October 14, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Ukraine news here or read through the updates below. 

The US is providing additional military assistance valued at up to $725 million to Ukraine, the administration announced late Friday.

Citing the recent Russian bombardment of targets across Ukraine and “the mounting evidence of atrocities by Russia’s forces,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Kyiv government would receive additional arms, munitions and equipment from the Pentagon.

It will bring total US military assistance for Ukraine to more than $18.3 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration, Blinken said.

The Pentagon broke down the assistance as follows:

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday to pledge $400 million in humanitarian aid to “alleviate the suffering of Ukrainian citizens in the wake of the crisis,” according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The crown prince also said that Saudi Arabia’s position was to support “de-escalation” and that the kingdom stood ready to “continue efforts of mediation,” between Ukraine and Russia, the state news agency said.

Some background: Last week, OPEC+, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to slash production by 2 million barrels per day, twice as much as analysts had predicted, in the biggest cut since the Covid-19 pandemic. An intense pressure campaign by the US to dissuade its Arab allies from the cut ahead of the decision seemingly fell on deaf ears. 

US officials expressed displeasure at the OPEC move and President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that Washington must now “rethink” its relationship with Riyadh.

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir denied that there were political motives behind the cuts. “Saudi Arabia is not siding with Russia,” he told CNN. “Saudi Arabia is taking the side of trying to ensure the stability of the oil markets.”

Iran’s delegation would have voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s attempt to absorb parts of Ukraine “if the whole body of the resolution is (focused) on the condemnation of this annexation,” a spokesperson told CNN on Friday.

Iran was absent Wednesday during the vote, which overwhelmingly passed.

The resolution calls on countries and international organizations not to recognize Russia’s so-called annexation of the four regions, demands its immediate reversal and calls for Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”

Iran considers the resolution to be “based on political motives,” a media counselor for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations told CNN.

“Some items in the resolution were not acceptable for Iran, but some parts of the text of resolution that was respecting the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of countries is an unchangeable principle in Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy,” the counselor said, citing the example of Iran not recognizing Kosovo because its declaration of independence “was a violation of Serbia’s territorial integrity.”

Some context: Iran has provided Russia with drones that have been used during the war against Ukraine, but Tehran’s relations with Moscow are not without complications. Read more here.

Russia’s deadly missile barrage on civilian targets appears to have drawn to a close, but the attacks’ toll is still felt widely across Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv’s troops push ahead with a counteroffensive, gaining ground in some key regions, according to officials.

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know:

A senior Ukrainian official has made a conciliatory gesture toward US billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk after bitter exchanges over his ideas for a settlement to the conflict with Russia.

“Definitely @elonmusk is among the world’s top private donors supporting Ukraine,” tweeted Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation. “Starlink is an essential element of our critical infrastructure.”

The remarks appear to be intended to draw a line under bitter criticism of Musk by some Ukrainian officials after he publicized ideas for a peace settlement that would see Ukraine surrender Crimea and agree to neutrality status.

The effort to smooth things over comes after CNN reported exclusively that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink satellite service, and asked the Pentagon to pick up the bill.

The system — which has been provided free of charge since early in the conflict — has been an essential link in allowing Ukraine’s forces to maintain communications.

Soon after the tweet from Fedorov, another senior Ukrainian official spoke of the value of the Starlink system to Ukraine’s war effort.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Head of the President’s office, tweeted: “Let’s be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war.”
“Business has the right to its own strategies. 🇺🇦 [Ukraine] will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”

What the Pentagon is saying: “We can confirm the Department received correspondence from SpaceX about the funding of Starlink their satellite communications product in Ukraine,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Friday.

“We remain in communication with SpaceX about this and other topics.”

Ukrainian forces continue to make progress in the southern region of Kherson, regaining control over more land previously occupied by Russia, a senior US military official said Friday.

“We have seen gains in the north now, really the line of advance for the Ukrainians, just north of the city of Mylove, and then extending essentially to the north and west with a number of small towns and villages that the Ukrainians have been able to clear of the Russians,” the official said.

The US has also seen some “incremental gains” in the central part of the battleground region, “so not a lot of advancement, but some,” the official said. “We’re talking kilometers.”

Because Ukrainian forces have gotten closer to Russian forces along this central axis, they are relying less on guided multiple launch rocket systems, or GMLRs, to counter Russians, the official said.

“It’s also placed a good portion of that battle space under standard artillery, not GMLRs,” the official continued. “They can range the Russian targets they want to hit with standard artillery.”

Gains in Kherson prompt evacuations: Meanwhile, Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas.

The announcement by Russia’s deputy prime minister came shortly after Moscow-backed officials in the region appealed for help moving residents out of harm’s way. It’s the latest indication that Russian forces are struggling in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Here’s a look at where things stand on the ground:

The Ukrainian military says it has destroyed a significant amount of Russian weaponry in a strike against a railway hub in the eastern region of Luhansk.

It also said the Russian had suffered substantial losses in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.

But in its operational update Friday, the General Staff made no mention of fighting around Bakhmut in Donetsk, where Russian forces appear to have made some gains in recent days.

But the General Staff did say that Russia “continues to focus its efforts on attempts to implement its plans to reach the administrative border of Donetsk region.”

The General Staff said that “according to preliminary information, in the area of the railway station in the town of Antratsyt [Luhansk] our soldiers destroyed a significant part of the enemy’s weapons and military equipment transported by rail. The amount and nature of damage is being specified.”

CNN is unable to confirm the attack.

More on Ukraine’s counteroffensive: In recent weeks, Ukraine has targeted Russian supply lines in Luhansk as it seeks to build on its successful offensive in neighboring Kharkiv.

In other areas, according to the General Staff, some 150 Russian soldiers had been killed and about 100 injured by Ukrainian attacks in Khlibodarivka (Donetsk region), Tokmak (Zaporizhzhia region) and Tokarivka (Kherson region).

The General Staff claimed that in the city of Kherson, Russian forces had seized 13 barge-type vessels for the transportation of personnel and equipment across the Dnipro River. Ukrainian long-range rocket attacks have made most bridges across the river impassable. 

It also claimed that three S-300 units had been destroyed. S-300 missiles have been causing devastating damage in central Ukraine, especially in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv.

The Russian government has announced plans to complete repairs to the Crimea bridge by July 1, 2023, according to a decree published on the government’s portal.

The road and rail bridge was badly damaged in an explosion last weekend. Russia has blamed Ukraine’s security services for the attack, allegedly carried out with a bomb concealed inside a truck.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, states that the Nizhneangarsktransstroy Company has been appointed as the sole contractor for the restoration and reconstruction of the Crimean bridge.

The decree said “the deadline for concluding state contracts for the performance of work specified [is] July 1, 2023,”

Russian forces have launched hundreds of missile strikes in Ukraine over the past week, most of them at civilian targets, a senior US military official said Friday.

“Since the attack at the Kerch Strait bridge last week, we’ve seen the Russians continue to retaliate. The use of precision guided munitions in a very imprecise way has continued over the course of the week,” the official said. “I think it’s fair to say we’re in the hundreds in terms of the number of missiles that the Russians have launched against Ukrainian targets.” 

The official said Russians are mainly targeting civilians, especially civilian infrastructure including “electricity or bridges or otherwise.”

“They have been used at civilian targets either indiscriminately or certainly in a deliberate way as it relates to infrastructure targets like electricity or bridges or otherwise,” the official said.

Putin’s deadly onslaught: Viewed as retaliation for the bridge blast, the wave of deadly missile attacks began Monday and caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption to avoid blackouts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that there is no need for more “massive” strikes against Ukraine “at least for now.” He also said he had no regrets for his actions.

Russia continues to face international backlash for the war and global outrage at its targeting of civilians. European lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Thursday to declare Russia a “terrorist” regime.

Russia is desperately searching for ways around Western sanctions in order to resupply its military, a top US official said in an exclusive CNN interview on Friday. Meanwhile, Russia’s stockpiles of advanced weapons are rapidly dwindling in Ukraine and it can’t secure the parts to replace them.

Here’s what Wally Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the US Treasury, told CNN’s Kevin Liptak:

More background: CNN reported earlier Friday that Western sanctions have sharply curtailed Russia’s ability to replenish the munitions it is using in Ukraine, according to a new analysis from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The details of the analysis were shared in a presentation with senior finance officials from nearly 30 nations Friday, who gathered at the Treasury Department for an update from Adeyemo, among other US officials.

The battlefield is “complicated but controlled” as Ukrainian forces push ahead with their counteroffensive to take back parts of the country seized by Russia in the early days of Moscow’s invasion, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi said Thursday.

Take a look at where the state of control stands in Ukraine:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would shut down corridors established for the export of Ukrainian grain if they are used to carry out “terrorist attacks.”

“If it turns out that humanitarian corridors are used for terrorist attacks, this will put the grain agreement into question,” Putin told reporters in the Kazakh capital of Astana. 

Putin on Friday suggested a link between the safe corridors and the recent attack on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, claiming that it’s possible the explosives for the attack were sent by sea from Odesa.

Some background on the grain deal: Since July, ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports in Odesa have been allowed to navigate a safe corridor through the Black Sea as part of a UN-brokered agreement between Kyiv and Moscow after five months of Russian blockade.

The deal is set to expire in November.

Putin’s remarks come as a Russian diplomat Gennady Gatilov suggested on Thursday that his country could potentially leave the deal. “If we see nothing is happening on the Russian side of the deal – export of Russian grains and fertilizers – then excuse us, we will have to look at it in a different way,” he said, according to Reuters. “We are not against deliveries of grains but this deal should be equal, it should be fair and fairly implemented by all sides.” 

Ukraine says it’s developing new technology to combat the waves of attacks by Iranian-made drones that Russia has bought.

Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said Friday that he believed Russia currently had some 300 Iranian-made attack drones, “and they are trying to purchase a few thousand more such drones. We will see whether it happens or not, but we have to be prepared.”

“We are developing systems for their suppression … We disassemble the drones to [see] the details, see what kind of electronic ‘brains’ they have inside and accordingly prepare various countermeasures,” he added.

The Russians were using Iranian “kamikaze” drones in groups, partly to detect the disposition of Ukrainian air defenses, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian military in the south, said on Thursday. “Now they are starting to use them almost all over the territory of Ukraine, they are using them from the northern directions, not only from the south.”

In the southern region, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 109 drones and 33 had hit targets, Humeniuk added, saying most had been aimed at civilian infrastructure.

“The fact that they are trying to use these drones on critical infrastructure facilities, to deprive us of water, heat, electricity, corresponds to the tactical and technical characteristics and purpose of these kamikaze drones, because they work like matches. [The drone] sets fire to the object and disables it not with an explosion, but more with a fire,” she explained.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Friday that there is no need for more “massive” strikes against Ukraine “at least for now.”  

His comments come after a week of deadly strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine, including in the Kyiv region.

When asked if he had regrets about his actions in Ukraine, Putin said: “I have no regrets. I want to make it clear that what is happening now is unpleasant.” 

He went on to stress that Russia actions in Ukraine are right and timely.   

Read more here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that there are no plans to expand the military mobilization and that the drive will be over within two weeks.

Some 222,000 out of the planned 300,000 Russians have already been drafted into the army so far, the Russian leader added.

Some background: Last month, Putin called for “partial mobilization” of Russia’s population to support the war in Ukraine. It came at a time when a sudden counteroffensive from Kyiv recaptured thousands of square miles of territory and put Moscow on the backfoot. Experts have said Russia’s forces have been significantly depleted.

Western sanctions have sharply curtailed Russia’s ability to replenish the munitions it is using in Ukraine, according to a new analysis from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, forcing Moscow to task its intelligence services with finding ways to evade restrictions and procure the critical technology and parts to sustain its war effort.

Russia has lost more than 6,000 pieces of equipment since the war began nearly eight months ago, the analysis obtained by CNN shows, with the country’s military struggling to acquire the microchips, engines and thermal imaging technology required to make new weapons.

Sweeping Western restrictions on exports to Russia have forced the country’s defense industrial facilities to periodically go idle. Two of the country’s largest domestic microelectronics manufacturers were forced to temporarily halt production because they weren’t able to secure necessary foreign components. And a shortage of bearings — a low-tech component — has undermined the production of tanks, aircraft, submarines and other military systems.

Even as early as May, only a few months into the war, the Russian defense industry found itself short of supplies and components for marine diesel engines, helicopter and aircraft parts and fire control systems, according to the analysis. And Russia has turned to Soviet-era tanks, removing them from storage to use in Ukraine.

The details were shared in a presentation with senior finance officials from nearly 30 nations Friday, who gathered at the Treasury Department for an update from Deputy US Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Morgan Muir on the sanctions’ effectiveness in choking off Russia’s military industrial complex.

Read more here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Germany is making a mistake by taking NATO’s side on the Ukraine conflict. 

“Germany decided that commitments to some international agreements, including NATO, took precedence over domestic interests. I believe that this is a mistake and their economy and citizens are suffering. Otherwise, they would not undermine the Nord Stream gas pipelines,” Putin told reporters after the completion of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana. 

“One branch of Nord Stream 2 pipeline is in working condition. A decision to launch it is not being made and is unlikely to be made, but it’s none of our business,” he added.

Putin was also asked if he would hold talks with US President Joe Biden.

“You should ask him (Biden) if he wants to hold talks with me. For now, I do not see the need for negotiations with Biden until I see a platform for this,” he said.

Even as it loses ground in Ukraine’s southern Kherson and northeastern Luhansk regions, Russian forces have been making slow but steady progress into their assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut, aided in large measure by Wagner mercenaries, or private military contractors.

Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region, is Ukrainian controlled, but has been bombarded by Russian artillery for months. If Russian forces were able to capture the city, it would enable them to further bombard the populations centers of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Russian forces were pushed further away from those cities when Ukraine recaptured Lyman and much of Kharkiv region last month.

“Wagner are carrying on with their advances on the eastern side of Bakhmut,” Semyon Pegov, a pro-Russian analyst who posts under the name WarGonzo, said on Telegram on Friday. “According to some reports the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] units are leaving the area in small groups under the threat of being surrounded. If it is really so we will find out shortly.”

CNN cannot independently verify the claim that Ukraine was withdrawing forces from Bakhmut, and Ukrainian officials have not commented on it. Andrey Marochko, an official in the Russian-back Luhansk People’s Republic, also repeated that claim, as did TASS, the Russian state news agency.

Pegov said that in the past week, Wagner mercenaries were able to capture the towns of Zajtseve and Vesela Dolyna to the southeast of Bakhmut. The UK Ministry of Defense on Friday said that they may also now be contesting the villages of Opytne and Ivanhrad, to the south of Bakhmut.

CNN cannot independently verify those claims, but they would mean that Russia is forming a more complete semi-circle around Bakhmut.

“The Wagner troops pushed the AFU from important road junction to the North-East of Bakhmut,” Pegov said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian officials agree that Bakhmut is being fiercely contested:

Post includes additional translation by Racz.

After a Russian-appointed leader outlined plans for the evacuation of civilians from the occupied Kherson region, Ukraine called it a form of deportation.

Russians are taking “the opportunity to carry out a semi-voluntary deportation of the Ukrainian population … and then repopulate the Kherson region with zombies who are 100% loyal to Moscow,” Yurii Sobolevskyi, deputy head of Kherson regional council, claimed on his Telegram channel. “There were similar processes in Crimea after the annexation. Fortunately, it is not 2014, and no-one intends to give Russia even a centimeter of Ukrainian land.”

On Thursday, Oleksandr Samoylenko, head of Kherson regional council, urged people there not to trust “the nonsense and false statements” of the Russian-appointed head of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, who had appealed to Moscow to help with the evacuation plan.

Remember: Saldo’s announcement came as Ukrainian forces exerted growing pressure on Russian defenders in parts of the region.

“The so-called ‘evacuation’ takes place under the guise of ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘education.’ This does not correspond to the real motives of the occupiers,” Samoylenko said, adding that the Russians’ goal was to get rid of the Ukrainian population in the region by seizing their property and “settle Russians from remote areas of the Russian Federation in your homes and apartments.”

He urged Ukrainians in the region to not go to Russia under any circumstances.

“Under no circumstances should you go to the Russian Federation, and also do not send your children to ‘rehabilitate’! Because when you leave your native land, you will immediately receive Russian passports. And according to their legislation, it will be very difficult, almost impossible, to return to Ukraine!” Samoylenko said on Facebook.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said it shares the feeling of “frustration” about not having access to prisoners of war in Ukraine.

The Red Cross added that a lack of “practical arrangements” meant that there are thousands of prisoners it has not been able to visit.

“We share the frustration regarding our lack of access to all prisoners of war (POWs) held in the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” the ICRC said in a statement Friday.

“We have been able to visit hundreds of POWs but there are thousands more who we have not been able to see.

“We want to stress that our teams are ready on the ground—and have been ready for months—to visit the Olenivka penal facility and any other location where POWs are held.

“However, beyond being granted access by high levels of authority, this requires practical arrangements to materialize on the ground. We cannot access by force a place of detention or internment where we have not been admitted.”

The statement came after a top Ukrainian official called on the ICRC to immediately send a delegation to the Russian prisoner of war camp at Olenivka, where more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners died in a fatal rocket attack in July.

A visit to Olenivka could not happen without Russian consent, as the detention center is in Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine. 

As Russia continues its deadly onslaught of strikes across Ukraine, a rocket hit the city of Zaporizhzhia early Friday.

Here are the latest developments:

A Russian diplomat has suggested that his country could potentially leave a deal to allow grain exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea, according to Reuters.

“If we see nothing is happening on the Russian side of the deal — export of Russian grains and fertilizers — then excuse us, we will have to look at it in a different way,” Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told Reuters. 

Reuters reported Thursday that when asked whether Russia might back out of renewing the deal, Gatilov said: “There is a possibility…We are not against deliveries of grains but this deal should be equal, it should be fair and fairly implemented by all sides.”

In July, the UN and Turkey brokered a major deal between Ukraine and Russia that promised to unblock ports on the Black Sea to allow the safe passage of grain and oilseeds.

However, Moscow cut back its contribution to the initiative earlier this month. In a letter obtained by CNN, Russia said that it was reducing the number of inspection teams it deployed at a Turkish port where grain ships are inspected. The letter also said that inspectors would be ending their working day earlier, because there was currently no allowance made for lunchtime.  

Since July, ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports have been allowed to navigate a safe corridor through the Black Sea – an agreement that ended five months of Russian blockade.

The deal is set to expire at the end of November.

Asked on Thursday about the possibility of Russia pulling out, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, said that it was “critical for the world,” and that there were good signs coming out of a meeting Thursday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“We’re trying to get a bit more detail, and we’ll be following up on that,” Dujarric said.

CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Andrew Carey in Kyiv contributed reporting.

There have been 620 attacks on health services in Ukraine since Russian launched its military invasion in February, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The agency’s top priorities are continuing support for the 150 health partners on the ground and responding urgently to the 620 attacks on health care since the beginning of the war, the agency’s Europe director Hans Kluge said Friday.

Other concerns for WHO include the health needs of those in Ukraine and “anticipating and preparing for challenges winter will bring,” he said at a press conference on the health impacts of the escalating conflict in Ukraine. 

The winter season poses challenges specifically for those “living precariously” and unable to heat their homes, Kluge added. 

“Wintertime challenges, and the recent escalation in fighting, could add to significant internal displacement with an anticipated two to three million people on the move in Ukraine itself as well as another exodus of refugees to surrounding countries,” he said. 

“Consequently, there will be an even greater strain on health services both in Ukraine and refugee receiving countries,” he continued. 

Mental health issues, another priority for WHO, will likely be “exacerbated,” said Kluge. 

“Ten million people… are potentially at risk of mental disorders, including acute stress, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said, adding that this estimate was made before the recent escalation in Ukraine.  

Russia’s Rostov region will on Friday receive residents from Kherson in south Ukraine, according to a Russian governor.

The head of the Russian-backed administration in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson has appealed to the Kremlin to organize an evacuation of civilians in the face of a Ukrainian offensive.

“The Rostov region will receive and accommodate everyone who wants to come to us from the Kherson region,” Vasily Golubev, governor of the Rostov region, told state news agency TASS Thursday. 

“We have already prepared to receive the first people arriving. We will create all the conditions for them. We are accepting the first group tomorrow,” Golubev added.

“The civilian population should be at a safe distance from the hostilities,” the deputy head of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, said on Telegram Friday.

“Already now, on the right bank of the Kherson region, our Russian army is courageously and professionally holding back the daily attempts of the militants of the Kyiv regime to break through the defenses and launch an offensive against the settlements of the region, including, of course, the city of Kherson.”

Golubev’s announcement came after Moscow said it would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Kyiv continued to make gains in its offensive to retake the southern Ukrainian region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged the use of “goodwill” to settle conflicts around the world, without making a reference to the war in Ukraine.

“Everyone has goodwill, and we need to use this goodwill to the maximum” in resolving any conflicts, Putin said while speaking to the leaders at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit. 

“We must strive to find ways out of the current situation, wherever it arises,” he added. 

Putin also said that Russia “welcomes the mediation efforts of anyone, as long as they are directed at calming the situation, to the benefit all participants in the conflicts.” 

“This also applies to our partners from the US and Europe,” he added. 

The event in the Kazakh capital of Astana is being attended by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. 

Since launching its invasion of Ukraine in February, the Kremlin has ruptured diplomatic ties with Kyiv and its Western allies.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree formally ruling out potential negotiations with Putin. It came in response to Putin’s announcement that he would illegally annex four regions in Ukraine, in a move widely condemned by international leaders.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has laid a wreath at a memorial for the thousands of servicemembers killed fighting Russian and Russian-backed forces between 2014 and the full-scale invasion in February.

The wreath was laid in honor of the Day of Defenders of Ukraine, which was first celebrated in 2015.

“On Mykhailivska Square in Kyiv, in the presence of an honor guard and to the sound of surma, a wreath with flowers from the Ukrainian people was placed at the Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in the Russian-Ukrainian War,” the president’s office said in a statement.

The ceremony comes after the bodies of 62 Ukrainian soldiers were “returned home” earlier this week following “difficult negotiations,” according to the country’s Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories.

“62 fallen heroes were returned home,” the ministry’s statement said, adding that the bodies included those of soldiers who had been held at a prison in Olenivka in the eastern Donetsk region.

The battlefield is “complicated but controlled” as Ukrainian forces push ahead with their counteroffensive to take back parts of the country seized by Russia in the early days of Moscow’s invasion, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi said Thursday.

“In fierce battles, under the steel rain of Russian shells, we held on to every piece of our land. We stopped the enemy onslaught and buried the myth about the invincibility of the Russian army. And now we’re getting ours back. No one and nothing will stop us,” Zaluzhnyi said in a Twitter post.

Zaluzhnyi said last winter “is already part of world history.”

“We withstood a powerful enemy’s attack. We showed what it means to be Ukrainian, to have the courage to fight for your freedom,” he said.

In the latest indication that Russian troops are struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances,Moscow said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of the occupied southern Kherson region to other areas.

The Ukrainian military has been carrying out a counteroffensive in Kherson and eastern parts of the country, taking back territory that had been occupied by Russia as well as striking critical infrastructure such as bridges and railways.

Weapons aid: On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his plea for more air defense capacities as NATO defense ministers met in Brussels, saying Kyiv has only about 10% of what it needs to combat deadly Russian strikes.

And according to Zaluzhnyi, Russia’s superior artillery means “the issue of increasing the fire capabilities of the Armed Forces is still relevant.”

An assembly of representatives drawn from 46 national parliaments across Europe voted overwhelmingly in favor on Thursday for a resolution calling on European countries to “declare the current Russian regime as a terrorist one.”

A total of 99 out of 100 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted in support of the resolution. Only a Turkish MP from the Republican People’s Party abstained.

“The continued use of long-range artillery by the Russian military to hit towns and cities across Ukraine has caused massive destruction and death,” the resolution said. “With these indiscriminate attacks, Russia aims to advance its terrorist policy to suppress the will of Ukrainians to resist and defend their country and provoke maximum harm to civilians.”

The resolution called on Russia to “completely and unconditionally withdraw its occupying forces.”

PACE is a parliamentary body of the Council of Europe, an international organization separate from the European Union. It has a broader membership, including countries like Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, as well as transcontinental countries such as Azerbaijan. PACE consists of national parliamentarians drawn from its member nations.

A Russian official on Friday morning said the country’s air defenses had shot down rockets in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine to the north, near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

“Our air defenses shot down rockets near Novoskolsk district this morning. The debris fell in the vicinity of the railroad. Power lines were damaged. Railway traffic has been temporarily suspended,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement on Telegram. “Emergency crews are on their way. I’m sure they’ll rectify the situation very quickly and traffic will be restored. I’ll keep you posted. Most importantly, there are no casualties.”

Some context: Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for damage inflicted on a residential building in Belgorod on Thursday. Russian officials blamed Ukraine, although Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Russia launched a missile toward Kharkiv and missed its target.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived at the Commonwealth of Independent States leaders’ meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

RIA Novosti carried pictures of Putin arriving at the meeting venue Friday, where talks have begun between of leaders from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Earlier this week, Putin attended the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana. In his remarks at the summit he said that, together with other Asian countries, Russia is looking to form a “system of equal and indivisible security based on the universally recognized principles of international law of the UN Charter.” Putin did not reference the war in Ukraine in his remarks.

Some context: The Commonwealth of Independent States comprises nine of the former Soviet republics. In September, Putin urged the group to consolidate against the West and create a “more just world order,” claiming Western countries were inciting conflicts on their territory.

A rocket hit the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine on Friday morning, according to Telegram posts from the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration and the city’s acting mayor.

“The enemy has attacked Zaporizhzhia. Infrastructure in one of the city’s districts was destroyed,” Anatoliy Kurtev, Acting Mayor of Zaporizhzhia city, said in a post on Telegram.

Kurtev said rescue teams have responded to the site of the attack. Neither official said whether any casualties were reported.

Some context: Zaporizhzhia is a major hub in southern Ukraine, not far from the front line in a region partly occupied by Russian forces — which have sustained attacks against the city this week.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law measures to illegally annex four Ukrainian regions, including Zaporizhzhia.

Since they first started arriving in Ukraine last spring, the Starlink satellite internet terminals made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been a vital source of communication for Ukraine’s military, allowing it to fight and stay connected even as cellular phone and internet networks have been destroyed in its war with Russia.

So far roughly 20,000 Starlink satellite units have been donated to Ukraine, with Musk tweeting on Friday the “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”

But those charitable contributions could be coming to an end, as SpaceX has warned the Pentagon that it may stop funding the service in Ukraine unless the US military kicks in tens of millions of dollars per month.

Documents obtained by CNN show that last month Musk’s SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as it has. The letter also requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine’s government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months.

“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in the September letter.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is pictured as he attends the start of the production at Tesla's "Gigafactory" on March 22, 2022 in Gruenheide, southeast of Berlin.

Related article Exclusive: Musk's SpaceX says it can no longer pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine, asks Pentagon to pick up the tab | CNN Politics

Ukraine is demanding that the International Committee of the Red Cross immediately send a delegation to the Russian prisoner of war camp at Olenivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region.

Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, published the call for a mission on the administration’s website.

“At the end of July, as a result of terrorist shelling by the Russian occupiers, more than 50 defenders of Ukraine were killed” at the camp, Yermak told the Red Cross, according to the public message.

CNN recently investigated the camp’s shelling.

The Russian Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian HIMARS rocket attack was responsible for the strike. The CNN investigation, based on analysis of video and photographs from the scene, satellite imagery from before and after the attack and the work of forensic and weapons experts, concluded the Russian version of events was very likely a fabrication.

In the aftermath of the attack, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was ready for the Red Cross to visit the camp. But, despite repeated requests from the organization, no visit was ever arranged.

Yermak said the conditions under which Ukrainian prisoners are held, and what they face in places of detention in the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, “is extremely important.”

“Therefore, I call for the Red Cross mission with international media representatives to arrive in Ukraine no later than in three days, even if you do not receive confirmation from Russia by this time. And we are sure that Russia is not interested in the truth being known.”

It’s unclear how any mission to Olenivka could happen without Russian consent, as the detention center is in Russian-occupied territory. 

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said that progress is being made toward establishing a safety zone around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi shared photographs on Twitter of a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in a Kyiv bunker on Thursday, saying “we are making progress” toward establishing a protection zone around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

However, he added the “situation continues to be extremely fragile, extremely precarious.”

In a tweet, Kuleba said he had “reiterated that Russia must withdraw from the ZNPP to ensure its nuclear safety and security, immediately stop abductions and intimidation of the Ukrainian personnel,” when he met with Grossi Thursday.

Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Kyiv continued to make gains in its offensive to retake the southern Ukrainian region.

The announcement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest indication that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

The Ukrainian military has been carrying out a counteroffensive in Kherson and eastern parts of the country, taking back territory that had been occupied by Russia as well as striking critical infrastructure such as bridges and railways.

Saldo claimed cities throughout Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexed in violation of international law, were being hammered by dangerous airstrikes.

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KHERSON, UKRAINE - OCTOBER 07: A view of the village, located in the border of the Kherson region where the control was again taken by the Ukrainian forces, as Ukrainian soldiers patrol around the site amid Ukraine's counterattack against Russian forces in the southern Kherson region, heavy clashes continue between the two sides in Kherson city, located in Kherson Oblast, Ukraine on October 07, 2022. Ukrainian forces retook 29 settlements in Kherson on an area of 400 square kilometers (about 155 square miles) on Oct. 1-6 as the counter offensive launched on Aug. 29 continues, according to information provided by officials. (Photo by Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Related article Russia to help evacuate civilians from occupied Kherson as Ukraine makes gains | CNN

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim al-Thani met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday to “defuse tensions” between Moscow and Doha, a source familiar with the talks, but not authorized to speak about them publicly, told CNN.

The United States and the European Union were briefed on the meeting before it took place, said the source.

“The purpose of the meeting between Qatar’s Emir and President Putin was to defuse the tensions between Russia and Qatar, which have grown following several events,” the source said.

A strain in the relationship between the two countries has emerged in recent months. The source said tensions have increased several times: after the Emir held a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky on Monday; after Qatar criticized Russia’s planned annexation of Ukrainian territory; and after Qatar’s participation in a meeting with NATO +8 countries in Germany in April.

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Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani attends the opening session of the 30th Arab League summit in the Tunisian capital Tunis on March 31, 2019. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read FETHI BELAID/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article Qatari Emir met with Putin to 'diffuse tensions' between Moscow and Doha, source says | CNN