Ukraine war latest: Putin not interested in peace, says Nato boss in stark warning

The two previous winters of the war were already challenging, but Russia has now intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with at least 11 major missile and drone strikes since March.

About half of Ukraine’s generating capacity was knocked out and distribution networks were also damaged.

In Kyiv, daily blackouts of eight hours are common and people plan their days around when power is scheduled to be available, including waiting in cafes for elevators to work if they live near the top of high-rise buildings.

Some residents and businesses have rushed to install new generating capacity in an attempt to access energy independently of the central energy system.

Analysts said strategies included more electricity imports from Ukraine’s Western neighbours, purchases of generators and alternative energy sources including solar panels, batteries and small gas turbine generators.

Russia has damaged or destroyed all of Ukraine’s thermal and hydropower plants.

In monetary terms, total damage to Ukraine’s energy sector exceeds $56 billion, including $16 billion in direct physical destruction and over $40 billion in indirect financial losses, according to estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics.

The country has to rely increasingly on nuclear generation, which makes it difficult to balance the amount of electricity on the grid, especially during peak morning and evening hours when retail consumption jumps.

Ukraine has blasted an agreement struck 30 years ago under which it relinquished nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances that never materialised, as it makes a concerted push for an invitation to join the NATO alliance.

Kyiv is desperately calling for robust security guarantees to protect it from renewed Russian aggression as US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House raises fears of a rapidly-struck settlement to the war that would leave it exposed.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry pointed to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which saw Kyiv give up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in return for security assurances, including from Russia, after the 1991 Soviet breakup.

“Today, the Budapest Memorandum is a monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making,” the ministry wrote in a statement, marking this week’s anniversary of the Dec. 5, 1994, agreement.

It said the agreement “should serve as a reminder to the current leaders of the Euro-Atlantic community that building a European security architecture at the expense of Ukraine’s interests, rather than taking them into consideration is destined to failure”.

Ukraine has denounced the memorandum since 2014, long before the 2022 invasion, when Russian troops seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula before backing paramilitary proxies in the east.

The fighting in Ukraine’s east, which killed thousands, was brought to an uneasy ceasefire followed by dozens of rounds of talks under what was known as the Minsk agreements.

Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, will sign a landmark security pact on Friday that reflects global geopolitical changes, Russian state news agency RIA has said.

The agreement will be among the documents the leaders are set to sign in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on the 25th anniversary of the Union State, a borderless union and alliance between the two former Soviet republics and neighbours.

“We are covering the topics of state, public, economic security, talking about ensuring stability in the development of our economies,” the agency quoted Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Nazaruk as saying.

“It is designed to take into account the changed external conditions, when the world is moving to a polycentric world order,” he added, describing what he called a “landmark” agreement.

As president, Lukashenko has kept Belarus in a firm authoritative grip for the past three decades, and been a loyal ally of Putin, allowing his territory to be used as a launch pad for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian drones struck critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s western Ternopil and Rivne regions overnight, the Ukrainian air force has said.

The attack left part of the city of Ternopil without electricity, its mayor said, a week after Moscow’s strikes cut power to much of the city and its surrounding region.

Ternopil lies about 135 miles east of NATO-member Poland.

Russia mounted two big attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in November, triggering power cuts across the country in the build-up to winter.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 22 of 28 drones that Russia fired overnight. One drone was “lost” and two more left Ukraine-controlled airspace, according to the statement.

Russia also attacked energy infrastructure in Rivne region, governor Oleksandr Koval said. There were no casualties, he added.

James Nixey of the Chatham House think-tank has warned that any part of Ukraine being in Nato would be unacceptable to Vladimir Putin, after Volodymyr Zelensky said he could accept territory being temporarily ceded to Russia in exchange for security assurances from the alliance.

“After all, [Nato] is, for him, an abhorrence. Putin doesn’t want a pause anyway – he believes he’s on the brink of an historic and strategic victory, kindly deal-sealed by Donald Trump,” Mr Nixey told The Independent.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced new military aid for Ukraine during a rare visit yesterday that he said sent a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin that Berlin would stand by Kyiv for as long as needed in the war.

The visit, his first to Kyiv since the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, comes ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and weeks after Mr Scholz’s governing coalition in Berlin collapsed, threatening his future as chancellor.

The political upheaval in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, adds to a growing sense of uncertainty in Ukraine, with Russian troops advancing ever faster in the east. It is unclear how much Kyiv’s European partners can step up support for Ukraine if Trump cuts help from the United States, its most powerful ally.

“My message from Kyiv to Putin: we’re in this for the long haul. Our support for Ukraine will not waver. We will stand by the Ukrainian people – for as long as it takes,” Mr Scholz wrote on X.

Vladimir Putin’s forces have made rapid advances towards the eastern flank of a longstanding lynchpin of Ukraine’s defensive line, according to the British Ministry of Defence.

The Donetsk town of Velyka Novosilka is now vulnerable following the loss of Vuhledar in early October, which lies 30 kilometres east, the ministry warned.

“This enabled increased Russian advances into less well-defended areas in western Donetsk oblast,” said the ministry, warning that “Russian forces are attacking behind established Ukrainian defences and threatening the primary logistics routes to the town”.

The Biden administration is sending Ukraine $725m worth of missiles, ammunition, anti-personnel mines and other weapons, secretary of state Antony Blinken said.

The outgoing US president Joe Biden is seeking to bolster Kyiv in its war with Russian invaders before leaving office in January.

The assistance will include Stinger missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), drones and land mines, among other items, Mr Blinken said in a statement.

“The United States and more than 50 nations stand united to ensure Ukraine has the capabilities it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression,” Mr Blinken’s statement said.

The announcement marks a steep uptick in size from MR Biden’s recent use of so-called Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the US to draw from current weapons stocks to help allies in an emergency.

Moscow’s troops have been capturing village after village in Ukraine’s east, part of a drive to seize the industrial Donbas region, while Russian airstrikes target a hobbled Ukrainian energy grid as winter sets in.