Adviser to Ukraine’s military chief died in explosion on his birthday
A close adviser to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army has been killed after a grenade amongst his birthday presents exploded, according to officials.
“Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” Gen Valery Zaluzhny posted on Telegram on Monday, saying that an “unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts”.
Chastiakov’s death was initially reported as a suspected assassination using a booby-trapped gift until further details emerged. Ukraine’s interior minister, Igor Klymenko, released a statement saying Chastiakov had been showing his son a box with grenades inside that he had received as a gift.
“At first, the son took the munition in his hands and began to turn the ring. Then the serviceman took the grenade away from the child and pulled the ring, causing a tragic explosion,” Klymenko said.
Police had identified a fellow soldier who gave the gift, said Klymenko, and seized two similar grenades. An investigation was underway.
Ukrainian police said the 13-year-old son was also seriously injured. Ukrainska Pravda reported Chastiakov’s wife as saying the grenade was in a gift bag her husband brought home. Some reports suggested the real grenade was amongst novelty gifts shaped to look like grenades.
The news of Maj Gennadiy Chastiakov’s death – in what is being reported as a bizarre birthday accident involving a grenade – comes after the Ukrainian military was rocked by the killing of at least 19 soldiers in a Russian attack during a medal ceremony.
There are tensions, too, between the military hierarchy and the government. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denied a suggestion from Ukraine’s military chief – Gen Valery Zaluzhny, to whom Chastiakov was an adviser – that the war with Russia has reached a stalemate.
Zaluzhny is said to have been rebuked over his assessment, which was published in the Economist.
Key events
G7 support for Ukraine in its war with Russia will not be affected by the intensifying Middle East conflict, says Japan
G7 support for Ukraine in its war with Russia will not be affected by the intensifying Middle East conflict, Japan said on Tuesday as the group’s foreign ministers prepared to hold virtual talks with Kyiv during a meeting in Tokyo.
The Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – as well as the European Union, meet in Tokyo on Nov. 7-8 to discuss issues including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza crisis.
“Our commitment to continue strict sanctions against Russia and strong support for Ukraine has not wavered at all, even as the situation in the Middle East intensifies,” Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told a press conference, Reuters reports.
Kamikawa said the G7 was arranging a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba to be held during the Tokyo meeting.
G7 countries recognise that Russia is settling into its war in Ukraine for the longer term and this requires enduring military and economic support for Kyiv, a senior U.S. official said after the bloc’s foreign ministers met in September.
The group has been at the forefront of sanctions on Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy making a surprise appearance at the G7 leaders summit in Hiroshima in May.
In the latest move aimed at turning the economic screws on Russia, the group is weighing up proposals to impose sanctions on Russian diamonds.
A Russian ship was “almost certainly” damaged after being struck in Crimea, says the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
In a defence intelligence update, the MoD said a newly built Russian naval corvette was damaged on 4 November, which was earlier reported by Ukrainian and Russian sources.
“Ukraine’s capability to hit Crimean shipbuilding infrastructure will likely cause Russia to consider relocating farther from the frontline, delaying the delivery of new vessels,” the update said.
Ukraine fired 17 drones towards Crimea, Russia says
Russia foiled an attempted Ukrainian drone attack Tuesday morning, shooting down drones over the Black Sea and the annexed Crimean peninsula, Moscow’s defence ministry said.
“On the morning of November 7, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using 17 unmanned aerial vehicles against buildings on Russian territory was stopped,” the defence ministry said, according to AFP.
“Anti-aircraft defences destroyed nine Ukrainian drones and eight others were intercepted over the Black Sea and the territory of Crimea,” it added.
Moscow and Kyiv have been launching overnight drone attacks at each other for months, with both sides typically claiming to have disabled or shot down dozens every week.
Falling debris injured one man, leaving him in a serious condition, Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, said. There was no other serious damage, Razvozhayev said.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that a statement by an Israeli junior minister who appeared to voice openness to the idea of Israel carrying out a nuclear strike on Gaza had raised many questions.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday suspended the heritage minister, Amihay Eliyahu, from a far-right party in the coalition government, from cabinet meetings “until further notice”.
Asked in a radio interview about a hypothetical nuclear option, Eliyahu had replied: “That’s one way.”
His remark drew swift condemnation from around the Arab world, scandalised mainstream Israeli broadcasters and was deemed “objectionable” by a US official.
“The UN security council and the International Atomic Energy Agency must take immediate and uninterrupted action to disarm this barbaric and apartheid regime. Tomorrow is late,” the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
“This has raised a huge number of questions,” Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, was quoted as saying by the state RIA news agency on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
Zakharova said the main issue was that Israel appeared to have admitted that it had nuclear weapons. Israel does not publicly acknowledge it has nuclear weapons though the Federation of American Scientists estimates Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads.
“Question number one – it turns out that we are hearing official statements about the presence of nuclear weapons?” Zakharova said. “If so, she said, then where are the International Atomic Energy Agency and international nuclear inspectors?”
Russia on Tuesday formally withdrew from a landmark security treaty that limited key categories of conventional armed forces, blaming the US for undermining post-cold war security with the enlargement of the Nato military alliance.
The 1990 treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe (CFE), signed a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, placed verifiable limits on categories of conventional military equipment that Nato and the then-Warsaw Pact could deploy.
The treaty was designed to prevent either side of the cold war from amassing forces for a swift offensive against the other in Europe, but was unpopular in Moscow as it blunted the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional weapons.
Russia suspended participation in the treaty in 2007 and halted active participation in 2015. More than a year after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin in May signed a decree denouncing the pact.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow had formally withdrawn from the pact at midnight – and that the treaty was now “history”, according to Reuters.
“The CFE Treaty was concluded at the end of the cold war, when the formation of a new architecture of global and European security based on cooperation seemed possible, and appropriate attempts were made,” the ministry said.
Russia said the US push for enlargement of Nato had led to alliance countries “openly circumventing” the treaty’s group restrictions, and added that the admission of Finland into Nato and Sweden’s application meant the treaty was dead.
“Even the formal preservation of the CFE treaty has become unacceptable from the point of view of Russia’s fundamental security interests,” the ministry said, noting that the US and its allies did not ratify the updated 1999 CFE.
After Russia announced its intention to exit the treaty this year, Nato condemned the decision, saying it undermined Euro-Atlantic security.
“Russia has for many years not complied with its CFE obligations,” Nato said in June. “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and Belarus’s complicity, is contrary to the objectives of the CFE Treaty.”
The US and its allies had linked ratification of the adapted 1999 CFE to Russia fulfilling commitments on Georgia and Moldova. Russia said that linkage was wrong.
Here are the latest images coming across the wires:
Russian strikes overnight in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa left eight people wounded and damaged a historic art museum, Ukrainian officials said, in the latest barrage of drones and missiles.
Three more were injured in a Russian shelling attack on the southern city of Kherson on Monday, as Kyiv doubled down on its warnings that Russia was planning to pummel Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the winter, AFP reports.
Images released by officials from inside the Odesa Fine Arts Museum showed art ripped from the walls of the 19th-century building and windows blown out by the aerial bombardment.
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack on Odesa’s National Art Museum and urged the UN’s Paris-based heritage agency, Unesco, to condemn the strike.
Unesco said it “strongly condemns the attack” and that “cultural sites must be protected”.
The art museum is part of a Unesco World Heritage site. The governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said most of the collection had already been removed during the war. “Canvases and paintings from the current exhibition were not damaged,” he said on social media on Monday.
A woman who lived in a nearby building said she and her family were away during the strike but their home had been damaged. “God led us away. We’ll see what happens in the flat next. Out of five windows, I have none left,” the woman, who gave her name only as Svitlana, told AFP.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday he did not believe it was the right time for elections as debate intensifies on holding a vote in 2024 while the country fought against Russia’s invasion.
All elections including the presidential vote set to take place next spring are technically cancelled under martial law that has been in effect since the conflict began last year.
“We must decide that now is the time of defence, the time of battle, on which the fate of the state and people depends,” Zelenskiy said in his daily address, according to AFP.
He said it was a time for the country to be united, not divided, adding: “I believe that now is not the (right) time for elections.”
The president, who was elected in 2019, said in September that he was ready to hold national elections next year if necessary, and was in favour of allowing international observers. Voting could be logistically difficult due to the large number of Ukrainians abroad and soldiers fighting on the front.
Zelensky’s approval rating skyrocketed after the war began, but the country’s political landscape has been fractious despite the unifying force of the war.
The former presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych has announced that he will run against his former boss, after criticising Zelenskiy over the slow pace of the counteroffensive.
Loud explosions have been heard near the towns of Novofedorivka and Saky in Crimea, according to Shot, a Russian news outlet whose story was in turn reported by Reuters.
Saky is north of the Crimean port of Sevastopol, and home to a Russian air base.
It came as the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said air defence systems destroyed five Ukraine-launched drones early on Tuesday over Sevastopol.
Russian officials regularly say most or all Ukrainian missiles were shot down, regardless of the actual outcome of an attack.
Debris fell on the roof of a private house in the village of Andriivka, in Sevastopol’s suburbs, setting it briefly on fire, Razvozhayev wrote online.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has been attacking Russian military infrastructure on the illegally Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.
Adviser to Ukraine’s military chief died in explosion on his birthday
A close adviser to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army has been killed after a grenade amongst his birthday presents exploded, according to officials.
“Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” Gen Valery Zaluzhny posted on Telegram on Monday, saying that an “unknown explosive device detonated in one of his gifts”.
Chastiakov’s death was initially reported as a suspected assassination using a booby-trapped gift until further details emerged. Ukraine’s interior minister, Igor Klymenko, released a statement saying Chastiakov had been showing his son a box with grenades inside that he had received as a gift.
“At first, the son took the munition in his hands and began to turn the ring. Then the serviceman took the grenade away from the child and pulled the ring, causing a tragic explosion,” Klymenko said.
Police had identified a fellow soldier who gave the gift, said Klymenko, and seized two similar grenades. An investigation was underway.
Ukrainian police said the 13-year-old son was also seriously injured. Ukrainska Pravda reported Chastiakov’s wife as saying the grenade was in a gift bag her husband brought home. Some reports suggested the real grenade was amongst novelty gifts shaped to look like grenades.
The news of Maj Gennadiy Chastiakov’s death – in what is being reported as a bizarre birthday accident involving a grenade – comes after the Ukrainian military was rocked by the killing of at least 19 soldiers in a Russian attack during a medal ceremony.
There are tensions, too, between the military hierarchy and the government. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denied a suggestion from Ukraine’s military chief – Gen Valery Zaluzhny, to whom Chastiakov was an adviser – that the war with Russia has reached a stalemate.
Zaluzhny is said to have been rebuked over his assessment, which was published in the Economist.
Summary
Hello and welcome to our daily restart of the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here is a summary to get you up to speed:
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A close military adviser to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s army has been killed after a grenade among birthday presents exploded. “Under tragic circumstances, my assistant and close friend, Major Gennadiy Chastiakov, was killed … on his birthday,” Gen Valery Zaluzhny wrote online. Chastiakov had left a wife and four children, he said.
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The death was initially reported as a suspected assassination attempt, but details later emerged suggesting there was a mix-up and the grenade was amongst birthday presents and mistakenly set off. Chastiakov’s son, 13, was also reported to have been seriously injured.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the deaths of at least 19 soldiers in a Russian missile strike on a military ceremony was a “tragedy that could’ve been avoided”. Other reports suggest the death toll could be much higher, while defence chiefs are under pressure over the staging of the event in a frontline village vulnerable to attack.
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Zelenskiy has said it is irresponsible to talk of holding an election in Ukraine in wartime and called for unity to avoid pointless political discussions. “We need to recognise that this is a time for defence, a time for battle, upon which the fate of the state and its people depend … I believe that elections are not appropriate at this time.” Elections are banned under martial law in force in Ukraine, but Zelenskiy had been considering whether to invoke special provisions to stage them. He has said he would like to run for a second term if a vote took place.
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In the US, some senate Republicans have released a sweeping set of US border security proposals as a condition for sending more aid to Ukraine, laying out a draft plan that includes resuming construction on parts of the Mexico border wall.
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Vladimir Putin has decided to run in the March presidential election, a move that would keep him in power until least 2030, as he is said to feel he must steer Russia through its most perilous period in decades, sources told Reuters.
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Radio Free Europe has said that it believes Russia may have taken one of its journalists “hostage” for a potential prisoner swap with the US and is appealing to Moscow not to treat her cruelly, the broadcaster’s acting president said.
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Several dozen owners of transport companies blocked three Polish border crossings with Ukraine in protest at what they say is unfair competition from its businesses.
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Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen by almost a third compared with last year, agriculture ministry data shows, to 9.8m tonnes so far in the July 2023-June 2024 season. The ministry said that by this point last year, Ukraine had exported 14.3m tonnes.
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Odesa’s national art museum said seven exhibitions, most featuring the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists, were damaged by a Russian strike that left a large crater outside the museum, which is celebrating its 124th anniversary. Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack and urged the UN’s Paris-based heritage agency, Unesco, to condemn it.
