Ukraine live briefing: Dnipro strike injures 9; Brazil rejects U.S. request for alleged Russian spy

In Brazil, justice officials said they could not approve a U.S. request to extradite Sergey Cherkasov, whom the United States accused of being a Russian spy, because they are already processing Moscow’s request for him over allegations of drug trafficking.

Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.

Russia’s extradition request was conditionally approved by Brazil’s Supreme Court earlier this year, according to the Brazilian Justice Ministry. Cherkasov, who is serving time in Brazil on charges of using fraudulent documents, was charged by the U.S. Justice Department with acting as an illegal agent of a Russian intelligence service while attending Johns Hopkins University in Washington as a master’s student. One of his lawyers has denied the spying allegations.

The International Olympic Committee invited Ukrainian fencer Olga Kharlan to compete at next year’s Paris Games after she was disqualified from the Fencing World Championships in Milan for refusing a mandatory handshake with Russian opponent Anna Smirnova. She will be granted “an additional quota place” if she failed to qualify, the President of the Committee wrote in a letter, which Kharlan shared on Instagram. “As a fellow fencer, it is impossible for me to imagine how you feel at this moment,” it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law moving the date of Christmas from Jan. 7 to Dec. 25, as part of an effort to “renounce Russian heritage.” The government said that Christmas is a Christian holiday, integral to Ukraine and that observing the Julian calendar, which celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7, had long been imposed on Ukrainian people.

“An uptick of fighting” has gripped southern Ukraine in the last 48 hours, including near the village of Robotyne, according to an update from the British Ministry of Defense on Saturday. Ukrainian officials say they have made some gains in their latest counteroffensive push to smash through Russian defenses in the south.

Russia claimed it intercepted two Ukrainian missiles, including one that local officials said landed in a town in Russia’s Rostov region on Friday, injuring nine people. Russia’s Defense Ministry said earlier that air defenses thwarted a Ukrainian drone targeting Moscow, with no casualties or damage. The Washington Post could not independently verify the claims.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia’s defense minister of visiting North Korea to secure weapons. “I strongly doubt he’s there on holiday,” Blinken told reporters, according to AFP. “We’re seeing Russia desperately looking for support, for weapons, wherever it can find them,” Blinken was quoted as saying on a trip to Australia which concluded Saturday. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang this week as the city marked the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice.

Global aid needs have skyrocketed during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program. He said the United Nations had to cut food, cash payments and assistance to millions of people in countries including Afghanistan and Yemen because of “a crippling funding crisis.”

In repeat bombing of Odessa, Putin deepens economic war on Ukraine: Since Russia terminated the U.N.-brokered grain deal that allowed Ukrainian exports from the Black Sea, attacks have intensified on Odessa, one of Ukraine’s major port regions, report John Hudson and Anastacia Galouchka.

As a result of the strikes, “Odessa’s grain industry suffered tens of millions of dollars in damage,” they write. “The attacks destroyed at least 60,000 tons of grain, enough to feed more than 270,000 people for a year, according to the U.N. World Food Program.”