Russia-Ukraine war latest: Putin’s power grid strikes target west

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez received a letter bomb which the interior ministry said was similar to those sent to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid earlier this week, and other sites with links to Kyiv.

The explosive device addressed to Mr Sanchez’s office was one of five to be revealed by Spanish security services in less than 24 hours, though ministers said it was delivered last week on 24 November.

Officials ordered increased security in diplomatic and public buildings shortly before the ministry’s statement, while Wednesday’s embassy package led Kyiv to put all of its consulates around the globe on high alert.

Other letter bombs were delivered to the Ministry of Defence and an air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz outside Madrid on Thursday and Spanish weapons manufacturer Instalaza in Zaragoza on Wednesday.

Air raid alerts have been issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes.

“An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” the country’s border service wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last night said Russia was thought to be “planning something in the south”, while Ukraine’s military said Moscow was moving troops from towns on the Dnipro river opposite the southern city of Kherson.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south.

The statement gave only limited details and made no mention of any Ukrainian forces having crossed the Dnipro. Ukrainian officials also stressed that Russia had intensified shelling across the river, knocking out power again in Kherson where electricity had only begun to be restored nearly three weeks after Russian troops vacated the city and fled across the river.

Since Russia abandoned Kherson last month, nine months into its invasion of Ukraine, the river now forms the entire southern stretch of the front.

Russia has already told civilians to leave towns within 15 km of the river and withdrew its civilian administration from the city of Nova Kakhovska on the river bank. Ukrainian officials have previously said Russia pulled back some artillery near the river to safer positions further away, but until now had stopped short of saying Russian forces were quitting towns.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov delivered a news conference earlier in which he made several wild statements regarding the war in Ukraine [see 10.02 post].

One of the more striking was his claim that Nato, in paticular the US, was directly participating in the war because of its support for Ukraine.

In defending Russia’s debilitating attacks on energy infrastructure, Mr Lavrov said: “We disable energy facilities that allow you [the west] to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to kill Russians.

“So don’t say that the US and Nato are not participants in this war – you are directly participating. Including not only the supply of weapons, but also the training of personnel – you train the [Ukrainian] military on your territory.”

The Kremlin said it would not recognise the legitimacy of any war crimes tribunal staged by the European Union over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

European Commision president Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday the EU would try to set up a specialised court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“As for attempts to establish some kind of tribunal: they will have no legitimacy, will not be accepted by us and we will condemn them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this morning.

Ukraine and western allies have alleged Russia of numerous war crimes over ten months of war, including in the briefly-occupied town of Bucha, which was found strewn with civilian corpses after a rout of Russian forces.

The International Criminal Court is investigating the situiation in Ukraine since the war, while several NGOs have been gathering alleged evidence of war crimes by Russian troops.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that the Kremlin’s relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure was in order to hold up western munitions.

The strange claim from Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat came after Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said around six million Ukrainians were facing winter without power after two month of strikes on energy infrastructure across the country.

Kyiv and western allies have accused Russia of resorting to attacks on the everyday lives of ordinary Ukrainians in an attempt to break the invaded country’s spirit.

Mr Lavrov today countered these accusations, claiming: “We attack energy facilities that make it possible for west to pump weapons into Ukraine.”

The west has been feeding Ukraine weapons throughout the war, lately turning towards the supply of air defence systems to counter the Russian strikes which have rained on cities all over the country, far from the front lines of the war in the south and east.

Spanish security forces found a third suspected explosive device hidden in an envelope mailed to the Air Force base located in Torrejon de Ardoz outside Madrid, the defence ministry said this morning.

At the time of the ministry’s statement, police were still analysing the parcel, which followed after two letter bombs on Wednesday, one of which was addressed to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid.

The second was addressed to a weapons manufacturer in Zaragoza, northern Spain.

Russia accused Germany of trying to whitewash its Nazi past after the German parliament voted to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a genocide imposed by the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.

In what came to be known as the Holodomor, millions of Ukrainians starved to death after Stalin ordered the seizure of grain and livestock from farms recently brought under state control.

The Kremlin this morning rejected the claim that this was a genocide and said millions of people across other parts of the Soviet Union also suffered.

“There is another attempt to justify and push forward a campaign – being planted in Ukraine and sponsored by the west – to demonise Russia and to pit ethnic Ukrainians against Russians,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Germans are trying to rewrite their history … downplay their own guilt and muddy the memory of the unprecedented nature of the countless crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War Two,” it added.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Germany for its recognition and, writing on Twitter in German, said: “The truth always wins”.

The US Army awarded a $1.2bn (£1bn) contract to Raytheon Technologies Co for advanced missile systems to be sent to Ukraine, the Pentagon said.

Raytheon will provide six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (Nasams), which help defend from missile and drone attacks, on top of two already received by Ukraine.

“Nasams are just the latest in the diverse set of air-defense capabilities we are delivering to Ukraine,” said Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

These six Nasams systems were part of the fifth Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package which was announced on 24 Augusts and had a total value of $2.98bn, according to an Army Statement.

Prosecutors on Wednesday moved to confiscate $5.4m (£4.4m) from a US bank account belonging to Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, after he was accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Reuters reports.

Federal prosecutors in New York said in court papers seen by the news agency they were entitled to the money because Mr Malofeyev sought to transfer it to a business partner, in violation of US sanctions.

The civil forfeiture complaint marks the latest push in Washington to seize control of wealthy Russians’ assets, a strategy being worked on across governments of allied countries.

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen yesterday said allies could seize frozen assets – citing figures of €300bn in Russian foreign reserves and €19bn of oligarch assets – and use them to fund the rebuilding of war-battered Ukraine.