Russian attack hits Ukrainian infrastructure in west; Putin reaffirms referendums in illegally annexed regions

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An infrastructure site was hit in a Russian attack early on Saturday in the western Ukrainian region of Vinnitsya, the regional governor said. Serhiy Borzov’s comments on Telegram came after reports of drones operating in the area. Ukrainian officials sometimes use the “infrastructure” term to refer to facilities involved in power generation or other industries.

Vladimir Putin said residents of Russian-held regions in Ukraine expressed their desire to be part of Russia in recent local elections, reaffirming referendums last year that western countries denounced as illegal. In a video address released early on Saturday on the one-year anniversary of Moscow’s announcement it was annexing four parts of Ukraine, the Russian president said the choice to join Russia was reinforced by this month’s local elections that returned officials supporting Russia’s annexation. Western countries dismissed the outcomes as meaningless, underpinned by mass coercion of voters. Flag-waving Russians gathered for a concert in Red Square on Friday as the Kremlin held celebrations to mark the annexations.

The UK government has imposed an asset freeze and travel bans on Russian officials in the annexed Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Crimea as part of its broader sanctions against Russia.

Seven European Union countries have ordered ammunition under a landmark EU procurement scheme to get urgently needed artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted western stocks, according to the EU agency in charge.

Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting out the routine autumn conscription campaign, calling up 130,000 citizens for statutory military service, a document posted on the government website showed. Separately, Putin reportedly met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Friday.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of five Central Asian nations on Friday pledged to cooperate closely on sanctions in a carefully worded statement that did not pinpoint Russia. The gathering of Scholz and the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan in Berlin was the first of its kind in an EU country.

Top US general Mark Milley was to retire on Friday after a four-year tenure as chair of the US joint chiefs of staff. Milley’s tenure included providing military assistance to Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

A Russian blogger who criticised highway patrol officers was jailed for eight-and-a-half years on Friday after a court alleged he posted “fake news” about Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. Alexander Nozdrinov, 38, ran a small YouTube channel where he posted videos of highway patrol officers from his home region of Krasnodar allegedly breaking the law. He was detained in March 2022 after investigators accused him of posting a photo of destroyed buildings on social media with the caption: “Ukrainian cities after the arrival of liberators”.

Norway says it will start barring Russian-registered passenger cars from entering the country starting next week, in a move that mirrors sanctions already imposed by the European Union against Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

“Very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has said.

Romania is moving air defences closer to its Danube villages across the river from Ukraine, where Russian drones have been attacking grain facilities, and is adding more military observation posts and patrols to the area, two senior defence sources told Reuters.

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The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said on Friday that “very difficult questions” would need to be answered before the EU could start membership talks with Ukraine.

EU countries are due to decide in December whether to allow Ukraine to begin accession negotiations, which would require the unanimous backing of all 27 members. Diplomats have said Hungary may be an obstacle.

Comment from Ukraine’s president comes after Jens Stoltenberg’s trip to Kyiv

Suspilne reports, citing the regional authority, that one person has been injured and hospitalised by a Russian attack on Antonivka near Kherson.

British defence secretary Grant Shapps discussed how to bolster Ukraine’s air defences during talks in an unannounced visit to Kyiv to meet Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president’s office said on Thursday.

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Germany has welcomed a decision by Switzerland to open the way to sell back some of its German-made Leopard II tanks to help rebuild stocks depleted by aid to Ukraine.

Germany had asked Switzerland in February to sell back some of the 96 Leopard II tanks it has in storage to manufacturer Rheinmetall, Reuters reports.

Viktor Sokolov shown in footage released by defence ministry, day after Ukraine said he had been killed in missile strike

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Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has rather sarcastically castigated US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller for deflecting a question about the appearance of a Ukrainian veteran of a Nazi unit in the Canadian parliament. Miller had said that he was attending the UN on Friday.

Zakharova has posted to her Telegram channel to say:

Everyone was at the UN on Friday, Matthew. And everyone saw how nazism triumphed in Canada. The UN has a lot of problems, but the internet works great there.

Russia again strikes at Ukraine’s port and grain infrastructure; border crossing with Romania closed following drone attack

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Ukraine says 34 officers were killed including Black Sea fleet admiral Viktor Sokolov in its missile strike on Sevastapol last week

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An air alert has been declared in Mykolaiv.

Tass reports that the Russian ministry of defence has reported that it destroyed Ukrainian drones that were over the north-western part of the Black Sea near occupied Crimea, as well as over the Kursk and Bryansk regions. It claims to have shot down eight aircraft-type drones in total.

Ukrainian military says attack that apparently killed Viktor Sokolov was timed to coincide with meeting of naval officials

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Ukraine has claimed it killed Adm Viktor Sokolov, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, along with 33 other officers, in one of Kyiv’s boldest attacks yet on the occupied peninsula of Crimea.

The Ukrainian military said Friday’s attack on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol was timed to coincide with a meeting of naval officials.

Russian forces repelled near Bakhmut after counterattacks on two villages recently retaken by Ukraine; air raid alerts in all Ukrainian regions.

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Air raid alerts were sounding in all Ukrainian regions on Sunday evening. The alerts were called at 12.30am local time on Sunday with the air force warning of incoming missile and drone strikes. Explosions were record in Kyiv Rih, and Odesa.

Two people were killed on Sunday after Russian shelling struck the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. The region’s governor said at least eight people were also injured in the attack as Ukrainian armed forces responded to Russian advances in the east and south.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces says its fighters had repelled Russian attacks on two villages near Bakhmut. Russian forces had “tried to restore lost positions near Klishchiivka … but were unsuccessful.”

The mayor of Russia’s Kursk had to cancel the Kursk City Day fireworks celebration after a Ukrainian drone struck an administrative building, damaging the roof. There have been more reports of explosions.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy handed awards to two Polish volunteers during a stopover in Poland on Saturday but did not meet any officials amid strained relations between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain imports.

An imprisoned Russian opposition figure has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Siberia, where he was placed in a tiny “punishment cell”, his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said.

Russia’s suspension of petrol exports will probably limit already tight supplies in the global market and have the biggest impact on countries that depend on Russian fuel supplies, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russians had probably faced localised petrol and diesel shortages in recent weeks.

Pope Francis has said the weapons industry is a key driver of the “martyrdom” of Ukraine’s people in the war with Russia, saying countries should not “play games” by promising weapons and then withholding them as this would only continue their misery. The Associated Press reports that the pontiff appeared to refer to Poland’s recent announcement that it was no longer sending arms to Ukraine when reporters asked him about the war as he was returning to Rome from a visit to Marseille, France.

The Russian-installed head of the Donetsk oblast has imposed a curfew banning the presence of civilians on streets and in public places from 11pm until 4am from Mondays to Fridays, Reuters reported. Denis Pushilin published a decree on Sunday that forbade assemblies, rallies and demonstrations, in addition to other mass events, in the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk oblast – unless they were permitted by the local operational headquarters for military threat response.

The European Commission has sent another €1.5bn in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine. The commission has pledged a total of €18bn to Ukraine – the country has already received €12bn. The funds go towards keeping essential public services running, such as hospitals, schools and housing for relocated citizens, as well as paying wages and pensions.

Civilians forbidden from being on streets and public places from 11pm until 4am, with mass events banned

• What we know on day 578 of the invasion

Volodymyr Zelenskiy met top US financiers – including Mike Bloomberg – during his visit to the US. According to Reuters, they discussed investment and the reconstruction of Ukraine during this meeting.

A Ukrainian drone has struck an administrative building in Russia’s Kursk oblast, the regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram – on Kursk City Day.

US agrees to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems; Ukraine reports advances in Zaporizhzhia area

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The United States has decided to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), an important boost to Kyiv’s capacity to target Russian military logistics at long range distances as the country prepares for a second winter at war. President Joe Biden told the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a private meeting that a small number of the weapons would be transferred, NBC reported, citing US officials. Ukraine has been asking for ATACMS for months.

Ukraine has reported breaking through Russian defence lines in the Zaporizhzhia area in the country’s south, with a general leading the counteroffensive there saying the advance is still under way. “On the left flank [near the village of Verbove] we have a breakthrough and we continue to advance further,” Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy told CNN. He said progress was “not as fast as it was expected, not like in the movies about the second world war”, but it was important “not to lose this initiative”.

Nine people were killed and 16 injured, among them two generals, in a Ukrainian airstrike on Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters in Crimea, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence. Kyrylo Budanov told the Voice of America that “among the wounded is the commander of the group, Col Gen [Alexander] Romanchuk, in a very serious condition. The chief of staff, Lt Gen [Oleg] Tsekov, is unconscious.” A Ukrainian missile hit the headquarters in Sevastopol on Friday. Russia’s defence ministry said one military serviceman was missing as a result.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Ukraine’s formula for peace is “completely not feasible” and that the war will be resolved on the battlefield if Kyiv and the west stick to the plan as a basis for negotiations. Lavrov accused western powers of directly fighting Russia, in comments at the United Nations.

Lavrov said Russia left the Black Sea grain deal because promises to Moscow had not been met. On the latest proposals by the UN secretary general to revive the deal, Lavrov said: “We don’t reject them, they are simply not realistic.”

Lavrov said he would go to Pyongyang next month for more negotiations following agreements reached by Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Three successive commanders of one of Russia’s most prestigious airborne regiments have either resigned or been killed since its invasion of Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. That highlighted the “extreme attrition and high turnover in Russia’s deployed military, even amongst relatively senior ranks”, it said in its intelligence update.

Russian spies are using hackers to target computer systems at law enforcement agencies in Ukraine in a bid to identify and obtain evidence related to alleged Russian war crimes, according to Ukraine’s cyber-defence chief.

Norwegian police have arrested a former commander of the Wagner mercenary group on suspicion that he attempted to illegally re-enter Russia after seeking asylum in Norway earlier this year, the lawyer for Andrei Medvedev said.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy held an impromptu meeting with the head of the Sudanese sovereign council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, where they discussed Russia-funded armed groups. The meeting took place at Shannon airport in Ireland.

Sergei Lavrov told the UN general assembly the “time has come for mutual trust building” between Armenia and Azerbaijan and that Russian troops “will certainly help with this”.

Azerbaijani soldiers and Russian peacekeepers are working jointly to disarm separatist fighters in the ethnically Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani army spokesman has said.

Sergei Lavrov rules out any moves at compromise in speech that also addresses Nagorno-Karabakh dispute

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Andrey Kortunov, an adviser to the Russian foreign ministry and director of Russian international affairs council, has been on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme discussing the strike on Russian navy’s Black Sea HQ.

Kortunov emphasised the “psychological” importance of long range missiles being used in the strike. “I think psychologically it’s important because it’s a long range missile - its destruction power is pretty significant. But militarily, I don’t think it really makes that big a damage – after all it didn’t hit any really critical military targets and the damage at least according to the reports we received is quite limited.”

Who opened investigations? Germany, Denmark and Sweden, a the leaks happened in their exclusive economic zones.

What have they found? German federal prosecutors seized objects from a sailing yacht in January and found traces of explosives.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s public prosecutor said the “primary assumption is that a state is behind it”.

What has Ukraine said? The New York Times reported in March that US officials had seen information suggesting it was done by a “pro-Ukrainian group”, without Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s knowledge. Zelenskiy has repeatedly denied Ukraine was behind the sabotage.

Could it be a false flag? Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, views Russia as “the most likely” culprit. The Kremlin has denied responsibility.