Russia-Ukraine warfare latest: Cluster bombs in battle for Avdiivka fuelling stalemate on frontline, UK says

A Russian artist and musician has been jailed for seven years for changing grocery store worth tags with anti-war slogans in what fellow critics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have decried as a “deeply tragic and frustrating illustration of the state of Russia today”.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, a self-described pacifist, appeared in a St Petersburg court docket on 17 November after 19 months of pre-trial detention. She was charged final April with discrediting Russia’s armed forces and spreading misinformation in regards to the “special military operation”.

Standing behind bars, the artist blew kisses and made a love image together with her palms throughout her last listening to as crowds applauded from outdoors. She was wearing a tie-dye t-shirt with a peace signal on the entrance.

Her seven-year sentence was handed down in the identical week that former Russian detective Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who murdered Kremlin-critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, was pardoned by Putin for spending a yr preventing in Ukraine. He had served lower than half of his sentence, having been imprisoned in 2014.

My colleague Tom Watling has the total report:

Our world affairs editor Kim Sengupta studies from Ukraine:

Kamianka lies in an enthralling valley of vivid flowers and luxurious bushes. It was portrayed as a mannequin village for a contented life in rural idyll. It was additionally a place of archaeological and geological lure, with its uncommon bronze age and Scythian websites and Jurassic limestone cliffs attracting guests from afar.

The settlement, set in a sleepy hole, was established within the 18th century by a rely from the Tsar of Russia’s court docket who had returned from Britain with new strategies of farming and an English bride. Keen to place his new information into observe, he allotted land, constructed a mill, constructed roads and funded a church and a college.

But Kamianka, in japanese Ukraine, additionally has a darkish historical past of violence. Its strategic position on the banks of the Siversky Donets River made it a battleground for armies over the ages. One of the bloodiest encounters was fought through the Second World War between Soviet and German forces, leaving 1000’s useless. The Waffen SS arrange a jail camp close by woods by which captured partisan fighters and native civic leaders have been tortured and executed.

Kamianka, nevertheless, recovered from the ravages of that warfare and started to slowly prosper. A profitable agricultural plant, a contemporary well being centre, a lyceum with scientific amenities, a sports activities stadium and a group centre attracted folks from neighbouring cities and cities. The village’s unique church, dismantled throughout Soviet occasions, with its stones used to build an airfield was changed with a wood one which was praised for its cupola which turned a vacation spot for pilgrimage.

The tranquil life was shattered with Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022.

You can learn the total dispatch right here:

Russia’s justice ministry has added The Moscow Times – a web based newspaper based in 1992 and common amongst Russia’s expat group – to its checklist of supposed “foreign agents”.

You can learn extra particulars on this report:

In his latest Independent Voices column, Jon Sopel writes that misgivings over America’s position within the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are “being played like a Stradivarius by that great fiddler, Donald Trump”. He argues:

“It’s becoming the campaign of the counterfactual. And being Donald Trump, the counterfactuals are contentious and tendentious.

He and his team are busy telling anyone who’ll listen he was the president signing peace deals between Israel and the Gulf states via the Abraham Accords – but with Biden in charge, war is breaking out. When he was president, his friend Vladimir Putin would never have dared invade Ukraine. He would have been too scared. But with Sleepy Joe in the White House?

It doesn’t need to cohere or be rational, but Trump is finding this riff is working well for him: when I was president, I was building relationships with Putin, breaking bread with Kim Jong Un, talking man-to-man with President Xi. When I was president, the world was a more peaceful place.”

Russia’s inside ministry has placed former Bank of Russia deputy governor and senior politician Sergei Aleksashenko on its needed checklist, Russian state information businesses have reported.

Mr Aleksashenko, who has criticised Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, has been dwelling in exile within the United States after falling out with President Vladimir Putin’s authorities and had already been designated a “foreign agent”.

Tass reported that Mr Aleksashenko had been added to the inside ministry’s needed checklist on an unspecified legal cost. Mr Aleksashenko stated on Telegram that he had been listed on the database for 5 years already, however urged that being added to the needed checklist was a brand new improvement.

Earlier this week, Vasiliy Piskarev – who leads the Duma’s committee on investigating international interference – accused Mr Aleksashenko and economist Sergei Guriev of being engaged in shaping sanctions towards Russia via their involvement with Stanford University’s worldwide working group on Russian sanctions.

Russia launched a serious in a single day drone attack, hitting infrastructure amenities within the south and north of Ukraine, the latter’s army has stated.

Air defence shot down 29 out of 38 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russian territory, Ukraine’s air pressure stated, in a bombardment lasting from 8pm to 4am on Saturday.

An vitality infrastructure facility was hit within the southern Odesa area, an administrative building was broken and one civilian was wounded, officers stated.

In Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv area on the border with Russia and Belarus, two infrastructure buildings have been broken through the in a single day strike, the army stated. The drones additionally focused Kyiv, all of which shot down on their method, they stated.

Ukraine’s army claims to have destroyed a complete of 15 Russian naval vessels within the Black Sea for the reason that begin of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, damaging 12 different ships in “a new type of naval warfare”.

Ukraine has stepped up its assaults within the Black Sea and on the annexed peninsula of Crimea. Kyiv has reported a collection of strikes on warships on and close to Crimea this autumn, together with a big touchdown vessel and a submarine.

“You can count the ones that have already been disabled. These are 15 destroyed and 12 damaged ships. Not all of this is the result of drone work, but they also have quite a lot of damaged ships to their credit,” navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk informed broadcasters.

He described Ukraine as “the driver of a new type of naval warfare” that had made Russia transfer its naval forces to positions harder to succeed in for what Kyiv has in its capability.

Russia can be struggling logistical issues, he stated, attributable to having to relocate vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, each ports on the japanese flank of the Black Sea to the southeast of Crimea and farther from Ukraine.

Russia has misplaced a brigade’s value of troops since Ukraine started its push to determine a foothold on the japanese financial institution of the Dnipro River, Kyiv has claimed.

These casualties have reportedly pressured Moscow’s forces to switch fight energy from elsewhere in Ukraine to Kherson, based on the Institute for the Study of War think-tank.

Russia is struggling “particularly heavy losses” in its push to recapture Avdiivka, as preventing rages on a number of fronts in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has stated – with cluster munitions enjoying “a major role” in disrupting assaults on either side.

“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,” the ministry stated.

“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.”

Russia beneath President Vladimir Putin has been closing in on those that problem the Kremlin. Protesters and activists have been arrested or imprisoned, impartial information shops have been silenced, and varied teams have been added to registers of “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations.”

The crackdown has been happening for years.