RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin is showing no regrets for the war against neighbour Ukraine, insisting it is going to plan and playing down any nuclear standoff with the West.

Putin, in remarks at a conference in Moscow on Thursday, had a familiar litany of grievances against "our Western opponents" and said the West's dominance over world affairs was coming to an end.

Putin accused the West of inciting the war in Ukraine and of playing a "dangerous, bloody and dirty" game that was sowing chaos across the world. Ultimately, Putin said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.

"We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two," the 70-year-old former KGB spy said at an annual foreign policy conference.

The conflict, which began eight months ago with an invasion by Russian forces of neighbouring Ukraine, has killed thousands, displaced millions, shaken the global economy and reopened Cold War-era divisions.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure were forcing electricity cuts in the capital Kyiv and other places, officials said.

The missile and drone attacks would not break Ukrainian spirits, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Thursday night video address as he stood outside in the dark next to the wreckage of a downed drone.

"Shelling will not break us - to hear the enemy's anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy's rockets in our sky. We are not afraid of the dark," he said.

Early on Friday, the Ukrainian military provided a summary of battlefield action in the southern province of Kherson, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been preparing for weeks for what could be one of the most consequential battles of the war.

DIPLOMACY

* U.S. President Joe Biden expressed skepticism about Putin's comment that he had no intention of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. "If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it?," Biden said in an interview with NewsNation.

CONFLICT

* Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said 23 of his soldiers were killed and another 58 wounded in a Ukrainian artillery attack this week. The comments were unusual given that pro-Moscow forces have rarely admitted to major battlefield losses.

* Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure were forcing electricity cuts in the capital Kyiv and other places, officials said.* "Shelling will not break us - to hear the enemy's anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy's rockets in our sky," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Thursday night video address as he stood outside in the dark next to the wreckage of a downed drone.

* In Kherson, Ukrainian forces killed 44 Russian servicemen in the past 24 hours, according to Facebook post by the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the south. Ukrainian artillery and missile forces destroyed an ammunition depot and a hangar with equipment, the statement said.

* The Russian defence ministry, which said its forces had repelled attempted Ukrainian advances in the east, said it had destroyed a Ukrainian military factory producing solid rocket fuel, explosives and gunpowder near the town of Pavlograd in the Dnipropetrovsk Region. It said it had also shot down a Ukrainian air force Mi-8 helicopter.

* Reuters could not independently verify either side's battlefield accounts. * A senior Russian government official raised the possibility that Moscow could shoot down commercial Western satellites being used to help Ukraine's war effort, as Russia pressed ahead with its bombing campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.


ECONOMY

* Russia will retaliate if its state and citizens' assets are confiscated by the European Union, the Foreign Ministry said.


QUOTES

"The historical period of the West's undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end," Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of Russian specialists.



READ MORE: Latest development on Ukraine-Russia crisis