Russia is establishing a “security zone” inside Ukraine along the border and it will be non-negotiable in any future talks with Kyiv, Vladimir Putin has said . The Russian president, wearing military uniform and speaking during a visit to a command post, said the operation was in response to Ukraine’s 2024-25 incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region . “The Russian armed forces were tasked not only with expelling the enemy from our land but also with establishing a security zone in the adjacent territory. This task is being carried out successfully,” he said in televised comments on Friday. “Our goal is to ensure the absolute security of Russia’s border regions for the future, and we do not plan to make this a subject for potential peace negotiations with Ukraine.”
The planned security zone spanned 660km (410 miles) , of which 70% was currently under Russia’s control, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov did not say how deep it would reach inside Ukraine. The zone requires Russia to carve out land in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, which are not among those it is illegally claiming as its own territory.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian military’s access to the Starlink satellite internet service had not yet been fully restored , as media reports suggested the order to throttle the service had come from within the White House. The Ukrainian president met European leaders on Friday in Brussels, where he asked the EU for another €70bn ($79bn/£59bn) next year to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia, report Jennifer Rankin and Andrew Roth . The meeting offered an important opportunity for Zelenskyy and Europe to align their strategies as Zelenskyy was again embroiled in a major quarrel with Donald Trump. Hours earlier the US president called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace” after his purported “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine failed to take hold.
Russian attacks killed at least eight people and injured 60 across Ukraine on Friday, hit two shopping centres and cut power to more than 1 million people after strikes on the energy grid, officials said. Two were kiled and 12 more wounded in attacks on three districts of the eastern city of Kharkiv, governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Further Russian strikes through the evening injured nine, officials said. Attacks in Kramatorsk in the eastern Donetsk region killed two and another two were killed in south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
A drone strike on a food-processing facility killed one person and wounded eight in the north-western region of Volyn , according to governor Roman Romaniuk, leaving 370,000 people temporarily without power. Drone attacks also struck a customs terminal and torched about 10 trucks in the town of Kovel, he said. Other attacks hit at least two shopping centres – one in the northern city of Sumy and another in the neighbouring region of Rivne, officials said.
The attacks came as a new report showed that civilian casualties from Russia’s invasion have climbed steeply. At least 328 civilians were killed and 2,105 wounded last month – a total that is 85% higher than in September last year, the report from the UN human rights office in Kyiv said on Friday. It said intensifying Russian attacks in October already had killed dozens of civilians, including children. “The first two weeks of October were among the deadliest periods for civilians in years,” said Danielle Bell, the UN office head.
As Russian missiles and drones have systematically slammed into power plants in Kyiv and Kharkiv this week, the rolling blackouts and water outages have increasingly resembled a supposed Russian blueprint to destroy life in major Ukrainian cities seen by the Guardian , writes Andrew Roth in this analysis .
