October 14, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Ukraine news here or read through the updates below. 

The US is providing additional military assistance valued at up to $725 million to Ukraine, the administration announced late Friday.

Citing the recent Russian bombardment of targets across Ukraine and “the mounting evidence of atrocities by Russia’s forces,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Kyiv government would receive additional arms, munitions and equipment from the Pentagon.

It will bring total US military assistance for Ukraine to more than $18.3 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration, Blinken said.

The Pentagon broke down the assistance as follows:

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday to pledge $400 million in humanitarian aid to “alleviate the suffering of Ukrainian citizens in the wake of the crisis,” according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The crown prince also said that Saudi Arabia’s position was to support “de-escalation” and that the kingdom stood ready to “continue efforts of mediation,” between Ukraine and Russia, the state news agency said.

Some background: Last week, OPEC+, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to slash production by 2 million barrels per day, twice as much as analysts had predicted, in the biggest cut since the Covid-19 pandemic. An intense pressure campaign by the US to dissuade its Arab allies from the cut ahead of the decision seemingly fell on deaf ears. 

US officials expressed displeasure at the OPEC move and President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that Washington must now “rethink” its relationship with Riyadh.

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir denied that there were political motives behind the cuts. “Saudi Arabia is not siding with Russia,” he told CNN. “Saudi Arabia is taking the side of trying to ensure the stability of the oil markets.”

Delegates from Iran at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on August 1.

Iran’s delegation would have voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s attempt to absorb parts of Ukraine “if the whole body of the resolution is (focused) on the condemnation of this annexation,” a spokesperson told CNN on Friday.

Iran was absent Wednesday during the vote, which overwhelmingly passed.

The resolution calls on countries and international organizations not to recognize Russia’s so-called annexation of the four regions, demands its immediate reversal and calls for Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”

Iran considers the resolution to be “based on political motives,” a media counselor for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations told CNN.

“Some items in the resolution were not acceptable for Iran, but some parts of the text of resolution that was respecting the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of countries is an unchangeable principle in Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy,” the counselor said, citing the example of Iran not recognizing Kosovo because its declaration of independence “was a violation of Serbia’s territorial integrity.”

Some context: Iran has provided Russia with drones that have been used during the war against Ukraine, but Tehran’s relations with Moscow are not without complications. Read more here.

Russia’s deadly missile barrage on civilian targets appears to have drawn to a close, but the attacks’ toll is still felt widely across Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv’s troops push ahead with a counteroffensive, gaining ground in some key regions, according to officials.

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know:

A senior Ukrainian official has made a conciliatory gesture toward US billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk after bitter exchanges over his ideas for a settlement to the conflict with Russia.

The remarks appear to be intended to draw a line under bitter criticism of Musk by some Ukrainian officials after he publicized ideas for a peace settlement that would see Ukraine surrender Crimea and agree to neutrality status.

The effort to smooth things over comes after CNN reported exclusively that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink satellite service, and asked the Pentagon to pick up the bill.

The system — which has been provided free of charge since early in the conflict — has been an essential link in allowing Ukraine’s forces to maintain communications.

Soon after the tweet from Fedorov, another senior Ukrainian official spoke of the value of the Starlink system to Ukraine’s war effort.

What the Pentagon is saying: “We can confirm the Department received correspondence from SpaceX about the funding of Starlink their satellite communications product in Ukraine,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Friday.

“We remain in communication with SpaceX about this and other topics.”

Ukrainian forces continue to make progress in the southern region of Kherson, regaining control over more land previously occupied by Russia, a senior US military official said Friday.

“We have seen gains in the north now, really the line of advance for the Ukrainians, just north of the city of Mylove, and then extending essentially to the north and west with a number of small towns and villages that the Ukrainians have been able to clear of the Russians,” the official said.

The US has also seen some “incremental gains” in the central part of the battleground region, “so not a lot of advancement, but some,” the official said. “We’re talking kilometers.”

Because Ukrainian forces have gotten closer to Russian forces along this central axis, they are relying less on guided multiple launch rocket systems, or GMLRs, to counter Russians, the official said.

Gains in Kherson prompt evacuations: Meanwhile, Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas.

The announcement by Russia’s deputy prime minister came shortly after Moscow-backed officials in the region appealed for help moving residents out of harm’s way. It’s the latest indication that Russian forces are struggling in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Here’s a look at where things stand on the ground:

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on October 14.

The Ukrainian military says it has destroyed a significant amount of Russian weaponry in a strike against a railway hub in the eastern region of Luhansk.

It also said the Russian had suffered substantial losses in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.

But in its operational update Friday, the General Staff made no mention of fighting around Bakhmut in Donetsk, where Russian forces appear to have made some gains in recent days.

But the General Staff did say that Russia “continues to focus its efforts on attempts to implement its plans to reach the administrative border of Donetsk region.”

CNN is unable to confirm the attack.

More on Ukraine’s counteroffensive: In recent weeks, Ukraine has targeted Russian supply lines in Luhansk as it seeks to build on its successful offensive in neighboring Kharkiv.

In other areas, according to the General Staff, some 150 Russian soldiers had been killed and about 100 injured by Ukrainian attacks in Khlibodarivka (Donetsk region), Tokmak (Zaporizhzhia region) and Tokarivka (Kherson region).

The General Staff claimed that in the city of Kherson, Russian forces had seized 13 barge-type vessels for the transportation of personnel and equipment across the Dnipro River. Ukrainian long-range rocket attacks have made most bridges across the river impassable. 

It also claimed that three S-300 units had been destroyed. S-300 missiles have been causing devastating damage in central Ukraine, especially in Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv.

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

The Russian government has announced plans to complete repairs to the Crimea bridge by July 1, 2023, according to a decree published on the government’s portal.

The road and rail bridge was badly damaged in an explosion last weekend. Russia has blamed Ukraine’s security services for the attack, allegedly carried out with a bomb concealed inside a truck.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, states that the Nizhneangarsktransstroy Company has been appointed as the sole contractor for the restoration and reconstruction of the Crimean bridge.

The decree said “the deadline for concluding state contracts for the performance of work specified [is] July 1, 2023,”

Police officers and soldiers inspect a shopping area following a Russian missile attack on October 13, in Kupiansk, Ukraine.

Russian forces have launched hundreds of missile strikes in Ukraine over the past week, most of them at civilian targets, a senior US military official said Friday.

The official said Russians are mainly targeting civilians, especially civilian infrastructure including “electricity or bridges or otherwise.”

“They have been used at civilian targets either indiscriminately or certainly in a deliberate way as it relates to infrastructure targets like electricity or bridges or otherwise,” the official said.

A local resident cleans debris in his apartment after a residential building was hit by a missile strike in Konstantinovka, Ukraine, on October 14. 

Putin’s deadly onslaught: Viewed as retaliation for the bridge blast, the wave of deadly missile attacks began Monday and caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption to avoid blackouts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that there is no need for more “massive” strikes against Ukraine “at least for now.” He also said he had no regrets for his actions.

Russia continues to face international backlash for the war and global outrage at its targeting of civilians. European lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Thursday to declare Russia a “terrorist” regime.

Russia is desperately searching for ways around Western sanctions in order to resupply its military, a top US official said in an exclusive CNN interview on Friday. Meanwhile, Russia’s stockpiles of advanced weapons are rapidly dwindling in Ukraine and it can’t secure the parts to replace them.

Here’s what Wally Adeyemo, the deputy secretary of the US Treasury, told CNN’s Kevin Liptak:

More background: CNN reported earlier Friday that Western sanctions have sharply curtailed Russia’s ability to replenish the munitions it is using in Ukraine, according to a new analysis from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The details of the analysis were shared in a presentation with senior finance officials from nearly 30 nations Friday, who gathered at the Treasury Department for an update from Adeyemo, among other US officials.

The battlefield is “complicated but controlled” as Ukrainian forces push ahead with their counteroffensive to take back parts of the country seized by Russia in the early days of Moscow’s invasion, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi said Thursday.

Take a look at where the state of control stands in Ukraine:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would shut down corridors established for the export of Ukrainian grain if they are used to carry out “terrorist attacks.”

“If it turns out that humanitarian corridors are used for terrorist attacks, this will put the grain agreement into question,” Putin told reporters in the Kazakh capital of Astana. 

Putin on Friday suggested a link between the safe corridors and the recent attack on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, claiming that it’s possible the explosives for the attack were sent by sea from Odesa.

Some background on the grain deal: Since July, ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports in Odesa have been allowed to navigate a safe corridor through the Black Sea as part of a UN-brokered agreement between Kyiv and Moscow after five months of Russian blockade.

The deal is set to expire in November.

Putin’s remarks come as a Russian diplomat Gennady Gatilov suggested on Thursday that his country could potentially leave the deal. “If we see nothing is happening on the Russian side of the deal – export of Russian grains and fertilizers – then excuse us, we will have to look at it in a different way,” he said, according to Reuters. “We are not against deliveries of grains but this deal should be equal, it should be fair and fairly implemented by all sides.” 

Ukraine says it’s developing new technology to combat the waves of attacks by Iranian-made drones that Russia has bought.

Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said Friday that he believed Russia currently had some 300 Iranian-made attack drones, “and they are trying to purchase a few thousand more such drones. We will see whether it happens or not, but we have to be prepared.”

The Russians were using Iranian “kamikaze” drones in groups, partly to detect the disposition of Ukrainian air defenses, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian military in the south, said on Thursday. “Now they are starting to use them almost all over the territory of Ukraine, they are using them from the northern directions, not only from the south.”

In the southern region, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 109 drones and 33 had hit targets, Humeniuk added, saying most had been aimed at civilian infrastructure.

“The fact that they are trying to use these drones on critical infrastructure facilities, to deprive us of water, heat, electricity, corresponds to the tactical and technical characteristics and purpose of these kamikaze drones, because they work like matches. [The drone] sets fire to the object and disables it not with an explosion, but more with a fire,” she explained.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Friday that there is no need for more “massive” strikes against Ukraine “at least for now.”  

His comments come after a week of deadly strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine, including in the Kyiv region.

When asked if he had regrets about his actions in Ukraine, Putin said: “I have no regrets. I want to make it clear that what is happening now is unpleasant.” 

He went on to stress that Russia actions in Ukraine are right and timely.   

Read more here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the plenary session of the Commonwealth of the Independent States Summit, on October, 14, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that there are no plans to expand the military mobilization and that the drive will be over within two weeks.

Some 222,000 out of the planned 300,000 Russians have already been drafted into the army so far, the Russian leader added.

Some background: Last month, Putin called for “partial mobilization” of Russia’s population to support the war in Ukraine. It came at a time when a sudden counteroffensive from Kyiv recaptured thousands of square miles of territory and put Moscow on the backfoot. Experts have said Russia’s forces have been significantly depleted.

A Russian tank lies destroyed in a field on October 13, near Izyum, Ukraine.

Western sanctions have sharply curtailed Russia’s ability to replenish the munitions it is using in Ukraine, according to a new analysis from the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, forcing Moscow to task its intelligence services with finding ways to evade restrictions and procure the critical technology and parts to sustain its war effort.

Russia has lost more than 6,000 pieces of equipment since the war began nearly eight months ago, the analysis obtained by CNN shows, with the country’s military struggling to acquire the microchips, engines and thermal imaging technology required to make new weapons.

Sweeping Western restrictions on exports to Russia have forced the country’s defense industrial facilities to periodically go idle. Two of the country’s largest domestic microelectronics manufacturers were forced to temporarily halt production because they weren’t able to secure necessary foreign components. And a shortage of bearings — a low-tech component — has undermined the production of tanks, aircraft, submarines and other military systems.

Even as early as May, only a few months into the war, the Russian defense industry found itself short of supplies and components for marine diesel engines, helicopter and aircraft parts and fire control systems, according to the analysis. And Russia has turned to Soviet-era tanks, removing them from storage to use in Ukraine.

The details were shared in a presentation with senior finance officials from nearly 30 nations Friday, who gathered at the Treasury Department for an update from Deputy US Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Morgan Muir on the sanctions’ effectiveness in choking off Russia’s military industrial complex.

Read more here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the plenary session of the Commonwealth of the Independent States Summit, on October, 14, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Germany is making a mistake by taking NATO’s side on the Ukraine conflict. 

“Germany decided that commitments to some international agreements, including NATO, took precedence over domestic interests. I believe that this is a mistake and their economy and citizens are suffering. Otherwise, they would not undermine the Nord Stream gas pipelines,” Putin told reporters after the completion of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana. 

“One branch of Nord Stream 2 pipeline is in working condition. A decision to launch it is not being made and is unlikely to be made, but it’s none of our business,” he added.

Putin was also asked if he would hold talks with US President Joe Biden.

“You should ask him (Biden) if he wants to hold talks with me. For now, I do not see the need for negotiations with Biden until I see a platform for this,” he said.

Even as it loses ground in Ukraine’s southern Kherson and northeastern Luhansk regions, Russian forces have been making slow but steady progress into their assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut, aided in large measure by Wagner mercenaries, or private military contractors.

Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region, is Ukrainian controlled, but has been bombarded by Russian artillery for months. If Russian forces were able to capture the city, it would enable them to further bombard the populations centers of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Russian forces were pushed further away from those cities when Ukraine recaptured Lyman and much of Kharkiv region last month.

“Wagner are carrying on with their advances on the eastern side of Bakhmut,” Semyon Pegov, a pro-Russian analyst who posts under the name WarGonzo, said on Telegram on Friday. “According to some reports the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] units are leaving the area in small groups under the threat of being surrounded. If it is really so we will find out shortly.”

CNN cannot independently verify the claim that Ukraine was withdrawing forces from Bakhmut, and Ukrainian officials have not commented on it. Andrey Marochko, an official in the Russian-back Luhansk People’s Republic, also repeated that claim, as did TASS, the Russian state news agency.

Pegov said that in the past week, Wagner mercenaries were able to capture the towns of Zajtseve and Vesela Dolyna to the southeast of Bakhmut. The UK Ministry of Defense on Friday said that they may also now be contesting the villages of Opytne and Ivanhrad, to the south of Bakhmut.

CNN cannot independently verify those claims, but they would mean that Russia is forming a more complete semi-circle around Bakhmut.

“The Wagner troops pushed the AFU from important road junction to the North-East of Bakhmut,” Pegov said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian officials agree that Bakhmut is being fiercely contested:

Post includes additional translation by Racz.

After a Russian-appointed leader outlined plans for the evacuation of civilians from the occupied Kherson region, Ukraine called it a form of deportation.

Russians are taking “the opportunity to carry out a semi-voluntary deportation of the Ukrainian population … and then repopulate the Kherson region with zombies who are 100% loyal to Moscow,” Yurii Sobolevskyi, deputy head of Kherson regional council, claimed on his Telegram channel. “There were similar processes in Crimea after the annexation. Fortunately, it is not 2014, and no-one intends to give Russia even a centimeter of Ukrainian land.”

On Thursday, Oleksandr Samoylenko, head of Kherson regional council, urged people there not to trust “the nonsense and false statements” of the Russian-appointed head of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, who had appealed to Moscow to help with the evacuation plan.

Remember: Saldo’s announcement came as Ukrainian forces exerted growing pressure on Russian defenders in parts of the region.

“The so-called ‘evacuation’ takes place under the guise of ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘education.’ This does not correspond to the real motives of the occupiers,” Samoylenko said, adding that the Russians’ goal was to get rid of the Ukrainian population in the region by seizing their property and “settle Russians from remote areas of the Russian Federation in your homes and apartments.”

He urged Ukrainians in the region to not go to Russia under any circumstances.

“Under no circumstances should you go to the Russian Federation, and also do not send your children to ‘rehabilitate’! Because when you leave your native land, you will immediately receive Russian passports. And according to their legislation, it will be very difficult, almost impossible, to return to Ukraine!” Samoylenko said on Facebook.