Russia-Ukraine war live news: at least 17 killed in attack on housing in Zaporizhzhia | Ukraine

At least 17 die in shelling of housing in Zaporizhzhia

Shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev has said.

Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after an attack on residential housing. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” he said.

The city lies 125km (80 miles) from the Russian-held nuclear power plant that is Europe’s largest.

⚡️Удар по Запоріжжю: повідомляють про 17 загиблих і 40 поранених. Цифри попередні. Жертв може бути більше, повідомляє секретар міськради Анатолій Куртєв

Зруйновані багатоквартирні приватні будинки

росіяни не здатні відповісти на полі бою і тому б’ють по містах в тилу
📷📹ТРУХА pic.twitter.com/vVbRJDMR9C

— Антон Геращенко (@Gerashchenko7) October 9, 2022
A rescuer at a damaged residential building in Zaporizhzhia after the Russian airstrike. Photograph: Reuters

Updated at 04.13 EDT

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The time is just past 1pm in Kyiv. Here is what you might have missed:

• Shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev has said. Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after an attack on residential housing. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” he said. The city lies 125km (80 miles) from the Russian-held nuclear power plant that is Europe’s largest.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has vowed that those who ordered and issued the “merciless” strikes in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia will be held responsible. In a post on his Facebook page, he said the attack was “evil” and that everyone involved in the incident “will be held accountable”.

• The damage from Saturday’s explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea could have a “significant” impact on Russia’s “already strained ability to sustain its forces” in southern Ukraine, the latest UK intelligence update says. The Ministry of Defence said the blast “will likely touch President Putin closely” for reasons including that it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was a childhood friend. The ministry said the bridge’s rail crossing had played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Russian divers will on Sunday examine the extent of damage from the blast on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia. Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.

• Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Saturday tightening security for the Kerch bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion that crippled the heavily guarded bridge. Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, is in charge of the effort. By Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was operational again but road traffic would remain constricted.

• An adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the explosion on the Kerch bridge was just “the beginning”. Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” Three people were killed on Saturday after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of the bridge, Russian officials said.

• Russian troops fighting in the Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine could receive all the supplies they needed via existing land and sea corridors, said Russia’s defence ministry after the Kerch bridge explosion. The road-and-rail bridge has been used to take Russian personnel and military supplies through the peninsula into other parts of Ukraine’s south.

• The parliamentary leader of Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge blast but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland. “Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire,” David Arakhamia wrote on Telegram. “The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode.”

• Russia has named a new senior commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin is a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s. He led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.

• Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops were involved in “very tough fighting” near Bakhmut, a strategically important eastern town Russia is trying to take. Reuters reported that while Ukrainian troops had recaptured thousands of square kilometres of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces meet more determined resistance. Zelenskiy said in his nightly address: “We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where it is very, very difficult now – very tough fighting.”

• Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the diesel generators at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had only a limited supply of fuel. Overnight shelling cut power to the plant, which needs cooling to avoid a meltdown, forcing it to switch to emergency generators. The United Natoins atomic watchdog has renewed calls for a protection zone at the plant, condemning the shelling as “tremendously irresponsible”.

• Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 30% in nine months, the ministry of economy said on Saturday. “Among the negative factors that affected the economy, the weather and the actions of the occupiers stand out,” it said.

• France’s prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents’ Awards on Saturday largely honoured reporting on the Ukraine conflict, with Associated Press and Burkina Faso newspaper Sidwaya among the recipients. The photo prize went to Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for his work with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the fall of Mariupol for AP.

• The series of explosions that rocked Kharkiv early on Saturday sparked a fire at one of the city’s medical institutions, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said. Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the explosions were the result of missile strikes in the city centre, Associated Press reported. They also sparked a fire in a non-residential building.

• The German defence minister has told Nato it must do more to bolster security, warning: “We cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go.” Christine Lambrecht said Germany had heard of Russian threats to Lithuania for implementing EU sanctions and that they must be taken seriously and be prepared, Reuters reported.

• The UK has rejected Moscow’s call for a secret ballot in the UN general assembly next week on whether to condemn Russia’s move to annex four regions in Ukraine and requested that the 193-member body vote publicly. The general assembly is set to vote on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” and the “attempted illegal annexation”.

The latest pictures from the Russian shelling of housing in Zaporizhzhia that has reportedly killed at least 17 people.

A rescuer with a hose extinguishing a fire in a residential building damaged after a strike in Zaporizhzhia, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Handout / Ukrainian State Emergency Service / AFP) Photograph: Ukrainian State Emergency Servic/AFP/Getty ImagesFirefighters work at the scene where a residential building was heavily damaged after a Russian attack in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) Photograph: Léo Corrêa/APA residential building damaged after a strike in Zaporizhzhia, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Handout / Ukrainian State Emergency Service / AFP) Photograph: Ukrainian State Emergency Servic/AFP/Getty Images

Slovakia’s defence minister, Yaroslav Nad, has tweeted that two Zuzana howitzers have been sent to Ukraine.

He said:

To celebrate his 70th birthday, we gave the aggressor Putin another gift. Two more new Zuzana 2 howitzers are already in Ukraine (and much more to come).

Updated at 05.42 EDT

Andrew Roth

Andrew Roth reports for us from Moscow:

Russia has appointed a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s as its first overall commander for the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin struggles to halt a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray.

The appointment of Gen Sergei Surovikin came on the same day as Vladimir Putin was dealt a humiliating blow after an explosion on the Kerch bridge sank a section of the motorway into the Kerch Strait and caused a major fire on the railway.

Surovikin is a veteran commander who led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.

Read more: Russia appoints notorious general to lead Ukraine offensive

Ukraine’s ministry of defence has posted pictures of the missile strike on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

The tweet adds that if Ukrainian military forces “had modern anti-missile systems, we could have prevented such tragedies”.

Another russian missile strike on the city of Zaporizhzhia. 17 civilians were killed.
If #UAarmy had modern Western anti-missile systems, we could have prevented such tragedies. pic.twitter.com/6mTHlFshF9

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 9, 2022

Updated at 04.29 EDT

Zelenskiy condemns ‘evil’ strike on Zaporizhzhia

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has vowed that those who ordered and issued the “merciless” strikes in Ukraine’s south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia will be held responsible.

In a post on his Facebook page, he said:

Zaporozhye again. Again merciless strikes on civilians. In residential buildings, just in the middle of the night. There are already 12 dead. 49 injured in hospital, 6 of them children.

The absolute meanness of all. Absolute evil.

Inhumans and terrorists. From the one who gave this order, and to all who followed this order. They will be held accountable. A must. Before the law and before the people.

Updated at 05.42 EDT

Peter Beaumont in Kyiv and Pjotr Sauer report:

As a chilly autumn dawn broke on Saturday over the Kerch bridge linking Russia-occupied Crimea to the mainland, the road traffic was light.

With the sky turning pink, a few cars and several lorries were making their way across the bridge, which is about 12 miles (19km) long and before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was used by 15,000 cars a day,

A little way distant and above the cars, a long cargo train carrying tankers of fuel among its wagons was also making its way towards the peninsula across the parallel railway bridge.

The blast, when it came at 6.07am (3.07 GMT), was devastating. CCTV footage posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a car and a lorry moving almost together when a vast fireball engulfed them, orange mixed with a storm of white-hot fragments swirling around the span.

Read more: Pressure on Putin grows as his ‘jewel in the crown’ bridge to Crimea is blown up

CCTV footage appears to show the moment the bridge linking Crimea and Russia was hit by a huge explosion early on Saturday morning.

The Kerch bridge, a hated symbol of the Kremlin’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian peninsula, was built in 2018.

Footage shared on Russian Telegram channels and news agencies appeared to show the moment of the explosion with two vehicles, a truck and a car, at the centre of the blast, although it was unclear whether either was responsible or simply caught up in the detonation

Kerch bridge blast: CCTV footage appears to show moment of explosion – video

At least 12 people were killed and 49 hospitalised, including six children, as a result of the shelling in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the region’s governor says.

A nine-storey building was partially destroyed overnight, five other residential buildings levelled and many more damaged in 12 Russian missile attacks on the city in south-east Ukraine, Reuters quoted Oleksandr Starukh as saying.

The governor said on Telegram:

There may be more people under the rubble. A rescue operation is under way at the scene. Eight people have already been rescued.

City official Anatoliy Kurtev had said earlier that at least 17 people were killed when missiles hit a high-rise apartment complex and buildings.

Updated at 04.12 EDT

Russian divers will on Sunday examine the extent of damage from the blast on the Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia.

Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.

The work came as the Kremlin-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said:

Of course, emotions have been triggered and there is a healthy desire to seek revenge.

Peter Beaumont in Kyiv has the full story:

Crimea bridge blast could have ‘significant’ impact on Russian forces, says MoD

The damage from Saturday’s explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea could have a “significant” impact on Russia’s “already strained ability to sustain its forces” in southern Ukraine, the latest UK intelligence update says.

The Ministry of Defence said the blast “will likely touch President Putin closely” for reasons including that it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was a childhood friend.

The ministry said the bridge’s rail crossing had played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The extent of damage to the rail crossing was uncertain, it said, but any serious disruption to its capacity would be “highly likely” to significantly affect Russian forces in Ukraine’s south.

Updated at 02.31 EDT

Some officials in Moscow and in Russian-occupied Ukraine have called for retaliation over the explosion that heavily damaged the Kerch bridge linking Crimea and Russia on Saturday.

“There is an undisguised terrorist war against us,” Russian ruling party deputy Oleg Morozov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Agence France-Presse quoted a Russian-installed official in the occupied Ukrainian Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, as saying:

Everyone is waiting for a retaliatory strike and it is likely to come.

Military analysts said the blast could have a major impact if Moscow saw the need to shift already hard-pressed troops to the Crimea from other regions or if it prompted a rush by residents to leave.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that even if Ukrainians were not behind the blast, it constituted “a massive influence operation win for Ukraine”.

He said on Twitter:

It is a demonstration to Russians, and the rest of the world, that Russia’s military cannot protect any of the provinces it recently annexed.

At least 17 die in shelling of housing in Zaporizhzhia

Shelling in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 17 people, city official Anatoliy Kurtev has said.

Anton Gerashchenko, a senior presidential adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said preliminary figures suggested 17 dead and 40 wounded after an attack on residential housing. “The Russians are not able to respond on the battlefield and therefore hit the cities in the rear,” he said.

The city lies 125km (80 miles) from the Russian-held nuclear power plant that is Europe’s largest.

⚡️Удар по Запоріжжю: повідомляють про 17 загиблих і 40 поранених. Цифри попередні. Жертв може бути більше, повідомляє секретар міськради Анатолій Куртєв

Зруйновані багатоквартирні приватні будинки

росіяни не здатні відповісти на полі бою і тому б’ють по містах в тилу
📷📹ТРУХА pic.twitter.com/vVbRJDMR9C

— Антон Геращенко (@Gerashchenko7) October 9, 2022
A rescuer at a damaged residential building in Zaporizhzhia after the Russian airstrike. Photograph: Reuters

Updated at 04.13 EDT

Summary

• Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Saturday tightening security for the Kerch bridge and for energy infrastructure between Crimea and Russia after the explosion that crippled the heavily guarded bridge. Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, is in charge of the effort. By Saturday evening, Russia said the rail link across the bridge was operational again but road traffic would remain constricted.

• An adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the explosion on the Kerch bridge was just “the beginning”. Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” Three people were killed on Saturday after a truck bomb caused a fire and the collapse of a section of the bridge, Russian officials said.

• Russian troops fighting in the Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia regions of southern Ukraine could receive all the supplies they needed via existing land and sea corridors, said Russia’s defence ministry after the Kerch bridge explosion. The road-and-rail bridge has been used to take Russian personnel and military supplies through the peninsula into other parts of Ukraine’s south.

• The parliamentary leader of Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge blast but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland. “Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire,” David Arakhamia wrote on Telegram. “The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode.”

• Russia has named a new senior commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Sergei Surovikin is a notorious general who opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in the 1990s. He led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017, where he was accused of using “controversial” tactics including indiscriminate bombing against anti-government fighters.

• Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops were involved in “very tough fighting” near Bakhmut, a strategically important eastern town Russia is trying to take. Reuters reported that while Ukrainian troops had recaptured thousands of square kilometres of land in recent offensives in the east and south, officials say progress is likely to slow once Kyiv’s forces meet more determined resistance. Zelenskiy said in his nightly address: “We are holding our positions in the Donbas, in particular in the Bakhmut direction, where it is very, very difficult now – very tough fighting.”

• Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the diesel generators at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had only a limited supply of fuel. Overnight shelling cut power to the plant, which needs cooling to avoid a meltdown, forcing it to switch to emergency generators. The United Natoins atomic watchdog has renewed calls for a protection zone at the plant, condemning the shelling as “tremendously irresponsible”.

• Ukraine’s GDP has shrunk by 30% in nine months, the ministry of economy said on Saturday. “Among the negative factors that affected the economy, the weather and the actions of the occupiers stand out,” it said.

• France’s prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents’ Awards on Saturday largely honoured reporting on the Ukraine conflict, with Associated Press and Burkina Faso newspaper Sidwaya among the recipients. The photo prize went to Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for his work with video journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the fall of Mariupol for AP.

• The series of explosions that rocked Kharkiv early on Saturday sparked a fire at one of the city’s medical institutions, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city said. Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the explosions were the result of missile strikes in the city centre, Associated Press reported. They also sparked a fire in a non-residential building.

• The German defence minister has told Nato it must do more to bolster security, warning: “We cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go.” Christine Lambrecht said Germany had heard of Russian threats to Lithuania for implementing EU sanctions and that they must be taken seriously and be prepared, Reuters reported.

• The UK has rejected Moscow’s call for a secret ballot in the UN general assembly next week on whether to condemn Russia’s move to annex four regions in Ukraine and requested that the 193-member body vote publicly. The general assembly is set to vote on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” and the “attempted illegal annexation”.