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An elite Russian unit is escalating its use of drones in Donetsk, forcing the defenders to innovate.
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Jillian Kay Melchior
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Tag: Donetsk
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Opinion | Ukraine at the Rubicon
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Despair and destruction: Civilians in Ukraine’s eastern strongholds struggle as Russia advances
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By HANNA ARHIROVA
DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.
In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.
Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.
Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.
“(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,” said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin “will go all the way … I’m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.”
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An armoured vehicle drives on a road near Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
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An armoured vehicle drives on a road near Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Despair and destruction
Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow’s forces.
“They was always shooting,” Ivanova said. “You’d be standing there … and all you’d hear was the whistle of shells.”
She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones “like beetles” filled the sky, she said.
“I never thought I’d leave,” she added. “I was a stolid soldier, holding on. I’m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.”
For years now, Ivanova had watched the region’s cities fall: Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and others. But the war, she said, still felt far away, even as it closed in on her doorstep.
“I felt for those people,” she said. “But it wasn’t enough to make me leave.”
A blast near her building finally forced her out. The explosion bent her windows so badly she couldn’t shut them before fleeing. Her apartment remained wide open. She left her whole life behind in Kostiantynivka, the city where she was born.
“Please, stop it,” she pleaded, directing her appeal to world leaders as she sat in an evacuation hub shortly after fleeing. “It’s the poorest people who suffer the most. This war is senseless and stupid. We’re dying like animals — by the dozens.”
Living through it together
Olena Voronkova decided to leave Kostiantynivka earlier, in May, when she could no longer run her two businesses: a beauty salon and a cafe.
She and her family relocated to nearby Kramatorsk, which is so close yet, in many ways, far away, as she is no longer able to enter her hometown. It wasn’t the first loss she had suffered since the war began. In 2023, a rocket strike from a multiple-launch system severely damaged their house.
The move to Kramatorsk wasn’t by choice, she added, but “because the circumstances left us no other option.”
First came the mandatory evacuation orders. Then a curfew so strict they could only move around the city for four hours a day. Then came the floods of remote-controlled drones.
“We’re used to life in Donetsk region. We feel good here. Kramatorsk is familiar. A lot of people from our city moved here — even local municipal workers,” Voronkova said.
Not long after arriving in Kramatorsk, she opened a cafe that is nearly identical to the one she left behind. She said the space just happened to look similar. It has high white walls and ornate mirrors she brought from her beauty salon, which is now in the combat zone.
The cafe has since become a refuge for others who also fled Kostiantynivka.
“At first there was hope that maybe some homes would survive — that people might go back,” she said. “Now we see it’s unlikely anyone has anything left. The city is turning into another Bakhmut, Toretsk or Avdiivka. Everything is being destroyed.”
She described the mood as “heavy” because “people are losing hope” and it felt easier in Kramatorsk because everyone shared the same loss, which created a sense of connection and mutual support.
“No one really knows where to go next. Everyone sees that Russia isn’t stopping. And that’s where the hopelessness begins. No one has a direction anymore. The uncertainty is everywhere,” she said.
Seizing the day
War is slowly draining the life out of Kramatorsk, as if warning that it may be the next city to be reduced to rubble.
Daria Horlova still remembers it as a bustling place where, at 9 p.m., life in the central square was just getting started. Now it’s deserted at all hours and 9 p.m. is when a strict curfew begins. The city is regularly bombed thanks to its proximity to the front line about 21 kilometers (13 miles) east.
“It’s still terrifying — when something’s flying overhead or strikes nearby, especially when it hits the city,” the 18-year-old said. “You want to cry, but there are no emotions left. No strength.”
Horlova studies remotely at a local university that relocated to another region and works as a nail artist. One day, she hopes to open her own salon. For now, she and her boyfriend are stuck in limbo, unsure of what to do next.
“It’s terrifying that most of the Donetsk region is occupied — and that it was Russia who attacked,” she said. “That’s why it feels like everything could change at any moment. Just look at Kostiantynivka — not long ago, life there was normal. And now …”
To distract herself from the anxiety, and the difficult decision she might soon have to make to leave, Horlova tries to focus on what brings her joy in the moment.
She already was evacuated from Kramatorsk once, earlier in the war, and doesn’t want to repeat it.
Instead of dwelling on what the future could hold, she asked her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, to ink a large tattoo of a goat skull on her right leg, something she has dreamed about for years.
“I think you just have to do things — and do them as soon as you can,” she said. “Being here, I know this tattoo will be a memory of Kramatorsk, if I end up leaving.”
Vasilisa Stepanenko and Yehor Konovalov contributed to this report.
Originally Published:
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The Associated Press
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More than 20 dead in Russian attack on Ukrainian village, Zelensky says
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At least 21 have been killed in a Russian air strike on a village in eastern Ukraine, say local Ukrainian officials.
The victims were ordinary people collecting their pensions in the Donetsk settlement of Yarova, said President Volodymr Zelensky. Donetsk regional leader Vadym Filkashkin said emergency services were at the scene, and that as many people were wounded as killed.
Yarova is to the north of Sloviansk, one of the big cities in the region, and not far from the front line as Russian forces advance slowly in the east.
If confirmed, the death toll would be among the heaviest attacks on Ukrainian civilians in recent weeks, 42 months into Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Donetsk’s regional leader shared an image of the attack’s aftermath, parts of which are too graphic to show [Vadym Filashkin/Telegram]
At least 23 people were killed in overnight air strikes on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv at the end of August.
At the weekend Russia launched its biggest air assault of the war on Kyiv so far, hitting the main government building in the capital, in what Zelensky said was a “ruthless” attack aimed at prolonging the war.
Posting graphic footage of the attack on Yarova online, Zelensky said there were “no words” to describe the latest Russian strikes. There was no immediate response from Russia’s military.
Vadym Filashkin said the attack took place at 12:30 on Tuesday as pensions were being handed out.
Yarova sites on a key railway line in Donetsk, between Lyman and Izium. It is also only 6km (3.6 miles) away from the next village of Novoselivka, where Russian forces are closing in on the outskirts.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said another three people had died in earlier Russian shelling of settlements in Donetsk.
“The world must not remain silent,” Zelensky said, calling for a response from both the US, Europe and the G20 group of nations.
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Inside Donetsk as residents flee attacks on Ukrainian region Putin wants to control
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The Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine has long been in Moscow’s sights. Vladimir Putin reportedly wants to freeze the war in return for full control of it.
Russia already controls 70% of Donetsk and nearly all of neighbouring Luhansk and is making slow but steady advances.
I’m heading to the front-line Donetsk town of Dobropillia with two humanitarian volunteers, just 8km (five miles) from Russia’s positions. They’re on a mission to bring the sick, elderly and children to safer ground.
At first, it goes like clockwork. We speed into the town in an armoured car, equipped with rooftop drone-jamming equipment, hitting 130km/h (80mph). The road is covered in tall green netting which obscures visibility from above – protecting it from Russian drones.
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This is their second trip of the morning, and the streets are mostly empty. The few remaining residents only leave their homes to quickly collect supplies. Russian attacks come daily.
The town already looks abandoned and has been without water for a week. Every building we pass has been damaged, with some reduced to ruins.
In the previous five days, Laarz, a 31-year-old German, and Varia, a 19-year-old Ukrainian, who work for the charity Universal Aid Ukraine, have made dozens of trips to evacuate people.
Evacuees leave the town of Dobropillia in Donetsk, Ukraine [BBC]
A week earlier, small groups of Russian troops breached the defences around the town, sparking fears that the front line of Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt” – some of the most heavily defended parts of the Ukrainian front – could collapse.
Extra troops were rushed to the area and Ukrainian authorities say the situation has been stabilised. But most of Dobropillia’s residents feel it’s time to go.
Laarz and Varia make evacuation trips for the charity Universal Action Ukraine [BBC News]
As the evacuation team arrives, Vitalii Kalinichenko, 56, is waiting on the doorstep of his apartment block, with a plastic bag full of belongings in hand.
“My windows were all smashed, look, they all flew out on the second floor. I’m the only one left,” he says.
He’s wearing a grey t-shirt and black shorts, and his right leg is bandaged. Mr Kalinichenko points to a crater beyond some rose bushes where a Shahed drone crashed a couple of nights earlier, shattering his windows and cutting his leg. The engine from another drone lies in a neighbour’s garden.
As we are about to leave, Laarz spots a drone overhead and we take cover again under trees. His handheld drone detector shows multiple Russian drones in the area.
Varia holding a drone detector standing beside Dobropillia resident Vitalii Kalinichenko [BBC]
An older woman in a summer dress and straw hat is walking by with a shopping trolley. He warns her about the drone, and she quickens her pace. An explosion hits nearby, its sound echoing off the nearby apartment blocks.
But before we can attempt to leave, there is still another family to be rescued, just around the corner.
Laarz goes on foot to find them, switching off the idling vehicle’s drone-jamming equipment to save battery power. “If you hear a drone, it’s the two switches in the middle console, turn it on,” he says as he disappears around the corner. The jammer is only effective against some Russian drones.
A series of blasts hit the neighbourhood. A woman, out to fetch water with her dog, runs for cover.
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Laarz returns with more evacuees, and with drones still in the air above, drives out of town even faster than he arrived.
Inside the evacuation convoy, I sit beside Anton, 31. His mother stayed behind. She cried as he departed and he hopes she will leave too soon.
In war, front lines shift, towns are lost and won and lost again, but with Russia advancing and the fate of the region hanging on negotiations, this may be the final time Anton and the other evacuees see their homes.
Anton says he’s never left the town before. Over the roar of the engine, I ask him if Ukraine should relinquish Donbas – the resource-rich greater region made up of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“We need to sit at the negotiation table and after all resolve this conflict in a peaceful way. Without blood, without victims,” he says.
A mother says goodbye to her son before his evacuation [BBC News]
But Varia, 19, feels differently. “We can never trust Putin or Russia, whatever they are saying, and we have experience of that. If we give them Donbas, it won’t stop anything but only give Russia more room for another attack,” she tells me.
The situation in Donbas is increasingly perilous for Ukraine as Russia slowly but steadily advances. President Volodymyr Zelensky has scoffed at suggestions that it could be lost by the end of this year, predicting it would take four more years for Russia to fully occupy what remains.
But it’s unlikely Ukraine will recapture significant territory here without new weaponry or additional support from the West.
This part of Donetsk is critical to Ukraine’s defensive. If lost or given to Russia, neighbouring Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions – and beyond – would be at greater risk.
Injured people are transferred to field hospitals at night [BBC]
The cost of holding on is measured in Ukrainian soldiers’ lives and body parts.
Later on, I drive to a nearby field hospital under the cover of darkness. The drone activity never ceases, and the war injured, and the dead, can only be safely retrieved at night.
Russian casualties are far higher, perhaps three times as much or more, but it has a greater capacity to absorb losses than Ukraine.
The wounded begin to arrive, the cases growing steadily more serious as night stretches into morning. The casualties are from fighting in Pokrovsk, a city that Russia has been trying to seize for a year, and is now partially encircled. It’s a key city in Donetsk’s defence, and the fighting has been brutal.
The first man arrives conscious, a bullet wound to chest from a firefight. Next comes another man in his forties covered in shrapnel wounds. It took two days and three attempts to rescue him, such was the intensity of the fighting. Next a man whose right leg has been almost blown off entirely by a drone strike on the road from Pokrovsk to Myrnohrad.
Surgeon and Snr Lt Dima, 42, moves from patient to patient. This is a medical stabilisation unit, so his job is to patch up the injured as quickly as possible and send them on to a main hospital for further treatment. “It’s hard because I know I can do more, but I don’t have the time,” he tells me.
After all this carnage, I ask him too if Donbas should be surrendered to bring peace.
“We have to stop [the war], but we don’t want to stop it like this”, he says. “We want back our territory, our people and we have to punish Russia for what they did.”
He’s exhausted, casualties have been heavier, dozens a day, since Russia’s incursion, and the injuries are the worst the doctors have seen since the war began, mostly because of drones.
“We just want to go home to live in peace without this nightmare, this blood, this death,” he says.
A surgeon at the field hospital said that injuries are the worst the doctors have seen since the war began [BBC News]
On the drive out that afternoon, between fields of corn and sunflowers, miles of newly uncoiled barbed wire glint in the sunlight. They run alongside raised banks of red earth, deep trenches and neat lines of anti-tank dragon’s teeth concrete pyramids. All designed to slow any sudden Russian advance.
It is believed that Russia has over 100,000 troops standing by, waiting to exploit another opportunity like the earlier breaches around Dobropillia.
These new fortifications carved in the Ukrainian dirt chart a deteriorating situation here in Donetsk. What’s left of the region may yet be surrendered by diplomacy, but until then Ukraine, bloodied and exhausted, remains intent on fighting for every inch of it.
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Putin’s military executes soldiers who don’t obey orders: White House
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White House national security spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military of executing soldiers who don’t follow orders while serving in Ukraine.
Russia’s military has been accused before of killing its own troops. Along with Ukrainian military intelligence releasing multiple audio clips that it says are intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers talking about units turning on troops, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) in November reported on the presence of Russian “barrier troops” or “blocking units” that threaten to shoot retreating personnel.
While speaking to reporters, Kirby indicated that the United States has direct information of members of the Russia military executing disobedient troops.
“We have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders,” Kirby said. “We also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.”
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense via email for comment.
John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson, is pictured at the White House in Washington, D.C., while Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, inset, is shown at the Kremlin in Moscow. Kirby on Thursday accused Putin’s military of executing troops who do not follow orders.
Anna Moneymaker/SERGEI GUNEYE/AFP/Getty Images
Kirby’s comments came during a press briefing in which he discussed what he characterized as low morale in Russia’s ranks due to high casualty rates sustained while fighting in Avdiivka.
Russia’s armed forces have sunk heavy resources in an attempt to capture Avdiivka, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Kyiv’s military has claimed thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed and hundreds of pieces of military equipment destroyed during fighting over the settlement. (Newsweek is unable to independently verify the casualty figures reported by Kyiv.)
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank on Wednesday said Russia’s Avdiivka offensive had “made a confirmed advance” to the city’s northwest but added Putin’s forces around Avdiivka were unlikely to be able to encircle the city.
During Thursday’s press conference, Kirby also condemned Russian commanders for the alleged soldier executions.
“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric. But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective,” he said.
Kirby continued: “From the very beginning, we’ve been talking about poor command and control, poor logistics and sustainment. They can’t feed their guys in the field, for crying out loud. And now, again, they’re willing to shoot them for … not following orders.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Ukraine vows to hold on to Bakhmut despite Russian onslaught
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BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops on Wednesday defended positions in Bakhmut in eastern Ukrain e amid a relentless push by Russian forces to capture a city that has been turned into a wasteland by seven months of fighting.
Both sides claimed successes in what has become the longest-running battle since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.
Ukrainian officials said that Ukrainian Ground Forces shot down a Russian fighter jet near Bakhmut and made gains in northern parts of the city.
Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, which has spearheaded the Russian assault on the city, said in a social media post Wednesday that Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Zaliznyanskoye and are expanding the encirclement of Bakhmut.
The claims couldn’t be verified.
Full Coverage: PhotographyThe battle for Bakhmut intensified after Russian forces captured the nearby town of Soledar in January. Russian forces must go through Bakhmut to push deeper into parts of the Donetsk province they don’t yet control, though Western officials say that the capture of the city would have limited impact on the course of the war.
An assessment by the U.K. Defense Ministry over the weekend said that paramilitary units from the Wagner Group had seized eastern parts of Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city marking the front line of the fighting.
Russian troops have enveloped the city from three sides, leaving only a narrow corridor leading west. The only highway west has been targeted by Russian artillery fire, forcing Ukrainian defenders to rely increasingly on country roads, which are hard to use before the muddy ground dries.
Full Coverage: Russia-Ukraine warUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the situation in Bakhmut with top military and intelligence officials on Tuesday and all agreed on the need to hold and defend the city, the presidential office said.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Hilltop coal-mining town a tactical prize in Ukraine war
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a small coal-mining town on Ukraine’s eastern front line, a fight for strategic superiority is being waged in a battlefield steeped with symbolism as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears.
The town of Vuhledar — meaning “gift of coal” — has emerged as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province that would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces who hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.
Located on an elevated plane that is one of the few high-terrain spots in the area, its capture would be an important step for Russia to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines. Securing Vuhledar would give Ukraine a potential launching pad for future counter-offensives south.
Then there is the symbolic weight: Vuhledar is close to the administrative border of Donetsk province, and winning it would play into Russia’s greater aim of controlling the region as a whole.
“The center of gravity of the Russian military effort is in Donetsk, and Vuhledar is basically the southern flank of that,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relation’s Berlin office.
The grinding fight to win the area has cost Russia manpower and weapons, as Ukrainians continue to hold up defensive lines. Russia sends battalion-sized scout groups to probe Ukrainian lines and shoot artillery toward their positions with an eye to pushing north toward the critical N15 highway, a key supply route.
In remarks this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian troops were advancing “with success” in Vuhledar. Meanwhile, a British defense intelligence briefing said Russia’s aim was to capture unoccupied areas of Ukrainian-held Donetsk but it was unlikely to build up the forces required to change the outcome of the war.
Vuhledar’s pre-war population of 14,000 has dwindled to about 300. The majority of the town’s residents worked in the coal mine and nearby factories before the war.
Olha Kyseliova, who was recently evacuated, worked in a brick factory before the fighting upended her life.
Russian forces ramped up attacks beginning on Jan. 24, residents said. That day, a missile tore through Kyseliova’s nine-story building. She was sheltering in the basement with her three children and emerged to find a gaping hole through the roof of her third-floor apartment.
That was the moment she decided she had to leave her hometown. “I cried the entire way out, I didn’t want to leave,” she said.
Three Ukrainian brigades are positioned in Vuhledar and on the outskirts of the town. The Associated Press spoke to five commanders in units from all three, who provided only their first names in keeping with Ukraine’s military policy. Russia’s 155 Marine infantry troops are positioned just four kilometers (two miles) away in Vuhledar’s suburbs.
For both sides, the town is tactically important.
“It’s one of the main logistics points of the Donbas region, and also one of the main points of elevation,” said Maksym, the deputy commander of a Ukrainian marine infantry battalion. “By capturing Vuhledar, Russians can easily occupy the entire Donetsk region.”
Seizing Vuhledar would enable Russia to push forward and threaten Ukrainian supply lines feeding into the fierce Marinka front line to the north, said Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations. For Ukraine, Vuhledar would be a launching pad for future counter-offensives toward Mariupol and Berdiansk.
From their perch in the town, Ukrainian forces can see into Russian lines and have so far been able to repel Russian attempts to encircle Vuhledar. Columns of Russian tanks and armored vehicles transporting infantrymen continuously assault and attempt to break Ukrainian defenses. Aviation, rockets and artillery target the town.
“But with our fighters and anti-tank equipment their attempts have not been successful,” said Maksym, the Ukrainian deputy commander. “The situation is strained, but controlled.”
Similar to other front lines along the east, the Russians are losing scores of infantrymen in an attempt to tire and weaken Ukrainian defensive lines. Serhii, the commander of a Ukrainian intelligence unit, said he saw Russian soldiers sent straight through fields mined by the Ukrainians following Russia’s capture of the village of Pavlivka, south of Vuhledar, in November.
“They de-mine our fields by using their own people,” he said.
Ukrainian commanders said some of their units are suffering from dire ammunition shortages.
That view was not shared across brigades, suggesting some are better supplied than others. Taras, the commander of a mortar unit, said his forces were suffering very serious shortages. Faced with orders to target an enemy position, he said, “I have just two or three rounds of ammunition to do it. It’s nothing.”
Two commanders of a brigade inside Vuhledar reported the Russians hurled gas-laden projectiles that caused severe disorientation for hours, and burning of the throat and skin. Higher-ranking commanders did not comment on the type of gas used and said an investigation was ongoing.
“They are probing and testing us across the eastern front line, including in Vuhledar,” said Oleksandr, a commander who was recently rotated out of the town. “They are trying to find our points of weakness.”
For now, Russia’s activities around Vuhledar are not “operationally significant,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. More combat power is required to execute breakthroughs that would achieve the stated aim of the Russian invasion — the capture of the entire Donetsk province.
Even in the event of victory in Vuhledar, Russia would still need a lot of combat power to push north. Three months after capturing the village of Pavlivka in November, Russian forces have yet to make breakthroughs in Vuhledar, which is only four kilometers — a six-minute drive — away.
“It’s not operationally significant because Russians will still have to fight for more territory to make a meaningful disruption of Ukrainian ground lines of communication to western Donetsk,” Stepanenko said. Vuhledar is just “one settlement on their way, where they are already suffering significant losses and where they already seem to have suffered losses in the area before.”
Meanwhile, the last of Vuhledar’s residents said they are staying put.
Oleksandra Havrylko, police press officer for the Donetsk region, pleads with those who remain to leave the devastated area. Most spend their days hiding in basements, coming out when there are lulls in fighting to charge phones and gather supplies in the town’s points of refuge, called “invincibility centers”.
All but one of the town’s children have been evacuated. The father of a 15-year-old, the last remaining minor in the town, refuses to part with his son or leave the area, she said.
“There are people in the city who don’t want to be evacuated, we tried many times,” she said. Most have never ventured far from their hometown.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Ukraine soccer club Shakhtar Donetsk launches $25M project for Mariupol soldiers after selling star player | CNN
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CNN
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Ukrainian soccer club Shakhtar Donetsk has launched a $25M project for Mariupol soldiers and their families, the club announced Monday.
The launch of the ‘Heart of Azovstal’ initiative comes after the club sold star player Mykhailo Mudryk to English Premier League side Chelsea.
“I am allocating the $25 million (UAH 1 billion) today to help our soldiers, defenders and their families. The money will be used to cover different needs – from providing medical and prosthetic treatment and psychological support to meeting specific requests,” Shakhtar president Rinat Akhmetov said in a statement.
“Their acts of bravery are unparalleled in modern history. It is them, their sacrifice and courage that helped contain the enemy in the first months of the war and let all of us feel the inevitability of the Victory of Ukraine now,” Akhmetov added.
Shakhtar said they will receive a Ukrainian record-breaking transfer fee of $75M for the 22-year-old with an additional $35M expected as a bonus payment, the club confirmed in a statement Sunday.
Mudryk scored three goals for Shakhtar in the Champions League group stages this season before the team was eliminated.
Many of Europe’s top clubs were interested in securing Mudryk’s signature but Chelsea ultimately won the race.
Akhmetov added that he is confident that Ukraine will win the war against Russia, and one day “we will play a friendly against Chelsea at Donbass Arena in a Ukrainian Donetsk.”
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Ukraine claims hundreds of Russian troops killed in strike; Moscow says 63 died | CNN
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CNN
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An apparent Ukrainian strike in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine appears to have killed a large number of Russian troops, according to the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian military bloggers and former officials.
The strike took place just after midnight on Sunday, New Year’s Day, on a vocational school housing Russian conscripts in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, according to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts.
The attack has led to vocal criticism of Moscow’s military from pro-Russian military bloggers, who claimed that the troops lacked protection and were reportedly being quartered next to a large cache of ammunition, which is said to have exploded when Ukrainian HIMARS rockets hit the school.
The Ukrainian military claimed that around 400 Russian soldiers were killed and further 300 were wounded, without directly acknowledging a role. CNN cannot independently confirm those numbers or the weapons used in the strike. Some pro-Russian military bloggers have also estimated that the number of dead and wounded could run in the hundreds.
The Russian defense ministry on Monday acknowledged the attack and claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died, which would make it one of the deadliest single episodes of the war for Moscow’s forces.
Video reportedly from the scene of the attack circulated widely on Telegram, including on an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of smoking rubble, in which almost no part of the building appears to be standing.
“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”
The Russian defense ministry said the Ukrainian attack used US-made HIMARS rockets.
Daniil Bessonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”
“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bessonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”
A Russian propagandist who blogs about the war effort on Telegram, Igor Girkin, claimed that the building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.
“Nearly all the military equipment, which stood close to the building without the slightest sign of camouflage, was also destroyed,” Girkin said. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”
Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline, calling them “unlearned in principle” and unwilling to listen to warnings about putting equipment and personnel so close together in HIMARS range. Girkin was previously minister of defense of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, and was found guilty by a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Sergey Markov, another pro-Russian military blogger, said there was “a great deal of sloppiness” on the part of the Russian command.
Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”
“As you can see, despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, hence the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might have not happened.”
Donetsk has been held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014 and it is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow sought to annex in October in violation of international law.
The news comes after the Ukrainian military claimed that more than 700 Russian soldiers had been killed Saturday, but did not specify where.
Russian forces “lost 760 people killed just yesterday, (and) continue to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut,” the military’s general staff said Sunday.
Russian units have been pressing an offensive towards the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk for months but have suffered heavy losses as Ukrainian forces have targeted them in what is largely open rural territory.
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine over the weekend as fresh rounds of Russian missile strikes hit several regions. The attacks killed at least six people in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions, while a man was injured early Monday.
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Putin claims Moscow ready for Ukraine talks as attacks go on
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KYIV, Ukraine — President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine even as the country faced more attacks from Moscow — a clear sign that peace wasn’t imminent.
Putin said in a state television interview, excerpts of which were released on Sunday afternoon that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process.”
He said that “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them” — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month old invasion kept losing momentum.
Putin also repeated that Moscow has “no other choice” and said he believed the Kremlin was “acting in the right direction.”
“We’re defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people,” he said.
Putin’s remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue. A country-wide air raid alert was announced twice on Sunday alone, and three missiles in the afternoon hit the city of Kramatorsk in the partially occupied Donetsk region, local officials reported.
The missiles hit an industrial area of the city, and there weren’t any casualties, according to the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko. Kyrylenko said that the city of Avdiivka was also attacked on Sunday with six rounds of shelling, and a woman was wounded there.
Elsewhere in the front-line region, around the city of Bakhmut, where fierce battles have been underway in recent weeks, the Russian forces were struggling to keep up the pace of their offensive, a U.S.-based think tank reported this weekend.
“Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to assess whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its recent update.
The think tank cited Russian military bloggers, who it said have recently acknowledged “that Ukrainian forces in the Bakhmut area have managed to slightly slow down the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements.”
Sources on Ukrainian social media “previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut” around Dec. 21, the report added.
“Russian forces will likely struggle to maintain the pace of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may seek to initiate a tactical or operational pause,” the institute concluded.
A day before, a deadly Russian attack on the southern city of Kherson, retaken by Ukrainian forces last month, killed and wounded scores of people.
The Russian forces shelled Ukrainian-held areas of the partially occupied Kherson region 71 times over the past 24 hours, including 41 attacks on the city of Kherson, the region’s Ukrainian governor Yaroslav Yanushevich reported on Sunday.
A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. Yanushevich said that 64 more have been wounded.
In the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, the city of Nikopol was shelled overnight from heavy artillery, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. No casualties have been reported.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Ukraine launches ‘most massive strike’ on occupied Donetsk region since 2014, Russia-installed mayor says | CNN
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CNN
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Ukrainian forces have unleashed the biggest attack on the occupied Donetsk region since 2014, according to a Russia-installed official, in the wake of heavy fighting in the east of the country.
Donetsk has been held by Russian-backed separatists for eight years and it is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow attempted to annex in October, in violation of international law.
“At exactly 7 a.m. the (Ukrainians) subjected the center of Donetsk (city) to the most massive strike since 2014,” the Moscow-appointed mayor, Aleksey Kulemzin, posted on Telegram.
“Forty rockets from BM-21 ‘Grad’ MLRS were fired at civilians in our city,” he said Thursday, adding that a key intersection in Donetsk city center had come under fire.
Kulemzin shared photographs on Telegram of damage to residential and commercial buildings and a cathedral.
There have been no immediate reports of casualties, according to Russian state media.
CNN cannot independently confirm Kulemzin’s claims.
The war in Ukraine ramped up further south as Russia also launched fresh assaults on Kherson overnight, after a wave of fatal shelling in the region earlier this week. Ukrainian forces retook control of the city last month in one of the most significant breakthroughs of the war to date.
The city was hit 86 times with “artillery, MLRS, tanks, mortars and UAVs,” in the past 24 hours, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration.
Ongoing shelling from Moscow has killed at least two people on Thursday and wounded another three people, Yaroslav Yanushevych said on Telegram.
“One of (the victims) was a volunteer, a member of the rapid response team of the international organization. During the shelling, they were on the street, they were fatally wounded by fragments of enemy shells,” he added.
Yanushevych added that three people were killed and 13 injured, including a 8-year-old boy, on Wednesday.
The ramped-up strikes in Donetsk and Kherson took place against the backdrop of a harsh winter season in Ukraine inflamed by wide-ranging power outages, caused by Russia’s targeting of critical infrastructure, and a grinding war of attrition on the battlefield.
The strikes in Kherson left the city “completely disconnected” from power supplies, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration, Yanushevych.
“The enemy hit a critical infrastructure facility. Shell fragments damaged residential buildings and the place where the medical aid and humanitarian aid distribution point is located,” Yanushevych later said in a Telegram video on Thursday.
Meanwhile, further west Kyiv received machinery and generators from the United States to help strengthen the Ukrainian capital’s power infrastructure amid the widespread energy deficits.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the city “received machinery and generators from the U.S. Government to operate boiler houses and heat supply stations.”
The Energy Security Project, run by USAID, delivered four excavators and over 130 generators, Klitschko said on Telegram. All equipment was free of charge.
This week, the Kremlin also appeared to rebuff Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace solution that involved asking Russia to start withdrawing troops from Ukraine this Christmas – as the war approaches the 10-month mark.
“The Ukrainian side needs to take into account the realities that have developed over all this time,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday in response to Zelensky’s three-step proposal.
“And these realities indicate that the Russian Federation has new subjects,” he said, referring to four areas Russia has claimed to have annexed, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
“Without taking these new realities into account, any progress is impossible,” Peskov added.
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Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices
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KYIV, Ukraine — The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday for a lower price cap on Russian oil than the one agreed to by Ukraine’s Western supporters, while Russian authorities called the $60-per-barrel cap harmful to free, stable markets.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on social media that the price ceiling set by the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and the United States on Friday didn’t go far enough. The cap is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.
“It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Yermak wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil “will continue to be in demand” and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy’s Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”
The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.
In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.
Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”
Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city.
The other regions annexed in violation of international law are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.
The mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.
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Inna Varenytsia in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices
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KYIV, Ukraine — The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday for a lower price cap on Russian oil than the one agreed to by Ukraine’s Western supporters, while Russian authorities called the $60-per-barrel cap harmful to free, stable markets.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on social media that the price ceiling set by the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and the United States on Friday didn’t go far enough. The cap is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.
“It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Yermak wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil “will continue to be in demand” and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy’s Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”
The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.
In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.
Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”
Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city.
The other regions annexed in violation of international law are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.
The mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.
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Inna Varenytsia in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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‘Stock up on blankets’: Ukrainians brace for horrific winter
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine could face rolling blackouts across the country through March, an energy expert said, due to what another official described Tuesday as the “colossal” damage done to Ukraine‘s power grid by relentless Russian airstrikes. Ukrainians are being told to stock up on supplies, evacuate hard-hit areas — or even think about leaving the country altogether.
Sergey Kovalenko, the CEO of private energy provider DTEK Yasno, said the company was under instructions from Ukraine’s state grid operator to resume emergency blackouts in the areas it covers, including the capital Kyiv and the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
“Although there are fewer blackouts now, I want everyone to understand: Most likely, Ukrainians will have to live with blackouts until at least the end of March,” Kovalenko warned in a Facebook post.
“I think we need to be prepared for different options, even the worst ones. Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about what will help you wait out a long shutdown,” he said, addressing Ukrainian residents.
Russia has been pummeling Ukraine’s power grid and other infrastructure from the air for weeks, as the war approaches its nine-month milestone. That onslaught has caused widespread blackouts and deprived millions of Ukrainians of electricity, heat and water.
“This winter will be life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine,” said Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, due to the lack of power and Ukraine’s damaged health facilities.
Temperatures commonly stay below freezing in Ukraine in the winter, and snow has already fallen in many areas, including Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities have started evacuating civilians from recently liberated sections of the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions out of fear that the winter will be too hard to survive.
Kovalenko said even if no more Russian airstrikes occur, scheduled outages will be needed across Ukraine to ensure that power is evenly distributed across the country’s battered energy grid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian missile strikes have damaged more than 50% of the country’s energy facilities.
“The scale of destruction is colossal” on the power grid from the Russian barrage last week, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the CEO of Ukrenergo, the state-owned power grid operator, told Ukrainian TV on Tuesday.
He said Ukraine has “practically no intact thermal (or) hydroelectric power plants” following the large-scale attack by Moscow on Nov. 15.
Also Tuesday, the Kyiv regional authorities said more than 150 settlements were enduring emergency blackouts due to the onset of winter weather, including snowfall and high winds. More than 70 repair teams have been deployed to restore power across the province.
The battle for terrain has continued unabated despite the deteriorating weather conditions, with Ukrainian forces pressing against Russian positions as part of a weeks-long counteroffensive and Moscow’s forces keeping up shelling and missile strikes.
In a key battlefield development, a Ukrainian official acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces are attacking Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit, which is a gateway to the Black Sea basin and parts of the southern Kherson region that are still under Russian control.
Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian army’s Operational Command South, said in televised remarks that Ukrainian forces are “continuing a military operation” in the area.
The Kinburn Spit is Russia’s last outpost in Ukraine’s southern Mykolayiv region, directly west of Kherson. Ukrainian forces recently liberated other parts of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Moscow has used the Kinburn Spit as a staging ground for missile and artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions in the Mykolaiv province, and elsewhere along the Ukrainian-controlled Black Sea coast.
Ukraine recently recaptured the city of Kherson, on the western bank of the Dnieper River, and surrounding areas.
Recapturing the Kinburn Spit could help Ukrainian forces push into territory that Russia still holds in the Kherson region “under significantly less Russian artillery fire” than directly crossing the Dnieper, a Washington-based think tank said. The Institute for the Study of War added that control of the area would help Kyiv alleviate Russian strikes on Ukraine’s southern seaports and allow Ukraine to increase its naval activity in the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s presidential office said Tuesday that at least eight civilians were killed and 16 were injured over the previous 24 hours, as Moscow’s forces once again used drones, rockets and heavy artillery to pound eight Ukrainian regions.
In the eastern Donetsk region, fierce battles continued around the city of Bakhmut, where the Kremlin’s forces are keen to clinch a victory after weeks of embarrassing military setbacks. Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko also said Russia launched missiles at the city of Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian military hub, and on the strategic city of Avdiivka.
He added that power and communications were nonexistent in most of the Donetsk region.
According to Ukraine’s presidential office, one civilian was killed and three others wounded after Russia shelled the city of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces recaptured on Nov. 10.
Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the war has killed at least 16,784 civilians and injured 10,189, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates.
But U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated earlier this month that some 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded.
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Follow all AP stories about the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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UK PM Sunak makes surprise trip to Kyiv, boosts defense aid
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KYIV, Ukraine — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised 125 anti-aircraft guns and other air-defense technology as he made an unannounced visit Saturday — his first — to Ukraine’s snow-blanketed capital for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The air-defense package, which Britain valued at 50 million pounds ($60 million), comes as Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power grid and other key infrastructure from the air, causing widespread blackouts for millions of Ukrainians amid frigid weather.
The package includes radar and other technology to counter the Iran-supplied exploding drones that Russia has used against Ukrainian targets. It comes on top of a delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles that Britain announced earlier this month.
The U.K. has been one of the staunchest Western backers of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Speaking alongside Zelenskyy, Sunak noted that the U.K. has given 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in military aid and pledged: “We will do the same again next year.”
“Your homes, your hospitals, your power stations are being destroyed,” Sunak said in announcing the new air-defense package. “You and your people are paying a heavy price in blood.”
Speaking through a translator, Zelenskyy said Russian strikes have damaged around half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
As snowflakes fell, Zelenskyy greeted Sunak at a presidential palace for their talks. He called the two countries “the strongest of allies.” Walking in the snow, they also inspected captured Russian tanks and other destroyed and rusting military hardware used by the invasion forces that are displayed in a Kyiv square.
“With friends like you by our side, we are confident in our victory. Both of our nations know what it means to stand up for freedom,” the Ukrainian leader said on Twitter.
Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who stepped down in July amid ethics scandals, won wide praise in Ukraine for his backing and made repeated visits to Kyiv. Sunak is keen to reassure Ukraine’s leaders that there will be no change of stance under his leadership, although when he was U.K. Treasury chief under Johnson he was considered resistant to demands for higher defense spending.
“The courage of the Ukrainian people is an inspiration to the world,” Sunak said. “In years to come, we will tell our grandchildren of your story.”
He pledged that Britain “will stand with you until Ukraine has won the peace and security it needs and deserves and then we will stand with you as you rebuild your great country.”
Sunak also laid flowers at a memorial for the war dead, lit a candle at a memorial for victims of a deadly Soviet-era famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, and met first responders at a fire station, his office said.
Sunak’s visit came in the wake of a major recent battlefield success for Ukraine: the recapture of the southern city of Kherson.
The restoration of rail connections brought further joy Saturday to Kherson’s residents, who excitedly waited for the first train from Kyiv.
“This is the beginning of a new life,” said 74-year-old Ludmila Olhouskaya, who didn’t have anyone to meet off the train but went to the station to show support. “Or rather, the revival of a former one.”
On the battlefield, Russian forces launched 10 airstrikes, 10 missile strikes and 42 rocket attacks on Ukraine in the last day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday.
Russia is pressing an offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, and Ukraine reported heavy fighting around the city of Bakhmut, the town of Avdiivka and the village of Novopavlivka.
Russian forces claimed to have repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to take back the settlements of Pershotravneve, Kyslivka and Krokhmalne in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province.
Ukrainian forces said they killed or wounded scores of Russian soldiers during an attack on the village of Mykhailivka in the southern Kherson region, and the wounded were taken to hospitals in Crimea. The claim could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian forces also reported they conducted deadly strikes on the Kinburn Spit in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv province, a key site for Russian electronic warfare.
Russia kept up its strikes on critical infrastructure, with a rocket attack overnight causing a fire at a key industrial facility in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to the region’s chief. Some parts of the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia were left without heat.
The head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm told the BBC that Ukrainians who can afford it should consider leaving the country to relieve pressure on its war-damaged power system.
“If they can find an alternative place to stay for another three or four months, it will be very helpful to the system,” said Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK. “If you consume less, then hospitals with injured soldiers will have a guaranteed power supply.”
In Poland, a funeral was held Saturday for one of the two men who died when a missile landed there this week, according to the state news agency PAP. A military honor guard and Polish and Ukrainian representatives joined the man’s family and members of the community.
NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance have both said that the missile strike in an eastern farming region appeared to be unintentional and was probably launched by air defenses in neighboring Ukraine. Russia had been bombarding Ukraine at the time.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense noted Saturday that Russia conducted its largest ever-debt issuance in a single day, raising $13.6 billion on Wednesday. It said debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defense spending, which has increased significantly in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February.
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Lawless reported from London. Elise Morton in London and Sam Mednick in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this story.
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Follow all AP stories about the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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Russian troops slam generals over ‘incomprehensible battle’ that reportedly killed 300 in Donetsk | CNN
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CNN
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Russian troops have denounced an “incomprehensible battle” in Donetsk after apparently sustaining heavy losses during a week of intense fighting in the key eastern region of Ukraine.
Moscow has been trying to break through Kyiv’s defenses around the town of Pavlivka for at least the past seven days, but it seems to have made little progress with as many as 300 men killed in action, according to an open letter published on a prominent Russian military blog on Monday.
The men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines launched stinging criticism against a senior Russian official in a rare display of defiance, accusing authorities of “hiding” the number of casualties “for fear of being held accountable.”
The letter, purportedly sent from the front lines to a regional Russian governor, came amid Moscow’s shaky offensive in a region President Vladimir Putin claimed to have illegally annexed just over a month ago.
“Once again we were thrown into an incomprehensible battle by General Muradov and his brother-in-law, his countryman Akhmedov, so that Muradov could earn bonuses to make him look good in the eyes of Gerasimov (Russia’s Chief of the General Staff),” the men said in the memo, sent to the governor of Primorsky Krai.
“As a result of the ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great commanders’ we lost about 300 men, dead and wounded, with some MIA over the past four days.
“We lost 50% of our equipment. That’s our brigade alone. The district command together with Akhmedov are hiding these facts and skewing the official casualty statistics for fear of being held accountable.”
They implored Governor Oleg Kozhemyako: “For how long will such mediocrities as Muradov and Akhmedov be allowed to continue to plan the military actions just to keep up appearances and gain awards at the cost of so many people’s lives?”
Russian military commentators have also criticized the army’s approach in Donetsk.
“The situation in Pavlivka has been discussed at the highest level for several days, and the blood keeps spilling,” Aleksandr Sladkov, a Russian military journalist working for All-Russian State Television and Radio, said on Telegram.
“Troops say that there is a dilemma now: exhausted units cannot be withdrawn without fresh ones being brought in. There are no fresh units and no possibility of withdrawal and replacement due the constant firing,” Russian military journalist Alexey Sukonkin, also posted on Telegram.
“Why did we retreat from Pavlivka and have to recapture it now?” Aleksander Khodakovsky, a Russian-backed commander from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said in criticism of Moscow’s tactical approach to the region.
Khodakovsky said Russian troops had been using basements as defensive positions, which meant they had not seen a flanking movement by the Ukrainians.
“That’s why quite a few Marines, including company commanders, were taken prisoner then. Not because they were weak in spirit, but because they were held hostage by their organization of defenses,” Khodakovsky said, adding that Ukrainian reconnaissance troops had used high-rise buildings in nearby Vuhledar and cameras fixed to the top of mine shafts to guide artillery strikes.
“The defenders of Pavlivka will again be taken hostage. Supplies and rotations will be difficult, it will be impossible to move through Pavlivka,” he said.
CNN cannot verify how many soldiers signed the letter nor their ranks, but Governor Kozhemyako confirmed he had received a letter from the unit.
“We contacted our Marine commanders on the front lines. These are guys who have been in combat since the beginning of the operation,” the governor said on Telegram.
Kozhemyako added the combat commander had emphasized that the deaths of the (Primorsky) troops were considerably exaggerated.
“I also know at first hand that our fighters showed at Pavlivka, as well as during the whole special military operation, true heroism and unprecedented courage. We inflicted serious damage on the enemy.”
Kozhemyako said the complaint made by the soldiers had been sent to the military prosecutor’s office.
Russia’s defense ministry issued a rare public response to criticism of the military operation in Donetsk, denying that its forces suffered “high, pointless losses in people and equipment.”
Russia’s losses in the area of Vuhledar and Pavlivka in the Donetsk region “do not exceed 1% of the combat strength and 7% of the wounded, a significant part of whom have already returned to duty,” the ministry claimed Monday, Russian state media agency TASS reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the fierce battle for Donetsk “remains the epicenter of the biggest madness of the occupiers” and refuted Kozhemyako’s claims that Moscow’s losses were “not that big.”
“They are dying in hundreds every day,” Zelensky added. “The ground in front of the Ukrainian positions is literally littered with the bodies of the occupiers.”
Noting that the governor was some 9,000 kilometers (around 5,500 miles) from the frontlines, Zelensky said: “The governor probably can see better from there how many military men and in what way are being sent for slaughter from his region. Or he was simply ordered to lie.”
Social media and drone videos in the past few days show numerous Russian tanks and other armored vehicles being struck around Pavlivka, which is about 50 kilometers southwest of Donetsk and has been on the front lines for several months.
The Ukrainian military released footage showing two Russian T-72B tanks and three BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles struck by Ukrainian artillery and anti-tank systems, with senior officials referencing repelled attacks of intense shelling in the area.
“The enemy is losing the opportunity to implement their plans,” Oleksii Hromov, deputy head of Ukraine’s Operations Directorate of the General Staff, said Thursday.
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Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power
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KYIV, Ukraine — The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country’s energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.
“We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Sunday that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. He called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships and “we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than now.”
Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region.
Rolling blackouts also were planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.
Kyiv plans to deploy about 1,000 heating points, but it’s unclear if that would be enough for a city of 3 million people.
As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south. Residents of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible, Ukraine’s military said Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine’s army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately.
Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to seize back the southern city of Kherson, which was captured during the early days of the invasion. In September, Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.
The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city.
Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they’re leaving when in fact they’re digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Forces, told state television.
“There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.
Russian forces are also digging in in a fiercely contested region in the east, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow’s illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.
The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region’s Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.
“The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko told state television.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic there was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.
Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia’s launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, according to Zelenskyy’s office. The strikes killed two people and wounded six.
In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
The front line is now on Bakhmut’s outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar, is taking a more visible role in the war. In a statement Sunday he announced the funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage” on Russian soil. The training centers are in addition to a military technology center the group said it was opening in St. Petersburg.
In Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office, told local media.
DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated, he said.
In one sliver of good news, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Saturday, October, 29. Russia’s War On Ukraine: Daily News And Information From Ukraine
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Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 248.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
During the day, the Russian Federation lost more than 500 military personnel, 19 tanks and 23 armored vehicles, 1 plane and 1 helicopter, and 5 drones in the war against Ukraine, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported. According to the general staff, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army has lost more than 70,000 personnel, 2,659 tanks, 273 aircraft, 252 helicopters and 351 cruise missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is preparing for the notion that the current Russian leadership will look for any new opportunities to continue the war. “Although Russia is trying to increase the pressure on our positions by using mobilized people, they are so poorly prepared and equipped, so ruthlessly used by the command that it allows us to suggest that Russia may soon need a new wave of sending people to war,” he mentioned.
During the 7 months of the full-scale war against Ukraine, more than 65,000 tons of ammunition were exported from Belarus to Russia. According to data published by the community of railway workers of Belarus, the maximum amount of ammunition was exported in April, at 22,534 tons (689 wagons) per month. Since July, the growth of supplies has been recorded again. In September 2022, they exported 14,479 tons (442 wagons). In addition to this, Belarussian president Aleksandr Lukashenko transferred tanks and other equipment to Russia. Only in the last few weeks, at least 94 T-72A tanks and 36-44 “Urals” have arrived in the Russian Federation,” reported the Telegram channel that monitors military activity in the territory of Belarus, Belarusian Hajun.
52 Ukrainian defenders returned from Russian captivity. The defenders of Azovstal and Mariupol, those who were captured by the Russians in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kyiv regions, Snake Island (also known as Zmiinyi Island) and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, are returning home, reports the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. As a result of the exchange, the Ukrainian side managed to return soldiers and officers, sailors, and medics. The youngest released recently turned 19, the oldest, 56. “The large exchange of ‘all for all’ doesn’t suit the aggressor country Russia yet, but the Ukrainian authorities are working on this issue,” said Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights commissioner of Ukraine.
Donetsk Region. According to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, on October 28 the Russians killed 3 civilians of the Donetsk region. Another 8 people were injured. The Ukrainian police also documented 29 artillery or missile strikes in the region. During the day, the Russian army attacked 15 settlements with artillery, BM-21 Grad, BM-27 Uragan, and mortars. Infrastructural objects and private houses were damaged.
Dnipropetrovsk Region. Russian troops shelled three communities — Nikopolska, Marhanetska and Myrivska. According to Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, the city of Nikopol was the most affected. “A 39-year-old man was injured there, currently he is in a moderate condition,” said Reznichenko. Eight high-rise and private buildings, several shops, a furniture factory, a hotel, a gas pipeline and electricity networks were damaged in Nikopol.
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Katya Soldak, Forbes Staff
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Russians said to be clearing Ukrainian region’s hospitals
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops moved large numbers of sick and wounded comrades from hospitals in southern Ukraine‘s Kherson region, Ukrainian military officials reported Saturday as their forces fought to retake a province overrun by invading soldiers early in the war.
Kremlin-installed authorities in the mostly Russian-occupied region previously urged civilians to leave the city of Kherson, the region’s capital. The Moscow-appointed authorities in Kherson also were reported this week to have joined tens of thousands of residents who fled to other Russia-held areas ahead of an expected Ukrainian advance.
“The so-called evacuation of invaders from the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region, including from medical institutions, continues,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a morning update. “All equipment and medicines are being removed from Kherson hospitals.”
The military’s claims could not be independently verified. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a nightly video address Friday that the Russians were “dismantling the entire health care system” in Kherson and other occupied areas.
“The occupiers have decided to close medical institutions in the cities, take away equipment, ambulances. just everything,” Zelenskyy said. “They put pressure on the doctors who still remained in the occupied areas for them to move to the territory of Russia.”
Kherson is one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and where he subsequently declared martial law. The others are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Elsewhere on Saturday, at least two Russian ships suffered damage in a major port in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukraine and Russia offered different versions of what happened and who was to blame.
The Russian Defense Ministry said two ships received “minor damage” during an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on navy and civilian vessels docked in Sevastopol at 4:20 a.m. The city, Crimea’s largest, hosts the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The ministry said 16 drones were used in the attack and that Russian forces had “repelled” them. Earlier Saturday, the Kremlin-installed governor of Sevastopol reported an “ongoing” drone attack.
An adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry gave a conflicting account, claiming that that “careless handling of explosives” had caused blasts on four warships in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Telegram that the vessels included a frigate, a landing ship and a ship that carried cruise missiles used in a deadly July attack on a western Ukrainian city.
Neither side’s claim could be immediately verified.
As Kyiv’s forces sought gains in the south, Russia kept up shelling and missile attacks in the country’s east, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday. Three civilians died in the last day and eight more were wounded in the Donetsk region, which has again become a front-line hotspot as Russian soldiers try to capture the city of Bakhmut.
Western analysts have long identified Bakhmut as an important target in Russia’s stalled eastern offensive. Capturing Bakhmut would pave the way for Moscow’s forces to threaten Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two largest Ukrainian-held cities remaining in the long-embattled Donbas region.
Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province make up the Donbas. Pro-Russia separatists have controlled parts of both provinces since 2014.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Russia’s troops retreated last month and Ukrainian troops clawed back broad swaths of territory, Russian shelling overnight wounded three civilians, according to the region’s Ukrainian governor.
Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram said that two women in their 40s and a 60-year-old man were wounded near Kupiansk, a town that served as a resupply hub for Russian forces in the region before Ukrainian troops regained control.
In neighboring Luhansk province, Gov. Serhii Haidai said late Friday that Ukrainian forces have shelled the entire length of the Kreminna-Svatove highway, where the Russians set up their main line of defense after their withdrawal from the Kharkiv region.
A Russian shelling attack Saturday also hit “critical infrastructure” in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the Ukrainian governor of the illegally annexed province said. Around a quarter of the region, including the local capital, also called Zaporizhzhia, remains under Ukrainian military control.
Writing on Telegram, Gov. Oleksandr Starukh said the damage was being assessed. He did not specify what was struck and did not mention any casualties.
Political pressure for efforts to negotiate an end to the war are building in parts of western Europe. Zelenskyy had said his country won’t negotiate with Russia as long as Moscow insists the annexed regions are Russian territory.
In remarks to Yale University students on Friday, the Ukrainian leader reiterated his unwillingness to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government because of its “disrespect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
In his nightly remarks, the Ukrainian leader noted that about 4 million Ukrainians live in areas subject to rolling blackouts following weeks of Russia targeting power plants and other infrastructure. He warned the emergency blackouts were possible elsewhere in Ukraine.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Friday, October 28. Russia’s War On Ukraine: News And Information From Ukraine
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Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 247.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
Russia lost its status as a key exporter of fossil fuels due to the invasion of Ukraine.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its World Energy Outlook, which highlighted a number of Russia’s main losses due to its invasion on February 24. The IEA Outlook reports that until February 24 of this year, Russia was the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels. But after the start of the war, it lost its status and its main customer—Europe. “Russian fossil fuel exports never return––in any of the scenarios in this year’s WEO––to the levels seen in 2021, with Russia’s reorientation to Asian markets particularly challenging in the case of natural gas,” the report says. According to the IEA, Russia’s share of internationally traded energy, which stood at close to 20% in 2021, will likely fall to 13% in 2030, while market shares of both the United States and the Middle East should rise.
U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly became the ambassador of the Ukrainian fundraising platform UNITED24. UNITED24 was launched by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as the main platform for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s invasion. According to Zelenskyy, Scott Kelly has been supporting Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. Currently, Kelly will focus on developing medical aid. His first project will be fundraising for Type C ambulance vehicles. “Pleased to announce my joint mission with @ZelenskyyUa to raise funds for ambulances in support of Ukraine. At liftoff, I’ve pledged to purchase the 1st vehicle. Join us!” Kelly said on Twitter.
Donetsk Region. According to the head of the Donetsk State Administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, on October 27 Russian attacks took the lives of four civilians in the region: three in Bakhmut, and one in Sviatohirsk. In addition, law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of five civilians who died during the occupation in the village of Shandryholovo. “Another 9 people were injured yesterday. Currently, it is impossible to establish the exact number of victims in Mariupol and Volnovakha,” said Kyrylenko. A total of 1,112 people have died and 2,483 people have been injured in the occupied territories of the Donetsk region since the beginning of the Russian invasion, not including the victims in the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha.
Kharkiv Region. The National Police of Ukraine documented large-scale damage caused by the Russian Army to one of the world’s largest radio telescopes, which is located in the Chuhuiv district. According to Olga Naumenko, deputy head of the investigation department, the institution’s building is completely destroyed and most likely cannot be restored. “The occupiers were on the territory of the station for several months, before the settlement was de-occupied. They dug trenches and left behind a lot of ammunition and their remains,” she said.
Mykolayiv. At night, the city came under fire from a Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile complex. Disregarding the norms of international humanitarian law, the army of the Russian Federation carried out the attack on one of the civilian districts of Mykolaiv. According to the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, Vitaliy Kim, a three-story administrative building was destroyed as a result of the rocket attack and a multi-story new building located nearby was damaged. One person was injured.
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Katya Soldak, Forbes Staff
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