Ukraine news latest: Residents urged to leave country to help crippled energy system

Bel Trew reports from the recently liberated city of Kherson, where – facing a constant threat from mines and potential artillery fire – rail workers are trying to get trains running again

Read Bel’s full report here:

One of the men killed by a missile that hit a southeastern Polish village this week will be buried on Saturday, the first of two funerals this weekend following a blast that raised fears that the war in Ukraine could spiral into a wider conflict.

Poland and other Western states have said the missile that landed in Przewodow, a village near the border with Ukraine, was a Ukrainian air defence missile that went astray in pursuit of a Russian missile.

Kyiv cast doubt on this version and has demanded access to the site and a role in the investigation into the cause of the explosion.

For the village itself, the blast plunged residents into mourning for two of their neighbours.

“It is sad for the family and the community,” said 67-year-old retired mechanic Ryszard Turczanik as he made his way towards the church. “Everybody is in deep sadness and we are going on this final road.”

Ahead of the funeral, local priest Bogdan Wazny described the victims as “very kind people”.

Ukrainians who are able to should leave the country to help reduce demand on the nation’s crippled energy system, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.

Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK, said those who have an “alternative place” to stay should go there for “three of four months.”

His comments to the BBC came after Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that half of the country’s energy system had been destroyed by recent missile attacks by Russia.

Russia’s surge in missile strikes in Ukraine are partly designed to exhaust Ukraine’s supplies of air defenses, something Moscow hopes would allow its forces to achieve dominance of the skies above the country, a senior Pentagon official said on Saturday.

“They’re really trying to overwhelm and exhaust Ukrainian air defense systems,” Colin Kahl, under secretary of defense for policy, told reporters during a trip to the Middle East.

“We know what the Russian theory of victory is, and we’re committed to making sure that’s not going to work by making sure that the Ukrainians get what they need to keep their air defenses viable.”

British Ministry of Defence said Russia conducted its largest-ever debt issuance in a single day, raising RUB 820 (USD $13.6bn) on 16 November 2022.

“This is important for Russia as debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defence spending, which has increased significantly since the invasion of Ukraine,” the British MoD said on Saturday.

“Russia’s declared ‘national defence’ spending for 2023 is planned at approximately RUB 5tn ($84bn), a more than 40 per cent increase on the preliminary 2023 budget announced in 2021.”

It said the size of auction highly indicates that “the Russian Ministry of Finance perceives current conditions as relatively favourable but is anticipating an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment over the next year”.

The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff said peace with Russia is only possible if it restores the 1991 borders.

“There will be peace when we destroy the Russian army in Ukraine and reach the borders of 1991”, Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential administration, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine held a referendum in 1991 when the Ukrainian parliament surprised the world by voting for Ukraine’s declaration of independence.

At least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed as a result of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said on Saturday.

More than 837 children have also been injured in a tally, that officials said was “not final” because they were still verifying information from zones of active fighting, liberated areas and territory still occupied by Russian forces.

The eastern Donetsk region was the most affected, with 423 children killed or injured, the prosecutor’s office said.

The United Nations has said at least 16,295 civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion on 24 February, which Kyiv and Western leaders have denounced as an act of unprovoked aggression. Moscow denies targeting civilians.

Finland’s foreign minister has defended its application to join Nato as he spoke at a conference in Bahrain on Saturday.

The decision to request for Nato membership is “a result of the drastic change in our security environment”, Finland’s top diplomat Pekka Haavisto told the annual Manama Dialogue conference in Bahrain.

“Applying for Nato membership was… a natural step for us to take”, he added.

Finland and Sweden scrambled to become Nato members and made a formal request in May, dropping decades of non-alignment status, after Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine.

“And what would be more dramatic for a change than the attack of your neighbour towards a country of 50 million people?” Mr Haavisto asked.

It came a day after Finland unveiled a plan to fortify its borders with Russia, including a 200km (124miles) fence.

Jubilant crowds in war-torn Ukraine cheered as the first train from the capital Kyiv arrived in liberated Kherson city on Saturday, for the first time in almost nine months since war broke out in the country.

The train, number 102, set out on an 11-hours journey to Kherson, carrying 200 passengers, marking the resumption of regular service between the cities, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the president’s office, wrote in a Telegram post.

“This is our victory train!” Mr Tymoshenko wrote. “Like this train, we will return to Kherson everything for a normal life!”

Pictures of the blast in Sakhalin island in eastern Russia.