November, 15-21

On 15 November the most severe missile strikes since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine were launched on Ukrainian cities. The Russian Federation (hereinafter: Russia) launched over 100 missiles. Objects of critical and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, Zhytomyr and several other cities were damaged. Throughout the week, the cities of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, Vovchansk, Kostyantynivka, Kramatorsk, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Nikopol, Marhanets, and other settlements were subjected to shelling. The Sumy oblast also came under attack. Ten mines hit private residential houses. 

The Russian Armed Forces are currently building defense lines in the South while also attempting to advance in two directions in the Donbas. Russia also attempts to advance in the Zaporizhzhia oblast — the area where Russian units are being deployed from the Kherson oblast. In Southern Ukraine Russian troops are strengthening their defenses, building fortifications for advancing units. While Russian troops are digging trenches on the left bank of the Kherson oblast, the Ukrainian army is enhancing its fortifications on the right bank of the Dnipro (the Kherson oblast) with air defense systems.

In temporarily occupied Crimea, Russia has actively begun taking steps to conscript more new soldiers into the army. According to Refat Chubarov, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Crimean Tatar men aged between 18-27 are being conscripted en masse into the Russian army. 

The Ukrainian intelligence agency has discovered that the private paramilitary organization “Wagner” began to massively recruit prisoners suffering from serious infectious diseases, in particular HIV and hepatitis C, from Russian jails.  

The first battalion of Turkic peoples, called “Turan”, has been established in Ukraine. Its fighters are ready to fight the regimes of Russian President, Vladimir Putin and Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

According to the official data provided by juvenile prosecutors, 437 children were killed with 839 wounded (of varying degrees of severity). 11,028 were listed as being deported. According to Yaroslav Yanushevych, Head of the Kherson Oblast Military Administration, in temporarily occupied Myrnenska, the Russian occupiers broke into the homes of families (whose children attend schools) to check if children are using gadgets to receive online education at Ukrainian schools.

 Since 24 February, over 20,000 Ukrainians have either been deported or abducted, both combatants and civilians. Torture chambers installed by Russia have been discovered in seven Ukrainian regions. The majority are in the Kharkiv (25) and Kherson oblasts (14). 

According to the United Nations (UN), more than 165,000 residents of communities where control of the Government of Ukraine, including Kherson, has been restored, are in a dire humanitarian situation caused by the destruction of infrastructure.

The pace of Kherson’s restoration is quite slow because of poor weather and due to the city being located right on the front line. This prevents its residents from going back to normal life. Some villages in the Kherson oblast have been completely destroyed. For example, in the village of Osokorivka, only a tenth of the 2,000 residents survived the Russian occupation. 

On 21 November the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s infrastructure sustained 12 direct hits. The Russian organization “Energoatom”, whose employees are illegally working at the plant, together with Russian occupation units, refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conduct an inspection of the plant on the pretext of “security reasons”. Moreover, 200 Ukrainian employees at the plant have been subjected to torture by Russia. 

A video in which the Ukrainian military allegedly shoots Russians has been widely publicized. According to Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights, in the video Russian soldiers resorted to the trick of staging the process of surrender. Following the video’s release, the Russians staged the surrender and at the same time began firing at Ukrainian soldiers, which is a war crime. Ukrainian soldiers firing back was an act of self-defense. Nevertheless, Russia contacted international organizations following the accident. 

47.734 crimes of aggression and other war crimes committed by Russia have been documented in Ukraine. For example, the Russian occupiers stole all the exhibits from the Kherson Museum of Local History along with the bones of Prince Grigory Potemkin. Apart from the thefts, the Russian military also fired at a humanitarian aid point in the village of Bilozerka in the Kherson oblast, leading to five people being wounded. With the so-called “special military operation” losing steam in the Luhansk oblast, Russian troops have resorted to deporting local residents. 

According to the Director of the Institute for Strategic Research and Security, Pablo Lysiansky, “the committees on juveniles” has begun their operations in temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. These commissions have already opened 37.500 cases on the deprivation of paternal rights. Over 40 children may find themselves without parental care. Pro-Ukrainian residents of one of the settlements in the Melitopol rayon have become victims of forced relocation.

The destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure has led to multiple environmental disasters. For example, the damage caused to the power grid has resulted in the “Zolote” mine (Luhansk oblast) flooding. 44% of Ukraine’s nature reserves are affected by hostilities, including Askania Nova, Europe’s biggest steppe reserve. It has lost all its infrastructure support.

At the Polish-Ukrainian Economic Forum, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Economy, Tetyana Berezhna, said that at least 5 million people had lost their jobs in Ukraine. According to the latest surveys, assessments of the current situation and the economic prospects for Ukrainian businesses have become grimmer. Ukraine’s Minister of Economy expects a further deterioration in the macroeconomic situation of the country due to the damage caused to energy infrastructure objects.

According to the Action Plan of the Ukrainian government for the restoration of Kherson and the oblast, three other Ukrainian oblasts will also participate in the plan: the Mykolayiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. All three oblasts have already started dispatching humanitarian cargo to the Kherson oblast, as well as joining reconstruction efforts, aimed at restoring the region’s entire infrastructure. Maintenance teams are ready to be deployed to conduct repair works in the Kherson oblast. The power supply is expected to be restored within the next 2-3 weeks. Last Tuesday (15 November) the Ukrainian government allocated 100 million UAH for the restoration of the Kherson oblast, including the restoration of critical infrastructure. 

The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv seized the controlling shares of the critical energy infrastructure enterprises Khersonoblenergo, Kirovogradoblenergo, Zhytomyroblenergo, Rivneoblenergo and Chernivtsioblenergo that make part of the VS Energy Group. According to the media and investigation materials, they are controlled by Russian citizens Aleksandr Babakov, Evgeniy Giner and Mikhail Voyevodin. 

The “grain deal” has been extended for another 120 days. Between 19-21 November, eight ships carrying 342.000 tons of agricultural produce left the port of Odesa for African, Asian and European countries. In total, since 1 August, 483 ships have left Ukrainian ports exporting 11,6 million tons of Ukrainian produce.

The Russia is spreading narratives to justify the large-scale missile strikes that were launched on Ukraine on 15 November. The Russian media explains the “soft” strikes on civilian energy infrastructure offered the Ukrainian government a choice: namely, providing energy and heat to civilians or using the “leftovers” of the energy system for the needs of the military. On 16 November the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that the missile strikes “had achieved its goals”, since the restoration of the Ukrainian energy system could take a long time. According to Moscow, Kyiv has admitted that the Ukrainian air defense system is not able to cope with Russian missiles.

Russia continues to spread narratives rejecting the Ukrainian identity and the country’s sovereignty. Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, said that Kyiv is an old Russian city and must be returned.

Russia denies hitting the Polish city of Przewodów which is located close to the Ukrainian border. The Kremlin claims that this was due to Ukrainian provocations. On 16 November the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Warsaw not to be misled by “dirty provocations hatched by the Kyiv regime and not to initiate its own”. Russian media claim that it was “a Ukrainian missile that hit Poland”. According to one Russian official message, “the missile that hit Poland” would prompt Washington to conduct direct negotiations with Russia instead of “playing diplomacy games with Kyiv”. 

Russia continues to reject the crimes committed by its army in Ukraine. According to these narratives, the information about these crimes is untrustworthy and the crimes have been staged. Russia also continues to spread information about Ukraine shooting on its collaborators in Kherson. Some media outlets refer to the situation in Kherson as “Kherson under the Ukrainian occupation”. Russian public discourse is also full of reflections on the situation in Crimea. Russian officials claim that the Ukrainian army lacks the capacity to mount an offensive on the peninsula. Moscow is also spreading information claiming that Ukraine has shot Russian prisoners of war. 

The “yellow level” of terrorist threat in Russian settlements located close to the Ukrainian border has been extended until 6 December. 

Western countries are accused of delivering weapons to Ukraine, that leads to “the prolongation of the conflict” (Vyacheslav Volodin). 

Russian officials believe that nobody in Russia really considers deploying nuclear weapons (Dmitry Peskov), and that the EU claims this in order to create hysteria around the issue.

The Kremlin has again spoken about Ukraine’s inconsistency vis-à-vis peace talks. At the same time, Russians hint at “a change in the weather” being able to influence Ukraine’s position (shelling of Ukraine’s energy system and the ensuing humanitarian crisis). Russian officials have castigated Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal regarding public negotiations with Russia.

The Russian media is publishing articles claiming that the Americans “are forcing the Ukrainian regime to conduct negotiations with Russia”. In particular, Mark Milley’s analysis (military methods are not working) is being widely quoted. 

On 21 November, Putin and Kremlin Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov said that replacing “the Kyiv regime” is not the goal of the special military operation and that “all of its goals will be reached through different means and in different formats”. In parallel to this, on 21 November, Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the Russian State Duma, said that “the Kyiv regime deserves as severe a punishment as possible for the atrocities it has committed” and that Zelenskyy has to appear before a tribunal for the killing of Russian POWs. 

Russia continues to communicate the introduction of additional privileges for the members of the families of the conscripted in Russian regions (the Sakha Republic, the Yaroslavl oblast). Some of the payments to the Russian military have been exempted from taxes. 

According to Russian narratives, the G20 summit failed “to fully isolate Russia”. During the summit in Bali, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov called Zelenskyy’s speech “a performance”, considering it as an attempt made by the USA and EU to divert attention from the summit’s agenda. Russians claim that the summit has revealed a split between the West and other countries. Russia regards the official document signed after the summit as “search for a compromise”. The Official media resources of the Russian President have not issued any comments on the topic. On their website the translation of the Russian-Balinese declaration has been published. Russian media are criticizing the EU for providing energy to Ukraine. The Kremlin is promoting message claiming that EU citizens are up in arms over the “supply of energy to the corrupted country”, demanding a “second Nuremberg for the EU’s leadership”. Putin also said that the reason of the imbalance in the world food provision lies in “the unprofessional and risky policy” of the West.