Closing summary
At least 11,000 Ukrainian children are reportedly being detained at 43 re-education camps across Russia, thousands of miles from home, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said on X.
Russia may begin full mobilisation after the 2024 Russian presidential election on 17 March, secretary of the national security and defence council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, has suggested.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met Fox Corp CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, in the Ukrainian capital in what Kyiv said was a “very important signal” of support. “The Head of State (Zelenskiy) thanked Lachlan Murdoch for his visit and emphasised that it is a very important signal of support at the time when the world’s attention is blurred by other events,” the president’s office wrote.
Ukraine sacked two senior cyber defence officials on Monday, a government official said, as prosecutors announced a probe into alleged embezzlement in the government’s cybersecurity agency.
US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in an unannounced visit to Kyiv, and said that American support to Ukraine would continue “for the long haul”, the Associated Press reported. Zelenskiy said Austin’s visit was “a very important signal for Ukraine”. “We count on your support,” he added, thanking Congress as well as the American people for their backing. Austin announced $100m in new military aid to Ukraine during his visit.
Russian shelling killed three people on Monday and damaged power lines and a gas pipeline in the central Dnipropetrovsk and southern Kherson regions of Ukraine, authorities said. An elderly woman was killed and a man injured in Russian artillery strike on the town of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk’s governor said.
“A power line and a gas pipeline were damaged,” Serhiy Lysak, the governor, said on Telegram. On Monday morning, two drivers were killed when Russian forces shelled a private transport company parking lot in Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. These claims have not been independently verified.
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From the Kyiv Independent: Russia’s federal air transport agency has proposed Russian airlines begin regular flights to North Korea in the latest sign of increasing ties between the two countries, Russian state-controlled media Kommersant reported.
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The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, announced $100m in new military aid to Ukraine during his unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reports.
The US has provided more than $44bn in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
A joint Ukraine-US military industry conference in Washington, due to take place on 6 and 7 December, is intended to boost Ukraine’s domestic arms production as the war drags towards the two-year mark.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that his talks with the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, included discussion on “battlefield developments”, the Black Sea and Ukraine’s export corridor.
Hosted @SecDef Lloyd Austin ahead of the next Ramstein meeting.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 20, 2023
We focused on the battlefield developments: our defense, perspectives, and support. We also discussed Ukraine’s actions in the Black Sea and the defense of our export corridor.
Freedom of navigation is a… pic.twitter.com/ws3D6MjyEs
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At least 11,000 Ukrainian children are reportedly being detained at 43 re-education camps across Russia, says MoD
At least 11,000 Ukrainian children are reportedly being detained at 43 re-education camps across Russia, thousands of miles from home, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said on X.
Since the start of the war, children as young as four months living in the occupied areas have been taken to 43 camps across Russia, including in Moscow-annexed Crimea and Siberia, for “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education”, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report, which was funded by the US state department, has previously found.
The international criminal court issued arrest warrants in March for Vladimir Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine – a war crime.
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Russia may begin full mobilisation after 2024 presidential election, says senior security official
Russia may begin full mobilisation after the 2024 Russian presidential election on 17 March, the secretary of the national security and defence council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, has suggested.
Danilov said in a speech to the International Security Forum in Halifax, Canada:
Russia has managed to adapt, and constantly injects funds into its defence sector. Russia proved to be more resilient to the west’s sanctions, as expected.
Russia is increasingly putting its economy on a war footing. Total mobilisation may follow the 2024 presidential elections.
Several sources have told Reuters that Putin has decided to run in the March presidential election, a move that will keep him in power until least 2030.
In September, Ukraine’s military said Russia could launch a big mobilisation campaign soon to try to recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers from inside Russia and occupied Ukraine.
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Nato is examining a more permanent ramp up of troop numbers in the western Balkans to keep tensions in the region under control, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said.
“We are now reviewing whether we should have a more permanent increase to ensure that this doesn’t spiral out of control and creates a new violent conflict in Kosovo or the wider region,” he told reporters on a visit to Kosovo.
After fresh violence between ethnic groups in Kosovo in September, Nato had called in reserve forces.
Nato’s regional KFOR mission, which has been in operation since 1999, comprises over 4,500 troops from 27 countries.
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Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch meets Zelenskiy in Kyiv
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has met Fox Corp CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, in the Ukrainian capital in what Kyiv said was a “very important signal” of support at a time when global media attention has shifted from the war in Ukraine.
Media titan Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son – who was recently announced as chairman of both Fox Corp and News Corp – is a leading figure in media with a US Republican-leaning audience.
“The Head of State (Zelenskiy) thanked Lachlan Murdoch for his visit and emphasised that it is a very important signal of support at the time when the world’s attention is blurred by other events,” the president’s office wrote on its website.
His remark appeared to be a reference to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has dominated headlines for more than a month, and significantly diverted global media attention from the war in Ukraine, which is nearing the 21-month mark this week.
Zelenskiy said it was vital to keep the world’s attention focused on the war in Ukraine.
“For us, for our warriors, this is not a movie. These are our lives. This is daily hard work. And it will not be over as quickly as we would like, but we have no right to give up and we will not,” he was quoted as saying by his office.
Zelenskiy said Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall, who was badly injured covering the war in Ukraine last year, and The Sun journalist Jerome Starkey were also invited to the meeting with Murdoch, Reuters reports.
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An elderly woman was killed and a man injured in Russian artillery strike on the town of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk’s governor said.
“A power line and a gas pipeline were damaged,” Serhiy Lysak, the governor, wrote on Telegram. These claims have not been independently verified.
Kyiv hopes to hold a new round of talks with Poland and the EU this week to resolve an issue with Polish truckers blocking crossings at the Ukrainian-Polish border, a Ukrainian trade representative has said.
“This week we hope to have negotiations in a trilateral format,” Taras Kachka, the representative, said in televised comments, according to Reuters.
Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has congratulated Argentina’s president-elect, Javier Milei, praising him on his “clear stance” in support of Kyiv.
Milei, a rightwing libertarian who on Sunday won almost 56% of the vote in the election’s second round, has previously said he would retreat from ties with countries including Russia, China and Brazil, citing disagreement with their governments’ policies.
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Reuters reports that Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had lodged a formal complaint with the Finnish ambassador in Moscow over Helsinki’s closure of four busy border crossings with Russia, a step it said impacted tens of thousands of people in both countries.
Finland on Saturday closed the crossing points as it sought to halt a flow of asylum seekers it said was caused by Moscow, an allegation Russia has denied.
In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said that Finland’s decision had been “rushed” and that it violated the rights and interests of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the countries’ shared border.
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Ukraine sacks two high-ranking cyber defence officials, says government official
Ukraine sacked two senior cyber defence officials on Monday, a government official said, as prosecutors announced a probe into alleged embezzlement in the government’s cybersecurity agency, according to Reuters.
Yurii Shchyhol, head of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP), and his deputy, Viktor Zhora, were dismissed by the government, senior cabinet official Taras Melnychuk wrote on Telegram.
Melnychuk, the cabinet’s representative to parliament, did not mention the reasons for the dismissals.
Shchyhol wrote on Facebook that he was confident he could prove his innocence, Interfax Ukraine reported. There was no immediate comment from Zhora.
Ukraine has stepped up efforts to curtail corruption as it pursues membership in the EU, which has made the fight against graft a key prerequisite for negotiations to begin.
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The US ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, has said Lloyd Austin’s visit to the Ukrainian capital signalled Washington’s “unwavering support to Ukraine in its fight for freedom”.
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US defense secretary vows support to Ukraine 'for the long haul' on surprise trip to Kyiv
The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, met with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and has said that American support to Kyiv would continue “for the long haul”, the Associated Press reports.
Austin, who travelled to Kyiv by train from Poland, met with Zelenskiy and was scheduled to meet with the country’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, and chief of staff Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
In Kyiv, Austin said Ukraine’s effort to defeat Russia’s invasion “matters to the rest of the world” and that US support would continue “for the long haul”.
Zelenskiy said Austin’s visit was “a very important signal for Ukraine”. “We count on your support,” he added, thanking Congress as well as the American people for their backing.
“I was honored to meet with President Zelenskiy in Kyiv today to reaffirm the United States’ steadfast support for Ukraine,” Austin wrote on X after his meeting.
He said the US, together with allies and partners, would continue to support Ukraine’s needs on the battlefield.
I was honored to meet with President @ZelenskyyUa in Kyiv today to reaffirm the United States’ steadfast support for Ukraine. We, along with our allies and partners, will continue to support Ukraine’s urgent battlefield needs and long-term defense requirements. pic.twitter.com/Odv6ClgcrP
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) November 20, 2023
As my colleague Shaun Walker writes, the war in the Middle East has meant that for perhaps the first time since February 2022, Ukraine has not been the main foreign policy issue on most western leaders’ minds for a sustained period of time.
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A senior defence official traveling with US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has told reporters that the US expects that this winter Russia will go after Ukraine’s infrastructure again, like the power grid, making air defences critical, the Associated Press reports.
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned Ukrainians to prepare for new waves of Russian attacks on infrastructure as winter approaches.
Last winter, about 10 months into the invasion, Russia made waves of attacks on power stations and other plants linked to the energy network, prompting rolling blackouts in widely disparate regions.
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Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has said it had become impossible to return asylum seekers who do not meet the criteria for protection, and that this had to be taken into account when policies are set, Reuters reports.
Finland has closed four crossing points on its border with Russia as Helsinki seeks to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow, leaving only four stations open.
The Kremlin has denied sending migrants and said earlier that Finland’s decision to shut border crossings reflected Helsinki’s adoption of an anti-Russian stance (see earlier post at 09.41).
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The bodies of 94 Ukrainian soldiers were returned to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government on Monday, the official account for the Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War wrote on Telegram.
In exchange, Ukraine transferred the bodies of an unspecified number of Russian soldiers killed in combat to the Russian side, the headquarters said.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine will ensure the transportation of repatriated bodies and remains to designated state specialized institutions for transfer to representatives of law enforcement agencies and forensic medical experts for identification of the deceased,” it wrote.
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Here are some images from Kherson following reported Russian shelling (Reuters was not able to independently verify the location or the date when the video and the images were taken):
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The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said the public street protest in Moscow, led by wives of deployed Russian soldiers, on 7 November, was likely the first such demonstrations in the Russian capital since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February.
In its latest intelligence update, the MoD wrote on X:
The protestors gathered in the central Teatralnya Square and unfurled banners demanding the rotation of their partners away from the frontline.
Since February 2022, social media has provided daily examples of Russian wives and mothers making online appeals protesting against the conditions of their loved ones’ service.
However, Russia’s draconian legislation has so far prevented troops’ relatives from coalescing into an influential lobbying force, as soldiers’ mothers did during the Afghan-Soviet War of the 1980s.
Police broke up the Teatralnya Square protest within minutes. However, the protestors’ immediate demand is notable.
The apparently indefinitely extended combat deployments of personnel without rotation is increasingly seen as unsustainable by both the troops themselves and by their relatives.
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Here is what the governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, has posted on Telegram about the reports of two people being killed in Kherson by Russian shelling (see earlier post at 08.25)
He wrote:
In the morning, the Russian army shelled the parking lot of a private transport company in Kherson.
As a result of the enemy attack, two drivers were killed, another person was injured. Cars and a residential building were damaged.
These claims are yet to be independently verified.
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Nato supports Bosnia’s territorial integrity and is concerned by “malign foreign interference,” including by Russia, in the volatile Balkans region that went through a devastating war in the 1990s, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said.
Sarajevo is the first stop on Stoltenberg’s tour of western Balkan countries that will also include Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia, the Associated Press reports.
“The Allies strongly support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “We are concerned by the secessionist and divisive rhetoric as well as malign foreign interference, including Russia.”
There are widespread fears that Russia is trying to destabilise Bosnia and the rest of the region and shift at least some world attention from its war in Ukraine.
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Morning summary
The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, arrived in Kyiv on Monday for a visit. “I’m here today to deliver an important message: the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight for freedom against Russia’s aggression, both now and into the future.”
Two people were killed early on Monday after Russian forces shelled a parking lot in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, authorities said. Regional prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into the artillery strike, which occurred at about 9am (7am GMT) and injured one other person, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
A Ukrainian soldier and a woman have died after a grenade exploded in a Kyiv apartment, police in the Ukrainian capital have said, but the cause of the blast, which injured a second man, was not immediately clear. Explosives technicians and investigators were working at the scene of Sunday’s explosion in the Dniprovskiy district, Kyiv police said in a statement.
The Ukrainian army said it had pushed back Russian forces “three to eight kilometres” from the banks of the Dnipro River, which if confirmed would be the first meaningful advance by Kyiv’s forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.
A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving earlier this year has returned to Ukraine. Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. “I believed I would be in Ukraine, but not on this day,” Yermokhin told Reuters while eating at a petrol station after crossing the border.
About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks, including those carrying fuel and humanitarian aid, were stuck on the Polish side of the border on Sunday due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.
Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Air defence units in Moscow intercepted a drone targeting the city late Sunday, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said units in the Elektrostal district in the capital’s east had intercepted the drone. No casualties or damage were initially reported. Air defences had also thwarted a drone attack on the Russian capital overnight to Sunday, authorities said earlier.
Russia launched 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones targeting Kyiv and the Cherkasy and Poltava regions overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, of which 15 were shot down. The overnight strikes on Kyiv were the second attack on the Ukrainian capital in 48 hours, said the city’s military administration spokesperson, Serhii Popko.
Five people including a three-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said. “All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.
The pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be a “sham” with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his arrest that he and his supporters were entering politics.
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The Kremlin, facing the prospect of a European Union ban on imports of Russian diamonds, said on Monday that EU sanctions tended to have a “boomerang effect” on those who applied them, Reuters reports.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was commenting on a proposed EU ban on diamond imports from Russia as part of a new sanctions package against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
Russia is the world’s biggest producer of rough diamonds by volume. Peskov told reporters such a move had been anticipated for a long time, but was likely to backfire.
“As a rule, it turns out that a boomerang effect is partially triggered: the interests of the Europeans themselves suffer. So far, we have been able to find ways to minimise the negative consequences of sanctions,” he said.
EU diplomatic sources said last week the proposal under discussion was to ban direct diamond imports from Russia from 1 January and from March to implement a traceability mechanism that would prevent imports of Russian gems processed in third countries.
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The Kremlin said on Monday that president Vladimir Putin will set out Russia’s view of what it sees as the “deeply unstable world situation” when he addresses an upcoming virtual G20 summit.
Russian state TV presenter Pavel Zarubin said on his Telegram channel on Sunday that it would be the “first event in a long time” including both Putin and western leaders.
According to the state RIA news agency, the G20 virtual summit will be held on Wednesday.
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The Kremlin said on Monday it regretted Finland’s decision to shut crossings on its border with Russia, saying it reflected Helsinki’s adoption of an anti-Russian stance, Reuters reports.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, speaking at a regular news briefing, also rejected Finland’s accusation that Russia is deliberately pushing illegal migrants towards the border and said that Russian border guards were following all instructions.
Finland, a member of the European Union and – from this year – also of the Nato military alliance, closed four crossings on its border with Russia on Saturday as Helsinki seeks to halt a flow of asylum seekers it says was instigated by Moscow.
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The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, arrives in Kyiv on Monday morning.
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Two killed by Russian shelling in Kherson, Ukrainian authorities say
Reuters reports that two people were killed early on Monday after Russian forces shelled a parking lot in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, authorities said.
Regional prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into the artillery strike, which occurred at about 9am (7am GMT) and injured one other person, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
The Kherson governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said the two dead were drivers for a private transport business.
Images posted on Telegram showed firefighters dousing cars that had been blasted apart, one day after a separate strike on the city wounded five people, including a three-year-old girl.
Russian forces have regularly shelled Kherson from across the Dnipro River since the regional capital was reoccupied by Ukrainian troops last November.
Ukraine said last week it had secured a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and that its troops were trying to push Russian forces further back.
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US defence secretary visits Kyiv
The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, arrived in Kyiv on Monday for a visit, he said on the X social media platform, Reuters reports.
“I’m here today to deliver an important message: the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight for freedom against Russia’s aggression, both now and into the future.”
The visit comes amid increasing division over Ukraine aid in the US legislature. A joint Ukraine-US military industry conference in Washington is due to take place next month.
That event, due to be held on 6-7 December, is intended to boost Ukraine’s domestic arms production as its fight against a full-scale Russian invasion nears the two-year mark.
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Reuters reports that a Japanese delegation led by senior industry and foreign ministry officials and including business representatives is visiting Ukraine on Monday for talks ahead of a reconstruction conference that Japan will host, the industry ministry said.
Japan, which has been supporting Ukraine with funds and by accepting refugees since Russia invaded in February 2022, has also been promoting support for Ukraine at the level of the G7, which Japan chairs this year.
Kazuchika Iwata, the state minister of economy, trade and industry (METI), and the state minister for foreign affairs Kiyoto Tsuji, are visiting together with representatives of Japan companies, METI said in a statement.
In Kyiv, the delegation, which includes members of Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business lobby, in charge of a committee on Ukraine’s reconstruction, plans talks with the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, government officials and companies.
Shmyhal said this month Ukraine would need budget support of about $42bn this year and next year to plug a massive deficit and aid reconstruction from the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion.
METI said the visit was an opportunity to hear about Ukraine’s needs and to discuss specific projects and accelerate public and private efforts to help.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who visited Japan in May during a G7 summit – and the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, agreed this month to hold a Japan-Ukraine Conference for promotion of Economic Reconstruction in Tokyo on 19 February.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier and a woman have died after a grenade exploded in a Kyiv apartment, police in the Ukrainian capital have said, but the cause of the blast, which injured a second man, was not immediately clear.
Explosives technicians and investigators were working at the scene of Sunday’s explosion in the Dniprovskiy district, Kyiv police said in a statement.
“A citizen contacted the police with a report that an explosion rang out in a neighbouring apartment,” they added.
The news came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed the commander of the military’s medical forces, Maj Gen Tetiana Ostashchenko, and said “new priorities had been set” in the operations of Ukraine’s military after a meeting with the defence minister, Rustem Umerov.
“There is little time left to wait for results. Quick action is needed for forthcoming changes,” the Ukrainian president said in his evening video address.
In other key developments:
The Ukrainian army said it had pushed back Russian forces “three to eight kilometres” from the banks of the Dnipro River, which if confirmed would be the first meaningful advance by Kyiv’s forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.
A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving earlier this year has returned to Ukraine. Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. “I believed I would be in Ukraine, but not on this day,” Yermokhin told Reuters while eating at a petrol station after crossing the border.
About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks, including those carrying fuel and humanitarian aid, were stuck on the Polish side of the border on Sunday due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.
Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Air defence units in Moscow intercepted a drone targeting the city late Sunday, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said units in the Elektrostal district in the capital’s east had intercepted the drone. No casualties or damage were initially reported. Air defences had also thwarted a drone attack on the Russian capital overnight to Sunday, authorities said earlier.
Russia launched 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones targeting Kyiv and the Cherkasy and Poltava regions overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, of which 15 were shot down. The overnight strikes on Kyiv were the second attack on the Ukrainian capital in 48 hours, said the city’s military administration spokesperson, Serhii Popko.
Five people including a three-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said. “All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.
The pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be a “sham” with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his arrest that he and his supporters were entering politics.
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