RussiaUkraine

The Kremlin has warned of the risk of escalation if Kyiv is provided with the US-built long-range missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country would only use long-range Tomahawk missiles against Russian military targets, as the Kremlin expressed alarm over Washington’s potential plan to offer the weapons to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy’s comment was aired by Fox News on Sunday, the same day he spoke to US President Donald Trump.

Writing on X, the Ukrainian president called his latest conversation with Trump “very productive”, noting that they had discussed strengthening his country’s “air defence, resilience, and long-range capabilities”. It was the second time the pair had spoken in as many days.

On Monday, Trump said he would only agree to provide Kyiv with Tomahawks if he knew what it planned to do with them. He added, without giving further details, that he had “sort of made a decision” over the issue.

Given that their range is 2,500km (1,550 miles), Ukraine could use the weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

In comments published on Sunday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the topic was of “extreme concern” to Russia.

“Now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides,” he told Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin.

Peskov said Moscow would have to bear in mind that some versions of the missile are able to carry nuclear warheads.

The Kremlin spokesperson’s remarks came as French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

After speaking with Zelenskyy on Sunday, Macron said: “As the agreement reached in Gaza offers a glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine too must come to an end.”

“If Russia persists in its obstinate warmongering and its refusal to come to the negotiating table, it will have to pay the price,” he said.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said in a Facebook post that he had urged Macron to give Ukraine more missiles and air defence systems, stressing that Russia was increasing its bombardments while the world’s focus was elsewhere.

“Russia is now taking advantage of the moment — the fact that the Middle East and domestic issues in every country are getting maximum attention,” Zelensky said in a readout of his call with Macron.

As it has done before, Russia is targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in an attempt to cripple the sector before winter.

In the past week alone, Russia has launched “more than 3,100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1,360 glide bombs” at Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy.

Two employees of Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, were injured at a substation in Kyiv province in overnight attacks on Sunday, according to the regional governor.

On Friday, Russia carried out what Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described as “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leading to blackouts across the country.

Here are the key events from day 1,326 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 12, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine on Saturday killed at least five people, while also cutting power to parts of the southern Odesa region, the AFP news agency reported, citing local officials.
• Two of the victims were killed in an attack on a church in Kostiantynivka in eastern Donetsk, AFP said.
• Ukraine’s private energy firm DTEK said that power has been restored to 240,000 households in Odesa after a Russian attack overnight on Saturday, which damaged some energy infrastructure.
• The Russian TASS news agency said a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region killed an 81-year-old man.
• An official from Ukraine’s SBU security service told the Reuters news agency that Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Bashneft oil refinery in Ufa, causing explosions and a fire. The unnamed official said the attack marked the third time Ukrainian forces struck the facility in Bashkortostan in southwestern Russia in the last month.

Regional security

• United Kingdom Secretary of State for Defence John Healy said that two Royal Air Force aircraft flew a 12-hour mission earlier this week alongside US and NATO forces to patrol Russia’s border. Healy described the joint operation as “substantial”, coming after a series of alleged Russian drone and aircraft incursions into NATO airspace.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he discussed the most recent Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system in a call with United States President Donald Trump. He described the discussion as “positive and productive”, while adding that the two also talked about how to bolster Ukrainian air defences.

• In a separate post on Facebook, Zelenskyy said that he congratulated Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East, while urging him to broker a similar deal for Russia’s war on Ukraine. He wrote that if Trump could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well”.

• Cuba denied US claims that it had deployed soldiers to fight for Russia in its war in Ukraine. It also said that 26 Cubans had been sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 14 years for mercenary activity since September 2023, when reports circulated of Cubans being sent to the front in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president praises Trump’s efforts to secure Gaza ceasefire, says other wars ‘can be stopped as well’.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to broker peace in Ukraine like in “the Middle East” during a phone call, saying if the United States president could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well.”

Saturday’s call came a day after Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy grid, knocking out power to parts of the capital, Kyiv, and nine other Ukrainian regions, which have since been restored.

Diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have slowed in recent weeks, in part because global attention has shifted to brokering a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, Kyiv said.

Trump, who announced the first phase of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday, met Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in August but failed to secure progress on a ceasefire in the European war.

“I had a call with US President Donald Trump. A very positive and productive one,” Zelenskyy said on Facebook, congratulating Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East.

“If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well, including the Russian war,” Zelenskyy added, calling for Trump to pressure the Kremlin into negotiations.

Relations between the two leaders have warmed dramatically since February when they sparred during a televised meeting at the White House.

Trump has since grown more hostile towards Moscow while expressing sympathy for Ukraine.

In September, he wrote on Truth Social that Kyiv should try to “take back” all its occupied territory with Europe’s and NATO’s help.

US first lady Melania Trump said on Friday that she had secured the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia after establishing an extraordinary back channel of communication with Putin.

Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five people on Saturday and cut power to parts of southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, according to Ukrainian officials.

Two of the people died inside a church in Kostyantynivka when it was hit by a strike, according to local authorities.

Using ‘Russian assets’

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said “the main work to restore the power supply” was completed but some localised outages were still affecting the Ukrainian capital after Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.

Ukrainian drone attacks, meanwhile, killed two people in Russia, according to regional officials.

In the Russian border region of Belgorod, a truck driver was killed by a Ukrainian strike, according to local officials.

Moscow has targeted Ukraine’s energy grid each winter since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, cutting power and heating to millions of households and disrupting water supplies in what Kyiv says is a brazen war crime.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says Ukraine uses the energy sites to power its military sector.

Both countries have accused each other in recent months of frustrating progress towards a peace deal.

Russia blames Kyiv and its European allies for the impasse, accusing them of undermining peace negotiations with Washington. Ukraine and Europe accuse Russia of playing for time so it can seize more Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday that Russia was taking advantage of the world being “almost entirely focused on the prospect of establishing peace in the Middle East” and called for strengthening Ukraine’s air defence systems and placing tighter sanctions on Russia.

“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defence and ensure recovery,” he said in the video, posted to X.

Here are the key events from day 1,325 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, October 11, 2025:

Fighting

• More than 450 Russian drones and 30 missiles targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure through the early hours of Friday morning in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “cynical and calculated attack” that injured at least 20 people nationwide.
• Throughout Friday, repair crews raced to restore power to more than 725,000 families in Kyiv and other cities amid widespread outages.
• In a video message discussing the attacks, Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly taking advantage of the moment” as world leaders focus on implementing a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
• Zelenskyy separately told reporters that Russia deliberately waited for bad weather before launching its assault, with inclement conditions reducing the efficiency of Ukraine’s air defences by 20 to 30 percent.
• Russian forces killed three foreign soldiers fighting on behalf of Ukraine near Otradnoye, a village in northeastern Ukraine, where Russian troops claimed to have taken control earlier this week, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
• Ukraine’s military said it struck Russia more than 70 times last month, decreasing oil refining in the country by more than 21 percent.

Peace process

• The “E3” leaders of Germany, France and the United Kingdom condemned Russia’s “escalatory” attacks against Ukraine’s national infrastructure, promising to increase pressure on Russia as Putin “continues his stalling tactics and abhorrent attacks in response to peace talks”.
• The leaders added they were “ready to progress towards using, in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces” in order to pressure Russia to negotiate.
• During a three-day visit to Tajikistan, Russia’s Putin told reporters he remained “committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage”, referring to his Alaska summit with United States President Donald Trump in August.
• Putin’s comments were a sharp reversal from those of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov earlier this week, who said that “powerful momentum” for peace talks has been lost since August.
• US First Lady Melania Trump said she and Putin are discussing the repatriation of children caught up in the war, with some already returned to their families and more expected to be reunited soon.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy said he had spoken with several leaders in light of Russia’s overnight strikes – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz  – and thanked all three for their support.
• Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, visited North Korea for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defence treaty last year, and Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops and vast quantities of weapons to support Moscow’s war against Kyiv.
• Putin told reporters that Trump “does a lot for peace” and praised the Gaza ceasefire deal.
• Trump quickly reposted a clip of Putin’s comments about his peace efforts to Truth Social with a note of thanks to the Russian leader.

Regional security

• Ukraine and the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding for the co-production of drones. Amsterdam has provided almost $9bn in support to Ukraine throughout the war, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.
• European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU must seek a “common European vision for defence”, and that Russia must be prevented from winning its war against Ukraine.
• Putin said that Russia is developing new weapons of deterrence, and noted that it’s “not a big deal” for Moscow if the US declines to extend the warhead limits set out in a nuclear arms treaty that expires next year.

Russian drone and missile strikes have wounded at least 20 people in Kyiv, damaged residential buildings and caused blackouts across swaths of Ukraine, authorities have said.

In the latest mass attack targeting the energy system as winter approaches, electricity was interrupted in nine regions, and more than a million households and businesses were temporarily without power across the country on Friday.

In southeastern Ukraine, a seven-year-old was killed when his home was hit, and at least 20 people were injured. In Kyiv, an apartment block in the city centre was damaged by a projectile, while on the left bank of the Dnipro River that divides the capital, crowds waited at bus stops with the metro out of action, and people filled water bottles at distribution points.

“We didn’t sleep at all,” said Liuba, a pensioner, as she collected water. “From 2:30am, there was so much noise. By 3:30, we had no electricity, no gas, no water. Nothing.”

According to Ukraine’s energy ministry, more than 800,000 customers temporarily lost power in Kyiv.

Moscow’s attack overnight and into Friday fell on the third anniversary of Russia’s first large-scale attack on energy facilities, months after Moscow invaded in February 2022, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia’s latest strikes a “cynical and calculated attack”, and urged allies to respond with concrete measures.

“What’s needed is not window dressing but decisive action – from the United States, Europe, and the G7 – in delivering air defence systems and enforcing sanctions,” he said in a statement on X.

The Kremlin has escalated aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities and rail systems over recent weeks, building on earlier bombing campaigns over the previous three winters that left millions without heating in frigid temperatures. Russia said its forces had hit energy sites supplying power to Ukraine’s defence industry.

The Ukrainian air force said the Russian barrage comprised 465 drones and 32 missiles, adding that 405 drones and 15 missiles were downed.

A source in Ukraine’s energy sector told the AFP news agency that the intensity of attacks was higher compared to last year, and that cloudy weather overnight had allowed drones to evade Ukrainian air defence systems.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian forces had targeted “critical infrastructure”.

“This was one of the largest concentrated strikes against energy facilities,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

It was the fourth attack in a week against the facilities of Ukraine’s biggest private electricity provider, DTEK, its CEO Maxim Timchenko said.

Late on Friday DTEK said it had restored power to at least 678,000 households and companies in Kyiv after the massive Russian aerial attack.

“DTEK power engineers continue to intensively restore electricity to Kyiv residents,” the company said on Telegram.

Children ‘rejoined’ with families

The Russian attack came as United States First Lady Melania Trump announced that eight children displaced by the war had been reunited with their families following negotiations between her team and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s.

Trump said that Putin had responded to a letter sent via her husband, President Donald Trump, at a summit in Alaska in August.

“My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours,” she said in a short, six-minute speech from the White House on Friday.

US President Trump’s own efforts to broker an end to Russia’s three-year war in Ukraine have stalled, as a series of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations this year ended.

Trump said on Thursday that Washington and NATO allies were “stepping up the pressure” to end the war in Ukraine.

But the Kremlin said that momentum towards reaching a peace deal had largely vanished.

Here are the key events from day 1,323 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, October 9, 2025:

Fighting

• Three people were killed and one injured by Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, the local governor said.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Novohryhorivka in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
• Russia’s air defence units destroyed 53 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing Russian Defence Ministry data.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that his country’s forces had killed thousands of Russian soldiers in the Dobropillia region of eastern Ukraine since August 21, when they launched a counteroffensive against Moscow’s occupying troops. Zelenskyy said this information was based on a report he had received from the Ukrainian army’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii.
• Zelenskyy also said Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s oil facilities had degraded them to an extent that the country was experiencing energy shortages. Russia, he claimed, had been forced to turn to its diesel reserves, which it had been saving for “a rainy day”.

Regional security

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said recent drone incidents and other airspace violations show Europe is facing hybrid warfare to which it must respond with measures that go beyond traditional defences, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
• Von der Leyen said it was clear Russia’s aim was to “sow division” and “weaken support for Ukraine”, and that Europe could “either shy away and watch Russian threats escalate, or meet them with unity, deterrence and resolve”. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has denied that Moscow was behind the recent drone incursions into the airspaces of multiple European nations.

Military aid

• Russia will respond harshly if the United States supplies Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, said, emphasising that “those who supply them and those who use them will have problems”.

Diplomacy

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the impetus to find a Ukrainian peace deal, which emerged after the summit between President Putin and US President Donald Trump in August, had proven to be exhausted.
• Ryabkov urged US leadership to take a “sober and responsible approach” to a possible transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such transactions could lead to a “qualitative change” in the situation.

Here are the key events from day 1,322 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 8, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have captured almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930sq miles) of Ukrainian territory so far this year, and Moscow retains the strategic initiative on the battlefield.
• Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian villages of Novovasylivka in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and Fedorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said.
• Russian air defence units destroyed 184 Ukrainian drones in recent attacks, the RIA Novosti state-owned news agency reports.
• Russia’s air defence units also intercepted and destroyed a drone flying towards Moscow city, said Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of the Russian capital.

• Ukraine’s Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said Russian air strikes have caused “significant” damage to Ukrainian gas production capacity due to the targeting of regional gas infrastructure and power transmission facilities in front-line regions.
• Hrynchuk said Ukraine wants to increase imports of natural gas by 30 percent after Russian attacks on its gas infrastructure, telling reporters she had discussed additional gas imports with Group of Seven (G7) member states.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of using oil tankers for intelligence gathering and sabotage operations, and he added that Ukraine was cooperating with its allies on the matter.
• Russia’s state nuclear energy company has claimed that a Ukrainian drone attempted to strike a nuclear plant in Russia’s Voronezh region bordering Ukraine, but the unmanned aerial vehicle crashed into a cooling tower and caused no damage at the site.

Military aid

• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was waiting for clarity from the United States about the possible supply of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such weapons could theoretically carry nuclear warheads and reiterated that Moscow would see the provision of such weapons as a serious escalation.
• The Kremlin also said it assumed for now that US President Donald Trump still sought a peace settlement in Ukraine.

Peace talks

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone with President Putin and said diplomatic initiatives need to gain momentum to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Russia-Ukraine war, Erdogan’s office said.
• The statement cited Erdogan as saying Turkiye will continue to work for peace and said bilateral relations and regional and global issues were also discussed with Putin.
• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she believed Trump had come to the conclusion that Russia was not interested in a peace deal with Ukraine, and that the only way forward was to apply pressure, continue to support Ukraine, and impose sanctions on Russia.

Politics and diplomacy

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it is not in Poland’s interest to hand over a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany for suspected involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines three years ago.
• Tusk said the problem with Nord Stream 2 was not that it was blown up but that it was built. He added that Russia built the pipelines “against the vital interests not only of our countries, but of all of Europe”.
• A Polish court ruled on Monday that the Ukrainian diver wanted by Germany over his alleged involvement in the explosions, which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline, must remain in custody for another 40 days, his lawyer said.
• European Union governments have agreed to impose limits on the travel of Russian diplomats within the bloc, the Financial Times reported.

Economy

• Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves totalled $46.5bn as of October 1, the National Bank of Ukraine reported on its website.

Pressing for stiffened sanctions, president says more than 100,000 components from US, UK and other suppliers found in Russian missiles and drones fired on Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has alleged that drones and missiles fired by Russia against his country are filled with parts sourced from Western companies.

In a social media post on Monday, Zelenskyy said the hundreds of weapons used in Russian attacks over the previous two nights contained tens of thousands of components produced by firms in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan and China.

“Nearly 100,688 of foreign-made parts were in the launched attack drones, about 1,500 were in Iskanders, 192 in Kinzhal missiles, and 405 in Kalibrs,” he wrote.

He made the accusation as Ukraine and some European partners are pressing for harsher sanctions and stronger oversight to close loopholes on current trade limits imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of its neighbouring country in February 2022.

Zelenskyy’s inclusion of US and UK companies was noteworthy due to the leading role the two countries have had in mobilising military and financial support for Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invading forces.

US companies manufacture converters for Kh-101 missiles and Shahed-type drones, sensors for unmanned aerial vehicles and Kinzhal missiles, and microelectronics for missiles, the Ukrainian president said. He added that British companies produce microcomputers for drone flight control.

“Ukraine is preparing new sanctions against those who help Russia and its war,” Zelenskyy said, adding that detailed data on each company and product have been shared with Ukraine’s partners.

Zelenskyy, who has long called on countries around the world to prevent the funding and equipping of Russia’s war machine, demanded more robust measures before a meeting of G7 sanctions coordinators, a body that oversees sanctions regimes among the club of the world’s wealthiest countries.

Oleh Alexandrov, a Ukrainian intelligence official, said over the weekend that Kyiv has evidence that China has been helping Moscow identify targets in Ukraine. He said there was “evidence of a high level of cooperation between Russia and China in conducting satellite reconnaissance of the territory of Ukraine in order to identify and further explore strategic objects for targeting”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied reliance on China’s satellites and said Russia has its “own capabilities, including space capabilities, to accomplish all the tasks the special military operation poses”.

Zelenskyy issued his statement as a number of European countries have been dealing with a wave of suspicious drone activity.

Unmanned aerial vehicles have been spotted over military sites and disrupted air traffic. Some governments have pointed a finger at Russia and warned that Moscow is testing NATO’s air defences.

Russia has denied responsibility, and President Vladimir Putin has mocked countries accusing Moscow of being behind the drone incursions.

On Monday, the Kremlin dismissed as “baseless” comments by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said his country assumes Russia was behind the activity.

Oslo Airport, meanwhile, temporarily suspended several landings on Monday after reports of a drone, its operator, Avinor, said.

Kyiv, Ukraine – On October 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged that Ukrainian attacks had destroyed a high-voltage transmission line between the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and Kyiv-controlled areas.

Days earlier, Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russian shelling had cut the plant off from the electricity network.

The mammoth, six-reactor plant – Europe’s largest and known in Ukraine as the ZAES – sits less than 10km (6.2 miles) south of the front line. It has been shut since 2022, generating none of the electricity that once provided up to a fifth of Ukraine’s needs.

But dozens of Moscow-deployed engineers have frantically tried to restart it – so far unsuccessfully. Ukraine has long feared that Russia is trying to connect the power grid and quench a thirst for energy in Crimea and other occupied areas.

Putin purported that the alleged Ukrainian strikes caused a blackout at the plant and that it had to be fuelled by diesel generators.

The latest blackout at the plant is the longest wartime outage of power.

“On the [Ukrainian] side, people should understand that if they play so dangerously, they have an operating nuclear power station on their side,” Putin told a forum in St Petersburg.

‘The radioactivity is so powerful’

In fact, apart from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Ukraine has three operating power stations – as well as the shutdown Chornobyl facility, the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

“And what prevents us from mirroring [Ukraine’s alleged actions] in response? Let them think about it,” Putin said.

His threat had apparently already been fulfilled a day earlier. Ukraine accused Russia of shelling that damaged the power supply to the colossal protective “sarcophagus” over the Chornobyl station’s Reactor Four that exploded in 1986.

Both the Chornobyl station and the plant in Zaporizhzhia need electricity for their safety systems and, most importantly, for the uninterrupted circulation of water that cools nuclear fuel.

The fuel, thousands of uranium rods that keep emitting heat, are too radioactive to be taken anywhere else.

In Chornobyl, the fuel is spent and submerged in cooling ponds or “dry-stored” in ventilated, secured facilities.

But at the Zaporizhzhia site, the rods are still inside the reactors – and are newer, hotter, and made in the United States.

Before the war, Ukraine began a switch from the hexagonal, bee-cell-like rods made by Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear monopoly, to the square rods made by Westinghouse, an energy giant based in Pittsburgh in the US.

The US-made rods will take years to cool down enough to be removed without the risk of contamination, according to a former Zaporizhzhia plant engineer who fled to Kyiv.

“The radioactivity is so powerful that one can’t get the fuel out, [or] transport or handle in other ways until it burns out. It will take years,” the engineer told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because of security concerns for relatives in Enerhodar.

Ukrainian forces ‘prevent’ Russia’s alleged plans

A greater challenge at the plant is a severe lack of reactor-cooling water. The Zaporizhzhia station stood less than 15km (9 miles) upstream from the mammoth, Soviet-designed Novo-Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River.

The dam created a reservoir with up to 18 cubic kilometres (4.76 trillion gallons) of water that freely flowed to the power station. In June 2023, the dam was destroyed by powerful blasts – Ukraine and Russian traded blame – and the water level dropped dramatically.

The deep cooling ponds around the plant that never froze, even in the harshest winters, had been filled to the brim, but the water keeps evaporating. There is enough to cool the shutdown reactors – but not nearly enough if the station is restarted and the uranium rods turn the water into steam to power the turbines.

“It’s absolutely impossible to switch on even one bloc,” the engineer said. “Of course, the Russians keep digging and supply some water, but it’s not enough at all.”

The biggest problem is Russia’s failure to hook the plant to the energy grid of occupied regions as Ukrainian forces pin-pointedly destroy the transmission lines Russia is building – along with fuel depots and thermal power stations, he said.

“The Russians are restoring them any way they can, but Ukrainian forces very much prevent the restoration,” the engineer quipped.

Bellona, a Norway-based nuclear monitor, said on October 2 that a “greater danger lies in Moscow’s potential use of the crisis to justify reconnecting the plant to its own grid – portraying itself as the saviour preventing a nuclear disaster”.

Should Moscow do that, the step would only “worsen [the] strategic situation, give Moscow additional leverage, and bring a potential restart closer – a move that, amid ongoing fighting, would itself sharply increase the risk of a nuclear accident,” it said.

Analysts pointed to a deal proposed by US President Donald Trump in March to transfer the plant to US management as a possible solution.

Ukrainian strikes “will go on until Russia makes a peace deal that also includes US control over the ZAES and its operation”, Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s University of Bremen, told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, blackouts in Crimea have become unpredictable and distressing, a Crimea local told Al Jazeera.

“They switch the power off and switch it back on without any warning. Then again – on and off, on and off. My fridge died,” said a resident of Simferopol, Crimea’s administrative capital, on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

Russia understands that improved power supply is a prerequisite for its efforts to restore occupied Ukrainian regions and conquer more Ukrainian land, said an observer.

Moscow needs the plant to “cover the growing [energy] consumption in the region, considering not just occupied Crimea, but also the occupied areas [above the Sea of] Azov. And also within the context of Russia’s plan to occupy part of the Zaporizhia region,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.

Greenpeace said that its detailed analysis of high-resolution satellite images taken after what Putin alleged were Ukrainian strikes showed that he was bluffing.

“There is no evidence of any military strikes in the area surrounding the pylons and network of power lines in this part of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” the international environmentalist group said on October 1.

The images showed that the power towers remained in position and there were no craters left by explosions around the lines, it said.

Greenpeace concluded that the blackout at the plant is “a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia” whose aim is to “permanently disconnect the plant from the Ukraine grid and connect the nuclear plant to the grid occupied by Russia”.

Here are the key events from day 1,320 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Monday, October 6, 2025:

Fighting

• A Russian attack killed a family of four, including a 15-year-old girl, in the village of Lapaivka in Ukraine’s Lviv region, the regional prosecutor’s office reported in a post on Facebook.
• The attack on the region in Ukraine’s west, far from the Russian border, also injured several people and targeted gas infrastructure used for heating during a cold snap, the regional administrator’s office wrote in a post on Telegram.
• One person was killed and 10 others injured as Russian forces launched 702 attacks on 18 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region in a day, Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
• The attacks left at least 73,000 people without power, with service restored to most people by early afternoon, Fedorov added.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed on Sunday its forces had hit Ukrainian military-industrial facilities as well as gas and energy infrastructure overnight.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post on Facebook that Russian forces launched more than 50 missiles and about 500 attack drones at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, targeting the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odesa and Kirovohrad regions.
• Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s Belgorod region left some 40,000 people without power, Regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Three people were also injured in Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported.
• Russian forces shot down four Ukrainian guided aerial bombs and 145 drones in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.

Politics and Diplomacy

• In response to a question from reporters about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer last month to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons, United States President Donald Trump said, “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned Europe must be wary of falling into “Putin’s escalation trap” while also strengthening anti-drone defences, amid drone sightings near airports across Europe.
• Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that “specific people from abroad … expressed direct support … for the announced attempt to overthrow [Moldova’s] constitutional order,” naming the European Union ambassador to Georgia, the day after protesters sought to force their way into the presidential palace.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz informed Trump about plans to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukrainian armed forces in a phone call on Sunday.
• The Reuters news agency reported that Trump administration diplomats are planning to accuse Cuba of providing up to 5,000 fighters to support Moscow’s war on Ukraine, in a bid to limit support for lifting the decades-long US embargo on Cuba. Cuban authorities previously arrested 17 people on charges related to a human trafficking ring that allegedly lured young Cuban men to fight in Ukraine with the Russian military.

Weapons

• Putin said that if the US supplies Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for long-range strikes deep into Russia, it would “lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations”, in a video released by Russian state television reporter, Pavel Zarubin, on Sunday.
• In a post on X, Zelenskyy said that Russian weapons used to attack Ukraine include components made by companies from many places, including “the United States, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the Netherlands”.

Five people have been killed in Ukraine after Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles across the country overnight, which officials said targeted civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia fired approximately 50 missiles and 500 attack drones.

“The Russians struck with cruise missiles, Shaheds and Kinzhals among other things,” he said. “The Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odesa, and Kirovohrad regions were all targeted.”

One person in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia and four members of a family in Lviv were killed in the attack. One of those killed was a 15-year-old girl.

Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, said that the city was left without power and that public transport was affected. Sadovyi warned residents of the city not to go outside, citing smoke and several ongoing fires.

Mykola Dmytrotsa, a resident of Lapaivka village just outside Lviv, said his house was struck.

“All windows were blown out, doors and everything inside, too. What else can I tell you? I do not even want to talk about it. No doors, no windows, no roof,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Volodymyr Hutnyk, a local official, said: “In this area, 10 private homes were damaged so severely that they are no longer habitable. They will need to be dismantled and rebuilt. Many other houses have shattered windows and doors, and their roofs have been damaged.”

Lviv is near Ukraine’s border with Poland and has generally avoided the worst of Russia’s attacks.

Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv region, said it was the largest attack the region had experienced throughout the war, which has lasted more than three years.

“Across all affected areas, residential buildings and critical infrastructure were damaged,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. “Moscow continues to strike homes, schools, and energy facilities – proving that destruction remains its only strategy.”

“Ukraine was shattered by explosions last night,” said Kira Rudik, a member of Ukraine’s parliament. “Every one of these tragedies could have been prevented if Russia had been stopped.”

At least 30 people were killed on a passenger train in Sumy due to a Russian strike on Saturday, which Ukraine’s president said was “savage”.

Poland scrambles jets

Poland said it mobilised its fighter jets along with NATO allies to respond to the strike, which the Polish air force said was “preventive in nature” and “aimed at securing the airspace and protecting citizens”.

Around 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace in early September, raising concerns about the possible spillover of Russia’s attacks onto Polish and NATO territory. Russia has also been accused in recent weeks of violating the airspace of other NATO members, including Norway, Estonia, Lithuania and Denmark.

Belgium on Friday said 15 drones were spotted flying over a military base in the country’s east. Its Defence Minister Theo Francken said there was no evidence linking Moscow directly, but added, “Personally, I think those drones are often an example of hybrid threats. This is a way to sow unrest. That has been Russia’s pattern for many years.”

Russia has denied responsibility for many of the attacks, with President Vladimir Putin mocking countries claiming Russia was behind the drone attacks over the weekend.

On Saturday, Denmark said Russian naval vessels had tracked Danish ships, sailed on collision courses, tracked aircraft with their radars and pointed their weapons. “Russia is using military means, including in an aggressive way, to put pressure on us without crossing the line into armed conflict in a traditional sense,” Danish intelligence director Thomas Ahrenkiel said.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said Russia is “masking its failed summer offensive with terror attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure”. Kallas said the EU was prepared to back Kyiv for “as long as needed” and said a new sanctions package was being prepared.

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kestutis Budrys, joined Zelenskyy after the attack in calling on countries around the world to stop purchasing Russian energy, which they said fuels Moscow’s war machine.

“We must stop feeding its imperial appetite and put an end to state terrorism,” Budrys posted on X.

These incidents come as Europe has hardened its position on Russia, announcing new sanctions, the possibility of using Russian money for Ukraine and purchasing NATO arms for Kyiv, while the US has warmed to the Kremlin.

Samuel Ramani, a fellow at the United Kingdom-based defence think-tank RUSI, said Russia is retaliating for Europe taking a “sharply” pro-Ukraine position in recent months.

Russia sees Europe as a more “incorrigible adversary, whereas with the Americans, we can still find a way back, a way to do business with them and work with them,” Ramani told Al Jazeera.

“As a result, the Russians are using a variety of tactics like GPS jamming, drones, hot air balloons as we have seen with Lithuania, to signal their discontent.”

Warsaw says ground-based air defence, radar reconnaissance systems also brought to the ‘highest state of readiness’.

Polish and allied air defences have been deployed to secure the country’s airspace, its military said, as Russia launched new deadly air strikes on neighbouring Ukraine.

The latest deployment on Sunday comes as the transatlantic security bloc NATO steps up its air patrols across the region in response to suspected Russian airspace incursions and drone sightings in several member states.

“Polish and allied aircraft are operating in our airspace, while ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have been brought to the highest state of readiness,” Poland’s operational command said in a post on X early on Sunday.

“These actions are preventive in nature and are aimed at securing the airspace and protecting citizens, especially in areas adjacent to the threatened region,” the statement added.

The Polish military said it is monitoring the current situation, stating that its forces under its command “remain fully prepared for immediate response”.

Poland shares an estimated 530km (329 miles) with Ukraine.

As of 02:10 GMT, all of Ukraine was under air raid alerts following Ukrainian Air Force warnings of Russian missile and drone attacks.

In a statement posted on Telegram, Ivan Fedorov, head of the southeastern Zapoprizhia region, said that a Russian “combined strike” killed a woman and wounded six other people, including a 16-year-old girl.

In late September, Poland was forced to briefly close part of its airspace southeast of the capital, Warsaw, after Russia launched a major attack across Ukraine.

Earlier that month, Polish and NATO forces also intercepted Russian drones which entered Poland’s airspace, marking their first direct military engagement with Moscow since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

On Sunday, NATO member Lithuania reopened its main airport after shutting it for hours following sightings of a “series of balloons” in its airspace.

Airports in Germany, Denmark, Norway and Poland have also recently suspended flights due to unidentified drones, while Romania and Estonia have pointed the finger at Russia, which has dismissed the allegations.

Here are the key events from day 1,319 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 5, 2025:

Fighting

• One person was killed and about 30 others injured after two Russian drones struck trains at a station in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “terrorism”, while Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Moscow deliberately targeted civilians during the attack.

• French photojournalist Antoni Lallican was killed, while his Ukrainian colleague Hryhory Ivanchenko was injured after a Russian drone attack struck the town of Druzhkivka in the Donbas region, one of the front lines of the three-and-a-half-year war, the Ukrainian military said.

• Russia has launched its most significant attack on Ukraine’s main gas production facilities in Kharkiv and Poltava regions, launching 35 missiles and 60 drones, according to Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi. The attack came as Ukraine prepares for a new heating season.

Regional security

• Danish Defence Intelligence Service director, Thomas Ahrenkiel, has accused Russia of risking unintended escalation, with its warships repeatedly sailing on collision courses with Danish naval vessels, aiming weapons and disrupting navigation systems in Denmark’s straits that connect the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.
• Germany’s Bild newspaper is reporting that drones have been spotted at airports and military installations across Germany over two days. The second drone sighting in two days has forced dozens of flights to be diverted or cancelled at Munich airport, although operations have resumed with delays by Saturday morning.

Politics and diplomacy

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has called on Russia and Ukraine to show the “political will” required to keep the area around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant safe to allow the external power line to be reconnected to the facility. The facility has been cut off from external power since September 23, making it more complicated to cool the reactors, while compromising nuclear safety.

• A senior Ukrainian intelligence official has accused China of passing on satellite intelligence to Russia to enable Moscow to better launch missile strikes inside Ukraine. Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Agency official Oleh Alexandrov told the state Ukrinform news agency that “there is evidence of high-level cooperation” between Moscow and Beijing in conducting satellite reconnaissance.
• The International Civil Aviation Organization has rebuked Russia for disturbances to critical satellite navigation systems that they say violate international rules, as the United Nations aviation agency’s assembly concluded in Canada. Estonia and Finland have accused Russia of jamming GPS navigation devices in the region’s airspace, charges that Moscow has denied.

Last week the European Commission said it was preparing to introduce tariffs on Russian oil imports entering the EU through Hungary and Slovakia.

It comes as US President Donald Trump has piled pressure on NATO members to stop buying Russian energy, in a bid to end the Russia-Ukraine war. At the UN last week he said, “They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?” Trump was referring to the more-than one billion euros ($1.35bn) EU countries are still paying to Russia each month for fossil fuels.

In this explainer, Al Jazeera outlines the latest figures on Europe’s oil and gas imports from Russia, why some countries remain dependent on Russian energy and which other nations are now purchasing Russian fuel.

Which European states are still buying Russian energy?

According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which tracks physical flows of fossil fuels, the EU spent 1.15bn euros ($1.35bn) on Russian fossil fuels in August.

The five largest importers accounted for 85 percent of that total, buying 979 million euros ($1.15 billion) worth of Russian oil and gas. The remaining 15 percent came from countries including Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Poland.

The top buyers of Russian energy include:

• Hungary: 416 million euros ($488m)
• Slovakia: 275 million euros ($323m)
• France: 157 million euros ($184m)
• Netherlands: 65 million euros ($76m)
• Belgium: 64 million euros ($75m)

Hungary and Slovakia both purchased Russian crude oil and pipeline gas, while France, the Netherlands and Belgium imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is natural gas cooled into a liquid so it can be transported by ship instead of through pipelines.

Europe’s heavy reliance on oil and gas

Together, oil (33 percent) and natural gas (24 percent) account for more than half of Europe’s energy supply. Coal contributes 11.7 percent, followed by nuclear at 11.2 percent, biofuels at 10.9 percent, solar and wind at 6.1 percent, and hydropower at 3.1 percent.

To transport these large volumes of oil and gas, Europe relies on an extensive network of 202,685 km of active pipelines as of 2023, according to GlobalData.

A key part of this network is the 4,000 km (2,500 miles) Druzhba pipeline, one of the world’s longest oil pipelines, with a capacity of 1.2 to 1.4 million barrels per day, carrying oil from eastern Russia through Belarus and Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia.

Hungary and Slovakia continue to receive oil through the pipeline under a temporary EU exemption, granted to prevent severe energy shortages, as these landlocked countries rely heavily on the Druzhba pipeline and have few alternative import routes or ports.

How has Europe’s reliance on Russian gas changed?

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU sourced more than 45 percent of its total gas imports and 27 percent of its oil from Russia. By 2024, these shares had fallen to 19 percent for gas and three percent for oil.

Many European leaders have faced pressure to impose heavier sanctions on Russia as the EU seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian energy. However, this remains challenging for countries heavily reliant on a single energy source, for example, in Hungary, more than 60 percent of energy comes from oil and gas.

Imports of Russian gas fell from over 150 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to less than 52 bcm in 2024. This shortfall was largely offset by increased imports from other partners: US imports rose from 18.9 bcm in 2021 to 45.1 bcm in 2024, Norway from 79.5 bcm to 91.1 bcm, and other partners from 41.6 bcm to 45 bcm.

What other commodities is Europe buying from Russia?

In addition to lower energy imports, the EU is now importing less nickel, iron and steel from Russia.

However, fertiliser essential for farming, for which Russia is a major producer and exporter, has increased by almost 20 percent from 2021 to 2025.

Earlier this year, the European Commission’s proposal to introduce a 6.5 percent tariff on fertiliser imports from Russia and Belarus was endorsed by the European Commission with the aim to phase out reliance on inorganic fertiliser from Moscow.

Outside the EU, who is buying Russian energy?

In August, China was the largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, accounting for 5.7 bn euros ($6.7 bn) worth of Russian energy export revenues, with 58 percent (3.1 bn euros) of these imports being crude oil.

India was the second-largest buyer, with 3.6 bn euros ($4.2bn) in imports, of which 78 percent (2.9 bn euros) was crude oil.

Turkiye ranked third, importing 3 bn euros ($3.5bn) worth of energy, including a mix of pipeline gas, oil products, crude oil and coal.

The EU was the fourth-largest purchaser, accounting for 1.2 bn euros ($1.4bn)  in imports. Two-thirds of these were Russian LNG and pipeline gas, valued at 773 million euros ($907m).

South Korea was the fifth-largest buyer at 564 million euros ($662m), with three-quarters of its imports consisting of coal.

Here are the key events on day 1,317 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, October 3, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine it was playing a dangerous game by striking near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and suggested Moscow could retaliate against nuclear plants controlled by Ukraine.
• The plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, has been cut off from external power sources for more than a week and is being cooled by emergency diesel generators, which were not designed for lengthy operations.
• As both Ukraine and Russia blame each other for cutting off the external power at Zaporizhzhia and shelling the area, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia deliberately cut the external power as it was preparing to connect the station to its own grid.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said power had been fully restored in two areas of the border Sumy region hit by overnight Russian attacks. Repairs to power were also proceeding in the neighbouring Chernihiv region, where more than 300,000 consumers had been left without electricity after Russian strikes on Wednesday.
• The Trump administration’s desire to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine may not be viable because current inventories are committed to the United States Navy and other uses, a US official and three sources have told the Reuters news agency.
• President Putin warned any decision by the US to supply the missiles to Ukraine would trigger a major new escalation with Washington, but would not change the situation on the battlefield.
• Ukraine and Russia have exchanged 185 service personnel and 20 civilians in the latest prisoner swap.

Regional security

• Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, southern Russia, Putin said Moscow would carry out a nuclear test if another nuclear power did so after saying that he had seen signs a country, which he did not name, was preparing to conduct tests.
• Putin repeated his offer to the US of voluntarily rolling over an agreement capping the number of nuclear warheads in Russia’s arsenal when a key arms control treaty expires next year, if Washington agrees to do the same.

• Putin said Moscow never had any issues with Sweden or Finland and that their decision to join the NATO military alliance was therefore “stupid”.
• France’s detention of a tanker vessel suspected of operating for Russia’s “shadow fleet” is part of a new European strategy to block revenue funding Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron said.
• The Kremlin said France’s boarding of the tanker was “hysteria” that could create problems for global energy transportation routes, while Putin condemned it as an act of piracy.
• Putin said the global economy would suffer without Russian oil, warning that prices would jump to more than $100 per barrel if its supplies were cut off.

Politics and diplomacy

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he saw great agreement among European leaders on supporting the use of frozen Russian assets to provide loans for Ukraine – to be repaid eventually using war reparations from Moscow – adding that he expects a concrete decision on the matter within three weeks.
• Russia said the European Union’s idea was “delusional” and would prompt it to retaliate very harshly.
• Maxim Kruglov, the deputy leader of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, which opposes the war in Ukraine, has been charged with spreading lies about the Russian army and could face up to 10 years in jail if found guilty.
• Kruglov’s lawyer said her client had been charged over two posts he had made on the Telegram messaging app: One post referred to UN data about the number of people killed in the port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine, which Russia took control of in May 2022, and another to events in Bucha, a town north of Kyiv, in March 2022.
• Voters in the Czech Republic are likely to oust their centre-right government in an election on Friday and Saturday, with polls favouring populist billionaire Andrej Babis to return to power on pledges to raise wages and lift growth while reducing aid for Ukraine.

Moscow has called France’s detention of the ship, and arrest of the captain, an act of piracy.

France has said it is increasing pressure on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine by detaining an oil tanker suspected of operating as part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” and putting its captain on trial.

France’s detention of the tanker is part of a new European strategy to block revenue funding Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said at an EU event in Copenhagen on Thursday.

“We want to increase pressure on Russia to convince it to return to the negotiating table,” Macron said. “We have now decided to take a step further by moving towards a policy of obstruction when we have suspicious ships in our waters that are involved in this trafficking.”

The tanker, called the Boracay, was sailing last week off the coast of Denmark and was cited by European naval experts as possibly being involved in drone flights over the country. A series of drone incidents near the country’s airports and military bases over the last week forced the closure of the Copenhagen airport, causing major disruptions.

Macron said he could not rule out a connection between the vessel and the drone incursions, but so far lacked proof. Moscow has denied any involvement.

French Navy commandos raided the Boracay on Saturday off western France.

An investigation led by the French navy concluded that the ship, coming from Russia and heading to India with a “large oil shipment,” was flying no flag, Stéphane Kellenberger, prosecutor of the western port city of Brest, said.

The United Nations has detailed rules governing how ships must fly flags at sea and identify themselves under the flag of the state granting them nationality.

The ship’s captain, a Chinese national, will stand trial in France in February. He faces up to one year in prison and a 150,000 euro ($176,000) fine if convicted.

In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Europe of stoking “hysteria” and called France’s actions an act of “piracy”.

“This is piracy. I am aware of this case – the tanker was seized in neutral waters without any justification,” Putin said on Thursday at a foreign policy forum in the southern resort city of Sochi, adding that there was no military cargo on the vessel.

“It’s piracy, and how do you deal with pirates?” Putin said. “You destroy them. It doesn’t mean that tomorrow a war will erupt all across the global ocean, but certainly the risk of confrontation will seriously increase.”

Russia has been accused of operating a “shadow fleet” of tankers made up of ageing ships bought used, often by nontransparent entities with addresses in non-sanctioning countries, and sailing under flags from nonsanctioning countries. Their role is to help Russia’s oil exporters elude the $60 per barrel price cap imposed by Ukraine’s allies.

Macron said “30 to 40 percent” of Russia’s war effort is “financed through the revenues of the shadow fleet”.

“It represents more than 30 billion euros. So it’s extremely important to increase the pressure on this shadow fleet, because it will clearly reduce the capacity to finance this war effort for Russia,” he said.

Despite Western sanctions, Russia’s military spending has fuelled its war economy. Three years into the war in Ukraine, growth is stalling, energy revenues are plunging, and the budget deficit is widening.

To shore up state coffers, Russia is raising the value-added tax from 20 percent to 22 percent, among other measures. The Ministry of Finance says funds will mainly cover defence and security spending.

The plan came a day after United States President Donald Trump said Russia was in “big economic trouble”, but is it?

Can the United Kingdom’s Labour Party deliver on its economic promises?

Plus, will the Africa-US trade pact, AGOA, be renewed?

More than 350 people have been rescued after the southern Ukrainian city was hit by two months of rain in just seven hours.

At least nine people, including one child, have been killed after a severe rainstorm and flooding in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, according to the country’s emergency services.

A total of 362 others have been rescued so far as workers evacuated trapped people and pumped water out of buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Wednesday.

A little girl who had been missing was found in the early morning thanks to the relief efforts, the service added.

It posted pictures of people rescued from a flooded bus and of vehicles being pulled from the water.

Gennadiy Trukhanov, the mayor of Odesa, who said the situation was difficult but “under control”, wrote that almost two months of rain had fallen in the city in just seven hours.

“No storm sewer system can withstand such a load,” the mayor said on Telegram, noting that rescue efforts were continuing “without a break”.

More bad weather is forecast for Thursday, potentially adding to the challenges faced by Ukrainian first responders, three-and-a-half years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

The weather-related deaths came as the local military administration in the southern city of Kherson said a man had died on Wednesday morning as a result of a Russian attack there.

Meanwhile, an overnight Russian attack on the northeast Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injured six people, including a policeman, and started several fires, according to the national police.

Five of the six people were taken to hospital for treatment, said Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of Kharkiv region.

Videos and photos from the scene showed firefighters attempting to extinguish flames that appeared to be ripping through market stalls.

Over in Russia, the regional governor, Mikhail Yevrayev, reported that a fire had broken out at an oil refinery in the Yaroslavl region.

Despite Ukraine’s continued targeting of oil facilities inside Russia, Yevrayev claimed that the blaze had nothing to do with its ongoing war with Ukraine.

“Residents were concerned it might have been the result of an enemy drone attack,” he said. But what happened has nothing to do with that …The fire is of a technological nature.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is “critical” as the facility has been without power for seven days.

“It has been seven days now. There has never been anything like this before,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Tuesday.

The Russian-installed management at the nuclear plant said on Wednesday that backup electricity supply at the plant is sufficient, but that resumption of supply via the Dneprovskaya line is impossible due to Ukrainian shelling, Russian state news agency RIA reported.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed late on Tuesday that he was “in constant contact with the two sides with the aim to enable the plant’s swift reconnection to the electricity grid”.

“While the plant is currently coping thanks to its emergency diesel generators — the last line of defence — and there is no immediate danger as long as they keep working, it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety,” he said.

Here are the key events on day 1,315 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 1 :

Fighting

• Russian forces claim to have captured a village near the city of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the Russian Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is engaging with Russia and Ukraine to restore offsite power to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as Russian shelling has prevented restoration of power needed to cool nuclear reactors and prevent a meltdown, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia’s shelling around the Zaporizhzhia plant “is a threat to everyone”.
• “No terrorist in the world has ever dared to do with a nuclear power plant what Russia is doing now,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Tuesday.

Regional security

• European Union leaders will discuss proposals for a “drone wall” at a summit on Wednesday in Copenhagen, following days of airspace intrusions by unidentified unmanned aircraft that forced temporary closures at Danish airports.
• The “drone wall” summit will also be the first opportunity for leaders of the EU’s 27 countries to debate a proposal to use Russian assets frozen in European banks to fund a loan of 140 billion euros ( $164.37bn) for Ukraine.
• The Kremlin said that Germany has long been indirectly involved in the war in Ukraine after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that Europe is “no longer at peace” with Russia.
• Moscow also said that Europe would be better off seeking dialogue with Russia about security issues rather than looking to build a divisive “drone wall”.
• Romania is looking to quickly set up production on its territory of a plant to build defensive drones, along with Ukraine, for use domestically as well as by EU and NATO allies, the country’s foreign minister, Oana Toiu, said.
• The French Navy said that authorities were investigating a possible sanctions infraction by the oil tanker Boracay, a vessel suspected of belonging to the so-called “shadow fleet” involved in the transport of Russian oil.

Military aid

• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow did not believe that Washington had taken a final decision on supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin said that there were many people living in Ukraine’s Odesa and Mykolaiv regions who wanted to “link their fate to Russia” but were afraid to speak out.
• Russia will expel an Austrian diplomat, according to Russian state news agencies, in response to Vienna’s decision to throw out a Russian diplomat over suspicions of relaying company secrets from Austrian oil company OMV to the Kremlin.
• US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that India is starting to diversify its oil purchases away from Russia, and that the EU is trying to strengthen economic ties with India.
• Russia’s Lavrov said that he believed Moldova’s election on Sunday had been openly manipulated, as the pro-European governing party won a resounding victory over its Russian-leaning rival in the key parliamentary election.

Ukrainian leader says the plant has been without power for seven days, the longest stretch since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is “critical” as the facility has been without power for seven days.

“It has been seven days now. There has never been anything like this before,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Tuesday.

One of the diesel generators providing emergency power to the plant is no longer working, Zelenskyy said, a week after external power lines went down.

“Russian shelling has cut the plant off from the electricity network,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“This is a threat to everyone. No terrorist in the world has ever dared to do with a nuclear power plant what Russia is doing now.”

The outage is the longest the Russian-occupied plant has gone without power since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It is also the 10th time since the start of the war that the plant – the largest in Europe – has been disconnected from the power grid.

Russia seized control of Zaporizhzhia in the first weeks of the war, and the plant’s six reactors, which before the conflict produced about one-fifth of Ukraine’s electricity, were shut down after Moscow took over.

But the plant needs power to maintain cooling and safety systems, which prevent reactors from melting – a danger that could set off a nuclear incident.

Russian officials have not commented on the latest statements on conditions at the plant.

But Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of risking a potentially devastating nuclear disaster by attacking the site, and have traded blame over the latest blackout.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, earlier this week decried the cutoff of the external power lines but assigned no blame to either side.

In a statement on Tuesday, Grossi said he was engaging with officials from both countries to restore offsite power to Zaporizhzhia as soon as possible.

“I’m in constant contact with the two sides with the aim to enable the plant’s swift re-connection to the electricity grid,” the IAEA chief said.

“While the plant is currently coping thanks to its emergency diesel generators – the last line of defence – and there is no immediate danger as long as they keep working, it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety,” he added.

“Neither side would benefit from a nuclear accident.”

IAEA monitors are stationed permanently at Zaporizhzhia and at Ukraine’s three other nuclear power stations.

The IAEA is engaging with both sides of the military conflict to help pave the way for the restoration of offsite power to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya NPP as soon as possible, Director General @rafaelmgrossi said today: https://t.co/ODSjkR6fXd pic.twitter.com/SbWEh7TBCq

— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) September 30, 2025