Summary
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, reaffirmed his stance that this is not the time to negotiate with Russia, and he also denied that any western leaders were pressuring him to do so. He also rejected remarks by his own commander-in-chief that the war had reached a stalemate. An aide also directly criticised the general.
Talks are under way to outline what Ukraine might have to give up to secure a peace deal with Russia, US news channel NBC reported earlier, citing a senior US official and another former senior official who briefed the network about the tentative plans.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, arrived in Kyiv on Saturday ahead of a report the EU is expected to present next week about Ukraine‘s progress in its membership bid. She said the EU would stand by Ukraine “for as long as it takes” and that the country had made “excellent progress” towards EU accession.
Russian forces are now focused on capturing Avdiivka’s coking plant, according to the town’s mayor Vitaliy Barabash. He said audio transmission intercepts had revealed that Moscow was now seeking to secure it. But UK intelligence suggests that Russia have incurred heavy losses in its assault on the Donbas town.
Ukraine said it has filed criminal charges against Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox church, in absentia for “justifying” Russia’s invasion. Moscow’s most influential spiritual leader, a fervent supporter of president Vladimir Putin, has called the war a historic battle against the “forces of evil”.
Zelenskiy appointed a new commander of the country’s special forces, a unit known for conducting military operations in Moscow-held territories, but the officer replaced in the shuffle said he had not been told why.
Ukraine’s newly appointed head of the defence industry says he is working tirelessly to ramp up local arms production and wants to turn the country into a weapons production hub for the west.
Updated
We have further comments from President Volodymyr Zelensky at the press conference.
“We have difficulties and different opinions, but we have no right to give up. Because what is the alternative? If we give away a third of our country, nothing will end. We know what a frozen conflict is,” Zelensky said, denying that Ukraine was at a “stalemate” in defending itself against Russia.
“We need to work more with partners on the supply of air defense, to gain superiority in the sky and enable the armed forces to conduct offensive operations. This is what we need to think about. Not about where we will be tomorrow, but about where we are now.”
Updated
Ukrainian presidential aide Ihor Zhovkva has criticised commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s comments in the Economist, warning against revealing battlefield information.
“Because then we make the aggressor’s job easier. I am sure that everything has been very carefully read [in Russia], noted, and conclusions have been drawn,” Zhovkva said on television today, according to the Kyiv Independent. “If we can somehow succeed in this way… maybe this is some smart strategy. But for me, it’s very strange.”
Zhovkva claimed that he received a “panicked” phone call from a senior allied official following the publication of the remarks. The official asked if Ukrainian forces were “at a dead end.”
In the Economist piece, Zaluzhnyi said that the war was moving towards a “positional” stage characterised by “static and attritional fighting”. He called for Ukraine to be provided greater support to improve its air power, among other things to better equip its military and defend against artillery.
The European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said that Ukraine has made “excellent progress” towards EU accession, days ahead of a key report on Kyiv’s membership bid.
Standing next to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, she said Ukraine had reached many milestones despite the war with Russia, highlighting Kyiv’s judicial reforms in their joint news conference in Kyiv.
I must say you have made excellent progress. I know you are in the process of completing outstanding reforms. If this happens and, I am confident, Ukraine can reach its ambitious goal of moving to the next stage in the accession process.
The EU assessment due on Wednesday is expected to say how far Ukraine has advanced in fulfilling various economic, legal, and other criteria to clear the way for accession talks in December.
The EU has provided €83bn for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia and plans to send another €3bn by the end of this year, Von der Leyen added.
The Ukrainian government has implemented all the steps required to ensure its readiness, Zelenskiy said, vowing to press on with reforms. He stressed efforts to fight corruption, improve transparency, and reduce the influence of oligarchs on the economy.
This visit comes at a historical moment ... when we are waiting on a political decision about Ukraine. This decision will have a pivotal impact not only for Ukraine but for entire Europe. Ukraine does not stop in transforming our institutions, reforms will continue.
Ukraine’s bid received another boost on Thursday when German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said she was confident the EU would advance Ukraine’s application next month.
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Today, President @ZelenskyyUa and @vonderleyen @EU_Commission congratulated the railroaders @Ukrzaliznytsia in #Kyiv. They thanked them for their work and awarded them with the state awards. I think this is symbolic: just as the Ukrainian Railways keep moving on schedule, so is… pic.twitter.com/hk1nBoSk23
— Oleksandr Kubrakov (@OlKubrakov) November 4, 2023
Russia has unveiled a sprawling exposition highlighting the nation’s accomplishments, which will run through the months leading to the presidential election in which Vladimir Putin is widely expected to seek a new term.
Putin issued a decree in March to hold the exposition and some observers have seen it as aimed at creating an ideological framework for his reelection. News reports had suggested he might use the opening to announce his candidacy for the March election, but his spokesperson later said he would not attend the event. Putin has led Russia as president or prime minister since 2000, and reelection would extend his term until 2030.
The event is held at VDNKh, the vast exposition grounds in northern Moscow that was established by Josef Stalin and is renowned for its collection of elaborate Soviet Gothic-style pavilions. The setting plays to many Russians’ nostalgia for the Soviet era and echoes Putin’s drive to restore Russia as a superpower.
Thematically, the exposition focuses on Russia as a country of diverse ethnic groups and cultures unified by a sense of national purpose. It includes displays from each of Russia‘s regions, as well as from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed, along with an array of presentations on industry, education and technology will be on offer.
It also draws on the view of Russia being in a civilizational battle, a concept that has been in forefront of official discourse since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
“Any provocations and aggressive actions directed against Russia are doomed to failure. Because we are a single people, bound by a common history, fraternal bonds of friendship and mutual understanding,” Putin said in a message marking the opening of the exposition.
Dear President @ZelenskyyUA, we are impressed by the reforms Ukraine has made in the midst of a war.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 4, 2023
I am confident that you can complete the outstanding reforms very soon.
If this happens, Ukraine can reach its ambitious goal. pic.twitter.com/ydD97QAZAf
Zelenskiy: 'This is not a stalemate'
In further comments from the press conference this afternoon, BBC Russia reports the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as saying:
Time has passed, people are tired ... But this is not a stalemate. Russia controls the sky. We take care of our military. No one wants to simply abandon them, like Russia abandons its people like meat. How to overcome this? F-16, we have to wait for the guys to learn, when they come back. When there is air defence at the front, the military goes forward and uses equipment.
This week, Ukrainian Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi told the Economist: “Just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate. There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
But Zelensky said that in 2022, it was widely believed that Ukrainian troops were in a stalemate, before they made gains.
A few military tricks, and you remember, the Kharkiv region was liberated. We have no right to give up. What’s the alternative? What, we need to give away a third of our state? This will only be the beginning. We know what a frozen conflict is, we have already drawn conclusions for ourselves. We need to work more with air defence partners, unblock the sky, give our fighters the opportunity to carry out offensive actions.
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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has again sought to dispel what one Russian state news agency has described as “myths” about Vladimir Putin’s “doubles”.
“We have only one Putin,” he said today at a new national exposition. “Now the ‘experts’ are guessing – there are three or four of them and who we now see every day – this morning they laid [flowers] at the [monument] of Minin and Pozharsky – this is the third or fourth “double”, it’s not clear.”
Last month, Peskov said in response to a claim that Putin had fallen ill: “This belongs to the category of absurd information hoaxes that a whole series of media discuss with enviable tenacity. This evokes nothing but a smile.”
On the double claims, he said in April: “As a matter of fact, he has always been and is mega-active. We can hardly keep up with him – those who work with him. His energy is enviable and one can only wish to be as healthy as he is.”
Back in 2020, Putin said he had rejected an offer to use body doubles for personal protection during a conflict with Chechnya. “I refused to have doubles. It was during the most difficult time of the fight against terrorism,” he said.
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Zelenskiy rejects reports that US officials are lobbying for peace
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has reaffirmed his stance that this is not the time to negotiate with Russia, and he also denied that any western leaders were pressuring him to do so.
He told a joint news conference with the European Commission head, Ursula von der Leyen, in Kyiv:
Everyone knows my attitude, which coincides with the attitude of Ukrainian society … Today no one is putting pressure [on me to negotiate], not one of the leaders of the EU or the United States. For us now to sit down with Russia and talk and give it something - this will not happen.
Zelenskiy also said that Ukraine was committed to pressing on with reforms, including strengthening anti-corruption practices. The EU next week is expected to present a report on Ukraine’s progress in its bid to join the bloc.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images coming through from Ukraine:
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Ukraine says it has filed criminal charges against Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox church, in absentia for “justifying” Russia’s invasion.
Moscow’s most influential spiritual leader, a fervent supporter of president Vladimir Putin, has called the war a historic battle against the “forces of evil”.
The Security Service of Ukraine said it had “collected evidence” against the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Vladimir Gundyaev, in partnership with the prosecutor general’s office.
It said he was “a member of the inner circle of Russia‘s top military and political leadership and ... one of the first to publicly support the full-scale war against Ukraine”. It accused Kirill, as he is better known, of “infringing” on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, justifying armed aggression and planning and preparing an “aggressive war”.
It said: “Comprehensive measures are being taken to bring the offender to justice for crimes against our state.”
Ukraine, a predominantly Orthodox country, accelerated its drive to cut ties with all Russian-linked Orthodox institutions after the war began. In October, Ukrainian lawmakers voted to ban the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox church (UOC), accusing its clergy of collaborating with Russia.
Updated
The UK Ministry of Defence has catalogued Russian losses in its attack on Avdiivka.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 04 November 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) November 4, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/aPIxD41W8M
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/2Yx5SSaSrT
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Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the US for its latest military aid package, amid concerns that there may now be a time-limit on support.
The defence minister Rustem Umerov, meanwhile, urged the US to provide Ukraine with “more ammo for our warriors.”
I am grateful to @POTUS Joe Biden, Congress, and the American people for today’s military aid package.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 4, 2023
It will strengthen our brave warriors and help us protect lives and infrastructure from Russian strikes.
The U.S. demonstrates strength in the face of aggression and terror.
Weekly call with @SecDef.
— Rustem Umerov (@rustem_umerov) November 4, 2023
Grateful to the US and Secretary Austin for the new military aid package for 🇺🇦.
Discussed latest battlefield updates and Future Force preparation status.
Urged on the current Ukraine’s needs: more ammo for our warriors.
Grateful for the constant… pic.twitter.com/lDcVsfJElX
The Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto has said the “time not yet ripe” for Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks.
He told the Quotidiano Nazionale newspaper:
Support for Kyiv from the west and the EU is unchanged. Ukraine is fighting for the protection of its sovereignty, as well as for the observance of international law.
It is obvious that a lasting peace cannot be based on military actions alone. A political ‘ceasefire’ is needed. The time is not yet ripe for that.
⚡️ Italian defense minister: 'Time not yet ripe' for Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) November 4, 2023
Italy's Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told the Quotidiano Nazionale newspaper on Nov. 4 that the time has not yet come for Russia-Ukraine ceasefire negotiations on a political level.
Updated
The Turkish president, Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he would try to facilitate the parliamentary ratification of Sweden’s Nato membership as far as possible, but added that Stockhom had still not taken sufficient action on Kurdish militants.
Long-neutral Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato last year to bolster their security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finland’s membership was sealed in April, but Sweden’s bid had been held up by Turkey and Hungary.
Erdogan submitted a bill approving Sweden’s Nato membership bid to parliament for ratification last month, a move welcomed by the alliance and Stockholm. Turkey had initially raised objections due to what it said was Sweden’s harbouring of groups it deems terrorist.
Speaking to reporters on a return flight from Kazakhstan yesterday, Erdoğan said Stockholm had taken some steps regarding protests organised by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and also concerning arms embargoes on Turkey, but not on the activities of the PKK in Sweden.
“Our duty was to submit this to parliament in the first stage, we did that,” broadcaster Haberturk quoted him today as having told the reporters on his plane. Erdoğan also said planned talks in parliament about Turkey’s 2024 state budget would now take priority, suggesting that the approval of Sweden’s Nato membership might not be rapid.
“But we will try to facilitate the work [on ratifying Sweden’s Nato bid] as much as possible. We will try to show positive efforts as much as we can at this point, so long as our counterparts approach us positively.”
Updated
Ukraine’s newly appointed head of the defence industry says he is working tirelessly to ramp up local arms production and wants to turn the country into a weapons production hub for the west.
Oleksandr Kamysyhin, the minister for strategic industries of Ukraine, said that Russia’s invasion of his country and the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East have highlighted the need for countries to spend on their defence systems.
“We’re really focusing on making Ukraine the arsenal of the free world,” Kamyshin told the Associated Press last night. “We are focused on producing all types of weapons and ammunition, and we show that we can test it on the battlefield and make it better during the war. That’s something we can contribute to the free world, because as you see, defence industry is becoming more and more important globally.”
Kamyshyn said approximately 500 companies in Ukraine’s defence industry are contributing to the country’s efforts to increase weapons production in order to counter Russia’s attempts to seize more territory.
He was appointed to the post around eight months ago, and is now in charge of 300,000 people employed in Ukraine’s defence industry.
He acknowledges that he has had to start scaling the local manufacture of weapons from scratch. Ukraine barely had a local defence industry to speak of before 2022, he said, with the military mainly relying on what it already had and what it received as military aid from allies before the war began with Russia’s invasion in February 2021.
Now, Ukraine is delivering locally produced munition to the battlefield and can increasingly strike inside Russia, he said.
Last year, there were claims that the then British prime minister Boris Johnson had lobbied the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelenskiy, against peace.
In a statement, Johnson’s office said at the time:
The Prime Minister updated on his visit to Kyiv last month and shared his conviction that Ukraine would win, supported with the right level of defensive military assistance. He urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion, but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government.
Ukrainska Pravda reported: “According [to] Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.
“The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”
It came after a former Israeli prime minister rowed back on a suggestion about an alleged agreement to end the war in Ukraine. “It’s unsure there was any deal to be made,” Bennett later said. “At the time I gave it roughly a 50% chance. Americans felt chances were way lower. Hard to tell who was right. It’s not sure such a deal was desirable. At the time I thought so, but only time will tell.”
Writing in Foreign Affairs in August 2022, former US national security official Fiona Hill and foreign policy expert Angela Stent said:
According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.
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Russian attacks in Ukraine wounded at least 14 civilians over the past day, officials said today.
The governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yurii Malashko, said nine people were injured in a Russian rocket strike on the village of Zarichne. Overall, 26 cities and settlements in the region came under attack over the past day, he said.
In the Kherson region, five people were injured, said governor Oleksandr Prokudin. He said attacks in the region came from artillery, mortars, drones, warplanes and tanks.
Nikopol, a city of the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, came under fire but no injuries were immediately reported, according to Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhii Lysak.
Updated
AFP has just posted a report from near the war-battered town of Bakhmut – which Ukraine is attempting to retake – quoting a Ukrainian soldier with a grim assessment of the conflict.
“I’ve been saying that for some time now already. Step by step we’re losing the war,” the serviceman, who uses the call sign “Mudryi” (Wise), told AFP. “The longer this static war continues, the worse it is for us.”
The frontline between the Ukrainian army and Russian forces occupying the east and south of the country has barely moved since last November, despite repeated Russian strikes and a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Ukrainian Gen Valery Zaluzhny surprised observers of the invasion this week with an unusually candid assessment that the warring parties had reached a deadlock along the sprawling front. “Just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he told the Economist. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
AFP journalists also found last month that Ukraine was still battling Russian forces in one key village it had claimed to have recaptured weeks earlier.
“We have problems with too many issues. First, the quality of training for our soldiers. Second, we don’t have enough weapons or artillery,” another Ukrainian serviceman near Bakhmut told AFP. “We’re starved for artillery and it’s getting worse.”
Updated
Almost $44bn has been spent by the Biden administration on security assistance for Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, according to the Pentagon.
NBC quotes a US official saying there is about $5bn left before the money runs out. A Gallup poll this week suggested 41% of American believe the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 24% just three months ago.
Officials expect Ukraine to want more time on the battlefield – especially with the new equipment it has received. “But there’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal,” a former senior administration official told NBC.
It is also expected that likely Russian attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine this winter could again cause serious difficulties for civilians.
Updated
Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, told NBC: “Any decisions about negotiations are up to Ukraine. We are focused on continuing to stand strongly in support of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russian aggression.”
It echoed a comment from the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who said in August: “It is the Ukrainians, and only the Ukrainians, who can decide when there are conditions in place for negotiations, and who can decide at the negotiating table what is an acceptable solution.”
But the NBC report suggests that the impetus for possible peace talks is coming from the US. Ukraine’s “depleting military forces” are the key concern for the White House, it said. “Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” an official told the network. “If they don’t have competent forces to use [foreign-supplied weaponry] it doesn’t do a lot of good”
Congressional Republicans have also opposed recent attempts to authorise fresh funding for Ukraine. The GOP has a majority in the house of representatives, while the Democrats control the senate.
It is likely that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would have to drop aspects of his 10-point peace formula that demands Russia retreat entirely from Ukrainian territory, including from Crimea which was annexed in 2014.
Russia currently controls about 17.5% of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory. NBC report that western officials say president Vladimir Putin believe he can “wait out the west” and keep up the fight in Ukraine until its allies can no longer provide the funding and weapons.
Updated
US and European officials discuss possible Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations – report
Talks are under way to outline what Ukraine might have to give up to secure a peace deal with Russia, the US news channel NBC has reported, citing a senior US official and another former senior official who have briefed the network about the tentative plans.
NBC reported that officials said representatives of more than 50 countries who support Ukraine, including Nato members, broached the topic last month. US and European officials are increasingly concerned that the war is at a stalemate, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive having failed to break through.
Some US military officials have reportedly said privately that the outcome of the war may simply come down to who can outlast the other the longest, with both sides dug in ahead of a winter that will make any big advances even more difficult. Ukraine is also struggling to recruit new soldiers, while Russia has a far larger population.
The discussions also reflect a changing political landscape amid the Israel-Hamas war, and the sheer amount of foreign funding required to keep Ukraine’s war effort going.
“Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin,” NBC reported. “US officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies”, officials said.
Updated
EU to stand by Ukraine 'for as long as it takes', pledges Von der Leyen
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU will stand by Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
She posted on X: “I’m here to discuss Ukraine’s accession path to the EU. The EU’s financial support to rebuild Ukraine as a modern, prosperous democracy.”
Von der Leyen reportedly added that her sixth visit to Ukraine since the Russian invasion would also involve conversations around a fresh EU sanctions package against Russia, set to include a ban on Russian diamonds.
She will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other senior Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, amid concerns that the EU and the US may have lost the enthusiasm to provide the country long term funding to keep it afloat while funding the war effort.
The Financial Times reports that the message she is sending through all of this is that Brussels will continue to prioritise the country while supporting its western aspirations.
“Of course the enlargement topic will be at the top of the agenda but also our financial and military support,” Von der Leyen told reporters. “The most important message is reassuring that we stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
Good to be back in Kyiv for my 6th war time visit.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 4, 2023
I’m here to discuss Ukraine’s accession path to the EU.
The EU’s financial support to rebuild Ukraine as a modern, prosperous democracy.
And how we will continue to make Russia pay for its war of aggression. pic.twitter.com/dLJ6bUz4UU
Ursula von der Leyen stated that she arrived in Kyiv to discuss Ukraine's path to EU membership 🇺🇦🇪🇺 https://t.co/vLLsTckkZu pic.twitter.com/aG1LIsa9k0
— Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 (@maria_drutska) November 4, 2023
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European Commission president arrives in Kyiv to discuss EU bid
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Kyiv on Saturday ahead of a report the EU is expected to present next week about Ukraine‘s progress in its membership bid, a Ukrainian lawmaker said.
Parliamentary deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on his Telegram channel that von der Leyen was expected to speak in the Ukrainian parliament. The EU assessment due on Wednesday is expected to detail how far Ukraine has advanced in fulfilling various economic, legal, and other criteria to clear the way for accession talks to be launched in December.
Ukraine, which applied to join the EU days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, sees joining the trade bloc as a top priority, reports Reuters.
The EU’s 27 members are due at a summit in December to decide whether to allow Kyiv to begin accession negotiations, a move requiring the unanimous backing of all the bloc’s members.
Ukraine‘s bid got a boost on Thursday when German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was confident the bloc would advance Ukraine‘s application next month.
Membership talks typically take years and involve extensive legal, political and economic reform. Ukraine‘s case is made much harder by the war raging in its south and east with no end in sight.
Updated
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appointed a new commander of the country’s special forces, a unit known for conducting military operations in Moscow-held territories, but the officer replaced in the shuffle said he had not been told why.
Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address yesterday that Col Serhiy Lupanchuk would now head the forces and described him as “an experienced officer, combat officer and the right man in command”.
The president said Lupanchuk’s predecessor, Maj-Gen Viktor Horenko, who led the forces from July 2022, “will continue to perform special tasks” within the defence ministry’s intelligence directorate. Zelenskiy gave no further explanation for the change. Horenko said in an interview he had been told nothing. “I personally don’t know the reasons. Let me just say that I learned of this from the media,” Horenko told the Ukrainska Pravda news site.
The special forces are believed to be behind the most sophisticated operations Ukraine’s military has conducted in areas under Russian control, in particular Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, eight years before Moscow’s full land invasion.
Russia intent on capturing Avdiivka coking plant, say Ukraine officials
Russian forces are now focused on capturing Avdiivka’s coking plant, according to the town’s mayor. Mayor Vitaliy Barabash, speaking on national television, said audio transmission intercepts had revealed that Moscow was now seeking to secure it. “They have a new aim and that’s the coking plant. They have to take it. Period,” Barabash said.
“We understand that a [new] third wave of attacks is bound to start any day once the ground dries out and they can move forward. They are engaged in a build-up. We see and hear that.”
Ukraine’s General Staff, in a Friday evening report, said its forces had repelled 17 attacks on and around Avdiivka. Ukrainian military officials said a heavy overnight set of drone strikes on widely separated regions showed new attacks on infrastructure were to be expected as winter approaches.
The General Staff report also said that Ukrainian forces had repelled seven attacks near Kupiansk, a town in the north-east first seized by Russia, but recaptured by Ukrainian forces in a fast-moving offensive late last year.
Russia’s military has focused on the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk after abandoning the initial aim of capturing Kyiv in the early days of the February 2022 invasion. Russian forces captured the devastated town of Bakhmut in May after months of battles and since mid-October have focused their assaults on Avdiivka, a potential gateway to Donetsk, held by Russian forces and their allies since 2014.
Welcome to today's coverage
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. My name is Mattha Busby and I’ll be with you for the next while.
The mayor of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka says Russian forces are now intent on capturing its vast coking plant. Ukraine’s General Staff, in a Friday evening report, said its forces had repelled 17 attacks on and around Avdiivka. Mayor Vitaliy Barabash, speaking on national television, said audio transmission intercepts had revealed that Moscow was now seeking to secure the town’s giant coking plant. “They have a new aim and that’s the coking plant. They have to take it. Period,” Barabash said. Russian forces, have been focused for weeks on seizing the key eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka.
More on this shortly. In the meantime, here are the other key recent developments:
The US will provide $425m worth of additional arms and equipment to Ukraine for its ongoing fight against Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration announced on Friday. The package uses the last of the funds in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a more than $18bn fund that allowed the Biden administration to buy weapons from industry, rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
A Ukrainian missile attack on Friday on an employment centre in a Russian-occupied town in the southern region of Kherson killed nine people and injured nine, the region’s Russia-appointed governor was quoted as saying.
A handful of Ukrainian troops who have reached the occupied side of the Dnipro River are clinging to a foothold in Russian-controlled territory in the south of the country despite a fierce bombardment. The marines have secured a beachhead that could allow Ukraine to reclaim more of the Kherson region that lies between Ukrainian territory and Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is considering the “pros and cons” of holding presidential elections next spring, his foreign minister said. “We are not closing this page. The president of Ukraine is considering and weighing the different pros and cons,” Dmytro Kuleba told a briefing, adding that holding elections during the war with Russia would entail “unprecedented” challenges.
Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine for weeks on Friday, hitting critical infrastructure in the west and south of Ukraine and destroying private houses and commercial buildings in Kharkiv.
Russia intends to stick to a nuclear test ban moratorium despite withdrawing its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban treaty, the foreign ministry said.
A Russian court sentenced Pyotr Verzilov, an activist linked to the Pussy Riot group, to eight and a half years in prison for breaching Russia’s strict censorship laws. The 36-year-old was sentenced “in absentia” as he has not lived in Russia since 2020, reported MediaZona, an opposition news site that he founded.
The Kremlin has dismissed a new package of US sanctions, saying Russia had learned to “overcome” such economic hurdles since the Ukraine conflict began. Washington yesterday sanctioned several Russian energy and finance companies it said were supporting Russia’s offensive against Ukraine.
The chief of Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has said the timing of a sale or spin-off of its extensive operations in Russia is largely out of his control. Russia made up 45% of RBI’s profit in the first nine months of the year, though it reported a 30% decline in the volume of its loans in Russia in the third quarter from a year earlier.
The Russian Orthodox church called for an apology from Alla Pugacheva, the country’s most renowned pop singer who returned home this week, over her criticism of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
