Summary
We’re ending our live coverage of the war in Ukraine for today. In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of all the latest developments.
Russia is ramping up its attacks in the eastern Donetsk region, the Ukrainian military has said. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun has “doubled its artillery fire and airstrikes” and had also “intensified ground infantry attacks”.
Russia is also likely to have begun using more 500kg cluster munitions in Donetsk, according to the British intelligence. The Ministry of Defence said the munitions, which eject 100-350 submunitions over a wide area, were thought to have been deployed in a number of parts of the region.
Russian forces claimed to have taken control of the village of Khromove in the same region. The village is on the western edge of Bakhmut, a city that fell to Russia over summer after a months-long battle and which remains the scene of heavy fighting.
Russian casualties since the beginning of the war now stand at 327,580, according to the Ukrainian military. In its latest daily update, Ukraine’s general staff said the figure had increased by 1,140.
Ukraine claimed to have killed five “high-ranking” Russian officials in a strike on a building in an occupied part of Kherson. The country’s armed forces said the strike had targeted a meeting in the village of Yuvileyne following “information provided by the underground and concerned local residents”.
Ukraine said its air defences shot down 21 out of 21 Iranian-made Shahed drones headed for the western Khmelnytskyi region, home to a Ukrainian air base, overnight on Tuesday. Earlier this year, Ukraine called on its western allies to help strengthen its air defences to enable it to protect itself from Russian attacks on its infrastructure.
The secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has warned that the bloc must not underestimate Russia and its ability to continue fighting the war in Ukraine. “Russia’s economy is on a war footing, Putin has a high tolerance for casualties, and Russian aims in Ukraine have not changed,” he said.
The European Union has delivered about 300,000 of the 1m shells it has promised to Ukraine, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said. Kuleba said the demands of Ukraine’s war effort meant there was a need for greater alignment of Ukrainian and Nato arms production and to create “a Euro-Atlantic common area” of defence industries.
Russia has failed in its bid to be re-elected to the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Following a vote of the member states, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland were elected to fill the three seats from the Eastern Europe bloc that were set to come free for the 2024-2026 term.
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Ukraine has seen no sign that its Nato allies are tiring of the war or of providing it with support, the country’s foreign minister has insisted.
Dmytro Kuleba was speaking from Brussels, where Nato’s foreign ministers are meeting to discuss the security situation in Ukraine and other parts of the world.
“I heard a clear ‘No’ to any reference to fatigue, and I heard [a] clear ‘Yes’ to increased support to Ukraine,” he told the Associated Press.
He also said some allies had made fresh offers of support, though declined to provide details.
“They understand that in order for them to feel safe, in order for them not to end up in a situation where NATO’s soldiers will have to fight, Ukraine has to win in this war,” he said.
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Russia fails in OPCW re-election bid
Russia has failed in its bid to be re-elected to the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
The council consists of 41 members, elected for two-year terms, who are responsible for overseeing compliance with the convention prohibiting the use of chemical weapons.
The Eastern Europe bloc is allotted five seats on the council, three of which were coming free for the 2024-2026 term. Following a vote of the member states, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland were elected to fill the seats.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, President Zelenskiy said the OPCW is a “very reputable international body” and that “terrorists have no place in it”.
“I am grateful to all of the countries that supported our candidacies and voted Russia out,” he said. “Its role in international affairs keeps diminishing and its isolation keeps growing.”
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Russia ramping up attacks in Donetsk, says Ukraine
Russian forces have today ramped up their attacks in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk, according to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian army.
It comes as both sides seek territorial gains before the winter weather threatens to make progress more difficult.
Oleksandr Shtupun said improvements in conditions after storms earlier this week had enabled Russian forces to step up their attacks and redeploy drones.
“The enemy has doubled its artillery fire and airstrikes,” he said. “It has also intensified ground infantry attacks, and is using armoured vehicles.”
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A man who used his finger to write “no to war” on a snow-covered turnstile outside a Moscow ice rink has been jailed for 10 days.
Court papers said Dmitry Fyodorov wrote the message on 23 November and was detained by police shortly after, Reuters reports.
The message is believed to have been considered an offence under a law targeting anyone deemed to have acted to discredit Russia’s armed forces.
Nearly 20,000 people are thought to have been detained and 800 criminal cases opened under laws cracking down on dissent introduced following the invasion of Ukraine.
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Russia is likely to have begun more frequent use of 500kg cluster munition bombs in Ukraine, according to British intelligence.
In its latest daily update, the Ministry of Defence said the RBK-500 bomb is reported to have been deployed in multiple areas in the eastern Donetsk region.
It said the RBK-500 ejects 100-350 submunitions, and that each sub-munition detonates with either a single anti-tank charge or hundreds of high-velocity fragments.
Earlier this year, the US began supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine to aid its efforts to break through Russia’s frontlines.
Cluster munitions have been prohibited under an international treaty because their sub-munitions scatter over a large area and often fail to explode on impact, increasing the risk of civilian casualties.
None of Russia, the US, or Ukraine have signed up to the treaty.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 29 November 2023.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) November 29, 2023
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/dqUnD0m3jP
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/XS4sVZsC44
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Here are some of the latest images coming through from Ukraine:
Russian forces have taken control of a village in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk, according to Russia’s defence ministry.
Khromove, which Russia calls Artyomovskoe, is situated on the western edge of Bakhmut, a city that fell to Russia over summer after a months-long battle and which remains the scene of heavy fighting.
Before the start of the war, Khromove had a population of about 1,000 people.
Reuters, which reported the ministry’s claim, could not independently verify whether the Russians now held the village.
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Five Russian officials killed in strike in Kherson, says Ukraine
Five “high-ranking” Russian officials have been killed in a Ukrainian strike on a building in an occupied part of the Kherson region, according to Ukraine.
The National Resistance Center of Ukraine, a branch of the Ukrainian armed forces, said on Telegram that the strike had targeted a meeting in the village of Yuvileyne following “information provided by the underground and concerned local residents”.
“As a result of successful actions, five high-ranking officials are known to have died,” it said.
The post was accompanied by pictures of a two-storey building with its roof partially destroyed and many of its windows blown out.
Ukraine has hailed the return of Scythian gold treasures as a “symbolic and historic” victory over Russia, which had laid claim to the artefacts in a decade-long struggle over ownership.
On Tuesday the collection, including a rare golden neck ornament and a solid gold helmet, was shown off in Kyiv. They are among 1,000 items lent in 2013 by four museums in Crimea for an exhibition in the Netherlands.
The following year – with the artefacts still out of the country – Vladimir Putin annexed the Black Sea peninsula. Ukraine and the museums in Moscow-occupied territory both demanded the Scythian finds be sent back to them.
After a lengthy battle the Dutch supreme court ruled in June that the items belonged to Ukraine. The Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam removed them from storage and dispatched them to Kyiv in a truck. They arrived on Sunday at Pechersk Lavra monastery in the capital.
“We returned home not just valuables that were taken out of Crimea in 2013, but a part of our history,” said Vasyl Malyuk, the head of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency, which coordinated the shipment. “For us, as well as for our country in general, this case is symbolic. It shows that Ukraine never gives up what belongs to it by law.”
Read Luke Harding’s full story here:
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The burden of providing assistance to Ukraine is being shared between the US and its Nato allies, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said.
Speaking at the meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels, Blinken sought to counter those within the US who have claimed the country is providing more than its fair share to Ukraine and called for a reduction in financial and military aid.
“The United States is not standing alone,” he said. “We’ve provided about $77bn in assistance to Ukraine. Our European allies, over the same period of time, have provided more than $110bn.
“We often talk about burden sharing and the imperative of burden sharing. When it comes to Ukraine, that’s clearly what we’ve seen and what we continue to see.”
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We must not underestimate Russia, says Nato chief
Nato must not underestimate Russia and its ability to continue fighting the war in Ukraine, the bloc’s secretary general has said.
Speaking at a meeting of Nato’s foreign ministers in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg said the war had diminished Russia’s influence in its near abroad, made it more dependent on China, and cost it a substantial portion of its conventional forces.
“All of this underlines Putin’s strategic mistake in invading Ukraine,” he said. “At the same time, we must not underestimate Russia.
“Russia’s economy is on a war footing, Putin has a high tolerance for casualties, and Russian aims in Ukraine have not changed.”
He added that Russia had amassed a large missile stockpile ahead of winter and was making new attempts to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Stoltenberg will be followed at the press conference by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Watch the event on the live feed at the top of the page.
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Russian casualties reach 327,580, according to Ukraine
Russian casualties since the beginning of the war now stand at 327,580, according to the Ukrainian military.
In its latest daily update, Ukraine’s general staff said the figure had increased by 1,140.
It said the number of tanks and armoured vehicles destroyed stood at 5,538 and 10,312 respectively, while the same figure for multiple launch rocket systems was 910.
It also said Russia had lost a total of 5,944 drones.
"The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one."
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 29, 2023
William Blake
The combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to November 29, 2023. pic.twitter.com/tbkFAJTt5B
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The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay.
Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,000 years of history in its 7,500 words to assert that the two countries are “one people”.
Now, 90 international and Ukrainian historians are coming together under the umbrella of the new London-based Ukrainian History Global Initiative to wrest Ukraine’s past from the shadow of Russian and Soviet narratives.
The historians want Ukraine’s history to take its place among a wealth of global stories – from the part it played in the history of the ancient Greeks who founded trading emporia on the Black Sea, to its connections with Byzantium, and its links with the Vikings who ruled the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus.
Read Charlotte Higgins’s full story here:
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The European Union has delivered about 300,000 of the 1m shells it has promised to Ukraine, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has said.
In March, the EU’s defence ministers announced a €1bn plan for the joint procurement of extra ammunition by the Brussels-based European Defence Agency.
Earlier this month, the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said the bloc would miss its target to deliver the rounds by March 2024.
Speaking to reporters this morning at a Nato meeting in Brussels, Kuleba said there was a need for greater alignment of Ukrainian and Nato arms production to ensure Ukraine receives the supplies it needs.
“We need to create a Euro-Atlantic common area of defence industries,” he said.
In September, the British defence company BAE Systems announced it was setting up a local entity in Ukraine to help ramp up its supply of weapons and equipment.
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The Russian navy had kept two submarines with up to eight Kalibr missiles on combat duty in the Black Sea as of Tuesday evening, according to Ukraine.
“The missile threat level is high,” Ukraine’s navy said on Telegram.
The US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said earlier that extreme weather had forced Russia to withdraw its fleet to port, but submarines can dive to avoid bad weather.
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Ukraine says it repelled 21 out of 21 overnight drone attacks
Following on from the last post, Ukraine appears to have had its own success in repelling a significant number of drone attacks overnight.
The country’s defence ministry said on X, formerly Twitter, that its air defences had shot down 21 out of 21 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight.
In a separate statement, it added that the drones were headed for the western Khmelnytskyi region, home to a Ukrainian air base.
It said two cruise missiles had also been destroyed.
“We are grateful to the partner countries for strengthening [our] air defence!” it said.
Earlier this year, Ukraine called on its western allies to help strengthen its air defences to enable it to protect itself from Russian attacks on its infrastructure.
In response, countries including the UK and US announced a support package of hundreds of air defence missiles.
100% russian drones destroyed!
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) November 29, 2023
Overnight, the Ukrainian Air Forces shot down 21/21 «Shahed» UAVs and 2 Kh-59 cruise missiles.
Thank you, our air defenders!
We are grateful to the partner countries for strengthening 🇺🇦 air defence!
📸: Joint Forces Command (Illustrative photo) pic.twitter.com/t0O6Dm1jSF
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Russian air defence forces destroyed a drone flying towards Moscow overnight, the city’s mayor has said.
Writing on Telegram early this morning, Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was shot down over the southern district of Podolsk.
“According to preliminary data, there was no damage or casualties at the site where the debris fell,” he said.
“Emergency services specialists are working at the scene.”
Recent months have seen numerous drone attacks by Ukraine on the Russian capital.
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Bad weather has slowed Russia’s campaign to secure eastern Ukraine and capture the town of Avdiivka, Ukrainian officials have said.
After two days of storms – and snow in the south – the forecast was for more rain in the east, leaving the ground sodden and unsuitable for military manoeuvres.
“They’ve started to shell the town centre from Donetsk. Our brigade is holding its ground, but we can’t see any equipment coming,” Serhiy Tsekhotskyi, a Ukrainian officer in the town, told national television.
“The weather is unsuitable. But once the frosts come and the ground hardens, an attempted assault with equipment is possible.”
Another military spokesperson, Volodymyr Fitio, said the weather had forced the Russians to also make “adjustments”.
“You cannot advance when the ground is like this,” Fitio told the media outlet Espreso TV. “The Russians previously brought in reserves and threw them into battle. There are a lot fewer movements like that now because of the weather.”
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Summary
This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine, which has entered its 644th day. Here are the main developments:
Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukraine’s intelligence head, Kyrylo Budanov, was poisoned and received treatment in hospital, a Ukrainian military intelligence official confirmed. She fell ill reportedly after eating food laced with “heavy metals”.
Russian shells struck homes on Tuesday, killing four people and injuring at least five, Ukrainian officials said. A five-storey building was hit in the southern town of Nikopol, said the Dnipropetrovsk region governor, Serhiy Lysak.
Tornadoes were forecast for the Black Sea region after a storm that killed at least 14 people and left more than 2 million people without electricity in Russia and Ukraine including occupied Crimea.
The Institute for the Study of War said the storm forced Russia to return all of its naval vessels and missile carriers to their bases, and suggested that the threat of mines drifting in the Black Sea would increase because the storm dispersed minefields.
There were also reports that the storm damaged railways in coastal areas, which could have an impact on the Russian military’s logistics capabilities in occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine, the ISW said. The damage affected “the tempo of military operations along the frontline in Ukraine” but had not stopped them entirely.
In an intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russia had made small advances on the northern axis of a pincer movement as part of an attempt to surround Avdiivka. “Although Avdiivka has become a salient or bulge in the Ukrainian frontline, Ukraine remains in control of a corridor of territory approximately 7km wide, through which it continues to supply the town.”
The US Senate will begin considering legislation that includes aid for Israel and Ukraine as soon as next week, the leader of the Democratic majority, Chuck Schumer, said on Tuesday, adding that an aid bill was needed even if there was no agreement with Republicans, who demand linked funding for US border security.
Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania said their foreign ministers would boycott a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in North Macedonia on Thursday and Friday because the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, intends to take part.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, urged members of the alliance to “stay the course” in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion. “It’s our obligation to ensure that we provide Ukraine with the weapons they need,” Stoltenberg said after arriving for a gathering of foreign ministers from Nato countries at its headquarters in Brussels.
The EU has agreed to more than quadruple its spending on training Ukrainian soldiers, investing close to an extra €200m (£173m), AFP reported.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said military and financial support for Ukraine is of “existential importance” to Europe. In a speech to parliament, he was quoted by AFP as saying: “We will continue with this support as long as it is necessary. This support is of existential importance. For Ukraine … but also for us in Europe. None of us want to imagine what even more serious consequences it would have for us if Putin won this war.”
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