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.
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:
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Ukraine says Russian army still trying to encircle Avdiivka
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.
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Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian attempt to forge bridgehead on Dnipro river’s eastern bank
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Updated
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.
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Here are some of the latest photos from the newswires:
Updated
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.
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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.
The training was set up after Operation Orbital, the British Army’s long term training programme in Ukraine, was paused when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Operation Interflex launched in June 2022 with the target of training 30,000 troops by the end of 2023.
Delivered in locations throughout the UK, the programme takes volunteer recruits who have joined the Ukrainian armed forces with little to no previous military experience and teaches them the skills required to survive and be effective in frontline combat.
The MoD says the training allows Ukraine’s forces to accelerate their deployments, rebuild their forces and scale-up their resistance to the Russian invasion.
30,000 Ukrainians are now trained on Op Interflex.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) November 10, 2023
Training target met ahead of schedule.
The UK and its ten partner nations continued to train Ukrainian recruits in the fight against the illegal invasion of their country
👉 https://t.co/3b96YOZyRS
🇺🇦#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/lXaxFAoeqM
Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said he hoped a conference on joint Ukrainian-US weapons production would be held in December, Reuters reports.
The US is Kyiv’s most important supplier of military assistance.
“There was a very important agreement between President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy and President [Joe] Biden,” Yermak said. “Next month, I hope, a conference will be held in the United States dedicated to joint [weapons] production of Ukraine and the United States.”
He made the comment on the Moseychuk+ show of Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel.
Ukraine is prioritising its own defence production capabilities amid concerns that supplies from the west might be faltering. It also hopes that joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive a domestic industry plagued by inefficiency and lack of transparency for years before Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.
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The European Union will be able work around any Hungarian veto to giving Ukraine €50bn (£43.7bn) in aid, officials in the bloc said.
Reuters reports that the bloc’s executive has proposed expanding budget support to help Ukraine pay salaries and meet other expenses as the conflict grinds on after 21 months of fighting. The EU’s 27 member states are due to vote on the package at a summit on 14–15 December.
Some worry the aid could be blocked by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has touted his ties with Moscow and objected to similar support in the past. Yesterday Hungary said it did not want the EU to begin membership talks with Ukraine.
The proposed payout from the shared EU budget would need unanimous support from all member states.
Updated
The Czech and Taiwanese governments signed an agreement on Friday to work together to help reconstruction work in Ukraine, with a senior Czech envoy praising Taipei as a “great ally” despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
Reuters reports:
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.
Taiwan has donated more than $100m for humanitarian relief, and joined in western-led sanctions against Russia. Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine “a special military operation”.
The agreement between Taiwan and the Czech Republic, signed by the de facto ambassadors in each other’s capitals, will see the two working together on rebuilding water and energy systems.
Visiting Taipei for the signing ceremony, Tomáš Kopečný, the Czech government envoy for Ukraine reconstruction, said his country had “such a strong connection with Taiwan”.
“We are very happy that the country that is defending us on our behalf, Ukraine, is being supported by our great ally and friend, Taiwan, together with us,” Kopečný said at the ceremony at Taiwan’s foreign ministry.
Taiwan has no formal diplomatic ties with any European country except the Vatican.
But central and eastern European countries have been particularly keen to show support for Taiwan – especially following Russia’s attack of Ukraine – defying Beijing’s anger about such contacts and lessening Taiwan’s international diplomatic isolation.
China has declined to condemn Russia for the invasion of Ukraine it launched in February 2022 and has maintained close ties, though it has also sent envoys to help peace efforts.
Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister, Roy Lee, said aid would expand into other areas to assist resume normal life “when Ukraine is approaching final victory”.
“It is only the unity of democratic countries that will be able to punish and deter authoritarian countries to make the same wrong decision again,” Lee said.
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Reuters reports that 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, 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.
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Russia has suspended a cooperation agreement with Japan on the decommissioning of Russian nuclear weapons, according to a government document made public on Thursday night.
Reuters reports:
The document, posted on the Russian government’s official online portal, showed that prime minister Mikhail Mishustin had signed an order suspending the 1993 agreement on Tuesday.
It did not give a reason for the decision, but said the Russian foreign ministry would inform Japan about the move.
Russia’s relations with Japan have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February last year after Tokyo joined western countries by imposing punitive sanctions.
Russia agreed in 1993 that its Vladivostok-based Pacific Fleet would stop dumping liquid radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan, but asked richer countries to help it process the waste for underground burial.
Under the suspended agreement with Japan, Tokyo helped decommission weapons, including dismantling nuclear submarines.
Japanese media reported that the work had stalled as Moscow has stopped sending the necessary data to Tokyo.
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Sometimes, if the situation allows on Ukraine’s brutal eastern frontline, Yaroslav Pilunskiy will fly his drone to “a place I know where the Russians are constantly shelling over a lake, against a beautiful sunset”.
Moscow’s expenditure on the munitions represents a movie budget that Pilunskiy, 51, could only dream about in his former life as one of Ukraine’s most respected cinematographers. “When the command staff ask what I’m doing, I say: ‘When else will I be able to film these pyrotechnics?’”
On 23 February 2022, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he was working in Rome, colour-editing a film with a big international team. His only contact with drones, at that point, had been flying a simple model to scout movie locations.
Now he is a crack military drone operator for the armed forces of Ukraine.
Read more here:
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Vladimir Putin on Friday discussed the war in Ukraine with his military top brass including the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff.
Reuters reports that pictures released by the Kremlin showed Putin at meeting with Shoigu, Gerasimov and Gen Sergei Rudskoy, head of the general staff’s main operational directorate, at the southern military grouping’s headquarters in Rostov.
“The supreme commander in chief was shown new models of military equipment,” the Kremlin said. “The head of state heard reports on the progress of the special military operation.”
Putin last month visited the military headquarters in Rostov, where the Wagner mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, began a failed mutiny in June.
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Ukrainian military repelled Russian assaults near town of Avdiivka, says general staff
Ukraine’s general staff reported its military repelled Russian assaults in widely separated sectors of the front.
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.
Ukraine’s general staff, in its latest evening report, said its forces had repelled 11 attacks near Avdiivka, 15 in the nearby Maryinka sector and 22 further north-east in Bakhmut, a town seized by Russian in May. Six attacks were repelled further north near Kupiansk, where Russian forces have been active.
Russia’s investigative committee, in an account of Thursday’s fighting, said Ukrainian forces shelled the town of Skadovsk in a Russian-occupied area of southern Kherson region. Ukrainian news reports and online observers said the target was a base of the Russian FSB security service in Skadovsk. Dead and wounded were reported. Anton Gerashchenko, from Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry, said of the strike on Skadovsk: “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.”
Russia’s defence ministry reported strikes on Ukrainian troops and equipment near Bakhmut, the Reuters news agency said, adding it could not independently confirm reports from either side.
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Summary
Hello, this is the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. Let’s start with some of the key developments
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.
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