For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
10:30 p.m.: Olha Shevchenko was seven months pregnant when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. After her home in the village of Prudyanka was shelled that same morning, she fled to nearby Kharkiv and took refuge in a shelter beneath the factory where her husband works. Two months later, her baby boy, Zhenya, was born and he's been in the shelter his whole life. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has this report.
10 p.m.: A lawmaker from Vladivostok who fled Russia after it invaded Ukraine has received asylum in the United States, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
Viktor Kamenshchikov, who represented the Communist Party in the city’s legislature, said in a social media post on October 22 that his request for political asylum has been approved and he has been released from detention.
“I am free, I have received asylum, and now I can be a full member of American society. Was it a long process? Yes, but I don't regret it at all,” he said in a Telegram post.
Kamenshchikov was detained by U.S. border officials in May as he tried to cross into the country from Mexico. Thousands of Russians have made the same trek since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
8:46 p.m.:
8:08 p.m.: In Northern Ukraine, Chernihiv braces for a winter amid attacks on the energy grid by Russia, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “We have bought three carloads of various kinds of firewood,” said Iryna, an employee of the central heating plant in the city of Chernihiv, some 150 kilometers north of Kyiv and 40 kilometers south of the border with Belarus. “We got the cheapest they had at the sawmill. Good firewood costs at least 6,000 hryvnyas ($165) per carload."
“This is pine,” she said, showing a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter around the modest pile that she hopes will get her family through the coming, cold winter. “It burns quickly and gives little heat. We also bought a load of scrap lumber for 4,500 hryvnyas ($123). We will stay warm somehow.”
Iryna — who, like other locals interviewed for the story asked that their last names and images be withheld because of the ongoing Russian invasion — lives in a house of some 100 square meters in the settlement of Zhavynka, on the southern edge of the Chernihiv. Because of her job, she has seen the damage inflicted on the city’s heating and electricity infrastructure by recent Russian air attacks targeting civilians.
“I hope it will survive the winter,” she said.
7:18 p.m.:
6:46 p.m.: French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said the Russian Orthodox Church was allowing itself to be manipulated by the country's authorities to justify their war in Ukraine and urged it to resist such pressure, Reuters reported.
Macron, who is on an official visit to Italy, spoke in a keynote speech at an international conference organized by Italy's Sant' Egidio Community, a worldwide peace and charity group.
The Russian Orthodox Church's number two, Metropolitan Anthony, sat in the front row of the conference hall with other religious leaders as Macron spoke.
The French president dedicated much of his speech at the conference, whose title is "The Cry for Peace," to Ukraine.
6:03 p.m.:
5:15 p.m.: Iran announced Sunday a contract with Russia to supply it with 40 turbines to help its gas industry amid Western sanctions over Moscow's war in Ukraine, local media reported, according to Agence France-Presse.
Iran's "industrial successes are not limited to the fields of missiles and drones," Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company's CEO, Reza Noushadi, was quoted as saying by Shana, the oil ministry's news agency.
"Currently, 85% of the facilities and equipment needed by the gas industry are built inside the country, and based on this capability, a contract has recently been signed to export 40 Iranian-made turbines to Russia," he added.
Noushadi did not specify when the contract was signed, and when the turbines are due to be delivered.
Following the imposition of economic sanctions over the Kremlin's offensive in Ukraine, Russia reduced or halted supplies to different European nations, causing energy prices to soar.
4:28 p.m.:
3:55 p.m.: In his nightly video address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the electricity supply has been restored in all regions that were targeted by Russian terrorist attack yesterday. Responding to claims by Russian Minster of Defense Sergei Shoigu that Ukraine could use a “dirty” nuclear bomb, he added “Wherever Russia has brought death and degradation, we are restoring normal life” and added “wherever Russia comes, it leaves behind mass graves, torture chambers, destroyed cities and villages, mined land, destroyed infrastructure and natural disasters.
3:50 p.m.: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in a phone call on Sunday that he "rejected any pretext for Russian escalation" in Ukraine, the Pentagon said.
Reuters reports Shoigu told his French, Turkish and British counterparts of Moscow's concern that Ukraine could detonate a "dirty bomb," according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
2:35 p.m.: Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said he has little hope of a diplomatic solution to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine “until we see the clear defeat of Russia,” RFE/RL reports. “We have seen that negotiations and peace agreements with Russia simply do not work,” Rinkevics said. “Russia has no need for them. If Russia feels it is losing Ukraine and that the regime of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is losing the confidence of global public opinion and of Russian public opinion, then I think they will sit down at the negotiating table.”
The international community should support negotiations if Moscow and Kyiv agree to pursue them, Rinkevics said in an exclusive interview.
“But at the same time, if an agreement is signed that is a half measure and does not include some sort of strict control over its implementation, then I no longer have any illusions the Russian Federation would abide by it,” he added.
2:30 p.m.: Norwegian oil and gas workers have noticed unidentified drones buzzing in the North Sea skies overhead, The Associated Press reports. With Norway replacing Russia as Europe’s main source of natural gas, military experts suspect the unmanned aircraft are Moscow’s doings. They list espionage, sabotage and intimidation as possible motives for drone flights. The Norwegian government has sent warships, coastguard vessels and fighter jets to patrol around the offshore facilities. The prime minister has invited the navies of NATO allies Britain, France and Germany to help address what could be more than a Norwegian problem.
2 p.m.: German finance minister Christian Lindner said on Sunday it was not yet clear whether a gas price brake for consumers and small businesses planned from March could be implemented, “pointing to technical and legal difficulties in accelerating the move.
Some state ministers have called for the price brake to come into force in January, as will be the case for larger industrial firms in order to support smaller businesses and households through the winter, Reuters reports.
"We don't know at the moment whether it is technically possible," Lindner said, speaking on the "Bericht Aus Berlin" TV program on broadcaster ARD. "These are technical and legal questions we need to look at... we are working as quickly as possible."
Under current plans, the government will make a one-off payment to cover the December gas bill for households and small and medium-sized businesses this year, with an ongoing mechanism to limit prices in place from March.
Meanwhile, big industrial firms consuming more than 1.5 million kilowatt hours per year will see a brake on prices for 70% of their annual gas consumption from January, with the remaining 30% subject to market prices.
1:30 p.m.: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he believed there was a chance for peace in Ukraine, even as Russia warned the conflict there could escalate, Reuters reports.
"There is the prospect for peace, it will come around at some moment," said Macron at a conference in Rome aimed at seeking ways to promote world peace.
"And at a particular moment, given how things are evolving, and when the Ukrainian people and its leaders will have decided on the terms of this, a peace deal can be built up with the other side," added Macron.
France has repeatedly stressed the importance of keeping Western diplomatic channels to Moscow open since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24.
1 p.m.: In a tweet, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba characterized the Russian state-controlled RT media outlet an inciter of genocide on Sunday after a presenter said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers under the Soviet Union should have been drowned.
In a show broadcast last week, RT presenter Anton Krasovsky said children who criticized Russia should have been "thrown straight into a river with a strong current," Reuters reports.
He was responding to an account by Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko about how, when he first visited Ukraine in the 1980s, children told him they would live better lives were it not for Moscow occupying their country.
"They should have drowned in the Tysyna (river)," Krasovsky said in response. "Just drown those children, drown them." Alternatively, he said, they could be shoved into huts and burned.
In a short segment of the interview, which was shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers had raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.
"Governments which have still not banned RT must watch this excerpt," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in his tweet to a clip of the interview.
"Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide," Kuleba added.
12:50 p.m.: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday for the second time in three days and held calls with three other counterparts from NATO countries.
Moscow provided no details on the conversation with Austin, which came after the two men spoke on Friday for the first time since May. Its readouts on the other calls said Shoigu had said the situation in Ukraine was worsening.
"They discussed the situation in Ukraine which is rapidly deteriorating," the Russian defense ministry said of Shoigu's call with French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu. "It is trending towards further uncontrolled escalation."
Shoigu spoke separately to Turkey's defense minister Hulusi Akar and Britain's Ben Wallace.
There was no indication from the Russian side that the conversations had produced any positive result. They showed, however, that Russia and members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance are actively maintaining channels of communication at a time of rising international concern about a possible nuclear escalation.
With Russia reeling from successive defeats in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has said it would resort to nuclear weapons if necessary to defend its "territorial integrity." U.S. President Joe Biden has said the world is closer to "Armageddon" than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Reuters reports.
12:45 p.m..: Russian missiles smashed into a suburb of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine early on Sunday, destroying two apartment blocks. Nobody was killed because most residents had already moved away after a similar attack in the vicinity six months ago.
"All of the people who had small children decided to leave immediately" after the April attack, said Svitlana, 46, as she salvaged belongings from her glass-and-plaster strewn apartment.
"The pensioners had also decided to leave."
Her neighbor, Oleksii Begun, 35, said only about 15-20 flats in their 119-unit, 10-storey building were currently occupied after a Russian cluster munition hit a private home nearby in April, killing one person.
"It's a horror," he said, surveying the devastation wrought by Sunday's attacks.
The explosions in the Karabelnyi district of Mykolaiv, a ship-building center at the confluence of the Southern Buh and Dnipro rivers, continued a weeks-long Russian aerial offensive that has targeted civilian infrastructure, especially energy facilities, just weeks before the onset of winter, Reuters reports.
10:15 a.m.: Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military, said that Russian troops are falling back from positions on the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region, a gateway to Crimea, CNN reports. Russia is evacuating citizens from the area, but it claims it has not lost ground to Ukraine in Kherson. “The evacuation of the city of Kherson continues. We provide maximum assistance to all those traveling to the eastern part of the Kherson region and other subjects of the Russian Federation,” Kirill Stremousov, a Russian-appointed official in Kherson, said Sunday.
10:10 a.m.: More than military bases or transport hubs in recent weeks,Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s electricity distribution and heating networks, CNN reports.
With winter weeks away, Russian missile and drone strikes are hitting thermal power stations, electricity substations, transformers and pipelines leading to widespread internet outages rolling power cuts and disabled water pumping stations. Oleksandr Kharchenko, CEO of the Energy Research Center in Kyiv, said “this is a terrorist act planned with the help of competent Russian energy experts, which aims to shut down the energy system of Ukraine. That is, to achieve a complete blackout in the country.”
9:20 a.m.: Support for funding Ukraine is eroding among Republicans, CNN reports. If Republicans win the House in the midterm elections, they pledge to take a hard look at the money the US is spending to help foot the bill – to the tune of billions in security aid – for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
According to CNN, Kevin McCarthy, who would likely be Speaker of the House in January if Republicans win the House November, he said there will be no more “blank check.”
At a fundraiser in Philadelphia for Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman. President Joe Biden said McCarthy’s comments show today’s Republicans” have not sense of American policy,” Biden said. He added, “It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine – it’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s real, serious, serious consequential outcomes.”
9 a.m.: Alaska's senior U.S. senator Lisa Murkowski says two Russian Indigenous Siberians were so scared of having to fight the war in Ukraine, they to take a small boat across the treacherous Bering Sea to reach American soil. The two landed earlier this month near Gambell, on Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, where they asked for asylum. The U.S. Senator says the two feared for their lives because Russia is targeting minority populations for conscription into service in Ukraine. Murkowski says she met with the two Siberians recently but didn’t provide more details about exactly when or where the meeting took place or where their asylum process stood, The Associated Press reports.
8:55 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War says Russia’s military leadership has withdrawn its officers in the Russian-annexed city of Kherson across the Dnieper River in anticipation of an advance by Ukrainian troops. It said that to delay the Ukrainian counteroffensive as the Russians complete their retreat, Moscow has left newly mobilized, inexperienced forces on the other side of the major river. On Saturday, Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine told all Kherson residents to leave immediately.
8:25 a.m.: In a phone call with French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu Sunday, published by the Russian side, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow had concerns Ukraine could use a "dirty bomb" in the conflict. He did not offer evidence to support the suggestion that Ukraine might use such a weapon.
The Russian defense ministry said in a readout of the call "They discussed the situation in Ukraine which is rapidly deteriorating," and " trending towards further uncontrolled escalation."
A so-called dirty bomb uses conventional explosives laced with radioactive material.
The Russian defense ministry did not provide any further information on its statement.
8:20 a.m.: A Russian military jet crashed into a residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Sunday and the two pilots were killed, officials said. According to Reuters, this is the second such fatal incident in six days involving a Sukhoi fighter plane.
In a post on Telegram, Irkutsk governor Igor Kobzev said the plane crashed into a two-story house in the city. He published a video showing firefighters clambering over the wreckage and directing jets of water at the still smoldering rubble.
No one on the ground was hurt, the governor said.
Officials said the plane was a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter on a test flight. Last Monday, a Sukhoi Su-34 crashed into an apartment block in the southern city of Yeysk, near Ukraine, and at least 15 people were killed.
Videos of Sunday's incident, shared on social media, showed the plane dived almost vertically before crashing in a fireball, sending dense black smoke into the sky.
Russia's state Investigative Committee said it had launched a criminal investigation into violations of air safety rules.
5:27 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said in its latest Ukraine assessment that Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks with no confirmed advances to regain lost territory in Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts on October 22.
Occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast ordered civilians to evacuate east on October 21. Evacuations from Kherson City will support likely Russian plans to blow up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Plant (HPP) dam to cover their withdrawal.
4:19 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said that on October 19, Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed online that his engineering team were constructing an extensive fortified "Wagner Line" of defenses in Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast, and posted a map showing the planned extent of the project.
The project suggests Russia is making a significant effort to prepare defenses in depth behind the current front line, likely to deter any rapid Ukrainian counter offensives, the update said.
3:08 a.m.: Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the people of her besieged nation “are fighting for our lives” as they battle against the Russian invasion.
"We are fighting for our lives. … Our planning horizon is maybe a day or two — we don't know what tomorrow is or the day after tomorrow," she told the audience Oct. 22 at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany.
Zelenska noted that there was renewed Russian shelling on the Ukrainian capital overnight.
She said such shelling and other effects of war have led to a daily search for normalcy, mentioning concerns for her children and the dangers facing her husband.
1:26 a.m.: A former owner of a prestigious aircraft engine builder in central Ukraine has been detained on treason charges, Ukrainian media reported Saturday, quoting security sources, according to Reuters.
Several of Ukraine's most prominent media outlets said Vyacheslav Boguslaev, the "honorary head" of the Motor Sich company in the central city of Zaporizhzhia, had been detained and was being taken to Kyiv in a convoy.
The reports quoted security sources as saying Boguslaev, a former member of parliament, was suspected of collaborating with and assisting Russian forces occupying parts of four Ukrainian regions, including Zaporizhzhia region.
The city of Zaporizhzhia remains under Ukrainian control.
The reports quoted security sources as saying investigators had to break down the front door of Boguslaev's home in order to conduct a search.
Prominent journalist Iryna Romaliyska, writing on Facebook and also quoting security sources, said Boguslaev was known for his pro-Russian views. He was suspected, she wrote, of supplying Russia with parts for helicopters and planes and of having contacts with Russian special services.
Moror Sich is a well-known manufacturer of aircraft engines and industrial turbines. Ukrainian authorities last year blocked attempts by Chinese companies to take over the firm.
12:02 a.m.:
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
