Closing summary
Russia said it thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to forge bridgehead on Dnipro river’s eastern bank. “On 9 November, personnel from a motorised rifle company in the Russian military grouping ‘Dnipro’ under the command of Sen Lt Zolto Arsalanov destroyed servicemen from a unit of Ukraine’s 36th marine infantry brigade as they were trying to gain a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River,” a statement from the Russian military said.
Russian forces are still fighting to surround the war-battered frontline town of Avdiivka and capture a strategically-located factory nearby. “They (Russian forces) have not given up trying to surround Avdiivka,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a Ukrainian military spokesman told state media.
Russian artillery and drone attacks on Friday killed three people and damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility, power lines and a gas pipeline in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions of Ukraine. Both regions have come under regular shelling by Russian troops in occupied territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
Russian prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine are atoning for their crimes “with blood”, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov said. He was answering questions about the pardon of Vladislav Kanyus – a man sentenced to 17 years in a maximum-security prison for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend.
The Kremlin has said that it is under no obligation to reveal where a Ukrainian volunteer soldier convicted and jailed for trying to kill two civilians is being held. Human rights group Amnesty International and writers association PEN International have demanded that Russia provide information on Maksym Butkevych, a journalist and human rights activist who volunteered to join up as a soldier after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
A Ukrainian orphan from Mariupol, who was taken to Russia after it captured the port city last year, will be returned to Ukraine in a rare deal between Kyiv and Moscow. Bogdan Yermokhin, 17, was taken by Russian forces from Mariupol to Russia last spring and – as with an unknown number of other Ukrainian children – placed in a Russian foster family.
Germany has pledged to meet Nato’s spending target of 2% of economic output. Defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Germany would incorporate higher military spending into its medium-term financing plans as part of a wider policy shift announced yesterday.
The UK Ministry of Defence says it has now trained 30,000 Ukrainian recruits as part of Operation Interflex. The MoD says the operation is the biggest military training programme of its kind on British soil since the second world war.
Reuters reports that Russian artillery and drone attacks on Friday killed three people and damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility, power lines and a gas pipeline in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions of Ukraine.
Both regions have come under regular shelling by Russian troops in occupied territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. Locals usually face numerous air alerts throughout the day.
In Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region, a 67-year-old woman was killed in an afternoon drone attack, Serhiy Lysak, the governor, said on the Telegram messaging service.
“A 68-year-old man received shrapnel wounds. He’s hospitalised,” he added on Telegram.
An infrastructure facility, a gas pipeline and power lines, as well as 11 private houses, had been damaged. Images from the site shared by Lysak showed buildings with shattered windows, huge holes in the walls, and a burnt car.
In Kindiyka, Kherson region, shelling in the morning killed a 69-year old man and injured another 63-year-old, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
He later added that a 61-year-old man was killed and five more injured in a separate shelling in Novoraysk.
