LIVE – Ukraine accuses Russia of shooting the aid center, killing volunteers

Russia on Tuesday unveiled a new nuclear-powered icebreaker that will facilitate hydrocarbon exports to Asia via the Arctic, as Moscow reorients its energy strategy due to Western sanctions over its attack on Ukraine.

“The development of (Northern sea routes) will allow Russia to fully realize its export potential and build an efficient logistics route, including Southeast Asia,” Vladimir Putin said.

More than 170 meters long, this new nuclear-powered ship can break ice up to three meters deep. This is the third copy of the series released by the atomic energy giant Rosatom.

Ukrainian investigators said on Tuesday they had arrested the head of a Russian detention center in the city of Kherson, which was liberated by Moscow troops on November 11 after more than eight months of occupation, on charges of “treason”.

“From the first days of the occupation of Kherson, this employee of the detention center worked as the head of detention centers and places of execution for the invaders,” the State Investigation Bureau of Ukraine (SIB) said. ) in the statement.

According to SBI, this employee “made it possible for the criminals who were in prison to escape shortly before the release of Kherson”.

Vladimir Putin will meet the mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine, the Kremlin reported to Sky News on Tuesday.

“The president often organizes such meetings, not all of them are open to the public,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.

In September, Moscow announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 additional troops – drawing many Russians into the war in Ukraine.

Russian airstrikes hit a humanitarian aid distribution center in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Orykhiv on Tuesday, killing one volunteer and injuring two women, the governor of the Zaporozhye region said.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential staff, wrote in the Telegram messaging program: “Russian terrorists bomb humanitarian cargo delivery points, continue nuclear blackmail – this is a sad tactic of those who lost their soldiers.”

“For every such action, Ukraine has a counter-action,” he added.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has come under fire after attending a soccer match wearing a scarf depicting some Ukrainian territories as part of Hungary.

“The promotion of revisionist ideas in Hungary does not contribute to the development of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and does not correspond to the principles of European policy,” said Oleg Nikolenko, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

Viktor Orbán’s scarf is said to represent a map of “Greater Hungary”, which today is part of Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that no significant progress has been made in establishing a safety zone around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.

The last one, which has been under the control of Russian forces for several months, was hit by shell fire on Sunday.

Since February 24, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has registered 16,784 civilian casualties in Ukraine: 6,595 dead and 10,189 injured.

The death toll is highest in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with 3,939 dead and 5,338 injured.

The UN organization believes that the actual figures are much higher, as information from some places is difficult to obtain and many reports are still pending.

Residents of the city of Liman in Ukraine, which was liberated from Russian occupation a month ago, live in their basements to protect themselves from the cold. They help to get firewood for heating by huddling together in narrow places that do not even allow full stretching.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that his country “does not intend to carry out a ‘special operation’ to change the government in Ukraine”, Sky News reports.

A statement at odds with the launch of the invasion in February, when Moscow appeared to want to topple the Ukrainian government and install a regime favorable to Russia.

Ukrainian security service SBU and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kiev early Tuesday morning as part of operations aimed at “alleged subversive activities by Russian special services.”

It is the headquarters of the Russian-backed branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The SBU announced that the excavation was aimed at preventing the monastery from being used as “the center of the Russian world” and “was carried out to investigate suspicions that the buildings were used to house subversive and intelligence groups, foreign nationals, and stockpile weapons.”

15 thousand works disappeared from Kherson museum. Between October 31 and November 3, dozens of soldiers loaded the trucks as residents watched, shortly before Russian forces withdrew from the city.

“They took almost 80% of the collection from the Museum of Fine Arts, and a large part of the collection from another museum,” explains Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko.

These flights are authorized by the Russian martial law, thus speaking of “restitution”. Ukrainian heritage has been particularly targeted by the Russians since the occupation began.

This Sunday, Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye was bombed by Russia. “There are more than twelve strikes,” Petro Kotin, president of Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom, told BFMTV.

“In the last nine months, there have been 19 episodes that put the plant at risk: it has become the most dangerous episode in the world,” he laments.

According to him, “the Russians are holding the world hostage by seizing this plant and destroying the energy infrastructure.”

CNN reports that, according to a Ukrainian military official, Russian forces fired about 60 shells at Nikopol overnight and continued their multi-day attack on the southern region of Ukraine.

Valentin Reznichenko, head of the Dnepropetrovsk regional military administration, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday morning: “They fired at several villages of the Marhanets community.”

He said that no one was injured during the shooting during the night.

Poland and Germany announced the deployment of anti-aircraft missile systems Patriot More near the Ukrainian-Polish border, the Polish Minister of Defense said.

Reuters reports that Berlin offered Warsaw this defense system after last week’s missile crash in Poland.

such as ground-based air defense systems Patriotdesigned to intercept incoming missiles.

An official of Ukraine’s major energy supplier said that Ukrainians will live with power cuts at least until the end of March.

Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged by Russian attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky has left millions without electricity and water as winter approaches.

Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in Kyiv that the winter will threaten the lives of millions of Ukrainians after Russia’s series of devastating attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.

In this context, the Ukrainian government called on the residents of Kherson “to evacuate to safer parts of the country for the winter, especially women, children and the elderly.

After Sunday’s shootings of unknown origin at the Zaporizhia NPP, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on the “absolute necessity of protecting the safety and security” of the site during a phone call this Monday.

Emmanuel Macron said he was “deeply concerned” by “new shootings against a plant” in Ukraine, which Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of bombing each other.

The safety of the Nuclear Power Plant was not called into question by the bombings, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Monday that Kyiv had found four “torture sites” used by Russians in Kherson ten days before their forced retreat from the region, accusing Moscow of war crimes.

Welcome to this Tuesday’s coverage of the war in Ukraine.