Russia-Ukraine War Live Updates: Ukraine warns of Russian 'brutality' in eastern region

Ukraine's Moscow-occupied southern city of Kherson was cut off from electricity and water supplies after a Kyiv strike on nearby power lines, Russian-installed authorities said Sunday."In Kherson and a number of other areas in the region, there is temporarily no electricity or water supply," the city's Moscow-installed administration said on Telegram.It said it was a "result of an attack organised by the Ukrainian side on the Berislav-Kakhovka highway that saw three concrete poles of high-voltage power lines damaged".

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday to discuss macro-financial aid for Ukraine and further sanctions on Iran, Zelenskiy said."Noted the importance of continuing the grain initiative for world food security. Discussed increasing sanctions & opposing actions of Iran, which supports aggression," Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.

Russian forces are stepping up their strikes in a fiercely contested region of eastern Ukraine, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending army following Moscow's illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province, Ukrainian authorities said.The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region's Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilians and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said that twenty-eight ships carrying various agricultural products left Ukrainian ports in the past week and the revival of the Black Sea grain corridor is one of the most significant international results despite Russian threats, Al Jazeera reported."We showed that the world is capable of guaranteeing stability despite any threats posed by Russia," he said. "The world did not succumb to Russian blackmail, key actors acted decisively and, as a result, the aggravation of the food crisis was avoided," the Ukrainian president said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law to mobilize citizens with criminal records of murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and other serious crimes under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for military service. However, the criminals exempted from compulsory service are those who committed sex crimes against minors, were involved in the assassination of a government official, terrorism, or extremist activity.

Residents of the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut are living in dire conditions, with civilians killed and wounded daily, the deputy mayor said on Saturday, as fighting between Russian troops and Ukraine's forces rages around the city. Bakhmut has been an important target for Russia's military in its slow advance through the Donetsk region, one of the territories the Kremlin claims to have annexed after what Kyiv and the West say were sham referendums in September.

The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. The paper quoted unnamed people familiar with the discussions as saying that the request by American officials was not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, but a calculated attempt to ensure Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.

A US envoy called Iran’s statement that it provided drones to Russia months before the invasion of Ukraine “not true,” saying the Tehran government transferred dozens “just this summer.” That followed Iran’s first acknowledgement of any sort that it supplied Russia with drones.

Iran acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that it had supplied Moscow with drones but said they were sent before the war in Ukraine, where Russia has used them to target power stations and civilian infrastructure.

Iran has admitted for the first time that it sent drones to Russia but insisted they were supplied to its ally before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Russia of using Iranian-made drones in recent weeks to carry out attacks. Tehran has repeatedly denied the claims but on Saturday foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying that drones had been sent to Russia before the invasion began in late February.

Residents of the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut are living in dire conditions, with civilians killed and wounded daily, the deputy mayor said on Saturday, as fighting between Russian troops and Ukraine's forces rages around the city.

External power has been restored to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant two days after it was disconnected from the power grid after Russian shelling damaged high voltage lines, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Saturday.