The Defense Department has gotten a request from SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk to take over funding for his satellite network that has provided crucial battlefield communications for Ukrainian military forces during the war with Russia, a U.S. official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter not yet made public, said the issue has been discussed in meetings and senior leaders are weighing the matter. There have been no decisions.
Musk’s Starlink system of more than 2,200 low-orbiting satellites has provided broadband internet to more than 150,000 Ukrainian ground stations. Early Friday, Musk tweeted that it was costing SpaceX $20 million a month to support Ukraine’s communications needs.
In addition to the terminals, he tweeted that the company has to create, launch, maintain and replenish satellites and ground stations.
In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations & pay telcos for access to Internet via gateways.
We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder.
The request from the world’s richest man to have the Pentagon take over the hundreds of millions of dollars he says the system is costing comes on the heels of a Twitter war between Musk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in tweets overnight Musk referred to the friction, suggesting it may affect his decision to end his company’s largesse in funding the systems.
In a Twitter exchange last week, Musk argued that to reach peace Russia should be allowed to keep the Crimea Peninsula, which it seized in 2014. He also said Ukraine should adopt a neutral status, dropping a bid to join NATO.
Musk also started a Twitter poll asking whether “the will of the people” should decide if seized regions remain part of Ukraine or become part of Russia.
Ukraine’s leader fires back
In a sarcastic response, Zelenskyy posted a Twitter poll of his own asking “which Elon Musk do you like more?”: “One who supports Ukraine” or “One who supports Russia.” Musk replied to Zelenskyy that “I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world.”
Andrij Melnyk, the outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, responded to Musk’s original tweet with an obscenity.
Musk’s request that the Pentagon begin to pick up the tab comes as the Space Force and Pentagon have been looking at how commercial vendors will play a role in national security.
In March, commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson said that having many vendors providing needed capabilities, such as Maxar’s satellite imagery of stalled Russian convoys, has become essential, because it frees up limited military satellite assets to focus on other things.
In his tweets, Musk also raised a question that various vendors and the Pentagon are considering as space becomes a more critical part of wartime operations: If a commercial vendor is assisting the U.S. and is targeted, does the U.S. owe it protection?
“We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder,” Musk tweeted.
Russia launched new attacks around Ukraine‘s capital and other regions overnight, including sending Iranian-made kamikaze drones packed with explosives hurtling into towns around Kyiv. The drone attack set off air raid sirens and sent people running for shelters yet again in the capital, in a fourth day of reprisals by Moscow for a bombing that damaged a bridge providing the only land link between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Vladimir Putin’s escalating war on Ukraine is now led by a hard-line commander whose reputation for brutality earned him the nickname “General Armageddon.” For days it has been clear that the strategy is to increase the aerial assault not only on the front lines, where Russia has lost ground in recent weeks, but across Ukraine.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the kamikaze drones had killed or wounded anyone, but Ukrainian officials said Thursday that 13 people were killed and almost 40 others wounded over the preceding 24 hours of Russian missile strikes all around Ukraine.
A man reacts near the body of his cousin, killed in a Russian missile attack in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, October 13, 2022.
LIBKOS/AP
The southern city of Mykolaiv was struck again early Thursday, with Russian missiles destroying a five-story apartment building. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said an 11-year-old boy was rescued from the debris six hours after the strike, but seven others remained missing.
Kim said Russia hit the building with an S-300 missile — a weapon designed, and usually used to bring down enemy aircraft. Russia has seemingly turned to the S-300s more often to carry out indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities, amid intelligence reports that Putin’s army is running low on weaponry, and on morale.
Director GCHQ Sir Jeremy Fleming in the @RUSI_org Annual Security Lecture addressed the war in Ukraine, saying how Putin has misjudged the situation, with his plan being met by the courageous reality of Ukrainian defence.
“We know, and Russian commanders on the ground know, that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Sir Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s cyber intelligence agency GCHQ said in a speech on Tuesday.
The city of Zaporizhzhia — in Ukrainian-held territory but not far from the sprawling, Russian-occupied nuclear power plant that has been the focus of rising concern over a possible nuclear accident — was also hit again on Thursday.
The city, about 20 miles from the nuclear plant, has been the target of relentless Russian bombardment. Some of the missiles have slammed down in residential areas, and CBS News saw rescuers pulling one victim from beneath the rubble of an apartment building.
Rescuers stand over a dead body during recovery efforts after a missile attack by Russia, in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine, October 11, 2022.
Albert Koshelev/Ukrinform/Future Publishing/Getty
Over the past two weeks, more than 70 civilians have been killed by Russia’s aerial assault in Zaporizhzhia alone, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military claims it has managed to shoot down dozens of the missiles and Iranian-made “Shahed-136” drones Russia has fired over the past week, but with so many still getting through to wreak havoc on the country’s infrastructure and beleaguered civilians, it is desperate for more help.
To stop the aerial assault, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy begged this week for the U.S. and other partners to send Ukraine more, and more advanced, missile defense systems. He was assured that help is on the way.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled to Russia’s borders in the weeks after Putin announced a military draft, but as CBS correspondent Chris Livesay reports, not all are welcome. Livesay speaks to Russians who have fled to neighboring country Georgia.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy implored the leaders of the G7 to provide Ukraine with effective air defense systems to protect against Russia’s aerial bombardment. Charlie D’Agata reports.
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The Kremlin says it has arrested eight people — five of them Russian — in connection with the destruction of a key bridge linking Russia to Crimea. The explosion led to an escalation of attacks across Ukraine. Charlie D’Agata has the latest on the war.
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Russia’s main domestic security agency said eight people were arrested over an explosion on a bridge that links Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, known by the Russian acronym FSB, said it arrested five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia in the attack on the Kerch Bridge. A truck loaded with explosives blew up while driving across the bridge Saturday, killing four people and causing sections of road to collapse.
The span opened four years after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, serving as a symbol of Moscow’s regional dominance as well as a crucial route for getting military supplies to Ukraine and Russian travelers to a popular vacation destination.
The FSB alleged the detained suspects acted on orders of Ukraine’s military intelligence to secretly move the explosives by a convoluted route into Russia and forge accompanying documents.
The Russian security services have pointed the finger at Ukraine’s intelligence directorate and its head, Kyrylo Budanov. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday dismissed accusations of Ukrainian involvement.
“The entire activity of the FSB and the Investigative Committee is nonsense,” Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Yusov told reporters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the blast by ordering missile strikes across Ukraine, where his forces over the last month lost ground in the east and south as Ukraine’s military waged a counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian president’s office said on Wednesday that strikes Moscow ordered in retaliation for the bridge attack killed at least 14 people and wounded 34 in the last day. On Monday, Ukrainian authorities said Russian missiles killed 19 people, including five in Kyiv, the capital.
Meanwhile, the missile attacks caused a crippled nuclear plant in Ukraine to lose all external power for the second time in five days, increasing the risk of a radiation disaster because critical safety systems need electricity to operate, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator said Wednesday.
Ukrainian nuclear power operator Energoatom said the Zaporizhzhia plant suffered a “blackout” Wednesday morning when a missile damaged an electrical substation, leading to the emergency shutdown of the plant’s last external power source.
On-site monitors from the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog reported the last remaining outside line to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was restored about eight hours later. The war-related interruption nonetheless highlighted “how precarious the situation is” at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi said.
All six of the reactors were stopped earlier due to the war. But they still require electricity to prevent them from overheating to the point of a meltdown that could cause radiation to pour from Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Energoatom said diesel generators were supplying the plant but Russian troops blocked a convoy carrying additional fuel for the back-up equipment.
“Basically what we’ve got here is the weaponization of civil nuclear, perhaps for the first time,” Paul Dorfman, a nuclear expert at England’s University of Sussex said. “And in an increasingly unstable world, it’s important to understand this and what this implies for nuclear worldwide.”
Ukrainian workers later found a way to repair the line and connected the plant to the Ukrainian power grid, the company said. The chief of Energoatom, Petro Kotin, told The Associated Press last month the plant typically had enough diesel on hand to run the generators — “the station’s last defense before a radiation accident” for 10 days.
The bombardment also hit civilian buildings. Over the past two days, Russian strikes damaged about 1/3 of the country’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Wednesday.
Ukraine’s presidential office said in a morning update that eight Ukrainian regions in southeast were affected by Russian shelling and attacks involving drones, heavy artillery and missiles in the previous 24 hours, while strikes on central and western parts of Ukraine had ceased.
More than a dozen missiles were fired at the city of Zaporizhzhia and its suburbs, damaging residential buildings. While part of a larger eponymous region that Moscow has claimed as its own in violation of international law, the city remains in Ukrainian hands. Russian forces control the area about 53 kilometers (33 miles) away by air where the nuclear plant is located.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said Russian shelling left at least 14 people dead in the Zaporizhzhia region and the Donetsk region to the east. At least 34 people were wounded in five regions, he wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s southern command said on Wednesday its forces recaptured five settlements in the southern Kherson region, on the western fringe of an arc of Russian-controlled territory in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk are four regions recently annexed by Russia, a move condemned as illegal under international law by many countries and the U.N. secretary-general.
Despite the advance, Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Ukrainian forces’ counteroffensive in the south was losing pace while regrouping in the east to deliver a “powerful blow” on the front line between the cities of Svatove and Kreminna in Luhansk region.
Western governments, in the wake of the punishing missile and drone strikes Russia carried out across Ukraine this week, were shipping new weapons systems to Ukraine or gearing up to provide more help: The U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group and NATO defense ministers held meetings in Brussels on Wednesday.
Lines formed at gas stations as some pumps have been running dry in France because of a strike by energy workers, as seen here on October 12, 2022 in Paris.
Geoffroy Van der Hasselt/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Paris — France’s premier ordered striking oil workers back to their refineries on Wednesday, as long lines persisted at gas stations across the country. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told France’s parliament that the situation had become “unbearable” in some parts of France, as drivers lined up for hours and many gas pumps ran dry.
Her decision to order the requisition of essential workers came after a deal was negotiated Monday between oil producer Esso, the French branch of ExxonMobil, and two workers’ unions. Other unions voted to continue the strike at two Esso refineries, despite the order from the government in Paris.
The striking workers said they would continue their action despite the government’s move. The workers are demanding a pay rise, arguing their salaries cannot keep up with inflation that has soared to almost 6% in France this year. The strike action began two weeks ago, shutting down refineries across much of the north and east of the country.
Angered by the requisition order, another union joined the strike on Wednesday, extending the blockades.
A CGT Trade Union member (C) gestures as he speaks to journalists at the ExxonMobil refinery site, in Port-Jerome-sur-Seine, near Le Havre, northwest France, October 12, 2022.
LOU BENOIST/AFP/Getty
Government spokesman Olivier Véran warned that the requisition of essential workers could be extended to strikers at four other refineries, owned by France’s TotalEnergies.
Officials have said that more than 30% of gas stations across France are now having trouble getting fuel supplies. Véran said, however, that once essential workers were ordered back to an Esso plant in Normandy, it should free up supplies and prompt “a real improvement” in the situation at gas stations.
There have been some raised tempers in the long lines for gas, but most station owners have said people are trying to make the best of the situation. Riders were seen pushing scooters and motorcycles, rather than wasting precious fuel, and most drivers seemed more worried about the levels in their tanks than the high cost of the gas.
A gas station worker and a police officer set up a ribbon as they close a gas station in Paris, October 11, 2022, amid supply shortages caused largely by strikes that have hit French fuel refineries.
Christophe Ena/AP
In Vincennes, just outside Paris, drivers waited in line patiently, hoping their turn would come before the pumps ran dry.
Najat Hakem, 36, said she had already tried several gas stations that day. “Every time, it says they have diesel, and when it’s my turn they run out, because people jump the queue,” she said. “People on scooters, cars like Ubers, they all say they have a valid reason to jump the queue. But I work, too.”
She said the minimum wait was around an hour. “This is my third attempt; I’ve been up since 6.30 a.m.,” she said.
Odette Libert, 81, said she was in favor of requisitioning the refinery workers and was against the strike.
“This is not acceptable in France, just because a few people want to annoy everyone. It’s their problem, not the problem of all the French people,” she said. “They have jobs, there are many people who can’t get work. If they don’t want to work there, they should leave and go elsewhere. So, requisition.”
Six of France’s seven refineries have been hit by the strikes. Only the Lavera refinery near Marseille was still operating normally on Wednesday. It is one of the largest refining sites in southern Europe, with the capacity to process 210,000 barrels per day.
The war in Ukraine has hit energy supplies in Europe hard, and prices have soared since it began. That, in turn, has pushed inflation higher and raised the general cost of living. Inflation in France is currently at 5.6%.
President Biden says he doesn’t think Russian President Vladmir Putin will use a tactical nuclear weapon in the war with Ukraine. Facebook parent Meta unveiled a virtual reality headset with a $1,500 price tag. And the formal coronation of Britain’s King Charles III has been set for May 6.
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Russian missiles rained down across Ukraine for the second straight day. Russia’s military appeared to be targeting residential areas. Charlie D’Agata reports.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep TayyipErdoğan in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on Wednesday on the sidelines of a regional summit, a Turkish official told AFP Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that potential talks between Russia and the West might be discussed during the meeting. The leaders are both attending the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
Last month, the two leaders met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan.
NATO member Turkey has so far refrained from joining Western sanctions against Russia and instead attempted to play the role of a mediator, hosting talks with officials from Moscow and Kyiv and arbitrating a grain deal alongside the U.N. to ensure safe food exports out of blockaded Ukrainian ports. It has also supplied drones to Ukrainian forces. But it is also accused of war profiteering, helping others in the evasion of international embargoes for its own benefit.
Putin will also meet with UAE ruler Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday, according to Kremlin spokesman Peskov.
The war in Ukraine grew more intense overnight with a barrage of deadly airstrikes that hit civilian areas throughout the country. It was Russia’s most widespread assault since its invasion in February. Charlie D’Agata reports.
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Smoke billows around Israeli security forces vehicles during a reported operation in Jenin city in the occupied West Bank, October 8, 2022.
JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP/Getty
Ramallah, West Bank — A 12-year-old Palestinian boy died Monday after being shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers during a weekend army raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Mahmoud Samoudi was shot in the abdomen Saturday during an army raid in Jenin, a refugee camp and stronghold of armed Palestinians.
During the raid, soldiers entered the camp and surrounded a house. In videos circulated on social media, exchanges of fire could be heard. At the time, Palestinian health officials said two teens, ages 16 and 18, were killed and that 11 people were wounded.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Monday’s death.
Israel has been carrying out nightly arrest raids across the West Bank since a spate of attacks against Israelis in the spring killed 19 people. The army said it had traced some of the perpetrators of those attacks back to Jenin.
Mourners and relatives carry the body of a Palestinian man who was killed by Israeli soldiers, during his funeral in the West Bank city of Jenin, October 8, 2022.
Ayman Nobani/Xinhua/Getty
Israeli fire has killed more than 100 Palestinians during that time, making it the deadliest year in the occupied territory since 2015.
The Israeli military says the vast majority of those killed were militants or stone-throwers who endangered the soldiers. But several civilians have also been killed during Israel’s months-long operation, including a veteran journalist and a lawyer who apparently drove unwittingly into a battle zone.
Local youths who took to the streets in response to the invasion of their neighborhoods have also been killed.
Israel says the arrest raids are meant to dismantle militant networks. The Palestinians say the operations are aimed at strengthening Israel’s 55-year military occupation of territories they want for an independent state.
Israeli security forces check Palestinians walking in the Palestinian Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, October 10, 2022, as Israeli forces searched for a Palestinian suspected of killing an 18-year-old military policewoman in east Jerusalem.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty
Hours after the deadly raid in the West Bank, a Palestinian gunman opened fire on an Israeli military checkpoint in east Jerusalem, killing a female Israeli soldier and wounding three other people, Israeli authorities said. The hunt for the shooter continued on Monday.
It was the latest bloodshed in the deadliest round of fighting in east Jerusalem in seven years. It came a day before Israel started celebrating the weeklong Sukkot holiday, a time when tens of thousands of Jews visit the holy city.
The Israeli troops were shot at a checkpoint near the Shuafatrefugee camp in east Jerusalem. Police said the assailant got out of a car and opened fire, seriously wounding the female soldier and a security guard before running into the camp. The army announced early Sunday that the woman, who was 19, had died.
Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday people were killed and injured in multiple missile strikes on cities across Ukraine, including the first bombardment of the capital in months. The strikes could signal a major escalation in the eight-month-old war.
“Air raid sirens are not subsiding around Ukraine… Unfortunately there are dead and wounded. Please do not leave the shelters,” Zelensky said on social media, accusing Russia of wanting to “wipe us from the face of the Earth.”
Rescue workers survey the scene of a Russian attack on Kyiv, Ukraine on Oct. 10, 2022. Several explosions rocked the city early in the morning following months of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital.
Adam Schreck / AP
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office, said on social media Monday that, “Ukraine is under missile attack. There is information about strikes in many cities of our country.”
General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said on Twitter that Russia had launched 75 missiles at Ukraine but that “41 of them were neutralized by our air defence.”
Zelenskyy later emerged onto a street in Kyiv to record a selfie video with a message to his people and the world, denouncing Russia for the barrage of missiles which he said had targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and its civilians.
“They have specifically chosen such a time and such targets to cause as much damage as possible,” the president said. “But we Ukrainians, we help each other, believe in ourselves, rebuild everything. Now the shortages of electricity may occur, but not the shortage of our defiance and our confidence in our victory.”
In Kyiv, reporters for the French news agency AFP heard at least five explosions in two salvos Monday morning, and a BBC News reporter ducked for cover as a massive explosion struck while he was on the air. Some of the missiles hit the center of the capital. Previous attacks largely targeted Kyiv’s outskirts.
Videos posted on social media showed black smoke rising above several areas of the city. Russia’s last strike on the capital was on June 26.
Other major cities hit by explosions Monday included Lviv, in Ukraine’s far west, which has been a refuge for many people fleeing the fighting in the east.
The foreign minister of Moldova, a small nation that sits along Ukraine’s southwest border, said three cruise missiles “from Russian ships in the Black Sea” had flown through Moldova’s airspace as they headed for Ukraine on Monday morning.
Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu added in his Twitter message that he had “instructed that Russia’s ambassador be summoned to provide an explanation.”
CIA World Factbook
Witnesses also reported a loud explosion Monday morning in Russia’s Belgorod region, which sits right along Ukraine’s eastern border. One witness told Reuters there was a loud bang and windows shook. The cause of the blast wasn’t clear.
The explosions came a day after Putin said Ukraine was behind an explosion on the Kerch bridge, linking Crimea with Russia, that left three people dead.
“The authors, perpetrators and sponsors are the Ukrainian secret services,” Putin said of Saturday’s bridge bombing, which he described as a “terrorist act.”
Putin spoke during a meeting with the head of the investigation committee he has set up to look into the bombing, Russian news agencies reported. The Russian leader was gearing up for a meeting with his Security Council later Monday, the Kremlin told local news agencies.
“Tomorrow the president has a planned meeting with the permanent members of the Security Council,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The blast that hit the bridge sparked celebrations among Ukrainians and others on social media. But Zelenskyy, in his nightly address on Saturday, didn’t directly mention the incident, and officials in Kyiv have made no direct claim of responsibility.
On Saturday, Russia said some road and rail traffic had resumed over the strategic link, a powerful symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. The bridge has served as a vital supply link between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula during its current invasion of south and eastern Ukraine.
Some military analysts argue the explosion could have a major impact if Moscow sees the need to shift already hard-pressed troops to Crimea from other regions — or if it prompts a rush by residents to leave.
Mick Ryan, a retired Australian senior officer now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said even if Kyiv wasn’t behind the blast, it constituted “a massive influence operation win for Ukraine.
“It is a demonstration to Russians, and the rest of the world, that Russia’s military cannot protect any of the provinces it recently annexed,” he said on Twitter.
Rescuers gather near a residential building damaged after a strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, October 9, 2022.
Zelenskyy described the “merciless strikes on peaceful people” and residential buildings as “absolute evil” perpetrated by “savages and terrorists.”
Regional official Oleksandr Starukh posted pictures of heavily damaged apartment blocks on social media and said a rescue operation had been launched to find victims under the rubble.
Russian officials, meanwhile, denounced on Sunday what they said was a surge in Ukrainian fire into its territory that had hit homes, administrative buildings and a monastery.
Russia’s FBS, which is responsible for border security, said on Sunday: “Since the start of October, the number of attacks from Ukrainian armed formations on Russia’s border territory has considerably increased.”
More than 100 artillery attacks, concentrated on the western border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, had hit housing and administrative buildings, said the statement. The attacks had killed one person and wounded five others.
Missed the second half of the show? The latest on the trial of Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes’ seditious conspiracy begins; how Donald Trump’s influence is playing out in 2022 midterm races; Russia launches deadly strikes in Ukraine after battlefield setbacks; and El-Erian on “unsettling volatility” in the market.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting of his national security council on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-owned news agency TASS on Sunday, following a fiery explosion on a strategic Crimean bridge on Saturday.
Although Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia, the blast that partially destroyed Putin’s pet infrastructure project — which is key to supply Russia’s military fighting in Ukraine — is bound to be on the security council’s agenda.
Over the past weeks, the Kremlin has been making thinly veiled threats to use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine as Kyiv regains territory Russia has occupied in its invasion of the country.
The latest Russian official to sabre-rattle was Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, who heads the defense committee of the State Duma.
“There will be an answer” that “all [Ukrainians] will feel” from the Russian side if Ukraine is found to be responsible for the blast that blew damaged the Kerch Bridge, Kartapolov told Russian news outlet Vedomosti on Sunday. “What the answer will be, we will find out. Our President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief never does what ‘partners’ expect from him. He does what is not expected of him,” Kartapolov said.
The Ukrainian government so far hasn’t been commenting about the origins of the apparent bombing. The country’s security service posted a cryptic message on Telegram Saturday after the blast, which reads: “Dawn, The bridge is well ablaze; Nightingale in Crimea, The SBU [Ukrainian security service] meets,” with a picture of the damaged bridge.
Russia opened an investigation into the explosion, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry is pointing the finger at Ukraine. “The reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure testifies to its terrorist nature,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to Russian news outlet Kommersant.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia | AFP via Getty Images
Fear is mounting that Russia might resort to a nuclear response. Pope Francis on Sunday said that “we should not forget the danger of nuclear war,” asking “Why don’t we learn from history?”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the Russian army killed some 17 civilians in the Ukrainian area of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday.
“A missile attack on the civilian population of Zaporizhzhia destroyed residential houses, where people slept at night, lived, didn’t attack anyone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
As the war in Ukraine rages on, students in Ukraine are preparing for the new school year differently. Instead of traditional school supplies, children are being sent with emergency kits and bomb shelters have been set up in the few schools still standing. CBS News correspondent Debora Patta has more.
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A Palestinian assailant opened fire at an Israeli military checkpoint in east Jerusalem late Saturday, seriously wounding two people, Israeli authorities said. The shooting came hours after a pair of Palestinian teenagers were killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
It was the latest bloodshed in the deadliest round of fighting in the area in seven years. It also came less than 24 hours before Israel was to begin celebrating the weeklong Sukkot holiday, a time when tens of thousands of Jews visit the holy city.
Saturday night’s shooting occurred at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem. Police said the assailant wounded a female soldier and a security guard. Israeli rescue services said the woman was in critical condition and the man was in serious condition. A third Israeli was lightly wounded.
Police said they were searching for the attacker, with special forces and a helicopter involved in the search.
“Our hearts tonight are with the wounded and their families,” said Prime Minister Yair Lapid. “Terrorism will not defeat us. We are also strong on this difficult evening.”
Israeli security forces deploy following a shooting attack at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, on October 8, 2022.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area in a move that is not recognized internationally. It considers the entire city, including east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important holy sites, to be its capital. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Israel already has been carrying out daily arrest raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of Palestinian attacks last spring killed 19 Israelis. Most of the military activity has been focused in the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus in the northern West Bank.
Earlier Saturday, the Israeli military shot and killed two Palestinian teens during an arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, the site of repeated clashes between Israeli forces and local gunmen and residents. The camp is known as a stronghold of Palestinian militants.
Palestinian officials said soldiers entered the camp early Saturday and surrounded a house. In videos circulated on social media, exchanges of fire could be heard. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported two dead and 11 wounded, three of them critically.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead as Mahmoud al-Sous, 18, and Ahmad Daraghmeh, 16.
The Israeli military said it had arrested a 25-year-old operative from the Islamic Jihad militant group who has previously been imprisoned by Israel. It said the man had recently been involved in shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers.
It said soldiers opened fire during the raid when dozens of Palestinians hurled explosives and shot at them.
Just before noontime, the Israeli forces withdrew from the area.
Israeli Defense Forces raid Jenin Refugee Camp at early morning hours in Jenin, West Bank on October 08, 2022.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The killing occurred a day after two Palestinian teenagers, ages 14 and 17, were killed by Israeli fire in separate incidents elsewhere in the occupied West Bank. Rights groups accuse Israeli forces of using excessive force in their dealings with the Palestinians without being held accountable. The Israeli military says it opens fire only in life-threatening situations.
Israel says it is forced to take action because Palestinian security forces, who coordinate with the military in a tense alliance against Islamic militants, are unable or unwilling to crack down. Palestinian security forces say the military raids have undermined their credibility and public support, especially in the absence of any political process. The last round of substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ended in 2009.
Most of those killed are said by Israel to have been militants. But local youths protesting the incursions as well as some civilians have also been killed in the violence. Hundreds have been rounded up, with many placed in so-called administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold them without trial or charge. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting this year.
The violence is also fueled by deepening disillusionment and anger among young Palestinians over the tight security coordination between Israel and the internationally backed Palestinian Authority, which work together to apprehend militants.
U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland said he was alarmed by the rising bloodshed. “The mounting violence in the occupied West Bank is fueling a climate of fear, hatred and anger,” he said in a statement, calling on the sides to reduce tensions and take steps toward reviving a political process.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in some 130 settlements and other outposts among nearly 3 million Palestinians. The Palestinians want that territory, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, for their future state.
