Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Over the last three months, Russian forces in Ukraine have likely largely stopped deploying as Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), according to the latest military intelligence update from Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

It said that “the BTG concept has played a major part in Russian military doctrine for the last ten years, and saw battalions integrated with a full range of supporting sub-units, including armour, reconnaissance and (in a departure from usual Western practice) artillery.”

However, it noted that several intrinsic weaknesses of the BTG concept have been exposed in the high intensity, large-scale combat of the Ukraine war so far.

“BTGs’ relatively small allocation of combat infantry has often proved insufficient” and the “decentralised distribution of artillery has not allowed Russia to fully leverage its advantage in numbers of guns.”

In addition, few BTG commanders have been empowered to flexibly exploit opportunities in the way the BTG model was designed to promote, the ministry noted.

— Holly Ellyatt

Speculation is mounting that Russia could try to mobilize men in the occupied part of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, in December.

The Center of National Resistance, a part of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces to support Ukrainian resistance efforts, said on its website that “Russians are bringing riot police to carry out the mobilization of men in the southern temporarily occupied territories.”

It said riot police units from Dagestan had arrived on the left bank of the Dnipro river of the Kherson region, together with employees of the military commissariats from the pro-Russian, so-called “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, to conduct the mobilization.

“The newly arrived occupiers do not hide that in December the personnel will be involved in the illegal conscription of residents of the region with Russian passports. However, it is not exclusive that all men will fall under the ‘mobilization’, and not only the holders of enemy passports.”

Russian forces withdrew from the western bank of the Dnipro river to the eastern (or “left”) bank earlier in November. They have built up defensive lines and fortifications on that side of the river. Russia has already attempted to “Russify” occupied areas by handing out Russian passports and promoting Russian language and culture while suppressing that of Ukraine.

The Center of National Resistance called on the residents in the “TOT,” or “temporarily occupied territory,” to leave the region “and not become a resource for the enemy.”

— Holly Ellyatt

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday will announce new assistance to help restore Ukraine’s power transmission ability in the face of Russian attacks targeting the country’s energy grid, a senior State Department official said.

Blinken arrived in Romania on Monday evening ahead of a meetings with NATO allies and foreign ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies.

Ukraine’s foreign minister told some NATO diplomats visiting Kyiv earlier in the day that transformers were the biggest element of the country’s power infrastructure that needed to be restored.

— Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia continues to pound the southern region of Kherson, a part of which Russian forces withdrew from several weeks ago.

“This day, as well as every single day, the occupants again shelled Kherson and the communities of the region. In just one week, the enemy shelled 30 settlements of our Kherson region 258 times,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday. Russian forces had also damaged a pumping station supplying water to Mykolaiv, he added.

“Ukraine will never be a place for destruction. Ukraine will never accept orders from these ‘comrades’ from Moscow. We will do everything to restore every object, every house, every enterprise destroyed by the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for weeks, causing widespread power blackouts and shortages of energy, water and heat, leaving millions of people in tough circumstances as temperatures plummet. Temperatures in the capital Kyiv are below freezing and are even colder in the countryside.

— Holly Ellyatt

A communications line created between the militaries of the United States and Russia at the start of Moscow’s war against Ukraine has been used only once so far, a U.S. official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the United States initiated a call through the “deconfliction” line to communicate its concerns about Russian military operations near critical infrastructure in Ukraine.

Reuters is the first to report on the use of the deconfliction line, beyond regular testing.

Few details are known surrounding the specific incident that led to the call on the line, which connects the U.S. military’s European Command and Russia’s National Defense Management Center.

The official declined to elaborate but said it was not used when an errant missile landed in NATO-member Poland on Nov. 15, killing two people. The blast was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile but Russia was ultimately responsible because it started the war in late February, NATO said.

Although the U.S. official declined to specify which Russian activity raised the U.S. alarm, there have been publicly acknowledged incidents involving Russian fighting around critical Ukrainian infrastructure. These include Russian operations around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest, which is under Russian control.

— Reuters

Russia is targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine in an effort to erode morale as its invasion stalls, John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said Monday.

“This is a guy who’s used food as a weapon. He’s used fear as a weapon. Now he’s using the cold weather here to try to bring the Ukrainian people to their knees,” Kirby said.

Kirby said nearly all of the recent Russian military hits have been on civilian infrastructure like water and energy.

“It’s the kind of resources that people need as they get ready to brace for what will no doubt be a cold winter,” he said.

Kirby called the recent attacks despicable and said the U.S. and its allies are working to provide the Ukrainians with the training and tools they need to be successful militarily and to keep essential systems up and running.

“These targets are largely civilian and it’s designed to work for one reason and that’s to try to bring the Ukrainian people to their knees because he can’t bring the Ukrainian armed forces to its knees,” Kirby said.

— Emma Kinery

Russia is preventing staff from entering the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant unless they sign contracts with Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy company, claimed Ukraine’s General Staff in a Facebook post.

Russia occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in March. However, it continues to be operated by Ukrainian staff.

In early October, Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions, including the Zaporizhzhia region where the plant, Europe’s largest, resides. Along with the annexation, Putin transferred control and oversight of the Zaporizhzhia plant to Russia.

The plant remains at the frontlines of fighting between Russia and Ukraine, with damage from shelling causing it to go into blackout mode last week. The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned of instability in the plant’s leadership and its oversight under Russian military control. It’s also sounded alarms over potentially catastrophic consequences that could arise from continued shelling around the plant.

— Rocio Fabbro

Russia has launched more than 16,000 missiles attacks on Ukraine since the start its invasion of the sovereign nation on Feb. 24, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said.

The majority of these strikes — 97% of them — were aimed at civilian targets, he said over Twitter.

“We are fighting against a terrorist state,” Reznikov said. “Ukraine will prevail and will bring the war criminals to justice.”

Last week, the European Parliament declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism for its attacks on civilian sites.

Russia has increasingly turned to missile and drone strikes as its battlefield losses mount. The energy sector became a primary target for Russian strikes, which have left large swaths of the Ukrainian population without power. Fears of a harsh and deadly winter grow as Russia’s ongoing attacks continue to debilitate Ukraine’s already unstable energy infrastructure.

— Rocio Fabbro

The Kremlin denied a claim made by the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company that Russian forces could be preparing to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that they’ve occupied since March.

The head of Energoatom, Petr Kotin, said Sunday that he saw signs Russia could be preparing to leave the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility and the center of bitter missile attacks between Russia and Ukraine.

“In recent weeks we are effectively receiving information that signs have appeared that they are possibly preparing to leave the [plant],” Kotin said on national television, Reuters reported.

“Firstly, there are a very large number of reports in Russian media that it would be worth vacating the [plant] and maybe worth handing control [of it] to the [International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA],” he said, referring to the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

“One gets the impression they’re packing their bags and stealing everything they can.”

The Kremlin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov denied the claim Monday, stating “there is no need to look for some signs where they are not and cannot be,” state news agency Tass reported.

—Holly Ellyatt