Russia launched its second big attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this month on Thursday, triggering deep power cuts across the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law on Thursday Ukraine’s first wartime tax increases as the conflict with Russia reaches its 34th month.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenkko said that the Bill was vital to ensure smooth funding for the Ukrainian defence sector next year. The changes will take effect from 1 December, he said.
Russia hits Ukrainian energy facilities, Kyiv accuses Moscow of ‘despicable escalation’
Russia unleashed its second big attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this month on Thursday, triggering deep power cuts across the country.
President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had responded to Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory with US medium-range Atacms missiles. He said Russia’s future targets could include “decision-making centres” in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of a “despicable escalation”, saying it had used cruise missiles with cluster munitions.
Over one million people lost power in the immediate aftermath of the strikes, and millions more had their existing schedule of rolling power cuts intensified.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia used 91 missiles and 97 drones in Thursday’s attack. It said 12 of those had hit their targets, most of which were energy and fuel facilities.
“The enemy is using a large number of missiles and drones. Their massive use in certain areas often exceeds the number of means of (air defence) cover,” the air force said.
Infrastructure facilities were damaged in nine regions, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.
The attack reinforced fears of long power cuts during the winter months as temperatures hover around zero.
Officials said it was the 11th major strike on the energy system since March. Russia has knocked out about half of Ukraine’s available generating capacity during the war, damaged the distribution system and forced authorities to impose long blackouts.
The air force said it had shot down 79 missiles and downed 35 drones, while 62 drones were “lost”, meaning it was likely they had been disrupted by electronic warfare.
A source in the energy sector said Ukraine had disconnected all nuclear power units from the grid before the attack to protect them. Ukraine gets more than half of its electricity from nuclear plants.
Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo announced deep power cuts across the country because of damage from the attacks, warning of at least 12 hours without electricity for some consumers.
All missiles or drones aimed at the capital, Kyiv, were brought down, officials said.
In western Ukraine, Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said Thursday’s Russian strikes had cut off electricity to about 523,000 people. Power was also cut to nearly 500,000 people in the Volyn and Rivne regions, their governors said, and disrupted in the Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr regions.
State oil and gas firm Naftogaz said its facilities had been attacked in the morning airstrikes.
Officials across Ukraine said they were turning on generators to ensure emergency heat and water supplies to hospitals, schools and other critical facilities during bitter winter weather.
Syrian and Russian jets bomb rebel-held northwest Syria
Russian and Syrian warplanes bombed rebel-held northwest Syria near the border with Turkey on Thursday to push back an insurgent offensive that captured territory for the first time in years, Syrian army and rebel sources said.
Rebels led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched an incursion on Wednesday into a dozen towns and villages in the northwestern province of Aleppo, which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
The attack was the biggest since March 2020 when Russia, which backs Assad, and Turkey, which supports the rebels, agreed to a ceasefire that ended years of fighting that uprooted millions of Syrians opposed to Assad’s rule.
In its first statement since the surprise campaign, the Syrian army said it had inflicted heavy losses on what it described as terrorists who had attacked on a wide front.
The army said it was cooperating with Russia and unnamed “friendly forces” to regain ground and restore the situation.
Insurgents advanced almost 10km from the outskirts of Aleppo city and a few kilometres from Nubl and Zahra, two Shi’ite towns where Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah has a strong militia presence, an army source said.
They attacked al-Nayrab airport east of Aleppo, where pro-Iranian militias have outposts.
Russian jets pounded newly captured areas and hit populated towns in the last opposition-held enclave, according to two army sources.
The opposition-run rescue service known as the White Helmets said at least 16 civilians were killed in the rebel-held town of Atareb when a Russian jet bombed a residential area.
The main Aleppo-Damascus highway was closed as a result of the fighting, residents and witnesses said.
Rebels say the campaign responded to stepped-up strikes in recent weeks against civilians by the Russian and Syrian air forces on areas in southern Idlib province, in Syria’s far northwest, and to pre-empt any attacks by the Syrian army, which they said was building up troops near front lines with rebels.
Meanwhile, Iranian state media said Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Kioumars Pourhashemi, a senior Iranian military adviser in Syria, was killed in Aleppo by rebels.
Iran has sent thousands of fighters to Syria during the Syrian war. While these have included members of the Guards, officially serving as advisers, the bulk have been Shi’ite Muslim militiamen from all over the region.
Pro-Iranian militias have an extensive military presence in the Aleppo countryside.
Ukraine imposes first wartime tax increases
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law on Thursday Ukraine’s first wartime tax increases as the war against Russia reaches its 34th month.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenkko said that the Bill was vital to ensure smooth funding for the Ukrainian defence sector next year. The changes will take effect from 1 December, he said.
The government is raising the war tax for residents to 5% from 1.5% paid currently on personal income and is introducing the war tax for tens of thousands of individual entrepreneurs and small businesses.
It also increases some rental payments, taxes commercial banks’ profits at 50%, and raises taxes on the profits of other financial institutions to 25%.
The tax increases would help raise about $3.4-billion in additional revenues next year to fund Ukraine’s defence efforts at a critical juncture of the war as Kyiv is fighting a much bigger and better-equipped enemy.
The move to increase taxes during the war has proved a sensitive and much-debated topic in Ukraine as poverty has risen and the economy has been devastated by fierce combat along more than 1,000km of front line, Russian bombardments of cities and infrastructure.
Marchenko said that the approval of tax increases was also a vital step for Ukraine’s financial programme with the International Monetary Fund, a key lender.
The government and IMF staff have reached an agreement that would give Kyiv access to about $1.1-billion but the fund’s executive board must still weigh in on the deal.
Ukraine’s external financing needs would reach about $38.4-billion next year, Marchenko said. The budget deficit is targeted at about 19.4% of the gross domestic product in 2025, down from about 24% planned for this year, he said.
The government plans to cover next year’s deficit with financing from the IMF, the European Union, and also with funds from a long-awaited $50-billion G-7 loan backed by frozen Russian assets.
France declines to commit to Putin arrest under ICC warrant
France, which is under pressure over its stance on an international arrest warrant issued for Israel’s prime minister, declined on Thursday to say whether it would be prepared to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin under a similar warrant.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last week for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence chief and a Hamas military leader for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
All European Union member states, including France, are signatories to the ICC’s founding treaty, but France said on Wednesday it believed Netanyahu had immunity from actions by the ICC as Israel had not signed up to the court statutes.
The ICC has also issued an arrest warrant against Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, although Russia is not a signatory to the ICC’s founding treaty.
French foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said on Thursday that France’s legal position was essentially the same on the arrest warrants issued for Putin and Netanyahu.
“We’ve probably been less precise when commenting on Putin’s case compared to the present one but, in any case, our position is the same,” Lemoine told reporters.
Asked if this meant France would not arrest Putin if he set foot on French soil, he said: “With regard to Vladimir Putin, all those who committed crimes, there is no impunity. They have to be held responsible for their deeds, and we have always said that we’ll apply international law in all its aspects.”
But he said the question of immunity, which he said was enshrined in the ICC’s statutes, was “complex” and that states sometimes had differing views on the issue.
Romania’s top court orders presidential election recount
Romania’s top court on Thursday ordered a recount of votes in the first round of the presidential election and the country’s top security body warned Romania was a key target for hostile actions from Russia after a shock result in the ballot.
Having polled in single digits before Sunday’s vote, independent far-right politician Calin Georgescu, 62, surged to a victory that raised questions over how such a surprise had been possible in the European Union and Nato member state.
The Constitutional Court “unanimously ordered the re-verification and recounting of the voting ballots for the 24 November presidential election,” it said in a statement.
The decision adds to the turmoil surrounding the electoral process in Romania, which is scheduled to hold three ballots in as many weeks, votes which are crucial to the direction of a country that has been pro-Western and a staunch ally of Ukraine.
Georgescu has previously praised 1930s Romanian fascist politicians as national heroes and martyrs, has been critical of Nato and Romania’s stance on Ukraine, and has said the country should engage, not challenge Russia.
He is due to face centrist contender Elena Lasconi in a run-off on 8 December.
Meanwhile, a parliamentary election is scheduled for Sunday. Analysts expect Georgescu’s victory in the first round of the presidential election to boost the far-right in the parliamentary election.
Romania’s Supreme Defence Council, the country’s top security body, said on Thursday it had evidence of cyber attacks meant to influence the electoral process.
“A presidential candidate benefited from massive exposure through preferential treatment given to him by the TikTok platform by not labelling him as a political candidate and not asking him to label electoral content,” the council said in a statement.
It said that Romania was a key target for “hostile actions by state and non-state actors, especially the Russian Federation”.
There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities but Moscow has previously denied interfering in foreign elections.
Putin says no restrictions apply if Ukraine gets nuclear weapons
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would use all weapons at its disposal against Ukraine if Kyiv were to acquire nuclear arms.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he leaves office.
“If the country which we are essentially at war with now becomes a nuclear power, what do we do? In this case, we will use all, I want to emphasise this, precisely all means of destruction available to Russia. Everything: we will not allow it. We’ll be watching their every move”, Putin said during a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“If officially someone were to transfer something, then that would mean a violation of all the non-proliferation commitments they have made,” Putin said.
Putin also said it was practically impossible for Ukraine to produce a nuclear weapon, but that it might be able to make some kind of “dirty bomb”, a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material to spread contamination. In that case, Russia would respond appropriately, he said.
Russia has repeatedly said, without providing evidence, that Ukraine might use such a device.
Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its 1991 collapse, but gave them up under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the United States and Britain.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly complained that the move left his country without security, citing this as a reason it should be admitted to Nato – something Moscow strongly opposes.
Bulgarians spied for Russia on US base in Germany, UK court told
A team of Bulgarians carried out surveillance on a US military base in Germany where Ukrainian forces were being trained, one of six operations they undertook as part of a spying conspiracy for Russia, prosecutors told a London court on Thursday.
Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, are accused of being part of a highly sophisticated spying network, run by a Russian agent named as Jan Marsalek, an Austrian national, which gathered surveillance of individuals and locations in Britain and abroad.
Prosecutor Alison Morgan said the trio had put many lives at risk. The defendants deny the allegations.
Morgan told jurors at the start of the trial at London’s Old Bailey court that two other men, Orlin Roussev and Bizer Dzhambazov, had admitted being part of the spying conspiracy.
She said the group had carried out surveillance, used false identities, deployed advanced technologies and compiled detailed reports in return for significant sums of money.
They were acting under the direction of Roussev who himself was receiving instructions from Marsalek, who used the false name of Rupert Ticz, Morgan said. Marsalek is the former chief operating officer for collapsed payments company Wirecard and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Ivanova, Gaberova, and Ivanchev deny a charge of conspiracy to gather information useful to an enemy between August 2020 and February 2023. Ivanova also denies possessing false identity documents. Their trial is expected to last until February.
Morgan told the jury that the spying ring had been involved in operations including one involving surveillance in late 2022 at the Patch barracks in Germany, a US base near Stuttgart where Ukrainian troops were being trained to use surface-to-air missiles.
Other alleged operations involved surveillance on Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian national who worked for the investigative website Bellingcat and was the lead investigator on its reports about the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.
Britain’s relations with Russia, already at their worst in decades over Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, have been further strained by recent reports that Kyiv has used British long-range missiles inside Russian territory.
On Tuesday, Russia expelled a British diplomat it accused of espionage, while in October the UK’s domestic spy chief accused Russian intelligence services of seeking to cause “mayhem”.
Ukraine says faster military aid more important than drafting more soldiers
Ukraine urged its partners on Thursday to speed up military aid, saying quicker delivery of critical battlefield equipment was more important than drafting more men.
A senior US administration official said on Wednesday that Ukraine was not mobilising enough new soldiers to replace those lost on the battlefield, and urged Kyiv to reduce the mobilisation age from 25 to 18.
“We are now in the situation when we need more equipment to arm all the people that have already been mobilised, and we think the first priority is to send quicker, faster military aid,” Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, told reporters in Kyiv.
His statement echoed a comment on Wednesday from Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn, who criticised what he said was sluggish military aid.
“Ukraine cannot be expected to compensate for delays in logistics or hesitation in support with the youth of our men on the frontline,” Lytvyn wrote on X. DM