Ukraine energy grid faces ‘sternest test yet’ over winter after destruction of power plants – Ukraine war live | Ukraine

Germany plans almost €400m ($445m) in extra military aid for Ukraine this year despite a row over budgetary constraints, according to a finance ministry document seen by Agence France-Presse (AFP) onGermany plans extra 400 mn euros military aid to Ukraine Thursday.

The additional funds are needed to “fulfil the German government’s support commitments to the Ukrainian armed forces”, the letter to the parliamentary budget committee said.

The sum of €160m from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets will be allocated to meet Ukraine’s urgent humanitarian needs for this winter, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.

She added that a fuel power plant is being dismantled in Lithuania and will be rebuilt in Ukraine, where 80% of the country’s thermal plants have been destroyed.

“We aim to restore 2.5 gw of capacity, which is 15% of Ukraine’s needs,” von der Leyen said, according to Reuters.

Russian forces have taken control of the village of Heorhiivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the RIA state news agency cited the defence ministry as saying on Thursday.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report, the latest in a series of reports by Russia of gains in eastern Ukraine.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will travel to Kyiv on Friday and meet president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the bloc seeks to help Ukraine weather Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure.

“I will be travelling to Kyiv to discuss these matters in person with president Zelenskiy tomorrow in our efforts to help Ukraine,” von der Leyen told a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The coming winter will prove the “sternest test yet” for Ukraine’s energy grid since Russia’s invasion, with numerous power plants destroyed or damaged, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.

Putting forward a 10-point plan for Ukraine to safeguard its war-battered energy security, the IEA also warned of problems for neighbouring Moldova’s electricity supply after Ukraine stops allowing the transit of Russian gas at the end of 2024, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Ukraine’s energy system has made it through the past two winters … But this winter will be, by far, its sternest test yet,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a news release accompanying the report.

The report said that in 2022 and 2023 “about half of Ukraine’s power generation capacity was either occupied by Russian forces, destroyed or damaged, and approximately half of the large network substations were damaged by missiles and drones”.

With Ukraine having lost more than two-thirds of its electricity production capacity since the Russian invasion, the report warned of a “yawning gap between available electricity supply and peak demand”.

It urged European countries to expedite deliveries of equipment and parts to rebuild the damaged facilities and called for measures to protect them from drones.

AFP reports that in the summer, when energy needs tend to be lower, Ukraine’s capacity for power generation already fell more than two gigawatts below the peak demand of 12 gigawatts.

As demand for energy to heat homes increases in winter, the IEA predicts that the country’s peak demand could increase to nearly 19 gigawatts.

“Strains that are bearable in the summer months may become unbearable when temperatures start to fall and supplies of heat and water falter,” the report said.

The IEA said that power plants damaged by Russian attacks or occupied by Russian troops, such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, urgently needed replacing or repairing, while the physical and IT security of critical infrastructure needed strengthening.

It also recommended increasing electricity and gas import capacity from the EU, accelerating the decentralisation of electricity production and greater investment in energy efficiency.

It estimated the cost of necessary repairs and upgrades at $30bn.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a large Russian weapons depot caused a blast that was picked up by earthquake monitoring stations, in one of the biggest strikes on Moscow’s military arsenal since the war began.

Pro-Russian military bloggers said Ukraine struck an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a historic town more than 300 miles north of Ukraine and about 230 miles west of Moscow.

Videos and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame rising high into the night sky and detonations thundering across a lake, in a region not far from the border with Belarus.

The strike was part of a broader Ukrainian drone campaign targeting Russian oil refineries, power plants, airfields and military factories, and highlights Kyiv’s enhanced long-range drone capabilities.

Earthquake monitoring stations registered what sensors thought was a minor earthquake in the area.

Ukrainian Pravda reported that the operation was conducted by the Ukrainian security service together with the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine and the Special Operations Force. An unnamed official at the Ukrainian security service said the weapons warehouse contained long-range Russian missiles and guided bombs known as KABs.

Russia’s defence ministry said 54 Ukrainian drones targeted five western Russian regions overnight and that all of them were destroyed.

But in a tacit admission of the strike, Igor Rudenya, the governor of Russia’s Tver region, said firefighters there were trying to contain a fire and that some residents were being evacuated from their homes.

Russia’s campaign of airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy grid probably violates international humanitarian law, a UN monitoring body said on Thursday, reports Reuters.

Over the course of its invasion, Russia has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Ukrainian electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities.

The first big wave of strikes hit in the autumn and winter of 2022, a few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The strikes have continued throughout the war, though Moscow has markedly stepped up its campaign since March.Each wave of strikes has left Ukrainian cities without power for hours at a time for weeks on end.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) focused its report on nine waves of strikes between March and August 2024.

According to Reuters, the report said:

There are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign to damage or destroy Ukraine’s civilian electricity and heat-producing and transmission infrastructure have violated foundational principles of international humanitarian law.”

HRMMU said it had visited seven power plants that were damaged or destroyed by attacks, as well as 28 communities affected by the strikes.

The HRMMU said the attacks posed risks to Ukraine’s water supply, to sewage and sanitation, to the provision of heating and hot water, to public health, to education and to the wider economy.

Reuters reports that the report highlighted a particular problem in urban areas, where most homes are linked up to centralised heating and hot water systems.

The report said that nearly 95% of Kyiv’s residents relied on centralised basement heating systems whose output requires electric pumps to reach the upper floors of the building.

“Without emergency electricity supply, millions of urban residents could be left without heat,” it said.

HRMMU cited experts as saying that Ukrainians should expect power outages of between four and 18 hours a day this winter.

The report also said that during the summer period of 2024, energy-related issues were the second most common reason that Ukrainians gave for fleeing the country.

Kyiv says the targeting of its energy system is a war crime, and the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for four Russian officials and military officers for the bombing of civilian power infrastructure.

Moscow says power infrastructure is a legitimate military targets and has dismissed the charges against its officials as irrelevant.

IMF postpones Russia visit after heavy criticism across Europe

Phillip Inman

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indefinitely postponed a staff mission to Moscow this week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, after the move came under heavy criticism from several of Kyiv’s European allies.

After revelations in the Guardian of widespread condemnation, the IMF said it would spend more time gathering information for a “rigorous analysis”.

Officials of the Washington-based organisation were due to travel to the Russian capital and meet “stakeholders” before publishing an assessment of the economy.

The IMF said last week it was a “mutual obligation” to carry out an article IV annual review of a member country and the situation in Russia had become “more settled”.

On Friday, nine European countries protested against the IMF’s plans, saying it would damage the reputation of the fund to resume dialogue with a country that had invaded another.

Aleksei Mozhin, the IMF’s executive director for Russia, told the Tass news agency on Wednesday that the decision was taken on Monday, the day preliminary talks were supposed to start.

Critics said a first official visit since 2021 would be based on flawed data and provide Russia with a cloak of respectability.

In a letter seen by the Financial Times and signed by Poland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and non-EU members Iceland and Norway, ministers said there was a “reputational risk” to the IMF, and indicated a visit would “diminish donors’ efforts and actions in supporting Ukraine through IMF initiatives”.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would “probably” meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will be in the US next week to address a meeting of the UN security council on Russia’s war in his country.

“Probably, yes,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter about whether he will meet the Ukrainian leader. Trump did not provide further details.

Zelenskiy said in August he wanted to present a peace plan to US president Joe Biden, vice-president Kamala Harris and Trump. While Trump and Zelenskiy talked over the phone in July, they have not talked in person since Trump’s 2017-2021 term.

More on that in a moment. In other developments:

• Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that his “Victory Plan”, intended to bring peace to Ukraine while keeping the country strong and avoiding all “frozen conflicts”, was now complete after much consultation. Zelenskiy pledged last month to present his plan to Biden, presumably next week when he is in the US. While providing daily updates on the plan’s preparation, Zelenskiy has given few clues of the contents, indicating only that it aims to create terms acceptable to Ukraine, now locked in conflict with Russia for more than two and a half years.

• The Biden administration still is not convinced that it should give Ukraine the authority to launch long-range missiles deeper into Russia, and US officials say they are seeking more detailed information about how Kyiv would use the weapons and how they fit into the broader strategy for the war, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. US officials said they have asked Ukraine to spell out more clearly its combat objectives. The report comes a week after Biden discussed easing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles supplied by the west with British prime minister Keir Starmer.

• A Ukrainian drone attack on a large Russian weapons depot caused a blast that was picked up by earthquake monitoring stations, in one of the biggest strikes on Moscow’s military arsenal since the war began. Pro-Russian military bloggers said Ukraine struck an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a historic town more than 300 miles north of Ukraine and about 230 miles west of Moscow. Videos and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame rising high into the night sky and detonations thundering across a lake, in a region not far from the border with Belarus.

• The EU must be quick to increase its defences as Russia may be ready for a confrontation in six to eight years, the nominee to be the EU’s first defence commissioner told Reuters in an interview. Andrius Kubilius, a former prime minister of Lithuania, has been tapped to boost the continent’s arms industry, by getting EU countries to spend more on European weapons and procure jointly – as well as by getting companies themselves to cooperate more across borders. The new post reflects how security has risen to the top of the EU’s political agenda since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “Defence ministers and Nato generals agree that Vladimir Putin could be ready for confrontation with Nato and the EU in six to eight years,” Kubilius, a fierce critic of Russia and a supporter of Ukraine, said on Wednesday.

• Putin on Wednesday said he had ordered a boost of Russia’s army to 1.5 million active soldiers earlier this week to ensure a well-trained military. The president on Monday signed a decree boosting the number of active troops by 180,000 soldiers – making the Russian army the second largest in the world by active troop size.

• Russia’s counteroffensive to retake Ukrainian-held territory in the Kursk region has been “stopped”, a spokesperson from Ukraine’s military administration there told AFP on Wednesday, after Moscow said it was beginning to repel the surprise incursion. Russia earlier this month said it had taken back several villages from Ukraine in the region, where Kyiv has held on to swathes of land since its shock offensive began more than a month ago. “They tried to attack from the flanks, but they were stopped there,” spokesperson Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky from Ukraine’s military administration in Kursk told AFP.

• The British government on Wednesday said it summoned Russia’s ambassador to condemn what it called Moscow’s “unprecedented and unfounded public campaign of aggression against the UK”. Andrei Kelin was told that Russia’s behaviour, including its “malicious and completely baseless” claims of spying against six British diplomats, contravened the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, the foreign ministry said.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indefinitely postponed a staff mission to Moscow this week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, after the move came under heavy criticism from several of Kyiv’s European allies. After revelations in the Guardian of widespread condemnation, the IMF said it would spend more time gathering information for a “rigorous analysis”.