Russia left Ukraine’s power plants alone overnight for the first time since President Trump’s “energy ceasefire,” but hit its cities anyway; the Houthis told civilians to clear out of Saudi oil sites; and a second ship in a week went down off Bulgaria’s coast. Ten stories as of Tuesday morning, October 13.
1. Kyiv, Kharkiv and Warsaw / Ukraine and Russia. Russia hit no Ukrainian energy targets overnight into Tuesday, the first time that has happened since Trump announced his “energy ceasefire” at the weekend, while it hammered transport and logistics sites with ballistic missiles and drones, France 24 reported, citing Reuters. Four people were killed in a residential building in Kharkiv, and one missile came down just over a kilometre from a plant that heats much of Lviv. The Kremlin would only say that “contacts” were ongoing. Ukraine’s air force said it had no advance surveillance warning before Russia fired six ballistic missiles at Kyiv late Monday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called that strike “particularly vile” and said partners gave no early warning, The Guardian reported: “This is precisely what helps prevent people from being killed – when there is an early warning about ballistic missiles.” That comes after U.S. officials threatened over the weekend to halt intelligence sharing, though Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said cooperation continues. Zelenskyy said Ukraine hasn’t hit a Russian refinery in two days. In Moscow, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Russia could supply 3.5 million tonnes of diesel a month to world markets by year’s end, Al Jazeera reported.
2. Riyadh, Dammam and Sanaa / Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition told civilians to leave the Yemeni Oil Company’s al-Sabah central station in Houthi-held Sanaa ahead of a planned operation, and Al Jazeera’s team then heard explosions in the capital, Al Jazeera reported. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree hit back with his own evacuation alert, calling Saudi oil facilities “a legitimate target.” He named Aramco’s headquarters in Dammam, Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport and an Aramco refinery in Riyadh, and promised a “harsh and painful” response to any strikes on Sanaa. The coalition said it shot down three drones north of Riyadh on Tuesday. France’s embassy told its citizens to stay away from the airports in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, France 24 reported. On the ground, Saudi-backed government forces say they’re pushing into Marib province, and in besieged Taiz a rights group counted five civilians killed and 17 wounded by Houthi shelling in 24 hours, Al Jazeera reported.
3. Strait of Hormuz / Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. At least 12 tankers have been attacked in and around the Strait of Hormuz in the past week, going by the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warnings, The National reported. Delayed UKMTO reports cover six ships hit on Sunday alone: five tankers and a container ship, five in the strait and one hit by a drone near Oman’s Sohar anchorage. The U.S. Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center rates the threat to shipping in the strait “severe” in its latest advisory, published by UKMTO, and says the attacks show Iran’s “intent to assert [its] presence along key transit lanes.” “The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” an adviser to the Revolutionary Guards’ commander, Mohammadreza Naqdi, was quoted as saying. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week it is open, with “almost as much oil flowing out now as there was before this conflict began.”
4. Krapets and Byala / Bulgaria. Prime Minister Rumen Radev summoned Russia’s ambassador after drones hit two merchant ships off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast on Tuesday and one of them sank, BBC News reported. Six crew from the Guinea-Bissau-flagged HS Dignity were rescued and 10 are missing after it went down 17 nautical miles east of Krapets, the defence minister said. All 15 aboard the Ukrainian-owned Chelsea-3, hit off Byala, were rescued. There’s no conclusive evidence against “either side,” Radev said, but “the logic suggests that the outcome benefits the Russian Federation.” His defence minister was blunter: “We assume the drones are Russian.” The ambassador, Eleonora Mitrofanova, said she had no information from Russia’s defence ministry and suggested a third-party provocation. Both ships were just outside Bulgarian territorial waters. At least 45 merchant ships have been hit by drones in the Black Sea in the past year, DW reported.
5. Rome / Vatican City and Italy. Pope Leo XIV, 71, checked into Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Tuesday for an afternoon operation to remove a small nodule from his lung, The Guardian reported. The surgery is considered low risk and will show whether the growth is malignant. A thoracic team led by Prof. Stefano Margaritora is doing the operation, and the pope is expected to stay in hospital for about a week, Vatican News said. His audiences are cancelled through October 20, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle will lead Wednesday’s general audience. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the news came “like a bolt out of the blue.” There was no word on how the surgery went as of this brief.
6. Budapest / Hungary. Hungary’s parliament voted on Tuesday to scrap the parts of Viktor Orbán’s 2021 child protection law that banned the “portrayal or promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism,” BBC News reported. Minutes later, the government said the EU had agreed to release €4.2bn in funds frozen in the final years of Orbán’s rule. Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, which ousted Orbán in April, now holds the same two-thirds majority Fidesz once had. Fidesz and the Christian Democrats voted no. “We’ve been fighting this so-called child protection law for five years,” said Tamás Dombos of the Háttér Society. Activists still want same-sex marriage and adoption rights.
7. Washington and Athens / United States and Greece. “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia said on Tuesday, adding “we wish her well,” Al Jazeera reported. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, has faced weeks of misconduct reports. The Wall Street Journal reported she asked a Trump donor to cover a $100,000 credit card bill shortly before her confirmation hearing, promising access to administration officials. Her lawyers deny wrongdoing and say the money was owed for past speaking engagements. Trump said Monday, “We’re not happy.” Top House and Senate Democrats want investigations, DW reported.
8. Ceuta / Spain and Morocco. King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia began the first Spanish royal visit to Ceuta in nearly two decades on Tuesday, as the North African exclave still deals with July’s surge of about 70,000 people from Morocco, BBC News reported. Aid groups estimate at least 141 people died in the crossings. Ceuta’s president Juan Jesús Vivas puts the number still in the city at 15,000; Madrid says it has 7,400 shelter places. The royals will attend an interfaith ceremony at the cemetery where many of the dead are buried, then head to Melilla on Wednesday. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recently confirmed that Moroccan military vessels entered Spanish waters off Ceuta during the crossing but played it down. Spain votes on November 29.
9. New Delhi / India. Police detained Cockroach Janta Party leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das early on Tuesday after they climbed barricades into Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s traditional protest site, and chanted for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign, BBC News reported. A day earlier the home ministry had said Jantar Mantar would no longer be a designated protest venue. “You cannot denotify the resistance,” founder Abhijeet Dipke wrote on X. The movement and opposition parties say a revision of voter rolls that removed tens of millions of names favors Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party; the party and the Election Commission reject that. Congress has asked the Supreme Court to step in.
10. Puerto Iguazú / Argentina, and the Pacific. Argentina briefly shut tourist access to Iguazu Falls on Monday when the Iguazu River topped 12,000 cubic metres per second, more than six times its average flow, after heavy rain fuelled by a supersized El Niño, The Guardian reported. “It just keeps raining,” said park director José María Hervás. Officials planned to reopen on Tuesday as the flow eased. Out in the Pacific, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says weekly sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific have hit their highest level on record, weeks before the event’s expected December peak, BBC Weather reported. “We are currently witnessing an El Niño event that is unprecedented in the historical record,” said Berkeley Earth’s Zeke Hausfather.
Coming Up
Confirmed dates on The Watch: Through October 18, the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, with G20 finance ministers there October 15. October 15–16, the European Council in Brussels, where von der Leyen says Ukraine’s funding will be “front and centre.” October 19, Alberta’s referendum on whether to move toward a binding independence vote.
Sources: France 24; Reuters; The Guardian; Al Jazeera; The National; UKMTO; BBC News; DW; Vatican News; BBC Weather.
