The new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine made a rare acknowledgment of the pressures they were under from Ukrainian offensives to retake southern and eastern areas that Moscow claims to have annexed just weeks ago.

Russian commander admits situation is ‘tense’ for his forces in Ukraine

On the ground

• The situation in areas Russia claims to have annexed was “tense”, said Sergei Surovikin, a Russian general appointed this month to take charge of its forces. Russian troops in some areas were under continuous attack, he said.

• The Russian-appointed governor of Kherson announced the evacuation of four towns in the region.

• Russian air strikes have destroyed 30% of Ukraine’s power stations since Oct. 10, causing massive blackouts across the country, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

• Russian strikes hit a power plant in Kyiv, killing three people, as well as energy infrastructure in Kharkiv in the east and Dnipro in the south. A man sheltering in an apartment building in the southern port city Mykolaiv was also killed and the northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr was without water or electricity.

Diplomacy

• Ukraine’s foreign minister said he was proposing a formal cut in diplomatic ties with Iran after a wave of Russian attacks using what Kyiv says are Iranian-made drones.

• Iran has denied supplying drones and Russia has denied using them.

• But senior Iranian officials and diplomats told Reuters that Iran has promised to provide Russia with surface to surface missiles as well as drones.

• The United States, Britain and France plan to raise alleged Iranian arms transfers to Russia at a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, diplomats said.

• NATO said Ukraine would receive anti-drone defence systems in coming days.

• Russia’s Duma has indefinitely stopped broadcasting live plenary sessions to protect information from “our enemy”, a leading lawmaker said.

• Zelenskiy urged his troops to take more prisoners, saying this would make it easier to secure the release of soldiers being held by Russia.

Nuclear threat

• The Kremlin said that the four regions of Ukraine that Russia declared it had annexed fall under the protection of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

• International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi expects to return “soon” to Ukraine, he told Reuters, amid negotiations to establish a security protection zone around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.