Ukraine’s president says Russian shelling has ‘actually destroyed’ the city

Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, while Ukraine’s military reported missile, rocket and airstrikes in multiple parts of the country.

The latest battles of Russia’s nine-and-a-half-month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that Russian president Vladimir Putin illegally claimed to have annexed in late September, the Associated Press reported.

Ukraine’s foreign minister says 17 diplomatic missions have now received suspicious packages

• What we know on day 283 of the invasion

More details have been published about attacks on Ukraine on Friday, in an update from the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces.

They said Russia continues to shell civilian infrastructure and is trying to go on the offensive in Avdiivka and Bakhmut.

UK defence ministry confirms providing missiles to Ukraine as civilians in Kherson flee from Russian shelling

• See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage

The UK Ministry of Defence has confirmed that as part of its aid package, the UK has provided Brimstone 2 missiles, a precision-guided missile, to the Ukrainian armed forces. “This aid has played a crucial role in stalling Russian advancements,” it said.

Civilians in Kherson are leaving the city to flee Russian shelling, just weeks after celebrating Ukraine’s recapture of the southern city. Reports said a line of trucks, vans and cars – some towing trailers or ferrying out pets and other belongings – stretched a kilometre or more on the outskirts of Kherson on Saturday.

The Belgium prime minister, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, was on the second day of an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Sunday. Accompanied by Belgian foreign minister, Hadja Lahbib, De Croo used the visit to announce additional Belgian support of around 37.4 million euros.

Russian forces have suffered heavy casualties during fighting in Ukraine’s south-central Donetsk province and are unlikely to achieve a breakthrough there, the UK Ministry of Defence says.

There are growing fears Russia’s relentless targeting of Ukraine’s electricity grid will threaten the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants, in the wake of the unprecedented emergency shutdown on Wednesday. Petro Kotin, the president of Ukraine’s nuclear power company, Energoatom, said all safety mechanisms had worked as intended on Wednesday but two generators were damaged in the process.

Ukrainian authorities are gradually restoring power, aided by the reconnection of the country’s four nuclear plants, but millions of people are still without heat or electricity after the most devastating Russian air strikes of the war.

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has warned rape in war violates international values as severely as the use of chemical weapons amid evidence of the “abhorrent act” being used in Ukraine.

Russia kept up its onslaught on Ukrainian cities on Saturday with an attack on Dnipro which injured six people and destroyed seven houses, said the regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko.

Thirty-two civilians have been killed in Kherson since 9 November, when Russian forces withdrew from the southern city they had occupied for eight months, the Kyiv Independent quoted Ukraine’s national police chief, Ihor Klymenko, as saying. Since then, Russian troops have shelled Kherson frequently.

Ukraine accused the Kremlin of reviving the “genocidal” tactics of Josef Stalin as Kyiv commemorated a Soviet-era famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the winter of 1932-33.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy hosted a summit in Kyiv with allied nations on Saturday to launch a “grain from Ukraine” initiative to export $150m worth of grain to countries most vulnerable to famine and drought. Up to 60 Ukrainian grain ships can be sent by the middle of next year to some of the world’s poorest countries in Africa, the Ukrainian president has said in a statement released to the Guardian.

Belarus’s long-time foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, has died. Belarus has been an ally of Russia and a base over the border for the invasion of Ukraine. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova posted on her Telegram channel that “we are shocked by the reports of the death”. Makei had been due to meet Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Minsk on Monday.

The prime ministers of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine – Ingrida Šimonytė, Mateusz Morawiecki and Denys Shmyhal, respectively – met in Kyiv on Saturday for talks to discuss and reiterate their commitment to work together “in countering Russia’s armed aggression”.

Russia is firing ageing cruise missiles stripped of their nuclear warheads at Ukrainian targets because Vladimir Putin’s stocks are so depleted, the UK Ministry of Defence has suggested. An intelligence update from the ministry on Saturday said the desperate improvisation by the Russian president’s struggling forces were “unlikely to achieve reliable effects”.

Ukraine’s president calls on local government officials to do more as power cuts leave population vulnerable to the elements

My colleague Charlotte Higgins has written a feature on how Ukrainian artists have been weaponising their work to mount a cultural resistance, in defiance of Putin’s plan to eradicate Ukraine’s sense of identity and history.

The head of Ukraine’s presidential administration said on Saturday that Russia would answer for a Soviet-era famine that left millions of Ukrainians dead during the winter of 1932-33.

UK prime minister makes first visit to Ukraine since taking power

Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering.

“Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.

This is important for Russia as debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defence spending, which has increased significantly since the invasion of Ukraine.

Debt issuance is expensive during periods of uncertainty. The size of this auction highly likely indicates the Russian Ministry of Finance perceives current conditions as relatively favourable but is anticipating an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment over the next year.