Putin says there is 'no need' to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine; Biden casts doubt on the claims

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed doubts over Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's claims that Russia had completed its partial military mobilization.

"Today they are reporting to the enemy about the alleged completion of their mobilization ... About the alleged needlessness of new waves of sending Russian citizens to the front. We feel completely different on the front line," Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post.

Earlier, Shoigu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to announce the completion of Putin's call for a partial military mobilization of 300,000 people. According to Shoigu, 82,000 have already been sent to the front lines.

"Although Russia is trying to increase the pressure on our positions by using mobilized people, they are so poorly prepared and equipped, so rudely used by the command that it suggests: Russia may soon need a new wave of sending people to war," Zelenkyy said.

Zelenskyy said that, as a result, Ukraine is preparing for the possibility of further Russian mobilization and aggression, noting Iran's contributions to Russia's missile and drone arsenal.

"We are preparing for the fact that the current Russian leadership will look for any new opportunities to continue the war. In particular, thanks to his accomplices - in Iran," he said.

— Rocio Fabbro

Canada will sell a government-backed, 5-year bond to raise money for Ukraine and it will impose new sanctions on 35 Russian individuals, including Gazprom executives, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

"Canadians will now be able to go to major banks to purchase their sovereignty bonds which will mature after five years with interest," Trudeau told an annual meeting of the Congress of Ukrainian Canadians in Winnipeg.

The proceeds will "help the (Ukrainian) government continue operations, including providing essential services to Ukrainians, like pensions, and purchasing fuel before winter," a statement said.

The equivalent of the income raised will be channeled "directly to Ukraine" through an International Monetary Fund administered account, the statement said.

Trudeau also announced new sanctions on 35 senior officials of energy sector entities, including Gazprom "and its subsidiaries," according to a statement, plus six other "energy sector entities."

— Reuters

The United States announced an additional $275 million in military support to Ukraine, including "arms, munitions, and equipment from U.S. Department of Defense inventories."

"This drawdown will bring the total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to an unprecedented level of more than $18.5 billion since the beginning of the Administration," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. It is the "twenty-fourth drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment for Ukraine since August 2021," according to the statement.

Air defense capabilities are a major focus of the assistance package, Blinken said, and two initial medium-range missile systems are ready for delivery to Ukraine next month.

"The capabilities we are delivering are carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield for Ukraine today," he said.

This assistance comes as Russia has scaled up its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, which many have considered a sign of Russia's faltering position on the battlefield.

— Rocio Fabbro

Russia sustained its missile and air strikes in Ukraine, according to an evening update from the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces.

"Today, the Russians launched 3 missile and 14 air strikes, carried out more than 50 attacks from remote missile launching systems," Ukraine's military reported.

Russian forces also targeted Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.

The armed forces reported that the military's aviation forces carried out 24 strikes on Russian positions, including in 20 areas with weapons and military equipment and four with anti-aircraft missile systems.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery also hit a command post, areas of concentration of manpower, weapons and military equipment, ammunition warehouses and other important military objects, according to the update.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Iran to stop sending arms to Russia in a phone call with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian.

"I demanded Iran to immediately cease the flow of weapons to Russia used to kill civilians and destroy critical infrastructure in Ukraine," Kuleba wrote in a tweet.

Iran has reportedly sent missiles and self-detonating Shahed drones, also known as "kamikaze" drones, to Russia to be used in its war against Ukraine. The U.S. Department of Defense assessed that Iran has already sent hundreds of drones to Russia.

However, Iran has outwardly denied the allegations.

— Rocio Fabbro

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu met with President Vladimir Putin to confirm the completion of Putin's partial military mobilization of 300,000 people.

"The military commissariats, within the framework of a special military operation, will continue to recruit troops only by accepting volunteers and candidates for military service under the contract," Shoigu said in the meeting, broadcast on state television. He noted that the initial mobilization supply problems "have been resolved."

According to Shoigu, 82,000 of the recruits have already been sent to active duty or the frontlines. The rest are in training.

"It is necessary to modernize the entire system of work of military registration and enlistment offices, mistakes were inevitable, since mobilization had not been carried out for a long time," Putin said of the process.

The Russian president called for the partial mobilization in late September in hopes of bolstering his country's sagging fortunes in its war against Ukraine.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said Russian forces "turned Mariupol into a city of nameless graves," as the seaside town grapples with Russia's months long occupation.

"The worst thing is that the graves have no names, only numbers and it is not known at all how many bodies were buried in one grave," he said, adding that relatives of the deceased may not be able to receive the remains.

"Those guilty of these war crimes will bear the strictest and most just responsibility," he said, adding that Russian troops have attempted to destroy "the traces of their own crimes."

Lubinets said that following Mariupol's liberation, Ukraine will exhume the bodies and work to properly identify those that were killed and disrespectfully buried.

— Amanda Macias

More than 4.4 million Ukrainians have applied for temporary resident status in neighboring Western European countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates.

Nearly 8 million Ukrainians have become refugees and moved to neighboring countries, according to data collected by the agency.

"The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has caused civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcing people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance," the U.N. Refugee Agency wrote.

— Amanda Macias

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, there have been at least 631 attacks on vital health services in the country, the World Health Organization's Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care estimates.

The organization reports that health care facilities were damaged 549 times, ambulances were targeted in 82 cases and at least 158 attacks affected crucial medical supplies. The group also estimated that attacks on health services led to at least 100 deaths and 129 injuries.

The Kremlin has previously denied that it targets civilian infrastructure like hospitals, schools and apartment buildings.

— Amanda Macias

The organization overseeing the export of agricultural products from Ukraine said that 399 vessels have left the besieged country since ports reopened.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal agreed to in July by Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said the ships have transported a total of 9 million metric tons of grain and other food products so far.

In August, three of Ukraine's ports were reopened to exports under the U.N.-backed deal.

Read more about the Black Sea Grain Initiative here.

— Amanda Macias

Workers repair power lines and electrical equipment destroyed in a Russian missile strike on a power plant in an undisclosed location in Ukraine.

— Metin Aktas | AFP | Getty Images

Kharkiv's governor Oleg Synegubov announced that the region will see hourly power outages starting Monday as Russian strikes damage energy infrastructure.

"Such actions are necessary for the stabilization of power grids, because the enemy continues to attack our energy infrastructure," Synegubov said in a Telegram post. Power supply restrictions in the northeastern region will follow a 12-shift schedule to "at least slightly reduce the discomfort for residents," he said.

Oleksiy Kuleba, the governor of the region of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, also urged citizens to use energy sparingly.

"The situation still remains tense, and it is unfortunately too early to talk about the stabilization of the system," he said in a Telegram post. He noted that there will be "tougher and longer" power cuts in the country's capital and surrounding areas.

Blackouts will continue throughout major cities in attempts to preserve energy as Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure persist.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian military spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said the country's air force has shot down more than 300 Iranian Shahed-136 "kamikaze" drones.

Moscow has carried out several devastating missile and drone strikes against what Kyiv said were civilian targets and critical infrastructure such as energy facilities.

Iran and Russia's representatives at the United Nations have sharply denied reports that Tehran supplied Moscow with a fleet of drones for use in Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it uses Iranian-made drones to target residential and other high civilian areas.

— Amanda Macias

Brittney Griner will enter a system of isolation, grueling labor and psychological torment when she is transferred to a penal colony, the successor to the infamous Russian gulag, to fulfill a nine-year sentence handed down Tuesday in Moscow, former prisoners and advocates said. 

Human rights violations are a regular feature of many of the camps, according to the U.S. State Department, human rights groups and others who have maintained regular contact with prisoners in Russia. That the WNBA star, who lost her appeal Tuesday, is a gay Black woman could add unknown variables to a penal system that is known to be remote and harrowing. 

"Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life-threatening," a 2021 State Department report on Russian human rights abuses said. "Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities."

The report notes that "physical and sexual abuse by prison guards was systemic," that torture of prisoners was pervasive — at times resulting in death or suicide — and that discriminatory protections against women and people of color were not often enforced. The law also does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Read the full NBC News story.

— NBC News

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has plunged Europe into an era of insecurity, Germany said, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted a "dangerous" decade ahead.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is from a wing of Germany's Social Democrats that long argued for closer economic ties to Moscow, said the Feb.24 invasion had ruptured those hopes.

"When we look at the Russia of today, there is no room for old dreams," Steinmeier said, referring to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's dream of a "common European home".

"It has also plunged us in Germany into another time, into an insecurity we thought we had overcome: a time marked by war, violence and flight, by concerns about the expansion of war into a wildfire in Europe," he said. "Harder years, rough years are coming."

— Reuters

Ukraine's prosecutor general released an updated assessment of crimes committed by Russia during the eight months of its war in Ukraine.

The prosecutor general registered 42,616 crimes of aggression and war crimes committed by Russia. These include breaking the laws and customs of war, propaganda and waging an aggressive war. The report found that 430 children were killed and more than 800 injured by Russia.

The office also reported nearly 18,600 crimes against national security. It identified 627 suspects as Russian military and political leaders.

These crimes, according to the prosecutor general's office, violate several articles of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which came into force in 2001. The first report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, formed in March at the request of United Nations Human Rights Council member states, confirmed evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine late last month.

— Rocio Fabbro

Ukrainian soldiers Anton Domaratskyi (2nd R) and Victor Nesterenkoi (2nd L), brought to New York through the nonprofit organization Kind Deeds, receive prosthetics at an orthopedic clinic in the city of Brooklyn, New York.

— Eren Abdullahogullari | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Russia's central bank kept its interest rate unchanged at 7.5%, citing inflationary expectations and geopolitical uncertainty following the "partial mobilization" of Russian troops into Ukraine and prospects for a prolonged conflict.

The move to hold the interest rate ended a cycle of several months of cutting that began in April. The central bank had more than doubled rates to 20% shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine to counter a plummeting ruble.

The central bank has cut rates six times since then, hitting the pre-war interest rate of 9.5% by June, citing improvements in fiscal conditions and lowering inflation. While inflation is still far above the bank's target of 4%, sitting at 13.7% in September, it's fallen significantly from the 20-year high of 20.37% it hit in April as Western sanctions and foreign exchange freezes set in.

The decision to hold rates at 7.5% was expected by a majority of analysts interviewed by Reuters, the news agency reported.

— Natasha Turak

The U.S. has rejected Russian accusations that the Pentagon is helping Ukraine build banned bioweapons, dismissing them as lies.

The claims are "pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, arguing that Russia was trying to "distract from the atrocities" being committed in Ukraine.

"Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. The United States does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States," Thomas-Greenfield said.

Russia's ambassador to the UN said Moscow would launch an investigation into what he described as U.S. and Ukrainian breaches of the weapons convention.

— Natasha Turak

U.S. President Joe Biden expressed skepticism toward Russian President Vladimir Putin's claims in a recent speech that he had no need or intention to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

"If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it? Why is he talking about the ability to use a tactical nuclear weapon?" Biden said during an interview with NewsNation. "He's been very dangerous in how he's approached this."

Putin, in a speech Thursday, downplayed the possibility of a nuclear conflict and denied that Russia had threatened to use nuclear weapons. He said that Moscow was only responding to "nuclear blackmail" from the West.

In earlier weeks, however, Putin and other high-level Kremlin officials had expressed Russia's readiness to use all means at their disposal, including nuclear weapons, to protect the territorial integrity of Russia, which was understood to include the illegally annexed territories of Ukraine.

— Natasha Turak

Russian President Vladimir Putin poured cold water on claims that Russia would deploy nuclear weapons over Ukraine, despite repeatedly citing his ability to use such weapons if Russia's "territorial integrity" was threatened.

"We see no need for that," Putin said Thursday, speaking at a conference of foreign policy experts. "There is no point in that, neither political, nor military."

Putin had previously vowed to use "all means available to protect Russia," which observers took to mean nuclear weapons, but the president said in his latest remarks that that was merely a response to what he called "nuclear blackmail" by Western leaders.

He made particular reference to former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss's comments in August that she would be prepared to use nuclear weapons as leader.

— Natasha Turak

Russia is likely using mobilized reservists to boost its units west of Ukraine's Dnipro river, but troop numbers are already very low there, Britain's Ministry of Defense said in its latest intelligence update on Twitter.

"In September 2022, Russian officers described companies in the Kherson sector as consisting of between six and eight men each. Companies should deploy with around 100 personnel," the ministry tweeted.

"In the last six weeks there has been a clear move from Russian ground forces to transition to a long-term, defensive posture on most areas of the front line in Ukraine," the ministry said.

"This is likely due to a more realistic assessment that the severely undermanned, poorly trained force in Ukraine is currently only capable of defensive operations."

It continued, "Even if Russia succeeds in consolidating long-term defensive lines in Ukraine, its operational design will remain vulnerable."

— Natasha Turak

IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said that its inspectors will arrive in Ukraine this week on the heels of Russian allegations that Kyiv is preparing to use a "dirty bomb."

"I am very grateful for the openness that the Ukrainian government and I had a very comprehensive discussion with Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba about this. He came to the conclusion and I agree that the best way to dispel any doubt is to allow the inspectors in and this is what we're going to do," Grossi told reporters at the United Nations.

Grossi added that it will likely only take a few days to carry out the inspections.

The U.S. and its allies have dismissed Russian allegations that Ukraine is assembling a 'dirty bomb.'

— Amanda Macias

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told her colleagues before the U.N. Security Council meeting that she would keep her remarks short because "frankly, this meeting is a waste of everyone's time."

"Russia has called us here, once again, for the sole purpose of spreading disinformation. We all know these claims are pure fabrications, brought forth without a shred of evidence," Thomas-Greenfield said referencing recent Moscow claims that Kyiv has a biological weapon.

 "We hear Russia raise alarms that biological weapons will be delivered by birds and bats and now even mosquitoes. Birds and bats," she said, calling Russia's allegations "absurd."

"Russia's assertions are absurd for many reasons, including because such species, even if they could be weaponized, would pose as much a threat to the European continent and to Ukraine itself as they would to any other country," Thomas-Greenfield said.

— Amanda Macias

Missile strikes hit Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia; Russia warns U.S. commercial satellites could become targets