Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin’s troops ‘ramping up invasion plan with attacks on Bakhmut’

Ukraine’s intelligence directorate said on Sunday that an explosion in the Russian-occupied town of Melitopol killed at least three Russian servicemen in an attack it described as an “act of revenge” by local underground groups.

The blast occurred during a meeting on Saturday of Russian officers in the town, a hub of Russian forces in the south, the directorate within the defence ministry said in a statement.

“This act of revenge, carried out by representatives of the local resistance, took place in the New Post offices seized by the Russians,” it said.

There was no mention of the incident from Russian officials. Reuters was unable to verify the Ukrainian statement.

The intelligence statement said the meeting on Saturday at the local military headquarters was attended by Russian National Guard and FSB intelligence service officers.

“As a result of the explosion at least three National Guard officers were killed at the headquarters,” the statement said. “Information of other enemy losses is being clarified.”

The statement said police converged on the area and a burned-out car was later seen being towed through the town.

US President Joe Biden is facing two wars on two continents, and the fallout from each conflict will shape a second term even if the fighting ends before that.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for almost two years, and Israel and Hamas began their latest clash about a month ago. Biden wants to send military support to Ukraine and Israel, something that he describes as “vital” to U.S. national security interests.

“History has taught us when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction,” he said in a recent Oval Office address.

His plans will require challenging congressional negotiations. Some Republicans are resisting more assistance for Ukraine after Congress has already approved $113 billion in security, economic and humanitarian resistance.

Both conflicts will likely require years of U.S. involvement. For example, Biden is looking for a new opportunity to push for a two-state solution in the Middle East, creating an independent Palestinian country alongside Israel.

A Ukrainian military officer coordinated last year’s attack on the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing anonymous sources in Ukraine and Europe.

No one has taken responsibility for the September 2022 blasts, which occurred off the Danish island of Bornholm and ruptured three out of four lines of the system that delivers Russian gas to Europe.

Washington and NATO called it an act of sabotage, while Moscow said it was an act of international terrorism.

Roman Chervinsky, a former intelligence official who served in the Ukrainian military’s special forces, managed a six-person team but did not plan the attack, the Post reported. He denied involvement.

A spokesperson for Ukraine‘s military told Reuters he had “no information” about the claim. The Ukrainian foreign ministry and Kyiv’s domestic security service, the SBU, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

His commanding officer at the time, Maj. Gen. Viktor Hanushchak, told Ukrainian media earlier this year that senior military leadership had signed off on the plot to lure the Russian pilot.

Ukraine‘s General Staff said that Russian troops were also continuing their weekslong push to encircle Avdiivka, an Ukrainian stronghold south of Bakhmut and a key target since the beginning of the war.

It’s considered the gateway to parts of the eastern Donetsk region under Kyiv’s control.

The General Staff said the air force was playing a key part in the latest Russian assault. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, who leads Ukrainian troops fighting in and near Avdiivka, said Sunday that the attacking Russian forces were ramping up airstrikes, particularly those using guided bombs. He wrote on Telegram that Russian troops over the previous day had launched 30 airstrikes and 712 artillery barrages at the city and surrounding areas, and clashed almost 50 times with Ukrainian units.

Moscow’s troops have begun a push to regain territory near Bakhmut, the eastern mining city that was the site of the war’s bloodiest battle before falling into Russian hands in May, the head of Ukraine‘s ground forces wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian troops had recaptured the heights over Bakhmut and made some advances to the city’s west, north and south since Kyiv launched its summer counteroffensive.

“Toward Bakhmut, the Russians have become more active and are trying to recapture previously lost positions. … Enemy attacks are being repelled,” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote in a Telegram update on Sunday afternoon.

Ukraine‘s long-awaited counteroffensive has so far resulted in only incremental gains and heavy losses, with Ukrainian troops struggling to punch through Russian lines in the south. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces have attempted to press forward in the northeast, likely with a view to distract Kyiv and minimize the number of troops it is able to send to key southern and eastern battles.

The Ukrainian ground forces’ spokesperson similarly reported that Russian troops had “switched from defense to active defense” near Bakhmut, “putting pressure” on Ukrainian troops south of the city. Vladimir Fityo made the remarks on Ukrainian TV, adding that Russian troops were searching for weak points in Ukrainian defenses and ramping up artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition has agreed in principle to double the country’s military aid for Ukraine next year to 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion), a political source in Berlin said.

If approved by parliament, where Scholz’s parties hold a majority, the boost would lift Germany’s defence spending to 2.1% of its gross domestic product target, beyond the 2% pledged by all North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, the source added.

Lawmakers of Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Green party agreed on the increase in negotiations over the proposed 2024 federal budget ahead of a formal meeting of the budget committee of the Bundestag – or lower house of parliament – on Thursday, Nov. 16, the source said.

A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry of Defence said the Bundestag committee has not finished negotiations and declined to comment further.

Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper also said the committee is due to approve the additional 4 billion euros.

“Doubling the military spending is both the right thing to do and important,” it quoted member of parliament Andreas Schwarz, who acts as an SPD military budget official, as saying.

“With the move we will underscore our promise to Ukraine with the necessary funds. The fact that we will also be able to fulfil our NATO obligation is a great success of the … coalition,” he was reported as saying.

A European Union plan to spend up to 20 billion euros ($21.4 billion) on military aid for Ukraine is meeting with resistance from EU countries, diplomats said this week.

This wasn’t how Pavel Butorin expected to celebrate his anniversary this week, with his wife of 21 years in a Russian prison and barely any communication available.

Russian-American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva — who works as an editor for U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe — has been detained in Russia for almost a month and charged with failing to self-register as a “foreign agent.”

“Alsu should be celebrating this anniversary with me and our children at home, not in a Russian prison,” Butorin told The Associated Press in an interview in Prague on Friday. “We want her back. Alsu must be released as soon as possible,” he said, visibly shaken.

Rosgvardiya’s national guard is thought to be led by Pavel Prigozhin, the son of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Wagner leader who died in a plane crash in August of this year soon after the rebel group captured Rostov-on-Don.

Other Wagner fighters are likely to have joined Redut, another Private Military Company, which have a total of 7,000 personnel, say the Ministry of Defence.

Wagner group fighters also joined Chechen Akhmat special forces and 170 former Wagner fighters had already joined Akhmat, according to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

The UK government describes the Wagner mercenary group as a terrorist organisation.

Hungary’s prime minister said Friday he does not support moving forward on negotiations on Ukraine‘s future membership in the European Union, signaling again that his country could pose a major roadblock to Kyiv‘s ambitions to join the bloc.

EU leaders are to decide in mid-December whether Ukraine should be formally invited to begin talks to join the 27-member union, with Hungary seen as a potential obstacle. Unanimity among all member states is required to admit a new country into the bloc, giving Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a powerful veto.

The EU’s executive branch on Wednesday recommended that Ukraine should be permitted to open membership talks once it has addressed some shortfalls. But in an interview with state radio on Friday, Orbán said the embattled country is nowhere near gaining membership in the world’s largest trading bloc.

With somber bugles and bells from Australia to western Europe’s battlefields of World War I, people around the globe on Saturday remembered the slaughter and losses just over a century ago that was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.”

Yet the rumble of tanks and the screeching of incoming fire from Ukraine to Gaza pierced the solemnity of the occasion and the notion that humankind could somehow circumvent violence to settle its worst differences.

“This time last year, our thoughts were focused on Ukraine. Today, our minds are full with the terrible images emerging from Israel and Gaza. These are just two of the more than 100 armed conflicts in the world today,” said Benoit Mottrie, the head of the Last Post Association in western Belgium’s Ypres, where some of the fiercest and deadliest World War I battles were fought.