According to media reports, about 1,000 bodies, including civilians and children, were exhumed in the recently liberated areas of Kharkiv Oblast. These include the 447 bodies found at the Izium mass grave site.
Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russian forces in the southern Kherson region is proving more difficult than in the northeast due to wet weather and terrain, Ukraine’s defense minister said. Kiev’s forces are pressuring Russian forces in the strategically important Kherson region, which Moscow has occupied since the invasion began, and are threatening President Vladimir Putin with another major battlefield setback, Portal reported.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Wednesday he does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons. Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia has the right to defend itself with all the weapons in its arsenal, which includes the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
About 70,000 civilians were relocated from the right bank of the Dnieper River to the left bank in Kherson Oblastthe Russian-appointed governor of the region told Russian media.
Ukraine’s government is advising refugees living abroad not to return before spring amid mounting fears over whether the country’s damaged energy infrastructure can handle demand this winter. The energy crisis comes as officials in Kyiv warned that the coming winter could herald the heaviest fighting of the war around the southern city of Kherson, where Russian forces have dug in.
Up to 70 Australian forces will be deployed to Britain to train Ukrainian troops in the country’s latest boost in support for Kyiv. The Australian government announced the decision late Wednesday, stressing that the ADF members would not enter Ukrainian territory.
The Kremlin also said assets in the four Ukrainian regions Russia allegedly annexed last month could be transferred to Russian companies in the future. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was obvious that “abandoned assets” could not be left dormant and the government would look into the issue.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held a phone call with his Indian and Chinese counterparts and expressed Russia’s concerns over the possible use of a “dirty bomb” by Ukraine, Shoigu’s ministry said. Since Sunday, Shoigu has had a series of phone calls on the same subject with NATO’s defense ministers.
Over the past day, Russian forces have launched five missiles, 30 airstrikes and more than 100 multi-launch missile system attacks according to the Ukrainian General Staff of Armed Forces in more than 40 settlements across Ukraine. Russian forces have continued their sustained offensive against the strategically located cities Bachmut and Avdiivka in Donbass, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, killing a civilian yesterday in Bakhmut. However, Ukrainian authorities believe that Russian forces are digging in for the “heaviest battles” in the strategic southern region Kherson. Russian authorities spent yesterday relocating civilians to the region, blaming the approaching attack by Ukrainian forces as the reason they had to leave the region.
Two people have been killed in a Russian missile attack in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city. One of the dead was a pregnant woman. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has opened a pre-trial investigation into the attack.
Wladimir Putin entered the invasion of Ukraine with the term “denazification” – now its Security Council is turning to the term “desatanization”. Alexei Pavlov, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, now claims that there are “hundreds of sects” in Ukraine whose citizens have abandoned orthodox values. Those living in Ukraine can attest that this statement is patently false.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine roughly estimate that 480 Russian soldiers were killed yesterday alone, bringing the total to 68,900 soldiers lost in the invasion of Ukraine so far.
The Nobel Foundation has decided not to invite the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus to its famous awards ceremony this year, although the foundation usually invites all ambassadors stationed in Sweden. “In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the foundation has decided not to invite the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus to the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm,” the foundation said in a statement. The Foundation jointly presented this year’s Peace Prize to the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights organization, along with Memorial, a Russian human rights group banned by the Kremlin, and veteran Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, who is being held without trial in his home country.
Russia is reportedly recruiting members of the Afghan Army’s highly respected national command corps to fight in Ukraine, foreign policy reports. These are the Commandos trained by US Navy Seals and British Forces. About 20,000 to 30,000 of the volunteer commandos were left behind when the US left Afghanistan under Taliban control in August 2021.