Ukraine news – live: Heavy snowfall to blanket Kyiv with millions cut off from power – live

The Ukrainian defence ministry has claimed that a total of 86,710 Russian soldiers have died in the course of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The war, which has continued for 276 day now, has seen heavy Russian losses, the defence ministry said in its update yesterday.

Russian losses include 278 aircraft, 261 helicopters, more than 2,900 tanks and 5,848 armoured combat vehicles.

The Kremlin has not confirmed its losses in the Ukraine invasion, which Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”.

Aside from the impact caused by the speed of the missiles and the combustion of any unspent fuel, such weapons are unlikely to achieve reliable effects against Moscow’s intended targets, the Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update.

The Kremlin is almost certainly hoping that such missiles “will function as decoys and divert Ukrainian air defences”, London believes.

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Volodymyr Zelensky’s office has announced that the Ukrainians who defended Mariupol and the Snake Island outpost now heavily imbued with the symbolism of Kyiv’s resistance against Moscow’s forces are among those freed in the latest prisoner swap.

“Another exchange of prisoners. We managed to free 12 of our people. The soldiers who defended, in particular, Mariupol, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Snake Island are going home,” said Andriy Yermak.

“Over the last week, we managed to return 98 Ukrainians. We are working on the release of all our people. Thank you for the work of the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.”

Russia’s “special military operation” has now been raging for more than nine months in Ukraine, the conflict continuing to record devastating casualties and force the mass displacement of millions of Ukrainians.

Vladimir Putin began the war by claiming Ukraine needed to be “demilitarised and de-Nazified”, an entirely baseless pretext on which to launch a landgrab against a sovereign neighbour state that happens to have a Jewish president.

Ukraine has fought back courageously ever since and continued to defy the odds by defending itself against Russian onslaughts with the help of Western military aid.

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Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of carrying out a genocide against Ukraine as the invasion entered its 10th month.

The Ukrainian president was commemorating the victims of the Holodomor genocide perpetrated in Soviet Ukraine from 1932-1933 under Joseph Stalin’s regime.

“Ukrainians went through genocide. And today we are doing everything possible and impossible to stop Russia’s new genocidal policy. A new one – but similar to the one that killed millions of people in the 20th century,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address.

He added: “And we don’t just fight off aggression. Step by step, we are creating a system that will stop aggression, dismantle its consequences, and guarantee long-term security – the security of Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world.”

Family members held the last rites for a two-day old infant who was killed in a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia this week.

The child was killed after artillery fire hit a maternity ward in the city of Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“At night, Russian monsters launched huge rockets at the small maternity ward of the hospital in Vilniansk,” regional governor Oleksandr Starukh had said.

“Grief fills our hearts,” he added. “A baby who has just appeared in the world has been killed.”

The Ukrainian defence ministry took to Twitter to share the photo of the newborn’s funeral.

“Serhiyko. The youngest victim of Russian terrorism. The baby lived for only two days. For each of our children, for each of our babies, our soldiers will fight their hardest on the battlefield. But no matter how strong our rage is, we will never become like you, Russians,” the ministry’s tweet read.

Top Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of committiong over 49,000 crimes of aggression and war crimes.

As of 26 November, officials have recorded 49,471 war crimes and crimes of agrression by Russian forces in Ukraine during the course of Moscow’s nine-month long invasion, said the prosecutor’s general’s office.

Another 19,139 crimes against Ukraine’s national security have also been recorded by law enforcement agencies.

Ukrainian power suppliers will not be able to provide a stable electricity supply to residents in the war-hit country as of yet, Volodymyr Zelensky said in his late night address.

“Today, our power engineers continued restoring the system – and we now have more opportunities to generate and supply electricity. But, unfortunately, not enough to make the supply completely stable,” he said.

At the peak of outages earlier this week well over 10 million Ukrainians were disconnected following a major Russian missile bombardment.

As of Saturday morning, Mr Zelensky said around half of these had been restored. “However, in 14 regions and in Kyiv, there are still restrictions for more than a hundred thousand subscribers in each of the regions,” he said.

The Ukrainian president warned that if consumption increases in the evening, the number of outages may increase. This “once again shows how important it is now to save power and consume it rationally”, he said.

It is a new test of endurance for many in Kyiv and the surrounding regions who have already spent the last few weeks dealing with regular blackouts.

Heavy snowfall was expected in Kyiv starting today and the temperatures are dropping below freezing day and night.

Electricity producers were able to provide only three-quarters of consumption needs, necessitating restrictions and blackouts across the country, Grid operator Ukrenergo said.