War in Ukraine: Forced resettlement in the Luhansk region - Russian troops increase their presence
Created: 11/19/2022, 6:56 p.m
By: Sandra Kathe, Karolin Schäfer, Vincent Büssow, Nail Akkoyun, Christian Weihrauch, Jan-Frederik Wendt
In the Ukraine war, heavy fighting is currently raging in the Donbass again.
War crimes are apparently coming to light in liberated Cherson.
The news ticker.
Zaporizhia:
After heavy shelling in the region, the heat supply fails
5 trillion rubles:
Russia's spending on the war far exceeds the planned budget
No “breathing space”:
Zelenskyj rejects a short-term ceasefire with Russia
Editor's note:
Read the latest developments in the Ukraine conflict in our news ticker.
The information on the Ukraine war processed here comes partly from the warring parties in Russia and Ukraine.
They can therefore not be independently checked in part.
+++ 6.49 p.m .:
In the Ukraine war there is movement in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk: According to the findings of the Ukrainian general staff, the Russian armed forces are increasing their troop presence in the Luhansk region.
In order to accommodate the many soldiers, part of the civilian population will be forcibly resettled, the general staff in Kyiv said on Saturday.
The people would be housed in other places, it said
+++ 16:24:
The new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has surprisingly arrived in the Ukrainian capital Kiev for talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted footage of the meeting on Telegram, commenting, "From the first days of the war, Ukraine and Britain have been solid partners."
Important issues of cooperation and international security were discussed at the meeting.
A soldier of the Russian Army.
(Iconic photo) © Alexey Maishev / Imago Images
News about the Ukraine war: Deputy Minister of Defense speculates about the end of the war
+++ 3.15 p.m .:
The Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine has shown optimism that the “war will be over by the end of spring”.
He also does not rule out that the Ukrainian military will advance to Crimea by the end of the year, General Volodymyr Havrylov told British television channel
Sky News
on Saturday (November 19) .
He also included a possible end to Putin's rule in Russia in his considerations.
Such an event would speed up the recapture.
But this is only a matter of time anyway.
Ukraine has already had significant success in recapturing its territories from Russia.
(Archive image) © Efrem Lukatsky/dpa
+++ 1:14 p.m .:
After violent attacks on the city of Zaporizhia, the heat supply in at least 123 high-rise buildings is said to have failed.
This was reported by the head of the regional military administration on Saturday morning (November 19) on Telegram.
Already on Friday there were reports of shelling in the region (see update from November 18, 3:25 p.m.), which is partly occupied by Russia.
In the past 24 hours, Russia is said to have continued shooting at Zaporizhia and the surrounding towns, according to the state news agency
Ukrinform
, among others.
According to the local military administration, 33 reports of home and infrastructure demolitions were received.
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News on the Ukraine war: Russia spends additional billions
+++ 10.34 a.m .:
Russia is apparently spending additional billions on the war against Ukraine.
According to the British Ministry of Defense, the expected military spending in the coming year will exceed the planned budget by 40 percent.
About 5 trillion rubles are planned to be spent, equivalent to $84 billion.
For this, the country took on a larger amount of debt at once than ever before.
+++ 9.46 a.m .:
Since the recapture of Cherson, the heavy fighting in the Ukraine war has continued to focus on the east of the country.
This was reported by President Zelenskyy in a video address on Friday evening (November 19).
As can be seen from the military situation reports from both sides, the course of the front in the area has hardly changed.
According to Ukrainian information, Russia is now moving forces to the east that had become free as a result of the withdrawal from Cherson.
News about the Ukraine war: Russia arrests hundreds of people in Cherson
+++ 7.40 a.m .:
During the Russian occupation of the southern Ukrainian city of Cherson, hundreds of Ukrainians were arrested and many of them disappeared.
This emerges from a study by the US University of Yale published on Friday (November 18).
The Conflict Observatory research group, whose work is supported by the US State Department, counted 226 unlawful arrests and enforced disappearances.
About a quarter of the people were believed to have been tortured, and four of them died in captivity.
According to the report, the Russian military and the Russian secret service FSB were behind most of the cases.
Those affected were men of military age, including civil servants, teachers, law enforcement officials and journalists.
News in the Ukraine war: Zelenskyj rejects "short armistice" with Russia
Update from Saturday, November 19,
6:33 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected the idea of a "short-term ceasefire" with Russia - arguing that it would only make the situation worse.
"Russia now wants a brief ceasefire, a respite to regain strength," said the president in a speech broadcast on Friday (November 18) at the International Security Forum in Halifax, Canada.
Such a respite would not end the war but only make things worse, he said.
"A (...) real, lasting and honest peace can only come through the complete destruction of Russian aggression," Zelenskyy added.
News in the Ukraine war: Russia is said to have committed war crimes in Cherson
+++ 10:20 p.m .:
After the liberation of the Ukrainian city of Cherson in the Ukraine war, numerous residents of the city report on Russian war crimes that are said to have occurred during the occupation from March 2nd.
The news portal Ukrainska Pravda
is now reporting
that young people are said to have been held in Russian torture chambers.
The online portal relies on a report by the Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets, which he published on the social media platform Facebook.
According to Lubinet's descriptions, the cruelty of the rooms in Kherson, where people are said to have been tortured by Russian soldiers, differs markedly from finds in other liberated areas: because men and women were held captive together, because there were special cells for juveniles and because all Rooms are said to have been under video surveillance.
The exact age of the detained young people is still being investigated: "Witnesses have testified that some of the detained boys did not look older than 14 years," reports Lubinets.
War crimes in Ukraine war: Russians accuse Ukrainian soldiers
+++ 8:25 p.m .:
After a video appeared on social media, Russia accused Ukraine of executing Russian prisoners of war.
This is reported by several media, including the British newspaper
Guardian
and the news
agency Reuters
, but they emphasize that the authenticity of the video and the circumstances under which it was created could not initially be checked independently.
The video shows a group of what appear to be Russian soldiers exiting a house with their hands raised, then being told to lie on their stomachs in front of the building by gunmen wearing Ukrainian army yellow armbands.
Then machine gun fire can be heard before at least twelve bodies are shown.
The location of the recording is Makiivka in the Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
News in the Ukraine war: Russia with sharp allegations
A spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, called the video
"further evidence of Ukraine's crimes," according to
Reuters .
Matilda Bogner, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, stressed that the mistreatment of prisoners by Russian soldiers has been "rather systematic".
The mistreatment of Russian prisoners of war has so far been classified as "not systematic".
Ukraine war: Russia bombs “civilian critical infrastructure”
+++ 6.41 p.m
.: After massive Russian air raids in the past few days and weeks, almost half of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine is no longer operational.
This was stated by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday afternoon.
Millions of people in Ukraine are currently without electricity.
According to Schmyhal, last Tuesday, November 15 alone, more than 100 rocket attacks were carried out, mostly on the country's energy infrastructure.
Russia accuses Shmyhal of "missile strikes on civilian critical infrastructure" and a fight "against the civilian population".
The Prime Minister therefore called on Ukraine's European partner countries to provide support in the energy sector, such as financial aid and the delivery of spare parts.
Problems with German tank howitzers in the Ukraine war: spare parts are missing
+++ 5 p.m.:
Germany delivered a total of 14 self-propelled howitzers 2000 to Kiev during the Ukraine war.
However, there are already problems that could endanger the use of combat vehicles.
According to
Spiegel
information, there are planning errors when ordering spare parts.
A large part of the military equipment provided by the federal government has to be repaired after use at the front,
Spiegel
reported .
However, the Federal Ministry of Defense has not yet ordered any spare parts so that the weapon systems can be repaired.
Meanwhile, six howitzers were transported to Lithuania for maintenance.
However, since the required spare parts are missing and are not available from the industry either, one of the tanks had to be cannibalized and left in Lithuania.
According to the newspaper, the Bundeswehr pointed out months ago that the relevant material had to be ordered - apparently without success.
Ukraine war: 10 people die in rocket hit
+++ 3:25 p.m .:
Russia has again carried out air attacks on Ukraine.
Among other things, the city of Vilnjansk in the north of the Zaporizhia region was hit.
In addition to the critical infrastructure, a residential building was also destroyed.
The number of victims has now been corrected to ten, three of whom were children.
"During the night of November 17, 2022, occupying forces struck the city of Vilnyansk with three S-300 rockets,"
Ukrinform
quoted the region's prosecutor's office as saying.
"A missile hit a two-story house."
Children died further east in the same oblast.
On Friday night, Russian forces shot dead a family with two children in the settlement of Komysh-Zoria,
pravda.com
reported .
The region is occupied by Russian troops.
The Ukrainian domestic intelligence service confirmed the violent death to the portal.
News about the Ukraine war: Russia launches attacks
+++ 1.45 p.m .:
According to the Ukrainian military, Russia has again launched attacks on the Kiev front lines in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"The enemy is concentrating its efforts on obstructing our defense forces in certain areas, launching attacks towards Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka," Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on Friday.
This is reported
by CNN
.
Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been fiercely contested for several months, but remain in Ukrainian hands.
According to the British MoD, the Russian army will "likely" step up its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine by moving troops from the south after they were forced to withdraw from the city of Kherson last week.
News on the Ukraine war: Kremlin excludes talks with the USA
Update from Friday, November 18, 12:55 p.m .:
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, said there was no prospect of a summit meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden and that it was not planned either.
Peskov is quoted by the Russian news agency Tass as saying: "There is simply nothing to discuss with them about Ukraine."
Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia does not rule out further high-level meetings with the US on "strategic stability".
News about the Ukraine war: Heavy fighting reported in Donbass
First report from Friday, November 18:
Kiev/Moscow – In the Donbass coal and steel region in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian troops are fighting fiercely, with the front line hardly changing at the moment.
The Ukrainian General Staff on Friday (November 18) reported artillery and tank shelling on villages such as Vodyane, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka near the town of Avdiivka.
The Kiev information was not independently verifiable, but in this case it was consistent with reports from Russian military bloggers.
Ukrainian-controlled Avdiivka is a few kilometers north of Donetsk.
Because the front between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-controlled separatists has been running there since 2014, Ukraine's positions are well developed.
In the nearly nine months since the Russian invasion on February 24, Russian forces have made little gains in terrain.
According to Russian data, the village of Opytne was conquered last.
News about the Ukraine war: Russia fires at village with anti-aircraft missiles
According to the situation report of the Ukrainian general staff, another focus of the fighting is the region around the city of Bakhmut.
There, Ukrainian positions were fired on with tanks, mortars, tube and rocket artillery.
Here, too, the course of the front has remained practically unchanged for months.
There was also heavy artillery fire on the Kupyansk front.
This important railway junction in the Kharkiv region was recaptured in September's rapid advance by the Ukrainian army.
Since then, however, the Ukrainians have made little progress towards the east.
According to local authorities, Russian troops fired at a village in the Zaporizhia region at night with the S-300 system missiles, which were actually intended for anti-aircraft defense.
A building was destroyed but no one was injured.
(nak/chw with dpa)
