Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Russian forces pounded the town of Avdiivka in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk region Monday morning, Ukrainian officials said Monday.

“This morning, Avdiivka was subjected to massive artillery shelling,” the acting chief of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, Ihor Moroz, said on Telegram.

A number of households and an industrial building sustained damage in the area, Moroz said, and Russian artillery shelling was reported in the area of the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant, the largest coke producer in Ukraine.

CNBC was unable to verify the report. Avdiivka has become one of the most intense combat hotspots in Ukraine with Ukraine’s General Staff stating Monday that Russian troops continued to try to surround the town, but unsuccessfully. Avdiivka lies south of Bakhmut and similarly has been a key Russian target since the beginning of the war given its strategic location in Donetsk.

— Holly Ellyatt

The Kremlin said on Monday that more signs were appearing of Ukrainian involvement in the blasts that ruptured Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, following a Washington Post report that a Ukrainian military officer coordinated the attack.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also told reporters in a call that it was “alarming” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has denied that Kyiv was involved in the blasts on the Baltic seabed, was reported to have been unaware of the operation.

— Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet made a decision on participating in the next presidential elections, his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

“It is clear that the time for the announcement of elections is approaching, but so far there have been no decisions. As soon as they are, we will inform you,” he told reporters on Monday.

Neither Putin, 71, nor the Kremlin has confirmed he will run for another six-year term in office, taking his presidency up to 2030 and potentially beyond. Several media reports have cited unnamed sources saying Putin will stand for office, however.

Peskov told CNBC last week that while no decision had yet been made, he had “no doubt that if he puts forward his candidacy, he will win confidently.”

“Society is consolidated around the president,” Peskov added.

Read more here: Kremlin says Putin will ‘win confidently’ if he runs in the 2024 presidential election

— Holly Ellyatt

Two Russian state news agencies published alerts on Monday saying Moscow was moving troops to “more favorable positions” east of the Dnipro River in Ukraine, only to withdraw the information minutes later.

The highly unusual incident suggested disarray in Russia’s military establishment and state media over how to report the battlefield situation in southern Ukraine.

The RBC news outlet quoted the defence ministry as saying: “The sending of a false report about the ‘regrouping’ of troops in the Dnieper (Dnipro) region, allegedly on behalf of the press centre of the Russian Ministry of Defence, is a provocation.”

Russia’s military last week said its forces had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to forge a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and on nearby islands.

In a series of three alerts on Monday, the RIA state news agency said that the command of Russia’s Dnepr group of forces had decided to relocate troops to “more favorable positions” east of the Dnipro.

It said that, after the regrouping, the Dnepr force would release some troops to be deployed in offensives on other fronts.

RIA said the Russian military command had agreed with the Dnepr leadership’s conclusions and ordered the relocation of troops to start.

Minutes later, RIA withdrew all three alerts without explanation. Another state agency, TASS, published just one alert on troops regrouping to more favorable positions, and then withdrew it, saying it had been released in error. It apologised to its readers.

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said last week that Ukraine appeared to have conducted assaults across the Dnipro in Kherson region in mid-October, and noted that Russian military bloggers were reporting continued Ukrainian ground operations on the eastern bank.

— Reuters

Large elements of the Wagner Group of mercenaries have likely been assimilated into the command structure of Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya) and resumed active recruitment, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update Sunday.

The Wagner Group has been in a state of flux since the death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash in August. The incident is under investigation. The Kremlin denied any involvement in Prigozhin’s death, which came after he led a short-lived and unsuccessful rebellion against Russia’s defense ministry.

Now, the latest iteration of the Wagner Group, under Rosgvardiya’s command, is likely being led by Pavel Prigozhin, the son of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, the U.K. said.

“Other groups of Wagner fighters have highly likely joined another Russian PMC [private military company], Redut, which according to a Radio Free Europe investigation now has 7,000 personnel in total,” the U.K. said in an intelligence update on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“The Russian state is now exercising more direct control of Wagner Group activities and former personnel following the mutiny in July 2023 and subsequent death of Wagner’s leadership in August 2023,” it added.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine appears to be intensifying attacks against Russian military and logistical assets in occupied parts of the country, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Sunday. 

Noting that the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (or GUR) reported Sunday that Ukrainian partisans had attacked a Russian military headquarters in occupied Melitopol in the Zaporizhia region, the ISW said it followed a number of audacious attacks by Ukraine in recent days.

“The GUR’s November 12 announcement follows a Ukrainian partisan attack against a former Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) People’s Militia head on November 8; strikes against a Russian military base in occupied Skadovsk, Kherson Oblast and Black Sea Fleet assets in Crimea on November 9; and three rear-area strikes and partisan attacks in Russia on November 11,” the ISW said.

“Ukraine appears to be intensifying attacks against Russian military, logistics, and other high-profile assets in rear areas in occupied Ukraine and Russia,” it added.

There is pressure on Ukraine to make progress in its counteroffensive given the limited amount of time before inclement weather and muddy fighting conditions take hold. Russia also appears to have intensified attacks in recent weeks and targeted the capital Kyiv on Saturday for the first time in 52 days.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country must brace itself for more attacks on national infrastructure as winter approaches.

“We are almost halfway through November and we must be prepared for the possibility that the enemy may increase the number of drone or missile strikes against our infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Sunday.

Russia pummelled Ukrainian energy infrastructure last winter, putting pressure on much of the civilian population by depriving them of heating and power. The Kyiv School of Economics estimated last January that damage to the country’s energy sector had already totaled $6.8 billion.

“Russia is preparing for winter. And in Ukraine, all our attention should be focused on defense, on response to terrorists, on everything Ukraine can do to make it easier for our people to get through this winter and to increase the capabilities of our troops,” Zelenskyy said.

— Holly Ellyatt