Russia-Ukraine war live: Kherson official suspected of aiding Russians detained; Nato ‘won’t back down’ on aid

Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, is expected to address British MPs and peers in parliament shortly.

The wife of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in London to raise awareness of violence against women and girls in conflict, as well as to appeal to Britain and the west to continue delivering vital aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine has detained a deputy head of newly liberated Kherson’s city council on suspicion of aiding and abetting Russian occupation forces that seized control of the city in March, Ukraine’s state prosecutor has said.

Reuters reported that the Kherson official, who was not named in the statement, cooperated with the occupation authorities and helped with the functioning of public services under the Russians, according to the prosecutor.

The official, who could not be reached for comment, faces up to 12 years in prison under the allegations if prosecuted and found guilty. The official was in custody, but could post bail, the prosecutor said.

Ukraine proclaimed the liberation of Kherson on 11 November after Russian forces who invaded Ukraine in February pulled out of the city in the south of the country and crossed to the other side of the Dnipro River.

Pope Francis has sparked fury in Russia over an interview in which he suggested that non-Christian members of its armed forces showed more cruelty in Ukraine than ethnic Russian soldiers.

In an interview with the Catholic magazine America published Monday, the pope said that soldiers from the Buddhist region of Buryatia and the Muslim-majority Chechnya republic were “the cruellest” while fighting in Ukraine.

“Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryats and so on,” he said.

Russia has disproportionately relied on ethnic minorities to provide its main fighting force in Ukraine.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has said that the New START treat on nuclear arms control between Russia and the United States remained effective, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

That was despite a lack of mutual inspections and Russia’s last-minute decision to call off talks of a joint commission this week, Ryabkov added.

However, he also signalled to the United States that increasing US involvement in the Ukrainian conflict brings growing risks, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Ryabkov said there was no dialogue between Russia and the United States over Ukraine as the two sides had “radically different positions.”

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has confirmed that a Zambian national who died in Ukraine had been fighting for his group.

The admission by Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, comes two weeks after Zambia demanded an urgent explanation from Moscow over the death of its citizen.

Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda, 23, “died a hero” fighting with Russian forces, Prigozhin said on Telegram.

He said:

Lemekhani Nathan Nyirenda on September 22 was one of the first to break into enemy trenches, showing courage and bravery.

Nyirenda father said he had been serving a nine-year jail sentence on the outskirts of Moscow for a drug offence when he was “conscripted” to fight, Reuters reports. His family said it was unclear how he was recruited or by whom.

Prigozhin said he “remembered this guy well” and had met Nyirenda on his recruitment drive across Russia’s prisons. He claimed the Zambian willingly agreed to go and fight for Wagner.

Prigozhin and other Wagner representatives have toured Russian prisons offering amnesty in return for signing up to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

It has not been possible to independently verify the circumstances of Nyirenda’s death or Prigozhin’s assertion that he had joined Wagner voluntarily.

Ukraine’s state energy operator, Ukrenegro, has said it is still struggling to restore full power nearly a week after Russian missile strikes damaged energy facilities across the country.

The power deficit was running at 30% as off 11am local time (09:00 GMT), Ukrenegro said in a statement.

The figure represents a slight rise from yesterday after emergency shutdowns at several power plants and an increase in consumption as winter sets in.

The statement by Ukrenegro added:

We emphasise that the general deficit in the energy system is a consequence of seven waves of Russian missile attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Moscow had been left with “no other choice” but to cancel nuclear weapons talks with the US, state-run news agencies reported.

The US state department yesterday said Russia had “unilaterally postponed” talks about the “New START” nuclear arms reduction treaty, which had been due to start in Cairo this week.

Ryabkov claimed Washington had only wanted to discuss resuming inspections while Moscow had other priorities. He was quoted by the Russian state-owned news agency Ria Novosti as saying:

By and large, the situation was such that we had no other choice. The decision was made at the political level.

Ryabkov was also quoted by state-owned Tass news agency as adding:

The Americans focused exclusively on the topic of resuming inspections ... meanwhile the solution of other issues has been and remains a priority for us. We have repeatedly explained our position ... but we did not see the slightest desire on the American side to move in this direction.

He said it was unlikely any meeting would take place this year.

Ukraine is considering expelling all Russian citizens who came to Crimea after it was annexed by Moscow in 2014, according to a representative of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In a piece for the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, Tamila Tasheva, Zelenskiy’s top representative for Crimea, wrote:

According to Ukrainian legislation, all foreigners who entered the peninsula after 2014, not through Ukrainian checkpoints or through them, but violated the terms of stay, live in the territory of Crimea illegally.

The decision is simple and does not contradict international law: the population that came illegally to the territory of the peninsula must leave the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol through voluntary departure or forced expulsion.

She added that current Ukrainian legislation also provides for the possibility of forced return of foreigners and stateless persons, although it cannot currently be applied to temporarily occupied territories.

Tasheva also wrote that Ukraine does not recognise passports that Russia “forcibly” distributed to residents of the Crimea peninsula under its occupation, adding:

All of them were and remain citizens of Ukraine.

Russian forces appear to be planning “some quite big air attacks” in Ukraine”, according to a security and defence analyst.

Prof Michael Clarke, the former director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told Sky News:

It looks as though Russians are preparing some big air attacks. There’s a lot of Twitter chat and satellite imagery at air bases … so there may be a lot of air activity.

He added that Moscow’s troops were making “some progress” in the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut, and were “really digging in for winter”.

He said:

The Russians have been pounding away at Bakhmut for about four weeks and they’re trying to attack it from the east, the north, and it looks as though they’ve made some progress from the south of Bakhmut.

The UK’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said Russia is targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to “freeze” its people into submission.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Bucharest, he said:

We have seen Vladimir Putin attempting to weaponise energy supplies right from the very start of this conflict.

This targeting of civilian infrastructure of energy infrastructure is obviously designed to try and freeze the Ukrainians into submission.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has said Beijing is ready to “forge a closer partnership” with Moscow to “maintain international energy security”.

The Chinese leader was cited by state-owned broadcaster CCTV as writing, in a congratulatory letter to the Fourth China-Russia energy forum:

China is willing to work with Russia to forge a closer energy partnership, promote clean and green energy development and jointly maintain international energy security and the stability of industry supply chains.

State-owned news agency Xinhua also cited him as saying that Russia and China had “strengthened communication and coordination” and had “demonstrated strong resilience of China-Russia energy cooperation and broad prospects of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era”.

Air raid alerts were issued across all Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv, after warnings by officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile attacks.

There were no immediate reports of any new strikes, and Kyiv sounded the all clear after about 10 minutes of air raid warnings.

Christopher Miller from the Financial Times shared a screenshot of the air raid app in Kyiv:

Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, said:

Last time, the Russians also disguised the strike as a training flight...Let’s see.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned in his Sunday night address that Russian forces would launch new missile strikes on the country.

Zelenskiy said:

We understand that the terrorists are planing new strikes. We know this for a fact. And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down.

The Ukrainian leader said this week could well be difficult as the previous week, and that defence forces and citizens should be prepared to “get ready” to withstand the consequences of fresh strikes.

Hello everyone. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong here again, taking over the live blog from Tom Ambrose to bring you all the latest news from Ukraine. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.

The time in Kyiv is almost 1pm. Here is a round-up of the day’s headlines so far:

• The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance will not pull back in its support for Ukraine, calling on partners to pledge more winter aid for Kyiv as it braces itself for more cold and darkness due to Russian attacks on infrastructure. Nato foreign ministers meeting in Bucharest are focusing on ramping up military assistance for Ukraine such as air defence systems and ammunition, even as diplomats acknowledge supply and capacity issues, but also discuss non-lethal aid, Reuters reported.

• The United States is expected to announce “substantial” financial aid to Ukraine on Tuesday to help it deal with the damage caused by Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, senior US officials said. The aid, which will be detailed by secretary of state Antony Blinken on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in the Romanian capital Bucharest, “is substantial and it is not the end”, one senior official told journalists Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity and without giving further details.

• Ukrainian authorities are investigating sites where torture allegedly took place in the city of Kherson. More than two weeks after the Russians retreated, investigators say five torture rooms have been found in the southern city and at least four more in the wider Kherson region. Ukrainians allege that they were confined, beaten, given electric shocks, interrogated and threatened with death, AP reported.

• Russia’s envoy has expressed Moscow’s strong dissatisfaction to the Vatican following Pope Francis’ latest condemnation of the “cruelty” of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

• Rocketing energy bills are forcing Hungary to shutter libraries, theatres, swimming pools and even its new football stadiums for winter, AFP reports. The state-of-the-art grounds – symbols of rightwing nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán’s 12 years in power – are among a long list of buildings no longer able to cope with rising energy prices in the central European country.

• People should not forget the war in Ukraine this Christmas, the country’s first lady has said ahead of a speech to British MPs on Tuesday. Olena Zelenska is expected to address MPs and peers on Tuesday as she visits London, days after Rishi Sunak made his first visit as prime minister to Kyiv to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

• The pace of global shipping activity is set to lose steam next year as economic turmoil, conflict in Ukraine and the impact of the pandemic weaken the outlook for trade, UN agency Unctad said on Tuesday. The world’s largest investment banks expect global economic growth to slow further in 2023 following a year roiled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and soaring inflation.

• Kyiv plans to erect Christmas trees, minus lights, throughout the battered city in a defiant display of holiday spirit as the capital area’s millions of residents suffer through blackouts due to Russian attacks, officials said. “No one is going to cancel the New Year and Christmas, and the atmosphere of the New Year should be there,” the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, told the RBC-Ukraine news agency in an interview. “We cannot allow Putin to steal our Christmas.”

• Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily. Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, but neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces have made a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.

• Russian forces continue to shell residential infrastructure and housing in the recently liberated city of Kherson, according to Ukraine’s military. In its update on Monday, US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Russian troops were digging trenches and fortifying their positions in preparation for a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern Kherson.

That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for now. My colleague Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you shortly.

A Ukrainian soldier tries to warm up on the frontline in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance will not pull back in its support for Ukraine, calling on partners to pledge more winter aid for Kyiv as it braces itself for more cold and darkness due to Russian attacks on infrastructure.

Nato foreign ministers meeting in Bucharest are focusing on ramping up military assistance for Ukraine such as air defence systems and ammunition, even as diplomats acknowledge supply and capacity issues, but also discuss non-lethal aid, Reuters reported.

Part of this non-lethal aid – goods such as fuel, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone jammers – has been delivered through a Nato assistance package that allies can contribute to and which Stoltenberg aims to increase.

“Nato will continue to stand for Ukraine as long as it takes. We will not back down,” Stoltenberg said in a speech in Bucharest.

He added that the only way to get the right terms for a negotiation to begin would be for Ukraine to advance on the battlefield.

Russia’s envoy has expressed Moscow’s strong dissatisfaction to the Vatican following Pope Francis’ latest condemnation of the “cruelty” of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Francis had told the Jesuit magazine America in an interview:

When I speak about Ukraine, I speak about the cruelty because I have much information about the cruelty of the troops that come in.

Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryati and so on. Certainly, the one who invades is the Russian state.

This is very clear.