United News of Bangladesh

NATO on Monday began its long-planned annual nuclear exercises in northwestern Europe as tensions simmer over the war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use any means to defend Russian territory. Fourteen of NATO’s 30 member countries were due to take part in the exercises, which the military alliance said would involve around 60 aircraft including fighter jets and surveillance and refueling planes. The bulk of the war games will be held at least 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) from Russia’s borders. U.S. long-range B-52 bombers will also take part in the maneuvers, dubbed Steadfast Noon, which will run until Oct. 30. NATO is not permitting any media access. NATO said that training flights will take place over Belgium, which is hosting Steadfast Noon this year, as well as over the North Sea and the United Kingdom. The exercises involve fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads, but do not involve any live bombs. The exercises were planned before Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February. Russia usually holds its own annual maneuvers around the same time, and NATO is expecting Moscow to exercise its nuclear forces sometime this month.

A Russian warplane crashed Monday into a residential area in a Russian city on the Sea of Azov after suffering engine failure, leaving at least 13 people dead, three of whom died when they jumped from upper floors of a nine-story apartment building to escape a massive blaze. A Su-34 bomber came down in the port city of Yeysk after one of its engines caught fire during takeoff for a training mission, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It said both crew members bailed out safely, but the plane crashed into a residential area, causing a fire as tons of fuel exploded on impact. After hours of combing through the charred debris of the building, authorities said 13 residents, including three children, were found dead. Another 19 were hospitalized with injuries. Vice governor of the region, Anna Menkova, said three of the four victims died when they jumped from the upper floors of the building in a desperate attempt to escape the flames, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency. The authorities reserved emergency rooms at local hospitals and scrambled medical aircraft. Over 500 residents were evacuated and provided with temporary accommodations. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed about the crash and dispatched the ministers of health and emergencies along with the local governor to the site. Yeysk, a city of 90,000, is home to a big Russian air base. Surveillance cam videos posted on Russian messaging app channels showed a plane exploding in a giant fireball. Other videos showed an apartment building engulfed by flames and loud bangs from the apparent detonation of the warplane’s weapons. The Su-34 is a supersonic twin-engine bomber equipped with sophisticated sensors and weapons that has been a key strike component of the Russian air force. The aircraft has seen wide use during the war in Syria and the fighting in Ukraine. Monday’s accident marked the 10th reported non-combat crash of a Russian warplane since Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights increased sharply during the fighting, so did the crashes.

As British Prime Minister Liz Truss struggles to retain her authority, one man is seen to be in the real position of power to restore order and credibility to the Conservative government and limit the damage caused by Truss’ economic plans. Jeremy Hunt, named Britain’s new Treasury chief three days ago, on Monday sought to calm jittery markets and angry Conservative lawmakers as he announced he was reversing the bulk of Truss’ tax-cutting economic stimulus package, which has left the U.K. in political and financial chaos since it was unveiled three weeks ago. Hunt, 55, on Friday became the U.K.’s fourth Treasury chief this year after Truss fired his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and ditched her pledge to scrap a planned increase in the corporation tax, a key plank of her tax-slashing plans. A veteran Cabinet minister, Hunt has served in top government posts including foreign secretary and health secretary. He is seen as a centrist among Tories and considered an experienced “safe pair of hands” to steer the government through its current self-inflicted crisis. It's a remarkable return to power for a man who twice ran unsuccessfully in Conservative Party leadership contests. Earlier this year, Hunt failed to get enough votes from party members and was knocked out in the first round of the race to replace Boris Johnson as party leader and U.K. prime minister. Hunt only secured 18 votes, far short of the 30 required to progress in the contest. He later gave his backing to Truss’ rival, Rishi Sunak, who came second in the race. He also ran against Johnson in the Conservatives’ 2019 leadership contest. In that race, Hunt sought to bill himself as the “serious” candidate in contrast to Johnson, but he lost heavily and was dumped from the Cabinet. One decisive factor in his defeat was that Hunt had backed the losing “remain” side in the 2016 Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union — a position that became politically untenable in the right-leaning, Eurosceptic party. Hunt remained a member of Parliament and kept himself in the public eye by grilling the government’s COVID-19 policies as head of Parliament’s health and social care select committee. A graduate of Oxford University, Hunt was co-founder of a successful business, an education publisher, before he entered politics in 2005 as Conservative lawmaker. Hunt was Britain’s longest-serving health secretary, holding the post from 2012 to 2018 under former Conservative prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May. He is remembered unfavorably by many for a bitter face-off with junior doctors when he oversaw unpopular plans to roll out new contracts for junior doctors. The dispute sparked large protests and a series of unprecedented doctors’ strikes in 2016 that left hospital emergency services uncovered. Hunt is now seen as the most powerful person in government, with one of his allies, Conservative lawmaker Steve Brine, last week likening him to the “chief executive” of the government while Truss remains as “chairman.” But Hunt has brushed off speculation that he would put himself forward again for the top job. “I think having run two leadership campaigns — and by the way failed in both of them — the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me," he told the BBC on Sunday. “I want to be a good Chancellor. It’s going to be very, very difficult, but that’s what I’m focusing on.”

Explosive-laden suicide drones struck Ukraine’s capital as families were preparing to start their week early Monday, the blasts echoing across Kyiv and sending people scurrying to shelters. Kyiv city mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital’s central Shevchenko district was hit, damaging several apartment blocks and setting fire to a non-residential building. There was no immediate word on casualties. The drones’ intended targets weren’t immediately clear but Russian strikes over the past week have hit infrastructure, including power facilities. Read:Putin says “doesn’t regret starting conflict and didn’t set out to destroy Ukraine” Witnesses posted videos of drones buzzing across bright morning skies over Kyiv and of what sounded like gunshots of people trying to shoot them down. Explosions were heard from the same central Kyiv district where a missile strike a week ago tore a hole in a children’s playground. Social media posts showed smoke billowing in the early morning light. Russian forces struck Kyiv with Iranian Shahed drones, wrote Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, in a post on the Telegram social media site. Russia has repeatedly been using the so-called suicide drones in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations. Strikes in central Kyiv had become a rarity in the last several months after Russian forces failed to capture the capital at the beginning of the war. Last week’s early morning strikes were the first explosions heard in Kyiv’s city center in several months, and put Kyiv as well as the rest of the country back on edge as the war nears nine months. Monday’s blasts seemed to continue what many fear could become more common occurrences in urban centers. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week’s strikes were in retaliation for the bombing of a bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland. Putin blames Ukraine for masterminding the blast, which suspended traffic over the bridge and curtailed Moscow’s ability to use the bridge to supply Russian troops in the occupied regions of southern Ukraine. Read:Russia to evacuate Kherson residents as Ukraine starts recapturing The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his Sunday evening address that there was heavy fighting around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in the Donetsk region. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the bulk of the industrial east known as the Donbas, and were two of four regions annexed by Russia in September in defiance of international law. On Sunday, the Russian-backed regime in the Donetsk region said Ukraine had shelled its central administrative building in a direct hit. No casualties were reported.

Pro-Kremlin officials on Sunday blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack that struck the mayor’s office in Donetsk, a city controlled by the separatists, while Ukrainian officials said Russian rocket strikes hit a town across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, among other targets. The attacks came as Russia’s war in Ukraine nears the eight-month mark. Kyiv also reported holding the line in continued fierce fighting around Bakhmut, where Russian forces have claimed some gains amid a seven-week Ukrainian counteroffensive that has led Russian troops to retreat in some other areas. On the front line, “the key hotspots in Donbas are (neighboring towns) Soledar and Bakhmut, where extremely heavy fighting continues,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Sunday. Those towns and Donetsk are in the industrialized Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since 2014. The Donetsk region is among four that were illegally annexed by Russia last month. Zelenskyy accused Russia of including convicts “with long sentences for serious crimes” in its front-line troops in return for pay and amnesty — something Western intelligence officials have also asserted. The municipal mayor’s building in Donetsk was seriously damaged by the rocket attack. Plumes of smoke swirled around the building, which had rows of blown-out windows and a partially collapsed ceiling. Cars nearby were burned out. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Kyiv didn’t claim responsibility or comment on the attack. Kremlin-backed separatist authorities have accused Ukraine of numerous strikes on infrastructure and residential targets in the occupied regions using U.S.-supplied long-range HIMARS rockets. Last week, the Kremlin launched what is believed to be its largest coordinated air and missile raids yet on Ukraine’s infrastructure. The wide-ranging attacks included the use of self-destructing explosive drones from Iran, and killed dozens of people. Zelenskyy’s office said Moscow was shelling towns and villages along the front line in the east Sunday, and that “active hostilities” continued in the southern Kherson region. The rockets at Nikopol, across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, damaged power lines, gas pipelines, and a raft of civilian businesses and residential buildings, Ukrainian officials said. Russia and Ukraine have for months accused each other of firing at and around the nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest. It’s run by its pre-occupation Ukrainian staff under Russian oversight. The region of Zaporizhzhia also was illegally annexed by Russia last month, despite the fact that some 20% of it remains under Ukrainian military control. Meanwhile, in western Russia along the border with Ukraine, officials said air defenses shot down “a minimum” of 16 Ukrainian missiles in the Belgorod region, Ria Novosti reported. Russian authorities in border regions have accused Kyiv of frequently firing at their territory, and say civilians have been wounded. Ukraine hasn’t claimed responsibility or commented on the alleged attacks. Russia has used Belgorod as a staging ground for shelling and missile attacks on Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile, Russia opened an investigation into a shooting in that region Saturday in which two men from a former Soviet republic who were training at a military firing range killed 11 and wounded 15 during target practice, before being slain themselves. The Russian Defense Ministry called the incident a terrorist attack. Other developments: — France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview published in Le Parisien. — The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, accused Moscow late Saturday of conducting “massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians,” which it said likely amount to ethnic cleansing. It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that “several thousand” children from a southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The original remarks by Russia’s deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, were reported by RIA Novosti on Friday. Russian authorities have previously admitted to placing children from Russian-held areas of Ukraine, who they said were orphans, for adoption with Russian families, in a potential breach of an international treaty on genocide prevention. — The Ukrainian military accused pro-Kremlin fighters of evicting civilians in occupied territories to house officers in their homes, an act it described as a violation of international humanitarian law. It said the evictions were happening in Rubizhne, in the eastern Luhansk region. It didn’t provide evidence for its claim. — A Russian commander wanted for his role in the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014 has been deployed to the front, according to social media posts by pro-Kremlin commentators. Posts by Maksim Fomin and others said Igor Girkin, also known as Strelkov, has been given responsibility for an unspecified Russian front-line unit. Girkin has been on an international wanted list over his alleged involvement in the downing of Kuala Lumpur-bound flight MH17, which killed 298 people. He remains the most high-profile suspect in a related murder trial in a Dutch court, with a verdict expected Nov. 17. Recently, Girkin’s social media posts have lashed out at Moscow’s battlefield failures. Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency said Sunday it would offer a $100,000 reward to anyone who captures him.

Even close to midnight on a school night, the tipoff was too important to ignore: A nearby gas station had just been resupplied. So Aicha Far scooped up her 6-year-old and set off into the night. The home carer needed to refuel her car so she could continue looking after the vulnerable people on the outskirts of Paris who rely on her to keep them fed, clean and safe. The prospect of a full tank was worth dragging the kid out of bed for. “I wrapped him in a blanket and put him in the back,” Far recalled on Saturday, as she gently coaxed an older woman she looks after to drink her breakfast hot chocolate. Chronic fuel shortages in France sparked by strikes and panic buying are fraying nerves and testing both the resilience and ingenuity of millions of French workers who depend on their vehicles to do their jobs. More than a quarter of gas stations nationwide were still without one type of fuel or more on Saturday, the French energy minister said. In the Paris region, the number was above a third. Motorists have sometimes lined up for hours to refuel — not always successfully — and tempers have flared. In the town of Versailles, southwest of Paris, 41-year-old nurse Aurelie Martin is trying to eke out the precious fuel left in her tank — and bracing for the next time she’ll have to visit the pumps. She is up well before dawn to give jabs, change dressings and dispense other essential medical care to dozens of patients each morning. Rather than doing little hops in her Mini from one patient to the next, she’s increasingly scurrying on foot between them when she can, racking up 10 kilometers (six miles) of walking each morning to save fuel. “I’m doing the bare minimum by car,” she said as she made her rounds on Saturday. “I had hoped up to now that the situation would improve, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be getting better.” The strikes have hit French refineries and fuel depots. Strikers have demanded higher wages from what they feel should be their share of windfall profits generated by high oil and gas prices amid the global energy crisis aggravated by Russia’s war in Ukraine. After runs on toilet paper, pasta and other essentials at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel and where to find it are the latest obsessions in France. The government has urged motorists not to panic-buy. Some gas stations have banned jerrycans. When Martin bumped into other nurses also making their early morning rounds on Saturday, gasoline was the first thing they talked about. One nurse who’d run out of fuel told Martin that one of her patients was offering to lend her his car. On messaging groups, nurses share tips about gas stations that have been resupplied or that have priority pumps for them and other essential workers. Martin said some of her fellow nurses have been yelled at by other motorists for trying to cut to the front of lines. With 30 to 40 patients to home-visit per day, Martin knows she’ll need to refuel early next week. “My day off is on Tuesday and I think the full tank that I had will last until then,” she said. “So on Tuesday, I’ll see if I need to spend the day lining up and that is what I will do if a gas station hasn’t been set aside for us.” “Truth be told,” she added, “I have been pushing back the inevitable moment.”

At least 11 Russian soldiers were killed Saturday in a shooting incident that underlined the challenges posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hasty mobilization, just as Ukrainian troops pressed an offensive to reclaim the areas in the country’s south that were illegally annexed by Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry said two men opened fire at volunteer soldiers during a target practice session in western Russia, killing 11 of them and wounding 15 others before being killed themselves. The ministry called it a terror attack. Russia has lost ground in the nearly seven weeks since Ukraine’s armed forces opened their southern counteroffensive. This week, the Kremlin launched what is believed to be its largest coordinated air and missile raids on Ukraine’s key infrastructure since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. In the continuation of those attacks, a missile strike Saturday seriously damaged a key energy facility in Ukraine’s capital region, the country’s grid operator said. Following mounting setbacks, the Russian military has worked to cut off power and water in far-flung populated areas while also fending off Ukrainian counterattacks in occupied areas. In the Zaporizhzhia region, Gov. Oleksandr Starukh said the Russian military carried out strikes with suicide drones from Iran and long-range S-300 missiles. Some experts said the Russian military’s use of the surface-to-air missiles may reflect shortages of dedicated precision weapons for hitting ground targets. Dmytro Pocishchuk, a hospital medic in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital who has treated dozens of people wounded during Russian attacks in recent weeks, said people sought safety outdoors or in his building’s basement when the familiar blasts started at 5:15 a.m. Saturday. “If Ukraine stops, these bombings and killings will continue. We can’t give up to the Russian Federation,’” Pocishchuk said several hours later. He put a small Ukrainian flag on the broken windshield of his heavily damaged car. Kyiv region Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said the missile that hit a power facility Saturday morning didn’t kill or wound anyone. Citing security, Ukrainian officials didn’t identify the site, one of many infrastructure targets the Russian military tried to destroy after an Oct. 8 truck bomb explosion damaged the bridge that links Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian electricity transmission company Ukrenergo said repair crews were working to restore electricity service, but warned residents about further possible outages. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, urged residents of the capital and three neighboring regions to conserve energy. “Putin may hope that by increasing the misery of the Ukrainian people, President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy may be more inclined to negotiate a settlement that allows Russia to retain some stolen territory in the east or Crimea,” said Ian Williams, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy organization based in Washington. “A quick look at history shows that the strategic bombing of civilians is an ineffective way to achieve a political aim.” This week’s wide-ranging retaliatory attacks, which included the use of self-destructing explosive drones from Iran, killed dozens of people. The strikes hit residential buildings as well as infrastructure such as power stations in Kyiv, Lviv in western Ukraine, and other cities that had seen comparatively few strikes in recent months. Putin said Friday that Moscow didn’t see a need for additional massive strikes but his military would continue selective ones. He said that of 29 targets the Russian military planned to knock out in this week’s attacks, seven weren’t damaged and would be taken out gradually. The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, interpreted Putin’s remarks as intended to counter criticism from pro-war Russian bloggers who “largely praised the resumption of strikes against Ukrainian cities, but warned that a short campaign would be ineffective.” In the southern Kherson region, one of the first areas of Ukraine to fall to Russia after the invasion and which Putin also illegally designated as Russian territory last month, Ukrainian forces pressed their counteroffensive Saturday. Kyiv’s army has reported recapturing 75 villages and towns there in the last month, but said the momentum had slowed, with the fighting settling into the sort of grueling back-and-forth that characterized Russia’s months-long offensive to conquer Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. On Saturday, Ukrainian troops attempted to advance south along the banks of the Dnieper River toward the regional capital, also named Kherson, but didn’t gain any ground, according to Kirill Stremousov, a deputy head of the occupied region’s Moscow-installed administration. “The defense lines worked, and the situation has remained under the full control of the Russian army,” he wrote on his messaging app channel. The Kremlin-backed local leaders asked civilians Thursday to leave the region to ensure their safety and to give Russian troops more maneuverability. Stremousov reminded them they could evacuate to Crimea and cities in southwestern Russia, where Moscow offered free accommodations to residents who agreed to leave. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, said the military destroyed five crossings on the Inhulets River, another route Ukraine’s fighters could take to progress toward the Kherson region. Konashenkov claimed Russian troops also blocked Ukrainian attempts to make inroads in breaching Russian defenses near Lyman, a city in the annexed Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainians retook two weeks ago in a significant defeat for the Kremlin. Amid the fighting, two men from an unnamed former Soviet nation fired on volunteer soldiers during target practice at a firing range in the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine and were killed by return fire, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The shooting comes amid a mobilization ordered by Putin to beef up Russian forces in Ukraine — a hasty and poorly executed move that triggered protests and caused hundreds of thousands to flee Russia. Some of the mobilized reservists were sent to the front lines without receving proper training and equipment, according to activists and media reports. Putin said on Friday that more than 220,000 reservists already had been called up as part of an effort to recruit 300,000. To the north and east of Kherson, Russian shelling killed two civilians in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Resnichenko said. He said the shelling of the city of Nikopol, which is located across the Dnieper from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, damaged a dozen residential buildings, several stores and a transportation facility. Fighting near the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, has been an ongoing concern during the nearly eight-month war. The power station temporarily lost its last remaining outside electricity source twice in the past week, fueling fears the reactors could eventually overheat and cause a catastrophic radiation leak. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi reported that such fears were somewhat eased late Friday, because Ukrainian engineers had managed after several weeks to restore backup power lines that can serve as a “buffer” in case of further war-related outages. “Working in very challenging conditions, operating staff at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant are doing everything they can to bolster its fragile offsite power situation,” Grossi said. “Restoring the backup power connection is a positive step in this regard, even though the overall nuclear safety and security situation remains precarious.”

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has appointed former Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt as new Treasury chief, replacing sacked Kwasi Kwarteng. Hunt is a government veteran who has served as former foreign secretary and health secretary, and ran unsuccessfully to lead the Conservative Party in 2019. Truss also replaced the second highest-ranking Treasury minister in a bid to restore order after weeks of turmoil over the government’s economic plans. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss fired her Treasury chief ahead of a hastily arranged news conference on Friday as she struggled to calm markets and hang on to her job following the release of a controversial economic plan. Kwasi Kwarteng’s departure comes after just over a month in the job — and three weeks after he announced a tax-cutting “mini budget” that sent the pound plunging to record lows against the dollar. Kwarteng tweeted his departure letter to Truss, saying “You have asked me to stand aside as your Chancellor. I have accepted.” He defended the government’s economic plan, saying the country faces an “incredibly difficult” situation and “following the status quo was not an option.” Market reaction was muted, having already baked in the notion that the government will back down on some of its key proposals. Truss is due to hold a news conference later Friday. She is under intense pressure to scrap some of the 43 billion pounds ($48 billion) in unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets and led the Bank of England to step in to prevent a wider economic crisis. Senior members of the Conservative Party were publicly advising the government to take action. The pound rose as much as 1.7% against the dollar on Thursday and bond markets stabilized amid expectations that Truss would revise the economic growth plan. Read: New UK PM Truss vows to tackle energy crisis, ailing economy Truss, a free-market libertarian, came to power last month pledging to cut taxes to spur growth. But her ability to deliver on that commitment is now in doubt. Analysts suggest the most likely change in her program would be to abandon a promise to halt her predecessor’s plan to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25%. That would reduce the bill for her program by about 18 billion pounds a year. James Athey, the investment director at abrdn, said that it now seemed certain that the government “is about to U-turn on its decision not to U-turn on its profligate tax-cutting policies.″ The rumors are calming markets, he said. “The risk now is that investors have forgotten that there are significantly more problems than just an ill-advised and ill-timed fiscal easing to deal with,″ he said. “Inflation is at multi-decade highs, government borrowing is huge as is the current account deficit. The housing market is likely to suffer a hammer blow from the jump in mortgage rates and the war in Ukraine rumbles on. We may well be through the worst of the volatility but I fear that the U.K. is nowhere near out of the woods.” Conservative lawmakers are agonizing over whether to try to oust their second leader this year. Truss was elected last month to replace Boris Johnson, who was forced out in July. Some reports suggest senior Conservatives are plotting to replace Truss with a joint ticket of Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, her two closest rivals in the summer contest for leadership of the party, though it’s unclear how that could be achieved.

In a sign that continuing and sustained Ukrainian military gains along the southern front are worrying the Kremlin, Russia is promising free accommodation to residents of the partially occupied Kherson region who want to evacuate to Russia. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin made the announcement shortly after the Russia-backed leader of Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Moscow last month, asked the Kremlin to organize an evacuation from four cities in the region. “Cities of the Kherson region — Kherson and Nova Kakhovka, Hola Prystan and Chornobaivka — are subject to daily missile strikes,” Vladimir Saldo said in a video posted online Thursday. “These missile strikes cause serious damage, first and foremost to the residents. Among targets missiles hit are hotels, residential buildings, markets — (places) where there are lots of civilians.” Saldo said a decision has been made to evacuate Kherson residents to the Russian regions of Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol, as well as the annexed Crimea. “I would like to ask you to help organize this process. We, residents of the Kherson region, of course know that Russia doesn’t abandon their own, and Russia always offers a hand,” Saldo said. His plea comes as Ukrainian forces push their counteroffensive deeper into the southern Kherson region, albeit at a slower pace. The move comes as the Ukrainian military continues to make gains in the south. Ukrainian armed forces have reported steady territorial gains along the southern front, including the recapture of 75 settlements in the Kherson region in the last month, the Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories said late Thursday night. In the east, Ukraine’s armed forces have recaptured 502 settlements in the Kharkiv region, 43 in the Donetsk region and seven in the Luhansk region, the ministry said. Saldo’s deputy, Kirill Stremousov, in his own statement tried to play down the announcement, saying that “no one’s retreating ... no one is planning to leave the territory of the Kherson region.” Earlier on Thursday, the British military said on Twitter that “the Russian occupation authorities have likely ordered preparation for the evacuation of some civilians from Kherson.” “It is likely that they anticipate combat extending to the city of Kherson itself,” the British Defense Ministry said. Early Friday, Russia continued its targeted attacks on critical infrastructure across Ukraine, a strategy that started Monday, when a massive, coordinated attack on nearly every region in the country was said to be carried out in retaliation for the explosion on a Moscow-funded bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland. Multiple Russian missile strikes shook the Zaphorizhzhia region capital overnight as the city continued to be a focal point while Ukraine pushed its counteroffensive on the southern front. Zaporizhzhia regional Governor Oleksandr Starukh said several explosions were reported in the city overnight at infrastructure facilities, causing fires. There were no victims in preliminary reports, and further details about specific damage were unavailable. Russian forces have struck the regional capital and surrounding area continuously in recent days and weeks, creating concerns about the safety of the nearby nuclear power plant. The regional capital is about 100 miles from the plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Two days ago, it was forced to revert to diesel-fueled generator power to maintain its reactor cooling systems after an attack on a substation’s communication line was lost during fighting in the area. Missile, drone and rocket attacks on Ukraine have kept the country on edge with air raid sirens occurring more frequently and bringing a heightened sense of urgency after Monday’s strike killed 19 and wounded more than 100, including many in the capital, Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday doubled down on his proposal to turn Turkey into a gas hub for Europe after deliveries to Germany through the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream pipeline were halted. Putin floated the idea of exporting more gas through the Turk Stream gas pipeline running beneath the Black Sea to Turkey as he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kazakhstan. It’s the second unlikely energy proposal that Putin has pitched in as many days, with European leaders calling Russia’s cuts in natural gas a political bid to divide them over their support for Ukraine. It’s created an energy crisis heading into winter that has fueled inflation, forced some industries to cut production and sent utility bills soaring. “This is just another attempt by Russia to use gas as a geo-strategic tool to weaken EU and NATO countries,” said Simone Tagliapietra, an energy policy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. Russia was “tempting Turkey to becoming an energy hub — a long lasting strategic aim of the country — while trying to create new divisions among European countries,” the analyst said, adding that Putin’s strategy was not likely to succeed. A day earlier, Germany rejected Putin’s proposal to step up gas flows to Europe via a link of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea – a pipeline that has never been operational. Moscow has cut off the parallel Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline over what it claimed were technical problems. The Russian leader first voiced the proposal on Wednesday, saying that Russia could increase the volume of its gas exports to Turkey through the Black Sea pipeline. “We could ... make the main routes for the supply of our fuel, our natural gas to Europe through Turkey, creating in Turkey the largest gas hub for Europe -- if, of course, our partners are interested in it,” Putin told a Moscow energy forum. On Thursday, he said the hub could help regulate “exorbitant” prices. “We could easily regulate (prices) at a normal market level, without any political overtones,” Putin said. “Putin is in a desperate situation. Nord Stream 1 and 2 are not operational and are unlikely to be operational for a long while,” said Mehmet Ogutcu, chairman of the London Energy Club. “Europe has made clear that it will not enter an engagement (with Russia) as long as the war in Ukraine continues.” “Turkey remains Putin’s only option,” he said. Ogutcu said Turkey was likely to tread carefully, wary of further increasing its dependence on Russia. “There is a delicate balancing act (by Turkey). If the balance tilts too much toward Russia this will damage (Ankara’s) relations with the West,” Ogutcu said. Erdogan did not comment publicly on the proposal but Putin’s spokesman, Dimitry Peskov said Turkey has reacted positively to the idea. Officials from Erdogan’s office could not immediately be reached for comment. Turkey’s state-run news agency however, quoted Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez as saying on Wednesday that it was “too early to assess” the proposal. “Technically it is possible,” Anadolu Agency quoted Donmez as telling reporters at the same Moscow energy forum. “For such international projects, technical, commercial and legal evaluation and feasibility studies need to be conducted.” NATO-member Turkey, which is depending on Russian for its energy needs and tourism, has criticized Moscow’s actions in Ukraine but has not joined U.S. and European sanctions against Russia. It has maintained its close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv and positioning itself as a mediator between the two. Ankara recently helped broker key deals that allowed Ukrainian to resume grain exports and led to a prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia. Although Russia is still conveying gas to Europe via Ukraine, the amount has plummeted drastically with the two Baltic pipelines out of commission. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline never came on stream because Germany blocked its operation just before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.