Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 625

Summary for Friday, 10th November 2023 - Day 625

Good morning

• Russian troops are intensifying their attacks on the key eastern town of Avdiivka, Ukrainian officers have said. Oleksandr Borodin from the third separate assault brigade said Russian forces were launching major infantry attacks, while trying to keep equipment intact, telling Espreso TV: “It is not just infantry advancing but also parallel work of artillery, drones, aviation, the same air bombing and more.”
  
  
• Russian forces, Borodin told Espreso, were unable to replenish supplies quickly and Ukrainian defensive positions were solid, with the Russians recording “no serious successes”. Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka’s military administration, told Espreso that Russian forces were shelling “round the clock” but rain-soaked ground was holding them back. “Once the ground dries, they will definitely advance.”
  
  
• A Ukrainian strike on occupied Skadovsk in the Kherson region reportedly hit a base for the FSB, Russia’s federal spy service. Reuters reported that five people were killed in the attack on Thursday. Various reports said high-ranking Russian officers were killed. Anton Gerashchenko, from Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry, said: “So the occupiers are well aware they not safe, that they are being watched and can be destroyed at any time. Ukraine uses high-precision western weapons for these strikes.”
  
  
• The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia’s military was being overextended by the war in Ukraine. In its latest daily intelligence update, the MoD said that the likely need for Russia to reallocate surface-to-air missile (Sam) systems from distant parts of its territory to maintain coverage over Ukraine showed the conflict was straining its military.
  
  
• Russian-installed health officials in illegally occupied Crimea say private clinics have “voluntarily” stopped providing abortions, which leaves them available only in state-run medical facilities. The move comes amid a wider effort in Russia to restrict abortion under the increasingly conservative regime of Vladimir Putin who has curried favour with the Orthodox church.
  
  
• A Ukrainian diplomat said a global peace summit for Ukraine may take place next year. The Ukrainian president’s top diplomatic adviser, Ihor Zhovkva, said it might take place in February 2024.
  
  
• Ukraine said queues were growing at its border with Poland as Polish lorry drivers continued to block crossings for a fourth day. The protests, which started on Monday, involved the drivers blocking three border crossings with Ukraine. They are protesting against competition from Ukrainian drivers.
  
  
• Ukraine told its western allies that giving it the interest accrued from frozen Russian assets would not be enough to compensate for damage sustained by the war and that it hoped to receive the assets in full. Ukraine’s deputy justice minister, Iryna Mudra, said Kyiv’s partners were considering introducing a tax on income or investment of frozen Russian assets, an idea she said Kyiv welcomed but saw as insufficient.
  
  
• Germany issued new defence policy guidelines for the first time in over a decade. The 19-page document details the implications for Germany’s military of the Zeitenwende, the major shift of policy the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, announced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
  
  
• Hungary said the EU should not start membership talks with Ukraine. EU leaders are expected to decide next month whether to accept the European Commission’s recommendation to invite Kyiv to begin membership talks with the bloc, but Hungary prefers a form of “privileged partnership” for Ukraine, rather than full membership.
  
  
• Ukraine will be able to overcome Hungary’s political opposition to its progress on EU membership, according to Kyiv’s minister for European integration, Olga Stefanishyna. “We understand that there is a such a statement, but we also understand there is a dialogue with Budapest,” she said.
  
  
• The Kremlin is moving to absorb former Wagner soldiers into Russia’s military structures, the Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer writes.
  

Ukrainian military repelled Russian assaults near town of Avdiivka

An-2 plane disappears in Chukotka, Russia

An An-2 plane of Stryzh Avia Airlines has disappeared in Chukotka.

• In October, Russian Telegram channels reported that an Il-76MD military transport plane caught fire during take-off from a military airfield in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
  

Ukraine Map Shows Avdiivka Almost Fully Encircled by Russia's 40K Troops

Reuters reports that Ukrainian forces damaged two small Russian landing boats in Crimea during an overnight attack using sea drones

There was no immediate comment by Russia, which seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and whose Black Sea Fleet is headquartered in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.
“As a result of a night operation on the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea, small amphibious ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet were hit by soldiers,” the intelligence agency said on the Telegram messaging app.
The statement said the vessels were crewed, and loaded with armoured vehicles. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Ukraine says some Russian navy vessels have relocated from Sevastopol following recent attacks.
Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in the south and east in early June, but has encountered strong resistance from Russia’s occupying forces.
In the latest fighting reports, the Russian news agency RIA quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying Russian air defences had brought down two Ukrainian drones over Crimea and one over the Tula region south of Moscow early on Friday. Kyiv did not immediately comment and Reuters was unable to verify the report.

Ukrainian troops cut Oleshky-Nova Kakhovka road – ISW

Ukrainian troops have cut the Oleshky-Nova Kakhovka Road (53 km northeast of Kherson) in at least two districts.

• The Russian military command will likely struggle to redeploy combat-effective reinforcements to respond to ongoing Ukrainian operations in eastern Kherson Oblast while conducting defensive operations in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast and sustaining other offensive efforts in eastern Ukraine.
  
  
• Russian forces have likely launched opportunistic localized offensive operations in the Bakhmut direction and intensified ground attacks near Bakhmut in recent days.
  
  
• Russian forces struck a civilian ship near Odesa City on 8 November.
  
  
• Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual live "Direct Line" forum and annual press conference will occur in tandem on an unspecified date by the end of the year, potentially to set conditions to cancel the events as the Kremlin sees fit.
  
  
• Russia may seek to provide gas to Iran through Kazakhstan.
  
  
• Unspecified actors appear to be targeting Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov as he continues to heap honors on his children.
  
  
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupiansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, on the Avdiivka front, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast and advanced near Kupiansk.
  
  
• Russian authorities appear to be increasingly reliant on private security companies to protect domestic energy infrastructure from Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian far rear areas.
  
  
• Occupation authorities reportedly continued efforts to militarize Ukrainian youth.
  

Russian forces attack village in Kherson Oblast with artillery, killing civilian

Russian occupying forces have shelled the village of Kindiika in Kherson Oblast in the morning, killing an elderly man.

Russian artillery and drone attacks on Friday killed three people and damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility, power lines and a gas pipeline in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions of Ukraine.

Both regions have come under regular shelling by Russian troops in occupied territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. Locals usually face numerous air alerts throughout the day.
In Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region, a 67-year-old woman was killed in an afternoon drone attack, Serhiy Lysak, the governor, said on the Telegram messaging service.
“A 68-year-old man received shrapnel wounds. He’s hospitalised,” he added on Telegram.
An infrastructure facility, a gas pipeline and power lines, as well as 11 private houses, had been damaged. Images from the site shared by Lysak showed buildings with shattered windows, huge holes in the walls, and a burnt car.
In Kindiyka, Kherson region, shelling in the morning killed a 69-year old man and injured another 63-year-old, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
He later added that a 61-year-old man was killed and five more injured in a separate shelling in Novoraysk.

Summary of the day so far ...

• The Ukrainian military repelled Russian assaults near town of Avdiivka. Russian forces have been bearing down since mid-October on the shattered town of Avdiivka, known for its coking plant and its position as a gateway to the city of Donetsk, 20km (12 miles) to the east.
  
  
• Ukrainian forces damaged two small Russian landing boats in Crimea during an overnight attack using sea drones, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said on Friday. There was no immediate comment by Russia, whose Black Sea fleet is headquartered in the Crimean city of Sevastopol.
  
  
• The UK Ministry of Defence says it has now trained 30,000 Ukrainian recruits as part of Operation Interflex. The MoD says the operation is the biggest military training programme of its kind on British soil since the second world war.
  
  
• Germany has pledged to meet Nato’s spending target of 2% of economic output. Defence minister Boris Pistorius said Germany would incorporate higher military spending into its medium term financing plans as part of a wider policy shift announced yesterday.
  
  
• The Czech and Taiwanese governments signed an agreement on Friday to work together to help reconstruction work in Ukraine. Ukraine has won broad sympathy in Taiwan after Russia’s invasion, with many Taiwanese seeing parallels between Ukraine’s situation and the threat Taipei’s government says it faces from China, which claims the island as its own territory.
  
  
• The Kremlin said that it is under no obligation to reveal where a Ukrainian volunteer soldier convicted and jailed for trying to kill two civilians is being held, Reuters reports. Human rights group Amnesty International and writers association PEN International have demanded that Russia provide information on Maksym Butkevych, a journalist and human rights activist volunteered to join up as a soldier after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
  

Russian prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine are atoning for their crimes “with blood,” Agence-France Presse reports Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying today, as he answered questions about the controversial pardon of a man who had murdered his ex-girlfriend.

Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian attempt to forge bridgehead on Dnipro river’s east bank

A Ukrainian orphan from Mariupol, who was taken to Russia after it captured the port city last year, will be returned to Ukraine in a rare deal between Kyiv and Moscow

Ukraine says Russian army still trying to encircle Avdiivka

Here are some of latest photos from Avdiivka, one of the current flashpoints of the conflict:

Closing summary

• Russia said it thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to forge bridgehead on Dnipro river’s eastern bank. “On 9 November, personnel from a motorised rifle company in the Russian military grouping ‘Dnipro’ under the command of Sen Lt Zolto Arsalanov destroyed servicemen from a unit of Ukraine’s 36th marine infantry brigade as they were trying to gain a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River,” a statement from the Russian military said.
  
  
• Russian forces are still fighting to surround the war-battered frontline town of Avdiivka and capture a strategically-located factory nearby. “They (Russian forces) have not given up trying to surround Avdiivka,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a Ukrainian military spokesman told state media.
  
  
• Russian artillery and drone attacks on Friday killed three people and damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility, power lines and a gas pipeline in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions of Ukraine. Both regions have come under regular shelling by Russian troops in occupied territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
  
  
• Russian prisoners sent to fight in Ukraine are atoning for their crimes “with blood”, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov said. He was answering questions about the pardon of Vladislav Kanyus – a man sentenced to 17 years in a maximum-security prison for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend.
  
  
• The Kremlin has said that it is under no obligation to reveal where a Ukrainian volunteer soldier convicted and jailed for trying to kill two civilians is being held. Human rights group Amnesty International and writers association PEN International have demanded that Russia provide information on Maksym Butkevych, a journalist and human rights activist who volunteered to join up as a soldier after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
  
  
• A Ukrainian orphan from Mariupol, who was taken to Russia after it captured the port city last year, will be returned to Ukraine in a rare deal between Kyiv and Moscow. Bogdan Yermokhin, 17, was taken by Russian forces from Mariupol to Russia last spring and – as with an unknown number of other Ukrainian children – placed in a Russian foster family.
  
  
• Germany has pledged to meet Nato’s spending target of 2% of economic output. Defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Germany would incorporate higher military spending into its medium-term financing plans as part of a wider policy shift announced yesterday.
  
  
• The UK Ministry of Defence says it has now trained 30,000 Ukrainian recruits as part of Operation Interflex. The MoD says the operation is the biggest military training programme of its kind on British soil since the second world war.