Chris Lange, FISM News

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A Russian official said on Tuesday that four annexed regions of Ukraine are under the protection of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview that aired on Russian state television Tuesday that the regions Russia formally annexed earlier this month “are inalienable parts of the Russian Federation and they are all protected” when asked whether they were included under the nuclear umbrella, Reuters reported.

He added: “Their security is provided for at the same level as the rest of Russia’s territory.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that he was “not bluffing” when he warned that Moscow was ready to use any means at its disposal to defend the “territorial integrity” of Russia.

NATO is conducting nuclear preparedness exercises this week and said that it expects that Russia will hold its own nuclear drills soon, as it has done in previous years. However, Peskov said he had no information about that. 

“There is an established system of notifications to inform about the conduct of exercises, and this is carried out through the channels of the Ministry of Defense,” he said.

Despite its claims, Russia does not wholly control any of the four regions, where Ukraine has liberated a swath of occupied territories, and still has not defined its borders. The annexation has been condemned as illegal by Ukraine and its Western allies, including a majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly.

Russia denies using Iranian ‘kamikaze’ drones 

Russia continued unleashing drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure targets overnight and into Tuesday morning in what analysts believe is a deliberate attempt to cripple electricity and water facilities before winter. The Kremlin on Tuesday denied that it used Iranian-supplied “Kamikaze” drones in large-scale attacks against Ukraine earlier this week.

Washington said the claim is a flat-out lie and that it was clear that Russia used Iranian drones in residential and civilian attacks throughout Ukraine, including Monday’s rush-hour strikes in Kyiv.

A senior Pentagon official on Monday called the drone attacks “a sign of the bankrupt Russian strategy that they continue to conduct indiscriminate strikes across Ukraine.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday that President Biden “strongly condemns Russia’s missile strikes” and referred to Putin’s “brutality.”

Russia seeks to cut off power, water across Ukraine ahead of brutal winter months

Overnight attacks knocked out power and water supplies in Zhytomyr and caused extensive damage to an energy facility in the southeastern city of Dnipro. Power facilities in Kharkiv were also targeted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of terrorizing and killing civilians with air attacks.

“Ukraine is under fire by the occupiers. They continue to do what they do best — terrorize and kill civilians,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

“The terrorist state will not change anything for itself with such actions. It will only confirm its destructive and murderous essence, for which it will certainly be held to account,” he continued.

There was no immediate word on how many people had been killed in the strikes.

Moscow, as it has done throughout the war, denied targeting civilians. 

Russian warplane crashes in training exercise, killing 13

Elsewhere, a Kremlin warplane crashed into a residential area in the Russian port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov Monday, killing at least 13 people and wounding 19 others, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. The crash, which occurred during training exercises, was reportedly caused by engine failure. The region’s vice governor, Anna Menkova, said that the incident caused a massive fire in a nearby apartment complex. She also said that three of the victims died when they jumped out of upper-floor windows in a desperate attempt to escape the flames.

Energoatom reports kidnapping of two more operators from Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company accused Russia on Tuesday of “kidnapping” two senior staff at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine.

The power station’s head of information technology, Oleh Kostyukov, and Oleh Oshek, an assistant to the plant’s director, were seized on Monday, Energoatom wrote on the Telegram app on Tuesday.

“At present, nothing is known of their whereabouts or condition,” Energoatom’s statement said.

The kidnappings follow two earlier detainments of Ukrainian power station operators, one of whom was released unharmed last month while the whereabouts of the second man remain unknown.

Danish police: Nord Stream gas leaks caused by ‘powerful explosions’

Danish police said on Tuesday that a preliminary investigation into the cause of damages to the two Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Danish part of the Baltic Sea confirms a previous assessment by Swedish prosecutors that four holes discovered in the pipelines resulted from “powerful explosions.” World leaders have said the explosions point to acts of sabotage, though none have specified who was behind the incidents.