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At least 437 Ukrainian children killed in war, says prosecutor general
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said at least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 837 have also been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion.
The eastern Donetsk region was the most affected, with 423 children killed or injured, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Officials said the figures were “not final” as they were still verifying information from zones of active fighting, liberated areas and territory still occupied by Russian forces.
The statement reads:
As of the morning of November 19, 2022, 1,274 children were affected in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression. According to the official reports by juvenile prosecutors, 437 children were killed and 837 sustained injuries of varying severity.
Key events
Russia’s recent surge in missile strikes across Ukraine is partly aimed at overwhelming and exhausting Ukraine’s supplies of air defences, a senior Pentagon official has said.
Colin Kahl, the US under secretary of defence for policy, said Moscow hopes to dominate the skies above Ukraine by forcing Kyiv to use all its much-needed supplies.
He said:
We know what the Russian theory of victory is, and we’re committed to making sure that’s not going to work by making sure that the Ukrainians get what they need to keep their air defenses viable.
Ukrainians urged to consider leaving country to save energy
Ukrainians should consider leaving the country to help save energy, the head of Ukraine’s biggest private energy firm has said.
Russian missile strikes have crippled Ukraine’s energy system, with authorities warning that Kyiv could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.
With temperatures plummeting and the capital seeing its first snow earlier this week, officials have been racing to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure since the war began.
In an interview with the BBC, Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of the energy firm DTEK, said Ukraine’s electricity system becomes less reliable with each Russian attack.
Reducing electricity consumption is the key to keeping it running, Timchenko said. He said:
If they can find an alternative place to stay for another three or four months, it will be very helpful to the system.
He said Ukrainians should view leaving the country as a way of helping their country win the war against Russia.
If you consume less, then hospitals with injured soldiers will have guaranteed power supply. This is how it can be explained that by consuming less or leaving, they also contribute to other people.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said about 10 million people were power, describing the electricity situation in more than a dozen regions as “very difficult”.
The first passenger train to the recently liberated Kherson city has arrived from Kyiv for the first time since Russian troops occupied the southern Ukrainian city.
Illia Ponomarenko of the Kyiv Independent shared a video of local residents waiting at the platform to greet the train:
In a post posted on Telegram, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, wrote:
The first train left for Kherson! This is our victory train! There are 200 passengers in the carriages who bought tickets ‘to victory’ as part of the joint initiative by Ukrzaliznytsia and UNITED24.
He added that the train to Kherson would depart from the capital on even-numbered days and return from Kherson on odd-numbered days, adding:
Just like this train, we will return everything for a normal life to Kherson!
Ukraine’s defence ministry tweeted last night that Kherson’s train station was the first building to have its power restored, after the city’s electricity and water supply was cut off as the Russians fled.
At least 437 Ukrainian children killed in war, says prosecutor general
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has said at least 437 Ukrainian children have been killed and more than 837 have also been injured as a result of Russia’s invasion.
The eastern Donetsk region was the most affected, with 423 children killed or injured, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Officials said the figures were “not final” as they were still verifying information from zones of active fighting, liberated areas and territory still occupied by Russian forces.
The statement reads:
As of the morning of November 19, 2022, 1,274 children were affected in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s full-scale armed aggression. According to the official reports by juvenile prosecutors, 437 children were killed and 837 sustained injuries of varying severity.
What happened next to the Ukrainians defending Snake Island?
Luke Harding
In his 12 years in the frontier service, Bohdan Hotskiy saw many wild places. He thought his home, Ukraine, was the most beautiful country in the world: it had sea and mountains, forests and steppes, marshes and lakes. All was perfect, and so complete that Hotskiy – a 29-year-old captain – never felt the inclination to go abroad. Why bother? “We have everything,” he tells me when we meet in the Ukrainian town of Izmail, close to the border with Romania.
It is high summer. We sit outside on a bench in a central park, not far from the Danube River and Izmail’s port. Hotskiy is dressed in military uniform and holds a Kalashnikov. He is a modest and diffident person, tall and a little awkward, his dark hair receding into an arrow shape. At times Hotskiy seems reluctant to talk about his recent experiences, giving staccato answers to my questions. His story is remarkable, a tale of survival and dispossession.
Hotskiy tells me that as a teenager he wanted to join an elite service. He became a border guard, rose up the ranks and last year received an order to move to a new maritime location. He was to command a force of 28 men. They were being sent to a strategically important mini-territory 22 miles from Ukraine’s southern coast. It was a rocky outpost in the Black Sea; an ancient place known in Ukrainian as Ostriv Zmiinyi. English translation: Snake Island.
The island was associated with legends. The Greeks knew it as White Island, after its rock formations, or – as one story had it – the colour of its serpents. It was also associated with warriors. According to mythology, it was where the spirit of Achilles went after his death at Troy. In some versions, Helen of Troy joined him. Sailors were advised not to sleep there, lest they anger the gods.
In the modern age, rival powers contested the island: the Ottomans, the Russian empire and the Germans. A lighthouse was built in the 19th century on the spot where a temple to Achilles once stood. There were wrecks from the first and second world wars – a Russian destroyer, sunk in 1917 by a German mine; a Soviet submarine, resting at a depth of 35 metres; and a grain ship that had been bound for Europe. Latterly, the island was home to a small population of Ukrainian frontier service staff.
Read the full story here:
Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to the Ukrainian president, has dismissed “conspiracy theories” about his country surrendering.
“Ukraine will not kneel to Russians,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.
Any conspiracy theories about “🇺🇦 surrender” or West’s secret negotiations with Putin do not take into account “small detail”. Ukrainians. Such arrangements cannot be implemented. Ukraine will not kneel to Russians. It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of our existence.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) November 19, 2022
The UK Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence update on the war Ukraine. Russia made its largest single-day issuance of debt in history on Wednesday, it said.
The update continues:
This is important for Russia as debt issuance is a key mechanism to sustain defence spending, which has increased significantly since the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s declared “national defence” spending for 2023 is planned at approximately RUB 5tn ($84bn, or £70.6bn), an increase of more than 40% on the preliminary 2023 budget announced in 2021, it adds.
Debt issuance is expensive during periods of uncertainty. The size of this auction highly likely indicates the Russian Ministry of Finance perceives current conditions as relatively favourable but is anticipating an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment over the next year.
Nine people, including four children, have died after a suspected gas explosion in a residential building in Russia’s Sakhalin island, the local governor said.
The suspected gas explosion took place in a brick building built in the 1980s in the village of Tymovskoye, Russian state-owned Tass news reported.
Preliminary information reportedly pointed to a gas leak, with emergency services cited as saying that a 20-litre gas cylinder connected to a cooking stove had blown up.
Russia’s investigative committee said it was investigating the cause of the disaster.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the area around the Black Sea port of Odesa and more than a dozen other regions are grappling with power shortages following relentless Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.
The Ukrainian president said on Friday in his nightly video address:
The situation with power supplies is difficult in 17 regions and in the capital. Things are very difficult in Kyiv region and the city of Kyiv, Odesa region and also Vynnitsia and Ternopil [areas in western and south-western Ukraine].
Reuters also reported that the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said earlier that Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure had crippled half of the country’s energy system.
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine, with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to 2 million more in the Kyiv region. Odesa, the focal point of Ukraine’s agriculture exports, is the third most populous city, with about 1 million.
Emergency blackouts were occurring in those areas, Zelenskiy said. Other areas were subject to “stabilisation” blackouts according to a schedule.
With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first winter snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardments of the war on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure during the past month.
This is from the Financial Times’ Christopher Miller:
Millions of Ukrainians and huge sections of Kyiv still without power tonight. Some neighborhoods and city blocks in the capital have been without electricity for nearly 24 hours straight. And the snow has started falling. ❄️ pic.twitter.com/Zu80JYFGh8
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) November 18, 2022
The Hungarian prime minister’s objection to a mammoth European Union aid package for Ukraine has drawn accusations Budapest is trying to “blackmail” Brussels into handing over billions in threatened funds.
Viktor Orbán, Moscow’s closest ally in the EU, said on Friday he was against the bloc taking out joint loans to finance a proposed €18bn ($18.6bn) package to keep Kyiv’s government operating in the face of Russia’s invasion, Agence France-Presse reported.
Orban instead called for a sum to be given that would be “equitably” split between the EU’s 27 member nations and leave Budapest on the hook for just €170m.
Orban’s declaration came as the long-standing scourge of Brussels is embroiled in a row over the EU executive’s refusal to release to Hungary €5.8bn in post-Covid recovery funds.
The European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – many MEPs and some EU capitals oppose releasing the cash before Hungary makes concrete progress on addressing alleged corruption and shortcomings in the rule of law.
Budapest is also facing an unprecedented case from the EC that could see another €7.5bn in EU funds suspended.
At least six killed in Russian attacks on south-east Ukraine
Russian forces unleashed the breadth of their arsenal to attack Ukraine’s south-east, employing drones, rockets, heavy artillery and warplanes that killed at least six civilians and wounded six others, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
Associated Press reported that in the Zaporizhzhia region, part of which remains under Russian control, artillery pounded 10 towns and villages.
The death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a residential building in the city of Vilniansk on Thursday climbed to 10 people, including three children.
In Nikopol, located across the Dnipro River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, 40 Russian missiles damaged several high-rise buildings, homes and a power line.
In the wake of its humiliating retreat from the southern city of Kherson, Moscow intensified its assault on the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday that its forces took control of the village of Opytne and repelled a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the settlements of Solodke, Volodymyrivka and Pavlivka.
The city of Bakhmut – a key target of Moscow’s attempt to seize the whole region of Donetsk – remains the scene of heavy fighting, the regional governor said.
Asia-Pacific leaders added their voices on Saturday to international pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, issuing a summit statement saying “most” of them condemned the war.
Apart from substituting the name of the organisation, the statement was word-for-word the same as a G20 declaration issued last week after a summit in Indonesia
The 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum issued a joint declaration after a day and half of talks in Bangkok criticising the conflict and the global economic turmoil it has unleashed.
The summit communique was agreed by all Apec members, including Russia and China – which has refrained from public criticism of Moscow for the invasion – but includes a number of diplomatic fudges.
It said:
Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.
There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.
Kyiv power shortages ‘critical’ amid Ukraine blackouts
The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv is in a “critical situation” with power shortages while the country faces hours-long blackouts, officials say, amid Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Heavy artillery and missile fire have interrupted electricity supplies to as much as 40% of the country’s people at the onset of winter, Associated Press reported.
Ukraine’s electricity grid chief said freezing temperatures were putting additional pressure on energy networks.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Ukrenergo’s chief executive, told Ukrainian state television:
We understand that the enemy wants to destroy our power system in general, to cause long outages. We need to prepare for possible long outages, but at the moment we are introducing schedules that are planned and will do everything to ensure that the outages are not very long.
The capital of Kyiv is already facing a “huge deficit in electricity”, mayor Vitali Klitschko told AP. About 1.5-2 million people – around half of the city’s population – were periodically plunged into darkness as authorities switch electricity from one district to another, he said.
It’s a critical situation.
But he added that Russia’s attempts to make Ukraine think about giving up “won’t work”.
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Here’s a brief look at the latest developments as it approaches 9.15am in Kyiv.
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Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, the government in Kyiv has said, as authorities warned that the city could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.
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With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the war. The UN says Ukraine’s electricity and water shortages threaten a humanitarian disaster.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the idea of a “short truce” with Russia, saying it would only make things worse. “Russia is now looking for a short truce, a respite to regain strength,” the Ukrainian president said in remarks broadcast at the Halifax International Security Forum. “Someone may call this the war’s end, but such a respite will only worsen the situation.”
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Hundreds of Ukrainians were detained and abducted in Kherson after Russia seized the province, in evidence of a planned campaign, a Yale University group researching war crimes has said. The Conflict Observatory said it had documented 226 extrajudicial detentions and forced disappearances in Kherson. About a quarter of that number were allegedly subjected to torture and four died in custody.
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The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline. The footage appears to show Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie face down. One of the men, as he emerges from the building, appears to turn his gun on Ukrainian soldiers. The footage suggests all the Russians were killed in the violence that followed.
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Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, talked with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and they congratulated each other for the extension of a UN-brokered grains deal, Erdoğan’s office said. Erdoğan told Zelenskiy the “extension of this understanding to the negotiation table” would benefit all parties.
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The Dutch government will summon the Russian ambassador in the Netherlands over Russia’s response to the verdict in the trial over the 2014 shooting down of passenger flight MH17, news agency ANP reported, citing the foreign minister, Wopke Hoekstra. Russia has criticised the Dutch court’s decision to convict two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader.
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Ukrainian experts were working at the site in the border area of south-eastern Poland where a missile killed two people, said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. He wrote on Twitter that Ukraine would continue “open and constructive” cooperation with Poland over the incident.
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Poland will not grant a Russian delegation visas to attend an Organisation for Security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Lodz on 1 and 2 December. “We are not giving them visas,” said Łukasz Jasina from the Polish foreign ministry.
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Vladimir Putin discussed creating a Turkish “gas hub” with Erdoğan, the Kremlin said on Friday. “Particular attention is paid to the prospects of implementing the initiative, launched by the Russian president in October and supported by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
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Ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group said some members condemned the war in Ukraine and also pledged to keep supply chains and markets open. “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” their joint statement read, adding that Apec was not the forum to resolve security issues.
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Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, has said two more bodies have been recovered in Vilniansk in the Zaporizhzhia region. “Thus nine people have already been found dead from the rockets of Russian terrorists who fired at residential buildings yesterday,” he said on Telegram. The claims have not been independently verified.
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The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia appeared to be preparing defences for further major Ukrainian breakthroughs in Donetsk province.
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Construction of a planned barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia will start early next year, Finnish border guard officials said, amid concerns over Europe’s changing security environment.
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