October 9, 2022 Russia-Ukraine News

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Crews restored power and cellular connection in Enerhodar, the city near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian control, a senior official said Sunday.

“Water supply will be restored in the near future,” Rogov, a pro-Russian leader in the regional Zaporizhzhia government, wrote in a telegram post Sunday

Rogov also said that Ukrainians “have concentrated significant number of militants in Zaporizhzhia direction” and that the risk of storming the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “remains high”.

Some context: Russian and Ukrainian officials blame each other for the recent shelling in Enerhodar.

According to Ukrainian-elected mayor Dmytro Orlov, constant Russian shelling “prevents quick emergency and restoration work.”

Orlov said “the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly tried to deliver humanitarian supplies with food, hygiene products and so on to the city,” adding that Ukraine is “ready to organize prompt delivery and distribution of drinking water in Enerhodar” but that Russian forces have not let humanitarian aid through.

Volunteers work to clean the debris on a site where several houses were destroyed after a Russian attack at a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Sunday, October 9.

Thirteen people have died and the injury count has risen to 89 people, among them 11 children, in the rocket attack by Russian forces on the city of Zaporizhzhia, a top Ukrainian official said Sunday.

Ukraine’s Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, shared the updated toll in a Telegram post.

“The number of dead and wounded has increased. Among them are many children! As a result of the rocket attack on the city, 13 people died, including 1 child. 89 civilians were injured, including 11 children,” Tymoshenko wrote. 

According to Tymoshenko, the search and rescue operations are ongoing, with rescuers continuing to get people out from under the rubble.

Earlier Sunday, officials with Ukrainian emergency services said they and other agencies deployed more than 200 rescuers and teams with search dogs after the strikes.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Austria called on Russia to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure Sunday, condemning this weekend’s missile strikes on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.

View the tweet here:

Russian President Vladimir Putin called Saturday’s explosion on the Crimean bridge a “terrorist attack” and claimed Ukrainian special services organized and executed the blast. 

Putin made his remarks during a meeting with Chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin Sunday.

“Secret services of Ukraine and citizens of Russia from foreign countries are the ones who helped to execute this terrorist attack,” Bastrykin said.

Bastrykin also said that Russians “have already established the route of the truck where the explosion occurred.” In addition, “carriers have been identified — persons who participated in organizing the movement of this truck.”

What we know so far: CCTV video shows the moment a huge explosion rocked the bridge Saturday.

“A truck is seen driving in the lane towards Crimea when all of a sudden there’s a massive explosion, though it’s not clear whether it is the truck that actually blew up,” CNN’s Fred Pleitgen reports.

What Ukraine is saying: High-ranking Ukrainian officials immediately celebrated the blast. Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council posted a taunting birthday message for Putin and the postal service announced stamps commemorating the explosion.

But Ukraine has stopped short of claiming responsibility. An adviser to the head of the Ukranian president’s office even suggested the blast was to be blamed on internal strife “between the military and power structures of Russia.”

Ukrainian troops have significantly increased shelling of Russian territory near the war’s frontlines since the beginning of October, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement Sunday.

“Over the past week, more than 100 attacks using multiple launch rocket systems, cannon artillery, mortars and unmanned aerial vehicles on 32 settlements in the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions were recorded,” the statement said.

According to FSB, one local resident was killed during the shelling and five people were injured, including a child.

“In border settlements, two electrical substations, 11 residential buildings and two administrative buildings were destroyed. 8 checkpoints across the state border were damaged,” the statement added.

Two settlements in Ukraine’s Sumy region were shelled by Russian forces on Sunday, according to a statement published by the Ukrainian Operational Command North on Facebook.

There were no losses among personnel and equipment, according to the command.

“From 12:10 to 12:15, the observers recorded three ‘arrivals,’ probably from a 120 mm mortar, in the area of the settlement of Seredyna-Buda. Also, from 14:35 to 14:55, it became known about five more hits, probably from a 120 mm mortar, in the area near Bachivsk village,” the statement read.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on Telegram on Sunday that the Russian forces used a drone to attack a third area in Sumy — the village of Myronivka.

One person died in the drone attack, Tymoshenko said.

Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.

Former Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday he is “cautiously optimistic” that two Americans wrongfully detained by Russia will be released and suggested they could be freed by the end of the year.

Richardson, a former Democratic governor of New Mexico, and his namesake center privately work on behalf of families of hostages and detainees. He recently traveled to Russia to discuss with Kremlin officials the possible release of basketball star Brittney Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, and he said Sunday that he’s working with the families of both Americans and coordinating with the White House for their release.

“I do think so. Now, I hate making predictions, but yes,” Richardson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if he believed Griner and Whelan may be released before the end of this year.

Some background: The Biden administration has distanced itself from Richardson’s efforts. Last month, a senior administration official told CNN that anyone “who’s going to Russia is going as a private citizen, and they don’t speak for the US government.”

The detainees: Griner was sentenced in August to nine years in a Russian jail after pleading guilty to drug-smuggling. The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist had been arrested at a Moscow airport and accused by Russian prosecutors of trying to smuggle less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage – which she said she had accidentally packed while in a hurry.

Whelan was detained at a Moscow hotel in December 2018 and arrested on espionage charges, which he has consistently and vehemently denied. He was convicted and sentenced in June 2020 to 16 years in prison in a trial US officials denounced as unfair.

Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge, on October 8.

The Kremlin is intent on showing the attack on the Crimea bridge wasn’t that serious and that the crucial lifeline from the Russian mainland to the illegally-annexed Crimean Peninsula will be back to normal soon.

The physical damage can be restored — Russia immediately dispatched a large emergency team to the site — but the damage to Russia’s prestige and, more importantly, to the image of Vladimir Putin, won’t be that easy to repair. 

Putin’s February 21st address to the Russian people, delivered just before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, laid bare his warped view of history. Ukraine, he insists, is not really an independent country: “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” he claimed. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.” 

That speech, one of the most revealing of his presidency, makes clear that this fratricidal war against Ukraine is very personal to him. For many years he has been fixated on Peter the Great, the Russian czar who founded St. Petersburg, the city in which Putin was born and raised. I once visited the city administration office in which Putin worked in the early 1990s after he returned from his job as a KGB operative in East Germany. On the wall above his desk was a portrait of Peter the Great.

In June of this year, as the grinding war in Ukraine entered its fourth month, Putin again compared himself to Peter the Great, insisting that Peter, who conquered land from Sweden, was “returning” to Russia what actually belonged to it.

Already, a day after the attack, Russian forces are bombing civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. Hardline supporters of Putin are urging more strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure. Western leaders warn that an increasingly frustrated Putin might resort to using tactical nuclear weapons. Military experts say he could retaliate asymmetrically, striking unexpected targets.

For years, Putin has had another obsession: punishing traitors. One month after his forces attacked Ukraine, he threatened to retaliate against any Russians who opposed the war, calling them “fifth column … national traitors” in thrall to the West.

This Sunday, the day after the bridge bombing, he called it a “terrorist attack” whose “authors, executors and masterminds” are the secret services of Ukraine…and “citizens of Russia from foreign countries.”

One thing is clear: as the fighting moves closer to Russia, Vladimir Putin sees his “historic mission” in jeopardy. And that means emotions could outweigh reason. For Ukraine, for Russians who oppose the war, and for the world, this is a dangerous moment.

There has been no electricity or running water for three days in a row in Enerhodar, the city adjacent to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian control, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.

According to Ukrainian-elected mayor Dmytro Orlov, constant shelling “prevents quick emergency and restoration work.”

Orlov said “the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly tried to deliver humanitarian supplies with food, hygiene products and so on to the city,” adding that Ukraine is “ready to organize prompt delivery and distribution of drinking water in Enerhodar” but that Russian forces have not let humanitarian aid through.

“For a long time now, the occupiers have not let humanitarian goods from the territories controlled by Ukraine into the city,” Orlov said.

Russian and Ukrainian officials blame each other for the recent shelling in Enerhodar.

Vladimir Rogov, a senior pro-Russian official in the regional Zaporizhzhia government, said Friday that the situation in Enerhodar and its suburbs was due to shelling from Ukrainian side.

Car traffic on the Crimean bridge has resumed in two lanes, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Marat Khusnullin said in a Telegram post Sunday.

“Traffic has already been launched along two lanes on the Crimean bridge,” Khusnullin wrote, adding that earlier, one lane was being used for cars traveling in both directions, slowing down traffic since the explosion. 

The deputy prime minister also posted a video showing the cars moving in two lanes across the Kerch bridge.

Train traffic has also resumed on the bridge, but larger vehicles like heavy trucks, vans and buses continue to use ferry boats.

Sen. Chris Murphy speaks to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been pushed into a corner by setbacks in his war effort, but there are no imminent signs he would resort to using nuclear weapons, US Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview Sunday morning.

Putin’s war effort is faltering, Murphy, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“Vladimir Putin is increasingly getting pushed into a corner. This war is going incredibly badly for him, the mobilization that he has undertaken has backfired,” Murphy said. “This morning, you see scenes of hundreds of Russian troops essentially refusing to go into training.”

Tapper asked Murphy about US President Joe Biden’s recent warnings on the danger of nuclear escalation with Putin, in which he invoked “Armageddon.”

Murphy said Biden’s assessment was realistic, “for the fact that you were dealing with an incredibly dangerous human being in Russia. The war is going badly, and you just can’t predict what he’s going to do next.”

More than 200 rescuers sifted through rubble in Zaporizhzhia Sunday after Russian missile strikes.

More than 200 rescuers are on scene at the site where a round of missile strikes killed at least 12 people and injured scores in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, authorities said Sunday.

“As of 15:00 [3:00 p.m. local time], emergency rescue operations at the sites of missile strikes in Zaporizhzhia continue. In total 215 people and 58 vehicles are involved (including 85 people and 20 vehicles from the State Emergency Service), as well as 8 teams (8 search dogs) of the dog unit ‘Antares’ from Pavlohrad town,” Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said in a tweet.

Yesterday evening: The southern city was hit by six Russian cruise missiles and 16 S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force. The cruise missiles were fired from Russian Tu-22M3 and Su-35 fighter jets inside Russian-held areas of the Zaporizhzhia region.

The Zaporizhzhia rescue effort after Russian missile strikes Sunday included eight teams using dogs to search for survivors.

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02:34 - Source: CNN

CCTV video appears to show the moment a large explosion heavily damaged the Kerch bridge that links Russia’s mainland with annexed Crimea, in a devastating blow to Vladimir Putin’s war effort in Ukraine.

“A truck is seen driving in the lane towards Crimea when all of a sudden there’s a massive explosion, though it’s not clear whether it is the truck that actually blew up,” CNN’s Fred Pleitgen reports.

Russian leaders said the blast, which killed three people, was caused by a truck exploding on the road bridge. Ukrainian officials have publicly celebrated the explosion, without directly claiming responsibility.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu speaks at a meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, on August 31.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said Saturday’s explosion on Kerch Bridge is a “win” for Ukraine “whatever the reason behind the blast,” a foreign ministry press officer told CNN Sunday. 

The blast left the road and rail bridge linking annexed Crimea to mainland Russia severely damaged, which Ukraine has celebrated but not claimed responsibility for.

“Whatever the reason behind the blast, it’s a win for the Ukrainian Armed Forces nonetheless.”

A passenger train and cars travel along on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, on October 9.

Another train has passed over the Kerch Bridge, traveling from Sevastopol to St. Petersburg, following the blast that severely damaged parts of the road and rail bridge between annexed Crimea and the Russian mainland, Russian state media TASS reported on Sunday.

The first passenger services resumed travel across the bridge on Saturday, traveling from the Crimean peninsula to Krasnodar Krai in southern Russia, Russia’s Ministry of Transport said in a statement.

Some road traffic has also resumed, according to the Russian-appointed deputy leader of Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, who said on Sunday that “there is no threat of interruptions in food supplies to the Kherson region due to the rapid resumption of traffic on the Crimean bridge.”

However, heavy trucks, vans and buses are traveling on ferry boats.

About 100 vans and trucks and about 650 passengers have been ferried across the Kerch Strait since the blast, TASS reported on Sunday, citing Crimean authorities. Ferries for both light vehicles and heavy trucks have already made several journeys overnight and on Sunday.

TASS also reported that a line of about 200 cars has formed in Krasnodar, Russia, from where the ferry to Crimea departs. Passenger buses are also departing via ferry and are able to bypass the lines.

Repair works: On Saturday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said repair works on the bridge would be carried out around the clock. He added that a damage survey will be completed within a day and Russian divers will check all the supports of the bridge on Sunday morning.

At least 87 civilians, including 10 children, were injured by a round of missile strikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, head of Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said Sunday.

Officials had earlier said that 49 people were injured in the strikes.

The southern city was hit by six Russian cruise missiles and 16 S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force. The cruise missiles were fired from Russian Tu-22M3 and Su-35 fighter jets inside Russian-held areas of the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukrainian troops are preparing for further advances into Russian-held Luhansk, according to Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk region’s Ukrainian military administration.

Hayday acknowledged photographs of Ukrainian troops outside the Luhansk village of Stelmakhivka, less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the crucial post of Svatove.

New Ukrainian incursions into Luhansk have been made possible by the rapid-fire reclamation of territory in the past weeks, particularly the re-taking of Lyman in the Donetsk region.

All of Luhansk region is claimed as Russian territory by the Kremlin, following its forcible annexation. But in recent days Ukrainian forces have been approaching the region from several directions, building on their successful offenses in Kharkiv and Donetsk. 

Damage to a residential building is seen after a rocket attack in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on October 9.

A round of missile strikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed 12 and left 49 injured Saturday evening, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

Zaporizhzhia official Anatoliy Kurtev had earlier said 17 were killed with 40 injured.

What happened? The southern city was hit by six Russian cruise missiles and 16 S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force.

The cruise missiles were fired from Russian Tu-22M3 and Su-35 fighter jets inside Russian-held areas of Zaporizhzhia region.

Russia has repurposed S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to hit ground targets, hitting civilian infrastructure and residential neighborhoods in Zaporizhzhia.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Ukraine’s southern command claimed to have shot down a Russian jet fighter in the Mykolaiv region as well as an Iranian-made drone close to Odesa.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree strengthening the defenses of the only bridge connecting annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland after a huge blast early Saturday severely damaged its structure.

Here’s what led up to this:

The blast: A huge explosion severely damaged the only bridge connecting annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland, causing parts of Europe’s longest bridge to collapse. At least three people were were killed, according to Russian officials.

Ukrainian leaders celebrate: While stopping short of claiming responsibility, high-ranking Ukrainian officials publicly celebrated the bridge explosion. Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council posted a taunting birthday message for Putin and the postal service announced stamps commemorating the blast. In Kyiv, residents posed for selfies in front of a billboard depicting the burning bridge.

The damage: Maxar satellite images captured the damage to the Kerch Strait bridge Saturday, shortly after an explosion rocked the only direct road and rail connection between annexed Crimea and mainland Russia.

The blast caused parts of the bridge to collapse, though Russian transportation officials restarted rail service and allowed vehicles to use some undamaged portions of the roadway by Saturday evening.

Some travel across the bridge restored: Russian officials rushed to investigate the explosion and restore partial service on the bridge’s parallel rail and roadway structures. By evening, limited car traffic resumed on undamaged parts of the bridge and train service had restarted. The blast disrupted major transport links, however, and Russian officials planned to use ferries for trucks.

Repair work to begin: On Saturday, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said the lights on the Crimea bridge were set to be restored in the next few hours so that repair works could be carried out around the clock.

Khusnullin added that divers would start work on Sunday to check all the supports of the bridge. Once all results are received, a decision will be made to open traffic on the bridge for buses and heavy vehicles.