Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia launches further strikes on Zaporizhzhia, damaging hospital, as water restored in Kyiv

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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called on Europeans to remain united against Russia’s war and to severely limit the price for Russian oil, amid discussions about the pricing EU countries will pay per barrel.

“There is no split, there is no schism among Europeans and we have to preserve this. This is our mission number one this year,” Zelenskiy said in an address via a live video link to a conference in Lithuania.

“Europe is helping itself. It’s not helping Ukraine to stand against Russia, this is helping Europe to stand against Russian aggression”, he added, according to Reuters.

European Union governments remained split on Thursday over what level to cap Russian oil prices at to curb Moscow’s ability to pay for the war, and Zelenskiy called on the EU leaders to settle on the lowest proposal of $30.

“The price cuts are very important. We hear about (proposals to set the cap per barrel at) $60 or $70. Such words sound more like a concession (to Russia)”, Zelenskiy said.

“But I’m very grateful to our Baltic and Polish colleagues for their proposals, quite reasonable ones, to set this camp at $30 a barrel. It’s a much better idea”, he added.

Our correspondent in Ukraine, Isobel Koshiw has visited Kherson, the recently recaptured city in the south of the country, which faced heavy shelling last night.

She has tweeted: “Kherson was shelled very heavily last night by Russian troops stationed on the eastern bank. According to Kherson’s head, Yanushevych, 10 people died and 54 were badly injured as a result.

“The initial euphoria was (inevitably) going to fade. But the amount of incoming increased every day and there were more people leaving the city. There was a sharp drop in atmosphere.

“The city is/was relatively intact. But if Russia wants to turn it into Kharkiv 2, where every 3rd-4th building is damaged, they could. Their frontline is just across the river.

“Though in the case of Kherson, there are even lower prospects that shelling the city will result in any kind of victory or advance for Russia.”

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has been speaking at a press conference this morning, ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting in Romania next week.

Stoltenberg said it would continue its support for Ukraine and increase “non-lethal” aid, Reuters reports.

“Nato will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will not back down,” he told reporters in Brussels. “Many wars end in negotiations, but what happens at the negotiating table depends on what happens on the battlefield.”

He added that there was “no lasting peace” if Russia won, and also said Finland and Sweden should be welcomed as “fully fledged” members of the alliance.

The UK’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has tweeted this photograph of him meeting Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday morning.

The BBC has interviewed Ukrainian president Voldymyr Zelenskiy’s wife, Olena Zelenska, where she refers to the long road ahead for Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion.

She compared the situation to a foot race, saying: “You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are,” but adding that unlike a marathon, the Ukrainian war effort is indeterminable.

“Sometimes it can be very difficult. But there are some new emotions that help us to hold on.”

Zelenska also talked of the difficulty she faced because of the separation from her husband. The Russian forces had designated Zelenskiy and his family as targets. “I live separately with my children and my husband lives at work,” she said. “Most of all, we miss simple things – to sit, not looking at the time, as long as we want.”

Speaking to the BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, for the broadcaster’s 100 Women season, Zelenska said the Ukrainians are determined to fight on.

“We all understand that without victory, there will be no peace. It would be a false peace and wouldn’t last long.”

The UK’s foreign secretary is visiting Ukraine today. Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has this.

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, travelled to Kyiv on Thursday to meet the Ukrainian leadership and promise support for as long as it takes to defeat Russia’s brutal efforts to break the country’s resolve.

In his first visit to Ukraine since his appointment as foreign secretary, Cleverly presented a package of support including money for the reconstruction of schools, ambulances, the victims of sexual violence, and grain sales to the world’s poorest markets, such as Sudan and Yemen.

With Kyiv under regular bombardment, his visit, which follows a trip to the Ukrainian capital by Rishi Sunak on Saturday, was conducted with a high level of security.

The new Conservative leadership is eager to reassure the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that Boris Johnson’s departure from No 10 will not lead to waning levels of British moral, military and financial support.

Cleverly said: “As winter sets in, Russia is continuing to try and break Ukrainian resolve through its brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and energy infrastructure. Russia will fail.”

It’s just gone 9.30am in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where some of its residents have woken up without electricity.

Last night, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, spoke out against “energy terror” by Russia, as it repeatedly seeks to take out the country’s power infrastructure.

Kyiv’s major, Vitali Klitschko, told citizens that energy companies would try to get electricity back on for customers on a three-hour rotating basis. He said that half of the city is still without power.

The Russian war effort in Ukraine is characterised by confusion among reservists over eligibility for service and inadequate training and equipment, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

In its daily update, the MoD said some reservists were having to serve with “serious chronic health conditions” since they were called up during Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a “partial mobilisation”.

The soldiers are likely to have had heavy casualties while digging “ambitious” trench systems near the town of Svatove in the Luhansk oblast while they were under heavy artillery fire.

It added that Russian reservists have been killed in large numbers in frontal assaults into well-defended Ukrainian areas near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. Both areas are in eastern Ukraine, towards the border with Russia.

The UK believes that the Kremlin is likely to be worried about reservists’ families who will risk arrest by protesting about the conditions their relatives face.

Forbes Ukraine estimates that Russia has spent $28bn – or a quarter of its annual budget – on its war in Ukraine, which has lasted nine months so far.

Forbes reports:

This estimate includes the direct costs that are necessary to support military operations. But it does not include stable defence spending, or losses related to the economy.

In 2021, all budget revenues of Russia amounted to $340bn. That is, the Russian Federation has already spent a quarter of last year’s revenues on military operations.

If in the spring such costs could look quite acceptable, considering that the Russian Federation received about $1bn a day for oil and gas. Now the situation is different.

The revenues of the federal budget of the Russian Federation from the export of oil and gas are decreasing – Russia has already lost most of the European gas market after the Nord Stream supply was cut off. Sanctions on Russian oil will begin in December.

Oil prices rose in Asia on Friday after a week marked by worries about Chinese demand and haggling over a western price cap on Russian oil, Reuters reports.

Brent crude futures rose by 28 cents, or 0.33%, to trade at $85.62 a barrel at 0410 GMT.

G7 and European Union diplomats have been discussing levels for a Russian price cap of between $65 and $70 a barrel, with the aim of limiting revenue to fund Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine without disrupting global oil markets.

“The market considers (the price caps) too high which reduces the risk of Moscow retaliating,” ANZ Research analysts said in a note to clients.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said Moscow will not supply oil and gas to any countries that join in imposing the price cap, which the Kremlin reiterated on Thursday.

Trading is expected to remain cautious ahead of an agreement on the price cap, due to come into effect on 5 December when an EU ban on Russian crude kicks off, and ahead of the next meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+, on 4 December.

Russian strikes have damaged a hospital in Zaporizhzhia overnight, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Starukh, said on Telegram.

He wrote:

The enemy again attacked the suburbs of Zaporizhzhia. This time the rockets hit near the hospital. Fortunately, people were not injured, the same cannot be said about the building. Dozens of broken windows.

The attacks come as Russia’s latest barrage shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear plants – one of which is located in Zaporizhzhia – for the first time in 40 years.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Financial Times that this week’s strikes had created a situation not seen for 80 or 90 years: “A country on the European continent where there was totally no light.”

By early Thursday evening, officials said a reactor at one nuclear plant, Khmelnytskyi, had been reconnected to the grid.

The vast Zaporizhzhia plant in Russian-held territory was reconnected on Thursday, Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom said.

This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest as it happens for the next while.

Russian strikes have damaged a hospital in Zaporizhzhia overnight, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Starukh, said on Telegram.

On Thursday night, more than 24 hours after Russian strikes had devastated Kyiv’s infrastructure, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said 60% of homes were still suffering emergency outages. Water services had been fully restored however, said city officials.

Here are the other key recent developments:

Russia risked causing a “nuclear and radioactive catastrophe” by launching attacks in which all Ukraine’s nuclear power plants were disconnected from the power grid for the first time in 40 years, Ukraine’s nuclear energy chief said. Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that three nuclear power plants on territory held by Ukrainian forces had been switched off after the latest wave of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities.

Ukraine expected the three nuclear power plants would be operating again by Thursday evening, energy minister German Galushchenko said.

More than 15,000 people have gone missing during the war in Ukraine, an official in the Kyiv office of The Hague-based International Commission on Missing Persons said. The ICMP’s programme director for Europe, Matthew Holliday, said it was unclear how many people had been forcibly transferred, were being held in detention in Russia, were alive and separated from family members, or had died and been buried in makeshift graves.

European Union governments remained split over what level to cap Russian oil prices at to curb Moscow’s ability to pay for its war in Ukraine without causing a global oil supply shock, with further talks expected on Friday. Six of the EU’s 27 countries are said to be opposed to the price cap level proposed by the G7, which will come into force on 5 December.

Foreign ministers from the G7 will discuss how to further support Ukraine in ensuring its energy supply during a meeting in Bucharest next week, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said.

The European Union is pressing ahead with a ninth sanctions package on Russia in response to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Finland. She said the EU would “hit Russia where it hurts to blunt even further its capacity to wage war on Ukraine”.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russia’s new strategy to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure would not weaken the country’s resolve to liberate all occupied land, describing the conflict, in an interview with the Financial Times, as a “war of strength and resilience” and pushing back against western fears of escalation.

In his address late on Thursday, Zelenskiy said: “Together we endured nine months of full-scale war and Russia has not found a way to break us, and will not find one.” Zelenskiy also accused Russia of incessantly shelling Kherson, the southern Ukrainian city that it abandoned earlier this month. Seven people were killed and 21 wounded in a Russian attack on Thursday, local authorities said.

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orb?n, said that his country’s parliament would ratify Nato membership for Finland and Sweden early next year. Hungary and Turkey are the only members of the alliance who have not yet cleared the accession.

Hungary will provide EUR187m ($195m) in financial aid to Ukraine as its contribution to a planned EU support package worth up to EUR18bn in 2023, according to a government decree.

British foreign minister James Cleverly said the UK would pledge millions of pounds in further support for Kyiv to ensure the country has the practical help it needed through the winter. Cleverly is visiting Ukraine and is set to meet Zelenskiy and foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba on the trip.

Russia and Ukraine have carried out the latest in a series of prisoner of war exchanges, with both sides handing over 50 people, officials in Kyiv and Moscow confirmed.

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko provoked ire in Ukraine by suggesting that the end of the war is Ukraine’s responsibility, and that if it does not “stop”, it will end in the “complete destruction” of the country. He said that similar to relations with Germany after the second world war, once the Ukraine war has concluded “we will make it all up”.

Ground battles continue to rage in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is pressing an offensive along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, which has been held by its proxies since 2014.