Russian missiles crashed into infrastructure targets across Ukraine on Tuesday morning as Moscow stepped up what looked like a deliberate campaign to destroy electricity and water facilities before winter.
Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know right now
Violence
Russian air strikes have destroyed 30% of Ukraine’s power stations since Oct. 10, causing massive blackouts across the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr was left without water and electricity supply after Russian air strikes, its mayor said.
Russian forces attacked energy infrastructure in northern Kyiv, causing several explosions and sending smoke rising over the city, Ukrainian officials and witnesses said.
A Russian missile struck an apartment building in the southern port city Mykolaiv, in one of three explosions heard there in the early hours, a Reuters witness said.
Nuclear
Russia still has not notified the United States about exercises of its nuclear forces that Washington has said it expects Moscow to soon carry out, a senior US military official said on Monday.
The Kremlin on Tuesday said that the four regions of Ukraine that Russia declared it had annexed in recent weeks fall under the protection of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
The West should listen carefully when President Vladimir Putin talks about using nuclear weapons but should remember that it is more useful for him to threaten their use than to go ahead, the head of Norway’s armed forces told Reuters.
Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company accused Russia of “kidnapping” two senior staff at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine.
Diplomacy
Sensing that Russia has been weakened by its war in Ukraine, some of its closest allies in Central Asia are displaying a newly assertive streak.
Zelenskiy urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying on Monday evening that this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia, hours after the two sides carried out one of the biggest prisoner swaps so far, exchanging 218 detainees, including 108 Ukrainian women.
The Kremlin on Tuesday said it had no information about whether or not Iranian “Kamikaze” were used in large-scale attacks against Ukraine earlier this week.
Washington on Monday accused Iran of lying when it says Iranian drones are not being used by Russia to launch attacks against Ukraine. Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks.
Economy
Exxon Mobil Corp said on Monday that it had left Russia completely after Putin expropriated its properties following seven months of discussions over an orderly transfer of its 30% stake in a major oil project.
The Pentagon is considering paying for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network in war-torn Ukraine, Politico reported on Monday, citing two US officials.
Discussions will continue on extending and expanding a UN-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian Black Sea grain exports, the UN spokesman said on Monday, after UN officials held talks in Moscow on the deal.