Russia-Ukraine war live updates Despite reports Ukrainian defense likely caused fatal explosion, NATO blames Russia

Ukraine’s already damaged energy system was hamstrung again after Tuesday’s nearly heavy barrage of air attacks. Millions of people throughout the country are without steady power and are experiencing emergency blackouts and stabilization outages, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said during his nightly address.

People are experiencing the blackouts and outages in 18 regions and the city of Kyiv, he said, according to his website, adding: “We are doing everything to restore electricity.”

He said workers were also trying to restore the water supply to the Mykolaiv region, where pipes left broken from attacks have left people with salty and yellow water.

Initial findings in the investigation into Monday’s explosion on Poland’s side of its border with Ukraine, killing two, “support the hypothesis that this was not an intentional attack,” Polish Ambassador Krzysztof Szczerski told the United Nations Security Council. While the “apparent cause” was the explosion of a Ukrainian air defense missile, he said, “it is clear that it is Russia which is to blame for menacing the world with the war aggression and its spillover effects.”

The location “has no military background whatsoever,” Szczerski said. “Those innocent people would not have been killed if there had been no Russian war against Ukraine. Their only fault was the fact that they lived close to civilian infrastructure on the Ukrainian border that Russia treats as a military target.”

The U.S. intelligence community has new information substantiating that the explosion in Poland that killed two people on Tuesday was from at least one or as many as two Ukrainian SA-10 surface-to-air missiles that went off course, a person familiar with the intelligence said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

The Ukrainian missiles are older and less reliable than the newer missile defense systems Kyiv received from the West that have intercepted dozens of incoming Russian missiles. NASAMS, for example, are a higher-quality ground-based missile defense weapon.

Despite preliminary reports that a Ukrainian defensive missile caused an explosion responsible for killing two people in Poland on Tuesday, NATO leaders and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russia.

In his nightly address, Zelensky was careful to say his country would cooperate with the international investigation into the incident, writing: “The Ukrainian position is very transparent: we strive to establish all the details, every fact.”

He added: “All our information is in full access, we have been giving it to our partners since the night, from those first hours when the world began to find out what happened. I spoke with (Polish President Andrzej Duda) last night and expressed my condolences to him — Russian aggression took the lives of two Polish citizens.”

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doubled down Wednesday on his assessment that the likelihood of Ukraine vanquishing Russia on the battlefield is “not high,” as he tried to massage his recent suggestion that Ukraine ought to use this winter to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Milley’s comments at the Economic Club of New York last week tripped off a scramble, as Biden administration officials sought to dispel the impression that support in the United States for Ukraine’s defense might be waning. On Wednesday, Milley told reporters emphatically that the United States would “continue to support Ukraine as long as it takes to keep them free,” and that it was “up to Ukraine to decide how or when or if they will negotiate with the Russians.”

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday called Russian efforts to target Ukraine’s electrical grid a “war crime,” adding that “over a quarter of Ukrainian civilians” are now living without power as the country enters the coldest months of the year.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Milley, who addressed the media shortly after meeting virtually with almost 50 counterparts working to equip Ukraine militarily, shared the assessment that Russia’s attacks would only solidify international resolve to keep Ukraine well-armed.

Britain’s top domestic spy chief warned Wednesday that “the U.K. must be ready for Russian aggression for years to come,” in a speech singling out Russia, Iran and China as the country’s top threats.

Ken McCallum, the director general of Britain’s MI5, said Russia’s “covert tool kit” included “cyberattacks, disinformation, espionage,” as well as attempting assassinations and disrupting democracy, the Associated Press reported.

McCallum said some 400 spies working covertly at Russian missions in Europe had been expelled since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. Despite this “significant strategic blow,” he said, the Kremlin was working fast to rebuild its spy network.

Polish farmer Mateusz Zub was due to start work just after the blast Wednesday that killed two colleagues on a farm near the village of Przewodow.

“I saw the smoke pile and heard the blast, and that’s it,” he told the Reuters news agency. “The windows were shaking.”

He said he thought initially that a furnace had exploded. Then he realized a missile had hit.

“I called my colleagues because I was weak in the knees,” Zub continued. “They told me those men are dead. That could’ve been me.”