Russian Strikes in Zaporizhzhia Region Raise Death Toll, Safety Fears 

Russia concentrated its attacks Friday on the area around Zaporizhzhia, one of the four areas of eastern Ukraine that it claims to have annexed.

The Ukrainian governor of the Zaporizhzhia region said that Russian forces had fired more missiles at the regional capital on Friday and had used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones there for the first time.

The death toll from earlier missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 12.

In other Moscow-annexed areas, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported its forces had repelled Ukrainian advances near the city of Lyman and had retaken three villages elsewhere in the eastern Donetsk region. The ministry said Russian forces also had prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the Kherson region.

Communication troubles

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the front line that may have prevented troops from liberating territory held by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers.

Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the U.S. government and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks, the Financial Times reported.

Some of the outages led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication in recent weeks, said a senior Ukrainian government official with direct knowledge of the issue. Many outages were reported in the south, around the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, but also along the front line in eastern Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, the Times said. But later, on Twitter, Musk said, “As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.”

Ukrainian claim successes

Ukrainian forces have liberated 2,434 square kilometers and 96 settlements in the eastern part of the country in their latest offensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Friday. 

Zelenskyy also said that in the last week alone, Kyiv’s forces had taken 776 square kilometers and 29 settlements in the eastern region. On Thursday, he said more than 500 square kilometers had been recaptured in the south.

Nuclear worries

Fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has alarmed nuclear energy watchdogs. An accident there could release 10 times the potentially lethal radiation as the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine 36 years ago, Ukrainian Environmental Protection Minister Ruslan Strilets said Friday.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi will travel to Russia early next week for talks on setting up a protection zone around the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

President Joe Biden said Thursday night at a fundraiser in New York that the risk of Armageddon was at its highest point since the early 1960s as losses in Ukraine prompt Russian officials to discuss the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since [U.S. President John F.] Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said. In October 1962, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were seemingly on the verge of a nuclear conflict after the U.S. deployment of ballistic missiles in Turkey and Italy were countered by the Soviet deployment of similar missiles in Cuba.

Speaking to Democratic donors, Biden said he and U.S. officials were still “trying to figure out [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s offramp” in Ukraine.

Following Biden’s comments, the White House said Friday that the U.S. saw no reason to change its nuclear posture and did not have any indication that Russia was imminently preparing to use nuclear weapons.

“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously … we take these threats” from Russia, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.

The president reiterated the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine.

EU divide

European Union leaders on Friday agreed to give more financial and military aid to Ukraine, but a full day of talks at a Prague summit did not bring any agreement on whether or how to cap natural gas prices.

EU leaders want to lower natural gas prices before winter sets in, but political discussions on how to go about it are tangled amid differing proposals. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday suggested gas price cap options for the EU leaders to discuss, after France, Italy, Poland and 12 other countries urged Brussels to propose an EU-wide cap to contain inflation.

Other countries are opposed, including Germany, Europe’s biggest gas buyer, and the Netherlands. They insist capping prices could cause demand for gas to rise or leave countries struggling to attract supply from global markets.

Captured Russian tanks

Britain’s defense ministry said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter Friday that “repurposed, captured Russian equipment makes up a large proportion of Ukraine’s military hardware. Ukraine has likely captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and around 650 other armored vehicles since the invasion. Over half of Ukraine’s currently fielded tank fleet potentially consists of captured vehicles.”

The update added that “the failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering highlights their poor state of training and low levels of battle discipline. With Russian formations under severe strain in several sectors and increasingly demoralized troops, Russia will likely continue to lose heavy weaponry.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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