India does not want to say in advance how it will vote at the United Nations General Assembly on a likely draft resolution condemning Russia’s proclaimed annexation of parts of Ukraine, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said on Monday. “As a matter of prudence and policy, we don’t predict our votes in advance,” Jaishankar said during a joint media briefing along with Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Canberra. The General Assembly is due to vote on the draft resolution on Tuesday or Wednesday, diplomats said.

Volunteers work to clean the debris on a site where several houses were destroyed after a Russian attack at a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, October 9, 2022. (AP)

An external power line to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the biggest in Europe — was repaired on Sunday after shelling disconnected the facility from the grid and forced it to resort to emergency diesel generators, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said.The International Atomic Energy Agency said the 750-kilovolt line was reconnected to the plant on Sunday evening following repair work by Ukrainian engineers. That enabled the plant to start switching off the generators that had kicked in to provide it with power after the line — its last connection to the grid — was cut early Saturday.IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi tweeted that the reconnection was “a temporary relief in a still-untenable situation.”

A Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia overnight struck apartment buildings and killed at least 17 people, a top official in the Ukrainian city said Sunday.City council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said the city was struck by rockets overnight, and that at least five private houses were destroyed and around 40 were damaged. The Ukrainian military also confirmed the attack, saying that there were dozens of casualties. The strike came after an explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging an important supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine and hitting a towering symbol of Russian power in the region.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, has lost its last remaining external power source as a result of renewed shelling and is now relying on emergency diesel generators, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that the plant’s link to a 750-kilovolt line was cut at around 1 am on Saturday. It cited official information from Ukraine as well as reports from IAEA experts at the site, which is held by Russian forces.

With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and its grip, creating a disorderly vacuum that previously obedient former Soviet satraps, as well as China, are moving to fill.

On the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in just one remote village has been devastating: homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.

All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.

Russia’s latest wave of threats to use nuclear weapons and cut energy supplies even further so far haven’t scared off Ukraine’s allies in the US and Europe, only hardening their will to see Kyiv win. What they’re not so sure about is whether they want Vladimir Putin to lose. Joe Biden brought the tension into the open Thursday, warning that the Russian president’s nuclear threats may not be a bluff as his other options for salvaging his invasion of Ukraine narrow.