December 4, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Officials in the recently liberated city of Kherson in southern Ukraine say two critical services have been largely restored after Russian strikes damaged infrastructure.

Electricity:

Kherson city's power supply is back to 85% across town, according to local officials. 

That marks a significant improvement in the southern city over recent days.

After being restored to roughly three-quarters capacity Friday, the city had been cut off from electricity entirely by Russian shelling.

By Saturday, power was restored to 75% in the city, and then Sunday marked another improvement.

Water:

Seventy percent of residents now have water supplied in their homes, Yanushevych wrote on Telegram.

The city’s pumping station had been without power due to the Russian strikes that knocked energy grids offline.

OPEC and its allies decided Sunday to stick with their existing policy of curtailing oil output, just hours before new Western sanctions on Russian crude exports come into force.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and other major oil producers including Russia, said they would continue to restrict supply by 2 million barrels per day, a policy set in October that started last month and is due to run through the end of 2023.

In a statement, OPEC said Sunday’s meeting — held via video conference — had reaffirmed the decision taken in October, adding that the group was ready to meet at any time to “address market developments if necessary.”

The cuts agreed to in October, the biggest since the start of the pandemic, drew criticism from the United States. The Biden administration called them “shortsighted” and said they would hurt low- and middle-income countries by pushing energy prices higher.

Since then, oil prices have instead pulled back, as traders have focused on how ongoing coronavirus lockdowns in China and global recession fears could hit demand.

Markets could be volatile in the coming days, however. Europe’s ban on importing oil from Russia shipped by sea kicks in on Monday, injecting extra uncertainty into the outlook for energy supply.

G7 nations, the European Union and Australia agreed Friday to impose a price cap of $60 a barrel on Russian oil shipped to other countries that have not adopted an embargo. The move, which also takes effect Monday, is aimed at depriving the Kremlin of revenue while avoiding a price shock by keeping Russian oil flowing to some markets.

Moscow has previously threatened to retaliate by cutting off oil supply to countries that adhere to the price cap.

What Ukraine is saying: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the decision to set the price cap at $60 a “weak position.”

“The logic is obvious: if the price limit for Russian oil is $60 instead of, for example, $30, which Poland and the Baltic countries talked about, then the Russian budget will receive about a hundred billion dollars a year,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday. “This money will go not only to the war and not only to Russia’s further sponsoring of other terrorist regimes and organizations.”

The eastern town of Bakhmut has become a prime target for Russian troops, a Ukrainian military official said Sunday. 

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern Group of the nation's armed forces, said Ukrainian troops were holding out in Bakhmut, describing the situation as “very difficult, but under control.”

Russian units appeared to make some progress in the town a few days ago, though they also looked to be taking heavy casualties.

Meanwhile in the Kherson region, head of the regional military administration Yaroslav Yanushevych said Russia's forces have once again shelled residential areas.

That included attacks on private apartment buildings and other civilian infrastructure, according to Yanushevych.

One civilian in Kherson was killed and two were injured Saturday, he said.

Ukrainian officials say that Russia left numerous mines, tripwires and other dangerous objects throughout the Kherson region, with the National Police reporting that they have seized 4,200 explosive devices and destroyed another 1,250. 

In the city of Kherson, crews have restored electricity supply, with about 75% of the community gaining access to power as of Sunday morning, according to the regional military administration.

CNN's Tim Lister and Julia Kesaieva contributed to this report.

The first vessel from the humanitarian program "Grain from Ukraine" delivered 25,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat bound for Ethiopia on Saturday, according to a statement from President Volodymyr Zelensky's office.

The statement said that, as part of the initiative, Ukraine plans to send over 60 more ships to Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Kenya and Yemen.

The first ship arrived at the port of Doraleh in Djibouti on Saturday, en route for landlocked Ethiopia.

A second vessel, which crews have finished loading in the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk, will head toward Ethiopia next week with 30,000 tons of wheat on board.

Some background: Experts warned over the summer that millions of people had been pushed into hunger as a Russian blockade fueled soaring grain commodity prices.

Those prices reached record highs this year as more than 20 million metric tons of Ukrainian wheat and corn remained trapped in Odesa.

Grain shipments can now leave Ukraine under an uneasy agreement brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, but the belated shipments are no quick fix.

The global food shortage has been accelerated by years of pandemic-related disruptions, the climate crisis, conflict, food export restrictions and spiraling costs, and the effects will take significant time to address.

Ukrainian officials reported Russian strikes in two southern regions late Saturday and early Sunday morning.

The attacks damaged buildings but no one was reportedly killed or wounded.

In Zaporizhzhia:

Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said several strikes were reported in a village there. 

While the strikes caused no casualties, they did break windows and damage roofs on homes, and power lines were damaged, according to Starukh.

In Dnipropetrovsk:

In the nearby Dnipropetrovsk region, officials reported shelling near the town of Nikopol, said Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the region's military administration.

"Russians shelled peaceful towns and villages 10 times with 'Grad' and heavy artillery," he said, adding that no one was injured.

In one community, homes, garages and power lines were damaged, he said. The scenes of shelling in other areas are being inspected and the details of the attacks are being clarified, he added. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the European Union's Russian oil cap decision a “weak position" and still too “comfortable for the budget of a terrorist state” in his nightly address Saturday. 

The EU reached a consensus Friday on the price at which to cap Russian oil, just days before its ban on most imports comes into force. The bloc’s 27 member states agreed to set the cap at $60 a barrel.

The move is aimed at reducing inflows to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war chest without adding to stress on the global economy by further reducing the supply of energy.

But Ukraine's president said it didn't go far enough, saying the situation had called for "big decisions." 

“The logic is obvious: If the price limit for Russian oil is $60 instead of, for example, $30 — which Poland and the Baltic countries talked about — then the Russian budget will receive about a hundred billion dollars a year,” Zelensky said.

The money will flow into the war effort and "to Russia's further sponsoring of other terrorist regimes and organizations," the president added.

A top Russian government official and the leader of the Moscow-aligned mercenary group Wagner denied sending alarming packages to Ukrainian embassies across Europe this week.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of being behind the more than a dozen letters, which contained explosives or animal parts and were sent to a series of Ukrainian diplomats.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova sent CNN a single word comment in response to that allegation: “psycho.”

And Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch and head of the Wagner mercenary group, said he had nothing to do with the packages.

In response to CNN’s request for comment, Prigozhin said the Wagner Group would “never engage in boorish stupid antics.”

“Think about the madness when some hooligans send bomb letters or other offensive things, what does this have to do with Wagner PMC,” Prigozhin said in a written response.

More background: There have been 17 cases of embassies receiving either letter bombs, false bomb letters or letters containing animals parts, like the eyes of cows and pigs, according to Kuleba.

“This campaign is aimed at sowing fear,” Kuleba told CNN in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Friday.

When asked who he thought was behind the letters, Kuleba told CNN, “I feel tempted to say, to name Russia straight away, because first of all you have to answer the question, 'who benefits?'"

“Maybe this terror response is the Russian answer to the diplomatic horror that we created for Russia on the international arena, and this is how they try to fight back while they are losing the real diplomatic battles one after another,” he added.