Closing summary
It’s coming up to 8pm in Kyiv and the Ukraine war live blog is about to close. Here’s a summary of the days’ events:
Russia says it has shot down 36 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula. There were claims in local media outlets that a fire at an oil refinery in the early hours of Sunday had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone. Ukraine has said it shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched Russia overnight.
State media in Russia has reported that more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Yuzhno-Donetsk over the past 24 hours. The 58th motorised infantry, 79th air assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 128th territorial defence brigade were reportedly involved in the attack by Russian troops.
Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of Vladimir Putin said. The comments were made after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its post-war reconstruction.
Ukraine and Russia are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus president, said. Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched … seriously stalemate.”
Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka.
Four Ukrainian police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk oblast.
A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow. In a statement, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”.
That’s it from me, Donna Ferguson, for now. Thanks for following along.
Updated
Russians commemorated the victims of Soviet state terror on Sunday, in a subdued event that demonstrates how the Russian government has continued its crackdown on dissent in the country.
The “returning of the names” event is traditionally held in Moscow every year on 29 October, the eve of Russia’s Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression, at the Solovetsky Stone memorial Lubyanka square, to victims of Soviet-era repression. It involves the reading out of names of individuals killed during Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror of the late 1930s.
However, since 2020, Moscow authorities have refused to grant a permit for the event, which is organised by the human rights group Memorial.
This refusal is allegedly owing to the “epidemiological situation” and a ban on holding public events, though supporters of Memorial believe the refusal is politically motivated.
Memorial was itself ordered to close by the Moscow authorities in November 2021. Although it was shut down as a legal entity in Russia, the group still operates in other countries and has continued some of its human rights activities in Russia.
Instead of a demonstration, on Sunday Muscovites and several ambassadors from western countries, including the US envoy, laid flowers at the Solovetsky Stone. The subdued event took place under the watchful eyes of police, according to Associated Press.
Banned from holding a gathering on Lubyanka square, Memorial organised a live broadcast of the reading of the victims’ names, from Moscow and other Russian cities, as well as from abroad.
Russian prosecutors are seeking a three-year prison sentence for Oleg Orlov, a human rights campaigner and co-chair of Memorial.
Updated
Russia says it shot down 36 Ukrainian drones
Russia’s defence ministry says it shot down 36 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula overnight on Saturday.
“The air defence systems in place destroyed 36 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the Black Sea and the northwestern part of the Crimean peninsula,” the ministry wrote on Telegram, Associated Press reports.
Local authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, which borders the Black Sea, said that a fire broke out at an oil refinery in the early hours of Sunday, but did not specify the cause. “The reasons for the incident are being established,” a statement from local authorities said, amid claims in local media outlets that the fire had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone.
In Ukraine, the country’s air force said it had shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia overnight.
Updated
Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medevedev, has claimed Europe was short-sighted when it moved away from Russian oil.
“Europe has castrated itself in bloody fashion and without anaesthesia by walking away from energy cooperation with our country,” Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev, now deputy secretary of the security council, as saying on social media. “This cooperation is either spoiled or frozen for some time.”
Medvedev, president from 2008 to 2012, has positioned himself as one of Russia‘s most vocal hardliners, reports Reuters.
He cast Russia as previously a “predictable partner of Europe”. But now, he noted according to Russian state news outlet Tass: “We are now not even neighbours, but real enemies. And now the EU is raving about the complete unpredictability of Russia, building crazy conspiracy theories, spending astronomical sums to maintain its security.”
Updated
Russian victory in Avdiivka would “lock Ukraine out” of the southern Donbas, warns Michael Clarke, distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and visiting professor in defence studies at King’s College London, in the Sunday Times:
Russia’s renewed attack at Avdiivka, which began on the weekend of October 7, is particularly significant. The Russians have diverted scarce resources to try, yet again, to surround the city, bringing in about six brigades and a great deal of air power and artillery from other units, bombarding the two Ukrainian brigades holding the city. So far, Ukrainian forces have defended the town fiercely and the Russians have not completed an encirclement — though they will keep trying.
Avdiivka is becoming another Bakhmut. Except that Bakhmut had no real strategic importance. It was a symbol the Wagner mercenaries wanted to create for themselves. But Avdiivka does have genuine strategic value: it is on a key route into the city of Donetsk, as close to the airport as it is to the northern suburbs of the city.
The road system makes Avdiivka the gateway to southern Donbas. The Ukrainians have held it against Russian pressure since last year. It is Kyiv’s route to victory in that sector. If they lose Avdiivka now, they will be locked out of the south, and most of what they have achieved in the Donbas further north will count for little. Ukraine’s 1st Tank Brigade has been brought in to defend Avdiivka, while parts of the hard-fighting 47th Mechanised Brigade have been pulled out of the main southerly thrust from Zaporizhzhia and sent east to help defend the city. Fierce battles have been going on for control of the coke and chemicals plant on Avdiivka’s northern flank and the sand quarry at the village of Opytne on the southern flank. These two miserable industrial sites really matter.
About 2,000 Ukrainians were registered to participate in a 1km race in Kyiv today to honour those who have been killed or injured during the war with Russia.
It was not immediately clear how many people participated in the race, which took place this afternoon. Runners wore bibs displaying the name of a relative or friend who had been killed, taken captive, or injured during the war. Funds gathered were also earmarked to go towards Ukraine’s air defences.
Updated
Last night, the Russian military dropped four guided aerial bombs on Novoberyslav, Kherson Oblast, damaging no homes and injuring no one, as per Kherson Regional Military Administration.
— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) October 29, 2023
📷 Telegram/Kherson OVA pic.twitter.com/xXGKAkLFu8
More than 1,500 Ukrainian-made FPV drones purchased under the state program were sent to Donetsk sector of the front.
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) October 29, 2023
Source: Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/mBclErcgpJ
Russian state media has reported that more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Yuzhno-Donetskover the past 24 hours.
“Units of the Vostok group of troops, in cooperation with army aviation and artillery, repelled four attacks by assault groups of the 58th motorized infantry, 79th air assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 128th territorial defense brigade in the areas of the settlements of Urozhaynoye, Novomikhailovka and Staromayorskoye of the Donetsk People’s Republic Republic,” a ministry of defence report cited by Ria said.
It added that “Russian units defeated the personnel of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Ugledar and the village of Vodyanoye”, with “about 130” soldiers killed, and “an armored personnel carrier, two cars and a D-20 howitzer” destroyed. It did not provide information on Russian losses.
The state media outlet went on to detail a series of other reported Ukrainian losses from over the weekend.
The UK ministry of defence has cited unspecified reports that the Russian government is attempting to suppress discussion of “negative political, economic and social trends” at universities.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 29 October 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) October 29, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/e5jfGrOgUe
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/BVP3h4wbpW
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry published photos of the aftermath of massive Russian strikes on the Kherson region. pic.twitter.com/2LSrvxwKE2
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 29, 2023
Volunteer Ukrainian soldiers have been pictured undergoing intensive military training outside of Kyiv ahead of their deployment.
Updated
Summary
Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of president Vladimir Putin said. It comes after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its post-war reconstruction.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, the Belarus leader said. Alexander Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched … Seriously stalemate.”
Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka.
Four Ukrainian police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk province.
A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow. In a statement, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”.
Crimean schoolchildren are being trained as part of a military-patriotic programme called the “School of Future Commanders”.
In Sevastopol yesterday the training was conducted under the guidance of military personnel and included multi-sport racing, emergency medicine, and weapons handling.
Updated
Russian air defence systems shot down over 30 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula overnight, the defence ministry has said.
“The air defence systems in place destroyed 36 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the Black Sea and the northwestern part of the Crimean peninsula,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Local authorities in the southern Krasnodar region bordering the Black Sea said that a fire broke out at an oil refinery in the early hours of Sunday, but did not specify the cause, AP reports. “The reasons for the incident are being established,” a statement from local authorities said, amid claims in local media outlets that the fire had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone.
Drone strikes and shelling on the Russian border regions and Moscow-annexed Crimea are a regular occurrence.
In Ukraine, the country’s air force said today that it had shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia overnight.
Close to the front line in the country’s east, where Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in a grinding battle for control, four police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk province.
Russians commemorated the victims of Stalinist terror today, more than 20 months into Moscow’s Ukraine offensive that has been accompanied at home by a crackdown on dissent.
The Kremlin has doubled down on its version of history, which often glosses over Stalinist crimes – with public commemoration of Soviet-era repression seen as unpatriotic, AFP reports.
The “Returning of the Names” event was organised by Nobel Prize winning Memorial – a rights and historical memory group shut down weeks before Moscow launched its 2022 military campaign. Every year, the event sees people taking turns to read out the names of people executed during Stalin’s Terror between 1936 and 1938.
In Moscow, it is traditionally held at the Solovetsky Stone memorial to victims, sited opposite the Lubyanka headquarters of the KGB, now occupied by its modern successor FSB. AFP reporters said the square was encircled by metal barriers with a heavy police presence.
Oleg Orlov, the Memorial’s co-chair who was recently fined for denouncing the Ukraine campaign, attended the ceremony.
Several Western ambassadors, including the US envoy, laid flowers there. Memorial staged a live feed of the reading of the names from Moscow and other Russian cities such as Volgograd and Siberia’s Novosibirsk as well as from abroad.
Once a week, Ukrainian parents bring their children to a community centre in Kyiv for canine therapy.
Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China’s biggest annual show of military diplomacy, started on Sunday, but the name of Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu, initially listed in the forum’s agenda as the first guest speaker at tomorrow’s opening ceremony, was not on the agenda.
His slated appearance was originally thought to suggest China intends to give Russia, which invaded in Ukraine in 2022, centre stage at the forum. But as of today, his name was not on the agenda, Reuters reported.
China hopes to use the forum to promote president Xi Jinping’s vision for a safer world and draw developing countries closer, as it faces increased coordination between the US and its allies to curtail its military ambitions. The US defence department has sent a delegation led by Xanthi Carras, China country director in the office of the undersecretary of defence.
This year’s forum takes place at an awkward time for China, when it is without a defence minister, whose main role is to engage with foreign militaries. On Tuesday, Beijing sacked defence minister Li Shangfu but did not name a replacement. Reuters reported last month that Li, who has been missing for two months, was being investigated for corruption.
Some European countries, including France, plan to send a small delegation from their defence ministries, according to sources familiar with the matter. Nato’s delegation will be led by Wendin Smith, its security policy director, a Nato official said.
Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka.
According to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update on Saturday morning, Russia has probably committed elements of up to eight brigades to the sector where it initiated a “major offensive effort” in mid-October.
Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday that Russia had lost 298,420 troops since the beginning of its full-scale invasion last year, including 740 casualties in the last day. These figures have not been independently verified.
The intelligence update states that the nature of the operation in Avdiivka indicates that Russia’s “core military-political challenge remains the same as it has throughout most of the war … Political leaders demand more territory to be seized but the military cannot generate the effective operational level offensive action.”
Canada is to take the lead in facilitating a global network of countries working to free kidnapped Ukrainian children from Russia or territories it occupies, the Guardian has been told.
Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska said last month that an estimated 19,000 children were forcibly removed from their homes since the war started. It is one of the topics under discussion at a two way meeting of national security advisers in Malta to progress a peace plan amid fears military and political energies will be diverted to the Middle East.
More than 60 countries, including the US, the UK and the EU are meeting at the third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks underway this weekend in Malta following similar gatherings in Saudi Arabia in August and Denmark in June. China, which attended the meeting in Jeddah, is not participating. Notable additions this time include the Holy See, Armenia and Mexico.
They are working to develop operational details of Zelenskiy’s 10 point peace formula which seeks to end the war but also provide a framework for food and energy security, safety around the Zaparazhay nuclear plant and humanitarian needs.
The EU is discussing new routes to facilitate transit of Ukraine’s agricultural goods while the humanitarian working group, which enjoys the widest participation including from Qatar and Turkey, is discussing kidnapped children.
Armed with a brush and a bucket of grey paint, the Russian anti-war activist Ilya Zernov walked through Belgrade until he reached a large mural that said “Death to Ukraine” on the side of an apartment block.
As Zernov, 19, started painting over the mural, he said he was cornered by three Serbian men who ordered him to stop. “One of them pulled out a knife … He then punched me in the right ear,” Zernov, who fled his hometown of Kazan shortly after Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine, told the Observer.
The attack left him with a perforated eardrum, but Zernov said he was glad he managed to at least partly cover the mural. “As a Russian, I felt it was my responsibility to do something. The graffiti glorified violence.”
Zernov is one of the estimated 200,000 Russians to have left for Serbia since the start of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, making the Balkan country one of the main exile destinations for those fleeing the consequences of the Kremlin’s war.
A fire broke out in early hours today at the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, local emergency authorities said, after social media reports of powerful blasts.
Baza and Shot, two Russian news outlets with good security sources, said that the fire at the refinery, which lies 50 miles (80km) east of the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, one of Russia’s most important oil export gateways, was caused by a drone attack.
Earlier, Russia’s defence ministry, without providing much detail, said its air defence systems destroyed 36 Ukraine-launched drones over the Black Sea and the north-western part of the Crimean Peninsula. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
The Krasnodar region is connected to Crimea – which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014 – via the illegal, Russian-built Kerch bridge. The bridge has been closed by Ukrainian attacks several times.
Schooling will move to online starting from tomorrow in Ukraine’s central city of Vinnytsia after a Hepatitis A outbreak sent scores of children and adults to the hospital, the country’s chief sanitary official said .
“The main thing now is to establish the centre of the outbreak and the causes in order to stop the spread of the viral Hepatitis A among the population as soon as possible,” chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Ihor Kuzin wrote on Facebook on Saturday, Reuters reports.
Kuzin, who also serves as Ukraine’s deputy health minister, said 141 people in the city and the region were in a hospital. Vinnytsia, which had a pre-war population of around 370,000, is the administrative centre of the Vinnytsia region in central Ukraine.
“So far, there is no single cause of the outbreak,” Kuzin said. “We are analysing the centers of spread and are working with the population, in particular to establish a circle of contact persons.”
Russia would confiscate European assets if frozen funds 'stolen' by EU
Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of President Vladimir Putin said today.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on Friday that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its post-war reconstruction.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the State Duma, the Russian lower house of parliament, said Moscow would retaliate in a way that would be more costly to the bloc if the EU moved against Russian assets, many of which are held in Belgium, Reuters reported.
“A number of European politicians, led by the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, have once again started talking about stealing our country’s frozen funds in order to continue the militarisation of Kyiv,” the close Putin ally said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
“Such a decision would require a symmetrical response from the Russian Federation. In that case, far more assets belonging to unfriendly countries will be confiscated than our frozen funds in Europe.”
He claimed that EU politicians were considering the move “in an effort to hold on to their jobs and because of the poor financial situation to which they had led their countries.”
Von der Leyen said on Friday that the value of frozen Russian sovereign assets was €211 billion and said that the bloc had decided that Russia must pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The EU clearing house in Brussels, Euroclear, has reportedly earned more than €3bn this year from frozen Russian assets which it is holding due to EU sanctions.
Updated
More on that news that Putin ally and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is calling for Ukraine and Russia to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict.
Lukashenko, who provided his country’s territory as a launch pad for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said that Ukraine’s demands for Russia to quit its territory needs to be resolved at the negotiating table “so nobody dies”.
“We need to sit down at the negotiating table and come to an agreement,” Lukashenko said in a question and answer video posted on the website of the Belarusian state news agency BelTA. “As I once said: no preconditions are needed. The main thing is that the ‘stop’ command is given.”
Russian forces have kept pushing this week near the ruined Donetsk city of Avdiivka suffering heavy losses, the US White House has said, but the vast frontline in Ukraine has moved little in the past year despite Kyiv’s gruelling months-long offensive.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy reiterated yesterday at a gathering of over 60 national security advisers that his 10-point peace plan, which includes calls for the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, is the only way to end the war.
Belarus leader says 'situation is now seriously stalemate'
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, the authoritarian leader of Belarus has said.
Alexander Lukashenko, who is an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched. People are dying”.
“There are enough problems on both sides and in general the situation is now seriously stalemate: no one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position,” he said.
In other news:
A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow, which condemned it. In a statement afterwards, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”. It follows similar meetings in Jeddah and Copenhagen, with the Ukrainians hoping to eventually hold a summit at the level of heads of state.
Russia’s forces around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka have “likely suffered” some of its highest casualty rates of 2023 so far, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update.
The report follows the Ukrainian president’s claims on Friday that Russian forces lost at least a brigade’s worth of troops attempting to advance on Avdiivka.
The head of the office of the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, has praised Qatar’s role in facilitating the return of four Ukrainian children from Russian captivity earlier this month.
Ukraine and the Netherlands began talks on a bilateral agreement on security guarantees in Malta, Andriy Yermak also announced. It is the sixth country to start bilateral negotiations with Ukraine on security guarantees.
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Mykola Tochytskyi, has pointedly accused Russia of having a history of “provoking” and “stoking” hybrid conflicts across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
“We warned that turning a blind eye to [Russian] violation of international peace and security would fuel conflicts in the world,” Tochytskyi said, amid the Israel-Hamas war. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously expressed fears that the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel could threaten military support for Ukraine.
Russia’s foreign ministry claimed a Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia, damaging its walls.
Updated
