do so. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the government had agreed to the request from the Canberra-based Ukrainian embassy, which serves both countries.
Ukraine is to evacuate civilians from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Residents of the two southern regions have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far”. The WHO regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P Kluge, called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created to all areas of Ukraine newly recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.
Russian troops have been accused of burning bodies at a landfill on the edge of Kherson during their occupation. Residents and workers at the site told the Guardian they saw Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a stench of burning flesh.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for the time being. I’ll be back at 2pm UK time but my colleague Léonie Chao-Fong will be along shortly to bring you all the latest news from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Updated
The Kremlin said that no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia seized shortly after its invasion, was rocked by shelling on Sunday, drawing condemnation from the UN nuclear watchdog, which said such attacks risked a major disaster.
Updated
Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in south-eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.
Oleksandr Starukh, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, gave no further details of the attack on Orihiv, about 70 miles east of the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which has been shelled in the past few days.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other of firing the shells that fell near reactors and damaged a radioactive waste storage building at the plant, Reuters reported.
“Russian terrorists are shelling humanitarian delivery points, continuing nuclear blackmail – a pitiful tactic of military losers,” Andriy Yermak, chief of the presidential staff, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“Well, for every such action there is a Ukrainian counteraction,” he added.
Updated
An image shows the destruction of Kherson International airport in Chornobaivka, located in Kherson oblast, Ukraine.
Updated
Russia reiterates that it does not want to topple Ukraine government
Russia has reiterated that it is not seeking a change of government in Ukraine.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said his country “does not intend the ‘special operation’ to change the government in Ukraine”, Sky News reports.
A reporter asked Peskov if one of the goals of the “special military operation” was regime change in Ukraine.
“No [it is not], the president has already spoken about this,” Peskov replied.
This is in contrast to the beginning of the invasion in February, when Moscow had appeared to be aiming to overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a Russia-friendly regime.
Updated
1,000-year-old Kyiv monastery raided amid Russian spy fears
Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv early on Tuesday as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said.
The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex that was raided is a Ukrainian cultural treasure and the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church known as the Moscow Patriarchate, Reuters reported.
“These measures are being taken … as part of the systemic work of the SBU to counter the destructive activities of Russian special services in Ukraine,” the Security Service of Ukraine said in a statement.
It said the search was aimed at preventing the use of the cave monastery as “the centre of the Russian world” and carried out to look into suspicions “about the use of the premises … for sheltering sabotage and reconnaissance groups, foreign citizens, weapons storage”.
The SBU did not say what the result of the raid was. The Moscow Patriarchate did not immediately comment.
In May, the Ukrainian Orthodox church of the Moscow Patriarchate ended its ties with the Russian church over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and condemned the support of Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s church, for what Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will in coming days meet the mothers of soldiers amid fierce fighting in Ukraine, the Vedomosti newspaper reported, citing three unidentified sources in the presidential administration.
Russia celebrates Mother’s Day on 27 November. The Kremlin has not officially announced any Putin meeting with soldiers’ mothers.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to deny or confirm the meeting, Vedomosti said.
Updated
The UK Ministry of Defence’s update for today reports that Russian and Ukrainian media reported an attack at an oil terminal in Novorssiysk port on Russia’s Black Sea coast on 18 November.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 22 November 2022
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) November 22, 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/5qYY4RI3xB
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/hI41BWWlTG
More on the winter energy crisis in Ukraine: the Ukrainian government has been offering people in the recently liberated city of Kherson, which remains mostly without electricity and running water, free evacuations to regions with better infrastructure, as well as free accommodation.
“Given the difficult security situation in the city and infrastructure problems, you can evacuate for the winter to safer regions of the country,” the deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskiy urged Ukrainians on Monday to conserve energy, saying they “should be mindful and redistribute their consumption throughout the day”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the blackouts and Russia’s strikes on energy infrastructure are the consequences of Kyiv not willing to negotiate, the state Tass news agency reported late last week.
Temperatures in some of Ukraine’s regions have already dropped below freezing, including in the capital of Kyiv.
Kovalenko said the country should be prepared for all options, including lengthy power outages.
“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you wait a long outage,” Kovalenko said. “It’s better to do it now than to be miserable.”
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That’s it from me for today. My colleague Tom Ambrose will take you through the news for the next while.
The Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will soon be able to add New Zealand to the list of parliaments he has addressed, after Wellington agreed to a request to do so.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the government had agreed to the request from the Canberra-based Ukrainian embassy which serves both countries.
“The ask has been made. Happy to accommodate that,” she said, adding that it would be over to a parliamentary committee to find the time. The address is likely to be in the final week of the sitting year, which begins on 13 December.
Zelenskiy has given Ardern an invitation to visit Kyiv, which she is yet to take-up. But the defence minister, Peeni Henare, made a 10-hour trip to the Ukrainian capital last weekend.
New Zealand has given tens of millions of dollars of aid in support of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, as well as donating military equipment and levying sanctions targeting Russian elites and trade.
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US state department seeing 'mounting evidence of systemic war crimes'
Russians have murdered, tortured and kidnapped Ukrainians in a systematic pattern that could implicate top officials in war crimes, the US state department’s ambassador for global criminal justice said Monday.
There is mounting evidence that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been accompanied by systemic war crimes committed in every region where Russian forces have been deployed”, said ambassador at large Beth Van Schaack.
Evidence from liberated areas indicates “deliberate, indiscriminate and disproportionate” attacks against civilian populations, custodial abuses of civilians and POWs, forceful removal, or filtration, of Ukrainian citizens – including children – to Russia, and execution-like murders and sexual violence, she told reporters.
“When we’re seeing such systemic acts, including the creation of a vast filtration network, it’s very hard to imagine how these crimes could be committed without responsibility going all the way up the chain of command,” she said.
Van Schaack represents the US to global bodies investigating war crimes and other atrocities, and called the current situation a “new Nuremberg moment”, a reference to the war crimes trials held in the German city at the end of the second world war.
She said in a briefing for reporters that Russia’s nine-month-old assault on Ukraine has sparked an “unprecedented array of accountability initiatives”, involving numerous bodies, along with the international criminal court in The Hague.
The bodies are coordinating to develop priorities and approaches “under all available jurisdictional bases”, she said.
Van Schaack declined to say specifically if the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, could be prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine.
But she said prosecutors will “follow the evidence where it leads”.
Under international law, the doctrine of superior responsibility allows for prosecutions “to go all the way up the chain of command”, she said.
She also said that rights officials are looking closely at a video that emerged over the weekend that suggests Ukrainian troops may have killed Russian prisoners of war.
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Blackouts likely to last until March 2023
Ukrainians are most likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said on Monday, as the government started free evacuations for people in Kherson to other regions.
Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged by Russian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, leaving millions of people without electricity and water as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing.
Sergey Kovalenko, head of the YASNO major private energy provider for Kyiv, said that workers are rushing to complete repairs before the winter cold arrives.
“I would like everyone to understand: Ukrainians will most likely live with blackouts until at least the end of March,” Kovalenko said in a post on his Facebook page. He added:
The basic scenario is that if there are no new attacks on the power grid, then under current conditions of electricity generation, the power deficit could be evenly distributed across the country. This means the outages will be everywhere but less lasting.
There are also different forecasts of the development of this situation, and they completely depend on attacks Russia.”
Summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest for the next while.
Ukrainians are most likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said late on Monday.
Sergey Kovalenko, head of the YASNO major private energy provider for Kyiv, said that workers are rushing to complete repairs before the winter cold arrives.
“I would like everyone to understand: Ukrainians will most likely live with blackouts until at least the end of March,” Kovalenko said in a post on his Facebook page.
More on this soon. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:
Ukraine is to evacuate civilians from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Residents of the two southern regions have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.
The Kremlin said it was concerned by what it claimed to be Ukrainian shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control. Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, countered that the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia plant was a Russian tactic aiming to disrupt power supplies and “freeze Ukrainians to death”. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appealed to Nato members to guarantee the protection of his country’s nuclear power plants from “Russian sabotage”.
The UN nuclear watchdog was to conduct an assessment of the Zaporizhzhia plant on Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the forces behind its shelling were “playing with fire” and such attacks risked a major disaster.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far”. WHO regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P Kluge, called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created to all areas of Ukraine newly recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general office has said its officials have identified four locations where Russian forces tortured detainees in Kherson city. It said Russian forces “set up pseudo-law enforcement agencies” in pre-trial detention centres and a police station before troops withdrew from the southern Ukrainian city.
Russian troops have been accused of burning bodies at a landfill on the edge of Kherson during their occupation. Residents and workers at the site told the Guardian they saw Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a stench of burning flesh.
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