Russia may begin full mobilisation after 2024 presidential election, says senior security officialRussia 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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US secretary of defense, 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.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that his talks with US defense 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.
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
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 20, 2023At least 11,000 Ukrainian children are reportedly being detained at 43 re-education camps across Russia, says MoDAt 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.
Russia may begin full mobilisation after 2024 presidential election, says senior security officialRussia 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.
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.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch meets Zelenskiy in KyivVolodymyr 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.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets Lachlan Murdoch, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/ReutersAn 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.
ADR trucks carrying flammable substances are blocked at the Rava-Ruska-Hrebenne checkpoint. Photograph: Ukrinform/ShutterstockUkraine’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.
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.
Ukraine sacks two high-ranking cyber defence officials, says government officialUkraine 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.
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”.
US defense secretary vows support to Ukraine ‘for the long haul’ on surprise trip to KyivThe 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, 2023As 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.
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.
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).
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.
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):
First responders work near a damaged car whose occupant was killed after a reported Russian artillery strike in Kherson. Photograph: Kherson Regional State Administration/ReutersView of a blown-out window frame and damaged equipment inside an office after a reported deadly Russian artillery strike in Kherson. Photograph: Kherson Regional State Administration/ReutersView of exterior damage to a building after a reported deadly Russian artillery strike in Kherson. Photograph: Kherson Regional State Administration/ReutersThe 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.
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.