Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a “very severe” situation persisted in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the “heaviest” fighting near the city of Bakhmut. The attacks came as Russia’s war in Ukraine neared eight months.
Pro-Kremlin officials blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack on Sunday that hit the mayor’s office in Donetsk, a separatist-held city, while Ukrainian officials said Russian rocket attacks hit a city near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other targets.
More than 30 settlements in Ukraine have been hit by Russian attacks in the last day, according to the Ukrainian military. Two schools in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia were reportedly destroyed in the strikes, which targeted civilian areas.
The Ukrainian military said the estimated number of Russians killed since the start of the war has reached 65,000. Sunday morning’s update from the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said the death toll had risen by 300 over the past 24 hours.
In Ukraine, 423 children have been killed since the beginning of the invasion, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine has reported. He added that another 810 children had been injured in the conflict, with the highest number of child casualties occurring in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions.
Ukraine has managed to maintain its energy stability after last week’s Russian attacks on key parts of its infrastructure, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. In a Facebook post, Shmyhal said that in the first three days of the week, Russia launched up to 130 missile and drone strikes against civilian and energy facilities, particularly in the capital, Kyiv.
Russia is “probably unable to produce advanced munitions at the rate they are being spent”, according to the latest update from the UK Ministry of Defence. The ministry said attacks like those launched in Ukraine on Oct. 10, in which Russia fired more than 80 cruise missiles, represent “further degradation of Russia’s long-range missile stocks, which will likely limit their ability to hit the volume of targets they desire. in the future.”
US and allied security officials believe Iran has agreed to provide Russia with surface-to-surface missiles and attack drones intended for use in Ukraine. EU foreign ministers will discuss the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. In a statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian “stressed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not provided and will not provide any weapons for use in the war in Ukraine.”
The Belarusian defense ministry has said that just under 9,000 Russian troops will be stationed in Belarus as part of a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders. Last week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his troops would deploy with Russian forces near the border with Ukraine as part of a “joint grouping,” citing what he said were threats from ‘Ukraine and the West.
Russian soldiers have reportedly shot dead Ukrainian conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko at his home after he refused to participate in a concert in occupied Kherson. The concert was intended “by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson,” Kyiv’s culture ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The US think tank The Institute for the Study of War has said that Russia continues to carry out “massive and forced deportations” of Ukrainians that “likely represent a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing”. In its latest assessment of the conflict, the Institute for the Study of War notes that Russian officials have “openly admitted placing children from occupied areas of Ukraine for adoption with Russian families.”
Poverty in Ukraine has increased tenfold since the start of the war, a senior World Bank official has said. Arup Banerji, the bank’s regional director for Eastern Europe, said Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure far from the front lines of the conflict have complicated an already dire economic situation.