Russia-Ukraine war live: Putin’s bid to destroy Ukraine’s energy system ‘highly likely to have failed’ | Ukraine

Russia’s campaign to break down Ukraine’s unified energy system within the past winter period has “highly likely failed”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence says in its latest intelligence update.

Large-scale long-range attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have become rare since early March 2023, it says.

The report goes on to say that Ukraine’s energy situation “will likely improve” with the arrival of warmer weather.

Russian forces used ground- and air-fired missiles, rocket launchers and weaponised drones to bombard the provinces of Ukraine it has illegally annexed but doesn’t fully control, causing casualties, building damage and power outages on Friday.

Associated Press reported that the Ukrainian military said Russian forces launched 18 airstrikes, five missile strikes and 53 attacks from multiple rocket launchers between Thursday and Friday mornings.

Russia was concentrating the bulk of its offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing on the cities and towns of Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka in Donetsk province, according to the statement from Ukraine’s general staff.

Most of Friday’s battlefield reports concerned the four Ukrainian provinces Russia annexed in September: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Also in Donetsk province, Russia launched a missile attack on the city of Sloviansk, destroying residential buildings, while one civilian was wounded during fighting in Bakhmut.

Donetsk’s regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on Friday that 15 cities and villages on the front line were shelled in the region. The Moscow-installed mayor of Donetsk city, Aleksei Kulemzin, said Ukrainian shelling killed one person and wounded six.

Russia’s defence ministry reported inflicting dozens of casualties on Ukrainian forces and destroying drones and other Ukrainian weapons and combat vehicles in several battlefront hotspots in the annexed provinces.

In southern Ukraine’s partially occupied Kherson province, seven people were wounded in 24 hours, the regional governor said on Friday. Writing on Telegram, Oleksandr Prokudin said Russia had carried out 46 attacks there, including seven on the regional capital, also called Kherson, with heavy artillery and aircraft fire.

A 10-year-old girl, a three-year-old boy and a 30-year-old woman were wounded on Friday in Russian shelling of the village of Stanislav in the province, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said.

Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton and I’ll bring you the latest developments.

Russian forces have reportedly bombarded the provinces of Ukraine it illegally annexed but doesn’t fully control, causing casualties, building damage and power outages on Friday.

The strikes came as three civilians were killed and 17 wounded over the previous 24 hours in Russian artillery, missile and aerial attacks on 114 settlements in nine regions, the Ukrainian defence ministry said.

More on the battlefield reports shortly. In other developments:

• The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into the possible release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites including Twitter and appear to detail US and Nato aid to Ukraine, but may have been altered or used as part of a misinformation campaign. Associated Press reported that the documents were labelled secret and resembled routine updates the US military would produce daily. Reuters reported three unnamed US officials said Russia or pro-Russian elements were likely behind the leak and that the documents provided a month-old snapshot of the war and appeared to have been doctored to play down Russian losses.

• Russian Federal Security Service investigators formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage but the Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, Russian news agencies reported on Friday. Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war.

• The Ukrainian military said it had downed a Russian Su-25 ground attack jet near Marinka. A video showed a big explosion as the plane slammed into the ground, with its pilot descending on a parachute. The Russian military did not confirm the plane’s downing, AP reported.

• Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has threatened to abandon a landmark grain deal with Ukraine if obstacles to Moscow’s exports remained. The agreement last July allows Ukraine to export grain through a safe corridor in the Black Sea. “If there is no further progress in removing barriers to the export of Russian fertilisers and grain, we will think about whether this deal is necessary,” Lavrov told a news conference in Ankara alongside his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Friday.

• Ukraine has said Russia is concentrating all its efforts on capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, where it described the situation as “difficult” but said it was holding out. The UK Ministry of Defence said earlier that Russian forces had “highly likely” advanced into Bakhmut’s town centre and seized the west bank of the Bakhmutka River, severely threatening Ukraine’s key supply route to the west.

• Ukraine can resume exporting electricity after a six-month gap, given the success of repairs carried out after repeated Russian attacks, the energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said on Friday. Last October, Ukraine halted exports of electricity to the European Union – its main export market for energy since the war began – following Russia strikes on energy infrastructure. “The most difficult winter has passed,” Halushchenko said.

• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has criticised Russia’s treatment of the Muslim-minority Tatar community in Kremlin-controlled Crimea and vowed to recapture the peninsula from Russia during a first official state iftar. Speaking on Friday outside the centre of the capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was beginning a new tradition of hosting an official iftar, the meal breaking the daily fast during the month of Ramadan.
  With Reuters and Agence France-Presse