Thursday, November 23, 2023
1419 GMT –– Russia was 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 front lines, Ukrainian soldiers say.
Sitting in an indent –– surrounded on almost three sides by Russian forces –– Avdiivka has become a symbol of a grinding war in which neither side has made a decisive breakthrough in more than a year.
But despite having suffered steady losses in troops and equipment, Russia was showing no signs of abandoning its attempt to capture the former coal hub in Ukraine's industrial east.
"The fields are just littered with corpses," Oleksandr, a deputy of a Ukrainian battalion in the 47th mechanised brigade, told AFP news agency.
"They are trying to exhaust our lines with constant waves of attacks," he said, without providing his full name for security reasons.
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1609 GMT –– ‘2024 must become year when Ukraine throws Russia out of its skies’: Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that next year must become the year when his country throws Russia out of its skies.
“Since 2022, Ukraine has liberated more than half of the land that Russia has occupied. In 2023, Ukraine expelled the Russian fleet from most of the Black Sea. 2024 must become the year when Ukraine throws Russia out of its skies,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on X.
In his statement, Zelenskyy listed five reasons why strengthening Ukraine's air defence is the “best strategic security investment”.
1525 GMT –– Russian court fines Google over 'fakes' about Ukraine war -RIA
A Russian court fined Alphabet's Google on Thursday 4 million roubles ($44,582) for its failure to delete what the court called fake information about the course of Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.
Russia has repeatedly clashed with foreign technology companies over content, censorship, data and local representation in a simmering dispute that intensified after Russia started its offensive against Ukraine in February 2022.
1409 GMT –– Russia has sold nearly all its oil well above the West's price cap -govt official
Russia has succeeded in selling almost all of its oil well above a Western-imposed price cap of $60 per barrel, a Russian government official said on Thursday.
The European Union, G7 countries and Australia introduced the price cap on Russian oil last December, aiming to curb Russia's ability to finance the conflict in Ukraine.
"Even unfriendly countries note that the so-called price cap has not worked. More than 99% of oil traded well above the $60 per barrel ceiling," Vladimir Furgalsky, a Russian Energy Ministry official, told a round table discussion at the upper house of parliament.
Russia was forced to cut exports of oil and oil products immediately after the price cap was introduced as it struggled to find enough ships to transport all of its output.
But it then managed to place most of its exports with domestic or non-Western foreign shippers, which do not require Western insurance coverage.
1300 GMT –– Hungary set to receive millions in EU money despite Orban's threats to veto Ukraine aid
Hungary is set to receive 900 million euros ($981M) in European Union money, the EU's executive arm said, despite the Hungarian prime minister’s attempts to scupper the bloc’s support for Ukraine.
That money comes from the bloc’s REPowerEU program aimed at helping the 27 EU nations recover from the energy crisis that followed Russia’s offensive against Ukraine last year, and reduce their dependance to Russian fossil fuels.
EU leaders will meet in Brussels next month to discuss the opening of formal negotiations on Ukraine's future accession.
0952 GMT — Ukraine trying to repel Russian forces in Kharkiv amid increasing attacks – Kiev
Ukraine's army is trying to repel increasing attacks conducted by the Russian military in the eastern Kharkiv region.
Despite harsh winter conditions, clashes between Ukrainian and Russian forces have intensified notably in the direction of the city of Kupiansk, similar to those near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Marinka, Lyman, Vuhledar and other settlements.
The increasingly cold weather in the region, where snowfall has been reported and temperatures dropped below zero, has caused more difficult conditions for the soldiers on the front line.
"There are … clashes in the Kupiansk direction. Like (in) Bakhmut, there are … clashes in this direction, I think there is no difference. Now the situation is the same on the entire front line," a Ukrainian soldier, codenamed Monakh, said.
1113 GMT — Ukraine says 3 civilians killed by Russian shelling
Russian shelling killed three civilians in southeastern regions of Ukraine, Kiev authorities said, while a Russian television journalist was reported to have died from injuries he sustained in a Ukrainian drone attack.
Southern Ukraine's Kherson region received eight nighttime artillery barrages, killing a 42-year-old man in his apartment building and wounding another man, the Ukrainian presidential office said. Russian shelling also killed two people in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the office said.
Russian state media reported that TV journalist Boris Maksudov died after being wounded in a drone attack while working in southern Ukraine's Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia region.
1058 GMT — Russia sentences Ukrainian to 18 years over bomb plot
Russia sentenced a Ukrainian man to 18 years in prison for trying to blow up buildings in the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian city of Melitopol in a plot allegedly orchestrated by Kiev, state media said.
A military court in Russia's southern city of Rostov-on-Don found Dmitri Golubev guilty on various "international terrorism" charges for one explosion and two attempted blasts in Melitopol in August last year, Russian state media reported.
Prosecutors said Golubev planted an explosive device at the entrance to the regional traffic police headquarters, with the subsequent detonation damaging the building.
1055 GMT — Kremlin calls Russian war reporter’s death in alleged Ukrainian drone attack a 'big tragedy'
The Kremlin described the death of a Russian war reporter in an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Wednesday as a "big tragedy."
"This is truly a big tragedy. Each time the death of a journalist is a tragedy both for the team and for loved ones," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Rossiya-1 TV.
Peskov went on to say that the Kremlin does not expect to hear a reaction from the West on the death of the correspondent.
0915 GMT –– Russia boosts 'security' after Finland closes border points
Russia announced tightened security in its northern Murmansk region after Finland said it would close all but one border crossing between the two countries.
Helsinki said Wednesday the move follows a surge in attempted crossings by migrants seeking asylum in the EU country –– which Finland says is a destabilisation ploy by Russia.
"A decision has been taken to introduce a heightened state of readiness in the Murmansk region, and a number of additional measures to ensure the security of our residents," Murmansk governor Andrey Chibis said in a social media post.
He did not provide details.
0820 GMT — Russia says reporter dies after Ukraine drone attack
A journalist working for Russian state television has died from injuries sustained in a drone attack in Ukraine, the network said.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of attacking reporters. Last month, it said three correspondents from the Izvestia news outlet were injured by shelling in the Donetsk region.
"Boris Maksudov, a military correspondent for the Rossiya 24 TV channel, has died," Vladimir Solovyev, a prominent presenter on the state-controlled network announced on social media.
2330 GMT — Ukraine welcomes Western allies' air defence bloc
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his defence minister have welcomed the formation of a 20-nation "coalition" by Ukraine's Western allies to boost air defences, seen as a key element in the country's campaign against Russian forces.
Zelenskyy said the group, one of several devoted to specific areas of Ukraine's defence, was formed at a virtual meeting of the "Ramstein group" examining Ukraine's military needs.
Germany's defence ministry had earlier announced the formation of the group in a posting on X, formerly Twitter, with Germany and France taking on leading roles.
2152 GMT — Zelenskyy warns of 'difficult defence' in east as cold sets in
Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in, but forces in the south are still conducting offensive actions, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
Russian troops launched offensives on different sections of the front line in Ukraine's east this autumn, trying to advance on the devastated town of Avdiivka and in the northeast between the towns of Lyman and Kupiansk.
"Difficult weather, difficult defence on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskyy said on Telegram messenger.
Operations could be complicated by cold weather, with daytime temperatures of minus 5 degrees Celsius expected to dip as fighting moves to an attritional phase.
2057 GMT— Ukraine MP detained for offering bribe for funding
Ukrainian authorities have detained a deputy suspected of offering a bribe to get funding for a university, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the deputy offered $10,000 in Bitcoin to the head of the state reconstruction agency to get funding to repair buildings at the university where he is in charge. The prosecution department said in a social media post that a court had agreed to its request to place the suspect in detention.
The accused was not identified, but media reports named the deputy as Andrii Odarchenko, a member of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's ruling party. Media reports said Odarchenko had denied the charges and said he was the victim of political persecution.
2000 GMT — Nearly half of Americans think US is spending too much on Ukraine aid
As lawmakers in Washington weigh sending billions more in federal support to Kiev to help fight off Russian aggression, close to half of the US public thinks the country is spending too much on aid to Ukraine, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Those sentiments, driven primarily by Republicans, help explain the hardening opposition among conservative GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are rebuffing efforts from President Joe Biden to approve a new tranche of Ukraine aid, arguing that the money would be better spent for domestic priorities.
Yet opposition to aid is down slightly from where it was a month ago in another AP-NORC poll.
For our live updates from Wednesday (November 22), click here.
