(RockedBuzz via Reuters) – All non-critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian port of Odessa was left without power after Russia used Iranian-made drones to strike two energy plants, leaving 1.5 million people without power, officials said on Saturday.
ODESA WHEAT EXPORTS
* Traders have no plans to suspend grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports of Odessa due to the latest Russian attack on the region’s energy system, Agriculture Minister Mykola Solky said.
CONFLICT
Ukraine attacked occupied Melitopol, a strategically located city in the southeast of the country, on Saturday evening. Russian-installed authorities said a rocket attack killed two and wounded 10, while the city’s exiled mayor said dozens of “invaders” were killed.
* RockedBuzz via Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
DIPLOMACY, CULTURE
* Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to take over parts of Ukraine and shows no restraint in his brutality, but it is still important to keep contacts open in case the time comes to end the war, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
* Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a ‘dependent dictatorship’ like Belarus, the wife of jailed Belarusian Nobel peace laureate Ales Byalyatski said after receiving the award on his behalf, speaking her words.
* Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, freed in a prisoner swap for US basketball star Brittney Griner, said he wished her luck at the Abu Dhabi rink where they were swapped on Thursday.
ECONOMY
* A dozen countries, including Belgium, Italy, Poland and Slovenia, have lobbied to “significantly” lower the European Union’s cap on gas prices, as the bloc struggles to agree on the measure.
* The Russian-installed administration of Ukraine’s Kherson region said it had begun exchanging locally circulating Ukrainian hryvnia currency into Russian rubles, with circulation of the hryvnia in Moscow-controlled areas of the region ending on January 1.
(Compiled by William Mallard and Frances Kerry)
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