Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 1,340.
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 1,340.
Russian Attacks on Ukraine
Waves of Russian missiles and drones battered Ukraine overnight on October 22, killing six people, including two children, and wounding dozens more. The large-scale bombardment occurred just hours after reports that a planned meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Budapest, Hungary, had been canceled.
Russia’s barrage involved some 400 drones and 28 missiles, of which the Ukrainian Air Force intercepted and electronically jammed 349 projectiles; the rest pounded Kyiv and hit apartment blocks, hospitals and energy infrastructure in other major cities, triggering emergency power outages in most regions of Ukraine.
In the nation’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, three Russian Shahed drones slammed into a private kindergarten, killing one person and wounding seven others. Footage from the scene showed firefighters carrying children through thick smoke. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the strike, which destroyed the second floor of the building, writing on X: “There is no justification for a drone strike on a kindergarten, nor can there ever be.”
In addition, between October 21 and 23, Russian strikes killed at least nine people and wounded 94 others. The attacks occurred in the southern Kherson and eastern Donetsk provinces, and in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia, central Dnipropetrovsk and northeastern Kharkiv regions.
New Sanctions against Russia
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, on October 22. The new measures target Russia-based subsidiaries majority-owned by Rosneft and Lukoil, potentially barring them from conducting transactions in U.S. dollars. The Trump administration’s first direct targeting of Russia’s energy sector, a critical source of revenue for the Kremlin’s coffers, immediately reverberated through global energy markets: Brent crude rose 5% to $65.70 a barrel.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the sanctioned oil firms as twin engines of “the Kremlin’s war machine” and called for an immediate ceasefire. He stated that the new sanctions were necessary in response to “President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war” and added that the U.S. is prepared to take further action against Moscow if needed.
The sanctions will likely translate into revenue losses for Moscow: Rosneft and Lukoil have supplied roughly 60 percent of Russia’s crude sold to India, the largest buyer of discounted Russian seaborne crude oil since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
