Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis and opinion.
A family prepares for winter in eastern Ukraine
Julian Borger spent time with the Trebushnikova family in Novomoskovsk, eastern Ukraine, as they prepare for a difficult winter. He writes:
“Before the most recent Russian missile strikes last week, there was at least some predictability about electricity. It would come on for four hours and then off for four. But since Vladimir Putin’s latest missile salvo hammered down on Ukraine’s power grid on 23 November, there has been less electricity, lasting three or four hours, and it comes at random times.
“There is gas to cook with and Alina usually makes dinner in the middle of the day, when there is enough light to see what she is doing. After sunset they have only a small string of decorative lights that her husband rigged up with a battery.
“On Thursday, Alina was preparing borscht and rice and a bit of meat. How long this was going to go on for, she could not say, but it sounded to her like the war would not end soon. Meanwhile, they must endure.
“‘They say a Ukrainian woman can stop a horse in its tracks,’ she said with a smile. ‘She must be a mountain for her husband and children.’”
Explosions rock two Russian airbases far from Ukraine frontline
Explosions rocked two Russian airbases far from the frontlines this week, as Kyiv appeared to launch a pre-emptive strike on bombers that the Kremlin has used to try to cripple the Ukrainian electrical grid.
The Russian defence ministry confirmed the attacks on Monday, claiming two of its warplanes had been damaged when it intercepted two Ukrainian drones. For Kyiv the strike represented an unprecedented operation deep inside Russia to disrupt the Kremlin strategy of provoking a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine.
Russian media reports and video posted to social media indicated that an explosion occurred early on Monday morning at the Engels-2 airbase in Russia’s Saratov region, which hosts Tu-95 bombers that have taken part in cruise missile strikes against Ukraine.
Luke Harding looked at what the strikes in Russia mean for the war. Monday’s guerilla-style raid shows Ukraine’s tactical ingenuity in its bitter battle against Russia, he wrote. And Kyiv’s continuing capacity to surprise.
Vitali Klitschko plans for the worst in Kyiv
In his office in Kyiv’s city hall, mayor Vitali Klitschko is planning for the worst and hoping for the best, Peter Beaumont wrote this week. The previous day, as the sixth mass Russian missile strike against Ukrainian cities sent Kyiv’s residents to the bomb shelters and metro stations, no rockets had made it through to hit the capital.
On the mayor’s desk is a newspaper he has had produced and distributed around the city in recent days. Bearing his name, and the headline “We will overcome and win”, it lists all the emergency services in Kyiv that will be available in case of what should be unthinkable but isn’t: the failure of all power and services to a city of 3 million in the depths of Ukraine’s winter.
Across three densely printed pages are supermarkets with generators that will work, the post offices and banks, and arrangements for public transit. It lists the 45 underground metro stations that will remain open as shelters and provide phone charging and internet, as well as tips for surviving a prolonged blackout.
“It’s for the worst-case scenario,” says Klitschko, a former world champion boxer turned politician, picking up the paper. “We need to tell people what they need to do if the situation becomes critical and they don’t have internet and connection to media.”
Fighting intensifies in southern Kherson
The people of Nova Kakhovka on the east bank of the Dnieper River had grown accustomed to constant shelling, but in recent days they have been hearing machine gun fire as the war draws closer to what could be its next major battlefield. Julian Borger spoke to Zaporizhzhia residents; despite predictions that the conflict would slow down in the winter months, civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia through the last open crossing point on the frontlines say the fighting is escalating in the southern Kherson region as Ukrainian forces seek to keep the Russians on the retreat towards Crimea and beyond.
“It has been machine guns lately, not artillery,” said Anna, a 78-year-old from Nova Khakovka after arriving at a police checkpoint in Zaporizhzhia. “The windows were shaking, the house was shaking. We were afraid that everything could collapse at any moment.”
Below freezing on the frontline
Dan Sabbagh spent time with Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline as winter sets in.
“Temperatures in the frontline Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, under remorseless attack from the Russians, plunged to -11C (12.2F) this weekend, and at no point got above freezing. Gradually the mud and rain of late autumn will give way to snow and cold of -20C or worse. Yet both sides have their reasons to carry on fighting.
“The weather is a neutral party to the near-10-month war, but in winter it inevitably acts as a constraint. Simple operations take far longer to conduct in the cold, cover from foliage is reduced or eliminated, white camouflage is required when snow has arrived and more rations are needed because soldiers consume more calories.
“Shelter and warmth is vital, above all because the armies have to ensure soldiers can dry once they get wet, or they will risk hypothermia or frostbite. A report from Channel 4 News on the Donbas frontline concludes in the kind of well-prepared, deep-dug warm bunker required for winter troops, complete with a kitten to hunt down the inevitable mice.”
Brittney Griner freed in prisoner swap
Russia freed the jailed US basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday in a dramatic high-level prisoner exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” who had been held in a US prison for 12 years.
Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist whose imprisonment on drug charges brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees. She was arrested in February, convicted in August and sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony.
Joe Biden, who had made Griner’s release a top priority after she spent almost 10 months in jail on drug charges, said in an address from the White House he found her “in good spirits” when speaking after the swap in Abu Dhabi.
Griner’s wife, Cherelle, stood with Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and said she was “overwhelmed with emotion”.
