Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin says there’s no need for more ‘massive strikes’

Russia’s Gazprom have said that shipments of gas to Europe, via Ukraine, remain stable.

The company will ship 42.4 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Friday, unchanged from recent days, it revealed.

A Briton hosting four Ukrainians said his monthly £350 payment is “failing to cover the increase in the bills this winter” and called for further support and clarity from the government regarding its plans.

Several groups, including the Refugee Council, have expressed concerns over the Homes for Ukraine scheme potentially being “quietly phased out” – although the Government said the scheme is continuing.

However, a new refugees minister has yet to be appointed following Lord Harrington’s departure and the cost-of-living crisis is set to bite this winter for hosts like Steve Dury.

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Germany’s economy ministry said on Friday that it had taken note of a lawsuit by Russian state energy giant Rosneft against the government for taking control of its German unit but that it was yet to recieve any documents related to it.

The ministry said the conditions for Germany imposing trusteeship over the company were met according to the Energy Security Act.

“The reason for this is the endangerment of energy supply operation and an impending impairment of the security of supply,” the spokesperson added.

Rosneft argued that Berlin’s move last month was unjustified given that the firm had always upheld its oil delivery commitments, newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing the law firm hired by Rosneft, Malmendier Legal.

Reuters

One building in the recaptured but devastated Ukrainian town of Izium is filled with those at the end of their lives. It reeks of unwashed sheets and unbathed skin and needs more heat to fend off the approaching winter.

Despair weighs on its occupants like a blanket and the sound of weeping echoes in its rooms.

Now an orphan wanders the cold hallways among the elderly and infirm, his eyes firmly upon the phone in his hand. Until a few days ago, 13-year-old Bohdan had a father. Now he has no one.

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Officials in Ukraine have urged the Red Cross to conduct a mission to a prison camp located in the Russia-occupied east of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, called on the Red Cross (ICRC) to the Olenivka prison, which is located in Donetsk.

“We just can’t waste more time. Human lives are at stake,” he tweeted.

Last month, the Red Cross attempted to access the camp, but said it they were denied access to it by Russian authorities.

In a statement on Friday, the ICRC said: “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.”

Elon Musk confirms reports that funding is being pulled from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service provision in Ukraine on Twitter.

He replied to a tweet by a journalist from the Kyiv post, writing tweeting “We’re just following his recommendation.”

This was in reference to Ukrainian diplomat Andrij Melnyk having said “F**k off is my very diplomatic reply to you” to Mr Musk’s Twitter poll which he published 3 October.

A Russian-installed official in southern Ukraine said on Friday that the town’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has begun working according to Russian standards, state-owned news agency TASS reported.

Russia declared Zaporizhzhia region a part of its territory last month in a move rejected by Kyiv and unrecognised internationally.

A Russian man has been detained in Norway, suspected of flying unmanned drones in the country.

The fifty-year-old was found with two drones, following a number of drone sightings near to Norwegian offshore oil and gas platforms in recent weeks.

The Russian citizen was detained on Tuesday but has not been identified.

Eleanor Sly reports:

Rape and sexual assaults have been used as part of Russian “military strategy,” said a UN envoy.

UN envoy Pramila Patten said that Moscow’s forces were using a "deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims."

Speaking with AFP in an interview, she said: "When you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.”

According to Ms Patten, the UN has verified over one hundred cases of rape and sexual assaults in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.

When Natalia* was escaping the drunk Russian soldiers who had raped her for several hours, she clutched her four-year-old son’s hands and walked past her husband’s corpse in the pitch-black night.

She told her son they had to run very fast because just hours earlier, the Russian soldiers — who terrorised her and shot her husband down in the family’s yard before raping her — had threatened to show the toddler “her scattered brains” if she did not undress.

The invasion had entered its fourth day when this happened in Kyiv.

Arpan Rai wrote in June: