WAR IN UKRAINE: November 7, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 257
French President Emmanuel Macron tells the COP27 UN climate summit the Ukraine war shouldn't change commitments on climate. “Russia's aggression against Ukraine has not only brought the war to European soil but it has also brought uncertainty and tension to the world," he says, bringing "difficulty upon difficulty" especially to the African continent and around the Mediterranean. He says the Ukraine crisis - which came just a few months after the Covid pandemic - would lead many to say they have other priorities to focus on. “But at the same time we see many states being affected by the consequences of the unravelling of the climate, and we must show that the climate emergency is well and truly here."
Russia's continuing assault on Ukraine's energy infrastructure with missile and drone strikes has seen the country's power reportedly cut by a third, with the grid operator now urging people to cut their electricity usage as much as they can. In the central city of Kremenchuk, residents are dealing with blackouts every couple of hours, the BBC’s Ukraine correspondent reports.
Zelensky: More than 4.5 million people have no access to electricity due to Russian attacks. In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the most difficult situation is currently in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. “Whatever the terrorists want, we must survive this winter and become even stronger in the spring,” Zelensky said. Kyiv to have emergency blackouts on Nov. 7 due to shortage of electricity. Serhiy Kovalenko, CEO of energy supplier Yasno, said that the electricity shortages would be 32% more than expected. “It's a lot and it's a force majeure,” he said. Blackouts will be longer than outlined in the official blackout schedules for Nov. 7, and outages can start “from the morning," he said - Kyiv Independent
Accounting Chamber: Russia's damage to Ukrainian soil, air, forests worth at least $37 billion. The Russian all-out invasion has caused more than $37.4 billion worth of damage to Ukraine's environment, according to the Accounting Chamber. Almost one-third of Ukrainian forests – three million hectares – has already been affected; some of the forests are lost forever, the government agency wrote. "Russia has also turned our fertile black soil into the world's most contaminated with explosive materials land," it stated.