Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia intensifying assault on Avdiivka, says Ukraine military

Reuters reports that 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.

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

Russian forces are still fighting to surround the war-battered frontline town of Avdiivka and capture a strategically-located factory nearby, AFP reports a Ukrainian military spokesman saying.

Avdiivka, an industrial hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has long been a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after it was briefly captured by pro-Russian forces in 2014.

“(Russian forces) are not only fighting for the plant, they have not given up trying to surround Avdiivka,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a Ukrainian military spokesman told state media.

He said Ukrainian forces were repelling Russian assaults on the large chemical plant and that the facility was under their control.

He added that Russian forces were routinely striking Avdiivka with artillery and military jets, saying a bombardment late Thursday had killed two civilians.

“The bodies are now under the rubble,” Shtupun said.

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week they were bracing for a third wave of attacks from Russian forces, which began storming the city about one month ago.

Further south in the region of Kherson, the regional governor said five people were wounded and one killed in Russian shelling of the village of Novoraysk.

The official, Oleksandr Prokudin said that among those wounded, a 61-year-old man had sustained fatal injuries.

Russian and Ukrainian forces are entrenched on opposing banks of the Dnipro river, which cuts through the Kherson region and are regularly shelling each other.

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, Agence-France Presse reports.

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.

Moscow said earlier this year that he had tried to escape back to Ukraine but was stopped near the Belarus border.

“Bogdan Yermokhin will soon be in Ukraine!” Ukraine’s rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on social media on Friday.

“I officially confirm that we have agreements on Bogdan’s return to Ukraine, and his reunification with his sister.”

The news came after his lawyers told Ukrainian media this week that Moscow had sent Yermokhin – given Russian citizenship while in Russia – military call-up papers, ahead of his 18th birthday.

Moscow confirmed Yermokhin will be returned to Ukraine.

The Kremlin has been accused of illegally transferring thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, and the international criminal court (ICC) is seeking the arrest of the president, Vladimir Putin, over alleged deportations.

Russia’s military has said its forces thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to forge a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the River Dnipro and on nearby islands, killing about 500 Ukrainian soldiers in the past week, Reuters reports.

The news agency could not independently verify the claim, which was made in a Russian defence ministry statement that said the fighting had happened in the Kherson area of southern Ukraine.

“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,” the statement said.

The latest Russian statement said its forces had killed most of the Ukrainian soldiers and taken 11 of them prisoner. The Russian soldiers were presented with state awards for “courage and heroism” by Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, as a result, it said.

The statement spoke of what it said were multiple unsuccessful attempts by Ukraine to seize a bridgehead on the islands and on the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

“As a result of active pre-emptive actions of Russian troops and artillery fire, the enemy’s losses during the week totalled up to 505 servicemen, 18 field artillery guns, 15 boats and 25 vehicles,” it said.

Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was making some gradual progress in the south and east including what he called “good steps” near the Kherson region.

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

Russia has likely recruited 100,000 people from prisons to fight in Ukraine, Olga Romanova, the head of an independent prisoners’ rights group has estimated, including those convicted of violent crimes including murder and rape. Prisoners are offered pardons and released after serving on the front lines.

Peskov defended the approach, after reports said that Vladislav Kanyus – a man sentenced to 17 years in a maximum-security prison for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend – was freed after fighting in Ukraine.

The case made international headlines in 2021 after it was revealed Kanyus inflicted 111 individual injuries to his ex-partner, 23-year-old Vera Pekhteleva, in an hours-long attack described as “torture”.

“Those convicted, including for serious crimes, are atoning with blood for their crime on the battlefield,” Peskov told reporters. “They are atoning with blood in storm brigades, under bullets and under shells,” he added.

Russian media outlets have reported several instances of prisoners released after serving in Ukraine going on to commit serious offences, including murders.

A civilian cargo ship was hit by a Russian missile earlier this week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported.

In its daily intelligence briefing, the MoD said the ship was Liberian-flagged and appeared to have been struck by a Russian anti-radar missile at Pivdennyi port, near Odesa, on Wednesday.

It said:

Ukrainian officials stated that this was likely a KH-31 (AS-17 Krypton) air-launched missile.

A harbour pilot was killed, and three crew members and a port worker injured. Ukraine’s infrastructure minister said the ship was loading freight iron ore destined for Russia’s strategic ally, China.

The AS-17 was probably being used to target Ukrainian military radars in the area. It is a realistic possibility the air-launched AS-17 missile in the absence of a live military radar signature, locked on to the civilian ship’s radar.

If so, this would demonstrate poor weapons deployment tactics on behalf of the Russian pilot.

• 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.

Germany has pledged to raise regular budget outlays for defence to ensure it meets its Nato spending target of 2% of economic output, even after a special €100bn (£87.4bn) defence fund has been exhausted, Reuters reports.

Defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said Germany would incorporate higher spending into its medium-term financing plans.

He was speaking a day after the government pledged to make its military the “backbone” of European defence as part of a major policy shift to boost spending and modernise its forces following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Germany has for years been criticised for spending too little on defence, effectively relying on the United States to underpin its security despite being Europe’s biggest economy.

Nato expects Germany to spend 1.57% of its GDP on defence this year, but that is likely to rise to 2% in 2024 thanks to a special defence fund that German chancellor Olaf Scholz launched in his Zeitenwende, or policy shift.

Here are some of the latest photos from the newswires:

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, Reuters reports.

Human rights group Amnesty International and writers association PEN International have demanded that Russia provide information on Maksym Butkevych.

Butkevych is a journalist and human rights activist who led a refugee charity and volunteered to join up as a soldier after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. His family and lawyers say they have been unable to establish his whereabouts since August.

“The federal penitentiary service has no obligation to disclose, in response to such requests, the place of detention of a person sentenced to a long (jail) term,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the case.

Butkevych was arrested last year when his unit was captured on the front line, and subjected to what Amnesty called a sham trial, without access to his lawyer.

He was sentenced in March to 13 years in prison. At the time, Russian investigators released a video of him confessing to a masked interrogator that he had deliberately fired from a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on a residential building, with intent to kill civilians.

Amnesty said the confession was made under duress, noting for example that Butkevych refers to the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine as the Lugansk People’s Republic, the term used by Moscow.

Two other Ukrainian men, Viktor Pohozei and Vladyslav Shel, were shown making similar confessions in the video and were sentenced to eight and a half years and 18 and a half years respectively in what Amnesty also described as sham trials.