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Putin set to make speech at Russian thinktank this afternoon
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is due to make a speech at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club at 2pm GMT today.
The club is a thinktank with close links to the Kremlin generally considered to be part of Moscow’s propaganda machine.
Putin gives an annual speech at its event and you will be able to follow along here in about half an hour.
Key events
Kyiv to face stricter and longer power outages after drone strikes
Isobel Koshiw
A new timetable of scheduled blackouts will be introduced in Kyiv and the surrounding area over the coming days, after Iranian drones caused more damage to energy infrastructure in Kyiv region last night, the city’s administration said.
The new timetable is designed to prevent uncontrolled blackouts and will be stricter and longer than those recently announced by Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state energy company.
Residents in Kyiv apartment buildings have started leaving small packages of snacks in lifts to be used in case people get stuck during a blackout.
In Kyiv, volunteers are leaving emergency kits in elevators in case of power outages. (Label is in Ukrainian & Russian)
“In case you are stuck in the elevator this kit is for you:
-Warm blanket, so you stay warm
⁃a flashlight so you can see
⁃Water for you not to dehydrate…” pic.twitter.com/3hkVYrE0Kx— Nolan Peterson (@nolanwpeterson) October 25, 2022
Putin set to make speech at Russian thinktank this afternoon
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is due to make a speech at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club at 2pm GMT today.
The club is a thinktank with close links to the Kremlin generally considered to be part of Moscow’s propaganda machine.
Putin gives an annual speech at its event and you will be able to follow along here in about half an hour.
Moscow has said that provisions of the Black Sea grain deal to ease Russian agricultural and fertiliser exports were not being met, and that it was yet to make a decision on whether the agreement should be extended.
A foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, told reporters that the west had not taken sufficient steps to ease sanctions on Russia’s logistics, payments and insurance industries to facilitate Russia’s exports.
The deal, struck in July for 120 days, is set to expire in the second half of November, Reuters reported.
The Kyiv region, including the capital city itself, faces a 30% deficit in its capacity to generate the power it needs following Russian strikes overnight targeting energy infrastructure, the regional governor said.
“Last night the enemy damaged the facilities of the energy infrastructure of our region. A number of critical facilities have been disabled,” Oleksiy Kuleba said in a video clip on the Telegram messaging app.
Separately, the Kyiv region’s military administration said the region must “prepare for emergency power outages for an indefinite period” because of the Russian strikes, Reuters reported.
Four lion cubs and a black leopard cub from war-torn Ukraine have found safety in a Polish zoo, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said, after surviving drone attacks and bombing in the first few months of their lives.
The cubs were transferred to animal rescue organisations in Kyiv and Odessa after a crackdown on the exotic pet trade in Ukraine, and are now in Poznan zoo in western Poland awaiting onward travel, the Reuters news agency reports. It quoted Meredith Whitney, the IFAW’s wildlife rescue program manager, as saying:
An estimated 200 lions live in private homes (in Ukraine) and as the war rages on, they face increasingly grim outcomes.
IFAW said it had partnered with a sanctuary in the United States and one in Europe to care for the cubs, who were bred in captivity and cannot be released into the wild.
The Wildcat Sanctuary (TWS) in the United States will take care of the lion cubs. Tammy Thies, the founder of the sanctuary, said:
We were thrilled to be able to offer these cubs a beautiful, one acre habitat together and hope to welcome them home soon.
Philip Oltermann
Police in the eastern German state of Saxony are appealing for witnesses after four young Ukrainian females were racially abused and physically assaulted by a group of German teenagers.
The dispute between the two groups took place last Friday evening in the Saxon town of Hoyerswerda but were only reported this week. Two Ukrainian girls, aged 15 and 16, sustained light injuries, police said.
A week ago, a shelter housing Ukrainian refugees in north-eastern Germany had gone up in flames, in what authorities presume to be an arson attack.
An oil depot in the Russian-occupied city of Shakhtarsk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk, was engulfed in flames overnight on Wednesday.
The city’s Russian-installed mayor, Alexander Shatov, claimed the fire was caused by Ukrainian shelling of the railway station.
Russian state news agency reports said 12 fuel reservoirs near the station were damaged by the fire.
No casualties have been reported so far.
Philip Oltermann
Germany’s government has questioned Russian claims that a part of the damaged Nord Stream pipeline infrastructure remains capable of carrying gas following the as-yet-unexplained sabotage attack on 26 September.
Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom claimed recently that one of the four pipes that make up Nord Stream 1 and 2 – pipe B of Nord Stream 2 – is still intact and could transport gas in the future.
In response to a formal parliamentary query by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, however, the German government said:
It is likely that the act of sabotage with strong explosions had negative effects on both pipelines, and they are currently no longer technically available.
Separate teams in Germany, Sweden and Denmark are investigating the destroyed section of the pipeline in the Baltic Sea with a view to understanding the methods of the sabotage.
Ukraine prepares for possible future attack launched from Belarus
Ukraine has boosted its forces in the northern region near Belarus to counter any possible renewed Russian attack across the border, the deputy chief of Kyiv’s general staff, Oleksii Hromov, has said:
At the current time the creation of a strike force [in Belarus] is not observable. [But] there are and will be threats. We are reacting, we have already increased our troops in the northern direction.
Belarus is Russia’s main ally in the conflict and has allowed Russian forces to use its territory as a springboard to attack Ukraine.
We reported earlier on the Russian threat to commercial satellites. Here’s a little more detail. Last year, Moscow launched an anti-satellite missile to destroy one of its own satellites, thereby demonstrating its offensive space capability.
Konstantin Vorontsov, the deputy director of the foreign ministry’s department for non-proliferation and arms control, told the United Nations the United States and its allies were trying to use space to enforce western dominance. Reading from notes, he said the use of western satellites to aid the Ukrainian war effort was “an extremely dangerous trend” and told the United Nations First Committee:
Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.
He claimed the west’s use of such satellites to support Ukraine was “provocative”.
We are talking about the involvement of components of civilian space infrastructure, including commercial, by the United States and its allies in armed conflicts.
Vorontsov did not mention any specific satellite companies, though Elon Musk said earlier this month that his rocket company SpaceX would continue to fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, citing the need for “good deeds”.
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