World about Ukraine: November 2023 digest, Week 1

U.S. NEWS: Ukraine Orders Investigation Into Russian Attack on Assault Brigade

Ukraine’s defence minister ordered on Saturday an investigation into an alleged Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukrainian assault brigade, after reports that more than 20 soldiers were killed during an awards ceremony.

“My condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers from the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Transcarpathian Brigade,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said in a social media statement, adding that he had ordered a “full investigation.”

The statements came after a flurry of earlier reports on Ukrainian social media and from military bloggers that more than 20 soldiers were killed in a village close to the front lines in Zaporizhzhia during an award ceremony commemorating the Artillery Day on Friday.

Al Jazeera: Russia pursues Avdiivka with ‘meat assaults’ in a replay of Bakhmut 

Russia has doubled down on a campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka during the 88th week of its war in what appears to be a repeat of its year-long campaign to capture nearby Bakhmut, which fell in May.

As in Bakhmut, the Russian tactics have consisted of waves of infantry attacks that Ukrainian commanders said would soon become denser, and as in Bakhmut, Russian forces were suffering large losses of men and equipment.

During the past week, they advanced past a railway line that runs 10km (6.2 miles) southwest of Bakhmut, meaning Russian forces can’t use it to resupply their front lines.

Al Jazeera: Ukraine military says it hit Zalyv shipyard in Russian-annexed Crimea

Ukraine’s armed forces said they hit marine and port infrastructure at a shipyard in the port city of Kerch on the eastern coast of Russian-occupied Crimea.

Since launching its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces this summer, Kyiv has ramped up attacks on the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014.

Ukraine had “implemented successful strikes on marine and port infrastructure of the ‘Zalyv’ factory in the temporarily occupied city of Kerch,” the Department for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Telegram post, giving no further details.

“I hope another ship has followed the Moskva!” Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of Ukraine’s Air Force, said

The Guardian: ‘This is our reality’: the Ukrainian artist putting bomb-blasted roads in a gallery

Some artists use paintbrushes. Zhanna Kadyrova uses an AK-47. And for her latest show, she braved unexploded mines to turn the shrapnel-hit roads of a formerly occupied town into astonishing art

Viewed from a distance, Zhanna Kadyrova’s latest works might seem like abstract and very heavily impastoed paintings. Close up, however, they soon reveal themselves for what they are: sizeable rectangles of asphalt – actual bits of road – pitted and scarred from violent showers of shrapnel.

These slices of road surface, complete with traces of white lines, come from Irpin, the commuter town on the western fringes of Kyiv occupied by the Russian troops last year – and the scene of some of the worst fighting in the early days of the full-scale invasion. After the town’s liberation, and with the permission of the mayor, Kadyrova had these chunks cut out of the street. “They are readymades,” says the artist, in her low, throaty voice as we sit in the autumnal sun outside her studio in Kyiv, part of a tumbledown 19th-century former distillery loomed over by new high-rises. “Part of their titles are the precise coordinates of where we found them.”

BBC: Russia hits most settlements in one day

Russia bombarded 118 Ukrainian towns and villages in 24 hours, more than on any other day this year, says Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

He said 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions had come under attack and the onslaught had caused deaths and injuries.

Many of the communities hit were near the front lines in the east and south.

Russia has for weeks trained much of its military firepower on Avdiivka, a strategically significant town in the eastern region of Donetsk.

“[Avdiivka] is being erased, shattered. There have been more than 40 massive shelling attacks against the territorial community in the past day,” said local leader Vitaliy Barabash. 

He said two civilians had been killed and warned that Russia was building up to a third wave in its offensive. Ukraine says Russia has been pouring reinforcements into the area in a bid to encircle and capture the town.

U.S. News: Von Der Leyen Hails Kyiv’s ‘Excellent Progress’ in EU Accession Efforts

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday that Ukraine had made “excellent progress” towards EU accession, days ahead of a key report on Kyiv’s membership bid.

Standing next to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, she said Ukraine had reached many milestones despite the war with Russia, highlighting Kyiv’s judicial reforms.

“I must say you have made excellent progress,” she told a joint news conference in Kyiv.

“I know you are in the process of completing outstanding reforms. If this happens and, I am confident, Ukraine can reach its ambitious goal of moving to the next stage in the accession process.”

Polske radio: Netherlands pledges €500m in military aid to Ukraine

The Netherlands has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, worth EUR 500 million, to help strengthen Kyiv’s defence capabilities against Russia’s ongoing invasion, according to a report on Friday.

The package will include ammunition and is scheduled for delivery by the middle of the next year, Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform reported.

Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said that about EUR 260 million of the total amount would be allocated for artillery rounds, while EUR 240 million would be earmarked for tank ammunition, according to Ukrinform.

VOA NEWS: 2 More Civilians Killed in Russian Shelling of Kherson

Russian shelling on Thursday killed two more civilians — an 81-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man — in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, according to local authorities, marking the latest deaths in Russia’s assault on the area.

The shelling targeted several villages, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Four others were injured in the strikes, which also damaged buildings.

The two deaths came after one person died Wednesday in Russian shelling in the region’s capital, which is also called Kherson. Prokudin called the damage left by the assault “an apocalyptic scene.”

VOA NEWS: UN Urges Russia to Take Responsibility for Deadly Strike on Ukraine Funeral

The United Nations has urged Russia to take responsibility for the deadly strike on a funeral reception in a Ukrainian village on October 5, that left 59 civilians dead.

The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report that a Russian Iskander missile — a short-range precision-guided ballistic weapon — probably caused the blast in the Ukrainian village of Hroza. The report pointed to debris and damage at the scene as grounds to believe Russia was responsible for the strike.

The attack on Hroza, which killed 36 women, 22 men and an 8-year-old boy, was one of the deadliest strikes since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine Front Lines

Tags: Ukraine world about ukraine