Russia-Ukraine war live: reports of strikes overnight in Zaporizhzhia; G7 and Zelenskiy to hold crisis talks

Ukraine’s state emergency services have updated their count of the dead and wounded from yesterday’s attacks. In a message posted to Telegram earlier this morning, the agency said that “according to preliminary data, 19 people died, there were another 105 injured”.

The service also said that over 1,000 people and 120 units were involved in extinguishing fires and emergency rescue operations yesterday. They suggest that around 300 settlements in four oblasts remains without power.

Thérèse Coffey, who is deputy prime minister of the UK, has been interviewed on Sky News this morning. She was asked what the UK could do to offer further support to Ukraine following yesterday’s wave of Russian missile strikes on cities. She called for other countries to offer support, saying:

We have been continuing the support that we’ve been giving. The prime minister [Liz Truss] was foreign secretary beforehand, working in step with our defence secretary Ben Wallace and at the time prime minister Boris Johnson, and we continue to do that. So we need to make sure that the west is also resolved to making sure that Putin must fail. And the people of Ukraine succeed.

Pressed on something specific the UK could offer, she continued:

Well, of course, some of these operational matters, of the direct support [that] will be given will be discussed confidentially, both within government, but also with the Ukrainian president. And I know that we have always stepped up to deliver what we can.

But this is a time for other countries to continue the level of support that they’ve been showing, and where necessary to escalate their level of support directly to the Ukrainian armed forces, as we have done

Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner said on Monday he has renounced his Russian citizenship after leaving the country in 2014.

Milner is the founder of internet investment firm DST Global, and made a fortune by betting on Chinese tech companies like e-commerce platforms Alibaba and JD.com.

“My family and I left Russia for good in 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea,” Milner said in a tweet. “And this summer, we officially completed the process of renouncing our Russian citizenship.”

Milner has been an Israeli citizen since 1999 and has not visited Russia since 2014, according to a fact sheet on DST Global’s website.

Milner also has no assets in Russia, 97% of his personal wealth was created outside of the country and “Yuri has never met Vladimir Putin, either individually or in a group,” according to the website.

Ukraine’s state emergency service has reported that the death toll from Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities on 10 October has risen to 19, with the number of injured rising to over 105.

Hong Kong’s leader John Lee said Tuesday he will implement only United Nations sanctions – not US, UK or EU sanctions – after the US warned the territory’s status as a financial centre could be affected if it acts as a safe haven for sanctioned individuals, AP reports.

Lee’s statement Tuesday came days after a luxury yacht connected to Russian tycoon Alexey Mordashov docked in the city.

Mordashov, who is believed to have close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was sanctioned by the US, UK and the European Union in February after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hong Kong authorities have said that they do not implement unilateral sanctions imposed by other governments.

“We cannot do anything that has no legal basis,” Lee told reporters. “We will comply with United Nations sanctions, that is our system, that is our rule of law,” he said.

A US State Department spokesperson said in a statement Monday that “the possible use of Hong Kong as a safe haven by individuals evading sanctions from multiple jurisdictions further calls into question the transparency of the business environment.”

The State Department spokesperson also said the city’s reputation as a financial centre “depends on its adherence to international laws and standards.”

The UK Ministry of Defence has published its daily update from Ukraine, reporting that “the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that General Sergei Surovikin had been appointed as overall commander of its Joint Group of Forces conducting the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine” on 8 October.

“For much of its operation, Russia has likely lacked a single empowered field commander,” the MoD tweeted.

“Surovikin’ s appointment likely reflects an effort by the Russian national security community to improve the delivery of the operation. However, he will likely have to contest with an increasingly factional Russian MOD which is poorly resourced to achieve the political objectives it has been set in Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emine Dzheppar, reports that Russia fired at least fifteen rockets on Zaporizhzhia last night, targeting “an educational institution, a medical institution and residential buildings.”

Citing the Oblast Military Administration, media outlet Ukrainska Pravda reports that that Ladyzhynska power plant in the southwestern city of Vinnytsia was shelled a short while ago by two Shahed-136 kamikaze drones.

Ukranian state news agency Ukrinform reports that 98 miners are still trapped underground following Russia’s shelling of Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelensky’s home town.

Power outages caused by the strikes have left 98 miners stick underground., the news agency reports, with rescuers working to release them.

Almost 900 miners had been trapped in four mines following the strikes, but most have since been freed.