Ukraine Update…262 days into the Russian move on the Ukraine

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

• Zelensky called on Ukrainians to limit energy use during peak periods. In his nightly address Monday, he said “the situation is particularly difficult” in the capital, Kyiv, as well as in the regions of Sumy in the northeast and Odessa on the Black Sea. After a major Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last week, the country has “practically no intact thermal and hydropower plants left,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of national power grid operator Ukrenergo, said at a news conference Tuesday, Ukrainian news site Pravda reported. “The scale of destruction is colossal,” he said, adding that scheduled electricity shutdowns were needed to prevent the system’s collapse.
• Shelling has caused “widespread damage” to the Zaporizhzhia plant, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has tried to negotiate a buffer zone around the plant, determined Monday that its reactors remained intact. Zelensky said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron about the facility, which is controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine.
• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed the war with his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Wei Fenghe. The Tuesday conversation “underscored how both the United States and China oppose the use of nuclear weapons or threats to use them,” the Pentagon said. The two met on the sidelines of a meeting of regional defense ministers in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
• Ukraine’s SBU security service raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in the capital on Tuesday as part of operations to counter what it described as “subversive activities by Russian special services.” The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Monastery houses the Russian-linked part of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church, which follows the Moscow Patriarchate. A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, whose head, Patriarch Kirill, has supported Moscow’s war in Ukraine, called the search an “act of intimidation.” The SBU also raided two monasteries and the headquarters of the church’s diocese in Rivne, western Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday he considered the raids “another link in the chain of military actions against Russian Orthodoxy.

• Ukrainian prosecutors said they uncovered suspected torture sites in Kherson after Russian forces withdrew from the city earlier this month. Investigators found parts of rubber batons, a wooden bat, an apparatus allegedly used to torture civilians with electric current, and bullets in the walls. The Washington Post could not independently verify the claims. U.N. officials have noted “patterns” of torture committed by Russia in Ukraine.
• Russia’s State Duma, or lower house of parliament, adopted a resolution Tuesday condemning the alleged killings of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian forces and calling on Western nations to stop supporting Kyiv. The U.N. Human Rights Office is reportedly looking into videos that had circulated online in recent days and that the Kremlin said showed Ukrainian forces executing Russian prisoners of war. Ukraine said Monday it would investigate the footage, the Associated Press reported.
• The United States is closely tracking recent footage that allegedly shows Ukrainian forces executing Russian troops, the U.S. envoy for global criminal justice, Beth Van Schaak, said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday. “It’s really important to emphasize that the laws of war apply to all parties equally, both the aggressor state and the defender state, and this is in equal measure,” she said. “We would urge Ukraine to continue to abide by international obligations in this conflict.”….

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