Ukraine's allies pledge 1 billion euros to help country weather winter challenges

Russia and Ukraine pounded each other's forces in heavy fighting in the eastern region of Donetsk on Tuesday, as Kyiv's allies meeting in Paris pledged just over 1 billion euros ($1.44 billion Cdn) to help Ukrainians survive the freezing winter.

Russian forces are battling to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, two of four territories the Kremlin claims to have annexed in votes rejected by most countries as illegal.

Moscow is also attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure with waves of missile and drone strikes, at times cutting off electricity for millions of civilians enduring Europe's deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

"They're shelling really hard, there's shelling, especially at night," Valentyna, 70, told Reuters as she fled the Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut, which Moscow seeks to capture but which is now largely in ruins because of incessant bombardment.

Valentyna, who declined to give her surname, spoke in a van driving to the relative safety of Ukrainian-controlled Pokrovsk.

"The house would shake, and every minute, second you expect it could crumble around you and that'd be it. I couldn't even sleep in the last week, so I decided to leave," she said.

In Paris, about 70 countries and institutions pledged aid to help maintain Ukraine's water, food, energy, health and transport, French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said Ukraine needed at least 800 million euros.

"It's a lot, but the price is less than the cost of blackout," Zelenskyy told the meeting via video link.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada's deputy prime minister, participated in the conference in Paris. She said in a tweet that Canada would "provide $115M in revenues from the tariffs we have levied on Russian and Belarusian goods to urgently rebuild Kyiv's power grid."

French President Emmanuel Macron, host of the event, said there was an agreement on removing heavy weapons from Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and that talks were underway on the way to do this.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed administrator of the portion controlled by Moscow, told Russian media that just over half of the Donetsk People's Republic had been "liberated." The self-styled republic is a breakaway Russian-backed entity that has been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the report.

Russian artillery attacks continue

Fierce fighting in the region in recent weeks has left unclear which parts of Donetsk are under Russian and Ukrainian control.

Three civilians were killed in the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on his Telegram channel, while in the southern Kherson region, regional Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych reported that three people were killed and 15 wounded in Russian artillery attacks in the past day.

Russian troops shelled the part of the Kherson region under Ukrainian control 57 times, he said.

Reuters could not independently verify the latest battlefield accounts.

Belarus, a close ally of Russia, launched a snap inspection of its troops' combat readiness after an order from President Alexander Lukashenko, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

It was the latest in a flurry of military actions, including a counterterrorism exercise last week, that have raised fears Russia may mount an attack on Ukraine from Belarusian territory in the coming months.

Russia rejects peace proposal

The G7 on Monday promised to "meet Ukraine's urgent requirements" after Zelenskyy appealed for modern tanks, artillery and long-range weapons. The Ukrainian president also urged G7 leaders at a virtual meeting to support his idea of convening a special Global Peace Summit to bring peace to his country.

Russia on Tuesday dismissed a peace proposal from Zelenskyy that would involve a pullout of Russian troops and demanded Kyiv accept new territorial "realities" that included Russia's addition of four Ukrainian regions as its "new subjects."

U.S. President Joe Biden told Zelenskyy on Sunday that Washington's priority was to boost Ukraine's air defences. The United States also shipped the first batch of power equipment to Ukraine under an aid package agreed upon last month.

Russia is "deliberately trying to freeze Ukrainians to death as we enter winter," a senior U.S. official said.

Moscow denies deliberately attacking civilians, but the war has displaced millions and killed thousands of non-combatants.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said "unlivable conditions" were likely to send another wave of Ukrainian refugees into Europe over the winter.

WATCH | Ukraine says about 13,000 children sent to Russia this year: 

Russia accused of taking thousands of Ukrainian children

2 years ago

Duration 7:01

The Ukrainian government says roughly 13,000 children, some with living family members, have been illegally taken to Russia since the war started. Ukraine says it’s a war crime, and Russia claims it’s saving forgotten orphans.

Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides Kyiv with electricity, said on his Facebook page that power shortages in Ukraine's capital were significant.

There are no peace talks underway to end the conflict, which Moscow describes as a "special military operation" against security threats posed by its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies call it an unprovoked, imperialist land grab.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Ukraine must take into account the "realities" that have developed in the Ukraine conflict — including Russia's capture of territories from Ukraine — for there to be peace between the two sides.