Ukraine war latest: Russia’s power grid strikes target west, claims Putin ally

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov delivered a news conference earlier in which he made several wild statements regarding the war in Ukraine [see 10.02 post].

One of the more striking was his claim that Nato, in paticular the US, was directly participating in the war because of its support for Ukraine.

In defending Russia’s debilitating attacks on energy infrastructure, Mr Lavrov said: “We disable energy facilities that allow you [the west] to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to kill Russians.

“So don’t say that the US and Nato are not participants in this war – you are directly participating. Including not only the supply of weapons, but also the training of personnel – you train the [Ukrainian] military on your territory.”

The Kremlin said it would not recognise the legitimacy of any war crimes tribunal staged by the European Union over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

European Commision president Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday the EU would try to set up a specialised court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“As for attempts to establish some kind of tribunal: they will have no legitimacy, will not be accepted by us and we will condemn them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this morning.

Ukraine and western allies have alleged Russia of numerous war crimes over ten months of war, including in the briefly-occupied town of Bucha, which was found strewn with civilian corpses after a rout of Russian forces.

The International Criminal Court is investigating the situiation in Ukraine since the war, while several NGOs have been gathering alleged evidence of war crimes by Russian troops.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that the Kremlin’s relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure was in order to hold up western munitions.

The strange claim from Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat came after Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said around six million Ukrainians were facing winter without power after two month of strikes on energy infrastructure across the country.

Kyiv and western allies have accused Russia of resorting to attacks on the everyday lives of ordinary Ukrainians in an attempt to break the invaded country’s spirit.

Mr Lavrov today countered these accusations, claiming: “We attack energy facilities that make it possible for west to pump weapons into Ukraine.”

The west has been feeding Ukraine weapons throughout the war, lately turning towards the supply of air defence systems to counter the Russian strikes which have rained on cities all over the country, far from the front lines of the war in the south and east.

Spanish security forces found a third suspected explosive device hidden in an envelope mailed to the Air Force base located in Torrejon de Ardoz outside Madrid, the defence ministry said this morning.

At the time of the ministry’s statement, police were still analysing the parcel, which followed after two letter bombs on Wednesday, one of which was addressed to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid.

The second was addressed to a weapons manufacturer in Zaragoza, northern Spain.

Russia accused Germany of trying to whitewash its Nazi past after the German parliament voted to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a genocide imposed by the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.

In what came to be known as the Holodomor, millions of Ukrainians starved to death after Stalin ordered the seizure of grain and livestock from farms recently brought under state control.

The Kremlin this morning rejected the claim that this was a genocide and said millions of people across other parts of the Soviet Union also suffered.

“There is another attempt to justify and push forward a campaign – being planted in Ukraine and sponsored by the west – to demonise Russia and to pit ethnic Ukrainians against Russians,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Germans are trying to rewrite their history … downplay their own guilt and muddy the memory of the unprecedented nature of the countless crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War Two,” it added.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Germany for its recognition and, writing on Twitter in German, said: “The truth always wins”.

The US Army awarded a $1.2bn (£1bn) contract to Raytheon Technologies Co for advanced missile systems to be sent to Ukraine, the Pentagon said.

Raytheon will provide six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (Nasams), which help defend from missile and drone attacks, on top of two already received by Ukraine.

“Nasams are just the latest in the diverse set of air-defense capabilities we are delivering to Ukraine,” said Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

These six Nasams systems were part of the fifth Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package which was announced on 24 Augusts and had a total value of $2.98bn, according to an Army Statement.

Prosecutors on Wednesday moved to confiscate $5.4m (£4.4m) from a US bank account belonging to Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, after he was accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Reuters reports.

Federal prosecutors in New York said in court papers seen by the news agency they were entitled to the money because Mr Malofeyev sought to transfer it to a business partner, in violation of US sanctions.

The civil forfeiture complaint marks the latest push in Washington to seize control of wealthy Russians’ assets, a strategy being worked on across governments of allied countries.

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen yesterday said allies could seize frozen assets – citing figures of €300bn in Russian foreign reserves and €19bn of oligarch assets – and use them to fund the rebuilding of war-battered Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin paid tribute to Jiang Zemin, the recently deceased 97-year-old former leader of China.

The Russian leader praised the former Chinese Communist Party chair as “an authoritative politician and wonderful person” as he offered the “most sincere sympathy to the family and friends of the deceased, as well as to the friendly people of China.”

Mr Jiang was in power from 1989 to 2000 and co-signed a still-outstanding treaty of friendship between China and Russia with Mr Putin, then in his first term as president.

The Chinese leader oversaw a decade of rapid growth, while Russia was itself embracing markets after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“A crucial period in China’s modern history and its great achievements in economic and social development, as well as the strengthening of international positions, are inseparably linked with the name of this outstanding statesman,” Mr Putin said.

Russia’s repeated attacks on Ukraine’s electricity distribution grid, primarily with cruise missiles, are likely the first example of the Kremlin attempting to implement the concept of a Strategic Operation for the Destruction of Critically Important Targets (SODCIT), the British defence ministry said today.

The move is a key component of the military doctrine Moscow has adopted in recent years, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

“Russia envisioned SODCIT as using long-range missiles to strike an enemy state’s critical national infrastructure, rather than its military forces, to demoralise the population and ultimately force the state’s leaders to capitulate,” it added.

The ministry pointed out that these strikes continue to cause power shortages resulting in indiscriminate, widespread humanitarian suffering across Ukraine.

“However, its effectiveness as a strategy has likely been blunted because Russia has already expended a large proportion of its suitable missiles against tactical targets,” the ministry said.

And as for Ukraine, which has successfully mobilised for nine months, “material and psychological effect of the SODCIT is likely less than if it was deployed in the initial period of a war”, the defence ministry claimed.

The voltage in Kherson power grid has collapsed today due to Russian shelling, regional officials said.

Kherson oblast governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said today that the voltage of the reclaimed city has disappeared after coming under constant shelling.

Kherson is among the areas witnessing heavy fighting in the war from Russian troops.