Ukraine-Russia war latest: Ukrainian drones wound Russian firefighters as G7 ministers pledge support

The Russian military has attacked energy facilities in the Chernihiv region, according to the area’s military administration.

“The enemy continues to attack energy supply facilities. A critical infrastructure facility in Chernihiv Oblast was hit at night. The strike caused a fire, which was contained within a few hours,” said Viacheslav Chaus, the administration’s chief, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

There is as-yet no threat to electricity supply after the attack overnight on Saturday.

Putin has introduced bizarre new laws in Russia that will ban anything suggesting a child-free life is attractive.

Laws that would outlaw “propaganda” discouraging Russians from having children were overwhelmingly approved on Thursday in the first of three readings in the lower house of parliament.

The Russian president who portrays Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children to secure the demographic future of the country.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has shared a video of the moment Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) returned home to their families.

In a post on X, he said: “95 of our people are home again. These are the warriors who defended Mariupol and ‘Azovstal’, as well as the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson regions.

“Each time Ukraine rescues its people from Russian captivity, we bring closer the day when freedom will be returned to all those still held in Russian captivity.

“I thank the team involved in finding and liberating prisoners. We are doing everything to bring back all of our people held by Russia. I am grateful to the warriors who replenish the exchange fund and to all our partners who help us.”

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman urged international organizations Sunday to respond to a claim that several Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv had launched an incursion in August.

DeepState, a Ukrainian battlefield analysis site close to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said that Russian troops shot and killed nine Ukrainian “drone operators and contractors” on Oct. 10 after they had surrendered.

Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram that he sent letters to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the case, calling it “another crime committed by the Russians.”

Read the full report:

Ukraine’s accession to NATO would make a diplomatic and political resolution to the conflict impossible, Russia’s foreign ministry said according to the RIA state-owned news agency.

It would ultimately lead to an escalation in the war, the ministry said on Saturday morning.

Ukrainian president Zelensky has been pushing hard in recent months for the war-torn country’s accession to NATO to be guaranteed. He went on a whirlwind tour to present his ‘victory plan’ to allies in the West, including US president Joe Biden and UK prime minister Keir Starmer, which puts NATO accession front-and-centre of any possible Ukrainian victory.

Telegram channels are sharing videos of what appears to be a drone attack on a Russian factory in Bryansk.

The Kremniy factory is a plant used in the defence industrial base and this would mark the fourth time the facility has come under attack, according to Radio Liberty, a US-government-funded media organisation.

Products produced by the factory are used in the creation of Pantsir air defence systems and Iskander missile systems, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said that thirteen drones were shot down over the Bryansk region, two over the Rostov region and one over the Belgorod region.

They later reported a drone attack on an uninhabited building, adding that “no fire has started”.

The U.N. human rights chief warned Thursday that the world is at an especially dangerous moment in history, with disregard and disrespect for international law “reaching a deafening crescendo.”

Volker Türk said conflicts are spreading and intensifying and humanitarian and human rights laws are being “trampled amid broad impunity.”

The UN high commissioner for human rights spoke about this critical moment “for human life, for human rights and for the stability and prosperity” of countries to reporters Thursday and in a briefing to the General Assembly’s human rights committee on Wednesday.

Türk said the reason the world is in such a crisis of conflicts and violations of international law is because the international structures that were painstakingly built after World War II and the Holocaust to protect human rights and prevent atrocities are starting to erode.

South Korea’s spy agency has warned that North Korea has sent a battalion of troops to bolster Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

My colleague Rachel Hagan reports:

Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron joined Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz on Friday afternoon for talks focused largely on how to end the war in Ukraine as Russian forces advance in the east.

“We discussed how to speed up our support for Ukraine” Mr Starmer told reporters after the meeting. “So as Ukraine enters a difficult winter, it is important to say we’re with you.”