Nov 22 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s government appealed to people to conserve energy amid relentless Russian strikes that have halved the country’s power capacity, as the United Nations health body warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter.
POWER SUPPLIES
* Ukraine’s national power grid operator said the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks was “colossal” but he dismissed the need to evacuate civilians.
* The Kremlin said no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, once again accusing Kyiv of shelling at the plant and risking a nuclear incident.
* There are no immediate nuclear safety or security concerns at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia reactor complex despite shelling at the weekend that caused widespread damage, the U.N. atomic watchdog said after its experts toured the site.
* Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for repeated shelling in the immediate area of the facility.
CONFLICT
* Battles continued to rage in the east, where Russia has sent some of the forces it moved following its withdrawal from around the city of Kherson in the south. Moscow is pressing an offensive of its own along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, held by its proxies since 2014.
* “The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line (in the Donetsk region),” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.
* Russian air defences repelled two drone attacks in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, including one targeting a thermal power station near Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the regional governor said.
[1/12] Light is seen inside an apartment in a residential building during a power cut amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine November 20, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
* Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in southeastern Ukraine, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.
* Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.
* Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said.
* Russia’s Orthodox Church condemned the raid as an “act of intimidation”.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin will in the coming days meet the mothers of reservists called up to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.
FOREIGN RESPONSE, AID
* Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany must be ready for the situation in Ukraine to escalate but that his recent trip to China was worth it alone for spelling out the two countries’ joint stance against using nuclear weapons.
* Disbursement of $4.5 billion in U.S. economic aid for Ukraine will begin in the coming weeks, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
QUOTE
“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you wait a long outage. It’s better to do it now than to be miserable.” -Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides energy for Kyiv.
Compiled by Shri Navaratnam, Alex Richardson and Mark Heinrich
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