Live updates | Russia-Ukraine War | National

On Oct 18, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces are again peppering Ukraine with missile and drone attacks, mostly targeting energy facilities as winter approaches.

Moscow’s attacks during the night and into Tuesday morning mostly concentrated on cities in the south and east of Ukraine, which Russia invaded almost eight months ago.

Numerous explosions were heard in the eastern city of Kharkiv, especially in its industrial area south of the city center.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration, wrote on Telegram that eight rockets were fired from the nearby Russian city of Belgorod. He said there were no injuries.

Russia also shelled the southern city of Mykolaiv with S-300 missiles, killing a man whose body was found in the debris of a two-story building, according to Regional Governor Vitalii Kim. Moscow’s forces also launched Iranian-made drones against the city, with Ukraine shooting down five of them, Operational Command South said.

In the southeast city of Dnipro, an energy facility was hit twice and severely damaged, the deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.

In Kyiv, an energy facility was hit three times. In Zhytomyr, 140 kilometers (87 miles) west of the capital, another energy facility was struck.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, so-called suicide drones caused a fire at an infrastructure facility.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

— Winter is coming: Ukrainians dig in for brutal season

— EXPLAINER: Killer drones vie for supremacy over Ukraine

— Ukrainian resilience persists amid Russian barrages

— NATO begins nuclear exercises amid Russia’s war

— EU approves Ukraine training mission

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russia has been using up its stock of munitions “at an unsustainable rate.”

Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said late Monday that Russian forces face a major supply shortage, especially of precision weapons such as cruise missiles.

Moscow is being forced to turn to countries such as Iran and North Korea for supplies and equipment, including UAVs, artillery shells and rockets.

International sanctions and export controls slapped on Russia are exposing its technological weaknesses, Haines said.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russians forces have abducted two more employees of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

State nuclear operator Energoatom wrote on its Telegram channel that two people were detained and taken to an unknown location: the head of the information technology service Oleh Kostiukov and the assistant general director of the station Oleh Osheka.

At the beginning of October, another person, the deputy general director for personal Valeriі Martyniuk, was abducted, and his whereabouts are still unknown.

The first one among top management of the plant to be seized was the plant’s director, Ihor Murashov. He was blindfolded by Russian forces on his way home from work, then released in early October after being forced to make false statements on camera.

Ukrainian technicians have continued running the plant after it was seized by Russian troops.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced a wave of Russian drone attacks and strongly urged the country’s allies to provide it with air defense weapons.

“To guarantee the protection of our skies and reduce the possibilities for Russian terrorists to zero, we need much more air defense systems and more missiles for those systems,” he said in a televised address to the nation late Monday. “This is not only in Ukraine’s interests. The less opportunities for terror Russia has, the sooner this war ends.”

Explosives-laden suicide drones have struck Ukraine’s capital, setting buildings ablaze and tearing a hole in one of them. Authorities said four people died.

“Russia doesn’t have any chance on the battlefield, and it tries to compensate for its military defeats with terror,” Zelesnkyy said. “Why this terror? To put pressure on us, on Europe, on the entire world.”

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