Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine says it has pushed Russian forces back near Kramatorsk; last Zaporizhzhia reactor disconnected after Russian shelling – as it happened

It is 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has urged the EU to supply his country with more weapons and equipment to help in its fight against Russia’s invasion. He also suggested Ukraine could deliver gas to the EU to ease an energy crunch that has driven prices to record-high levels. In a joint press conference with Shmyhal, the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, promised the bloc’s continued support to Kyiv, no matter “whatever threat, whatever blackmail” may come from Russia.

  
  

• Russia will not resume its gas supplies to Europe in full until the west lifts its sanctions against Moscow, the Kremlin said. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, blamed western sanctions for Russia’s failure to deliver gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, adding that Russia’s full resumption of gas supplies via Nord Stream 1 was “undoubtedly” dependent on whether the west would lift its sanctions on Moscow.
  
  

• Concerns over Russian gas supplies continued to drive up energy prices, while the pound and euro slumped after Russia shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline indefinitely. The contract for gas delivery next month in the UK soared by 35%, to 550p a therm. Winter gas prices were also up sharply. On Monday, the euro hit a 20-year low against the US dollar, falling as low as $0.9879 in early trading.

• Ukraine’s armed forces have said its troops repelled Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine and were able to knock Russian positions near Kramatorsk. In a situational update, it also claimed that Ukrainian troops had successes in disrupting Russian crossings near Kherson and in using long-range artillery in Kharkiv.
  
  

• Despite the Russian military’s efforts to contain the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, it is focused on conquering the Donbas region, according to the latest update from the UK ministry of defence. Russia’s main “axes of advance remain at Avdiivka near Donetsk city and, 60km to the north, around Bakhmut”, the MoD said.
  
  

• Ukraine has made progress in its recently launched counteroffensive, with its forces taking two settlements in the south, a third in the east as well as additional territory in the east of the country, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, posted an image of soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over a village he said was in Ukraine’s south.
  
  

• Russia-appointed officials in the occupied Kherson region of Ukraine say they are “pausing” a planned referendum on whether to become part of Russia because of attacks by Ukrainian forces. The Russian state news agency Tass reported that the head of Kherson’s authorities, Kirill Stremousov, said attacks on the Antonivskiy Bridge in Kherson city by Ukrainian forces had stopped traffic from crossing the Dnieper River, which links the two sides of the region.
  
  

• The final working reactor block of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been disconnected after Russian shelling disrupted power lines, according to Ukraine’s state energy operator. Energoatom told Reuters that the reactor was operating and providing the plant’s own electricity needs despite its disconnection from the grid.
  
  

• Four of the six International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission members at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have left its territory, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state enterprise operating all four nuclear power stations in the country, has said. The remaining two still stay on a permanent basis, it said.
  
  

• Ukraine and the EU have signed a deal to release a further €500m (£431m) in planned aid, aimed at supporting housing, education and agriculture. The European Commission announced the package as senior officials hosted a meeting in Brussels with Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. The meeting was the first since Ukraine was accepted as a formal candidate to join the EU.
  
  

• The EU is running low on weapon stocks as member countries continue to send arms and ammunition to Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat has warned. The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, urged member states to better coordinate their spending on military materiel during a debate with European lawmakers.
  
  

• Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s leading independent newspaper whose chief editor was last year co-awarded the Nobel peace prize, was stripped of its media licence today. The country’s media regular, Rozkomnadzor, had accused the publication of failing to provide documents related to a change of ownership in 2006. The ruling was “a political hit job, without the slightest legal basis”, its editor-in-chief and Nobel Peace laureate, Dmitry Muratov, said outside court today.
  
  

• A Russian court has sentenced the journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of treason. Safronov, a former military correspondent for Kommersant and Vedomosti, was arrested in 2020 and accused of disclosing classified information. Journalists were seen crying and hugging each other on the streets outside the courtroom after the verdict.
  
  

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, for his “personal bravery and principles” in response to Russia and said that he would remain “a great friend of Ukraine”. Johnson told the Ukrainian president that he was “convinced” Ukraine’s forces could “continue to succeed in pushing back Russian forces” and that the UK “remains steadfast in its support”, Downing Street said.
  
  

• The Kremlin has said diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia could worsen under the next British prime minister. Speaking to reporters before Liz Truss was declared the winner of the UK’s Conservative party leadership election, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he didn’t think “we can hope for anything positive” as the contest had been dominated by “anti-Russian rhetoric”.

• The Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are among 25 Americans who have been targeted with sanctions by Russia due to their public criticism of Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Russia’s foreign ministry said the group, which also included business leaders, academics and government officials, would be banned permanently from entering Russia.

That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the Russia-Ukraine blog today. As always, thank you for reading. I will be back tomorrow.

Ukraine’s armed forces have said its troops repelled Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine and were able to destroy Russian positions near Kramatorsk.

In a situational update, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said:

Our defenders successfully repelled enemy offensive attempts in the areas of the settlements of Bilohorivka, Hryhorivka, Pokrovske, Bakhmutske, Lozove, Spartak, Soledar, Zaitseve and Semihiria.

In the Kramatorsk direction, they had tactical success and knocked the enemy out of the positions he had previously occupied.

It went on to say that Ukrainian troops had successes in disrupting Russian crossings near Kherson and in using long-range artillery in Kharkiv.

It added:

As a result of Ukraine’s successful fire attack on Kharkiv Region’s Kupiansk, Russian occupiers lost over 100 troops killed and wounded, and two combat vehicles were destroyed.

It has not been possible to independently verify these claims.

The Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has urged residents of temporarily occupied territories and Russian-occupied Crimea to prepare bomb shelters and stock up on drinking water.

Podolyak wrote on Twitter:

We ask residents of occupied territories, including the Crimean peninsula, to follow the officials’ recommendations during de-occupation measures. In particular, to prepare a bomb shelter, stock up on a sufficient amount of water and charge the powerbanks. Everything will be Ukraine.

Russian officials have privately warned that the country may face a longer and deeper recession as the impact of western sanctions spreads in an internal report prepared for the government, Bloomberg reports.

The confidential report, which was seen by the network, finds that sanctions by western allies could handicap sectors that Russia has relied on for years to power its economy.

It paints a much bleaker picture of the true impact of Russia’s economic isolation as a result of its invasion of Ukraine than officials usually do in their public pronouncements.

In two of the three scenarios in the report, Russia’s economy could return to prewar levels only at the end of the decade or later. All the scenarios see the pressure of sanctions intensifying, with more countries likely to join them.

As many as 200,000 Russian IT specialists may leave the country by 2025, the report says, while also warning that the country faces a “blockade” that “has affected practically all forms of transport,” further cutting off its economy.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has urged the EU to supply his country with more weapons and equipment to help in its fight against Russia’s invasion.

Shmyhal told reporters after a meeting of the EU-Ukraine Association Council in Brussels:

We need more modern weapons, such as air defence, missile defence and ship defence.

Ukraine needed aircraft and more armoured vehicles as there were no signs Russia was willing to end its war, he added.

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Shmyhal also suggested Ukraine could deliver gas to the EU to ease an energy crunch that has driven prices to record-high levels.

He said:

We can replace to a large extent the Russian imports. 30bn cubic meters is what we have in our gas stores, and we can offer some of it to our European partners in order to replace the Russian Federation in the unstable market.

In a joint press conference with the Ukrainian prime minister, the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, promised the bloc’s continued support to Kyiv, no matter “whatever threat, whatever blackmail” may come from Russia.

Borrell said:

We will provide our support politically, financially, humanitarian and militarily as long as it takes and as much as needed.

The Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are among 25 Americans who have been targeted with sanctions by Russia due to their public criticism of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

The US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, was also on the sanctions list, as well as the US senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Rick Scott of Florida and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the group, which also included business leaders, academics and government officials, would be banned permanently from entering Russia.

Penn and Stiller have been outspoken critics of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have both met Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in high-profile shows of support.

View image in fullscreen

View image in fullscreen

It’s 7pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• Russia will not resume its gas supplies to Europe in full until the west lifts its sanctions against Moscow, the Kremlin said. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, blamed western sanctions for Russia’s failure to deliver gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, adding that Russia’s full resumption of gas supplies via Nord Stream 1 was “undoubtedly” dependent on whether the west would lift its sanctions on Moscow.
  
  

• Concerns over Russian gas supplies continued to drive up energy prices, while the pound and euro slumped after Russia shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline indefinitely. The contract for gas delivery next month in the UK soared by 35%, to 550p a therm. Winter gas prices were also up sharply. On Monday, the euro hit a 20-year low against the US dollar, falling as low as $0.9879 in early trading.
  
  

• The White House has accused Russia of using energy as a weapon after it stopped the supply of gas through Nord Stream 1. The US and Europe have been collaborating to ensure sufficient supplies are available and that European gas storage will be full by the critical winter heating season but “we have more work to do”, a US official said.
  
  

• Despite the Russian military’s efforts to contain the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, it is focused on conquering the Donbas region, according to the latest update from the UK ministry of defence. Russia’s main “axes of advance remain at Avdiivka near Donetsk city and, 60km to the north, around Bakhmut”, the MoD said.
  
  

• Ukraine has made progress in its recently launched counteroffensive, with its forces taking two settlements in the south, a third in the east as well as additional territory in the east of the country, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, posted an image of soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag over a village he said was in Ukraine’s south.
  
  

• Russia-appointed officials in the occupied Kherson region of Ukraine say they are “pausing” a planned referendum on whether to become part of Russia because of attacks by Ukrainian forces. The Russian state news agency Tass reported that the head of Kherson’s authorities, Kirill Stremousov, said attacks on the Antonivskiy Bridge in Kherson city by Ukrainian forces had stopped traffic from crossing the Dnieper River, which links the two sides of the region.
  
  

• The final working reactor block of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been disconnected after Russian shelling disrupted power lines, according to Ukraine’s state energy operator. Energoatom told Reuters that the reactor was operating and providing the plant’s own electricity needs despite its disconnection from the grid.
  
  

• Four of the six International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission members at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have left its territory, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state enterprise operating all four nuclear power stations in the country, has said. The remaining two still stay on a permanent basis, it said.
  
  

• Ukraine and the EU have signed a deal to release a further €500m (£431m) in planned aid, aimed at supporting housing, education and agriculture. The European Commission announced the package as senior officials hosted a meeting in Brussels with Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. The meeting was the first since Ukraine was accepted as a formal candidate to join the EU.
  
  

• The EU is running low on weapon stocks as member countries continue to send arms and ammunition to Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat has warned. The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, urged member states to better coordinate their spending on military materiel during a debate with European lawmakers.
  
  

• Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s leading independent newspaper whose chief editor was last year co-awarded the Nobel peace prize, was stripped of its media licence today. The country’s media regular, Rozkomnadzor, had accused the publication of failing to provide documents related to a change of ownership in 2006. The ruling was “a political hit job, without the slightest legal basis”, its editor-in-chief and Nobel Peace laureate, Dmitry Muratov, said outside court today.
  
  

• A Russian court has sentenced the journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of treason. Safronov, a former military correspondent for Kommersant and Vedomosti, was arrested in 2020 and accused of disclosing classified information. Journalists were seen crying and hugging each other on the streets outside the courtroom after the verdict.
  
  

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the outgoing British prime minister, Boris Johnson, for his “personal bravery and principles” in response to Russia and said that he would remain “a great friend of Ukraine”. Johnson told the Ukrainian president that he was “convinced” Ukraine’s forces could “continue to succeed in pushing back Russian forces” and that the UK “remains steadfast in its support”, Downing Street said.
  
  

• The Kremlin has said diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia could worsen under the next British prime minister. Speaking to reporters before Liz Truss was declared the winner of the UK’s Conservative party leadership election, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he didn’t think “we can hope for anything positive” as the contest had been dominated by “anti-Russian rhetoric”.

Hello everyone, it’s Léonie Chao-Fong still with you today on the Russia-Ukraine war blog. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said Russia had yet to achieve any of its strategic objectives in its war in Ukraine.

Russia “continues to lose significant equipment and personnel”, Wallace told MPs in the Commons.

He said:

It is estimated to date that over 25,000 Russian soldiers have lost their lives, and in all if you include killed, casualties, captured, or the now reported tens of thousands of deserters, over 80,000 dead or injured and the other categories.

This will have long-lasting impact on Russia’s army and its future combat effectiveness. Russia has yet to achieve any of its strategic objectives. And we are now on day 194 of what was envisaged in total to be a month-long campaign.

Wallace likened the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to a drug dealer who gets European countries “hooked” on gas.

He urged unity across the continent over the winter, adding:

If we don’t stand together, we don’t deal with it now, these threats won’t go away on their own and to the people in Prague or Cologne, if you give in to the dealer – the drug dealer, or the guy that gets you hooked on heroin – he will be back for more in a good few years.

The final working reactor block of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-east Ukraine has been disconnected after Russian shelling disrupted power lines, according to Ukraine’s state energy operator.

In a Telegram statement, Energoatom said:

Today, as a result of a fire caused by shelling, the [last working] transmission line was disconnected. As a result, [reactor] unit No 6, which currently supplies the [plant’s] own needs, was unloaded and disconnected from the grid.

The company told Reuters that the reactor was operating and providing the plant’s own electricity needs, despite its disconnection from the grid.

The plant’s backup diesel generators, which provide power for cooling in the event of a shutdown, have not been turned on, they added.

Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, warned that the world was “once again on the brink of a nuclear disaster” following the initial news.

Galushchenko added that the only way to ensure nuclear safety was the de-occupation of the plant and the creation of a demilitarised zone around the facility.

The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Andrew Roth, has been covering the sentencing of the journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in prison for treason.

Journalists were seen crying and hugging each other on the streets outside the courtroom following the verdict.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Safronov’s lawyer, Dmitry Katchev, said he was almost lost for words at the ruling.

Katchev told reporters:

Safronov was given 22 years for his journalistic activity. I want each of you, who are looking at me now, to think whether it is worth staying in this profession. If somebody was given 22 years for doing his job.

Safronov, a former military correspondent for Kommersant and Vedomosti, was found guilty in the Moscow court of treason charges that have been prosecuted with secret evidence behind closed doors.

Many will see today’s ruling as an enormous blow to media freedom in Russia, as it comes on the same day that a Moscow court stripped Novaya Gazeta of its print media licence, effectively banning the newspaper from operating inside the country.