Summary
Ukrainian authorities have said the country cannot produce enough electricity to meet growing demand for heating and is turning to neighbouring EU countries for help, amid fears of Russian strikes on production facilities.
Russia is throwing “waves” of soldiers towards the embattled Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, suffering massive losses in their attempt to capture strategically important territory on the eastern frontlines, Ukrainian soldiers say.
A leading Russian politician and supporter of the president, Vladimir Putin, has denied a report that he adopted an infant who had been forcibly taken from an orphanage in Ukraine.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence reports that a group of former Wagner mercenary soldiers have been recognised officially as Russian military veterans, following speculation over how they would be treated following their mutiny against Russia and death of their leader.
Ukraine said that it wants its export routes via Poland unblocked before it holds talks with Warsaw and the European Commission aimed at ending protests by Polish truckers that are reducing Ukrainian exports.
A Russian actor has been killed in a Ukrainian attack while performing to Russian troops in a Russian-controlled area of eastern Ukraine, according to her theatre. Ukrainian commanders said their forces had struck what they said was a Russian military award ceremony.
Ukraine has not reached a stalemate in its war with Russia because the west can help Kyiv by “dropping five more queens on the board”, according to an influential historian of eastern Europe.
Finland said it would close all but one crossing point on its border with Russia in an effort to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, as Estonia accused Moscow of mounting “a hybrid attack operation” on Europe’s eastern border.
Updated
Ukrainian traders’ union UGA has said that parliament’s “ill-considered” plans to change grain trading rules could completely halt Ukraine‘s key grain exports.
On 21 November, a bill passed its first reading in parliament that would change rules on the taxation of grain export transactions and could also introduce minimum export prices for grain. The bill is designed to minimise tax evasion on certain agricultural products, such as grain and oilseeds.
“UGA is concerned about a possible complete halt in grain exports from Ukraine due to the adoption by the parliament of ill-considered legislative changes to grain and oilseed exports that introduce contradictions in legislation, including tax legislation,” the union said.
It noted that some of the new requirements are impossible to fulfil and others may result in significant losses for both, traders and farmers. Ukraine was the fourth-largest grain supplier globally before Russia’s February 2022 invasion and in value terms grain accounted for half of its total exports last year.
UGA said the bill proposed that minimum export prices should not be lower than the average grain prices quoted on international exchanges for the previous 10 days. “This requirement is unenforceable... at some point the minimum export price from Ukraine set by this mechanism will exceed the real prices on the world market,” traders said. UGA said that global prices determined purchase and export prices in Ukraine, and not vice versa.
