LIVE – Ukraine and Russia exchange new prisoners of war

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At least 32 people have been killed in Russian shelling of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine since the withdrawal of pro-Moscow forces two weeks ago, National Police Chief Ihor said on Saturday. Klymenko, in a Facebook post.

Russian forces have completed their withdrawal from the city of
Kherson on November 11 after nearly nine months of occupation.

On the front, prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine continued on Saturday with 12 people released on the kyiv side. Opposite, Moscow announced that it had recovered nine of its men.

In recent days, many have been released. On Thursday, 50 captives were released on each side. On Wednesday, 35 people were also exchanged from each side, according to the respective representatives.

Ukraine garnered promises of support against Moscow this Saturday, on the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, the famine deliberately caused by the Stalinist regime in the 1930s, where several European leaders made the trip.

The Prime Ministers of Poland and Lithuania, two of Ukraine’s closest supporters, Mateusz Morawiecki and Ingrida Simonyte, thus spoke with their counterpart Denis Chmygal.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also paid a visit to kyiv, his first since the start of the Russian invasion. According to the Belga agency, it provides additional financial support of 37.4 million euros for Ukraine, in particular to help the population to cope with winter in a context of power cuts.

Emmanuel Macron also promised an additional 6 million euros for these exports, which are vital for the supply of many countries in Africa and Asia.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in a video additional aid of 15 million euros to support Ukrainian grain exports, disrupted by the war.

“The hardest thing is finding enough cut wood,” Serguiï Khmil, a resident of the village of Kamyanka, told AFP as temperatures plummet in eastern Ukraine. “There is a huge queue to get wood donated by volunteers,” he explains.

Without that wood, he thinks he’ll probably freeze to death in the ruins of his village, though he plans to use the countless ammunition crates left behind by the retreating Russian army as fuel this winter.

With his house largely destroyed by shelling, Serguii Khmil is working hard to convert his summer kitchen into makeshift winter quarters, now filled with blankets, ammunition crates and a stove assembled from Russian shell casings. .

After bombing and occupying the area, the Russians moved in, commandeering buildings, looting homes, stealing alcohol and driving while intoxicated. They started breaking into garages and houses and partying drunk at night,” said 53-year-old resident Volodymyr Tsybulya.

Their word is rare. A Russian army deserter testified to BFMTV about the horrors of the war in Ukraine which he says he witnessed. The former soldier spent several weeks in the Boutcha region, where he claims to have seen his former brothers in arms commit war crimes.

“They raped a mother and her 17-year-old daughter,” Nikita Chibrine, 27, told BFMTV about several Russian soldiers whom he described as “intoxicated”. “They were four in total,” he says.

>> Read more in our full article here.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reiterated in an interview with Parisian Friday that “Ukraine is not against negotiations” with Russia to find a way out of the conflict.

“But for that to happen, Russia needs to stop confusing negotiation with ultimatum,” he said.

However, he set conditions. “A just peace begins with a complete restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, including in particular Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, he said.

Electricity has been restored in Kherson, southern Ukraine, following its liberation from months of Russian occupation, a Ukrainian presidential official said on Saturday, Reuters reports.

“First we supply electricity to the city’s essential infrastructure and immediately afterwards to individuals,” Kirilo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Telegram messaging.

The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine, said Friday that a “former general” of the American Marines was part of this private army whose recruits fight in particular in Ukraine.

The Russian businessman assured in an interview with a Finnish newspaper that a “British battalion f (part of Wagner) is commanded by an American citizen, former general of the Marine Corps”, quoted by the press service of his company Concord.

For years Wagner has been suspected of playing a role in furthering the Kremlin’s ambitions, including in Ukraine where fighters from the paramilitary group were on the front line during the offensive launched in February.

In its daily bulletin devoted to monitoring the war in Ukraine dated this Saturday, the British Ministry of Defense made a startling observation about the arsenal used by the Russians. According to the institution, Russia uses outdated cruise missiles, or more precisely dating back to the end of the Soviet era, in its conflict against its neighbor, after having removed the nuclear warhead.

“Russia is likely to remove nuclear warheads from old nuclear cruise missiles and fire blank rounds at Ukraine,” the text begins. Speculation supported by open source images (free of rights) of the remains of an “AS-15 Kent cruise missile apparently shot down, and designed in the 1980s for the sole purpose of serving as a nuclear delivery system”.

Doubting the effectiveness of such a device, the British Ministry of Defense judges that Russia is waiting for it to lure the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense. “Whatever the Russian intention, this example of improvisation underlines the reduction of its stock of long-range missiles”, ends the press release.

More information here.

NASA this week unveiled satellite images of Ukraine plunged into darkness due to massive power cutsafter being targeted on Wednesday by Russian strikes. These images have been shared widely on social media by pro-Russian accounts to tout Moscow’s successes.

More than 6 million Ukrainian homes were still affected by power cuts on Fridaycompared to 12 million on Wednesday, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

>> It is to be read here.

The bombing conducted Friday by the Russians on the city of Kherson was particularly deadly: 15 dead and 35 injured according to local authorities. This is the first time that the Russians have deliberately struck the residential areas of this city in southern Ukraine, liberated just two weeks ago by national troops. Withdrawn, the invader now pounded the agglomeration from the other bank of the Dnieper.

Among the relatives of the victims of the Russian shootings dominate anger and sadness.

“I hate them. These people took the most precious people in my life, my parents. But I have a son and I have to live for him”, for example released Lilia Kristenko in front of the cameras and the building where lived his father and mother, now ravaged.

At the center of the drama, a tool from the Russian arsenal: multiple rocket launchers. Our consultant for international matters, Patrick Sauce, explained:

“Russian multiple rocket launchers are devastating against civilians. Their accuracy is not measured over a meter or two but sometimes sixty to a hundred meters. So you can aim for a power station and eventually it hits a school. The goal is really to terrorize the city.”

Fearing this type of assault, Ukrainian leaders had encouraged civilians to evacuate the city in recent days. We are also trying to empty hospitals of their patients.

More information here.

At the same time, more than six million Ukrainian homes were affected by power cuts on Friday, two days after massive Russian strikes against the country, according to Volodymyr Zelensky. “Tonight, cuts continue in most regions and in kyiv,” added the head of state in his daily address.

On Friday evening, the electricity network had lost “30%” of its capacity, the operator Ukrenergo said on Telegram, while this lack was “15-20%” on Wednesday morning. “We expect to go through the weekend with a deficit of around 25%. This figure is already close to that before the last attack, but still a little too large. Therefore, the timetables for the restrictions will be maintained”, specified the operator.

The deadliest shelling in recent days hit Kherson on Friday: “15 residents of the city were killed and 35 injured, including a child,” said Galyna Lugova, an official with the city’s military administration, on the social networks. She said several “private homes and high-rise buildings” were damaged.

“The Russian invaders opened fire on a residential area using multiple rocket launchers. A large building caught fire,” Yaroslav Yanushevich, governor of the Kherson region, said earlier. “Due to constant Russian bombardment, we are evacuating patients from hospitals in Kherson.”