Ukraine has decided to continue fighting in Bakhmut as the battle is pinning down Russia’s best units and degrading them ahead of a planned Ukrainian spring counteroffensive, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said. Mykhailo Podolyak’s comments in an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa were the latest signal of a shift this week from Kiev to continue the defense of the hotly contested eastern city, site of the war’s bloodiest battles.
Most of Kiev’s power supply had been restored, officials said after Ukraine reacted swiftly to the latest Russian missile and drone fleet targeting critical infrastructure on Thursday.
In the Kharkiv region, the governor said the energy situation was difficult. “The energy system has suffered significant damage,” Oleh Synyehubov said on Telegram. “However, critical infrastructure has already been restored in the city, and water supplies have been almost fully restored.” Public transport remained closed.
The underwater bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September was carried out by a team of divers operates from a 15-meter chartered yacht called Andromeda, according to a news report. The report in Der Spiegel traces Andromeda’s route around the Baltic Sea from its home port of Rostock to the German island of Rügen and then to the Danish island of Christiansø, near the site of the September 26 explosion. Questions have been raised about whether another ship was involved.
Switzerland’s government has said it will not change its long-standing policy banning the transfer of Swiss-made weapons to a third country despite growing pressure to export them to Ukraine.
The UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation board has backed the reappointment of Argentina’s Rafael Grossi to a second four-year term as director-general, diplomats said.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has visited Kiev and met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. They attended a service in St Michael’s Golden Dome Cathedral in memory of well-known Ukrainian military commander Dmytro Kotsiubailo.
Thousands of people gathered in Kiev to attend Kotsiubailo’s funeral. Kotsiubailo, nicknamed Da Vinci and hailed as a national hero and symbol of resistance, was killed on Tuesday near Bakhmut, aged 27.
The British Prime Minister has said the war in Ukraine will end at the negotiating table. Rishi Sunak said he would support Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be in the “best possible place to have these talks” and pledged further support to Ukraine to ensure it has an advantage on the battlefield. Sunak’s comments marked a clear break with his predecessor, Boris Johnson, in his stance on how the war with Russia will end.
Ukrainian officials have ordered a historically Russian-oriented wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to leave a monastery complex in Kiev where it is based, the latest move against a denomination the government views with deep suspicion.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has thanked Moscow for a “heroic” increase in ammunition production but said he was still concerned about shortcomings for his fighters and the Russian army as a whole. Yevgeny Prigozhin also said on Friday that Wagner had opened recruitment centers in 42 Russian cities.
The Kremlin said it saw risks of possible “provocations” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two Russian-backed breakaway regions in Georgia, after days of protests in Georgia over a “foreign agents” bill. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was viewing the situation “with concern.” The Kremlin regime sometimes issues false warnings about “provocations” for its own propaganda purposes.
The war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several “empires” and not just the “Russian Empire”, Pope Francis has said. in an interview. Speaking to Swiss TV RSI, the pope described how he had offered to go to Moscow to negotiate peace but had been turned down.
Cyprus’ newly installed president Nikos Christodoulides condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, barely 10 days after he took power. In his first interview with a foreign TV channel, Christodoulides told Greece’s state broadcaster, ERT, that the opposition to Moscow’s self-proclaimed “special military operation” put the island on the “right side of history”.
The International Fencing Federation has decided to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in Olympic qualifying events, caused outrage in Ukraine. Fencing became the first Olympic sport to reopen events to the aggressor and its allies, a year after their exclusion due to the war in Ukraine.