Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy thanks allies for air defense

The BBC reported that the 70-year-old leader of a pro-Kremlin political party, Sergei Mironov, has adopted a child, now 2 years old, who was taken from an orphanage in the Ukrainian city of Kherson last year.

According to the BBC, Mironov was "named on the adoption record of a 2-year-old girl who was taken in 2022 by a woman he is now married to."

The child's original name is Margarita, but her identity was changed after she was taken to Russia, the BBC reported, adding that the girl was one of 48 children who went missing from the Kherson regional orphanage after Russian forces seized the southern Ukrainian city.

Mironov denied the report and called the investigation a "hysteric fake unleashed by Ukrainian special services and their Western curators."

Russia has been accused of forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian children from schools, hospitals and orphanages in parts of the country controlled by its forces.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's commissioner for "the war crime of unlawful deportation ... and transfer" of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Four people were killed and five were injured in Russian shelling of Ukraine's southern region of Kherson, the regional prosecutors office said.

The office said on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces shelled the town of Beryslav, killing a man who was riding a bicycle. In a separate massive shelling of several settlements in Kherson district, three people — two men and a woman — were killed, it said.

Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River late last year, but now regularly shells those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

Earlier this month, Ukraine said it had secured a foothold on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the vast river in the Kherson region, something Russia acknowledged. 

Ukraine said it wanted its export routes via Poland to be unblocked before it holds talks with Warsaw and the European Commission, aimed at ending protests by Polish truckers which are reducing Ukrainian exports.

Taras Kachka, Ukraine's trade representative and a deputy economy minister, said drivers were being forced to live for days in freezing temperatures and unhygienic conditions.

"Our task is to unblock the road first and then talk about all the demands that the protesters have," Kachka said in an interview on national television."This should be done at the negotiating table... in Brussels, or in Warsaw, or in Kyiv, but not on the road in winter, causing damage not only to the economy but also to the health and lives of drivers who are stuck there."

Two Ukrainian drivers have died and thousands of trucks have been stuck for days in the winter cold as the truckers block the roads to three crossings on the Polish-Ukrainian border, a key route for Ukraine's trade following Russia's full-scale invasion.

Meanwhile, Polish truckers expanded their protests by blocking another border crossing, Medyka, where they were joined by local farmers who say grain prices have been depressed by Ukrainian imports.

Polish truckers started their blockade on November 6 to protest against what they said was business lost to Ukrainian drivers who have been made exempt from seeking permits to cross the Polish border.

Ukraine's national seed bank, one of the largest in the world, has been successfully moved from the frontline eastern city of Kharkiv to a safer location, according to the non-profit organization Crop Trust.

"As part of a yearlong effort, the Ukrainian genebank system... has successfully and safely transported over 50,000 seeds from Kharkiv to a more secure location," Crop Trust, the body set up by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, said in a statement.

It did not indicate a new location for the collection. The genebank contains many endemic seed species, some of which, including wheat and rapeseed, are important for food security.

Kharkiv is only a few dozen kilometers from the Russian border, and the city is constantly bombarded by Russian missiles and attack drones.

Last spring, a research facility near the seed bank was damaged. This raised concerns about the preservation of the collection, the 10th largest seed collection in the world.

Amid fears of Russian strikes on power plants, Ukraine said it cannot produce enough electricity to meet growing demand for heating and is turning to neighboring EU countries for help.

"Electricity consumption is continuing to grow, and there is a deficit in the energy system," grid operator Ukrenergo said on social media. "The situation remains difficult: repairs are underway at several blocks of thermal power plants, and there is a shortage of electricity in the power system."

Ukrenego added that on Wednesday, it had appealed to operators in Romania, Slovakia and Poland to provide "emergency assistance" to bolster supplies. 

According to Ukrenergo, 409 settlements in the country were without electricity because of Russia's invasion and "other reasons." It said the disruptions were in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kherson.

Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure last winter left millions in the cold and dark. Kyiv has been asking Western countries to bolster its air defence systems in case Russia restarts systematic strikes on energy facilities, as it did last winter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, for a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Russian state news agencies reported.

The CSTO is a military alliance of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, formed in 2002.

Putin has not scheduled separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of the CSTO countries in Minsk, but there will be communication on the sidelines of the summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

All the leaders of the CSTO member states are expected to attend Thursday's meeting, with the exception of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The Kremlin expressed regret over his refusal to come to Minsk.

Relations between formal allies Russia and Armenia have soured in recent months, with Yerevan publicly questioning the value of its partnership with Russia and seeking to deepen ties with the West.

The trigger was Azerbaijan's recapture of its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in September, which prompted nearly all of the territory's 120,000 ethnic Armenians to flee despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers.

A Russian actress has been killed in a missile strike while performing to troops in a Russian-controlled area of eastern Ukraine, according to her theatre.

The Russian theatre where actress Polina Menshikh worked said she had been killed on stage in the Donbas region.

Ukrainian military officials confirmed there had been a Ukrainian attack in the area on November 19. The Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment and has mentioned no casualties from the attack.

Ukrainian commanders said their forces had struck what they said was a Russian military award ceremony, targeting Russia's 810th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade.

Russian cultural leaders have been urged to visit areas near the front line to show support for soldiers fighting in Ukraine since Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022. 

In mid-November, a select group of Wagner veterans received official Russian veteran identification documents. This is the first time that Wagner personnel have been officially recognized as veterans by Russian authorities, the British Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update.

"This highly likely signals the rehabilitation of some Wagner elements by the Russian administration," the ministry said.

According to the update, the Russian Defense Ministry has established a new system that will allow Wagner veterans to receive veteran's identification documents and commensurate bonuses. The Wagner Group was recently incorporated into the command structure of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia).

This follows a long period of uncertainty about how the administration would treat Wagner personnel in the wake of the Wagner Group's mutiny and failed "March for Justice" in June 2023, the British ministry concluded.

A journalist working for Russian state television has died from injuries sustained in a drone attack in Ukraine. "Boris Maksudov, a military correspondent for the Rossiya 24 TV channel, has died," Vladimir Solovyev, a presenter on the state-controlled network announced on social media.

News that Maksudov had been wounded in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region was first announced on Wednesday by the Russian Defense Ministry, which said his injuries were not life-threatening.

Zaporizhzhia is one of four Ukrainian territories that Russia claimed to have annexed last year, even though its army does not entirely control any of them.

At least 15 media workers apart from Maksudov have been killed in Ukraine since Moscow launched its assault last February, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in, Zelenskyy said.

Forces in the south, however, are still conducting offensive actions, he noted.  

"Difficult weather, difficult defense on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskyy said on Telegram messenger.

Operations could be complicated by cold weather, with daytime temperatures of minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) expected to dip further.

Russian troops launched offensives on different sections of the frontline in Ukraine's east this autumn.

They are trying to advance on the devastated town of Avdiivka and in the northeast between the towns of Lyman and Kupiansk.

A court in Saint Petersburg sentenced a 17-year-old schoolboy in Russia to six years in a prison camp for attempted arson attacks against military facilities.

The court found him guilty of "attempted terrorism" for throwing Molotov cocktails at the buildings of two district defense offices a few months ago. It was in protest against Russia's war in Ukraine.

The harsh approach of the judiciary had previously caused a stir because the then-16-year-old teenager had hardly caused any damage.

Neither attempted attack led to a fire.

The Russian news website Meduza also reported, citing the pupil's mother, that he was suffering from chronic liver disease.

Russian courts often sentence opponents of the war to lengthy prison sentences.

Internationally, most of them are regarded as political prisoners.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the formation by Ukraine’s Western allies of a 20-nation “air defense development coalition.”

Air defenses are seen as a key element in Ukraine's campaign against Russian forces.

Zelenskyy said the group was formed at a virtual meeting of the "Ramstein group" examining Ukraine's military needs.

Germany's Defense Ministry had earlier announced the formation of the group in a posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, with Germany and France taking on leading roles.

"Thanks to every country participating in these efforts for enabling our cities and villages to be better protected against Russian attacks," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

"Not everything can be disclosed publicly at this time, but the Ukrainian air shield is becoming stronger every month."

Zelenskyy has long pointed to the importance of improved air defenses to keep Ukrainian cities safe from Russian air strikes.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov also noted other assistance agreed by participants.

It included a German air defense package announced this week during a visit to Kyiv by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, as well as a Dutch package and Estonian financing for help with information technology.

sri/wd (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)