Russia has damaged or destroyed almost every building in Avdiivka – report
Luke Harding
Russia has damaged or destroyed almost every building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, according to a new report, as part of a major assault which has seen civilian infrastructure deliberately flattened.
According to the Centre for Information Resilience, all 17 of the city’s educational institutions have been hit. The Russians have targeted nine out of 11 medical clinics, all five of Avdiivka’s churches and its three large supermarkets. The worst affected district is Khimik, made up of Soviet-era housing.
Russian forces have targeted the central area’s 26 high-rise apartment buildings, in an apparent attempt to stop the Ukrainian army from using them as observation posts. There have been strikes on 25 out of 26 tower blocks, which were once home to thousands of people, the report said.
Avdiivka has been a central battleground in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The bombardment of the city has been relentless – almost no building in the city centre has been left unscathed, with nearly all critical civilian infrastructure like schools, hospitals and supermarkets largely destroyed or damaged.
Russian strategy has involved the indiscriminate shelling of urban areas alongside the use of more precise weaponry to target specific buildings. We’ve seen similar patterns in other frontline cities such as Mariupol and Bakhmut, where we mapped Russian forces’ aggressive encirclement of those cities.
According to Avdiivka’s military mayor, Vitaliy Barabash, 154 residents have been killed. Around 1200 people remain inside the city, which has been on the frontline since 2014, when Russia seized the nearby regional capital of Donetsk.
In October, Russian armed forces attacked from three directions, using tanks, armoured personnel carriers and infantry.
So far, they have succeeded in capturing two kilometres of territory, as well as an industrial zone on Avdiivka’s south-eastern outskirts. Fierce battles continue.
Ukrainian troops control the main urban centre and a large coke and chemical factory to the north-west, as well as a crucial supply road.
The EU has adopted a 12th package of sanctions against Russia, the European Commission said. This package focuses on imposing additional import and export bans on Russia, combating sanctions circumvention and closing loopholes, it said.
Russia has damaged or destroyed almost every building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, according to a new report, as part of a major assault which has seen civilian infrastructure deliberately flattened.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has presented documents to Russia’s Central Election Commission to register as a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Supporters of Putin have formally nominated him to run in the 2024 presidential election as an independent candidate.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained a Ukrainian citizen who allegedly spied for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to help direct a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia, according to the SBU.
The Kremlin has welcomed the victory claimed in parliamentary elections by Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the result would lead to the “further strengthening of friendship” between the countries.
Frontline Ukrainian soldiers face shortages of artillery shells and have scaled back some military operations because of a lack of foreign assistance, Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, a senior army general, said. He told Reuters: “There’s a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) – that’s 122 mm, 152 mm. And today these problems exist across the entire frontline… The volumes that we have today are not sufficient for us today, given our needs. So, we’re redistributing it. We’re replanning tasks that we had set for ourselves and making them smaller because we need to provide for them.”
The main units of a German army brigade that is moving to Lithuania will start to arrive in 2025 and reach full fighting readiness in 2027, the Lithuanian defence minister, Arvydas Anusauskas, said. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, called the agreement on a permanent deployment of a German brigade in Lithuania a “historic moment”.
Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, will meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, this week, the Russian government said. The two leaders are expected to meet for talks in China on 19 and 20 December, with Mishustin also due to hold a meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang.
EU adopts 12th package of sanctions against Russia
The EU has adopted a 12th package of sanctions against Russia, the European Commission has said.
This package focuses on imposing additional import and export bans on Russia, combating sanctions circumvention and closing loopholes, the council said.
Among the measures is the prohibition on the direct or indirect import, purchase or transfer ofdiamonds, including jewellery, from Russia.
Russia has damaged or destroyed almost every building in Avdiivka – report
Luke Harding
Russia has damaged or destroyed almost every building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, according to a new report, as part of a major assault which has seen civilian infrastructure deliberately flattened.
According to the Centre for Information Resilience, all 17 of the city’s educational institutions have been hit. The Russians have targeted nine out of 11 medical clinics, all five of Avdiivka’s churches and its three large supermarkets. The worst affected district is Khimik, made up of Soviet-era housing.
Russian forces have targeted the central area’s 26 high-rise apartment buildings, in an apparent attempt to stop the Ukrainian army from using them as observation posts. There have been strikes on 25 out of 26 tower blocks, which were once home to thousands of people, the report said.
Avdiivka has been a central battleground in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The bombardment of the city has been relentless – almost no building in the city centre has been left unscathed, with nearly all critical civilian infrastructure like schools, hospitals and supermarkets largely destroyed or damaged.
Russian strategy has involved the indiscriminate shelling of urban areas alongside the use of more precise weaponry to target specific buildings. We’ve seen similar patterns in other frontline cities such as Mariupol and Bakhmut, where we mapped Russian forces’ aggressive encirclement of those cities.
According to Avdiivka’s military mayor, Vitaliy Barabash, 154 residents have been killed. Around 1200 people remain inside the city, which has been on the frontline since 2014, when Russia seized the nearby regional capital of Donetsk.
In October, Russian armed forces attacked from three directions, using tanks, armoured personnel carriers and infantry.
So far, they have succeeded in capturing two kilometres of territory, as well as an industrial zone on Avdiivka’s south-eastern outskirts. Fierce battles continue.
Ukrainian troops control the main urban centre and a large coke and chemical factory to the north-west, as well as a crucial supply road.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires:
Ukrainian servicemen walk past a symbolic Christmas tree outside a cafe in Kyiv. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, and Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins, attend a rally in support of Ukraine in Stockholm, Sweden. Photograph: Tt News Agency/Reuters
Putin submits documents to register as candidate for 2024 Russian presidential election
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has presented documents to Russia’s Central Election Commission to register as a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, the Associated Press reports.
Supporters of Putin have formally nominated him to run in the 2024 presidential election as an independent candidate.
The nomination by a group of at least 500 supporters, under Russian election law, is a requirement for those not running on a party ticket.
Independent candidates also need to gather at least 300,000 signatures of support from 40 regions or more.
The group that nominated Putin included top officials from the ruling United Russia party, prominent Russian actors and singers, athletes and other public figures.
Putin has dominated Russia’s political system and the media for the past two decades, jailing prominent opposition politicians – such as Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin – who could challenge him on the ballot.
Putin has won previous elections by a landslide, but independent election watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.
Russian fighters likely being returned to combat duties with unhealed wounds, says UK's MoD
Russian fighters from the Storm-Z units are “highly likely being returned to combat duties with unhealed wounds”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.
Some members of the unit have returned after limb amputations, it said in its latest intelligence update.
The MoD wrote on X:
Members of Russian Shtorm-Z units are highly likely being returned to combat duties with unhealed wounds, and even after limb amputations.
This follows credible reports that members of Shtorm-Z, Donetsk militias, and Wagner group have frequently received minimal or no treatment.
It is likely that convict recruits – who make up a large proportion of Shtorm-Z units – are especially liable to receive poor treatment. One reason is that prisoners often lack the paperwork required to access military hospitals.
Whilst reducing pressure on an overburdened military medical system, the lack of proper in-theatre medical attention will transfer the administrative and medical burden back to troops’ home units.
Storm-Z is an unofficial term used by Russian troops, combining a term for assault troops with the letter Z, adopted by the military as a symbol of their invasion of Ukraine.
Bulgaria has scrapped a tax on the transit of Russian gas through its territory after Hungary threatened to veto the country’s longtime bid to join the Schengen free-travel zone, AFP reports.
Lawmakers unanimously backed a proposal to abandon the exceptional tax of 20 leva (£9) a megawatt hour (MWh) for Russian gas coming from the TurkStream gas pipeline that it channelled to Hungary and Serbia.
Bulgaria and neighbouring Romania joined the EU in 2007, but their bid to join the free travel zone has met with opposition from member states over the years.
The EU will hold a summit on 1 February to discuss its multi-annual budget, including funding for Ukraine, the European Council president, Charles Michel, has said.
The row over financial aid comes at a dire time for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia has failed to make major gains and the US president, Joe Biden, has so far been unable to get a $60bn package for Kyiv through the US Congress.
Polish truckers resume blockade of main crossing at Ukrainian border
Polish truckers have resumed their blockade of the main crossing at the Ukrainian border, a week after it was lifted, Ukraine’s border service has said.
“Today, after 15:00 (1300 GMT), Polish carriers began a protest action on the access roads to the Dorohusk-Yahodyn checkpoint,” the service wrote on Telegram.
Protests by Polish truckers started last month against the terms of EU access for Ukrainian lorries.
They blocked the main road corridors into Ukraine, leading to higher prices for fuel and some food items as well as delays to drone deliveries to the Ukrainian army.
Trucks line up to cross the Polish-Ukrainian border at the Dorohusk-Jagodzin crossing in Ludwinów, Poland. Photograph: Kuba Stężycki/Reuters
Reuters reports that Denmark has set aside 1.8b Danish crowns ($264m) to help finance a Swedish initiative to donate CV90 armoured combat vehicles to Ukraine, the Danish Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Monday.
Sweden has already donated 50 CV90s to the country in its war with Russia. The Danish donation would help finance production of more such vehicles, spare parts, ammunition and a multi-year maintenance agreement, the ministry said.
Reuters reports that two court hearings for jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny that were due to take place on Monday have been postponed until January, court filings showed.
Navalny’s allies, who had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, say he has not been seen by his lawyers since 6 December and have raised the alarm about his whereabouts.
Two Ukrainian civilians were killed and at least two others injured over the past day, the president’s office reported on Monday.
In the north, the Russian army shelled the village of Krasnopillia in the Sumy region, killing a civilian in his home and damaging residential buildings, it said.
In the south, an 81-year-old man was reported to have died on the street during an attack on the centre of Kherson city.
Reuters has further details about the agreement on a permanent deployment of a German brigade in Lithuania (see earlier post at 10.14).
Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said most of the units will be arriving in 2025-2026, and they and their families will get “attractive conditions”, including German-language schools, housing and flight connections.
“The speed of the project clearly shows that Germany understood the new security reality,” he said.
Germany already leads Nato’s multinational battle group in Lithuania of about 1,000 troops, which will be integrated into the German brigade, Reuters reports.
Lithuania will spend about 0.3% of its gross domestic product over the next several years to build housing, training grounds and other infrastructure for the German troops, Laurynas Kasciunas, head of parliamentary national security and defence committee, said.
“All political parties, left to right, agree that this is a priority. We will find the resources needed,” Kasciunas told reporters.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained a Ukrainian citizen who allegedly spied for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to help direct a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia, according to the SBU.
The Kremlin has welcomed the victory claimed in parliamentary elections by Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the result would lead to the “further strengthening of friendship” between the countries.
Frontline Ukrainian soldiers face shortages of artillery shells and have scaled back some military operations because of a lack of foreign assistance, Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, a senior army general, said. He told Reuters: “There’s a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) – that’s 122 mm, 152 mm. And today these problems exist across the entire frontline… The volumes that we have today are not sufficient for us today, given our needs. So, we’re redistributing it. We’re replanning tasks that we had set for ourselves and making them smaller because we need to provide for them.”
The main units of a German army brigade that is moving to Lithuania will start to arrive in 2025 and reach full fighting readiness in 2027, the Lithuanian defence minister, Arvydas Anusauskas, said. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, called the agreement on a permanent deployment of a German brigade in Lithuania a “historic moment”.
Russia’s prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, will meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, this week, the Russian government said. The two leaders are expected to meet for talks in China on 19 and 20 December, with Mishustin also due to hold a meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang.
Security service detains Ukrainian civilian accused of helping direct Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained a Ukrainian citizen who allegedly spied for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to help direct a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia, according to the SBU.
The man was allegedly remotely recruited by the FSB in October and subsequently formed his own networks of informants to scour Zaporizhzhia in search of the positions of Ukrainian troops and defences.
The conspirators then are accused of taking pictures and videos of different suspected locations, which they shared with their FSB contacts.
A building in central Zaporizhzhia was allegedly struck as a result of the spying. Five people died, and another five were seriously injured.
The SBU said that the man has been charged with treason and faces life in prison if convicted.
Answering a question about whether he considers the battlefield situation a stalemate, Ukraine’s army chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, replied “no”, Ukraine’s RBC media reported.
He declined to comment on whether Ukraine would continue counteroffensive operations during the winter.
Last month, Zaluzhnyi told the Economist the war had entered a phase of attritional fighting in which neither side would make much progress unless there was a technological breakthrough.
He also suggested that Russia was slowly getting the upper hand thanks to its superior numbers.
“Just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he said, adding: “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
Ukraine has scaled back military operations due to shortfall in foreign assistance, says commander
Frontline Ukrainian soldiers face shortages of artillery shells and have scaled back some military operations because of a lack of foreign assistance, a senior army general has said.
There’s a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) – that’s 122 mm, 152 mm. And today these problems exist across the entire frontline …
The volumes that we have today are not sufficient for us today, given our needs. So, we’re redistributing it. We’re replanning tasks that we had set for ourselves and making them smaller because we need to provide for them.
Tarnavskyi added that the shortage of artillery shells was a significant issue for Ukraine, but also noted that Russian forces faced ammunition problems.
