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Yet another Russian mass missile attack has battered Ukraine’s already struggling infrastructure, leaving millions of people without electricity, heating and water as winter approaches.

What happened on Wednesday?

A wave of around 70 Russian missiles, as well as drones, struck cities across Ukraine on Wednesday afternoon (Nov. 23), in a continuation of the Kremlin’s deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure.

What did they hit?

The strikes forced Ukraine to disconnect three nuclear power stations, piling further pressure on an already weakened system. 

Power supplies in southern and eastern regions were disrupted, and Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said half of the western city was without electricity.

In Kyiv, there were water and electricity cuts as engineers raced to fix the system as best they could. 

Overnight, 70 percent of the city was without electricity as temperatures hovered just above freezing.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram that three people were killed in the attacks in the capital, including a 17-year-old girl, while 11 residents were injured. 

Reporters at the scene of one strike in Kyiv saw the burnt out remains of two cars and the bodies of two people killed in the blast.

On Thursday morning (Nov. 24) water was running on the left bank of the Dnipro river and Klitschko said those living on the right side of the city should have water “in the first half of the day.”

Neighboring Moldova, whose electricity grid is connected to Ukraine’s, said it was suffering massive blackouts caused by the missile barrage. President of Moldova Maia Sandu accused Russia of leaving her country “in the dark.”

In Zaporizhzhia earlier on Wednesday, Russian strikes smashed into a hospital in the city of Vilniansk, killing a newborn baby in the maternity ward. “Grief fills our hearts,” said Oleksandr Starukh, the head of the region, in the wake of the attack.

Why is Russia targeting civilian infrastructure?

Russia’s armed forces have faced defeat after defeat on the battlefield, most recently being forced into a humiliating retreat from the southern city of Kherson.

Unable to win in a fight with Ukraine’s army, the Kremlin is desperate for something it can sell to its people as a victory, so is now reduced to launching long-range missiles at civilian targets in an attempt to freeze the country’s population into submission.

In a poor attempt to justify the tactic, Russia says the aim of the missile strike campaign is to weaken Ukraine’s ability to fight and push it to negotiate.

What has Ukraine said?

President Volodymyr Zelensky told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday that Russian air strikes on Ukraine’s battered power grid were an “obvious crime against humanity.” 

“When we have the temperature below zero, and millions of people without energy supplies, without heating, without water, this is an obvious crime against humanity,” he told the meeting in New York via video-link.

What is the world saying?

French Ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Rivière, called the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system “a clear violation of humanitarian law”, AFP reports.

“The objective is clear: in the face of military defeats, to sow terror,” de Rivière told the UN Security Council on Wednesday. “The continuation of these reprisals is intolerable.”

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia was “clearly weaponizing winter to inflict immense suffering on the Ukrainian people”.

What are they going to do about it?

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola launched an appeal to get vitally needed equipment to the EU’s war-torn eastern neighbor. 

“Ukrainians are currently without electricity as a result of Russia’s attacks on critical civilian infrastructure,” Metsola said. 

Mayor of the Italian city of Florence, Dario Nardella, who heads a network of local authorities in Europe, said he was looking to coordinate a group of 200 cities around the continent to send generators they have in storage to Ukraine. 

“We’ve got the potential of sending several hundred, even industrial-sized, generators which will be able to produce quite a lot of power,” Nardella said. 

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff at the Ukrainian presidency, said that generators were needed to help ensure people’s basic needs as Russia bombards Ukraine. 

But he said the top priority for Kyiv was to get other heavy equipment needed for the “immediate recovery” of the country’s power grid. 

“We need to ensure generation and sustainable distribution of energy to sustain our economy,” Yermak said.

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Malaysia’s king appointed long-time opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister on Thursday and he will be sworn in at 5 p.m. (0900 GMT), ending five days of unprecedented post-election crisis after inconclusive polls.

Anwar’s appointment caps a three-decade long political journey from a protege of veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad to anti-government protest leader, to a prisoner convicted of sodomy, to opposition leader and, finally, prime minister.

Markets surged upon the end of the political deadlock. The ringgit currency posted its best day in two weeks and equities rose 3%.

A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented hung parliament with neither of two main alliances, one led by Anwar and the other ex-premier Muhyiddin Yassin, immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.

The 75-year-old Anwar has time and again been denied the premiership despite getting within striking distance over the years: he was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and the official prime minister-in-waiting in 2018.

In between, he spent nearly a decade in jail for sodomy and corruption in what he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.

The uncertainty over the election threatened to prolong political instability in the Southeast Asian country, which has had three prime ministers in as many years, and risks delaying policy decisions needed to foster economic recovery.

Anwar leads a multi-ethnic coalition of parties with progressive leanings while Muhyiddin’s alliance reflects more conservative, ethnic Malay, Muslim views.

His supporters expressed hope that Anwar’s government would head off a return to historic tension between the ethnic Malay, Muslim majority and ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.

“All we want is moderation for Malaysia and Anwar represents that,” said a communications manager in Kuala Lumpur, who asked to be identified by her surname Tang.

“We can’t have a country that is divided by race and religion as that will set us back another 10 years.”

Anwar’s coalition, known as Pakatan Harapan, won the most seats in Saturday’s vote with 82, while Muhyiddin’s Perikatan Nasional bloc won 73. They needed 112 – a simple majority – to form a government.

The long-ruling Barisan bloc won only 30 seats – the worst electoral performance for a coalition that had dominated politics since independence in 1957.

Barisan said on Thursday it would not support a government led by Muhyiddin, though it did not make any reference to Anwar.

Muhyiddin’s bloc includes the Islamist party PAS, whose electoral gains raised concern among members of the ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian communities, most of whom follow other faiths.

Authorities warned after the weekend vote of a rise in ethnic tension on social media and short video platform TikTok said it was on high alert for content that violated its guidelines.

Social media users reported numerous TikTok posts since the election that mentioned a riot in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on May 13, 1969, in which about 200 people were killed, days after opposition parties supported by ethnic Chinese voters made inroads in an election.

Police told social media users to refrain from “provocative” content and said they were setting up 24-hour check-points on roads throughout the country to ensure public peace and safety.

The decision on the prime minister came down to King Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, after both Anwar and Muhyiddin missed his Tuesday afternoon deadline to put together a ruling alliance.

The constitutional monarch plays a largely ceremonial role but can appoint a premier he believes will command a majority in parliament.

Malaysia has a unique constitutional monarchy in which kings are chosen in turn from the royal families of nine states to reign for a five-year term.

As premier, Anwar will have to address soaring inflation and slowing growth, while calming the ethnic tensions.

The most immediate issue will be the budget for next year, which was tabled before the election was called but has yet to be passed.

Anwar will also have to negotiate agreements with lawmakers from other blocs to ensure he can retains majority support in parliament.

The king’s decision at least secured the premiership for Anwar, but voters acknowledged that the close margin in parliament may mean more turmoil ahead as Anwar’s government takes shape.

“It’s definitely a momentous occasion,” said banker Julian Cheong. “What remains to be seen is how the next five years will pan out.”

Having spent much of her career railing against bureaucrats and financial elites, Italy’s new right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni now has to get them on side – and it is not proving easy.

Things got off to a bad start after her victory at a Sept. 25 election.

Searching for a finance minister who would reassure markets and Italy’s European partners, three political sources told Reuters she was turned down by European Central Bank board member Fabio Panetta and the outgoing minister Daniele Franco, a former Bank of Italy official.

So instead of appointing a ‘technocrat’ – an unelected official with the technical expertise to implement policy – Meloni ended up picking career politician Giancarlo Giorgetti of the co-ruling League party.

Panetta and Franco were left to vie next year for the role of Bank of Italy governor, an appointment made jointly by the government, the central bank and the head of state.

An ECB spokesperson said Panetta declined to comment. Franco was not available to comment. Meloni’s office did not reply to several requests for comment.

Now the Treasury department’s influential director general Alessandro Rivera is in the crosshairs of Meloni’s inner-circle, three government officials said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. But there is a dearth of viable alternatives.

Meloni, a fiery conviction politician, has often spoken out against Italy’s reliance on technocrats to solve its economic problems and lambasted alleged interference from “high international finance” and “Brussels bureaucrats”.

Yet to manage Europe’s second-largest debt pile and ensure the arrival of billions of euros of European Union pandemic recovery funds, it is vital that she finds a constructive way of working with these powerful policymakers, both at home and abroad.

Most Italian civil servants remain in place regardless of election outcomes, but new governments can replace some heads of department soon after taking office. Experienced top officials like Rivera, who has been Treasury director general under three administrations, are usually reappointed.

Unknown to the general public but a point of reference for the financial community and European officials, Rivera is considered too independent by Meloni’s aides, who are unhappy with his handling of some of Italy’s main financial dossiers.

These include the privatisation of national airline ITA Airways – the successor to Alitalia – and efforts to relaunch the country’s fifth largest bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) (BMPS.MI), which is 64%-owned by the Treasury.

“Rivera has influential supporters, especially among bankers, but he also seems to have powerful enemies in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party,” said Francesco Galietti, head of political risk consultancy Policy Sonar and a former Treasury official.

Rivera was not available to comment. A Treasury spokesperson said his future would be decided “at the right time.”

During the election campaign Meloni called in vain for her predecessor Mario Draghi to freeze the sale of a majority stake in ITA.

Less than a month before the election, the Treasury picked a consortium for exclusive talks led by U.S. private equity fund Certares, but the transaction has not been completed.

Now German carrier Lufthansa has renewed an interest, which would reverse the path laid out by Rivera’s top team.

Meloni’s people were also unhappy with the Treasury’s insistence on braving markets with a 2.5 billion euro ($2.59 billion) capital hike for Monte Paschi. The share issue eventually went ahead and the bank’s prospects have brightened.

Deputy Economy and Finance Minister Maurizio Leo, an adviser to Meloni, had proposed splitting his ministry by hiving off the finance department responsible for tax matters.

The scheme, announced in an interview to Reuters, has been shelved after pushback from the ministry’s career civil servants. The head of the finance department, Fabrizia Lapecorella, has asked to move to another ministry, two sources said.

Lapecorella did not respond to a request for comment.

Another top economic official, Pasquale Tridico, who heads state pensions agency INPS, is also in Meloni’s sights.

Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, of the Brothers of Italy, on Sunday accused Tridico, considered close to the left-leaning 5-Star Movement, of opposing the government’s plans and hinted he would not be reappointed when his mandate ends next year.

One of Meloni’s closest advisors told Reuters many top officials in ministries and state-run companies had been appointed by centre-left parties, and the right wanted to replace them with people from its own camp.

Antonino Turicchi, a former senior Treasury official and deputy chairman of Monte Paschi who has been historically close to the Italian right, was tipped by some government sources to replace Rivera.

However, last week Turicchi was named president of airline ITA, a job which is seen as preventing him from competing for the position at the Treasury – at least for now.

A senior official in Draghi’s former government said Rivera, with his broad international connections, was the only figure in the top tier of the Treasury qualified to flank finance minister Giorgetti, who has limited international experience and speaks little English.

Under Italian legislation, Giorgetti has until the end of January to either confirm or remove Rivera. But until then, he remains at the heart of Italian policymaking, helping prepare the government’s 2023 budget unveiled on Tuesday and accompanying the minister to the G20 summit in Bali last week.

($1 = 0.9650 euros)

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More than two thirds of the Ukrainian capital was still without power on Thursday morning and a swathe of residents had no running water, a day after Russian missile strikes caused Kyiv’s biggest outages in nine months of war.

The capital was one of the main targets of the latest wave of attacks on energy facilities that cut power in many regions and made emergency blackouts necessary in others to conserve energy and enable repairs as winter sets in.

The temperature plunged below zero degrees Celsius overnight in a city that had 2.8 million residents before the war and where it is already snowing and the streets are icy.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said electricians and repair workers were doing everything to get the power back on “as fast as possible” but the recovery would depend largely on the overall energy “balance” of the nationwide grid.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s staff, said power supplies had been restored in the Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions.

In the south, Mykolaiv region governor Vitali Kim appealed to Ukrainians to be as frugal as possible in their use of power.

“Consumption has been growing this morning (which is logical), there isn’t enough capacity in the system to switch it on for more consumers!!,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“The energy system is united like we all are! If you’ve turned off a few unneeded lights, that’s really important!!!”

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TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday cast this weekend’s local elections as a referendum on her leadership, saying a vote for her party’s candidates was a vote for her and her commitment to “take good care” of Taiwan and ensure peace with China.

Tsai’s second term in office runs out in 2024 and she cannot stand again as president because of term limits. She was re-elected by a landslide in 2020 on a pledge to stand up to China and protect Taiwan’s freedom and democracy.

Saturday’s elections, for city mayors, county chiefs and local councillors, are ostensibly about domestic issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and crime, and those elected do not have a direct say on China policy.

But Tsai has reframed the campaign to put relations with China, which views Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military pressure to assert those claims, front and centre.

In a video message, Tsai said voting for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates was the same as voting for her.

“If you have not yet decided which city or county chief candidate to vote for, then I ask you to please cast this vote for me, for candidates I am recommending,” she said.

“Thank you for choosing Tsai Ing-wen the last time around, and I believe that I can take good care of Taiwan,” she added. “I am also very conscientious and responsible about Taiwan getting a firm footing internationally, and committed to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

The election is happening a month after the end of the 20th congress of China’s Communist Party, where President Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term in office – a point Tsai has repeatedly made on the campaign trail.

China carried out war games near Taiwan in August to express its anger at a visit to Taipei by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Taiwan’s main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favours close ties with China and crushed the DPP at the last local elections in 2018, says it too is committed to protecting the island’s democracy and freedom.

But the KMT has criticised the DPP for being overly confrontational with China.

Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who remains a senior KMT member, wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday that voting for the DPP could bring war and supporting the KMT would ensure peace.

“Choose peace and reject war!” he added.

Tsai has repeatedly offered to talk to Beijing on the basis of equality and respect, but has been rebuffed.

An extensive cache of Aztec ritual offerings found underneath downtown Mexico City, off the steps of what would have been the empire’s holiest shrine, provides new insight into pre-Hispanic religious rites and political propaganda.

Sealed in stone boxes five centuries ago at the foot of the temple, the contents of one box found in the exact center of what was a ceremonial circular stage has shattered records for the number of sea offerings from both the Pacific Ocean and off Mexico’s Gulf Coast, including more than 165 once-bright-red starfish and upwards of 180 complete corral branches.

Archeologists believe Aztec priests carefully layered these offerings in the box within the elevated platform for a ceremony likely attended by thousands of rapt spectators amid the thunder-clap of drums.

“Pure imperial propaganda,” said lead archeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan when describing the likely spectacle.

In the same box, archeologists previously found a sacrificed jaguar dressed like a warrior associated with the Aztec patron Huitzilopochtli, the war and sun god, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a more than two-year pause on excavations.

Previously unreported details include last month’s discovery of a sacrificed eagle held in the clutches of the jaguar, along with miniature wooden spears and a reed shield found next to the west-facing feline, which had copper bells tied around its ankles.

The half-excavated rectangular box, dating to the reign of the Aztec’s greatest emperor Ahuitzotl who ruled from 1486 to 1502, now shows a mysterious bulge in the middle under the jaguar’s skeleton, indicating something solid below.

“Whatever is underneath the jaguar is something enormously important,” said Lopez Lujan.

“We’re expecting a great discovery.”

Lopez Lujan, who heads excavations at what is today known as the Templo Mayor, thinks the box could contain an urn holding the cremated remains of Ahuitzotl, the emperor whose military campaigns expanded the empire to modern-day Guatemala while linking Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts. But he says at least another year of digging is needed to settle the question.

To date, no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found despite more than 40 years of digging around the Templo Mayor, where more than 200 offerings boxes have been found.

The temple towered as high as a 15-story building before it was razed in the years after the 1521 Spanish conquest of Mexico, the rubble serving to obscure many of the latest finds.

Besides the central offering containing the jaguar, two additional boxes were recently identified adjacent to it, with both set to be opened in the next few weeks.

More ferocious animals dressed as warriors, perhaps adorned with jade, turquoise and gold, are likely.

The aquatic offerings covering the jaguar may represent the watery underworld where the Aztecs believed the sun sank each night, or possibly part of a king’s journey after death.

Joyce Marcus, an archeologist specializing in ancient Mexico at the University of Michigan, says the recently unearthed offerings illuminate the Aztec “worldview, ritual economy, and the obvious links between imperial expansion, warfare, military prowess and the ruler’s role” in ceremonies that sanctified conquests and allowed tribute to flow into the capital.

“Each offering box adds another piece of the puzzle,” she said.

Lastly, the skulls of a dozen sacrificed children between one to six years old were also discovered in a nearby pit, dating back decades earlier but also linked to Huitzilopochtli.

The information obtained from the excavations goes far beyond incomplete colonial-era accounts that were also colored by the European invaders’ own justifications for conquest, according to Diana Moreiras, Aztec scholar at the University of British Colombia.

“We’re really getting to know the Aztecs on their own terms,” she said, “because we’re actually looking at what they did, not what the Spaniards thought about them.”

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