Kyiv has accused the Red Cross of "inaction" over Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia, saying a lack of visits to detained soldiers and civilians meant they were vulnerable to being tortured.
"Unfortunately, at each exchange, we see that the International Committee of the Red Cross's inaction has led to our prisoners of war and civilian hostages being tortured daily by hunger, by electrocution," Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said in a presidential statement.
He said the organisation was not fulfilling its mandate to visit military and civilian prisoners in conflict zones.
The prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka in eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a July bombing strike, has become a focal point.
The United Nations has warned of dire sanitary conditions for those remaining in the facility, with many PoWs reportedly suffering from infectious diseases.
Kyiv has repeatedly asked for an ICRC team to visit.
The presidency's chief of staff Andriy Yermak said: "Ukraine expects and demands from the ICRC the appropriate determination to gain access to Ukrainian prisoners in Olenivka".
"We do not see that the ICRC is working to protect our prisoners," Mr Yermak said today.
The ICRC told AFP that it shared Kyiv's frustration.
"We know that behind it there's the anguish of families at not knowing the fate of their loved ones," a spokesman said.
"We reiterate that we will never stop demanding access to all prisoners of war until we can see them several times where they are held," he added.
Last week, ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson said the Red Cross was eager to visit Olenivka, but had to wait until it was granted authorisation and security guarantees to make sure its teams were not in danger.
"We share the frustration regarding our lack of access to all prisoners of war held in the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine," Mr Watson said.
"We have been able to visit hundreds of PoWs on both sides, but there are thousands more who we have not been able to see, and we are concerned about their fate," he told reporters on Friday.
The ICRC has called for "immediate and unimpeded access".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said Russia has destroyed almost a third of Ukraine's power stations in the past week, as Moscow rained more missiles down on infrastructure in what Kyiv and the West call a campaign to intimidate civilians.
Missiles struck power stations in the capital, Kyiv, where they killed three people, and in Kharkiv in the east, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih in the south and Zhytomyr in the west, causing blackouts and knocking out water supplies.
One man was killed in his flat that was destroyed in Mykolaiv in the south.
Russia has openly acknowledged targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure with waves of missile and drone strikes since the start of last week, in what President Vladimir Putin said was legitimate retaliation for a blast on a bridge.
Ukraine and the West say intentionally attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime, and the attacks, aimed at leaving Ukrainians with no heat and power as winter arrives, are Mr Putin's latest tactic to escalate a war his forces are losing.
"The situation is critical now across the country ... The whole country needs to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages," Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, told Ukrainian television.
In Mykolaiv, journalists heard three explosions in the early hours of this morning. A missile completely destroyed one wing of a building in the downtown area, leaving a massive crater. A fire crew was seen pulling the body of a man from the rubble.
Another kind of Russian terrorist attacks: targeting 🇺🇦 energy & critical infrastructure. Since Oct 10, 30% of Ukraine's power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country. No space left for negotiations with Putin's regime. @United24media pic.twitter.com/LN4A2GYgCK
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 18, 2022
The Russians "probably get pleasure from this", said Oleksandr, the owner of a nearby flower shop.
Mr Zelensky said Russia was continuing to try to terrorise and kill Ukrainian civilians.
"Since 10 October, 30% of Ukraine's power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country," he wrote on Twitter.
Read more: Latest Ukraine stories
Mr Zelensky reiterated his refusal to negotiate with Mr Putin who he says heads a "terrorist state".
Mr Zelensky ruled out negotiations with Mr Putin after the Russian leader announced the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last month.
Meanwhile Ukraine has accused the Red Cross of "inaction" over Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia.
In a presidential statement, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said the organisation was not fulfilling its mandates for visits to detained soldiers and civilians prisoners.
"Unfortunately at each exchange, we see that the International Committee of the Red Cross's inaction has led to our prisoners of war and civilian hostages being tortured daily by hunger, by electrocution".
The prison in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka in eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a July bombing strike, has become a focal point.
The UN has warned of poor sanitary conditions in the facility, with many people reportedly suffering from infectious diseases.
The presidency's chief of staff in Ukraine Andriy Yermak said: "Ukraine expects and demands from the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) the appropriate determination to gain access to Ukrainian prisoners in Olenivka.
"We do not see that the ICRC is working to protect our prisoners".
Last week, ICRC spokesperson Ewan Watson said the Red Cross was eager to visit Olenivka, but had to wait until it was granted authorisation and security guarantees to make sure its teams were not in danger.
"We share the frustration regarding our lack of access to all prisoners of war held in the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine".
The ICRC has called for "immediate and unimpeded access".
'Kamikaze drones'
There was no immediate word on how many people had been killed in today's strikes overall. A day earlier, Russia sent swarms of drones to attack infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, though it has pummelled villages, towns and cities across Ukraine in what it initially called a "special military operation" to disarm its neighbour.
The Russian defence ministry repeated earlier statements that it was carrying out attacks using high precision weapons on what it described as military targets and energy infrastructure across Ukraine.
Ukraine accuses Russia of using Iran-made Shahed-136 'kamikaze drones', which fly to their target and detonate. Iran denies supplying them and today the Kremlin also denied using them.
However, two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats told Reuters that Tehran had promised to provide Russia with more drones as well as surface-to-surface missiles, a move sure to infuriate the United States and its allies.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he would ask Mr Zelensky to formally cut diplomatic ties with Iran in protest over the drones. "The actions of Iran are vile and deceitful," he said.
NATO to send Ukraine anti-drone systems
NATO will deliver air defence systems to Ukraine in coming days to help the country defend itself against the drones that Russia is using to target critical infrastructure, the alliance's secretary-general said today.
Ukraine said attacks by swarms of drones had destroyed almost a third of its power stations over the past week after Russia stepped up its attacks on infrastructure far from the front line after suffering a string of military setbacks at the hands of Ukrainian troops.
Addressing a security conference in Berlin, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the answer to the attacks was for the allies to step up their deliveries of air defence systems.
"The most important thing we can do is deliver on what allies have promised, to step up and deliver even more air defence systems," he said.
"NATO will in the coming days deliver counter-drone systems to counter the specific threat of drones, including those from Iran.
"No nation should support the illegal war of Russia against Ukraine," Mr Stoltenberg said.
Situation 'tense' for Russian troops
Russia earlier this month named General Sergei Surovikin as overall commander of Moscow's forces in Ukraine. Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" in Russian media, served in Syria and Chechnya where Russian forces pounded cities to rubble in a brutal but effective scorched earth policy against its foes.
His appointment was quickly followed on 10 October by the biggest wave of missile strikes against Ukraine since the start of the war.
Mr Putin cast those strikes as revenge for an explosion that damaged Russia's bridge to Crimea - the peninsula Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for that attack but celebrated the destruction of what it considers a military target used to transport arms and troops.
British Armed Forces minister James Heappey told BBC Radio that Surovikin was pursuing a cruel and pointless strategy that he said would fail in its aim of trying to "break the will of the Ukrainian people".
The Russian military said today that the situation for its troops on the ground in Ukraine was "tense" in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, after several major setbacks in the east and south.
"The situation in the area of the special military operation can be described as tense. The enemy is not abandoning its attempts to attack Russian troop positions," General Surovikin told state television Rossiya 24.
The Kremlin said today that four Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed in recent weeks were under the protection of its nuclear arsenal. The statement comes as both NATO and Russia prepare to hold annual military exercises to test the readiness of their nuclear weapons forces.
Mr Putin has previously said he is prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend Russia's "territorial integrity".
Mr Putin has also called up hundreds of thousands of reservists, after his forces faced humiliating battlefield losses.
The governors of Russia's Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine, today reported cross-border shelling.
In Belgorod, a train station was shelled and train links suspended, and two villages were shelled in Kursk, leading to electricity outages, they said.
