Latest Ukraine updates: Ukrainians awarded EU’s Sakharov Prize

A senior US Treasury Department official has travelled to Turkey this week to discuss sanctions and export controls imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, the department has said, as Washington closely monitors growing economic ties between Ankara and Moscow.

Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Elizabeth Rosenberg travelled to Ankara and Istanbul from Monday through Wednesday, where she met with counterparts including officials from the ministries of finance and foreign affairs as well as representatives in the private financial and commercial sectors, according to a statement.

Putin has signed a decree imposing martial law in four “annexed” regions of Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Vall reports from Moscow, Russia.

The US has imposed new sanctions on Russia, targeting a network that Washington accused of procuring military and dual-use technologies from US manufacturers and supplying them to Russian users.

The US Department of the Treasury said it imposed sanctions on Russian national Yury Yuryevich Orekhov, whom it accused of being a procurement agent, and two of his companies – Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH and Opus Energy Trading LLC.

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said sanctions and export controls imposed by a broad coalition of allies had left Russia increasingly struggling to secure “inputs and technologies” for its war.

Russian occupation forces in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, say it has already resettled 7,000 civilians on territory that is controlled by Moscow, according to Russian news agencies.

It was not possible to independently verify the comments by the head of the administration, Vladimir Saldo.

The occupation administration called on people to gather at the port of Kherson. “Each person is allowed 50 kilos of luggage,” the authorities said. “Animals may be taken along.”

Zelenskyy has met in Kyiv with Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias and EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič.

On his Telegram channel, the Ukrainian leader later thanked Greece for its “principled and staunch stance” in supporting Ukraine’s successful bid for EU candidate status.

Earlier talks between Dendias and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba were interrupted by air raid sirens in Kyiv. According to Kuleba, the talks resumed in a bomb shelter. They signed an agreement of cooperation during their meeting.

Zelenskyy also awarded Lenarčič an Order of Merit “for his personal contribution to the support of Ukraine”.

The US has issued additional Russia-related sanctions, designating one individual and two entities, the Department of the Treasury’s website showed on Wednesday.

Ukraine will restrict electricity supplies across the country on Thursday after Russia knocked out more power plants, a senior aide to President Zelenskyy has said.

“From 7am to 11pm, it is necessary to minimise the use of electricity … if this is not done, you should prepare for temporary blackouts,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, said in a Telegram post.

Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo later said that the planned power cut would be limited to Thursday and cited a lack of capacity in the system.

“We do not exclude that with the onset of a cold weather we will be asking for your help even more frequently,” Ukrenergo said in a post on Telegram.

Zelenskyy and other leading politicians have held a crisis meeting to discuss emergency energy measures after many of the country’s facilities were destroyed in the latest wave of Russian attacks.

Work is under way to provide mobile power sources for critical infrastructure in major cities, towns and villages, Zelenskyy said.

“We are preparing for different scenarios and their consequences. Ukraine will defend itself whatever the enemy plans or does,” he said in a Facebook post.

US prosecutors have charged five Russian nationals and two traders for Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela for sanctions evasion and other charges over a scheme to ship Venezuelan oil to Russian and Chinese buyers.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Russian nationals Yury Orekhov and Svetlana Kuzurgasheva also procured military technologies from US manufacturers and shipped them to Russian end-users, including sanctioned companies.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called off a planned visit to Kyiv for security reasons, his office has said.

An official from his office said that security authorities in Germany and the foreign ministry had advised Steinmeier not to go but that the visit would be rescheduled soon.

The president in Germany holds a largely ceremonial role. He had planned to visit the Ukrainian capital in April, but Kyiv initially declined to welcome him due to unease about his past support of rapprochement with Russia. Since then, the diplomatic rift has been mended.

Biden says Putin is in an “incredibly difficult position” in Ukraine and has run out of options beyond trying to “brutalise” civilians into surrender.

“I think that Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredibly difficult position,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “It seems his only tool available is to brutalise individual citizens of Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens, to try to intimidate them into capitulating. They’re not going to do that.”

It is no surprise Russia is resorting to “desperate tactics”, the US says after Putin declared martial law in four partially occupied regions of Ukraine that Russia claims as its own.

“It should be no surprise to anybody that Russia is resorting to desperate tactics to try and enforce control in these areas,” state department spokesman Vedant Patel said at a daily press briefing.

Tony Radakin, chief of the UK defence staff, has urged the international community to remain united against what he called Putin’s “deeply irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric.

“He has few options left, hence, the nuclear rhetoric,” Radakin said. “And while this is worrying and deeply irresponsible, it is a sign of weakness, which is precisely why the international community needs to remain strong and united.”

Israel has offered to help Ukrainians develop air attack alerts for civilians, signalling a softening of a policy of non-military intervention in the war.

Kyiv has appealed for ways to counteract Iranian-made drones that Russia is using to carry out attacks across Ukraine.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel asked for systems that would shoot down the drones instead, but Minister of Defence Benny Gantz said Israel was firm on not supplying Kyiv with weapons.

Although it has condemned the Russian invasion, Israel has limited its Ukraine assistance to humanitarian aid, citing a desire for continued cooperation with Moscow over war-ravaged neighbour Syria and the wellbeing of Russia’s Jews.

Moscow-installed authorities in the port city of Mariupol have taken down a monument to the millions of Ukrainian victims of a 1930s famine.

Kyiv calls the man-made disaster caused by Joseph Stalin’s policies a “genocide” while Moscow says the famine occurred all over the Soviet Union and didn’t target Ukraine.

The state-run RIA Novosti news agency published a video of a truck uprooting the monument in Mariupol.

“We are not taking out a memorial; we are getting rid of a symbol of the political disinformation of the population, particularly of our youth,” local youth organisation spokeswoman Evgenya Krotova told RIA.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin says life in the Russian capital will remain “normal” after Putin introduced measures that could see transport restricted and security increased in the city of 12.5 million people.

While introducing martial law in four regions of Ukraine that are partially under Russian control, Putin also placed several Russian regions, including Moscow, on “increased alert”.

“I need to say that at the moment, no measures that would limit the normal rhythm of life are being introduced,” said Sobyanin, who has tried to keep a business-as-usual approach in Moscow.

“The tasks of ensuring the stability of the economy and carrying out security measures, coordination of forces and means of response, civil defence, protection from emergencies, etc will be solved by the relevant federal and city services,” the mayor said on Telegram.

Zelenskyy hails what he says is the Ukrainian people’s fight for democratic values against Russia after the EU awarded the annual Sakharov Prize for human rights to Ukrainians.

“Ukrainians prove dedication to the values of freedom, democracy every day on the battlefield against the terrorist state of the Russian Federation,” Zelenskyy said on Twitter.

A Russian missile strike has hit a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine, the region’s governor says after the latest in a wave of attacks on critical infrastructure ahead of winter.

The latest salvo hit the coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. It supplies electricity to three western regions and to five million consumers – more than 10 percent of Ukraine’s pre-war population.

“Our region experienced missile fire today,” Svitlana Onyshchuk, Ivano-Frankivsk’s governor, said in a video statement posted online. “The Burshtyn thermal power station was hit, which caused a fire.”

She said no one was hurt in the strike hundreds of kilometres from the front lines. It has until recently been relatively unscathed by the war. The same facility was hit by four missiles on October 10, the governor said.

The European Union has prepared new sanctions on Iran over supplying drones to Russia, which has used them to carry out attacks across Ukraine.

The sanctions are being drafted ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the drone attacks. The US, France and the UK requested the closed-door Security Council discussion, at which they will voice alarm, diplomats said.

Russia holds veto power on the Security Council and would be sure to kill any resolution. But the US and France have warned that Iran is violating a Security Council resolution by arming Russia in its war in Ukraine.

Norway’s domestic security agency has investigated drone sightings near key infrastructure sites after “an elevated intelligence threat from Russia”.

Hedvig Moe, deputy chief at PST, the intelligence agency’s acronym, said, “Russia is in a pressed situation as a result of the war and is isolated by sanctions” over its war in Ukraine.

“We are in a tense security-political situation, and at the same time a complex and unclear threat picture that can change in a relatively short time,” she said.

On Monday, Norwegian police revealed that they had arrested four Russians on suspicion of illegally photographing classified facilities and had previously caught two other Russians allegedly possessing drones.