Laurel Chor | Lightrocket | Getty Images Ukraine’s air force said it was ready to repel a new missile attack by Russian forces, adding to the country’s president’s warning yesterday that civilians should prepare for a new wave of shelling. “The Ukrainians are ready to repel another air attack,” Ukrainian Air Force Command spokesman Yuriy Ikhnat said on Telegram on Tuesday. “Ukrainians experienced the worst in February-March, when hundreds of rockets flew over our heads every day, Russian aircraft flew in many areas and active air battles took place. Is it possible to scare us with something else?”, the statement said. Ikhnat said Russia did not have “so many high-precision long-range missiles” while the commander of Ukraine’s Air Force “assured us that we are ready, our missiles are loaded and we will strike back no matter how many missiles.” “Russia has begun. Ikhnat did not elaborate on the details of an imminent Russian attack or how many missiles it had left with analysts agreeing that it is difficult to gauge what weapons Moscow has left in its arsenal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Monday that Russia was preparing new missile attacks that could be even more devastating than the ones the country experienced last week that left about 6 million people without power. “We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know that for a fact,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Sunday. “And as long as they have missiles, unfortunately, they will not rest.” — Holly Elliott
Anxiety is growing in Moscow about the war and how it might end, analysts say
Russian President Vladimir Putin grimaces during the SCTO Summit in Yerevan, Armenia on November 23, Factor | News Getty Images | Getty Images Russian political analysts say anxiety is rising in Moscow as the country’s forces have faced months of fighting and military casualties and are beginning to think they might be defeated. That would be disastrous for Putin and the Kremlin, which has bankrolled Russia’s global capital to win the war against Ukraine, analysts said, noting growing concern in Moscow about the war’s progress. “Since September I see many changes [in Russia] and a lot of fears,” Tatiana Stanovaya, non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and founder and head of political analysis firm R.Politik, told CNBC. “For the first time since the war started, people are starting to look at the worst case scenario, that Russia can lose, and they don’t see or understand how Russia can come out of this conflict without being destroyed. People are very worried, they think what’s happening is a disaster,” he said on Monday. Read the full story here: ‘Defeat is not an option’: Russian analysts fear a ‘desperate’ Putin as Ukraine war drags on
NATO to increase aid to Kyiv, Putin says using winter as ‘weapon of war’
NATO allies will increase aid to Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin uses winter as a weapon of war because his forces are failing on the battlefield, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
“I think we’ve all seen these pictures taken from satellites where you see Europe in the light and then you see Ukraine in darkness … so there’s a huge task to rebuild all of that,” Stoltenberg said.
“President Putin is trying to use winter as a weapon of war,” he told reporters as NATO foreign ministers gathered in Bucharest for a two-day meeting, which he said would serve as a platform to mobilize more support for Ukraine.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the plenary session of the third day of the 68th Annual Session of the Parliamentary Assembly at the Auditorium on the ground floor of the Melia Castilla Hotel, November 21, 2022, in Madrid, Spain.
Alberta Ortego | Europa Press | Getty Images
NATO foreign ministers will focus on increasing military aid to Ukraine, such as air defense systems and ammunition, even as diplomats acknowledge supply and capacity issues, but will also discuss non-lethal aid.
Some of that non-lethal aid – goods such as fuel, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone interference – has been delivered through a NATO aid package that allies can contribute to and which Stoltenberg aims to increase.
Stoltenberg’s comments were echoed by several ministers of the 30-member alliance, also joined by Finland and Sweden, as they seek to secure full membership pending ratifications by Turkey and Hungary.
— Reuters
Russia appears to have abandoned a significant part of its ‘military doctrine’, UK says
A convoy of pro-Russian troops in Mariupol, Ukraine, on May 16, 2022. Alexander Ermochenko Reuters Over the past three months, Russian forces in Ukraine have likely stopped deploying as Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), according to the latest military intelligence update from Britain’s Ministry of Defence. He said “the BTG concept has played an important role in Russian military doctrine over the past ten years and has seen battalions integrated with a full range of supporting subunits, including armour, reconnaissance and (in a departure from usual Western practice) artillery.” However, he noted that several inherent weaknesses of the BTG concept have been exposed in the high-intensity, large-scale combat of the Ukraine war so far. “BTGs’ relatively small combat infantry allocation often proved insufficient” and “decentralized artillery distribution did not allow Russia to fully utilize its gun count advantage.” 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 Elliott
Russia could mobilize men in occupied southern Ukraine
A damaged van used by Russian forces, in Kherson, Ukraine, on November 24, 2022. Chris McGrath | News Getty Images | Getty Images Speculation is mounting that Russia could try to mobilize men into the occupied part of Kherson in southern Ukraine in December. The National Resistance Center, part of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces in support of Ukrainian resistance efforts, said on its website that “Russians are bringing in police officers to carry out the mobilization of men in the southern, temporarily occupied territories.” It said riot police units from Dagestan arrived on the left bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, along with military commissariat officials from the pro-Russian so-called “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. to carry out the mobilization. “The newly arrived occupiers do not hide that in December the staff will be involved in the illegal recruitment of local residents with Russian passports. However, it is not exclusive that all men will fall into the “conscription”, and not only the holders of enemy passports. Russian forces withdrew from the west bank of the Dnipro River to the east (or “left”) bank earlier in November. They have set up defensive lines and fortifications on that side of the river. Russia has already attempted to “Russify” the occupied territories, handing out Russian passports and promoting the Russian language and culture while suppressing that of Ukraine. The National Resistance Center called on residents in the “TOT” or “temporarily occupied” areas to leave the area “and not become a resource of the enemy”. — Holly Elliott
Blinken could announce aid for Ukraine’s electricity transmission
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives at Henri Coanda Airport, Bucharest, November 29, 2022, ahead of a NATO meeting. Daniel Mihailescu Afp | Getty Images US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will announce on Tuesday new aid to help restore Ukraine’s power transmission capacity in the face of Russian attacks targeting the country’s energy grid, a senior State Department official said. Blinken arrived in Romania on Monday afternoon ahead of 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 component of the country’s electricity infrastructure that needed to be restored. — Reuters
Kherson region was bombed 258 times last week, Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia continues to pound the southern region of Kherson, part of which Russian forces withdrew several weeks ago. “On this day, as every day, the occupiers bombed Kherson and the communities in the region again. In just one week, the enemy bombed 30 settlements of our Kherson region 258 times,” Zelensky said in his night speech on Monday. Russian forces had also destroyed a pumping station supplying water to Mykolaiv, he added. “Ukraine will never be a place of destruction. Ukraine will never accept orders from these “comrades” from Moscow. We will do everything to restore every object, every house, every business destroyed by the invaders,” he said Zelensky. Destroyed Russian vehicles and tanks in Mykhailivska Square on November 19, 2022, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians are facing severe power outages after recent waves of Russian missile and drone strikes reportedly left almost half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure disabled and in need of repair as temperatures plummet. Jeff J Mitchell | News Getty Images | Getty Images Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for weeks, causing widespread blackouts and shortages of power, water and heat, leaving millions of people in dire straits as temperatures plummet. Temperatures in…
