Summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 9pm. Here is a roundup of the day’s main stories:
Ukraine has accused Russia of looting empty homes in the southern city of Kherson and occupying them with troops in civilian clothes to prepare for street fighting in what both sides predict will be one of the war’s most important battles. In recent days, Russia has ordered civilians out of Kherson in anticipation of a Ukrainian assault to recapture the city, the only regional capital Moscow has seized since its invasion in February.
Kherson was cut off from water and electricity supplies on Sunday after an airstrike and damage to the Kakhovka dam, local officials said.
A senior adviser to Ukraine’s president has said Kyiv had never refused to negotiate with Moscow and that it was ready for talks with Russia’s future leader, but not with Vladimir Putin. The comments on Twitter by Mykhailo Podolyak followed a Washington Post report on Saturday saying the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Moscow.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said 50,000 Russian soldiers called up as part of his mobilisation drive were now fighting with combat units in Ukraine, the Interfax news agency reported. Putin said 80,000 were “in the zone of the special military operation” - the term Russia uses for its war in Ukraine – and the rest of the almost 320,000 draftees were at training camps in Russia.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was urging residents of Kherson to evacuate as soon as possible, sending them warning messages on their phones on Sunday. Russia was “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians its force are leaving when in fact they are digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern forces, told state television. The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson has already expelled tens of thousands of civilians from the city.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has said he expects the battle of Kherson to be the defining battle of the war. Russian state-owned news agency Tass quoted him saying: “We have a difficult time ahead of us, next winter will be even more difficult than this one, because we are facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the war in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson, in which both sides use thousands of tanks, aircraft, artillery. The west thinks that in this way it will be able to destroy Russia, Russia believes that in this way it will be able to protect what it took at the beginning of the war and bring the war to an end. This will create additional problems everywhere.”
Russia’s defence ministry took the unusual step of denying reports by Russian military bloggers that a naval infantry unit had lost hundreds of men in a fruitless offensive in eastern Ukraine, the state-owned RIA news agency said. It said the ministry had rejected the bloggers’ assertions that the 155th marine brigade of the Pacific Fleet had suffered “high, pointless losses in people and equipment”.
Ukraine continues to brace for fresh Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Russia “is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy”, said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president.
At least 88% of Ukrainians believe their country will be a prosperous member of the European Union in 10 years, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Ukraine applied for membership of the EU shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February and Kyiv was granted candidate status in June.
Planned blackouts are scheduled to hit seven regions of Ukraine throughout Monday, according to Ukraine’s state-run energy company. The regions include the city of Kyiv, and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava.
Kyiv’s mayor urged residents to prepare for a worst-case scenario by making emergency plans to leave the city and stay with friends or family. Vitali Klitschko urged residents to “consider everything”, including loss of power and water. “If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, echoed Klitschko’s words about evacuating Kyiv’s residents, saying: “I hope it won’t come to this. If it comes to it, we’ll have to move them back to the west of Ukraine, Lviv and all the places closer to the European Union. That’s a huge number of people to be located but Ukrainian winters can become quite harsh. We have to think how we do it.”
Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, one of Ukraine’s western-most regions, has announced preparation measures for receiving more refugees and internally displaced people into his region, and appealed for help with the provision of diesel generators and financial aid for medical supplies.
Ukraine has received its first delivery of Nasams and Apside air defence systems, the country’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced on Monday. “We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us. Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US,” Reznikov wrote on Twitter.
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported on Monday that President Vladimir Putin will make a decision on whether to attend the next G20 summit in person by the end of the week. Zelenskiy has said he will not attend if Putin does. The summit in Bali is due to begin on Tuesday 15 November.
The head of Ukraine’s Byzantine-rite Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, met Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday and said there can be no dialogue with Russia as long as Moscow considered the neighbour it invaded as a colony to be subjugated. The Orthodox church of Ukraine has said worshippers can celebrate Christmas on 25 December, a move away from the traditional date of 7 January directed against the pro-Putin head of the Russian Orthodox church.
An internal rift over the supply of deadly drones to Russia for use in Ukraine has opened up in Iran, with a prominent conservative cleric and newspaper editor saying Russia is the clear aggressor in the war and the supply should stop. A former Iranian ambassador to Moscow has also hinted the foreign ministry may have been kept in the dark both by the Kremlin and the Iranian military.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK has told Sky News in London that the new British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will visit the country soon. Sunak had promised that Ukraine would be his first overseas port of call if he became PM, but in a high-profile U-turn he has headed to Egypt and Cop27 instead. Prystaiko said:“We’re not going to discuss the dates, because of the security of your prime minister. But he’s coming to Ukraine quite soon.”
Thanks for following along today. I’ll be back tomorrow but it’s goodbye for now.
Updated
Firefighters work at the scene of a damaged residential building after Russian shelling in liberated Lyman, Donetsk region, earlier today.
At least 88% of Ukrainians believe their country will be a prosperous member of the European Union in 10 years, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Ukraine applied for membership of the EU shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February and Kyiv was granted candidate status in June. The invasion has killed thousands of civilians and devastated vast tracts of territory and infrastructure, Reuters reported.
The poll surveyed 1,000 respondents across Ukraine with the exception of the annexed peninsula of Crimea and other areas that were occupied by Russian proxies when Moscow launched its invasion.
Ukrainians were optimistic about their chances of joining the EU even in the east of the country, which has experienced particularly heavy fighting, the poll found.
Seventy-six percent of respondents there saw the future of their country in the EU. Only 5% said they believed the war would ultimately leave the country with a destroyed economy and provoke a large exodus of Ukrainians.
Updated
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has reportedly held talks with aides to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, with the aim of reducing the risk that the war in Ukraine could spill over or escalate into a nuclear conflict.
The Wall Street Journal said the senior White House figure had held confidential conversations in recent months with the Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov and the Russian security council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, Sullivan’s counterpart, that were not made public.
Neither Washington nor Moscow has confirmed if the talks took place and the report did not detail the times or dates of the phone calls.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on the report at his daily briefing. “Once again, I repeat that there are some truthful reports, but for the most part there are reports that are pure speculation,” he told reporters.
Updated
At the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv recently, I watched a performance of an opera by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. The work, charming and comic, and an escape from the grimness of Russian missile attacks, is called Natalka Poltavka, based on a play by Ivan Kotliarevsky, who pioneered Ukrainian-language literature in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Operas by Verdi, Puccini and Mozart, and ballets such as Giselle and La Sylphide, are on the playbill, despite the almost daily air raid sirens.
But there is no Eugene Onegin in sight, nor a Queen of Spades, and not a whisper of those Tchaikovsky staples of ballet, Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. Russian literature and music, Russian culture of all kinds, is off the menu in wartime Ukraine. It is almost a shock to return to the UK and hear Russian music blithely played on Radio 3.
This absence, some would say erasure, can be hard to comprehend outside Ukraine. When a symphony orchestra in Cardiff removed the 1812 Overture from a programme this spring, there was bafflement verging on an outcry: excising Tchaikovsky was allowing Vladimir Putin and his chums the satisfaction of “owning” Russian culture – it was censorship, it was playing into Russia’s hands. Tchaikovsky himself was not only long dead, but had been an outsider and an internationalist – so the various arguments went.
It took some careful explanation to convey that a piece of music glorifying Russian military achievements, and involving actual cannons, might be somewhere beyond poor taste when Russia was at that moment shelling Ukrainian cities – particularly when the families of orchestra members were directly affected.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Ukraine has accused Russia of looting empty homes in the southern city of Kherson and occupying them with troops in civilian clothes to prepare for street fighting in what both sides predict will be one of the war’s most important battles. In recent days, Russia has ordered civilians out of Kherson in anticipation of a Ukrainian assault to recapture the city, the only regional capital Moscow has seized since its invasion in February.
Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson was cut off from water and electricity supplies on Sunday after an airstrike and damage to the Kakhovka dam, local officials said.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was urging residents of Kherson to evacuate as soon as possible, sending them warning messages on their phones on Sunday. Russia was “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians its force are leaving when in fact they are digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern forces, told state television. The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has expelled tens of thousands of civilians from the city.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić has said he expects the battle of Kherson to be the defining battle of the war. Russian state-owned news agency Tass quoted him saying: “We have a difficult time ahead of us, next winter will be even more difficult than this one, because we are facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the war in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson, in which both sides use thousands of tanks, aircraft, artillery. The west thinks that in this way it will be able to destroy Russia, Russia believes that in this way it will be able to protect what it took at the beginning of the war and bring the war to an end. This will create additional problems everywhere.”
Russia’s defence ministry took the unusual step of denying reports by Russian military bloggers that a naval infantry unit had lost hundreds of men in a fruitless offensive in eastern Ukraine, the state-owned RIA news agency said. It said the ministry had rejected the bloggers’ assertions that the 155th marine brigade of the Pacific Fleet had suffered “high, pointless losses in people and equipment”.
Ukraine continues to brace for fresh Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Russia “is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy”, said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president.
Planned blackouts are scheduled to hit seven regions of Ukraine throughout Monday, according to Ukraine’s state-run energy company. The regions include the city of Kyiv, and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava.
Kyiv’s mayor urged residents to prepare for a worst-case scenario by making emergency plans to leave the city and stay with friends or family. Vitali Klitschko urged residents to “consider everything” including loss of power and water. “If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, echoed Klitschko’s words about evacuating Kyiv’s residents, saying “I hope it won’t come to this. If it comes to it, we’ll have to move them back to west west of Ukraine, Lviv and all the places closer to the European Union. That’s a huge number of people to be located but Ukrainian winters can become quite harsh. We have to think how we do it.”
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv, one of Ukraine’s westernmost regions, has announced preparation measures for receiving more refugees and internally displaced people into his region, and appealed for help with the provision of diesel generators and financial aid for medical supplies.
Ukraine has received its first delivery of Nasams and Apside air defence systems, the country’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced Monday. “We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us. Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US,” Reznikov wrote on Twitter.
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported Monday that President Vladimir Putin will make a decision on whether to attend the next G20 summit in person by the end of the week. Zelenskiy has said he will not attend if Putin does. The summit in Bali is due to begin Tuesday 15 November.
The head of Ukraine’s Byzantine-rite Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, met Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday and said there can be no dialogue with Russia as long as Moscow considered the neighbour it invaded a colony to be subjugated. The Orthodox church of Ukraine has said worshippers can celebrate Christmas on 25 December, a move away from the traditional date of 7 January directed against pro-Putin head of Russian Orthodox church.
An internal rift over the supply of deadly drones to Russia for use in Ukraine has opened up in Iran, with a prominent conservative cleric and newspaper editor saying Russia is the clear aggressor in the war and the supply should stop. A former Iranian ambassador to Moscow has also hinted the foreign ministry may have been kept in the dark both by the Kremlin and the Iranian military.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK has told Sky News in London that the new British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will visit the country soon. Sunak had promised that Ukraine would be his first overseas port of call if he became PM, but in a high-profile U-turn has headed to Egypt and Cop 27 instead. Prystaiko said:“We’re not going to discuss the dates, because of the security of your prime minister. But he’s coming to Ukraine quite soon.”
A senior adviser to Ukraine’s president has said Kyiv had never refused to negotiate with Moscow and that it was ready for talks with Russia’s future leader, but not with Vladimir Putin.
The comments on Twitter by Mykhailo Podolyak followed a Washington Post report on Saturday saying the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Moscow.
“Ukraine has never refused to negotiate. Our negotiating position is known and open,” he wrote on Twitter, saying that Russia should first withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
“Is Putin ready? Obviously not. Therefore, we are constructive in our assessment: we will talk with the next leader of [Russia].”
Important: Ukraine has never refused to negotiate. Our negotiating position is known and open.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) November 7, 2022
1. First, RF withdraws troops from 🇺🇦
2.After everything else
Is Putin ready? Obviously not. Therefore, we are constructive in our assessment: we will talk with the next leader of RF.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said 50,000 Russian soldiers called up as part of his mobilisation drive were now fighting with combat units in Ukraine, the Interfax news agency reported.
Putin said 80,000 were “in the zone of the special military operation” - the term Russia uses for its war in Ukraine – and the rest of the almost 320,000 draftees were at training camps in Russia.
“We now have 50,000 in their combat units. The rest are not taking part in the fighting yet,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying during a visit to the Tver region, outside Moscow.
In September, Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” drive to call up hundreds of thousands of new fighters for the war after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of territory in a counter-offensive.
The move triggered an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Russians and triggered anti-war protests across the country, Reuters reported.
Updated
The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, reports:
An internal rift over the supply of deadly drones to Russia for use in Ukraine has opened up in Iran, with a prominent conservative cleric and newspaper editor saying Russia is the clear aggressor in the war and the supply should stop.
A former Iranian ambassador to Moscow has also hinted the foreign ministry may have been kept in the dark both by the Kremlin and the Iranian military.
Iran has denied for more than two months that it sold the drones to Russia despite their use to target power stations and civilian infrastructure, but at the weekend said it had supplied a small number of drones before the war started, an explanation that has been rejected by the US and Ukraine.
The row over the drones reflects a wider foreign policy debate in Tehran about the risks of developing close links with Moscow. It is also unusual, in that the criticism of Iran’s government is being led by a conservative cleric and a newspaper editor.
In remarks picked up by other Iranian newspapers, Masih Mohajeri, writing on the front page of the newspaper Jomhouri-e-Islami, highlighted three things the government should have done: advised the party that started the war, ie Russia, to observe international regulations that prohibit encroachment on the territory of other countries; told Russia at the outset of the war that it had no right to use the drones in Ukraine that Iran had provided; maintained stronger relations with the invaded country.
Read more of Patrick Wintour’s report here: Row brews in Iran over use of its drones in Ukraine war by Russia
It is the 105th anniversary of the October revolution in Russia – celebrated on 7 November because of calendar changes – and so at the Red Square in Moscow today Communist party and “Left Front” supporters have been carrying placards of Lenin and Stalin at a flower-laying ceremony at the Lenin mausoleum. The revolution led to civil war and ultimately the creation of the Soviet Union.
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv, one of Ukraine’s westernmost regions, has announced preparation measures for receiving more refugees and internally displaced people into his region, and appealed for help with the provision of diesel generators and financial aid for medical supplies. In a message posted to Telegram, he said:
Lviv oblast is among the five regions that received the largest number of forced migrants. Taking into account the fact that the occupier is targeting energy facilities, we expect a new wave of internally displaced people – from those regions where they will not be able to start the heating season.
Therefore we are renovating dormitories in which no one has lived for a long time. They will serve as shelters for people who lost their homes due to Russia’s military actions. Funds from the regional budget are directed to repairs.
Another important need of the Lviv region now is diesel generators. We want to provide them as much as possible for all important objects of the Lviv region, in particular medical and educational institutions, institutions where the elderly and disabled, and children without parents from among forced migrants are staying.
Also, financial support is needed by medical institutions of our region, which have an increased need for medical supplies and equipment.
The head of Ukraine’s Byzantine-rite Catholic Church met Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday and said there can be no dialogue with Russia as long as Moscow considered the neighbour it invaded a colony to be subjugated.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk’s trip to visit the pontiff was his first trip outside Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February. He said he prefers to remain in Kyiv to be close to the people despite the bombings and hardships.
“The war in Ukraine is a colonial war and peace proposals by Russia are proposals of colonial pacification,” he said after meeting the pope at the Vatican.
Reuters reports that Shevchuk, who has several times urged the pope to visit Kyiv, gave Francis a piece of shrapnel from a Russian mine that destroyed the facade of a church in Irpin in March.
“These proposals imply the negation of the existence of the Ukrainian people, their history, culture and even their church. It is the negation of the very right of the Ukrainian state to exist with the sovereignty and territorial integrity that is recognised by the international community,” Shevchuk said.
“With these premises, Russia’s proposals lack a basis for dialogue,” he said.
Earlier today, we reported that the Orthodox church of Ukraine allows worshippers to celebrate Christmas on 25 December, in a move that distances it from traditionally observing Christmas on 7 January, at the same time as the Moscow patriarchy, which has blessed Putin’s war.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, is a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin and has said Russian soldiers who are killed will be cleansed of all their sins.
You can read more about that from Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin in Kyiv here: Orthodox church of Ukraine allows worshippers to celebrate Christmas on 25 December
Updated
Ukraine claims Russia occupying empty Kherson homes with troops in civilian clothes
Ukraine has accused Russia of looting empty homes in the southern city of Kherson and occupying them with troops in civilian clothes to prepare for street fighting in what both sides predict will be one of the war’s most important battles.
In recent days, Russia has ordered civilians out of Kherson in anticipation of a Ukrainian assault to recapture the city, the only regional capital Moscow has seized since its invasion in February, Reuters reported.
Kherson, with a pre-war population of nearly 300,000, has been left cold and dark after power and water were cut to the surrounding area over the past 48 hours, both sides said.
Russian-installed officials blamed Ukrainian “sabotage” and said they were working to restore electricity. Ukrainian officials said the Russians had dismantled 1.5km of power lines, and electricity probably would not return until Ukrainian forces recapture the area.
Kyiv has described the evacuation of the area as a forced deportation, a war crime. Moscow says it is sending residents away for safety.
Updated
Three top Ukrainian officials confirmed that the shares of five strategic companies had been taken over by the defence ministry under wartime laws.
The decision was taken at a top security meeting on 5 November and came into force the following day, security council secretary Oleksiy Danilov told a briefing today.
Russia denies reports naval infantry unit lost hundreds of men in eastern Ukraine
Russia’s defence ministry took the unusual step of denying reports by Russian military bloggers that a naval infantry unit had lost hundreds of men in a fruitless offensive in eastern Ukraine, the state-owned RIA news agency said.
It said the ministry had rejected the bloggers’ assertions that the 155th marine brigade of the Pacific Fleet had suffered “high, pointless losses in people and equipment”.
On the contrary, in the course of 10 days the unit had advanced 5km (more than three miles) into Ukrainian defensive positions south-west of Donetsk, RIA quoted the ministry as saying. It specifically denied that the brigade’s commanders had shown incompetence, Reuters reported.
“Due to the competent actions of the unit commanders, the losses of marines for the given period do not exceed 1% of combat strength, and 7% wounded, a significant part of whom have already returned to duty,” it said.
The rare denial suggested the reports had touched a raw nerve at a point in the war’s ninth month when Russian forces are under heavy pressure in partly occupied regions of Ukraine that Moscow has proclaimed as its own territory – actions denounced as illegal by Kyiv, the west and most countries of the United Nations.
Updated
Ukraine has received its first delivery of Nasams and Apside air defence systems, the country’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced today.
“We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us. Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US,” Reznikov wrote on Twitter.
Look who’s here!
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) November 7, 2022
NASAMS and Aspide air defence systems arrived in Ukraine!
These weapons will significantly strengthen #UAarmy and will make our skies safer.
We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us.
Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US. pic.twitter.com/ozP4eXhgOg
Updated
A spokesperson for the German government on Monday said it was up to Ukraine to decide when to hold peace talks with Russia, adding that Moscow had also been reluctant to participate in them.
The Washington Post reported that the US has been privately encouraging Ukraine to signal it is open to talks with Russia, after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, ruled out negotiations while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is in power.
Updated
The Kremlin has declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report that Washington had held undisclosed talks with top Russian officials about avoiding further escalation in the Ukraine war.
According to the report, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with aides to president Vladimir Putin in the hope of reducing the risk that the war in Ukraine spills over or escalates into a nuclear conflict.
“We have nothing to say about this publication,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He also declined to comment on a Washington Post report that the US has been privately encouraging Ukraine to signal it is open to talks with Russia, after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy ruled out negotiations while Putin is in power.
“Well, we don’t know if that’s the case or not,” said Peskov.
“Once again I repeat that there are some truthful reports, but for the most part there are reports that are pure speculation,” he said.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
Ukraine is bracing for power blackouts and fresh Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Russia “is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy”, said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president. Ukraine faced a 32% deficit in projected power supply on Monday, said Sergei Kovalenko, CEO of Yasno, a major supplier of energy to the capital.
Planned blackouts are scheduled to hit seven regions of Ukraine throughout Monday, according to Ukraine’s state-run energy company. The regions include the city of Kyiv, and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava.
Kyiv’s mayor has urged residents to prepare for a worst-case scenario by making emergency plans to leave the city and stay with friends or family. Vitali Klitschko told residents to “consider everything” including loss of power and water. “If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, echoed Klitschko’s words about evacuating Kyiv’s residents, saying: “I hope it won’t come to this, and we’re still trying to renew all electric facilities, generating stations, the transformations, all of it. If it comes to it, we’ll have to move them back to west of Ukraine, Lviv and all the places closer to the European Union. That’s a huge number of people to be located but Ukrainian winters can become quite harsh. We have to think how we do it.”
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported Monday that President Vladimir Putin will make a decision on whether to attend the next G20 summit in person by the end of the week. Zelenskiy has said he will not attend if Putin does. The summit in Bali is due to begin on Tuesday 15 November.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the media on his daily call on Monday that while Russia remains “open” to talks, it is unable to negotiate with Kyiv due to its refusal to hold talks with Russia.
The Kyiv Independent is reporting that “farmers’ warehouses, a cultural site, and private houses” were damaged in Zaporizhzhia region by Russian strikes, and according to local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko Russian forces have killed one civilian in Bakhmut and wounded five civilians elsewhere in the Donetsk region.
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has said he expects the battle of Kherson to be the defining battle of the war. Russian state-owned news agency Tass quoted him saying: “We have a difficult time ahead of us, next winter will be even more difficult than this one, because we are facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the war in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson, in which both sides use thousands of tanks, aircraft, artillery. The west thinks that in this way it will be able to destroy Russia, Russia believes that in this way it will be able to protect what it took at the beginning of the war and bring the war to an end. This will create additional problems everywhere.’”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK has told Sky News in London that the new British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will visit the country soon. Sunak had promised that Ukraine would be his first overseas port of call if he became PM, but in a high-profile U-turn has headed to Egypt and Cop 27 instead. Prystaiko said:“We’re not going to discuss the dates, because of the security of your prime minister. But he’s coming to Ukraine quite soon.”
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later. Tom Ambrose will be with you shortly.
Updated
Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti is reporting that President Vladimir Putin will make a decision on whether to attend the next G20 summit in person by the end of the week. It cited Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he will not attend if Putin does. The summit in Bali is due to begin Tuesday 15 November.
Updated
Speaking on Sky News earlier today, Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, echoed the Kyiv mayor’s words that it might become necessary to evacuate the city if Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power supplies continue. Prystaiko told viewers:
I hope it won’t come to this, and we’re still trying to renew all electric facilities, generating stations, the transformations, all of it. If it comes to it, we’ll have to move them back to west west of Ukraine, Lviv and all the places closer to the European Union. That’s a huge number of people to be located but Ukrainian winters can become quite harsh. We have to think how we do it.
He said that in terms of power generation there was not a problem, as there are many households who have already been evacuated so are bot using electricity, and the economy is not running at full tilt, however transmission and the damage to power lines was the problem.
Reuters reports that Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the media on his daily call today that while Russia remains “open” to talks, it is unable to negotiate with Kyiv due to its refusal to hold talks with Russia.
Updated
Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, has claimed that Iranian drones are being stockpiled in Belarus to the north of Ukraine, “quite close to Kyiv” and are Ukraine’s “biggest problem”.
He told viewers of Sky News that “we managed to take from the sky around 70-75% of all the drones and rockets. They are running out of rockets, that is for sure. Today, the Russian fleet did not leave their bases for the sea where they launched their rockets at us. But the Iranian drones, this is the biggest problem. They are cheap … they come in a swarm. Very difficult to deal with.”
He called for political pressure and sanctions on Iran, saying “we have evidence that thousands and thousands of them have been provided, some of them stored now in Belarus, which is on top and north of Ukraine, quite close to Kyiv city for example.”
He continued “We have to cover the skies for Ukraine. It means sometimes planes, and in most of the cases rockets, anti-air. We also have to increase pressure on Russia and Iran as well. With Iran, political sanctions, more or less the same as Russia, just to keep them under pressure, until they won’t be any more able to send rockets or build new.”
Ukraine ambassador to UK: Sunak will visit Kyiv 'quite soon'
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, has told Sky News in London that the new British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will visit the country soon. Sunak had promised that Ukraine would be his first overseas port of call if he became PM, but in a high-profile U-turn has headed to Egypt and Cop 27 instead. Prystaiko said:
We’re not going to discuss the dates, because of the security of your prime minister. But he’s coming to Ukraine quite soon.
Updated
The Kyiv Independent is reporting that “farmers’ warehouses, a cultural site, and private houses” were damaged in Zaporizhzhia region by Russian strikes, and according to local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko Russian forces have killed one civilian in Bakhmut and wounded five civilians elsewhere in the Donetsk region.
The chiefly unrecognised authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the occupied east of Ukraine have issued their daily operational briefing. They claim that overnight one civilian has been killed and three injured after Ukrainian forces shelled eight settlements that the DPR occupies. In addition, they claim that 31 housing and five civil infrastructure facilities were damaged. The claims have not been independently verified. The DPR is one of the regions that Russia claims to have annexed.
Updated
Russian state-owned news agency Tass is carrying quotes from Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, who says he expects the battle for Kherson to be the decisive event of the war in Ukraine. He is quoted as saying:
We have a difficult time ahead of us, next winter will be even more difficult than this one, because we are facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the war in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson, in which both sides use thousands of tanks, aircraft, artillery.
The west thinks that in this way it will be able to destroy Russia, Russia believes that in this way it will be able to protect what it took at the beginning of the war and bring the war to an end. This will create additional problems everywhere.
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The British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, has described on Twitter the situation this morning in Kyiv as “calm”.
Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, governor of Sumy, has posted to say that the night was chiefly quiet in his region of Ukraine. He claimed that there were four explosions in Seredyna-Buda, “without consequences”.
Planned blackouts are scheduled to hit seven regions of Ukraine throughout Monday, according to Ukraine’s state-run energy company.
The regions include the city of Kyiv, and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava.
Occupied Kherson loses power
The occupied city of Kherson has lost power for the first time since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement on Telegram, the Russian-controlled Kherson administration said electricity and water supplies were down after a “terrorist attack” damaged three power lines on the Berislav-Kakhovka highway in an occupied part of the region.
Yuriy Sobolevskyi, deputy head of Kherson regional council, said about 10 settlements in the region were affected, as well as the main city.
Russian officials have said Ukraine is preparing to attempt a second offensive to retake more of the Kherson region. Recapturing it would have immense symbolic and logistical value for Ukraine as Russia wants the area to secure a water supply to Crimea, as well as a land bridge to Russia.
The head of the regional administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych, blamed Russia for the power outages. He said that in the city of Beryslav in the region, about 1.5km (one mile) of electric power lines had been destroyed, cutting off power entirely because the “damage is quite extensive”.
Energy specialists were working to “quickly” resolve the issue, the Russian-backed authorities said, as they called on people to “remain calm”. Kherson’s Moscow-appointed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said authorities hoped to have power back by the end of Monday.
News of the outage followed claims on Sunday in Russian state media that the Kakhovka dam in the region of Kherson was damaged by a Ukrainian strike using Himars rockets.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has warned that Moscow’s forces intended to blow up the strategic facility to cause flooding. The hydroelectric dam was captured by Moscow’s forces at the start of their offensive.
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Kyiv mayor urges residents to prepare for total blackouts
Kyiv’s mayor has told residents to consider leaving the capital in the event of a complete blackout.
Vitali Klitschko said he could not rule out the prospect of a complete blackout for the capital as Russia continued its campaign of strikes on energy infrastructure.
Speaking to Ukraine’s United News, a centralised news programme broadcast across all channels, Klitschko told people to prepare by buying power banks and warm clothes. In case of an all-out blackout, he said Kyiv’s residents should try to stay with relatives outside the capital.
If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time,” he said.
However, Klitschko urged people in Kyiv not to be “pessimistic”, saying he was only advising people to prepare for different scenarios. “We will do everything that depends on us so that such a scenario does not happen.”
As of Sunday evening, stabilisation blackouts continue in Kyiv and six regions, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said. Describing the situation as “really difficult” he said more than 4.5m Ukrainians – mostly in Kyiv and the surrounding region – were without electricity.
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Zelenskiy warns of 'mass attacks' on Ukraine's energy infrastructure
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned of continued “mass attacks” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian president said in his latest Sunday evening address:
We also understand that the terrorist state is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of mass attacks on our infrastructure. First of all, energy.
In particular, for this, Russia needs Iranian missiles. We are preparing to respond.”
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said earlier on Twitter that Ukraine would “stand” despite Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, adding that this would be done by using air defence, protecting infrastructure and optimising consumption.
Russian strikes over the past month have destroyed around a third of Ukraine’s power stations and the government has urged Ukrainians to conserve electricity as much as possible.
Sergei Kovalenko, CEO of Yasno, a major supplier of energy to the capital, said Ukraine faced a 32% deficit in projected power supply on Monday. “This is a lot, and it’s force majeure,” he said.
Ukraine’s authorities have issued scheduled blackouts across the country in order to stabilise the grid, and 17 EU countries have sent 500 power generators to Ukraine to help ease the energy crisis.
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.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has warned of continued Russian “mass attacks” on the country’s energy infrastructure as Ukraine reels from the destruction of around a third of its power stations.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, has told residents to consider leaving the capital in the event of a complete blackout.
For any updates or feedback you wish to share, please feel free to get in touch via email or Twitter.
If you have just joined us, here are all the latest developments:
Ukraine is bracing for power blackouts and fresh Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. Russia “is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy”, said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president. Ukraine faced a 32% deficit in projected power supply on Monday, said Sergei Kovalenko, CEO of Yasno, a major supplier of energy to the capital. “This is a lot, and it’s force majeure,” he said. About 500 power generators were being sent to Ukraine by 17 EU countries as 4.5m Ukrainians were left without power.
Kyiv’s mayor urged residents to prepare for a worst-case scenario by making emergency plans to leave the city and stay with friends or family. Vitali Klitschko urged residents to “consider everything” including loss of power and water. “If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time.”
Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson was cut off from water and electricity supplies on Sunday after an airstrike and damage to the Kakhovka dam, local officials said. “In Kherson and a number of other areas in the region, there is temporarily no electricity or water supply,” the city’s Moscow-installed administration said on Telegram. Russia accused Ukraine of an act of “sabotage”.
Ukraine’s military said Russia was urging residents of Kherson to evacuate as soon as possible, sending them warning messages on their phones on Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine’s army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately. Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern forces, said Russia was “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians its force are leaving when in fact they are digging in. The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has expelled tens of thousands of civilians from the city.
Russian forces are stepping up their strikes in a fiercely contested region of eastern Ukraine, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the Ukrainian army, Ukrainian authorities said. “Very fierce Russian attacks on Donetsk region are continuing. The enemy is suffering serious losses there,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
US officials have reportedly warned the Ukrainian government in private that it needs to signal an openness to negotiating with Russia. Officials in Washington warned that “Ukraine fatigue” among allies could worsen if Kyiv continued to be closed to negotiations, the Washington Post reported. US officials told the paper that Ukraine’s position on negotiations with Russia was wearing thin among allies worried about the economic effects of a protracted war.
External power was restored to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant two days after it was disconnected from the power grid when Russian shelling damaged high voltage lines, the UN nuclear watchdog said. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, held secretive talks with top Russian officials in hopes of reducing the risk of nuclear conflict, the Wall Street Journal has reported. It cited US and allied officials as saying that Sullivan held previously undisclosed conversations in recent months with the Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov and the Russian security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Sullivan’s counterpart. The White House declined to comment on the report.
