Ukraine suffers power outage amid Russian strikes on infra

KYIV/TEHRAN: Ukraine’s state electricity operator on Saturday announced blackouts in Kyiv and seven other regions of the country in the aftermath of Russia’s devastating strikes on energy infrastructure.

The move comes as Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian cities and villages with missiles and drones, inflicting damage on power plants, water supplies and other civilian targets, in a grinding war that is nearing its nine-month mark.

Ukrenergo, the sole operator of Ukraine’s high-voltage transmission lines, initially said in a an online statement on Saturday that scheduled blackouts will take place in the capital and the greater Kyiv region, as well as several regions around it - Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Poltava, and Kharkiv.

Iran admits sending drones to Russia

Iran admitted for the first time on Saturday that it has sent drones to Russia, but insisted they were supplied to its ally before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We supplied Russia with a limited number of drones months before the war in Ukraine,” foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.

In response, Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman warned Iran on Saturday in a post on Facebook that “the consequences of complicity” with Moscow would be “greater than the benefit from Russia’s support”.

The Iranian foreign minister also denied his country had supplied missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “completely false”. The Washington Post reported on October 16 that Iran was preparing to ship missiles to Russia.

Kyiv has said around 400 Iranian drones have already been used against the civilian population of Ukraine, and that Moscow has ordered around 2,000.

Train crosses North Korea border into Russia

A train crossed from North Korea into Russia on Friday, two days after the US said it had information indicating Pyongyang is covertly supplying Russia with artillery shells for its war in Ukraine, a Washington think tank said, citing commercial satellite imagery.