The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
10:21 p.m.: The Ukrainian military says its forces have shot down more than 20 Russian drones over the last 24 hours, The Associated Press reported.
Most of the drones were the Iranian-made Shahed-136 that are packed with explosives and are designed to crash into targets.
The military also said that 500 former criminals have been mobilized to reinforce Russian ranks in the eastern Donetsk region, where Ukrainian forces have been retaking territory. The new units are commanded by officers drawn from law enforcement.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War says Russia has increasingly deployed the cheaper an less sophisticated Iranian-made drones in recent weeks, but the weapons are unlikely to significantly affect the course of the war.
9:26 p.m.: Britain’s Defense Ministry says Ukraine’s ability to capture and put back into service Russian tanks and other equipment continues to be an important factor in its drive to repel the invasion, The Associated Press reported.
The ministry said Friday that Ukrainian forces have captured at least 440 tanks and about 650 armored vehicles since the start of the war.
It also said the failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering “highlights their poor state of training and low levels of battle discipline.”
8:45 p.m.: Dutch authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of selling microchips to Russia in breach of sanctions imposed by the West over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, officials said on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
The microchips, sold to companies and other bodies in Russia, could be used for military purposes, the Dutch financial and fiscal crime investigation service (FIOD) said.
The 55-year-old suspect has dual Dutch and Russian nationality, a FIOD spokeswoman told AFP.
He was arrested in the east of the Netherlands on September 27 following a report from a bank to financial investigators.
8:15 p.m.: Spain’s energy minister said European leaders meeting in Prague on Friday were nearing consensus on a EU gas pricing system that would create an alternative to the current benchmark and effectively cap prices.
Heads of state from across Europe met in Prague to discuss how to combat soaring energy prices caused by the Ukraine war. The European Union hopes to reach an agreement on electricity market reform within two weeks to ease the impact of gas prices in power generation systems.
Spain’s Energy Minister Teresa Ribera told Reuters in an interview the leaders were moving toward a consensus on an alternative benchmark price to the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas price that could effectively smooth over differences.
The new benchmark will be “a basket of indicators that allows us (EU) to have something that adapts in a flexible way. It is not an absolute fixed price,” said Ribera, adding the system would substitute the cap proposal.
6:58 p.m.: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday called on Brussels to ramp up pressure on Russia’s energy sector, a day after the EU imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
“We must continue moving in this direction, the direction of pressure on the Russian energy sector, on this main source of income of the aggressor state,” Zelenskyy said in a video address to an EU summit in Prague.
He thanked the EU for the adoption of new sanctions on Moscow, which expanded import/export bans and blacklisted individuals over Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
Zelenskyy also reiterated Kyiv’s calls to “demilitarize” Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in territory Moscow claimed to have annexed.
6:05 p.m.: A Ukrainian official said the bodies of 530 people have been discovered in recaptured areas of Kharkiv region since September 7, The Associated Press reported.
Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevhen Yenin said Friday the bodies included those 225 women, 257 men and 19 children, while 29 bodies haven’t been identified.
Overall, 1,350 civilians were killed in the Kharkiv region since the start of the war. Serhiy Bolvinov head of the Kharkiv region’s State Police Investigative Department, said 22 torture sites were found in recently liberated areas.
5:16 p.m.: The Russian rights group Memorial is honored to have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but it said the prize should have gone to political prisoners such as Alexey Navalny, who risk their lives for contesting President Vladimir Putin, the group’s co-founder said Friday, according to Agence France-Presse.
Lev Ponomarev, who helped create Memorial in the late 1980s under the perestroika Soviet reform drive, said his group had been “destroyed” as Russia presses its invasion of Ukraine, but was still seeking to continue its work.
“It is very well deserved and of course when I think of what I thought 30 years ago I am happy,” he said.
But Ponomarev said an even better move by the Norwegian peace prize committee would have been to give the award to Navalny, Putin’s leading opposition critic and an outspoken anti-corruption figure, or to liberal opposition figures Vladimir Kara-Murza or Ilya Yashin, who are also imprisoned.
4:20 p.m.: France has created a fund, initially worth about $98 million, for Ukraine to directly buy weapons and other material it needs in its war against invading Russia, President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
Macron also said that discussions were being held, particularly with Denmark, to deliver more highly accurate CAESAR truck-mounted cannons to Ukraine, on top of the 18 France has already given.
The fund would significantly boost the military support France is showing Ukraine, from approximately $230 million committed so far.
3:40 p.m.: Ukraine’s environmental protection minister says an accident at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could release 10 times the amount of potentially lethal radioactivity than the world’s worst atomic accident did in Chernobyl 36 years ago, The Associated Press reported.
Ruslan Strilets who is in Cyprus for a U.N. environmental conference, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that a release of radioactivity of that magnitude could expand to as much as 2 million square kilometers, “three times larger than Ukraine’s total area” or an area half the size of the European Union. An accident could also spark “a wave of environmental refugees” fleeing to other areas of Ukraine or abroad.
According to Strilets, about 3 million hectares of forest have been damaged or burned since the February. 24 launch of the Russian invasion.
Forest fires in combination with Russian attacks on oil depots and industrial facilities have spewed more than 67 million tons of pollutants into the air. Currently, 812 nature-protected areas have either been damaged or remain under threat.
He added that a preliminary assessment on environmental damage the war has caused in the last seven months puts the cost at more than $35.25 billion.
2:45 p.m.: Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the front line that may have prevented troops from liberating territory from Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers, as reported by The Financial Times.
Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the U.S. government, and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates, and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks.
The systems, which connect a small antenna to a 35-centimeter-high terminal, also provide internet for Ukrainian civilians.
Some of the outages led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication in recent weeks, said one senior Ukrainian government official with direct knowledge of the issue. Many outages were reported in the south around the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, but also occurred along the front line in eastern Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.
2:40 p.m.: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian officials have begun to “prepare their society” for the possible use of nuclear weapons but added he does not believe Russia is ready to use them.
In an interview with the BBC, Zelenskyy denied having urged strikes on Russia, claiming that an earlier remark had been mistranslated.
“They are not ready to do it, to use it. But they begin to communicate,” he said. “They don’t know whether they’ll use it or not use it. I think it’s dangerous to even speak about it.”
2:10 p.m.: Russia is concentrating attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region,The Associated Press reports.
The governor of the region said Friday that Russian forces fired more missiles at the regional capital and also used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones there for the first time.
The death toll from earlier missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 12.
In other Moscow-annexed areas, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that its forces had pushed back Ukrainian advances near the city of Lyman and retaken three villages elsewhere in the eastern Donetsk region. The ministry said Russian forces also had prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the Kherson region.
2 p.m.: A decision by the OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries to sharply cut production targets and boost crude prices has dealt a blow to consuming nations, prompting accusations that Gulf producers are siding with Russia at the expense of the United States and its Western allies.
The 13-nation OPEC group, plus 10 allies led by Moscow, agreed at a meeting in Vienna to slash output by two million barrels per day (bpd) starting in November, the group announced in a statement Wednesday.
The Biden administration, which for months has engaged in diplomatic efforts to dissuade its Middle Eastern allies from cutting oil production, reacted frustrated at the prospect of pump prices increasing further before a key midterm election, Al Jazeera reports.
1:15 p.m.: The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi will travel to Russia early next week for talks on setting up a protection zone around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the agency said in a statement on Friday.
Separately, four IAEA staff relieved the two who had been at the plant since Sept 1. The four will “provide support” to the protection zone once it is agreed, the IAEA said.
1:30 p.m. The U.S. government this week bought $290 million in supplies of a drug designed to treat blood cell injuries following radiological and nuclear emergencies as part of what it said were long-standing efforts to prepare for potential health impacts from threats to national security.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services purchased the drug Nplate from Amgen Inc AMGN.O.
When asked whether the purchase, announced Tuesday, was linked to tensions with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, an HHS spokesperson said it was part of ongoing efforts to prepare for a wide range of threats including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and emerging infectious diseases as part of national preparedness, Reuters reports.
Concerns about potential use of nuclear weapons have risen after Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued warnings in recent weeks that he is ready to use them to defend Russia, cautioning it was no bluff.
12:50 p.m.: Oleksandra Matviychuk, who leads Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties was one of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Friday.
In a comment to VOA, Matviychuk said the prestigious award to her, and her team was quite unexpected.
“First of all, this is the award to all Ukrainian people, who are fighting for freedom in this war with Russia and the right to have a democratic choice, for the right to live and build the country, in which the rights of every human are protected, the government is accountable, and the police does not disperse peaceful student demonstrations. And we are paying quite a high price for it.”
12:40 p.m.: After Biden’s stark comments on Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons could trigger a nuclear Armageddon, the White House says the United States sees no reason to change its nuclear posture and does not have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons, Reuters reports.
“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously … we take these threats,” from Russia, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.
11:30 a.m.: President Vladimir Putin is grappling with the gravest domestic crisis of his 23-year rule: an increasingly public quarrel inside the Russian elite over who is to blame for the battlefield defeats in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
“Putin’s authority is being eroded by the military failures in Ukraine — and there is a very real sense that a loss in Ukraine would fatally undermine his authority,” said Sergey Radchenko, a historian of the Cold War at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Since he was handed the Kremlin top job by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, Putin has built around him a fiercely loyal new elite of former spies, businessmen and technocrats who agreed to resolve all disputes in private.
But the humiliating defeats of a former superpower at the hands of much smaller Ukraine have weakened Putin’s authority and stoked a sense of crisis in Moscow not felt since the chaos of the 1990s that he had vowed to extinguish.
“Russia under Putin has never before been in a state of acute crisis but now there is a sense of acute crisis because every day, as Russia’s position worsens on the battlefield, Putin’s position deteriorates,” said Sergey Radchenko.
10:50 a.m.: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Vladimir Putin, is in a politically “very fragile” position due to Russia’s military setbacks in Ukraine, Belarus’ exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Friday.
“A weakened Kremlin means a weakened Lukashenko,” Tsikhanouskaya told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Paris.
Speaking just before a jailed Belarusian rights activist co-won the Nobel Peace Prize, Tsikhanouskaya – who herself had been mentioned as a possible winner this year – also said Belarusians deserved global recognition for standing up to “a dictator.”
“Lukashenko’s position is very fragile. People have energy and desire to bring democratic changes and our economic situation is worsening because of sanctions,” she said.
Lukashenko, one of President Putin’s few firm allies, has allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for missile strikes into Ukraine and a point of entry for Russian soldiers and warplanes since the start of the war on February 24.
10:35 a.m.: In a statement today, the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated Ales Bialiatski and the organizations Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties on being awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on shining a spotlight on the power of civil society to advance peace, VOA reports.
“Civil society groups are the oxygen of democracy, and catalysts for peace, social progress and economic growth. They help keep governments accountable and carry the voices of the vulnerable into the halls of power,” he said.
The U.N. secretary general pledged “to defend the brave defenders of universal values of peace, hope and dignity for all.”
10:30 a.m.: On his 70th birthday, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in the eye of a storm of his own making, says Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
Reuters reports that Putin’s army is suffering humiliating defeats in Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are fleeing his mobilization order, and his top lieutenants are publicly insulting military leaders.
With his room for maneuvering narrowing, Putin has repeatedly signaled that he could resort to nuclear weapons to protect the Russian gains in Ukraine — a harrowing threat that shatters the claims of stability he has repeated throughout his 22-year rule.
10:15 a.m.: Residents who live and work near or at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant describe their lives there as “living hell” after Russians captured Enerhodar, the satellite city of the nuclear plant.
According to the The Kyiv Independent, Russian residents there say soldiers routinely kill and abduct residents there. They say abuse of workers at the plant puts the nuclear plant under threat.
High stress and pressure of the understaffed workers could increase the risk of “human error with implications for nuclear safety,” according to an IAEA report.
Faltering maintenance could lead to the loss of cooling capacities, culminating in a meltdown of fuel inside an overheated reactor or cooling ponds for spent fuel rods — a scenario similar to the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
9:50 a.m.: The United Nations General Assembly will gather to vote next week on a resolution to condemn Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday.
The international community must “make clear to Russia: these areas belong to Ukraine,” Baerbock said in Berlin after talks with her Pakistani counterpart.
Ukraine and its allies have denounced the votes in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as illegal and coercive.
The Western-drafted U.N. General Assembly resolution would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” and the “attempted illegal annexation” of the areas where voting occurred, Reuters reports.
9:20 a.m.: Russia’s prime minister has sent a letter to the Swedish government requesting Russian authorities have a part in the investigation into the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines, Sweden’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
A Swedish crime scene investigation of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe has found evidence of detonations and prosecutors suspect sabotage, Reuters reports.
Sweden has previously rejected the request but Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said that Moscow would insist on a “comprehensive and open investigation” that includes Russian officials and Gazprom.
9:25 a.m.: In an informal meeting, EU leaders in Prague will discuss imposing a price cap on gas imports and transactions.
According to Euronews, 27 EU countries will discuss how to contain gas prices as a way to contain inflation.
But Reuters reports, Germany Europe’s biggest gas buyers and the Netherlands oppose the idea saying that capping prices would cause demand for gas to rise or leave countries struggling to attract supply from global markets.
9 a.m.: Ukraine’s new central bank chief Andriy Pyshnyi vowed on Friday to protect its independence and hailed the country’s banking system for continuing to work “seamlessly” though the war with Russia, Reuters reports.
Pyshnyi, a banker who has helped advise the government on sanctions against Russia, was approved as head of the National Bank of Ukraine in a parliamentary vote after being nominated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The challenges facing our state, its economy, financial and banking sectors are unprecedentedly many today,” Pyshnyi, 48, said in a statement on the central bank’s website.
“But for eight months now, the banking system of Ukraine, like the entire country, has not simply resisted full-scale military aggression. It is working. Seamlessly and continuously. I believe it is necessary to pay tribute to these efforts and continue to work on preserving and improving its work.”
8:45 a.m.: A U.N. human rights body has voted to appoint a new independent investigator on alleged human rights abuses in Russia, accusing Moscow of creating a “climate of fear” through repression and violence.
Members voted 17 in favor and six against, with 24 abstaining. The move is the first time that the 16-year-old Human Rights Council has set up a Special Rapporteur to examine the rights record of one of its so-called ‘P5’ members, which hold permanent seats on the Security Council.
“We want it to be clear today that we didn’t forget those who struggle for freedom at home while (Russian President Vladimir) Putin represses the Russian people and carries out oppression overseas,” Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Simon Manley, told Reuters right after the vote.
Nearly 50 countries including Britain voted in favor, all EU countries, barring Hungary, as well as the United States, Ukraine, Japan and Colombia. Those who voted against were China, Venezuela, Cuba, Eritrea, Bolivia and Kazakhstan.
8:35 a.m.: Officials in Europe praised the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to activists standing up for human rights and democracy in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said the award to Belarusian rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties “sends a signal that keeping civil society down is protecting one’s own power.”
According to the Associated Press the Norwegian Prime Minister added “I hope the Russian authorities read the justification for the peace prize and take it to heart.” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that the prize” pays homage to unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe.”
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said the award was “recognition of all the people who are sacrificing their freedom and lives for the sake of (Belarus).”
8:30 a.m.: At a Democratic fundraiser in New York, President Biden delivered a stark warning about the dangers behind Russian President Putin’s nuclear threats as Moscow faces military setbacks in Ukraine.
“First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” he said.
According to Reuters, Biden said, Putin’s nuclear threat brings risk of “Armageddon.” “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” he said.
8:15 a.m.: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties.
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “the peace prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”
5:50 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said in its latest Ukraine assessment that Ukrainian forces likely continued counteroffensive operations in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast near Kupyansk and operations to threaten Russian positions along the Kreminna-Svatove road in western Luhansk Oblast on Oct. 6.
Russian troops, the assessment said, are likely establishing defensive positions in upper Kherson Oblast following the collapse of the Russian line in northeast Kherson. Russian troops also continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on Oct. 6 and likely made incremental gains around Bakhmut.
4:14 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said repurposed captured Russian equipment now makes up a large proportion of Ukraine’s military hardware. Ukraine has likely captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks, the update said, and around 650 other armored vehicles since the invasion. More than half of Ukraine’s currently fielded tank fleet potentially consists of captured vehicles.
3:35 a.m.: Volodymyr Obodzinskiy lost his entire family in early March in a Russian attack. An air strike hit his house, killing his 40-year-old wife, Natalya; 14-year-old son, Volodymyr; 19-year-old daughter, Ivanka, and her 1-year-old twins. Obodzinskiy visited the wreckage of his home and spoke about the tragedy. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has the story.
2:07 a.m.: Tamara Halishnikova doesn’t remember how long the attack targeting her and other residents trying to escape the Russian-occupied village of Kurylivka lasted, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
All she remembers are the sounds that rang out as the column of vehicles made its way along a railway embankment that late-September morning.
“There was an explosion, then automatic-weapons fire, then more explosions, then we went to the embankment, then gunfire, gunfire, gunfire,” she said, speaking at a press conference to RFE/RL at a hospital in Kharkiv less than two weeks later.
Halishnikova and her daughter, Lyudmyla Potapova, were among seven survivors of a Sept. 25 attack on the vehicles, which carried 31 people attempting to flee fighting in Russian-held territory in northeastern Ukraine. Among the dead were 13 children, a pregnant woman, and Halishnikova’s husband.
1:05 a.m.: The United States accused Russian mercenaries on Thursday of exploiting natural resources in the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere to help fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a charge Russia rejected as “anti-Russian rage,” Reuters reported.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the Wagner Group of mercenaries are exploiting natural resources and “these ill-gotten gains are used to fund Moscow’s war machine in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine.”
“Make no mistake: people across Africa are paying a heavy price for the Wagner Group’s exploitative practices and human rights violations,” Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on the financing of armed groups through illicit trafficking of natural resources in Africa.
Wagner, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali and other countries. It was founded in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and started supporting pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said he regretted that Thomas-Greenfield raised the issue of “Russian support to African partners.”
“This exposes their real plans and aims – what they really need from African countries,” said Nebenzia, without elaborating.
12:02 a.m.: On a street in the middle of hard-hit Kharkiv, Hamlet Zinkivskiy stops and stares at a series of shattered windows that resembled a mosaic, its shards glinting in the sun, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
“If you don’t think about the death and destruction, it looks beautiful,” said Zinkivskiy, a street artist who was born in Ukraine’s second-largest city and, like others here, has watched and endured as it has been battered by Russian bombs and rockets.
Long before the large-scale Russian invasion began in February, the shaven-headed, chain-smoking 35-year-old became known in Ukraine and beyond for his spare, sometimes brooding black-and-white murals that changed the face of Kharkiv and became emblems of a new generation trying to break away from the city’s stagnant post-Soviet identity.
Zinkivskiy’s beloved hometown, located just about 30 kilometers from the Russian border, has been hit hard since the invasion began. On its first day, February 24, Russian troops reached the city’s northern suburbs, putting its future in question.
Source: Voice of America