Russia Ukraine war – live: Kyiv fights off 36 tanks in one of Moscow’s biggest armoured vehicle assaults

Recent Russian attacks have caused significant damage to the Ukrainian power system, but a total collapse is unlikely, the head of Ukraine’s national grid company Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said on Monday.

Since 22 March, the Russian forces have been attacking Ukrainian thermal and hydropower stations as well as main networks on an almost daily basis, which has led to blackouts in many regions of the country.

“Their [the Russians’] goal is to impose blackouts in some major Ukrainian cities, and our goal is to prevent it,” Kudrytskyi told Reuters in an interview.

The county’s largest private energy company, DTEK, has said the attacks damaged five of its six power plants, which lost 80 per cent of their capacity.

DTEK, which meets about a quarter of the country’s needs, has seen its thermal power stations and other facilities repeatedly hit by Russian missiles, drones and artillery in more than two years of war. The missile attacks have also significantly damaged the largest Ukrainian hydropower station in Zaporizhzhia, as well as the Kaniv and Dnister stations.

Most of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by three nuclear power plants, but thermal and hydro generation are key to balancing the system during consumption peaks.

“The biggest concern now is the state of electricity production, the part of it that balances the system – hydro and thermal generation. The scale of damage DTEK refers to is obviously a global (large-scale) level of damage,” Kudrytskyi said.

But he said that the country’s energy system was not near to collapsing. “We are definitely not one step away from collapse. A collapse is an uncontrolled shutdown of most or the entire power system. This has not happened and will not happen, this scenario we consider as unlikely,” he said.

A journalist on a reporting trip in a Ural Mountains city. A corporate security executive traveling to Moscow for a wedding. A dual national returning to her hometown in Tatarstan to visit her family.

All of them are US citizens, and all are behind bars in Russia on charges of varying severity.

Arrests of Americans in Russia have become increasingly common as relations between Moscow and Washington sink to Cold War lows. Washington accuses Moscow of targeting its citizens and using them as political bargaining chips, but Russian officials insist they all broke the law.

Dasha Litvinova and Eric Tucker report:

Ukraine has fought off 36 Russian tanks in the western Donetsk region, according to a think tank, in what is believed to have been one of Moscow’s biggest armoured vehicle assaults of the war.

Citing a Ukrainian serviceman, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Kyiv’s forces repelled 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles as part of a Russian battalion-sized mechanised assault near the key town of Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast on Saturday.

The ISW added that geolocated imagery shows a large number of destroyed and damaged Russian armored vehicles and tanks, with the Ukrainian serviceman reporting that Moscow lost at least 20 in the failed attack.

Foreign diplomats in Russia laid flowers on Saturday at the site of last week’s attack on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed 144 people.

Those in attendance included ambassadors from the United States, EU countries, Africa and Latin America. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti noted that the attendees included representatives of “unfriendly states”.

Since the attack, thousands of people have brought bunches of flowers, wreaths and other tokens such as teddy bears, creating a makeshift memorial at the Crocus City Hall.

Ukraine’s border guards have raised the nation’s flag over three towns in the “grey zone” on the eastern border with Russia.

Footage shared by the State Border Service of Ukraine shows flags being raised on a number of buildings in the towns of Shabelne, Pischane and Degtyarne.

“The territory of the destroyed villages is densely mined, and due to constant enemy shelling, it is uninhabitable,” a statement, shared alongside the video, read.

“However, border guards of the ‘Steel Border’ offensive guard brigade control the area and remind the enemy that this is our land and he has no place here.”

France’s foreign minister has said he is worried about North Korea providing ballistic missiles to Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Stephane Sejourne expressed his concerns while speaking at a joint press conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at Diaoyutai State Guest House on Monday in Beijing, China.

The French foreign minister also warned that there would be no lasting peace if Ukraine is not a main party in peace talks.

Russia has used five hypersonic Zircon missiles to attack Kyiv since the start of the year, the city’s military administration said on Monday.

It said Moscow had in total launched 180 weapons of various types, including missiles and drones, at the Ukrainian capital in the first three months of the year.

Ukrainian forces appear to have repelled a Russian battalion-sized mechanised assault near the key town of Avdiivka, according to a US war think tank.

The Institute for the Study of War said the attack is the first battalion-sized mechanised assault since Russian forces began the campaign to seize the Ukrainian town in Donetsk Oblast in late October 2023.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed a longtime aide and several advisers on Saturday in a continuing reshuffle while Russia unleashed fresh attacks overnight.

Zelenskyy dismissed top aide Serhiy Shefir from his post of first assistant, where he had served since 2019. The Ukrainian president also let go three advisers, and two presidential representatives overseeing volunteer activities and soldiers’ rights.

No explanation was given immediately for the latest changes in a wide-reaching personnel shakeup over recent months. It included the dismissal on Tuesday of Oleksii Danilov, who served as secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and Valerii Zaluzhnyi as head of the armed forces on Feb. 8. He was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom earlier this month.