Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Ivanovo Region Governor Stanislav Voskresensky at Moscow's Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Oct. 4, 2022. (AP)Russia Ukraine War Live News Updates, October 6: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree declaring that Russia was taking over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The state nuclear operator said it would continue to operate the plant, which was occupied by Russian forces early in the war.
Ukraine’s presidential office on Wednesday said that at least five civilians have been killed and eight have been wounded by the latest Russian shelling, AP news agency reported. A statement on Wednesday says Russian troops used six Iranian suicide drones to strike the town of Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region, leaving one person wounded.
In other updates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Zelenskyy Tuesday and asserted that there can be no military solution to the Ukraine conflict, while also underlining that endangerment of nuclear facilities could have catastrophic consequences. Zelenskyy thanked PM Modi for India’s support of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and underlined that Ukraine will not conduct any negotiations with Vladimir Putin.
Hosting World Cup matches in 2030 would be “the dream of people who survived the horrors of war,” Ukrainian soccer federation president Andriy Pavelko said Wednesday after his country launched a joint bid with Spain and Portugal amid the invasion and occupation by Russia.
The leaders of the three soccer federations joined together at UEFA headquarters to present a campaign they hope will connect people beyond the world of sports.
“This is the dream of millions of Ukrainian fans,” Pavelko said in translated comments at a news conference, “the dream of people who survived the horrors of war or are still in the occupied territories and over whom the Ukrainian flag will surely fly soon." Pavelko said the project is backed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It aims to bring the World Cup back to Europe 12 years after Russia hosted. (AP)
➡️ Putin signed laws admitting the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region into Russia in the biggest expansion of Russian territory in at least half a century.
➡️ He also said Russia would stabilise the situation in the regions, indirectly acknowledging the challenges it faces to assert its control.
➡️ Putin signed a decree ordering the Russian government to take control of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the biggest in Europe — and make it "federal property".
➡️ The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will visit Moscow to discuss safety at the plant, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported. (Reuters)
Overnight shelling in Ukraine's city of Zaporizhzhia has damaged or destroyed several residential buildings, causing fires and injuries, regional governor Oleksandr Starukh said early Thursday.
"As a result of the enemy attacks, fires broke out in the city," Starukh wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "There are possible casualties. Rescuers are already pulling people out from under the rubble." (Reuters)
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces have retaken more settlements in Kherson, one of the partially Russian-occupied southern regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
With Russian forces retreating from front lines in the south and east, Zelenskyy said in a late-night video address on Wednesday that Novovoskresenske, Novohryhorivka and Petropavlivka to the northeast of Kherson city had been "liberated".
At the United Nations, Russia is lobbying for a secret ballot instead of a public vote next week when the 193-member UN General Assembly considers whether to condemn its annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south after staging referendums in the provinces. (Reuters)
European Union countries agreed on Wednesday to impose a price cap on Russian oil and other new sanctions after Moscow illegally annexed four regions in Ukraine amid its monthslong war, EU officials said.
Diplomats struck the deal in Brussels that also includes curbs on EU exports of aircraft components to Russia and limits on steel imports from the country, according to an official statement from the Czech rotating EU presidency.
The 27-nation bloc will impose a ban on transporting Russian oil by sea to other countries above the price cap, which the Group of Seven wealthy democracies want in place by December 5, when an EU embargo on most Russian oil takes effect.
A specific price for the future cap has yet to be defined.
A deal on the price cap was not easy to reach because several EU countries were worried it would damage their shipping industries. More details about the sanctions will be published as soon as Thursday.
The new package of sanctions was proposed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week amid heightened security concerns over Russian President Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats and his annexation of parts of Ukraine.
“We have moved quickly and decisively," von der Leyen said as she welcomed the deal. “We will never accept Putin's sham referenda nor any kind of annexation in Ukraine. We are determined to continue making the Kremlin pay." The new sanctions also include an “extended import ban" on goods such as steel products, wood pulp, paper, machinery and appliances, chemicals, plastic and cigarettes, the Czech presidency said.
A ban on providing IT, engineering and legal services to Russian entities will also take effect.
The package, which will also include new criteria for sanctions circumvention, builds on already-unprecedented European sanctions against Russia as a result of its invasion of Ukraine in February.
EU measures to date include restrictions on energy from Russia, bans on financial transactions with Russian entities, including the central bank, and asset freezes against more than 1,000 people and 100 organisations.
The 27-nation bloc already agreed to ban Russian oil that comes by sea, not pipeline, but some member countries still require Russian supplies at low prices.
Hungary, which has questioned the efficiency of the previous measures and earlier said it could not support further energy sanctions, said it has been granted exemptions from any new steps that would have put its energy security at risk.
The EU's planned ban on most Russian oil products could force Russia to lower prices to find new customers.
OPEC oil-producing countries are meeting on Wednesday to discuss cutting production to boost oil prices, which would help Russia. (AP)
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia must be part of investigations into last week's explosions in the two Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea.
"So far, from those news conferences which took place in Denmark and Sweden, we've heard disturbing statements that any cooperation with the Russian side is ruled out," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"We, obviously, will be waiting for some clarification on that as we believe that, definitely, participation of the Russian side in examining the damaged area and investigating what happened should be mandatory."
European governments and NATO say the two Nord Stream pipelines were attacked in an act of sabotage, which has further roiled global energy markets after months of tension and disrupted supplies since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin on Friday blamed the United States and its allies, allegations rejected by Washington. Russia has rejected what it called "stupid" theories in the West that it sabotaged the pipelines itself.
The operators of the two pipelines between Russia and Germany have said they are currently unable to inspect the damaged sections because of restrictions imposed by Danish and Swedish authorities, in whose waters the blasts and leaks occurred.
Nord Stream 2 AG, Switzerland-based operator of the second pipeline, said on Tuesday it will examine the condition of the leaking pipelines once a police investigation of the "crime scene" is completed and a cordon is lifted.
Later on Tuesday, Nord Stream AG, operator of the older Nord Stream 1 pipeline, said it had been told by Danish authorities that receiving the necessary permits to carry out an inspection could take over 20 working days. (Reuters)
The Kremlin on Wednesday said that comments by a Pentagon official on Tuesday that Ukraine may use U.S.-supplied equipment to strike targets in Crimea were extremely dangerous, and evidence of direct U.S. involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the comments made by Laura Cooper, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs, were "extremely dangerous" and are "evidence of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict". (Reuters)
Kyiv has dismissed as “worthless” the laws that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on Wednesday formalising the annexation of four Ukrainian regions into Russia.
“The worthless decisions of the terrorist country are not worth the paper they are signed on," the head of the Ukraine President's Office, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram messaging application. “A collective insane asylum can continue to live in a fictional world.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said in his nightly address that he has signed a decree rendering void any of Putin's acts designed to annex Ukrainian territories since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“Any Russian decisions, any treaties with which they try to seize our land — all this is worthless,” Zelenskyy said at the end of his video address.
Russian energy company Gazprom says it is resuming gas supplies to Italy after reaching an agreement for transit through Austria.
The Russian government-controlled company had suspended delivery to Italy through Austria last week citing regulatory changes that came into effect in the Alpine nation last month.
In a statement on Wednesday, Gazprom said the operator of an Austrian pipeline has indicated its willingness to handle the transit of gas to Italy “making it possible to resume the supplies of Russian gas across Austria”. (AP)
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Russian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, famous for staging an on-air protest against Russia's war in Ukraine, confirmed she had escaped house arrest over charges of spreading fake news again, saying she had no case to answer.
'I consider myself completely innocent, and since our state refuses to comply with its own laws, I refuse to comply with the measure of restraint imposed on me as of 30 September 2022 and release myself from it,' she said on Telegram
Her lawyer said she was due to turn up to a hearing at 10 Moscow time (12.30 pm IST) at a Moscow district court, but that investigators had failed to establish her whereabouts. (Reuters)
A Russian-installed official in Ukraine's occupied Kherson region said on Wednesday that Russian forces in the region were regrouping for a counterattack, amid rapid Ukrainian gains in the region, state-owned news agency RIA reported.
RIA quoted Kirill Stremousov as saying that Russian forces were "conducting a regrouping in order to gather their strength and deliver a retaliatory blow". (Reuters)
An orthopaedic doctor from Andhra Pradesh, who was based in Ukraine when the conflict broke out with Russia, has appealed to the Indian government to help rescue his pet jaguar and panther left behind when he was forced out of the war zone.
Dr Gidikumar Patil, known as Jaguar Kumar after his unusual pets, says his topmost priority is to save the life of his “precious cats” – Yasha, a male rare “lep-jag” hybrid between a leopard and jaguar, and Sabrina, a female black panther.
The 42-year-old was forced to leave them behind with a local farmer when he left Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, a hotbed of the conflict in the region, in search of alternate sources of income.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed laws absorbing four Ukrainian regions into Russia, a move that finalizes the annexation carried out in defiance of international law.
Earlier this week, both houses of the Russian parliament ratified treaties making the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions part of Russia. The formalities followed Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” in the four regions that Ukraine and the West have rejected as a sham. (AP)
Russia's President Putin signs law formally annexing four Ukrainian regions, reports Reuters citing Russian news agency TASS.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during his phone call with Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday, “emphasised the importance” of PM Modi’s recent comment to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the ongoing war.
Speaking to Putin on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Uzbekistan on Sept. 16, PM Modi called for dialogue and diplomacy, and told the Russian leader: “I know that today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this.” His comment was widely praised by Western leaders and media.
said: “Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Narendra Modi for India’s support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also emphasized the importance of the Indian leader’s recent statement that now is not the time for war.”
➡️ Ukrainian forces captured the town of Dudchany on the west bank of the Dnipro River in their major advance in Kherson region, according to the Russian-installed head of the administration of occupied areas in the province.
➡️ Russian military bloggers described a Ukrainian tank advance through dozens of kilometers of territory along the west bank of the Dnipro. Kyiv has maintained almost complete silence about the situation in Kherson.
➡️ In the east, Ukrainian forces were advancing after capturing Lyman, the main Russian bastion in the north of Donetsk province. The pro-Russian leader in Donetsk said forces were forming a new defensive line around the town of Kreminna.
➡️ Russia has sacked the commander of its Western military district, news outlet RBC reported, after battlefield reverses.
➡️ US President Joe Biden told Zelenskiy that Washington will provide Kyiv with $625 million in new security aid, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the White House said. (Reuters)
Washington's decision to send more military aid to Ukraine poses a threat to Moscow's interests and increases the risk of a military clash between Russia and the West, said Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to the United States.
"We perceive this as an immediate threat to the strategic interests of our country," Antonov said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.
"The supply of military products by the US and its allies not only entails protracted bloodshed and new casualties, but also increases the danger of a direct military clash between Russia and Western countries." (Reuters)
Japan will reopen its embassy in Kyiv on Wednesday, the Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement.
Japan temporarily closed its embassy in the capital on March 2 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on phone, said that Ukraine will not conduct any negotiations with the current President of the Russian Federation, reported news agency ANI on Wednesday.
Days after India abstained on a United Nations Security Council resolution which sought to declare Russian annexation of captured Ukrainian territories as invalid, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a phone conversation Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and told him “there can be no military solution” to the conflict and India was ready to “contribute to any peace efforts”.
The Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement, said, “The leaders discussed the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Prime Minister reiterated his call for an early cessation of hostilities and the need to pursue the path of dialogue and diplomacy. He expressed his firm conviction that there can be no military solution to the conflict and conveyed India’s readiness to contribute to any peace efforts.”