Russia suffering ‘heavy casualties’ but neither side making progress, says UK
In its daily intelligence briefing, the UK’s Ministry of Defence notes Russian forces are suffering “particularly heavy casualties” in fighting around Avdiivka, which is one of three areas seeing heavy ground fighting.
The other two areas are Kupiansk and Luhansk.
Despite the heavy fighting, however, the MoD said neither side was making any significant progress.
Over the last week, the most intense ground combat has been taking place in three areas: on the Kupiansk axis, in Luhansk Oblast; around Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead.
Neither side has achieved substantial progress in any of these areas. Russia continues to suffer particularly heavy casualties around Avdiivka.
Eyewitness reports suggest small uncrewed aerial vehicles and artillery (especially cluster rounds) continue to play a major role in disrupting the attacks of both sides.
As colder winter weather sets in earnest in eastern Ukraine, there are few immediate prospects of major changes in the frontline.
Key events
Russia claims to have bombed Ukrainian forces near River Dnipro – killing 75
The Russian military has said it has heavily bombed Ukrainian forces near the River Dnipro in southern Ukraine, and killed about 75 Ukrainian soldiers.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield claim.
On Friday, Kyiv’s military said Ukrainian troops had pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro in parts of Kherson region and established several bridgeheads.
Two days earlier, Moscow had conceded for the first time that some Ukrainian forces had crossed onto the River Dnipro’s eastern bank, but has said they faced “Hell fire”.
Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement on Saturday that artillery and air strikes had targeted Ukrainian forces in the settlement of Kachkarivka, on the west bank of the River Dnipro, and on two islands, killing up to 75 enemy soldiers and destroying four vehicles.
Ukrainian forces had managed to get as far as the western bank of the River Dnipro last year, during its offensive which recaptured the regional capital of Kherson.
Germany calls on Putin to take first step towards peace
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called on Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to take the first step towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.
“He must withdraw troops,” Scholz said during a visit to Nuthetal in Brandenburg state.
However, there are currently no signs of this happening, he said in response to a question about whether peace negotiations are possible.
Putin must not succeed in his goal of using force to annex parts of a neighbouring country, Scholz said.
The chancellor once again assured Ukraine of Germany’s help in its defence against the Russian invasion for as long as necessary.
Charlotte Higgins
My colleague Charlotte Higgins has written a great piece about how Vogue responded to the war in Ukraine, a country where Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s dress of sweatshirts and cargo pants have become central to his image.
On 24 February 2022, the editor-in-chief of Vogue Ukraine, Venya Brykalin, woke up in Milan, where fashion week was in full swing, to the news that his country had been invaded. Nevertheless, he headed out as planned to the Max Mara show, and watched as a parade of luxurious cashmere coats sashayed past him.
“A sentiment that a lot of Ukrainians keep sharing is that doing your job is the most efficient way of staying sane,” he said this autumn by video call.
Many observers might ask what role a fashion magazine could play in a country that is defying a full-scale invasion. But fashion is powerful. Since February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stuck faithfully to a utilitarian wardrobe of sweatshirts, cargo pants and military boots. It has become a potent means of the Ukrainian president projecting a sense of peril and readiness for action.
On the streets of Kyiv, there is a sense that taking pride in one’s appearance is a way of demonstrating defiance – and insisting on normality – in the face of the Russian invasion.
That said, fashion has not been Vogue Ukraine’s main focus since the full-scale invasion began.
“The first news about the war appeared on our site on 24 February 2022. We didn’t hesitate – there was no meeting – we just started posting,” said the magazine’s features editor, Daria Slobodianyk. “One of the first things we did was post a list of guidelines, about what to do in the case of an air-raid siren for example, essentially answering our own questions.”
Ukraine has been the target of nearly 4,000 cyber-attacks since the war in Ukraine, three times higher than before Russia’s invasion.
The US assistant secretary of the Treasury Graham Steele told a conference on risk and federal insurance response in New York that between January 2022 and September 2023 Ukraine has been attacked by Russian state-sponsored cyber actors, Ukrinform reports.
Sectors including Ukraine’s infrastructure and financial services have been the focus of the attempts.
Cyber activity in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not limited to government actors, Steele said.
“We have observed that non-state cyber actors on both sides of the conflict have targeted a wide range of organisations – including in the financial services sector – with relatively unsophisticated incidents known as distributed denial of service attacks [DDOS],” he said.
DDOS attacks are when a website’s services become overwhelmed with traffic, which will stop users from accessing services.
One person was killed and three were injured in Russian attacks on the south-west Ukrainian region of Kherson on Friday, its governor has reported.
Oleksandr Prukudin said that the regional capital, Kherson, had been attacked 26 times. He claimed in a post on Telegram that more than 500 shells were fired.
Since the city’s liberation, more than 400 civilians have been killed and about 1,700 injured according to local authorities.
Russia’s interior ministry has placed the war critic Sergei Aleksashenko, formerly a deputy governor of the Bank of Russia and a deputy finance minister, on its wanted list, Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA reported on Saturday.
Aleksashenko has been living in exile in the US after falling out with President Vladimir Putin’s government and had already been designated a “foreign agent”, according to Reuters.
TASS reported that Aleksashenko had been added to the interior ministry’s wanted list on an unspecified criminal charge.
Reuters could not immediately access the ministry’s overall database and Aleksashenko could not immediately be reached for comment.
On his Telegram channel, Aleksashenko said he had been listed on the database for five years already, but suggested that being added to the wanted list was a new development.
Three civilians have been injured in Russia’s shelling of Donetsk over the last 24 hours.
Donetsk’s regional military administration’s acting head Ihor Moroz posted on Facebook: “On 17 November 2023, Russians injured three civilians in the Donetsk region, namely in Netailove, Maksymilianivka and Toretsk.”
Since the invasion began, 1,775 people have been killed and 4,315 have been injured in Donetsk.
Russia suffering ‘heavy casualties’ but neither side making progress, says UK
In its daily intelligence briefing, the UK’s Ministry of Defence notes Russian forces are suffering “particularly heavy casualties” in fighting around Avdiivka, which is one of three areas seeing heavy ground fighting.
The other two areas are Kupiansk and Luhansk.
Despite the heavy fighting, however, the MoD said neither side was making any significant progress.
Over the last week, the most intense ground combat has been taking place in three areas: on the Kupiansk axis, in Luhansk Oblast; around Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead.
Neither side has achieved substantial progress in any of these areas. Russia continues to suffer particularly heavy casualties around Avdiivka.
Eyewitness reports suggest small uncrewed aerial vehicles and artillery (especially cluster rounds) continue to play a major role in disrupting the attacks of both sides.
As colder winter weather sets in earnest in eastern Ukraine, there are few immediate prospects of major changes in the frontline.
Ukraine’s armed forces have claimed it killed another 620 Russian soldiers on Friday during its operations.
In a post by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, they said that it took the number of Russian soldiers killed during the conflict to more than 317,000.
The statistics are disputed and have not been independently verified by the Guardian.
Russia and Vladimir Putin have repeatedly attempted to play down the number of casualties.
Today’s fighting comes a day after Ukrainian troops had a number of successes in skirmishes east of the Dnipro River.
The Ukrainian Marine Corps said in a statement on social media that: “The defence forces of Ukraine conducted a series of successful operations on the left bank of the Dnipro River, along the Kherson front.”
Both Russia and Ukraine acknowledged this week that Ukraine had established positions on the eastern side of the river.
It is the frontline for a stretch of territory in south-east Ukraine, after it liberated Kherson and nearby areas around the city on the western bank of the river a year ago. Russia was forced into a humiliating withdrawal.
You can read more below from our reporter Shaun Walker in Kyiv.
Hello, this is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air defence has said it shot down 29 out of 38 drones in a Russian overnight strike.
The air force said in a statement the Russian forces launched Iranian-made Shahed drones from Russian territory in several waves. The attacks Ukrainian regions lasted from 8pm.
Here are some more developments:
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Ukraine and the US will hold a military industry conference in Washington on 6-7 December, officials from both countries have said. Ukraine is ramping up production of its own weapons and seeking joint ventures with international armament producers. Ukraine has set up a joint venture with Rheinmetall of Germany to service and repair western weapons, and in September hosted a forum with more than 250 western arms producers.
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Ukraine has said it has carried out “successful actions” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. It comes after Ukraine and Russia acknowledged earlier this week that Ukraine had established positions on the eastern side of the river, which marks part of the frontline in south-east Ukraine.
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Celebrating the development, Volodymyr Zelenskiy published pictures showing Ukrainian soldiers on the eastern bank of the river. “Left bank of Kherson. Our warriors. Thank you for your strength and for moving forward!” Ukraine’s president said. “Glory to each and everyone who is returning freedom and justice to Ukraine!”
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A total of 4.4m tonnes of cargo, including 3.2m tonnes of grain, has been shipped via Ukraine’s new Black Sea shipping corridor since it was established in August, according to a report by the Interfax-Ukraine agency. A UN-brokered deal that had allowed Ukrainian exports to pass through the Black Sea fell through in July after Russia withdrew, prompting Ukraine to announce a “humanitarian corridor” hugging the sea’s western coast.
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Thousands of people living near the frontlines in southern and eastern Ukraine were left without power after Russian strikes on energy facilities, the Ukrainian government said. Last winter, systematic targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure by Russia left millions without light or heating. Zelenskiy said this week that western support had allowed Ukraine to improve its air defences ahead of the coming winter months.
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At least nine people were killed in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to local officials. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said shelling on Thursday had targeted residential areas, shopping districts and administrative buildings. Another two people were killed in the eastern region of Donetsk, according to the acting head of its military administration.
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Russian casualties since the start of the war now stand at 316,760, according to the Ukrainian military.
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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said he has “no doubt” Vladimir Putin will still be Russian president after the election in March. Putin has not yet announced his intention to run but is widely expected to stand for another six-year term. Asked in an interview with student journalists what the next president should be like, Peskov said: “The same.”
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The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, followed his trip to Ukraine on Thursday with a visit to neighbouring Moldova. The Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, posted a photo of her and Cameron together to social media and said the two had met on Thursday night to discuss “Black Sea security, bilateral cooperation and our united stance against corruption”.
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The Dutch government has announced it has earmarked an additional €2bn in military aid for Ukraine in 2024. It is part of a wider package that includes an initial €102m (£89m/$111m) for reconstruction and humanitarian aid that will be increased during the year if needed.