Ukraine-Russia battle newest: Power outages throughout Ukraine as Putin strikes its power grid

Ukraine has introduced emergency power cuts in six regions amid a “massive” Russian missile strike, its national grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement this morning.

The emergency power outages have been implemented in Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovohrad oblasts due to the large-scale missile attack, it said.

Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko said “preventative measures” were in force.

“The enemy continues to terrorise Ukrainians. The transmission system operator is implementing preventive restriction measures due to the large-scale attack,” he said.

There are several variants of Army Tactical Missile Systems, a long-range missile system that often carries varying amounts of cluster bomblets.

Ukrainian forces used the US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time in October 2023, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying the weapons had “proven themselves.”

Ukraine likely has what are known as M39A1 Block IA ATACMS that are guided in part by Global Positioning System and have a range of 40 to 190 miles. They can carry a payload of 300 bomblets. The M39 Block IA were used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Army documents, and were added to the US arsenal in 1997.

Russian troops pressing their slow advance through eastern Ukraine took control of two settlements in Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said yesterday.

Russia’s troops have been advancing at their fastest rate since the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, announcing the capture of a long list of villages in daily frontline reports.

Moscow’s forces captured Terny, near the town of Siversk, one of the focal points of Russia’s campaign through Donetsk region, and Neskuchne farther south, a ministry report said.

Ukraine‘s General Staff, in a late evening report, said nothing about Terny changing hands, but mentioned the village as one of eight to come under attack in 17 armed clashes in the area. Five clashes were continuing late into the evening.

The report also identified Neskuchne as one of five villages where Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian attacks.

Ukraine’s popular DeepState blog, which uses open-source material to pinpoint the position of Kyiv’s troops, said Russian forces had made gains around Neskuchne.

The two men were reportedly captured during fighting in Russia’s Kursk border region, where the Ukrainian forces launched an incursion last August.

Pictures released on social media by Mr Zelensky show two men resting on cots in a prison cell with bars over the windows. Both wear bandages, one around his jaw and the other around his hands and wrists.

An Australian soldier is feared dead in Russia after a video showed him with hands bounds and struck by a Russian interrogator.

Oscar Jenkins, 32, was reportedly fighting in the Ukraine invasion against Russian forces. A foreign soldier who trained him said he is mourning the death of Mr Jenkins as he said Russia executed the Australian national to make an example of him, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

It is not immediately clear if Mr Jenkins is still alive in Russian custody.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the Russian and Australian ambassadors should be sent home if the Russians killed Jenkins.

“If there is confirmation that Oscar Jenkins has been killed, the government should take the strongest possible action and that is the ambassador should be withdrawn and that the ambassador here in Australia should be sent packing,” Mr Dutton, who could become prime minister in elections due this May, told the reporters.

“We should send a very clear message to Russia and to other similarly minded regimes that Australians are sacrosanct, that they deserve to be protected by their government and if they’re harmed in this way and if they’re brutally executed, as seems to be the suggestion in this case, and we wait for confirmation, then there should be a strong reaction from the prime minister,” he added.

Only Russia and the US should be involved in any negotiations on a settlement for Ukraine, Nikolai Patrushev, a hawkish adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin, said yesterday.

“I believe that negotiations on Ukraine should be conducted between Russia and the US without the participation of other Western countries. There is nothing to talk about with London and Brussels,” he told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

His remarks come shortly after Russia said it was ready for peace talks with the US as Joe Biden ends his term in the White House.

However, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte has called on the alliance to solidify Ukraine’s position before any potential peace talks with Russia. “Peace will not last if Putin gets his way in Ukraine, because then he will press ahead… I am convinced that peace can only last if Ukraine comes to the table from a position of strength,” he warned.

Moscow is open for talks with the US president-elect Donald Trump, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday.

The top Russian diplomat praised the incoming president for pointing to Nato’s plan to embrace Ukraine as a root cause of the nearly 3-year-old conflict.

Any prospective peace talks should involve broader arrangements for security in Europe, Mr Lavrov said at his annual news conference, while adding that Moscow is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv.

He specifically praised Mr Trump’s comments earlier this month in which he said that Nato’s plans to open its doors to Ukraine had led to hostilities.

Mr Trump said Russia had it “written in stone” that Ukraine’s membership in Nato should never be allowed, but the Biden administration had sought to expand the military alliance to Russia’s doorstep. Mr Trump said, “I could understand their feelings about that.”

“Nato did exactly what it had promised not to do, and Trump said that,” Mr Lavrov said.

“It marked the first such candid acknowledgement not only from a US but any Western leader that Nato had lied when they signed numerous documents. They were used as a cover while Nato has expanded to our borders in violation of the agreements,” he claimed.