Massive blackouts after Russian missile and drone attacks on power generating facilities have taken place in a number regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv. Russia openly declares that Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is among its key targets. Invaders want Ukrainians to feel scared, freeze and surrender. Please, continue to help us and #ArmUkraineNow

What’s going on?

• Russia continues to attack civil infrastructure in Ukraine. On the morning of October 17, it attacked Kyiv by nearly 30 Iranian regime-made kamikaze drones, most of which were successfully shot down. However, 5 of them reached their targets, hitting a historical residential building. The bodies of four dead civilians were pulled out from under the rubble.
• Since October 10, Russia has launched over 300 strikes on Ukraine’s electrical-power grid, destroying around a third of the country’s energy-generating capacity. Russia’s primary targets are electrical substations and power plants. Energy companies are restoring the electricity supply, but a temporary controlled restriction of electricity consumption has been introduced in order to stabilize the energy system.
• In Russia-occupied Mariupol, the invaders burned Ukrainian school textbooks in a schoolyard and dismantled a monument to victims of Holodomor (a man-made famine in Ukraine during Soviet occupation, recognized as a genocide by many countries). In occupied Crimea, self-proclaimed Russian authorities are planning an “evacuation” (looting) of museums to the territory of the Russian Federation. In this regard, Ukraine asks UNESCO to stop any cooperation with Russian museums. 
• Russia steals everything, including Ukrainian children. Nearly 8,000 Ukrainian children have been illegally deported to Russia since February 24, when Russia started its full-scale war. Some of them have been adopted into Russian families without being orphans and have been given Russian passports. The Children’s Ombudsman of the Russian Federation claimed that children from Mariupol who were illegally deported to the Moscow region have allegedly changed their anti-Russian views. Moreover she illegally adopted a Ukrainian child, who was abducted in Mariupol by the Russian army.

Losses

• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 16,150 civilian casualties in Ukraine since February 24. It is impossible to establish the actual number of dead, wounded and forcibly displaced people due to the fact that the occupation forces are continuing their assault on Ukraine. Russia’s war against Ukraine has already produced over 7.7 million refugees.
• On October 13, the news emerged that Yurii Kerpatenko, the principal conductor at the Kherson Music and Drama Theatre, was shot dead in his home after he categorically refused to participate in a “festive concert”, organised by Russian occupiers. 
• Find out more in our monitoring of losses among cultural figures.

Russian crimes against media

• In eight months of the full-scale war, Russia committed 457 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine. The number of journalists killed since February 24 is 42.
• On October 17, Serhiy Sylkin, a military serviceman from Ivano-Frankivsk and a former Suspilne (Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine) employee, was killed in a battle with Russian invaders near Bakhmut, Donetsk oblast.
• On October 23, the news emerged that director at the TV channels Pershy Zakhidny and Espresso, co-author of the Hero’s Story project, Vasyl Yavorsky had died in the war. He was a director for many years, working with many TV channels.
• Find out more about Russia’s crimes against the media in Ukraine in our report.

The war is not over yet

Photo exhibition The War Is Not Over Yet opened in the Odesa City Garden on October 19. The project aims to tell the stories of people who made the world aware of the war waged by Russia against Ukraine – journalists who have been killed, injured, captured, persecuted, or come under fire since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The case of Volodymyr Vakulenko

In April, news emerged that the Ukrainian writer, activist and volunteer Volodymyr Vakulenko had been abducted near Izium in the occupied Kharkiv region. To this day, Volodymyr Vakulenko’s fate remains unknown. In September, after the Armed Forces of Ukraine had liberated Izium and its suburbs from Russian occupation, the world learnt about the mass graves and torture chambers that Russian troops had left behind when they had forcibly occupied the Kharkiv region. Reports emerged of civilians slaughtered and deported under captivity. 
It hurts a lot to accept that a children’s writer could have been killed by Russian invaders. It hurts even more to know nothing about his fate. Volodymyr Vakulenko’s family, friends and colleagues have been existing in a state of uncertainty and hope for almost seven months now, much like the entire literary community of Ukraine.
Read the article about Volodymyr Vakulenko’s abduction here.

Share materials

• Andrey Kurkov “The Undefeated” (The New European);
• Andrey Kurkov “Diary of an Invasion” (Spectator);
• Oleksandr Mykhed “The more of us they kill, the more of us will bear witness to their evil” (Suspilne);
• Oleksandr Mykhed “The Language of War” (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities);
• Victoria Amelina at the Ryan Tubridy Show (RTE);
• Oksana Kutsenko “Stanzas for Ukraine – 10” (Poetry School);
• Janine di Giovanni “The Defiance of Celebrating Literature in the Midst of War“ (Foreign Policy);
• Borja Lasheras “Let the Guns Speak — Ukraine Is Writing its Future” (Center for European Policy Analysis);
• Wolodymyr Jermolenko “Wer wir sind” (Zeit in German);
• Serhij Zhadan “Ein Mensch mit einer Waffe hat eine völlig andere Sicht auf die Welt. Diese Erfahrung ist leicht zu haben, aber schwer wieder loszuwerden” (Zeit in German);
• Serhij Zhadan “Die Zeit arbeitet für diejenigen, die an den Sieg glauben” (Spiegel in German);
• Tanja Maljartschuk “Waren Russland und die Ukraine jemals „Brüder“?” (ARD in German);
• Andrei Kurkov “Quero que Putin vá para o inferno” (Sabado in Portuguese).

Dialogues on war

We continue our conversation series, #DialoguesOnWar, where Ukrainian and foreign intellectuals talk about the experience of the war and share their own observations:

• Dialogues on War: Tetyana Ogarkova and Sylvie Kauffmann (video);
• Dialogues on War: Iryna Tsilyk and Agnieszka Holland (text);
• Dialogues on War: Sophia Andrukhovych and Orhan Pamuk (text);
• Dialogues on War: Philippe De Lara and Kostiantyn Sigov (text).

PEN Ukraine webpage on war

Visit our webpage for the latest news and materials on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Here you will find information on the situation in Ukraine, links to important materials and information resources, petitions, addresses, a list of publications about Ukraine to read in English, and books by Ukrainian authors recommended for translation. The page is continuously updated with the latest news and links.