Latest Ukraine updates: Kyiv receives US air defence system

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said heavy fighting in many places along the front line is yielding some “positive results” for Kyiv.

“This is the Donetsk region, this is our Kharkiv region. This is the Kherson region, and also the Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia regions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

“We have positive results in several directions.”

Thousands of Hasidic Jewish pilgrims flocked to central Ukraine to mark the Jewish new year, ignoring international travel warnings as Russia struck more targets from the air.

The pilgrims, many travelling from Israel and further afield, converged on the small city of Uman, the burial site of Nachman of Breslov, a respected Hasidic rabbi who died in 1810.

The streets of one of Uman’s central neighbourhoods were packed with men of all ages chanting prayers, screaming, shouting and dancing. Some visitors had made the journey for years and were not deterred by the Israeli and US governments cautioning citizens not to make the trip.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged in an interview that the United States agreed to provide Kyiv with the sophisticated National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS).

“We absolutely need the United States to show leadership and give Ukraine the air defence systems. I want to thank President [Joe] Biden for a positive decision that has been already made,” Zelenskyy said, according to an English-language transcript of the interview.

“But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians.”

Zelenskyy also thanked the US for HIMARS and other multiple rocket-launching systems enabling Ukraine to advance against Russian occupying forces.

Russophiles in Bulgaria have rallied in the central town of Kalofer to show their support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, waving flags with the same “Z” symbols painted on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

The Balkan state – an EU and NATO member with historically close ties to Russia – still has many citizens nostalgic for the former Communist regime.

The pro-Moscow annual rally, dubbed “Russophiles meet”, comes as Bulgaria is preparing to return to the polls and grappling with its identity.

Hristo Ganev, a 60-year-old driver who attended the rally, told AFP he believed Putin’s claim that the war was needed to “fight Nazism”. He said he was even in favour of a nuclear war “if that is the price to pay to free yourself from American domination”.

Splits have sharpened in Europe over whether to welcome or turn away Russians fleeing conscription, after Moscow rushed to mobilise hundreds of thousands of recruits to fight in Ukraine.

German officials held out the possibility of granting asylum to deserters and those refusing the draft and called for a European-wide solution.

In France, senators argued that Europe has a duty to help and warned that not granting refuge to fleeing Russians could play into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands, feeding his narrative of Western hostility towards Russia.

Other European Union countries are adamant that asylum shouldn’t be offered. They include Lithuania, which borders Kaliningrad, a Russian Baltic Sea exclave. Its foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, tweeted: “Russians should stay and fight. Against Putin.”

Several thousand people are protesting in Moldova’s capital to demand the resignation of the country’s pro-Western government, amid mounting anger over soaring natural gas prices and inflation.

The small east European nation, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, has seen political tensions rise in recent months as gas prices hiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands of people protested outside the Moldovan president’s official residence in central Chisinau, chanting slogans including “down with [President] Maia Sandu” and “down with the government”.

Sandu has repeatedly condemned Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and is pushing for membership in the European Union. Her critics charge she should have negotiated a better gas deal with Russia, Moldova’s main supplier.

Russia is likely to change its military tactics in Ukraine, analyst and author Samir Puri told Al Jazeera, turning to more indiscriminate bombardments of parts of Ukraine it has not yet conquered.

“At the start of the invasion the Russian forces tried to operate with a bit more finesse,” Puri, a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. “It all failed.”

One of the reasons was poor logistics, with armed forces advancing without proper lines of supplies and the Russian defence ministry attempting to “bring control to this chaos”.

“Indeed, Mikhail Mizintsev has been appointed to be responsible for digging in Russian forces for the long haul,” Puri said, referring to the longtime army official appointed to replace General Dmitry Bulgakov on Saturday.

In a rare sign of turmoil, the defence ministry said Bulgakov, the deputy minister in charge of logistics, had been replaced “for transfer to another role”.

Police have clashed with protesters opposing the mobilisation of reservists in the southern Russian region of Dagestan, underscoring the level of discontent with President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send hundreds of thousands more men to fight in Ukraine.

Dozens of videos posted on social media showed confrontations with police in the regional capital of Makhachkala as protesters shouted “no to war”.

One video showed a group of women chasing away a police officer, while several clips showed violent clashes, including police sitting on protesters, as police attempted to make detentions.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify the footage. Russia’s independent OVD-Info rights monitor said it was concerned by videos of “very tough detentions” emerging from Makhachkala.

The United States would respond decisively to any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and has spelled out to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said.

“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively,” Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press news programme.

Sullivan did not describe the nature of the planned US response in his comments on Sunday, but said the US has communicated with Moscow and “spelled out in greater detail exactly what that would mean”.

He said the US has been in frequent, direct contact with Russia – including during the last few days – to discuss the situation in Ukraine and Putin’s actions and threats.

More than 100 people in Dagestan, one of Russia’s poorer regions in the North Caucasus, are attempting to block a highway as part of a protest against Putin’s mobilisation order.

Russian media reported that local police tried to break up the demonstration by firing warning shots in the air.

Protesters, the majority of whom were women, chanted “No to war!” at a protest rally in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala. Some of them argued with the police saying it was Russia that attacked Ukraine.

Dagestan is among several Russian regions identified by independent media as the homeland for hundreds of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford says online reports suggest two explosions took place in the occupied cities of Berdyansk and Melitopol.

“The Ukrainian government claims to have Ukrainians working behind enemy lines but it is difficult for us to verify this information,” Stratford said.

He added that solid photographic evidence pointed to the Antonivskyi Bridge across the Dnieper River in Kherson being hit again.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss has said allies should stand firm on Ukraine, ignoring what she called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “sabre-rattling”.

Putin this week ordered a partial mobilisation of troops and raised the possibility of nuclear conflict. Truss, who took office as prime minister earlier this month, said Putin was escalating his invasion of Ukraine because he was not winning and had made a strategic mistake.

“I think he didn’t anticipate the strength of reaction from the free world,” Truss told CNN.

“We should not be listening to his sabre-rattling and his bogus threats. Instead, what we need to do is continue to put sanctions on Russia and continue to support the Ukrainians.”

The Duma – the Russian parliament’s lower chamber – could discuss a draft law formally annexing occupied Ukrainian provinces on Thursday, Russian news agency TASS has reported.

Moscow on Friday launched a referendum in four occupied provinces of Ukraine that Kyiv and its Western allies see as a sham vote.

TASS cited an anonymous source as saying the Duma could debate the draft law two days after the vote is set to close on Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said regions of Ukraine where the widely-criticised referendums are being held will be under Moscow’s “full protection” if they are annexed, raising the prospect of the use of nuclear weapons if Kyiv tries to retake those territories.

Keep reading:

• Russia’s Lavrov vows ‘full protection’ for any annexed territory
• Four occupied Ukraine regions begin vote on joining Russia
• Russia can defend new regions with nuclear weapons: Medvedev
• ‘Thrown into the meat grinder’: Russians react to mobilisation

Long lines of vehicles have formed at a border crossing between Mongolia and Russia as people flee the Kremlin’s call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists for the war in Ukraine.

More than 3,000 Russians have entered Mongolia via the crossing since Wednesday, most of them men, the head of a checkpoint in the town of Altanbulag told AFP.

“Most of them are single young people who crossed the border with their parents,” Major G Byambasuren said. More than 500 were women and children.

Russian nationals can visit Mongolia and stay without a visa for 30 days and extend their stay by another 30 days if needed, Byambasuren said.

German utility RWE has signed a deal with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to deliver liquefied natural gas by the end of December, as Europe attempts to gain independence from Russian energy.

“This marks an important milestone in building up an LNG supply infrastructure in Germany and setting up a more diversified gas supply,” RWE said in a statement.

The deal, which includes a memorandum of understanding for multiyear supplies of LNG, came on the second day of a two-day trip in which Chancellor Olaf Scholz is seeking to deepen ties with the Gulf.

“We need to make sure that the production of LNG in the world is advanced to the point where the high demand that exists can be met without having to resort to the production capacity that exists in Russia,” Scholz told journalists before the deal was announced.

Russian authorities have promised to fix the mistakes in their troop call-up for Ukraine, after public outrage over older and sick people being ordered to report for duty.

When President Putin announced a partial mobilisation on Wednesday, he said only people with “relevant” skills or military experience would be concerned.

In a rare admission, upper house Speaker Valentina Matviyenko called on all governors who oversee the mobilisation campaigns to avoid mistakes.

“This is unacceptable … Make sure that partial mobilisation is carried out in full and complete compliance with the criteria. And without a single mistake!” she ordered.

Seven more ships laden with agricultural produce have left Ukrainian ports, the country’s infrastructure ministry says, bringing the total to 218 since a UN-brokered corridor through the Black Sea came into force at the start of August.

In a post on Facebook, the ministry said this brought the total amount of agricultural produce shipped through the corridor to 4.85 million tonnes.

“On September 25 … 7 ships with 146.2 thousand tons of agricultural produce for countries in Africa, Asia and Europe left the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi,” the ministry said.

Ukraine shipped up to 6 million tonnes of grain per month before the war but was left unable to export through the Black Sea after Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

A group of Sri Lankans held captive by Russian forces in an agricultural factory in eastern Ukraine has alleged torture for months before escaping on foot as the Russians withdrew from the Kharkiv region this month.

Recounting their ordeal to reporters in Kharkiv, one of the seven Sri Lankans said he was shot in the foot; another had his toenail ripped off and was slammed in the head with the butt of a rifle. Ukrainian officials described their treatment as torture.

“Every day we were cleaning toilets and bathrooms,” Dilukshan Robertclive, one of the former captives, said in English. “Some days Russians came and beat our people, our Sri Lanka people.”

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made an appeal to Russians, saying their president was knowingly “sending citizens to their death”.

Speaking in Russian, Zelenskyy called on Moscow’s forces to surrender, saying: “You will be treated in a civilised manner … No one will know the circumstances of your surrender.”

The comments came just hours after Russia passed a law toughening punishments for voluntary surrender and desertion.

Russia’s defence ministry has said Ukrainian forces continue with attacks around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the south of the country, including launching eight “kamikaze drones” at the facility.

Russian forces shot down all of the drones outside the territory of the plant, the defence ministry said, and radiation levels remain normal.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify battlefield reports.