Russian forces tried to advance in eastern Ukraine and trained tank, mortar and artillery fire on Kherson in the south, the Ukrainian military said, as Western allies sought to buttress Ukraine and its neighbors against Moscow.
FIGHTING
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* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.
* Spanish security forces found a third suspected explosive device hidden in an envelope mailed to a European Union satellite center located at an air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz, outside Madrid, the defense ministry said.
DIPLOMACY, FOREIGN RESPONSE
* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.
* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognize the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.
* The U.S. Army awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Raytheon Technologies Co for six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) for Ukraine on Wednesday, the Pentagon said.
* NATO foreign ministers sought to reassure fragile countries in Russia’s neighborhood that fear being destabilized by Russia as the conflict in Ukraine drags on.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin has focused his “fire and ire” on Ukraine’s civilian population, bombing more than a third of Ukraine’s water and electricity supply in a strategy that will not work, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
NUCLEAR
* Russia said it had promoted the chief engineer of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to become its director, after Kyiv said the plant’s previous boss was abducted by occupying Russian authorities.
* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
ENERGY CRISIS
* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.
QUOTES
* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff. (Compiled by Cynthia Osterman and Alex Richardson)
