This is CNBC's live blog tracking Friday's developments on the war in Ukraine. See below for the latest updates.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the current risk of Russia deploying a tactical nuclear weapon is greater than it has been at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, an assessment that overnight raised fears of a nuclear war to new heights.
Putin has repeatedly warned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.
It comes as Ukrainian forces reclaim dozens of settlements in the south of Ukraine, adding to a growing list of military setbacks for the Kremlin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country's forces have recaptured 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) in the Kherson region alone since the start of October.
Britain's Defense Ministry says more than half of Ukraine's fielded tank fleet could consist of captured Russian vehicles.
The International Monetary Fund announced it has approved $1.3 billion in emergency financing support to Ukraine, the largest IMF funding commitment to the country since early March.
The financing falls under the agency's newly created "Food Shock Window" program, which permits countries facing acute food security issues to access an additional channel of rapid financing.
"The scale and intensity of Russia's war against Ukraine that started more than seven months ago have caused tremendous human suffering and economic pain," the IMF said in a statement.
The money approved Friday will help Ukraine deal with the fallout from Russia's invasion, including its disastrous impact on Ukraine's agricultural export market.
Prior to the Russian invasion and subsequent naval blockade, Ukraine was one of the world's top exporters of wheat, barley and corn.
— Rocio Fabbro
U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated the three newly announced Nobel Peace Prize laureates, saying their work documenting human rights abuses perpetrated by Russia and by the Kremlin-backed government of Belarus had "made our world stronger."
The Nobel Committee recognized three of Putin's most vocal critics with this year's prize: Ales Bialiatski, the imprisoned founder of Belarus's most important human rights organization; Memorial, a prominent Russian human rights group that was shut down by the Kremlin in 2021; and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties, which documents Russian war crimes in that country.
"Even in dark days of war, in the face of intimidation and oppression, the common human desire for rights and dignity cannot be extinguished," Biden said in a statement.
"The brave souls who do this work have pursued the truth and documented for the world the political repression of their fellow citizens—speaking out, standing up, and staying the course while being threatened by those who seek their silence," he said.
— Rocio Fabbro
The organization overseeing the export of agricultural products from Ukraine said it has approved three vessels to leave the besieged country.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal among Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said the vessels are carrying 56,600 metric tons of grain and other crops.
One ship is destined for Turkey and is carrying 20,000 metric tons of corn. Another ship will depart from Ukraine's Yuzhny-Pivdennyi port for Greece and is carrying 3,300 metric tons of wheat. One ship, chartered by the World Food Program, will sail to Somalia from Chornomorsk.
Read more about the Black Sea Grain Initiative here.
— Amanda Macias
The organization overseeing the export of agricultural products from Ukraine said that approximately 600 voyages to and from Ukrainian ports have occurred since August.
Under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal among Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, more than 6.4 million metric tons of grain and other crops have left Ukrainian ports.
The group wrote that the vessels have sailed to their destinations without a single safety or security incident.
Read more about the Black Sea Grain Initiative here.
— Amanda Macias
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin's rhetoric on the use of nuclear weapons is a "risk for the whole planet."
Moscow, has "made a step already" by occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest nuclear station. Earlier this week, Putin signed a decree declaring that Zaporizhzhia is Russian property.
"The world can stop urgently the actions of Russian occupiers," Zelenskyy said in an interview with the BBC. "The world can implement the sanction package in such cases and do everything to make them leave the nuclear power plant," he added.
— Amanda Macias
Within Russia, criticism of Moscow's military leadership has burst into the open, NBC News reports, posing a rare challenge to the Kremlin.
The search for a scapegoat appears to have settled on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"It's time to stop lying," the chair of the Russian parliament's defense committee, Andrey Kartapolov, said this week, accusing the Defense Ministry of covering up bad news from Ukraine.
Public rebukes of the country's leadership are extremely rare in Putin's Russia, where any dissent, especially against those aligned with the Kremlin, is prohibited.
--- NBC News
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a new decree recognizing "the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Japan's northern territories, which have been occupied by Russia since the end of World War II.
"Russia has no right to these territories. Everyone in the world knows this well. And we must finally act," he said in his latest Telegram video. "It is necessary to liberate from the Russian occupation all the lands that the occupiers are trying to keep for themselves."
By drawing attention to Russia's use of force to redraw international borders, Zelenskyy could help the international community see his own country's unique situation as part of a more universal crusade.
"With this war against Ukraine and against the international legal order, Russia has put itself in conditions in which it is now only a matter of time," he said, before "The real liberation of everything that was once captured and is now under the control of the Kremlin."
— Rocio Fabbro
French President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a "special fund" to purchase materiel from the European Union for Ukraine.
"This European fund will make it possible to continue to supply defensive weapons. This fund will allow Ukraine to buy directly from our manufacturers the equipment it needs most," Macron said, according to an NBC News translation.
Macron said the fund will be launched with an initial sum of €100 million.
Since Russia's late February invasion, France has provided 18 Caesar guns mounted on trucks, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, armored vehicles and fuel for Ukrainian forces.
— Amanda Macias
Estonia will send Ukraine an additional security assistance package that will include artillery ammunition, winter uniforms and personal protective equipment.
"Through mobilization, nuclear threats, sham referendums on Ukrainian territories and illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories, Russia is escalating the war. The Estonian response can be only one – continuing aid to Ukraine," Estonia's Minister of Defence Hanno Pevkur said in a statement.
Estonia, NATO's smallest member country, has given Ukraine more than $250 million in military assistance since Russia invaded in late February. The Baltic country has delivered Javelin anti-tank missile systems, howitzers, anti-tank mines, anti-tank grenade launchers, mortars and other equipment.
Estonia also joined Germany in donating a field hospital and medical supplies worth nearly $10.2 million to Ukraine.
— Amanda Macias
(This content was produced in Russia where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.)
Russia's largest lender Sberbank has started arranging payment holidays on loans for servicemen, in line with Russian legislation that seeks to ease the financial burden on those called up to fight in Ukraine.
"From Oct. 7, Sberbank retail clients can apply for a grace period on loan payments as part of a federal law that came into force today," Sberbank said in a statement.
The central bank recommended banks offer payment holidays shortly after President Vladimir Putin announced on Sept. 21 that 300,000 people would be mobilized to boost Russia's military effort.
The law allows for servicemen to receive grace periods on mortgages, consumer and credit card loans for the duration of their service and for 30 days afterwards, Sberbank said.
The payment holidays also apply to family members of those serving in Russia's armed forces.
— Reuters
Ukraine is accusing Russia of striking deep inside its territory with what it says are Iranian-made "kamikaze" drones as Moscow's troops are facing mounting setbacks on the battlefield.
Ukrainian officials said that Russia used drones "of the Shahed-136 type" to target the town of Bila Tserkva, just 50 miles south of Kyiv, injuring one person and destroying several buildings.
Ukraine has been sounding the alarm about Russia's increasing use of drones, which it says are being supplied by Tehran, to hit cities far behind the front lines for weeks.
The drone, which has earned the nickname "kamikaze" for destroying its target by physically crashing into it, can be equipped with a small warhead, making it an effective precision weapon.
Read more at NBC News.
— NBC NEWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to "stabilize" the situation in the four regions of Ukraine whose annexation he formalized on Wednesday, as Ukrainian advances exposed the Kremlin's struggle to match its political theater with the reality on the battlefield.
"We proceed from the fact that the situation will be stabilized, we will be able to calmly develop these territories," the Russian leader said during a video conference with Russian teachers.
In a last symbolic step, Putin signed the decrees to legislate the absorption of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Kyiv said its forces were making rapid advances in the south and the east, retaking land after Putin escalated his seven-month war with the illegal annexation, renewed nuclear threats and a military call-up plagued by issues.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vowed that Russian forces would retake annexed territory that had been lost in the Ukrainian advance and that land will be with Russia "forever" — as Putin promised last week.
Read more on NBC News.
— NBC News
The U.S. State Department said that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant belongs to Ukraine after Russia claimed control of the facility.
"Zaporizhzhia belongs to Ukraine. The power plant belongs to Ukraine and the electricity and the energy that it produces rightly belongs to Ukraine," Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the State Department, told reporters.
"President Putin has absolutely no authority to take over a power plant in another country, and a piece of paper issued by him or his government certainly doesn't change that fact, either," he added.
Earlier this week, Putin signed a decree saying that Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest facility, belongs to Russia.
— Amanda Macias
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Rafael Grossi asserted his organization's position that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, belongs to Ukraine, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the plant is now part of Russia.
"This is a matter that has to do with international law," Grossi told a press conference while in Kyiv for meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"We want the war to stop immediately, and of course the position of the IAEA is that this facility is a Ukrainian facility."
A team of four experts from the IAEA, which is the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, are set to arrive at the plant today.
Russian forces have been occupying the plant and the Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine's southeast since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in late February. Its staff have continued working, though under extreme stress and frequent intimidation.
Putin illegally annexed the Zaporizhzhia region along with Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson in eastern Ukraine after Russian authorities conducted sham referendums in the territories on joining the Russian Federation. The international community has broadly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the votes or annexations.
— Natasha Turak
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivered a message congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin on his 70th birthday and praising their two countries' growing ties.
Putin is "reliably defending the dignity of the state and its fundamental interests from the challenges and threats by the US and its vassal forces," Kim said, adding that "Such reality is unthinkable without your distinguished leadership and strong will."
Kim lauded Putin for "building powerful Russia" and described him as "enjoying high respects and support from the broad masses of people." He added that Russian and North Korean cooperation had grown "as never before" and expressed hope for yet more closeness in the future.
North Korea and Syria are the only countries to have recognized the Russian-backed breakaway People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
— Natasha Turak
Russian citizens drafted during the partial mobilization begin their military trainings after a military call-up for the Russia-Ukraine war in Rostov, Russia.
— Arkady Budnitsky | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Activists and organizations from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in documenting human rights abuses.
The winners are Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties, Russian organization Memorial and Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski. Bialiatski is currently in prison in Belarus.
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honor three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbor countries Belarus, Russia and Ukraine," Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said in an announcement from Oslo. He also called for the release of the imprisoned Bialiatski.
Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties was founded in 2007 and has worked to advocate for democracy and human rights in the country. Since the start of the Russian invasion, it has been documenting Russian war crimes against civilians.
The group "has taken a stand to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full fledged democracy, to develop Ukraine into a state governed by rule of law," Reiss-Andersen said.
Ales Bialiatski in 1996 founded Belarus's most prominent human rights organization, Viasna, which seeks to help political prisoners and their families. The Russian group Memorial, one of the oldest civil rights groups in the country founded in 1987, focuses on uncovering human rights crimes committed during the Soviet era and currently. It was forced to dissolve in Russia in December 2021, but continues work at a new location.
The Nobel Peace prize is worth $900,000 and will be presented in Oslo on December 10.
— Natasha Turak
The bodies of 534 civilians were found in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region after Ukrainian troops regained the territory from Russian forces, local National Police official Serhiy Bolvinov told press. That figure included the 447 bodies unearthed in the town of Izium in mid-September that Ukrainian authorities say were buried in mass graves left by Russian occupying forces.
Bolvinov also said that investigators found more than 20 facilities they believe were used as "torture rooms." Russia has not commented on these latest charges, but previously rejected the findings from Izium, claiming that it was the work of Ukrainian forces.
— Natasha Turak
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that the country's forces had recaptured significant areas of the southern Kherson region in recent days.
"Since October 1, more than half a thousand square kilometers of territory and dozens of settlements have been liberated from the Russian sham referendum and stabilized only in the Kherson region," Zelenskky said.
"There are also successes in the eastern direction," he added. "The day will surely come when we will report on successes in the Zaporizhzhia region as well — in those areas that are still under the control of the occupiers. The day will come when we will also talk about the liberation of Crimea."
— Sam Meredith
Ukraine's State Emergency Service said rescuers had found 11 bodies and rescued 21 people from the rubble of buildings destroyed in Thursday's missile attacks in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, according to Reuters.
The State Emergency Service said rescuers continue working at the scene.
— Sam Meredith