The Ukrainian military reclaimed three more villages in the city of Dnipro, Kyiv, in the early stage of the second world war

A pair of people were killed and at least five were trapped in the city of Zaporizhzhia after seven Russian rockets slammed into buildings in the middle of the night.

The president of Ukraine said his country’s military had reclaimed three more villages in a region that was annexed by Russia.

A young girl was taken to the hospital after being rescued from multi-story buildings, according to Governor Oleksandr Starukh.

Rogov also said that Ukrainians “have concentrated significant number of militants in Zaporizhzhia direction” and that the risk of storming the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “remains high”.

The head of the I Atomic Energy Agency is going to speak to Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will discuss efforts to set up a secure protection zone, as well as the fact that staff, including the director, have been kidnapped by Russian troops.

A group of more than 40 countries plan to launch a European Political Community on Thursday to boost security and prosperity, a day after the Kremlin said it would allow more land grabs in Ukranian.

Peskov was unwilling to specify which additional Ukrainian territories Moscow was looking at, and he wouldn’t say if the Kremlin was going to organize more of the “Referendums” inUkraine that the West has dismissed as illegitimate.

The east end of the Dnipro gave up swathes of land that Russia had occupied since the early days of the war, and Putin officially declared Russian territory just five weeks ago.

As of last week, Ukraine said it had recaptured 2,400 square kilometers (927 square miles) in Kherson previously under Russian control. Authorities in Kyiv said Wednesday that it had liberated five more small, rural villages as the Ukrainian military pushes further southwest.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers will be sent to the annexed territory of Crimea once they are stable.

When Russian troops pulled back from the Donetsk city of Lyman over the weekend, they retreated so rapidly that they left behind the bodies of their comrades. Some of the people were lying down by the side of the road.

Lyman sustained heavy damage both during the occupation and as Ukrainian soldiers fought to retake it. Mykola, a 71-year-old man who gave only his first name, was among about 100 residents who lined up for aid on Wednesday.

A Russian Defense Minister Rejoinder: The War in Kherson is a Complete Disaster and its Rulings are Against Perturbations

The war should end so that the facilities can start working like they used to. We don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged, a complete disaster.”

Zelenskyy told Moscow that it had lost the war it launched in February when he switched from English to Russian in his address.

Crews restored power and cellular connection in Enerhodar, the city near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian control, a senior official said Sunday.

The leader of the Zaporizhzhia government, Alexander Rogov, wrote in a telegram that water supply would be restored soon.

Ukrainians have tried to deliver humanitarian supplies to the city with food, hygiene products, and so on but Russians have refused to let it through, Orlov said.

The dramatic scenes in Kherson came less than 48 hours after Russia’s defense minister announced that Russian troops in the city would withdraw. Russian forces blew up bridges and laid mines to slow the push of Ukrainian forces into the region this week, after ordering all civilians to leave towns and villages in the region a month ago.

MOSCOW and KYIV – Russia-backed authorities began an evacuation of civilians from the occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson Wednesday — in a sign that Moscow’s hold over the territory looks increasingly in jeopardy amid a surging Ukrainian counteroffensive.

On Thursday, Stremousov insisted that Saldo was only requesting that authorities “help organize the departure of residents of the Kherson region for temporary stay and rest in other regions of the Russian Federation.”

Ukraine has asserted that it carried out attacks against Russian troop concentrations that were withdrawing, but the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement later on Friday that “despite the attempts of the enemy to disrupt the transfer of Russian troops, no losses among personnel, weapons, military equipment and materiel were allowed.”

Saldo claimed that Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexed in violation of international law, was being attacked by dangerous airstrikes.

“We suggested that all residents of the Kherson region, if there is such a wish, to protect themselves from the consequences of missile strikes, should go to other regions … to take their children and leave.”

According to the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration, the civilian transports weren’t an “evacuation.”

The withdrawal was a humiliation for some commentators in Moscow. But others who were previously critical of the Defense Ministry have accepted the move. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Surovikin had saved a thousand soldiers and “made a difficult but right choice between senseless sacrifices for the sake of loud statements and saving the priceless lives of soldiers.”

The early days of the invasion in February were reminiscent of the bombardment that came soon after, but also show that the conflict in Ukraine has exploded once again as winter approaches.

For the first time in the war, it is headed towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

The Russian War is Here Forever in Ukraine, and the Ukrenergo Energy Crisis is Onsensing in Europe, as Seen by Ukrainians

The Ukrainian military later warned that Russia was preparing to strike the city from new positions across the river. The bridge that connected Kherson City to the eastern bank was destroyed, severing the main transit route for Russians who want to leave Kherson and for Ukrainians who want to go to mainland Russia.

“What seemed a distant prospect for anything that could be convincingly described as a Ukraine victory is now very much more plausible,” Giles said. “The response from Russia is likely to escalate further.”

The attacks, which took place on Monday, were a clear indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin was angry at what he saw as the losses of the war in his country.

These counter-offensives have changed the nature of the war and dispelled a suggestion made by the West and Russia that the Ukrainians were not able to seize ground.

The Ukrainian flag has been raised on top of the Kherson city administration building and police headquarters since early Friday morning, and there are unconfirmed videos and pictures on the internet showing jubilant locals in nearby villages. Several videos appeared to show Ukrainians tearing down Russian billboards signs that read “Russia is Here Forever.”

The Russians are trying to avoid collapsing their frontlines before winter sets in, according to a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Russians will be happy if they get to Christmas with the frontline looking like it did in February.

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

Giles said there are many reasons why things must be done quickly in Ukraine. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

Russia’s aerial bombardment may not form a recurrent pattern, but Western assessment suggest that Moscow might not be able to keep up with it.

“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said in a rare speech on Tuesday.

“Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives,” the ISW assessed.

“Another thing that the Ukrainians will have to do is they’re going to have to move their systems forward so that they can counter any possible Russian artillery that is going to be on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.

“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.

Some help for Putin may be on the way, however. Concerns of deepened military cooperation between close allies were raised after it was announced that a joint Regional Group of troops would be deployed by the two countries. Observers say that there may be a connection between the alleged Ukrainian threats of security and some level of involvement.

“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

While US officials are urging Zelensky to modify his rhetoric on negotiations if not his core demands, theUkrainian military’s fresh success in September will help reinforce international support for Ukraine’s war effort.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

“These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles [this week] were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said.

Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States, Bronk said.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure during the October 17-17 shooting: “The first time from the beginning of the war” by Yugoslav Giles

“There are many things Russia can do to make the war personal, not just for people of Ukraine but around Europe, to try to force pressure on governments to remove their support for Ukraine,” Giles said.

The Ukrainian energy minister told CNN that of the energy infrastructure in his country, 30% was hit by Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday. The minister told CNN that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

It is suggested by experts that the coming weeks are crucial for both on the battlefield and in Europe. Giles said that Putin’s next move depended on the response of the rest of the world. “Russia’s attitude is shaped by the failure of Western countries to confront and deter it.”

Saldo offered residents the option of relocating to cities “in any part of Russia,” and said the Russian government would provide housing vouchers to those who wished to move further from the fighting.

“We will not surrender the city, and we will fight to the end,” he said, adding that residents whose homes might be damaged from shelling could receive compensation from the Russian government.

Earlier in October, Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region pushed the Russian line back by 20 miles, according to the President’s office and Deep State, an independent monitoring group.

In what looked like a carefully staged remarks, he called the decision to leave the eastern bank of the Dnipro River a difficult one, but one that would preserve Russia’s combat capability.

The goal of the operation is to maximize the safety of civilians and soldiers. The Zvezda channel is a state media outlet that is funded by the Defense Ministry.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, suggested similar schemes are a “pretext for deporting Ukrainian citizens to Russian territory as they populate occupied areas with Russian citizens.”

In the event that Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure lead to shortages of water and electricity, the city of Kyiv is preparing for the worst, according to its mayor Vitali Klitschko.

If you have extended family, please be aware of the possibility of staying in Kyiv for some time, as there is an oven and water supply there.

His goal is to cause us to die, to freeze, or to flee our land so that he can have it. That’s what the aggressor wants to achieve,” Klitschko said regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kherson, Ukraine: a battle looms city near the Russian southwestern limit of the Soviet Union, according to Viktor Tkachuk

In case of emergency in the wintertime, Tkachuk said each district within the city would have about 100 heating centers. An ambulance crew and warm clothes will be near the heating centers where there will be heat, lighting, toilets, canteens and places to rest.

“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”

His home is just outside Kherson. He and his wife Nadiya raised their three daughters there. The Russians broke into their house within hours of them leaving, Viktor says a neighbor told him.

At a shelter, a volunteer named Artyom helps care for evacuees as if he was his own family, because he asked that he be called Artyom. Artyom asked that we not use his full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.

His wife generally stays home as much as she can. But to earn money, she sells potatoes and vegetables she grows in her own garden at a local street market.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms

“Everything is mine”: Artyom and his wife in Kyiv, Bosnia, the city where Russians are trying to make ends meet

Artyom thinks it’s not good. He fears the Russians will stop his wife, and he counts his fingers. He doesn’t know if she will get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He worries about the baby.

Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. And he says some are people who just can’t leave. Many are older. Others have few resources. His life right now is “fiercly” intense.

The local street markets that have sprung up since the war began are mostly the only public interaction in the city. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.

“From medicine to meat, you can buy most things,” said Natalyia Schevanka, who was from Kherson. “But it’s terrible to observe. They sell medicine on the hood and then cut meat on the side of the car.

The volunteer at a nonprofit that is helping to evacuate people from Kherson continues to have contact with people in the city. She says that she has regular updates from her grandmother.

Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can get a decent connection. They are concerned that Russians are listening in, trying to keep their conversations light.

Russian withdrawal of Kherson’s hydroelectric power plant during the Antonivsky Bridge attack in Ukraine: A blow to Putin’s war effort in Ukraine

Everyone we’ve spoken to is aware of the fact that the Russians could shell them here in the future. It is not clear whether all Russian troops have left Kherson. Behind this euphoria, there’s still that uncertainty.

On Sunday, Vladimir Leontie, who is an official in Nova Kakhovka that is Russian, made a statement on Russian state TV that the hydroelectric power plant was damaged by shelling from the Ukrainian armed forces and would take a year to repair.

The Russian forces planted mines around water towers in Beryslav, which is less than 50 miles from Kherson city, Mr. Yanushevych said.

The city has a large number of people who lived before the war. Ukrainian activists estimate that between 30,000 and 60,000 people still exist, but it is not certain how accurate those estimates are.

The loss of Kherson would be Russia’s third major setback of the war, following retreats from Kyiv, the capital, last spring, and from the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September. Kherson was the only provincial capital Russia had captured after invading in February and it was a key link in their bid to control the southern coastline along the Black Sea.

The agency offered to protect the rights of the Russian soldiers abandoned by their military leadership and still in Kherson, if they agreed to surrender.

“Your commanders ordered you to dress in civilian clothes and try to flee Kherson independently. Obviously, you won’t succeed,” the Ukrainian statement said.

The Russian withdrawal came amid reports of heavy damage to the Antonivsky Bridge — the area’s only road crossing over the Dnipro. Satellite images released by Maxar Technologies appeared to show a section of the bridge was completely sheared off.

The commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine proposed to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that they should leave Kherson.

In an interview with the news agency on Thursday, the Ukrainian Defense Minister said it would take a minimum of one week for Russian forces to leave the city.

The Russian withdrawal is widely believed to be a blow to Putin’s war effort in Ukraine — a view underscored by the Russian leader’s continued silence on the pullback.

The move puts Kyiv within reach of one of the most significant victories of the war, and it deals a huge blow to Putin who just a few weeks ago proclaimed Kherson a part of Russia forever.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Russia still maintains a legal hold over the territory following the withdrawal. “Here there is no change,” Peskov said Friday.

Ukrainian soldiers began entering Kherson on Friday, after the Russian army retreated from the city.

Videos shared by the Ukrainian government on social media showed civilians cheering and waiting to see a contingent of Ukrainian troops, just after Russia said it had pulled its troops out of the Dnipro River.

Elated civilians who had survived months of Russian occupation descended on Kherson’s central square, hugging newly arrived Ukrainian soldiers, snapping selfies with them, and waving Ukrainian flags.

The commander of a Ukrainian drone unit said he had not seen any Russian troops or equipment in his area.

“The Russians left all the villages,” he said. We did not see a single car as we looked at dozens of villages with our drones. We are not sure how they are leaving. They retreat quietly at night.

According to residents of Kherson, there were several explosions during the late hours of the Russian occupation on Thursday and Friday.

Serhiy, who asked that his last name not be published because of security reasons, said in a series of text messages that the conditions in the city had deteriorated overnight.

It wasn’t possible to call the fire department because a building burned in the center at night. There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating, and no water.

The attack on Tyahinka, Kherson’s eastern bank, and the threat of mines, warned a local official in Kherson city

“They will be plotting provocations, false-flag operations in the city,” he said. “There is a lot of work ahead on demining and clearing the city.” Many Russian soldiers are wearing civilian clothing according to residents in Kherson city.

It said that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and shelling the advancing Ukrainians across the river.

On Friday evening, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a nighttime video of celebrations in the city, where a crowd was waving flags and chanting “ZSU,” the Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces.

Russian military units moved their equipment to the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson direction. The ministry said on its Telegram channel that it was Moscow time this morning.

Ukraine has not reported any incoming fire from the east bank Friday but said a missile attack on the city of Mykolaiv, close to the border with Kherson, killed seven people early Friday.

Earlier Friday, the Ukrainian military’s southern operational command said Russian forces had been “urgently loading into boats that seem suitable for crossing and trying to escape” across the river.

A video circulating on social media on Friday, geolocated and authenticated by CNN, showed Ukrainian forces being greeted by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is just 14 miles (20 km) west of the hydroelectric dam and bridges that stretch across the Dnieper river at Nova Kakhovka.

Residents of the town of Bilozerka, on the western outskirts of Kherson city, raised a Ukrainian flag and ripped down Russian propaganda billboards on Friday, according to videos on social media geolocated by CNN.

Kyiv officials had warned that retreating Russian troops could turn the regional capital of Kherson into a “city of death” on the way out, and an official in southern Ukraine warned residents Friday to be wary of quickly returning to recently liberated territory due to the threat of mines.

Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration said on Telegram that there are a lot of mines. Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.”

Friday is a historic day for Ukrainian security in Kherson and the reconstruction of Luhansk, Donetsk and Nova Kakhovka

This is a subject of the Russian Federation, according to the spokesman for the president. It has been legal and defined. There can’t be any changes here.

The military presence is still limited, but huge cheers erupt from crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers drives past, with Ukrainian soldiers being offered soup, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses by elated passersby.

The relatively few residents who remain in Kherson have endured curfews, shortages of goods, partisan warfare and an intense campaign to force them to become Russian citizens and accept Moscow’s warped version of their culture and history.

Trenches and checkpoints were empty, quickly abandoned by Russians who on Friday announced they had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.

The withdrawal would protect the lives of the civilians and the troops who have faced punishing Ukrainian counteroffensive that targeted Russian depots and command posts, impeded their supply lines.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Friday was “a historic day” for the country after Russia decided to leave the west bank of the Kherson region.

The success in Kherson may allow exhausted Ukrainian units some respite and allow the focus to be shifted to the other side of the fighting in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure in Kherson and the Ukranian authorities have a huge task of reconstructing it.

Maxar Technologies has satellite images of at least seven bridges that have been destroyed in the last 24 hours.

There has been damage to the dam that spans the Dnipro in Nova Kakhovka on the east bank of the river. For weeks, both sides have accused the other of planning to breach the dam, which if destroyed would lead to extensive flooding on the east bank and deprive the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia of water to cool its reactors.

Events in Kherson and Kharkiv have shown that the Ukrainians possess tactical agility that seems alien to the Russian way of war, as well as far superior battlefield intelligence.

The president talked about the appearance of Ukrainian flags in the city even before the military arrived, saying, “I am happy to see how people, despite all the threats, despite the repressions, abuse of the occupiers, kept Ukrainian flags, believed in Ukraine.”

He said stabilization measures would follow due to the threat of mines. There are a lot of mines and explosives that were left by the occupiers. We will be clearing them,” he said.

“Our defenders are followed by police, sappers, rescuers, power engineers … Medicine, communications, social services are returning. … Life is returning,” he said.

The situation in Kherson: The next steps for the Ukrain military – CNN’s Nic Robertson and Cedric Leighton

“It’s too dangerous here now for displaced residents to come back to their homes in the newly recapture areas of Kherson,” officials said on Friday.

The head of the military administration of Mykolaiv traveled to Snihurivka Friday to discuss the restoration of life in the liberated territories of the region.

“Despite the fact that the relevant services have already started (removing mines in) the liberated territories, I warn local residents to be careful,” Kim added.

The Russian army terrified the couple so much that they were afraid of soldiers who would steal, torture, and even kill them.

This is not the end of the struggle against the Russian occupation in the country, reports CNN’s Nic Robertson, who witnessed emotional scenes Saturday in Kherson’s central square as residents hailed their liberation.

Speaking Saturday on the next steps for the Ukrainian military, CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton said: “This is going to be a major urban operation. What you are going to see is a methodical operation to clear buildings of potential booby traps and mines.

Bridges over canals, roads that were full of craters and anti-tank mines, were some of the things our team of CNN journalists had to drive through for much of the journey.

The city center, which Russian forces had occupied since March 3, was only partially protected by a Ukrainian checkpoint around 5 miles away, with half a dozen soldiers waving CNN’s crew in.

The words “Ukraine is Russian forever” have been painted over on the billboards around the city.

On the end of mining in Kherson, Ukraine: President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “first step” as a challenger to Russian forces

People in the city don’t have water or an internet connection. The mood was good as CNN entered the city center on Saturday.

As CNN stopped to regroup, we saw an elderly man and a woman hug a young soldier with their hands on his shoulder.

With the occupiers gone, everyone wants you to understand what they’ve been through, how euphoric they feel right now, and how much they’re grateful to the countries who have helped them.

Residents of the newly liberated city of Kherson are almost without water and face shortages of bread and medicines, officials warned, as efforts continued Sunday to remove mines and restore critical infrastructure following the withdrawal of Russian forces.

But life remains far from normal, with authorities warning residents to be wary of explosives littering the city, and Russian forces still nearby – just across the strategically important Dnipro River.

“Kherson is now a front line city,” he said. “Last night and in the early hours of this morning you could hear outgoing fire towards the Russian forces.”

The main threat at the moment is mass mining, with a police representative injured while demining one of the city’s administrative buildings, according to the National Police.

Almost 2,000 “explosive items,” such as mines, trip wires, and unexploded ammunition, have already been removed from the Kherson region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned during his nightly address Saturday. He urged Kherson residents “to be careful and not try to independently check any buildings and objects left by the occupiers.”

“There are 10 groups of bomb disposal experts working in Kherson, the police are working, and there are various units of the defense forces,” Zelensky said.

Operational status of a major hydroelectric project at the Dnipro river in Kherson city, Ukraine: an update from the AFU General Staff

The team in Kherson city reported that there was no heat in the city at night. Ukrainian authorities have said that those who find it too hard to live in Kherson can move to other parts of the country, since they do now have freedom of movement.

Satellite images from Maxar Technologies obtained by CNN on Friday showed water flowing out of three sluice gates at the dam, where a major hydroelectric project is situated.

An operational update from the AFU General Staff said Russian troops were concentrating on re-equipping their defensive lines on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.