Parts of a key bridge linking Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula appeared to be on fire Saturday morning, Russian and Ukrainian media reported. The Kerch strait bridge is vital to Russia’s ability to supply its invading forces in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s troops have made recent gains.
Ukraine took back nearly 300 square miles in the east this week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Facing Ukrainian advances there and in the south, Russian forces are intensifying missile attacks on civilian areas in key regions across the country, including Donbas, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday alone, at least 22 civilians were killed and 32 others were wounded in the southeast.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- The cause of the Kerch bridge fire could not immediately be determined. A fuel storage tank that burst into flames while on a cargo train traversing the bridge could have been behind the incident, Russian state media reported. Blasts were also reported at the bridge in August. The opening of the $4 billion bridge in 2018 was personally hailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a propaganda victory.
- In his nightly address, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had liberated 776 square kilometers, or nearly 300 square miles, in the country’s east, including in Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed to annex after illegal referendums.
- Officials are exhuming bodies from two burial sites identified in the recaptured city of Lyman, officials said. More than 200 bodies were found in one of them, Donetsk leader Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
- Russian shelling forced the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to rely again on its emergency diesel generators to sustain operations, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator said early Saturday. The attacks underscore the “precarious nuclear safety and security situation” at the plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement Friday.
- IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi will visit Moscow next week. Grossi also met with Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday. In meetings with E.U. leaders on Friday, Zelensky said Europe is “on the brink of a nuclear disaster” due to Russian attempts to fully control the nuclear plant.
- At least 22 civilians were killed and more than two dozen wounded in the southeast as the result of Russian operations Thursday, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, wrote in a Telegram post. Russia’s missile strikes on residential facilities in Zaporizhzhia killed at least 11 people Thursday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
- Captured Russian equipment now makes up a large portion of Ukraine’s military hardware, according to Britain’s Defense Ministry. Ukrainian forces probably have captured at least 440 Russian battle tanks and 650 other armored vehicles since the war began, the British Defense Ministry said Friday.
- At least eight Russian generals have been fired, reassigned or otherwise sidelined since the invasion in Ukraine began, and western governments have said that at least 10 others were killed in battle, a remarkably high number that military analysts say is evidence of grievous strategic errors.
- U.S. officials stressed on Friday that they had seen no evidence that Russia had taken the measures necessary to use its nuclear arsenal and that the United States has no reason to change its nuclear posture. President Biden startled many Americans by saying at a fundraiser Thursday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
- European Union leaders met in Prague on Friday to discuss the war and its impact, including rising inflation and energy shortages heading into winter. A day earlier, an inaugural meeting of the newly formed European Political Community was also held in Prague. Zelensky addressed both gatherings virtually. Europe’s focus on energy has intensified after OPEC Plus’s landmark decision this week to cut oil production starting in November.
After Russian retreat in east Ukraine, police find dozens of torture sites: Across at least five different provinces, Russian troops left the remnants of an archipelago of torture in their wake, often in buildings where families had lived or children had played. Under Russian occupation, Ukrainians learned that even the most mundane of locations could become a stage for terror, The Post’s Louisa Loveluck writes from Pisky Radkivsky.
On Friday, the chief investigator of the northeastern Kharkiv province, Serhii Bolvinov, said that his forces had recovered 534 civilian bodies in the eastern province of Kharkiv, most of them from a mass grave in the town of Izyum. Many bore signs of torture.
