A summary of today’s developments
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Sunday proposed holding a global peace summit this winter, in a video message Kyiv was hoping would be broadcast ahead of the World Cup final in Qatar, although it appeared unlikely Fifa would allow the move.It was reported on Friday that Zelenskiy had asked world soccer’s governing body to let him share a message of peace before the final. “We offered peace formula to the world. Absolutely fair. We offered it because there are no champions in war, there can be no draw,” Zelenskiy said in a video message issued by his office. The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “opened the gates of hell”, unleashing “every evil” force worldwide from murder and rape in occupied territory to famine and debt in Africa and Europe. Welby, the highest-ranking cleric in the worldwide Anglican communion, travelled to Ukraine last month to meet church leaders and Christians as well as those displaced by the conflict. He said he had been struck by the “size of the mass graves in Bucha, the photos of what had been done to the people there, the rape, the massacres, the torture by the occupying Russian forces”. Fragile morale almost certainly continues to be a significant vulnerability across much of the Russian force, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said in its latest defence intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine. In its daily briefing posted on Twitter, the MoD said soldiers’ concerns primarily focus on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay problems, lack of equipment and ammunition, and lack of clarity about the war’s objectives. Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv after the latest Russian bombardment that targeted water and power infrastructure, the capital’s mayor said on Sunday. Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app: “The city is restoring all services after the latest shelling. In particular, the capital’s heat supply system was fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.” Ukraine worked to restore electricity and water supplies on Saturday after Russia’s latest wave of attacks pitched multiple cities into darkness and forced people to endure sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water.
Agence France-Presse reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Saturday that while electricity had been restored to almost 6 million Ukrainians, there were ongoing problems with heat and water supplies and “large-scale outages” in many regions. Russian president Vladimir Putin has held meetings with his military commanders and sought their proposals on how Russia’s campaign in Ukraine should proceed, during a visit to the operation’s headquarters, the Kremlin said. Russia has claimed its mass strikes against Ukraine on Friday were part of preventing foreign weapons being delivered to Ukraine. On Friday, “military command systems, the military-industrial complex and their supporting energy facilities of Ukraine were hit with a mass strike with high-precision weapons”, Russia’s defence ministry said in its daily briefing. The attacks have prompted accusations from Ukraine’s allies of war crimes.