Here is the situation on Friday, November 24, 2023. (639 Day)
Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the military administration in Avdiivka, reported that Russian forces have launched the most intense attacks on the town. Barabash, speaking to Channel 24 television, described the situation as extremely challenging, with an average of eight to 18 air attacks per day, sometimes reaching 30. The defense line, however, remains intact. Only about 1,400 of the town’s original 32,000 residents are left, with 102 individuals evacuated in the past week.
In various parts of Ukraine, Russian attacks have resulted in at least six deaths and five injuries. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko mentioned a cluster bomb attack in a southern suburb of Kherson, which claimed three lives. Cluster bombs, utilized by both Russia and Ukraine, are criticized for causing civilian casualties. Russian actress Polina Menshikh lost her life during a Ukrainian attack while performing for Russian troops in the Donbas region.
Conflicting reports surround the incident, with Russia claiming a school and cultural center were hit in Kumachovo, causing one civilian casualty, while Ukraine asserts it targeted a Russian military award ceremony, hitting Russia’s 810th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade. Ukrainian military commander Robert Brovdi reported 25 deaths and 100 injuries, with no mention of Russian military casualties. The village of Kumachove is approximately 60km from the front line.
In a separate incident, Russian state television reported the death of Rossiya 24 correspondent Boris Maksudov due to injuries sustained in a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhia. While Russia initially stated the injuries were not life-threatening, Maksudov succumbed to them later in the week.
Ukraine’s national seed bank, ranked as the world’s 10th largest seed collection, has been relocated from Kharkiv to a secure location, as disclosed by Crop Trust, a nonprofit organization. The new location remains undisclosed. This genebank houses numerous endemic seed species crucial for food security, such as wheat and rapeseed.
In the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a Russian military court sentenced Ukrainian Dmitri Golubev to 18 years in prison. Golubev was convicted of attempting to detonate buildings in the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol in August of the previous year. The charges of “international terrorism” relate to one explosion and two attempted blasts, with prosecutors alleging a plot orchestrated by Kyiv, according to Russian state media reports.
Sergey Mironov, a Russian lawmaker and supporter of President Vladimir Putin, refuted a BBC report claiming he had adopted a child forcibly taken from a Ukrainian orphanage in Kherson last year. While the BBC, citing Russian and Ukrainian documents, reported that Mironov had adopted a child, now two years old, taken from a Kherson orphanage by his current wife, Mironov dismissed the investigation as a “hysteric fake.” He labeled it an “information attack” designed to “discredit” him, refraining from commenting on specific details.
A Russian court imposed a fine of four million rubles ($44,582) on Google for failing to remove what the court deemed “fake information” about the course of the war in Ukraine, as reported by the RIA news agency.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
