October 7, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The district of Nikopol “shuddered all night” under shelling from Russian forces, Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said in a post on Telegram.

“Almost 40 Russian shells hit Nikopol,” the post read. “Several high-rise buildings, more than 10 private houses, a transport infrastructure enterprise, gas pipelines and electricity networks were damaged in the city.”

No injuries were reported in the shelling, Reznichenko said.

The Nikopol district is in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It sits across the river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and has frequently come under fire from Russian forces on the opposite bank of the river Dnipro, plant is situated. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the situation in Ukraine, the presidential office in Ankara said Friday.

“The latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war were discussed,” during a phone call between both leaders, according to a readout from Erdoğan’s office.

Turkey’s President “reiterated that readiness to do their part for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine issue for the benefit of all," the readout added.

Some background: Erdogan has played a delicate balancing act since the start of Russia's invasion. He has refused to sign up to Western sanctions against Russia and sought to play something of a peacemaker role between Kyiv and Moscow.

The Turkish leader also helped broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine to allow the resumption of grain shipments from Ukraine's Black Sea ports.

Erdoğan called this agreement "one of the greatest accomplishments of the United Nations in the recent decades."

At the UN General Assembly last month, Erdogan called for an end to the "Russian-Ukrainian crisis," saying the seven-month war had sent a "wave of shock" around the globe.

CNN's Jonny Hallam contributed reporting.

The Russian Embassy in Washington has said its diplomats will hold a "telephone conversation" with two Russian men who fled to Alaska to avoid being drafted into the military, state media TASS reported.

"The embassy is aware of the situation with the detained Russian citizens in the state of Alaska. Today we received a notification about this from the Anchorage branch of the US Customs and Border Guard Service," Nadezhda Shumova, the head of the consular department of the Russian embassy in Washington, said, according to TASS.

The two Russians who crossed the Bering Strait, landing in Gambell, Alaska earlier this week said they were seeking asylum to avoid Russia’s draft in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine. 

“The Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service,” said Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Rescue operations are underway in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia after Russian missile strikes killed 11 people on Thursday, according to Ukrainian authorities.

“Emergency and rescue operations are ongoing at the site of destroyed residential buildings as a result of missile strikes on October 6,” the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in a Telegram post.

The bodies of the 11 people who died in the strikes were retrieved from two residential buildings, the statement added. Twenty-one people were rescued from both apartment blocks, 13 of whom were hospitalized.

The post updated the death toll from the attack. Officials had previously reported that seven people had been killed.

Some background: Moscow launched a series of fatal missile attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia early Thursday, just hours after the Kremlin signed a decree to formally seize a massive nuclear power plant nearby.

The city of Zaporizhzhia is not far from the front lines of the conflict. Though the city is under Ukrainian control, about 75% of the greater Zaporizhzhia region is occupied by Russian forces.

That region is one of four Ukrainian territories Russia is claiming to annex in violation of international law.

CNN's Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting.

As Ukraine continues to press its offensives in the east and south and criticism of Putin's war effort piles up in Russia, here are the latest developments:

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church praised President Vladimir Putin on the occasion of his 70th birthday Friday, claiming he was ordained by God to rule Russia. 

“The Lord placed you at the helm of power so that you could perform a service of special importance and great responsibility for the fate of the country and the people entrusted to your care," Patriarch Kirill said in a letter to the Russian President.

Kirill called priests to pray for Putin’s health for two days, Friday and Saturday.

Some context: Kirill has been a prominent public supporter Putin's war in Ukraine, despite the fact that it’s killing many of the church’s civilian parishioners.

His firm endorsement of the Kremlin and the war has also led to isolation from the religious community, with Pope Francis earlier warning him not to become "Putin's altar boy."

The UK government sanctioned Kirill for his support of the war in June.

In September, Kirill was also notably absent from the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, a gathering of international religious leaders.

Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), another of Friday's Nobel Peace Prize winners, was established in 2007 to promote human rights values in Ukraine and strengthen democracy in the country.

The committee commended its work on strengthening Ukrainian civil society and the pressure that it's put on authorities to "make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy."

"The center is playing a pioneering role in holding guilty parties accountable for their crimes," it said.

CCL said they were proud to have won the accolade on Friday, Reuters reported.

"Morning with good news. We are proud," they said.

Live updates: Read the latest on the Nobel Peace Prize here.

Russian human rights organization Memorial, one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union to expose the abuses and atrocities of the Stalinist era.

The group "wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten," according to the Nobel committee.

The Nobel committee highlighted the work of the group during the Chechen wars, during which they gathered and verified information on abuses and war crimes perpetrated on the population by Russian and pro-Russian forces.

The head of Memorial’s branch in Chechnya, Natalia Estemirova, was killed in 2009 as a result of this work, according to the Nobel committee.

Last December, Russia's Supreme Court ordered the closure of Memorial International, ruling that the group had fallen afoul of Russia’s “foreign agent” law. But Memorial said the real reason for the shutdown was that authorities did not approve of its work.

The ruling was a huge blow to Russia’s hollowed-out civil society organizations, which have increasingly fallen victim to President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime.

Live updates: Read the latest on the Nobel Peace Prize here.

Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, is the founder of Viasna (Spring), a human rights organization that has documented and protested the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners.

As one of the initiators of the democracy movement that emerged in the mid-1980s in Belarus, he has "devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country," the Nobel committee said Friday.

Government authorities have long sought to silence him. He has been detained without trial since 2020.

Despite this "tremendous personal hardship, Bialiatski has not yielded an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus," the committee said.

Live updates: Read the latest on the Nobel Peace Prize here.