Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Kharkiv’s governor Oleg Synegubov announced that the region will see hourly power outages starting Monday as Russian strikes damage energy infrastructure.

“Such actions are necessary for the stabilization of power grids, because the enemy continues to attack our energy infrastructure,” Synegubov said in a Telegram post. Power supply restrictions in the northeastern region will follow a 12-shift schedule to “at least slightly reduce the discomfort for residents,” he said.

Oleksiy Kuleba, the governor of the region of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, also urged citizens to use energy sparingly.

“The situation still remains tense, and it is unfortunately too early to talk about the stabilization of the system,” he said in a Telegram post. He noted that there will be “tougher and longer” power cuts in the country’s capital and surrounding areas.

Blackouts will continue throughout major cities in attempts to preserve energy as Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure persist.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian military spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said the country’s air force has shot down more than 300 Iranian Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drones.

Moscow has carried out several devastating missile and drone strikes against what Kyiv said were civilian targets and critical infrastructure such as energy facilities.

Iran and Russia’s representatives at the United Nations have sharply denied reports that Tehran supplied Moscow with a fleet of drones for use in Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it uses Iranian-made drones to target residential and other high civilian areas.

— Amanda Macias

Brittney Griner will enter a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment when she is transferred to a penal colony, the successor to the infamous Russian gulag, to fulfill a nine-year sentence handed down Tuesday in Moscow, former prisoners and advocates said. 

Human rights violations are a regular feature of many of the camps, according to the U.S. State Department, human rights groups and others who have maintained regular contact with prisoners in Russia. That the WNBA star, who lost her appeal Tuesday, is a gay Black woman could add unknown variables to a penal system that is known to be remote and harrowing. 

“Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life-threatening,” a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said. “Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”

The report notes that “physical and sexual abuse by prison guards was systemic,” that torture of prisoners was pervasive — at times resulting in death or suicide — and that discriminatory protections against women and people of color were not often enforced. The law also does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Read the full NBC News story.

— NBC News

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has plunged Europe into an era of insecurity, Germany said, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted a “dangerous” decade ahead.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is from a wing of Germany’s Social Democrats that long argued for closer economic ties to Moscow, said the Feb.24 invasion had ruptured those hopes.

“When we look at the Russia of today, there is no room for old dreams,” Steinmeier said, referring to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s dream of a “common European home”.

“It has also plunged us in Germany into another time, into an insecurity we thought we had overcome: a time marked by war, violence and flight, by concerns about the expansion of war into a wildfire in Europe,” he said. “Harder years, rough years are coming.”

— Reuters

Ukraine’s prosecutor general released an updated assessment of crimes committed by Russia during the eight months of its war in Ukraine.

The prosecutor general registered 42,616 crimes of aggression and war crimes committed by Russia. These include breaking the laws and customs of war, propaganda and waging an aggressive war. The report found that 430 children were killed and more than 800 injured by Russia.

The office also reported nearly 18,600 crimes against national security. It identified 627 suspects as Russian military and political leaders.

These crimes, according to the prosecutor general’s office, violate several articles of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which came into force in 2001. The first report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, formed in March at the request of United Nations Human Rights Council member states, confirmed evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine late last month.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian soldiers Anton Domaratskyi (2nd R) and Victor Nesterenkoi (2nd L), brought to New York through the nonprofit organization Kind Deeds, receive prosthetics at an orthopedic clinic in the city of Brooklyn, New York.

— Eren Abdullahogullari | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Russia’s central bank kept its interest rate unchanged at 7.5%, citing inflationary expectations and geopolitical uncertainty following the “partial mobilization” of Russian troops into Ukraine and prospects for a prolonged conflict.

The move to hold the interest rate ended a cycle of several months of cutting that began in April. The central bank had more than doubled rates to 20% shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to counter a plummeting ruble.

The central bank has cut rates six times since then, hitting the pre-war interest rate of 9.5% by June, citing improvements in fiscal conditions and lowering inflation. While inflation is still far above the bank’s target of 4%, sitting at 13.7% in September, it’s fallen significantly from the 20-year high of 20.37% it hit in April as Western sanctions and foreign exchange freezes set in.

The decision to hold rates at 7.5% was expected by a majority of analysts interviewed by Reuters, the news agency reported.

— Natasha Turak

The U.S. has rejected Russian accusations that the Pentagon is helping Ukraine build banned bioweapons, dismissing them as lies.

The claims are “pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, arguing that Russia was trying to “distract from the atrocities” being committed in Ukraine.

“Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. The United States does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN said Moscow would launch an investigation into what he described as U.S. and Ukrainian breaches of the weapons convention.

— Natasha Turak

U.S. President Joe Biden expressed skepticism toward Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims in a recent speech that he had no need or intention to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it? Why is he talking about the ability to use a tactical nuclear weapon?” Biden said during an interview with NewsNation. “He’s been very dangerous in how he’s approached this.”

Putin, in a speech Thursday, downplayed the possibility of a nuclear conflict and denied that Russia had threatened to use nuclear weapons. He said that Moscow was only responding to “nuclear blackmail” from the West.

In earlier weeks, however, Putin and other high-level Kremlin officials had expressed Russia’s readiness to use all means at their disposal, including nuclear weapons, to protect the territorial integrity of Russia, which was understood to include the illegally annexed territories of Ukraine.

— Natasha Turak

Russian President Vladimir Putin poured cold water on claims that Russia would deploy nuclear weapons over Ukraine, despite repeatedly citing his ability to use such weapons if Russia’s “territorial integrity” was threatened.

“We see no need for that,” Putin said Thursday, speaking at a conference of foreign policy experts. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”

Putin had previously vowed to use “all means available to protect Russia,” which observers took to mean nuclear weapons, but the president said in his latest remarks that that was merely a response to what he called “nuclear blackmail” by Western leaders.

He made particular reference to former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’s comments in August that she would be prepared to use nuclear weapons as leader.

— Natasha Turak

Russia is likely using mobilized reservists to boost its units west of Ukraine’s Dnipro river, but troop numbers are already very low there, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter.

“In September 2022, Russian officers described companies in the Kherson sector as consisting of between six and eight men each. Companies should deploy with around 100 personnel,” the ministry tweeted.

“In the last six weeks there has been a clear move from Russian ground forces to transition to a long-term, defensive posture on most areas of the front line in Ukraine,” the ministry said.

“This is likely due to a more realistic assessment that the severely undermanned, poorly trained force in Ukraine is currently only capable of defensive operations.”

It continued, “Even if Russia succeeds in consolidating long-term defensive lines in Ukraine, its operational design will remain vulnerable.”

— Natasha Turak

IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said that its inspectors will arrive in Ukraine this week on the heels of Russian allegations that Kyiv is preparing to use a “dirty bomb.”

“I am very grateful for the openness that the Ukrainian government and I had a very comprehensive discussion with Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba about this. He came to the conclusion and I agree that the best way to dispel any doubt is to allow the inspectors in and this is what we’re going to do,” Grossi told reporters at the United Nations.

Grossi added that it will likely only take a few days to carry out the inspections.

The U.S. and its allies have dismissed Russian allegations that Ukraine is assembling a ‘dirty bomb.’

— Amanda Macias

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told her colleagues before the U.N. Security Council meeting that she would keep her remarks short because “frankly, this meeting is a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Russia has called us here, once again, for the sole purpose of spreading disinformation. We all know these claims are pure fabrications, brought forth without a shred of evidence,” Thomas-Greenfield said referencing recent Moscow claims that Kyiv has a biological weapon.

 “We hear Russia raise alarms that biological weapons will be delivered by birds and bats and now even mosquitoes. Birds and bats,” she said, calling Russia’s allegations “absurd.”

“Russia’s assertions are absurd for many reasons, including because such species, even if they could be weaponized, would pose as much a threat to the European continent and to Ukraine itself as they would to any other country,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

— Amanda Macias