Closing summary
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy ,has said that the deaths of at least 19 soldiers in a Russian missile strike on a military ceremony was a “tragedy that could’ve been avoided”. Other reports suggest the death toll could be much higher, while defence chiefs are under pressure over the staging of the event in a frontline village vulnerable to attack.
Vladimir Putin has decided to run in the March presidential election, a move that will keep him in power until least 2030, as he is said to feel he must steer Russia through its most perilous period in decades, sources told Reuters.
Radio Free Europe has said that it believes Russia may have taken one of its journalists “hostage” for a potential prisoner swap with the US and is appealing to Moscow not to treat her cruelly, the broadcaster’s acting president said.
Several dozen owners of transport companies have today blocked three major Polish border crossings with Ukraine in protest at what they say is unfair competition from the neighbouring country’s businesses.
Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen by almost a third compared with last year, agriculture ministry data shows. The figures show that Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen to 9.8m tonnes so far in the July 2023-June 2024 season. The ministry said that by this point last year, Ukraine had exported 14.3m tonnes.
Odesa’s National Art Museum said seven exhibitions, most featuring the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists, were damaged by a Russian strike late last night that left a large crater outside the museum, which is celebrating its 124th anniversary. Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack and urged the UN’s Paris-based heritage agency, Unesco, to condemn it.
Solar panels removed from high-rise blocks of flats in London after the Grenfell tower fire have been sent to Ukraine, in an initiative designed to help the country’s reconstruction.
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Oil prices edged higher today after top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia reaffirmed their commitment to extra voluntary oil supply cuts until the end of the year.
Brent crude futures rose $1.16, or 1.4%, to $86.05 a barrel by 16:16 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was up $1.26, or 1.6%, at $81.74.
Saudi Arabia confirmed yesterday it would continue with its additional voluntary cut of 1m barrels per day (bpd) in December to keep output around 9m bpd, a ministry of energy source said. Russia also announced it would continue its additional voluntary cut of 300,000 bpd from its crude oil and petroleum product exports until the end of December.
“Russia and Saudi have an iron clad agreement to stay with the same supply constraints into the end of the year, and yet demand for fuel continues to be stronger than most analysts have anticipated, keeping a good bid underneath the crude prices,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.
The cuts could be extended into the first quarter of 2024 because of “seasonally weaker oil demand at the start of every year, ongoing economic growth concerns and the aim of producers and OPEC+ to support the oil market’s stability and balance,” said UBS strategist Giovanni Staunovo.
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Oil and gas budget revenues in Russia have increased by more than a quarter year-on-year, according to official data. The Wall Street Journal reported that it shows how “a western price cap on Russian oil meant to curb Moscow’s war spending is increasingly losing its punch”.
In December, the G7, the EU and Australia introduced a price cap for Russian oil of $60 a barrel. But Moscow has learned how to circumvent the measures designed to uphold the price ceiling – through the use of a fleet of old tankers to transport the oil.
“As a result, according to some estimates, the real cost of Russian Urals oil is now $74 per barrel,” the WSJ reports. “That is still at a discount to Brent, the global benchmark, which trades for roughly $88, though the gap between the two has narrowed considerably in recent months.”
Russia’s main clients – China, India and Turkey – do not abide by the western price caps, while insurers from non-G7 companies are guaranteeing an increasing proportion of the exports.
“The rise in Russian oil prices suggests the cap is increasingly unenforceable, the World Bank said in a recent report,” the WSJ reported.
“I hope that now everyone is convinced that the tool [the G7] came up with is simply ineffective and end consumers suffer from it,” deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said in October, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
But the US treasury last month issued the first fines on tankers for circumventing the sanctions, and other measures are being considered.
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Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, under European sanctions over his country’s invasion of Ukraine, has asked to be permitted to attend an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Skopje, according to a North Macedonian minister.
North Macedonia holds the rotating chairmanship of the pan-European security body that will have its annual ministerial conference in Skopje from 30 November to 1 December.
North Macedonia’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, said today he had received a letter from Lavrov who “demanded enabling his presence in Skopje”. Osmani said there were “a few challenges concerning that demand”. He added that since the airspace of North Macedonia, which is not a member of the EU but joined its sanctions against Moscow, and its neighbours is closed for Russian aircraft, “some logistical efforts have to be done”.
The minister said that, according to the OSCE rules, its 57 member states must all be present at the meeting. “However, that will depend on the decisions that will be taken in the next days. I hope we will succeed all of us to be present in Skopje.”
At last year’s OSCE ministerial meeting hosted by Poland, Warsaw refused to allow Lavrov into the country. Moscow described the refusal as “unprecedented and provocative”. Its delegation was instead led by Russia‘s permanent representative to the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich.
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The BBC has cited a Ukrainian news outlet which says it has spoken to comrades of soldiers in the deadly Russian attack on a Ukrainian military ceremony.
Hromadske reports that the troops’ commander was late to the event and arrived after the strike had hit. One source puts the death toll much higher than the figure of 19 released by Ukrainian officials. Video footage appears to show a number of bodies.
The personnel who were due to be awarded medals were reportedly sheltered by a wall where they were gathered, and suffered proportionally less casualties than the other group of attendees.
Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces said the ceremony was hit by an “Iskander-M” missile. There is significant pressure on Ukrainian top brass over the incident.
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The Financial Times reports that 127 UK companies have admitted breaching UK sanctions imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Citing a a freedom of information request response from the UK Treasury with data until 17 May, it reported that the breadth of the sanctions had posed a test to businesses – due to the level of integration between the British and Russian economies. Some of the breaches may have been accidental.
This was starkly demonstrated with the crisis at Chelsea FC when its then owner, oligarch Roman Abramovich, was sanctioned. About $300bn in assets belonging to Russia’s central bank have been frozen over the last year and a half.
Stacy Keen, financial crime partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, told the FT:
The Russian sanction packages have been felt more keenly outside of Russia in a heightened way that others just haven’t in the past. Russian individuals and entities had a footprint outside of Russia that perhaps if you look at the Iranian regime or the Syrian regime — there just wasn’t those interlinks between the economies.
The UK has put 1,600 individuals and companies related to Russia under sanctions since February 2022. UK entities are forbidden from doing business with two dozen banks and more than 100 oligarchs, the FT reported.
Penalties for doing so range from warning letters to criminal prosecution and unlimited financial penalties.
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The European Commission has proposed extending easier state aid rules to March next year to allow EU countries to compensate companies for high energy prices resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
The EU executive relaxed its state aid rules in March last year after thousands of companies were hit by the war in Ukraine, saying the easier regime would end in December this year.
The commission said:
Extending the easier rules by another three months would enable EU countries to continue to grant limited amounts of aid and to compensate for high energy prices until 31 March 2024. This will allow member states, where needed, to extend their support schemes and ensure that companies still affected by the crisis will not be cut off from necessary support in the upcoming winter heating period.
The extended rules would not apply to liquidity support such as state guarantees and subsidised loans, and measures aimed at supporting electricity demand reduction. EU countries can provide feedback to the proposal after which the commission aims to adopt the changes in the coming weeks.
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Some of the latest photos coming out of Ukraine.
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Ukraine expects a “positive” EU appraisal of its progress on the path towards eventual EU membership in a report due this week, a senior government minister said today, asserting that Kyiv had carried out all the reforms required of it.
Deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna was speaking in an interview with Reuters before the executive EU Commission publishes the report on Wednesday. Kyiv hopes it will recommend that EU leaders decide in December to open formal accession talks with Ukraine.
“I would say that the assessment would definitely be positive because we have been in permanent contact with the European Commission, discussing the steps and negotiating the steps we managed to implement,” Stefanishyna said.
The commission said in June that Ukraine had met two out of seven conditions the EU had set to start the membership talks. “I think for the purposes of the assessment when it comes to the seven steps, everything which has been agreed has been implemented and done,” Stefanishyna said.
Membership talks take years as candidates must meet extensive legal and economic criteria before joining. The EU, which now has 27 member states, is also unwilling to take in a country that is at war.
However, the deputy prime minister said today that Ukraine will have completed the reforms required to get membership of the EU within two years.
Such is the urgency attached to enlargement that Germany last week suggested that integration of Ukraine and others into the EU could be accelerated with membership benefits granted long before accession with some single market access and observer status at leadership summits.
Several dozen owners of transport companies have today blocked three major Polish border crossings with Ukraine in protest at what they say is unfair competition from the neighbouring country’s businesses.
Trucks lined up at the border checkpoint in Dorohusk, with almost all cargo traffic blocked by protesters who blamed the liberalisation of EU rules for the slump in their revenues. “We want the rules of fair competition to be restored,” Rafal Mekler, a co-organiser of the protest, told AFP in Dorohusk.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU waived a system of permits for Ukrainian transport companies to enter the bloc. According to Polish companies, the move triggered an influx of Ukrainian competitors into the sector, causing profits to plunge.
“Their costs of servicing a truck, hiring a driver or merely of opening a business or paying social insurance are much lower,” Marek Oklinski, a transport company owner, told AFP in Dorohusk. “They drive the prices down and take the cargo that we used to carry.”
The protesters staged similar blockages at crossings in Hrebenne and Korczowa, pledging to let passenger traffic as well as transport with humanitarian or military aid pass through.
Poland’s infrastructure ministry said Warsaw could not meet the demands of the protesting companies by reinstating the system of permits to the Ukrainian carriers, citing EU rules.
“The agreement was reached by the EU... therefore, in practical terms, Poland cannot reintroduce the permits system with Ukraine until the aforementioned deal expires,” the ministry told AFP, calling on the protesters to end the blockages.
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Radio Free Europe has said that it believes Russia may have taken one of its journalists “hostage” for a potential prisoner swap with the US and is appealing to Moscow not to treat her cruelly, the broadcaster’s acting president has said.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), has been in custody since 18 October. She was briefly detained in June while trying to fly out of Russia after visiting her mother.
Kurmasheva, 47, is the second US journalist to be held in Russia since the start of the war in February 2022. A court first found her guilty of failing to declare that she had a US passport, mandatory under Russian law, and fined her. She was then charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent”, an offence that carries up to five years in jail and one she has pleaded not guilty to.
RFE’s acting president Jeffrey Gedmin told Reuters:
My view is when she entered the country last May they saw her as a potential hostage and they wanted to watch and wait and listen and learn. And then suddenly, they escalated, they arrested, and they published a very vivid video of her in handcuffs being carted off.
They published the photo page of her passport, and they published the address of her mother. It was a quick acceleration, very brazen, very aggressive.
RFE/RL is funded by the US Congress and is designated a foreign agent by Russia on the grounds that it gets foreign funding for activity Moscow deems political.
“In Russia there is absolutely no campaign to persecute US citizens,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said when asked about Kurmasheva’s case. “There are US citizens who break the law and legal action is taken against them. There is no other campaign and we consider it inappropriate to speak of one.”
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Putin to remain president until at least 2030 – Reuters sources
Vladimir Putin has decided to run in the March presidential election, a move that will keep him in power until least 2030, as he is said to feel he must steer Russia through its most perilous period in decades, six sources told Reuters.
After defusing an armed mutiny by the leader of the Wagner mercenary group in June, the 71-year-old former KGB agent has moved to shore up support among his core base in the security forces, the armed forces and with regional voters outside Moscow, while Wagner has been brought firmly to heel.
Russian defence, weapons and overall budget spending has soared while Putin has made numerous public appearances, including in the regions, over recent months.
“The decision has been made – he will run,” said one of the sources who has knowledge of the planning. Another source, also acquainted with the Kremlin’s thinking, confirmed that a decision has been made and that Putin’s advisers were preparing for his participation.
Three other sources said the decision to run in the March 2024 presidential election had been taken. The sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of Kremlin politics.
One of them said a choreographed hint was due to come within a few weeks, confirming a Kommersant newspaper report last month. “Russia is facing the combined might of the west so major change would not be expedient,” one of the sources said.
While many diplomats, spies and officials have said they expect Putin to stay in power for life, there has until now been now been no specific confirmation of Putin’s plans to stand for re-election.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin – who has already served as president for longer than any other Russian ruler since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure – had not yet commented on the issue, adding: “The campaign has not been officially announced yet.”
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Ukrainian military chiefs are under growing pressure after the deadly Russian attack on a Ukrainian military event to mark artillery day, which celebrates those working in artillery and missile units.
According to the BBC, a well known Ukrainian volunteer, Serhiy Sternenko, has suggested that the commander who organised the ceremony ought to be jailed for life. “There have already been many similar incidents. Unfortunately. Without systemic changes, there will be more such incidents,” he said.
The broadcaster also reports on a video where a Ukrainian soldier, understood to be from a nearby unit, criticises those who organised the event. “As a result of this [ceremony], many Ukrainian defenders and civilians died,” he said.
Frontline villages are hit “methodically and regularly” and “anyone who is here will tell you this … Everyone on the frontlines knows that a crowd of more than two people always provokes an ‘arrival’ [air strike].” Another wrote: “How was it possible to gather ALL our warriors in one place?”
One pro-Kremlin blogger said on social media that “earlier, Ukrainians had ‘punished’ Russians in a similar way several times. And we quickly forgot about lining up outside, stopped huddling and began to constantly look at the sky”.
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Former Wagner fighters training in Chechnya, regional leader says
A large group of Russia’s former Wagner mercenaries has started training with special forces from the southern Russian region of Chechnya, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Monday, Reuters reports.
The Wagner group played a prominent role in some of the fiercest fighting of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but its future was thrown into question when its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August, two months after leading a brief mutiny against the Russian defence establishment.
Kadyrov said in a message on Telegram that a big group of ex-Wagner fighters was undergoing intensive training with his own Akhmat special forces.
“I am glad that today the ranks of the famous [Akhmat] unit have been joined by fighters who have excellent combat experience and have proven themselves as brave and efficient warriors,” he said.
“I am confident that in the upcoming battles they will fully live up to their reputation.”
He published a video, accompanied by stirring music, showing soldiers in combat training, including some wearing Wagner insignia on their uniforms and masks over their faces. Kadyrov said the drills included shooting, field medicine and training for snipers, machine gunners, sappers and artillerymen.
It was not clear how many Wagner men were taking part or whether any of them would stay on with the Chechen forces after the training was over.
After Prigozhin’s death, the Kremlin rejected as an “absolute lie” suggestions that he had been killed on Vladimir Putin’s orders to punish him for the June mutiny. Russia has yet to publish the results of an investigation into the fatal plane crash.
Putin subsequently moved to bring Wagner’s fighters under the control of the state, ordering them to sign an oath of allegiance, and the Kremlin has repeatedly said the group does not exist as a legal entity.
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Russian attack on Ukrainian military ceremony 'tragedy that could've been avoided', says Zelenskiy
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that the deaths of 19 soldiers in a Russian missile strike on a military ceremony was a “tragedy that could’ve been avoided”.
Today a criminal investigation was launched by the defence minister into the military officers who organised the awards ceremony in a frontline village. The soldiers were from the 128th Separate Mountain-Assault Brigade of Zakarpattia.
The Ukrainian admission of the attack and the numbers of those killed makes it one of the deadliest single military attacks reported publicly. Dozens more were reportedly injured.
“Criminal proceedings have been initiated,” Zelenskiy said on social media last night. “Every soldier in the combat zone – in the enemy’s line of fire and aerial reconnaissance – knows how to behave in the open, how to ensure safety.”
The State Bureau of Investigation said it intended to hold military officials accountable for the Rocket Forces and Artillery Day event held on Friday near the frontline in Zaporizhzhia. Russian reconnaissance drones would have easily been able to spot the crowded gathering, reports AP. But “collaborators have been accused of tipping the Russians off about events like this in the past”, the BBC’s Ukraine correspondent said (note: the video in the post contains graphic imagery).
The carnage sparked a wave of criticism among Ukrainians on social media for planning the event so close to the battlefield. Some figures have claimed (this link contains footage released by a Russian channel, purportedly of the drone strike) the death toll is higher.
A three-day mourning period has reportedly been announced in the region, with flags flown at half-mast.
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A Russian telecoms cable in the Baltic Sea suffered an outage last month and is now undergoing repairs by Russia, the Finnish economy ministry said today, adding to a spate of damage to the region’s subsea infrastructure.
The 1,000 kilometre (620 miles) Baltika cable belonging to state-owned Rostelecom runs from the region of Saint Petersburg to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in the southern Baltic Sea.
A gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia and two other telecoms cables, connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden, were also damaged last month. The Finnish ministry declined to comment on whether the Baltika incident was linked to the earlier outages.
Finnish police believe damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline was caused by a Chinese container ship dragging its anchor along the seabed but have not concluded whether this was an accident or a deliberate act.
Rostelecom reported the outage of its telecoms cable to Finnish authorities on 12 October, the economy ministry said, four days after the damage to the gas pipeline and the two other cables was discovered.
The Finnish border guard said today it was monitoring a Russian salvage ship, the Spasatel Karev, that was undertaking repairs to the Baltika cable in Finland’s economic zone.
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Ukraine’s landscape of memory is in a state of flux, writes the Guardian’s chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins.
On one hand, history is being rapidly reassessed. While many public sculptures in the capital and other cities are sandbagged and protected from missiles, Pushkinopad, or Pushkin-fall, is the name given to the steady removal of statues of the Russian poet from Ukrainian streets and squares. Pushkin Park in Kyiv, for instance, is now Ivan Bahrianyi Park, named after the 20th-century Ukrainian novelist and dissident.
On the other hand, the recent past pushes forward with all its grief, a visceral need for mourning, and insistent demand for remembrance. When people are killed and cities mutilated, the understandable tendency in Ukraine is to patch up urban environments as swiftly as possible, though it can feel strange when the external signs of violence are tidied away so resolutely that no trace remains.
Slovakia’s new prime minister, Robert Fico, who has pledged to halt the country’s military aid for neighbouring Ukraine, said today he had no intention of preventing private defence companies’ exports.
Nato member Slovakia is home to makers of artillery ammunition as well as heavy military vehicles such as howitzers, some of which have been shipped to Ukraine.
Fico ran a campaign ahead of his victory in September’s election criticising western support for Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and US foreign policies. He reiterated today that the country would halt any shipments from army storage to help Ukraine fight Russian aggression, but made clear private business would not be affected.
“We have communicated very clearly and I want to communicate – we are talking about weapons, about ammunition from Slovak army storage, about state material,” Fico said. “When some company wants to make weapons and send them somewhere, nobody is going to obstruct that.”
Fico said the government would make an inventory of Slovak equipment and ammunition stocks and prioritise replenishing those. He said strengthening the Nato country’s air defence was another a priority.
The country’s previous centre-right government was a staunch backer of Ukraine and supplied military equipment including fighting vehicles as well as an S-300 air defence system and MiG-29 jets.
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Some photos of the northern lights dazzling Ukraine last night.
IN PICTURES: Breathtaking Northern Lights Illuminate Ukraine's Skies
— KyivPost (@KyivPost) November 6, 2023
An amazing sight has appeared in the sky over #Ukraine: the #NorthernLights, also known as the Aurora Borealis.https://t.co/B6MSZYFwMC
JUST IN - Red northern lights appear over parts of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/YZcozikUPv
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 5, 2023
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The overnight Russian strikes also targeted the southern region of Kherson. Governor Oleksandr Prokudin posted footage of a five-storey building with most of its windows shattered and its walls partially collapsed.
“It is a miracle that no one was seriously injured,” Prokudin said, adding that a 54-year-old woman had been wounded.
Ukraine recaptured large parts of Kherson from Russian forces last year, including the region’s main city, but Moscow still controls swathes of the Black Sea territory.
Russian military attacked downtown Kherson with an anti-radar missile last night, destroying a residential building.
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) November 6, 2023
Report from the site and eyewitness stories.
🎥 @ZarinaZabrisky https://t.co/TbZRN5n5r1
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Solar panels removed from high-rise blocks of flats in London after the Grenfell tower fire have been sent to Ukraine, in an initiative designed to help the country’s reconstruction.
About 730 panels have been transported to a hospital in the city of Kremenchuk and the town of Ivanivka in the northern Chernihiv region. The roadside settlement was badly damaged in March 2022, when Russian troops occupied the area, killing civilians.
A change in building regulations after Grenfell meant the panels had to be removed. ReSolar – a startup firm based at the Eden project in Cornwall – transported them to Ukraine. Other organisations involved included UK Friends of Ukraine, Energize Ukraine and the Ultra Low-Carbon Solar Alliance.
Wesley Harcourt, a cabinet member at Hammersmith and Fulham council who is responsible for climate change and ecology, said the scheme avoided “unnecessary waste”. “We are enabling others to make the switch to renewable energy sources,” he said.
The reused panels will be installed on the roof of Ivanivka’s town hall. The neo-classical building – pictured – was hit by shelling. The occupation of the area was “terrible”, Imogen Payter, the director of UK Friends of Ukraine said. “There were countless stories of horror.”
Matt Burnell, ReSolar’s founder, said the panels would generate renewable electricity that would help communities in Ukraine and the UK. “We want to take the lead on how solar reuse should be done,” he said. Eventually the panels would be recycled in central Europe, with carbon emissions offset, he added.
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Kyiv ‘deeply outraged’ over attack on Odesa’s National Art Museum
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, said Kyiv was “deeply outraged” by the attack on Odesa’s National Art Museum and urged the UN’s Paris-based heritage agency, Unesco, to condemn the strike.
The art museum is part of a Unesco World Heritage site. The governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said most of the collection had already been removed during the war. “Canvases and paintings from the current exhibition were not damaged,” he said on social media.
A woman who lived in a nearby building said she and her family were away during the strike but their home had been damaged. “God led us away. We’ll see what happens in the flat next. Out of five windows, I have none left,” the woman, who gave her name only as Svitlana, told AFP.
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Odesa’s National Art Museum said seven exhibitions, most featuring the work of contemporary Ukrainian artists, were damaged by a Russian strike late last night that left a large crater outside the museum, which is celebrating its 124th anniversary.
Photos and video showed shattered windows, doors, and some paintings laying on the floor amid debris strewn across the galleries. The drone attacks also left at least five people in the city injured and set trucks with grain on fire, Ukrainian officials in the Black Sea port said.
“On November 6, the Odesa National Art Museum turns 124 years old,” Oleh Kiper, the governor of the Odesa region, of which Odesa city is the administrative centre, said on the Telegram messaging app. “On the eve of November 6, the Russians ‘congratulated’ our architectural monument with a missile that hit nearby.”
The Odesa National Art Museum, in one of the oldest palaces of Odesa, housed more than 10,000 pieces of art before the war, including paintings by some of the best-known Russian and Ukrainian artists of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Odesa city council posted a video showing blown out windows and debris inside what it said was the museum.
On the street near the museum, the attack left a several-meter deep hole. According to the city authorities, one person was injured there.
The Odesa Fine Arts Museum, which was damaged at the last night missile attack, celebrates its 124th anniversary today.
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) November 6, 2023
The museum is in the UNESCO world heritage.
A number of artworks were damaged because of the attack.
📸 - Odesa municipality/ Telegram pic.twitter.com/kRmaxbtumx
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When staff from Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian travelled to Belgium in September to visit a bear that they plan to rehome this month, they were not sure what to expect. Less than a year earlier, Yampil had been only a few days from death when he was found by Ukrainian troops in the ruins of an abandoned zoo in the town near Donetsk that gave him his name.
But after his traumatic ordeal, the asiatic black bear appeared to show no scars of the shelling that destroyed his habitat or the Russian occupation that killed almost all of the 200 other zoo animals.
The Five Sisters zookeepers were pleased to find a healthy bear chomping merrily on a cucumber when they arrived at his temporary home at the Natuurhulpcentrum rescue centre in eastern Belgium – a world away from the videos they had seen of Yampil, dirty and concussed after a shell landed near his enclosure, being carried through the rubble on a tarpaulin by soldiers.
Yampil’s thick fur and cartoonish ears are likely to make him a favourite at the Scottish zoo, where preparations are under way for his arrival at his temporary enclosure in the coming weeks, making him the first Ukrainian zoo refugee to arrive in the UK.
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The Court of Arbitration for Sport has registered an appeal filed by the Russian Olympic Committee against the decision by the International Olympic Committee to suspend its membership, the independent judicial body said today.
The challenge arose over the IOC’s suspension of the ROC following the ROC’s decision to include as its members some regional sports organisations which are under the authority of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Ukraine.
CAS said:
In its appeal to the CAS, the ROC requests that the challenged decision be set aside and that it be reinstated as a NOC recognised by the IOC, benefiting from all rights and prerogatives granted by the Olympic charter.
The CAS arbitration proceedings have commenced. In accordance with the code of sports-related arbitration (the CAS code), the arbitration rules governing CAS procedures, the parties are exchanging written submissions and the panel of arbitrators that will decide the matter is being constituted.
The Russian Olympic Committee was banned with immediate effect on 12 October for recognising regional organisations from four territories it claims to have annexed from Ukraine, the IOC said.
The IOC added the ROC would not be eligible for any funding after it recognised earlier this month Olympic councils from the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, but that it would not affect any Russian athletes competing as neutrals.
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An International Monetary Fund monitoring mission has started work today to review an ongoing multibillion dollar programme for Ukraine, as Kyiv seeks more than $41bn in international aid to cover its budget gap next year.
The IMF mission started policy talks with the Ukrainian officials on the $15.6bn Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan, the IMF said. The programme is part of a $115bn global package to support the economy as Ukraine battles Russia‘s invasion.
Ukraine’s central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, said:
We are committed to a constructive analysis of the completed work and fruitful discussion on the next steps. The review will not be easy, but Ukraine’s team has been working smoothly and effectively for over 20 months of the large-scale war.
We clearly understand the critical need to maintain IMF’s support not only for further budget needs financing, but for the country’s development and its European future.
Ukraine depends heavily on international aid to cover its budget gap and finance social and humanitarian spending. The government has received $35.4bn so far this year from partners to cover its budget gap. Last year, Ukraine got $31bn, finance ministry data showed.
The finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, told Reuters that Ukraine was finding it harder to secure financial support as the world’s attention shifts and geopolitical tensions rise.
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Kyiv said today that Russia‘s armed forces mounted several “unsuccessful” attacks across the frontlines in the south and east of Ukraine over the last week.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine has made any significant territorial gains for almost a year, and Kyiv’s top army commander said last week the war had ground to a stalemate. But fighting has remained intense, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the other.
Ukraine said 400 individual “combat clashes” took place over the last seven days, and that Russia was continuing its offensive on Avdiivka – an industrial town in the eastern region of Donetsk that Russia has been trying to surround and capture for months.
“The enemy is conducting assault actions in several directions at once,” Andriy Kovalyov, a spokesperson for the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Monday in an interview on state TV.
Kovalyov also reported Russian attacks near the village of Robotyne, which Ukraine regained control of earlier this year, in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. “The enemy attempted to restore its lost position near Robotyne but had no success.”
Russia‘s defence ministry said yesterday it had repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne. In a briefing with top military commanders, the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said last week his forces were “continuing to conduct an active defence, inflicting effective damage on the enemy” and that Russian “units are moving forward, occupying more advantageous positions”.
Ukraine’s Kovalyov said today that Kyiv was conducting its own “offensive operations” to the south of Bakhmut - a city destroyed by months of artillery fire and urban warfare before Russia eventually captured it in May. Agence France-Presse said it could not verify either side’s claims.
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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not made any announcements that he will run for another term and the campaign has not yet been announced, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
“The president has not made any statements” about this, Peksov said when asked about a Reuters report that Putin had decided to run.
“And the campaign has not been officially announced yet,” Peskov said.
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Ukraine says 19 soldiers killed by Russian airstrike at awards ceremony on Friday
Ukraine’s 128th assault brigade said on Monday a Russian airstrike killed 19 of its soldiers in the frontline Zaporizhzhia region on Friday, Reuters reports.
Ukrainian authorities ordered an investigation into the attack after receiving reports that soldiers were killed during an awards ceremony in a village close to the frontlines in the south-east.
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Putin to visit Kazakhstan on Thursday
Reuters reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to visit Kazakhstan on Thursday, the office of the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said on Monday.
The leaders will meet in the Kazakh capital, Astana, to discuss bilateral matters, it said in a statement. Putin and Tokayev will also join by video link a Kazakh-Russian business conference that will be held in the city of Kostanai.
It would be only Putin’s third known trip abroad since The Hague-based international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in March for the Russian leader on war crime charges, something the Kremlin strongly rejects.
Kazakhstan, like China and Kyrgyzstan, the two other countries Putin has visited recently, is not a signatory to the ICC.
The ICC, which accused Putin of illegally deporting children from Ukraine, obliges the court’s 123 member states to arrest Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory.
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Ukraine grain exports fall by almost a third compared with last year
Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen by almost a third compared with last year, agriculture ministry data showed on Monday.
The figures show that Ukraine’s grain exports have fallen to 9.8m tonnes so far in the 2023-24 July-June marketing season. The ministry said that by this point last year, Ukraine had exported 14.3m tonnes.
The volume exported this season includes 4.9m tonnes of wheat, 4.1m tonnes of corn and almost 700,000 tonnes of barley. In the previous season Ukraine exported 5.4m tonnes of wheat, 7.7m tonnes of corn and 1.2m tonnes of barley.
The ministry said traders had exported 550,000 tonnes of grain so far in November compared with 1.07m tonnes over 1-7 November in 2022.
The ministry gave no explanation for the drop but traders and farmers’ unions have said blocked Ukrainian Black Sea ports and Russian attacks on the country’s Danube River ports are the main reasons for lower exports.
Ukraine has traditionally shipped most of its exports through its deep water Black Sea ports.
The government said in a resolution published last week that a new export regime would be introduced for key food commodities aimed at preventing abuses, such as tax avoidance.
Ukraine’s government expects a harvest of 79m tonnes of grain and oilseeds in 2023, with its 2023-24 exportable surplus totalling about 50m tonnes.
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Russian drone attacks on Odesa late on Sunday evening left at least five people injured, set grain trucks on fire and damaged one of the city’s principal art galleries, Ukrainian officials in the Black Sea port said. Reuters carried the report:
“On November 6, the Odesa National Art Museum turns 124 years old,” Oleh Kiper, governor of the Odesa region, of which the Odesa city is the administrative centre, said on the Telegram messaging app. “On the eve of November 6, the Russians ‘congratulated’ our architectural monument with a missile that hit nearby.”
The walls of the building were damaged, some windows and glass were broken, he said. Kipper later said that 15 Russia-launched drones were destroyed over the city. Several high-rise residential buildings were damaged and warehouse and trucks with grain caught fire, which was promptly extinguished.
It was not clear whether the buildings and the trucks were hit by the drones or falling debris. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
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The Guardian’s Lisa O’Carroll reports this morning that Ukraine insists it will have completed the reforms required to get membership of the EU within two years, and its deputy prime minister has said it does not want a sympathy vote.
A review published on Wednesday is expected to reveal the European Commission position on whether negotiations should open or not with countries most advanced with their accession reforms.
“We do not want any discounts because of the war,” Olga Stefanishyna said, adding she was confident of a decision in the Ukraine’s favour.
“The two-year timeline we are talking about is just to make sure that we are prepared for membership in terms of legal approximation, of standards and rules and obligations of the directives.”
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. It is day 621 and here are the major developments.
The Ukrainian army has confirmed soldiers from its 128th Mountain Assault Brigade were killed in a Russian missile strike during what media described as a medal-awarding ceremony. A Ukrainian soldier said on social media that 22 people were killed and criticised commanders for having held the event in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region. Local media reported 20 deaths – figures that could not be independently verified.
“This is a tragedy that could have been avoided,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said of the soldiers’ deaths. “A criminal investigation has been registered into the tragedy. The main thing is to establish the full truth about what happened and to prevent this from happening again.”
Ukrainian cruise missiles damaged a warship docked at the occupied Crimean peninsula, Russia admitted on Sunday, a day after Ukraine announced the strike. Ukraine launched 15 cruise missiles at the BE Butoma shipyard based in the east coast city of Kerch on Saturday, with air defences shooting down 13, Russia’s defence ministry said. Ukrainian attacks have progressively been making Crimea untenable for Russia’s Black Sea fleet to use. Ukraine said the damaged warship was one of Russia’s most advanced, able to fire Kalibr cruise missiles. Online observers named the ship as the Askold.
Zelenskiy said the cost of letting Russia win the war would be further conflict involving ground troops from Nato countries, as he urged US lawmakers on NBC’s Meet the Press to increase war funding. Zelenskiy also said he was “not ready” for talks with Russia unless its invading troops withdraw. The US “know I am not ready to speak with the terrorists, because their word is nothing”, he said. “They have to go out from our territory, only after that the world can switch on diplomacy.”
Zelenskiy also urged Donald Trump to visit Ukraine, where he said it would take minutes to show the war-sceptic former US president his errors about the conflict.
Tensions simmered between the civilian and military wings of Ukraine’s leadership as the president’s office publicly rebuked top military commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi for his comments that the war was at a stalemate. The office of Zelenskiy said Zaluzhnyi’s words were helpful to Russia and stirred panic.
Zelenskiy said the war in Gaza was distracting focus from Ukraine’s war against Russia as humanitarian, diplomatic and media attention shifts to the Middle East.
Russian casualties climbed to more than 305,000 dead or injured, Ukraine said, with the US estimating 120,000 Russian deaths and 180,000 injured in the invasion.
Ukraine’s Col Oleksandr Shtupun said Russian forces were following “cannon fodder” tactics, referring to fighting in the Tavria region.
Fake Russian propaganda linking the Gaza and Ukraine wars is spreading online, with a fabricated Israeli promotional video claiming to show Ukrainians fighting in Israel exposed by the news organisation Ukrinform.
Russia and Saudi Arabia confirmed they would be restricting the supply of crude oil until the end of this year, in efforts to raise the price of oil worldwide.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Saturday that Ukraine had “made excellent progress” towards EU accession, as she visited Kyiv and affirmed EU support for Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
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