Category World News

Russia is increasing air attacks to compensate for its failure to crack Ukrainian defences on the ground, according to Kyiv.

“Russia has started a new wave of air terror against Ukraine – against our cities and civilian infrastructure,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NATO’s 71st Parliamentary Assembly on October 13.

Zelenskyy spoke days after Russia launched an overnight strike against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure involving 465 drones and 19 missiles.

Ukraine said it downed 405 of the drones and 15 missiles. The remainder deprived three-quarters of a million Ukrainians of electricity for the day, wounded 20 people and killed a seven-year-old boy.

Zelenskyy said cold autumn weather had reduced the effectiveness of Ukraine’s air defences by 20-30 percent, claiming Russia “deliberately waited” for this.

On Wednesday, Russian drones again knocked out power in some parts of Ukraine and struck a thermal power plant, according to Naftogaz, Ukraine’s gas utility.

Russia ‘increased the number of air attack means’

On the battlefront, too, Russia was turning to the air.

“In a month, the enemy has increased the number of air attack means used by 1.3 times,” wrote Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii on his Telegram channel on Saturday.

Syrskii generally refers to Russian first-person view (FPV) drones and air-launched glide bombs, which Russia uses at the front in addition to artillery and multiple launch rocket systems.

But Russia was increasingly using its long-range Shahed drones – the type it deploys against cities – to hit targets at the front as well, said the Kyiv Independent after speaking with analysts.

Shaheds are more precise than glide bombs, and Russia was “likely looking to conserve KAB guided aerial bombs where possible to prepare for a long war ahead”, said the newspaper.

Russia’s tactics prompted a flurry of consultations with allies.

On the day of the massive air strike, Zelenskyy said he spoke with United States President Donald Trump about the damage to Ukraine’s energy sector and what the nation needs to protect it. During the week, he also spoke with the leaders of Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.

Zelenskyy said he is short of air defences and has asked allies to increase provisions to protect 203 key facilities in Ukraine.

At Wednesday’s meeting of the Defence Contact Group for Ukraine, Germany pledged 2.3 billion euros ($2.7bn) in new weapons and air defence systems, including interceptors for Patriot launchers and two more IRIS-T systems.

Poland offered electricity exports, generators and the services of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to bolster Ukraine’s energy supply.

Zelenskyy dispatched Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko to the US to lay the groundwork for his meeting with Trump on Friday.

Russia’s fight for Donetsk

On the ground, Zelenskyy said this week that Russia had planned to capture the entirety of the Donetsk region this autumn. About a quarter of it remains in Ukraine’s hands.

The hammer has fallen hardest on Pokrovsk, once a city of 60,000 people. Russia has failed to take it by direct assault and by conducting an enveloping manoeuvre through Dobropillia to its north.

Syrskii said a Ukrainian counteroffensive at Dobropillia had retaken 181sq km (70sq miles) of territory since the end of August.

The Dobropillia counteroffensive caused 12,000 Russian casualties, including 7,000 deaths, and upset Russia’s plans to conquer Donetsk this autumn, Zelenskyy claimed.

Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the death toll estimated by Ukraine.

Ukraine’s operation “disrupted all the plans that the Russians communicated to the American side, claiming they would supposedly occupy the Donbas – most of it – specifically by November. Initially, they said September, then pushed the deadline to November”, said Zelenskyy.

Russia’s determination to capture Donetsk was evident in the fact that it had returned to high-casualty mechanised assaults on October 6, 9 and 13, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, having largely stopped reinforced company-sized mechanised assaults in late 2024.

All three assaults came in the Dobropillia direction and were defeated with high losses to men and armour.

“The Russians are now tasked with urgently taking Pokrovsk – at any cost,” Zelenskyy said, and some analysts suggested they may be swinging to the south of Pokrovsk instead.

Russia has not been wholly without success. During the week of October 9-15, it claimed to have seized four villages in Donetsk, and settlements in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk.

In Kharkiv, Zelenskyy said, Ukrainian forces were pushing Russian troops out of some positions in the city of Kupiansk, in whose northwestern outskirts they have taken positions.

Despite this, Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday evacuated hundreds of families from 27 villages in the Kupiansk area, citing the security situation.

Ukraine’s strikes and Tomahawks

Ukraine continued a successful campaign to choke off Russian fuel production.

Its drones struck Lukoil’s Korobkovsky Gas Processing Plant in the Volgograd region of Russia on October 9.

“The plant is part of the fuel supply system for the domestic market of the Russian Federation, as well as for export,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.

On Monday, Ukraine struck the oil depot at the port of Feodosia in Crimea, confirmed the region’s occupation head, Sergey Aksyonov. It is used to supply Russian occupying troops in Crimea, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv with fuel by rail.

Russian opposition news outlet Astra said the strikes damaged 11 fuel tanks, including eight 5,000-10,000-tonne diesel tanks and two petrol tanks.

Geolocated footage confirmed the attack, as well as strikes on two electricity substations in Feodosia and Simferopol, also in Crimea.

“This is absolutely fair that Ukraine strikes back with precise, targeted attacks,” said Zelenskyy.

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Ukraine has not been conducting these operations alone.

Several US and Ukrainian officials told the daily that Washington has been providing intelligence for the targeting of Russian refineries for months.

“The shift came after a phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July, when the FT reported the US president asked whether Ukraine could strike Moscow if Washington provided long-range weapons,” wrote the paper.

The sources said the US was involved in target selection, timing and route planning to evade Russian air defences.

Ukraine has so far mostly used its domestically produced drones, and Zelenskyy last month asked Trump to provide US Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of up to 2,500km (1,550 miles)

The issue is to be among those discussed between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday.

Russia’s deputy chairman of its National Security Council warned against the deployment of Tomahawks, which are nuclear-capable.

Severely malnourished one-year-old Ruqayya al-Dahdar is among thousands of children in Gaza who are still waiting for desperately needed aid, despite the ceasefire.

Despite a ceasefire deal with Israel, Palestinians across the devastated Gaza Strip continue to go hungry as food supplies remain critically low and aid fails to reach those who need it most.

As per the ceasefire agreement, Israel was supposed to allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza per day. However, Israel has since reduced the limit to 300 trucks per day, citing delays in retrieving bodies of Israeli captives buried under the rubble by Israeli attacks.

According to the UN2720 Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard, which monitors humanitarian aid being offloaded, collected, delivered and intercepted on its way into Gaza, from October 10-16, only 216 trucks have reached their intended destinations inside Gaza.

According to truck drivers, aid deliveries are facing significant delays, with Israeli inspections taking much longer than expected.

Satellite images captured by Planet Labs on October 14 and 15 show a large number of trucks queuing on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing and heading towards the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.

‘Palestinians want food’

While some food aid has trickled in over the past few days, medical equipment, therapeutic nutrition and medicines are still in extremely short supply, despite being desperately needed by the most impoverished, particularly malnourished children.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said some commercial trucks have entered Gaza over the past few days, but most Palestinians do not have the ability to buy any of the items they are bringing in as they have spent all of their savings in the past two years.

So far, what has arrived in the trucks includes “wheat, rice, sugar, oil, fuel and cooking gas”, she said.

While food distribution points are expected to open for parcels and other humanitarian aid, people in Gaza have yet to receive them. “Palestinians want food, they want shelter, they want medicine,” Khoudary said.

She added that even 600 trucks a day would be insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s entire population.

Food ‘is not a bargaining chip’

The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, has urged Israel to open more border crossings for humanitarian aid.

“We need more crossings open and a genuine, practical, problem-solving approach to removing remaining obstacles. Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip. Facilitation of aid is a legal obligation,” Fletcher said.

Since the ceasefire began, 137 World Food Programme trucks have entered Gaza as of October 14, delivering supplies to bakeries and supporting nutrition and food distribution programmes.

With the ceasefire in effect, WFP is now scaling up.

🔹137 trucks have already entered #Gaza — supporting bakeries, nutrition, and food distributions.

🔹170,000+ MT of food ready to move, enough to feed 2M people.

The goal: flood Gaza with food, fast. The ceasefire must hold. pic.twitter.com/AjKBu8rap7

Israeli authorities continue to block UNRWA

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the primary and largest organisation providing aid to Palestinians – has faced significant restrictions imposed by Israel.

The agency, which was responsible for delivering food, medical care, education and emergency assistance, says it has enough food aid in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt to supply the people in Gaza for three months.

This includes food parcels for 1.1 million people and flour for 2.1 million, and shelter supplies sufficient for up to 1.3 million individuals.

However, despite the ceasefire, Israeli authorities are continuing to block them from entering.

UNRWA has enough food outside #Gaza to supply people there for three months, amid desperate need. Our teams stand ready to deliver it.

But despite the #ceasefire, the Israeli Authorities’ block on UNRWA bringing any supplies into Gaza still continues after over 7 months.

Let us… pic.twitter.com/O3fwK70d5V

Malnutrition among children

As of October 12, at least 463 people, including 157 children, have died from starvation amid Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Nearly one in four children suffers from severe acute malnutrition.

After prolonged starvation, food must be reintroduced carefully under medical supervision to avoid re-feeding syndrome, a potentially fatal condition in which sudden intake of nutrients causes dangerous shifts in electrolytes, affecting the heart, nerves and muscles. A larger supply of nutritional aid, given safely, could dramatically save lives.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 90 percent of children in Gaza less than two years of age consume fewer than two food groups each day, which doesn’t include protein-rich foods.

At least 290,000 children between the ages of six months and 5 years, and 150,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women require feeding and micronutrient supplies.

In addition to this, there are an estimated 132,000 cases of children less than the age of five, and 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women projected to be suffering from acute malnutrition by June 2026, if immediate food aid isn’t made available.

United States President Donald Trump has claimed that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil, as Washington seeks to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine by cutting off the Kremlin’s vital energy revenues. Trump had said he would try to persuade China to do the same.

The US president told reporters on Wednesday that he had received assurances from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India would halt its oil purchases “within a short period of time”. India and China are the two biggest buyers of Russian seaborne crude exports.

Trump has sought to leverage his ongoing trade negotiations with New Delhi to pressure India over Russian oil. And, in August, he used India’s continuing imports of Russian oil as a pretext to impose additional trade tariffs on New Delhi. But Modi has so far refused to back down. For months, Indian officials have defended purchases of Russian energy as vital for India’s national security.

A move by India now to stop its imports would signal a major shift by one of Moscow’s top energy customers, and could undermine Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine.

Why has Russian oil been a bone of contention between India and the US?

Citing India’s continued imports of Russian oil, Trump slapped an additional 25 percent trade tariff on New Delhi in August – bringing tariffs to a total 50 percent. He did not instigate similar punitive actions against China, which remains the largest importer of Russian oil, however.

China imported a record 109 million tonnes of Russian crude last year, representing nearly 20 percent of its total energy imports, according to Chinese customs data. India, by contrast, imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

New Delhi has, therefore, accused Washington of selectively targeting India in its latest round of tariffs. Some observers argue that Trump’s stance in part reflects frustration with India’s unwillingness to acquiesce to his specific demands in ongoing trade talks.

“India’s longstanding protectionist measures – such as high tariffs for agricultural goods and subsidies on pharmaceuticals – have been a point of friction in US-India trade talks,” Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.

By contrast, Trump has adopted a noticeably softer approach with China, avoiding similar punitive, energy-linked tariffs. Some observers believe he may be biding his time to secure a broader trade deal with Beijing that would include access to China’s rare-earth metals.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to various manufacturing industries, including in the US, from car parts and military technology. China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals and currently restricts exports of 12 of them.

The upshot is that “China has much more leverage [than India], as shown by its recent export controls”, explained Garcia Herrero.

The most recent of China’s export restrictions, which require foreign companies to obtain special approvals from Beijing if they wish to purchase certain rare-earth products, were introduced this week, ahead of an expected meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart – President Xi Jinping – later this month.

In response to Beijing’s move, Trump has threatened to impose a new 100 percent tariff on Chinese exports from November 1. Still, he said his planned meeting with Xi is expected to go ahead: “I’m going to be there regardless, so I assume we might have it,” he told reporters last Friday.

How reliant is India on Russian energy?

Russia is New Delhi’s largest source of oil. According to Kpler, the shipping analytics company, India imported 4.5 million bpd (barrels per day) of crude in September. Of that, Russian supplies accounted for roughly 1.6 million bpd – or 34 percent of the total.

That represents an eye-watering 2,250 percent increase from January 2022, one month before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in Ukraine. At the time, India was importing just 68,000 bpd of oil from Russia.

Meanwhile, India is the second-largest buyer of Russian energy after China, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). China purchased 47 percent of Russia’s crude exports in September, followed by India at 38 percent.

Why is India buying so much Russian oil now?

In December 2022, several Western nations imposed a $60 price cap on Russian crude oil in a bid to reduce Russia’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine. This forced Moscow to compete more aggressively on prices if buyers wanted access to Western shipping and insurance services.

But cheaper Russian oil helped narrow New Delhi’s current account deficit, which fell by 65 percent in 2023-2024 compared to the previous year. Elsewhere, Reliance Industries (RIL) – now India’s top importer of Russian seaborne crude – became the biggest corporate winner.

In 2021, Russian crude accounted for just 3 percent of imports at Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery, India’s largest private facility. By 2025, that share had surged to around 50 percent, according to CREA.

CREA has also calculated that the Jamnagar refinery exported $85.9bn of refined products globally from February 2022 to July 2025. Incidentally, an estimated 42 percent ($36bn) of that has gone to countries sanctioning Russia.

How has India responded to Trump’s latest claim?

India has not officially confirmed Trump’s claim that it has promised to stop buying Russian oil.

Despite Trump’s punitive tariffs, New Delhi has consistently defended its purchase of Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine. A spokesperson for India’s External Affairs Ministry, Shri Randhir Jaiswal, reiterated that stance on Thursday. But he also hinted that India could look to diversify its import base.

In an official statement, he said: “Ensuring stable energy prices and secured supplies have been the twin goals of our energy policy. This includes broad-basing our energy sourcing and diversifying as appropriate.”

He added: “Where the US is concerned, we have for many years sought to expand our energy procurement … The current Administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India. Discussions are ongoing.”

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has survived two confidence motions, just days after he appointed his new government in time to submit a draft budget to parliament in a bid to end the political turmoil that has gripped the country for months.

A motion sponsored by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and its allies was defeated on Thursday, receiving the backing of just 144 lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly.

Just moments before, a motion tabled by far-left France Unbowed gained support from 271 lawmakers, 18 short of the 289 needed for a majority.

The votes followed Lecornu’s decision Tuesday to back suspending a divisive 2023 pension reform, in a bid to keep his cabinet afloat long enough to pass the much-needed 2026 austerity budget by the end of this year.

The leftist Socialist Party (PS) had threatened to vote to topple the premier if he did not move to freeze the reform that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

After the motions failed to pass, PS lawmaker Laurent Baumel warned that sparing the premier “was in no way a pact” for the future, urging “new concessions” in the looming budget talks.

Yael Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly and an ally of Macron, had a more positive outlook following the votes.

“I am pleased to see that today there is a majority in the National Assembly that is operating in this spirit: Work, the search for compromise, the best possible effort.”

Lecornu, who at the time of his first appointment last month was France‘s fifth prime minister in less than two years, must now steer a cost-cutting budget through a deeply divided parliament before the end of the year, in what is expected to be a bruising fight.

The confidence votes followed a dramatic two weeks in French politics.

This vote marks a reprieve, “but he [Lecornu] is far from out of the woods yet because he has a very challenging few weeks ahead of him,” said Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris.

Lecornu now “has to try to push through a budget … that is going to please all sides of the House and for now, he’s dealing with a government that has no majority so he’s relying on [individual] MPs”, said Butler.

“But as we’ve seen, there are MPs who are on the far-right, the far-left and in between who simply want to bring him down, as they say his policies are simply continuations of the French president. They are calling for new elections and they certainly don’t want to see Lecornu succeed.”

Lecornu resigned last Monday after criticism of his first cabinet, only to be reappointed days later and unveil a reshuffled team in time to submit a draft budget to parliament.

Under pressure from the European Union to rein in its deficit and debt, France faces an uphill battle over cost-cutting measures that felled Lecornu’s two predecessors.

France’s debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is the EU’s third-highest after Greece and Italy, and is close to twice the bloc’s 60 percent ceiling.

Lecornu has pledged not to invoke a constitutional tool used to push through every budget without a vote since 2022 and pledged to put all bills to debate.

“The government will make suggestions, we will debate, and you will vote,” the 39-year-old Macron loyalist emphasised in a speech to lawmakers Tuesday.

But the opposition has challenged his optimism.

Le Pen accused lawmakers of granting Lecornu a reprieve out of “terror of elections”, saying she was waiting with “growing impatience” for Parliament’s dissolution.

The far right sees its best chance yet to take power in the 2027 presidential race, when Macron’s second and final term ends.

This vote is “something of a reprieve” for Macron as well, said Butler, as “for the moment at least, his government survives.

“That’s more than we can say of the picture that has been painted here [in France] over the last few months, as we’ve seen one prime minister after another in government collapse.”

If Lecornu’s government were to fall in the coming weeks, “many say Macron will be under pressure to dissolve Parliament and call elections, which would likely favour the far-right, so it’s certainly something the French president would like to avoid,” said Butler.

The political turmoil has also deeply affected Macron’s image both domestically, “where he is very fragile”, and internationally, said Butler, referring to when United States President Donald Trump “poked fun at President Macron” while in Egypt earlier in the week to join other world leaders in signing the Gaza war ceasefire deal.