Russian shelling killed one person and wounded six others in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, a town near the front line of the 2½-year-old war that Russia’s military hopes to capture.
A sabotage operation damaged a Russian minesweeping vessel in Russia’s Kaliningrad region and put it out of action, said Ukraine’s military spy agency on Monday.
Ukraine would not extend its gas transit agreement with Russia after it expired at the end of 2024, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Monday.
Russian shelling kills one, wounds six in eastern Ukraine
Russian shelling killed one person and wounded six others in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, a town near the front line of the 2½-year-old war that Russia’s military hopes to capture.
Vadym Filashkin, the governor of Donetsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app that the shelling damaged six multi-storey apartment buildings, an administrative building and a business site. Pictures posted online showed dwellings with shattered windows and damage to facades.
Filashkin said two children were among the injured, including a two-year-old.
Russian forces have been advancing slowly through the Donetsk region in recent weeks, with the heaviest fighting gripping areas near the town of Pokrovsk, further south.
After failing to advance on Kyiv in the early days of the war, Moscow’s troops have focused on seizing the Donbas, comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Ukraine’s east.
Ukrainian sabotage damages Russian ship in Baltic Sea
A sabotage operation damaged a Russian minesweeping vessel in Russia’s Kaliningrad region and put it out of action, said Ukraine’s military spy agency on Monday.
The spy agency, known by the acronym GUR, said it was the second attack it had carried out on a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea this year.
The agency did not say how it had conducted the latest operation, but said water had entered the engine of the Alexander Obukhov Alexandrit-class minesweeper through “a mysterious hole” in a gas pipe.
“The ship, which was based in the city of Baltiysk and was supposed to go on combat duty, was seriously damaged,” it wrote on the Telegram messenger.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Its Kaliningrad exclave lies more than 300km northwest of Ukraine.
The GUR statement said the vessel was undergoing major repairs after the incident.
Kyiv will not extend gas transit deal, Ukraine tells Slovakia
Ukraine would not extend its gas transit agreement with Russia after it expired at the end of 2024, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Monday.
The two held talks in Uzhhorod in western Ukraine and, according to a Ukrainian official, were focused on infrastructure cooperation, energy security and support for Kyiv’s peace plan.
“Ukraine once again says it will not continue the transit agreement with Russia after it expires,” Shmyhal told a news conference sitting alongside Fico.
“Ukraine’s strategic goal is to deprive the Kremlin of profits from the sale of hydrocarbons which the aggressor uses to finance the war.”
Slovakia, a member of Nato and the EU which shares a border with Ukraine, opposes Kyiv’s accession to Nato, but has a strong interest in maintaining the transit of oil and gas from Russia to the west via Ukraine.
Slovak state-owned gas buyer SPP said this month it was continuing negotiations to secure an extension of gas transit through Ukraine after Kyiv’s contract with Russian supplier Gazprom expires at the end of the year.
Shmyhal said that Kyiv understood the “acute dependence” of some states, including Slovakia on the Russian gas supply, but was counting on gradual diversification of delivery.
Ukraine’s prime minister also said the two countries had agreed on the creation of an Eastern European energy hub, which aimed to utilise large Ukrainian gas storage facilities.
Fico has been a big critic of Western military aid to Ukraine and has made a big show of halting government-sponsored military aid to Ukraine while allowing commercial supplies to continue.
Russian court jails US citizen on Ukraine mercenary charge
A Russian court on Monday sentenced a 72-year-old US citizen to six years and 10 months in prison after convicting him in a closed-door trial of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine.
Investigators said Stephen James Hubbard, a native of Michigan, was paid $1,000 per month to serve in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit in the eastern city of Izyum, where he had been living since 2014.
They said Hubbard was provided with training, weapons and ammunition when he allegedly signed up in February 2022, the same month that Moscow sent thousands of troops into Ukraine. Hubbard was detained by Russian soldiers on 2 April of that year, the RIA state news agency quoted the prosecutor as saying last month.
Russian state media said Hubbard had pleaded guilty to the charge.
But in interviews last month, Hubbard’s sister Patricia Hubbard Fox and another relative cast doubt on his reported confession, telling Reuters he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms at his age.
On Monday, Hubbard, wearing a beige sweater, sat in a glass courtroom cage in handcuffs. He stood up, seemingly with difficulty, to hear the judge in the Moscow City Court pronounce him guilty, removing his hat to reveal a shaved head.
Hubbard listened without visible emotion to the judge before conferring with his lawyer, who later declined to comment to reporters. RIA reported that Hubbard’s lawyer would appeal the verdict.
Reuters was unable to confirm how Hubbard was detained. The Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry has not replied to multiple messages seeking comment.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Washington had limited information about the case because Russia has refused to grant consular access, but confirmed that the 72-year-old prisoner was arrested two years ago in Ukraine.
Hacker attack disrupts Russian state media on Putin’s birthday
Russian state media company VGTRK, which owns and operates the country’s main national TV stations, was targeted in a massive cyberattack on Monday that a Ukrainian government source said Kyiv’s hackers had caused.
The website of VGTRK, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, was not loading early on Monday and its Rossiya-24 rolling 24-hour news channel was not available online.
“503 Service Unavailable. No server is available to handle this request,” read an error message when Reuters reporters tried to access the livestream.
“Our state media holding, one of the largest, has faced an unprecedented hacker attack on its digital infrastructure,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, saying VGTRK was working to overcome the consequences.
A Ukrainian government source said Ukrainian hackers were responsible for the incident, which coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 72nd birthday.
“Ukrainian hackers ‘congratulated’ Putin on his birthday by carrying out a large-scale attack on the all-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company,” the source told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Russian missile strike damages vessel carrying grain
A Russian missile strike damaged a civilian Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged vessel loaded with corn in the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi on 6 October, said Ukraine’s restoration ministry on Monday.
The ministry said on Facebook: “Fortunately none of the 15 crew members, citizens of Egypt and Syria, were injured. In total, the vessel was loaded with about 6,000 tons of Ukrainian corn. This is a completely civilian cargo.”
The ministry said this was the 20th civilian vessel to be damaged by Russian attacks.
“This is nothing more than Russia’s attempts to influence the successful operation of the Ukrainian maritime food corridor and endanger global food security,” the ministry quoted Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba as saying.
Russian hypersonic missile hits ‘area’ of major air base
A Russian hypersonic missile struck the “area” of Ukraine’s major Starokostiantyniv airbase on Monday morning, Kyiv said in a rare admission, after a drone and missile attack that also targeted the capital.
The latest strike on the Starokostiantyniv airfield in the western Khmelnytskyi region, which is often attacked by Russia, came a day after the Dutch defence minister said the Netherlands would supply Ukraine with more F-16 jets in the coming months.
Ukraine, which took receipt of a batch of F-16s this summer after months of lobbying the West, keeps the whereabouts of its warplanes top secret to protect them from long-range strikes that Russia has conducted throughout its war.
The air force, which seldom discloses damage to military targets, did not say if the strike had caused any damage to the air base, but the acknowledgement of a missile striking the vicinity of the facility was unusual.
There were no civilian casualties or damage to critical infrastructure, Governor Serhiy Tyurin said.
Two Kinzhal missiles were also shot down in the Kyiv region, the air force said. Debris came down in three Kyiv districts, but no major damage or casualties were reported after air defences engaged incoming targets, city authorities said.
Debris damaged the roof of a multi-storey residential building and the roof of a supermarket in the Solomianskyi district in the city’s west and one piece of debris came down on the territory of a school, said the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Popko.
Missile debris also fell onto an open area in the central Shevchenkivskyi district and damaged the roof of a car in the southern Kyiv district of Holosiivskyi.
Ukrainian air defences also shot down 32 Russian drones and a further 37 were lost on military radars, suggesting they had been disabled by electronic warfare systems, the air force said.
Russia will appoint a new ambassador to US
The Kremlin said on Monday that a new Russian ambassador to the US would be appointed, dismissing speculation that relations with Washington were being downgraded at the end of the term of the current envoy Anatoly Antonov.
The Siberian-born Antonov (69), a career diplomat, had been the head of the Russian embassy in Washington since 2017. He said in July that his assignment was coming to an end.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin was not currently scheduled to receive Antonov, but added that an ambassador had the opportunity to report to the president daily.
Asked if the return of Antonov indicated that relations with Washington were being downgraded, Peskov said: “No, of course an ambassador will be appointed in a timely manner.” DM