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The latest developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine. All times EDT.
9:58 p.m.: U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, facing nine years behind bars in Russia after being convicted on drug charges, has been transferred to a penal colony about 500 km southeast of Moscow, her lawyers said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Griner was sentenced in August following her arrest at a Moscow airport in February with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She was moved from a detention center near Moscow on Nov. 4 to be taken to an undisclosed prison location.
Her legal team, confirming an earlier Reuters story, said Griner had been taken to Female Penal Colony IK-2 in the town of Yavas in the Mordovia region.
"We can confirm that Brittney began serving her sentence at IK-2 in Mordovia. We visited her early this week," lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boikov said in a statement. “Brittney is doing as well as could be expected and trying to stay strong as she adapts to a new environment."
Mordovia is the region where another American, Paul Whelan, is serving a 16-year sentence in a different penal settlement after being convicted of espionage charges that he denies.
8:15 p.m.: The last batch of bracelets made from metal produced by the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russia's invasion, have gone on sale across Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Proceeds from the bracelets, which sell for around $40, will go to an organization helping finance the procurement and maintenance of drones used by the Ukrainian military.
"We are proud to be Ukrainian when we wear this bracelet. This is a very strong feeling," said Yurii Ryzhenkov, the director of Metinvest, the company that owns Azovstal and was involved with the bracelets. "My (entire) family already bought one ... and they think it's something symbolic that unites the whole country."
Ukrainian fighters fought Russian forces for months over control of Mariupol, a strategic Azov Sea port city and industrial hub.
In the closing days of the battle, fighting focused on the vast Azovstal complex that sheltered the last remaining fighters, and some civilians, until their surrender in mid-May. The fig
7:22 p.m.: Hundreds of residents in the newly liberated city of Kherson queued up in the rain to switch the Russian SIM cards in their mobile phones for local ones on Thursday, Reuters reported, only days after the city was retaken by Ukrainian forces.
The government in Kyiv, which says Russian troops destroyed the Kherson telecommunications system before leaving, has set up relay stations around the city.
Booths were erected around the city's main square by local telecoms providers, including Kyivstar and Vodafone, where residents had the option of either acquiring a free SIM card or paying to skip the queue.
"My SIM card burned when my apartment was hit by a rocket. The whole building burned down, a four-story building, 65 apartments," said Semyanova Liudmyla, 67, after picking up her free card.
A local Kyivstar employee showed a handful of Russian SIM cards, which she said were either handed out for free or sold by the Russian government during the occupation.
6:33 p.m.: Fresh Russian strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Thursday, the latest in a wave of attacks that have crippled the country's energy infrastructure as winter sets in and temperatures drop, Agence France-Presse reported.
Repeated barrages have been disrupting electricity and water supplies to millions of Ukrainians, but the Kremlin blamed civilians' suffering on Kyiv's refusal to negotiate, rather than on Russian missiles.
AFP journalists in several Ukraine cities said the fresh strikes had hit with snow falling for the first time this season and after officials in Kyiv warned of "difficult" days ahead with a cold spell approaching.
"Four missiles and five Shahed drones were shot down over Kyiv," the Kyiv regional administration announced, referring to the Iranian-made suicide drones that Moscow has been deploying against Ukraine targets in swarms.
5:55 p.m.: The United States welcomed the verdict reached in the Netherlands on Thursday convicting three men in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014 as an important step toward accountability, Agence France-Presse reported.
"The decision by the District Court of The Hague is an important moment in ongoing efforts to deliver justice for the 298 individuals who lost their lives on July 17, 2014," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement.
The verdict "reflects the Netherlands' firm commitment to establish the truth and pursue accountability in this case," he said.
5 p.m.: For 10 days, Alesha Babenko was locked in a basement and regularly beaten by Russian soldiers. Bound, blindfolded and threatened with electric shocks, the 27-year-old pleaded for them to stop.
“I thought I was going to die,” he told The Associated Press.
In September, Babenko and his 14-year-old nephew, Vitaliy Mysharskiy, were arrested by Russian soldiers who occupied his village of Kyselivka in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson. They had been taking photos of destroyed tanks and sending them to the Ukrainian army.
Seated this week on a bench outside his home, Babenko was visibly shaken as he recounted the trauma of being thrown into a car, driven to the city of Kherson and interrogated until he confessed.
As violence escalates in Ukraine, abuses perpetrated by Russia have become widespread, according to the United Nations and human rights groups. The situation is particularly concerning in the Kherson region, where hundreds of villages, including the main city, were liberated from Russian occupation in early November. It was one of Ukraine’s biggest successes in the nearly 9-month-old war, dealing another stinging blow to the Kremlin.
4:10 p.m.: The EU will provide temporary cold-weather shelter, generators and electricity grid-repair kits to Ukraine to help tide it over the winter ahead of a possible flare-up of hostilities in the conflict with Russia, Reuters reported Thursday, quoting the bloc's crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic.
"Winter is almost here and this is now our cardinal priority when we talk about humanitarian aid," he told reporters, adding that the "systematic destruction by Russia of critical infrastructure in Ukraine" has made support over the winter even more crucial.
EU member states have been asked to prepare for additional refugee inflows from Ukraine during the winter if there is a surge in attacks, Lenarcic said. "We are encouraging member states to put enough resources in place to face this kind of increased needs," he said.
While winters in Ukraine tend to be very cold with temperatures plunging well below zero Celsius, this one will be precarious, with Russia likely continuing to attack its power, water and heating infrastructure. "You can imagine how hard this winter could be for Ukrainians when they are facing energy shortages, electricity blackouts, lack of water, lack of heating, oil," Lenarcic said. "All of these due to the Russian destruction of critical civilian infrastructure."
Earlier this month, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that if expected deliveries from abroad are taken into account, the country should have sufficient gas supplies for this winter.
3:24 p.m.: The long border between Finland and Russia runs through thick forests and is marked only by wooden posts with low fences meant to stop stray cattle. Soon, a stronger, higher fence will be erected on parts of the frontier, The Associated Press reported.
Earlier this month, Polish soldiers began laying coils of razor wire on the border with Kaliningrad, a part of Russian territory separated from the country and wedged between Poland and Lithuania. Cameras and an electronic monitoring system also will be installed on the area that once was guarded only by occasional patrols of border guards.
The fall of the Berlin Wall more than 30 years ago symbolized hope for cooperation with Moscow. Now, Russia’s war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of confrontation in Europe — and the rise of new barriers of steel, concrete and barbed wire. These, however, are being built by the West.
“The Iron Curtain is gone, but the ‘barbed wire curtain’ is now unfortunately becoming the reality for much of Europe,” said Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. “The optimism that we had in Europe after 1989 is very much now gone.”
2:30 p.m.:
2:15 p.m.: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said on Thursday it was committing $7 billion to Africa over the next four years, as Bill Gates warned that the Ukraine crisis was reducing the amount of aid flowing to the continent.
The Foundation's pledge, which is up 40% on the amount spent during the previous four years, will target projects tackling hunger, disease, poverty and gender inequality. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, will take the biggest share.
Humanitarian groups in Africa are grappling with the diversion of funding away toward Ukraine, and as Russia's invasion increases goods prices globally, impacting aid operations.
"The European budgets are deeply affected by the Ukraine war and so right now the trend for aid is not to go up," the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp. told journalists at the University of Nairobi during a visit to Kenya.
"If you take all aid (into Africa) including all climate aid — we'll have a few years where it’ll probably go down."
2:05 p.m.: Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Thursday that his country already has experts in Poland to try to access the site where a stray missile killed two Polish citizens this week, as part of a larger investigation into the incident.
1:35 p.m.: Since the invasion of Ukraine more than eight months ago, Poland has aided the neighboring country and millions of its refugees — both to ease their suffering and to help guard against the war spilling into the rest of Europe, The Associated Press reported.
But a missile strike that killed two men Tuesday in a Polish village close to the Ukrainian border brought the conflict home and added to the long-suppressed sense of vulnerability in a country where the ravages of World War II are well remembered.
“The thing that I dread most in life is war. I don’t want to ever experience that,” said Anna Grabinska, a Warsaw woman who has extended help to a Ukrainian mother of two small children.
One of the men killed in Przewodow was actively helping refugees from Ukraine who had found shelter in the area.
NATO and Polish leaders say the missile was most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.
1:10 p.m.: Russia on Thursday rejected what it called the "scandalous" decision by a Dutch court to convict two of its citizens for downing a Malaysian airliner and said the proceedings had not been impartial, Reuters reported.
Judges convicted three men of murder for their role in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew, and sentenced them to life in prison in absentia.
Russia's foreign ministry said the court had been under unprecedented pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the media to impose a politically motivated outcome.
"The trial in the Netherlands has every chance of becoming one of the most scandalous in the history of legal proceedings," it said in a statement. Moscow has repeatedly denied responsibility for the downing of the jet.
Separately, a top Russian politician told Tass news agency that Moscow would not be extraditing Girkin and Dubinskiy.
Andrei Klishas, a member of Russia's upper house of parliament, told Tass that the court's decision would not have any legal consequences.
12:40 p.m.: In Ukraine's Luhansk region, occupying Russian forces are said to be using a dirty basement to hold mobilized soldiers who no longer want to fight. According to their relatives, the soldiers are under intense pressure to return to combat, even though they lack essential gear and were said to have been abandoned by their commanders. Current Time, a co-production of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and VOA, has this report.
12:05 p.m.: European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Thursday that peace in Ukraine was not going to be possible until Russia withdrew its troops, but that Moscow showed no signs of being ready for that, Reuters reported.
“I am afraid Russia is not ready to withdraw and as far as it doesn’t withdraw, peace will not be possible,” Borrell told Reuters in the Uzbek city of Samarkand.
“It is Russia who has to make peace possible, the aggressor has to withdraw if he wants a sustainable peace,” he said.
11:40 a.m.: The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said Thursday that the decision to continue of the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a relief to farmers and consumers around the world. UNOCHA also provided a video explanation of the key aspects of the deal on Twitter.
11:05 a.m.: China and India, after months of refusing to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, did not stand in the way of the release this week of a statement by the world’s leading economies that strongly criticizes Moscow.
Analysis from The Associated Press Thursday asks: Could this, at last, signal a bold new policy change by Beijing and New Delhi to align themselves with what the United States and its allies believe is the best way to end a war that has brought death and misery to Ukraine and disrupted millions of lives as food and energy prices soar and economies crack?
Their positions will become clearer in coming weeks, but for now both nations, which have significant trade ties with Russia and have so far stopped short of outright criticism of the war, may simply be looking out for their own interests and keeping future options open, AP said.
10:40 a.m.: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed a Dutch court’s decision Thursday to convict three suspects of murder for their role in shooting down Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.
The convicted men, two Russian former intelligence officers and a Ukrainian separatist leader, were found guilty of downing the plane and killing all 298 people on board.
The Dutch court said Russia had overall control of the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine at the time when the plane was shot down, Reuters reported.
"From half May 2014 Russia had so-called overall control over the People's Republic of Donetsk," presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, referring to the region where the passenger flight was shot down on July 17, 2014.
Zelenskyy said on Twitter that punishment for all of Russia’s “atrocities then and now is inevitable.”
10:25 a.m.: Ukraine is likely to get the access it has demanded to the site in southeastern Poland where a missile killed two people, Reuters quoted the Polish president's top foreign policy advisor as saying on Thursday.
Warsaw says evidence from the scene points to the explosion being caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile that went astray, something Kyiv denies saying it has evidence of a "Russian trace" in the blast.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday that access to the site of the explosion would require the agreement of both countries leading the investigation, Poland and the United States.
10:10 a.m.:
9:55 a.m.: A Dutch court ruling on Thursday on the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine sent a strong signal that "every war crime committed by the Russians" will be investigated and "brought to a conclusion," a senior Ukrainian official said.
A court in The Hague said Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in 2014 by a Russian-made missile fired from a field in eastern Ukraine and that Russia had overall control of separatist forces at the time.
"It can be said that this is the strongest signal to the whole world, including Russia itself, that every war crime committed by the Russians will be documented, investigated and brought to a conclusion. No matter how much time it takes," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters.
9:45 a.m.: Dutch judges on Thursday convicted three men of murder for their role in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine, and sentenced them to life in prison. A fourth man was acquitted, Reuters reported.
MH17 was a passenger flight that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.
"Only the most severe punishment is fitting to retaliate for what the suspects have done, which has caused so much suffering to so many victims and so many surviving relatives," Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, reading a summary of the ruling.
Families of victims stood weeping and wiping away tears in the courtroom as Steenhuis read the verdict.
The three men convicted were former Russian intelligence agents Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian separatist leader. A fourth, Russian Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges.
At the time, the area was the scene of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, the precursor of this year's conflict.
Victims' representatives said the ruling is an important milestone, though the suspects remain fugitives. They are all believed to be in Russia, which will not extradite them.
9:30 a.m.: A Dutch court was set to deliver its verdict on Thursday in the trial of four men over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014. All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was hit over separatist-held eastern Ukraine by what investigators say was a missile supplied by Moscow.
The suspects -- Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko – were not in court as they have refused to attend the 2.5-year trial.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published a review of what investigators say actually happened over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Note: this recreation was originally published in 2017.
8:50 a.m.:
8:35 a.m.: The Kremlin on Thursday accused Kyiv of shifting the goalposts regarding possible peace talks, said it could not imagine engaging in public negotiations and called on Washington to push Kyiv towards diplomacy.
In a briefing call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the United States was capable of taking Russia's concerns into account and could encourage Kyiv to return to the negotiating table if it wanted to, Reuters reported.
Peskov also said Ukraine had changed its position on whether it even wanted to negotiate with Moscow several times during the course of the nine-month conflict and could not be relied on.
8:20 a.m.: Russia is not considering using nuclear weapons, the Kremlin said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will defend its territory with all available means, including its nuclear weapons, if attacked. Russian officials say the West has repeatedly misinterpreted Kremlin statements.
Asked if it was possible that Russia would use a nuclear weapon and whether or not it had been discussed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said even the framing of such questions was unacceptable.
8:10 a.m.:
7:55 a.m.: Ukrainian forces control around 1% of territory in the eastern region of Luhansk, the RIA Novosti news agency cited the Russian-installed head of the area as saying on Thursday.
The Moscow-backed administrator Leonid Pasechnik said Ukraine controlled the village of Belogorovka and two other settlements in the region.
Russia has declared the Luhansk region its own after holding what it called referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine. Western governments and Kyiv said the votes breached international law and were coercive and non-representative.
7:40 a.m.: Russia again unleashed missiles on Thursday against Ukrainian energy facilities, while its forces stepped up attacks in eastern Ukraine, reinforced by troops pulled from Kherson city in the south which Kyiv recaptured last week, Reuters reported.
Explosions resounded in cities including the southern port of Odesa, the capital Kyiv, the central city of Dnipro and the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, where officials said two people were killed.
"Missiles are flying over Kyiv right now," Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as saying.
Zelenskyy posted video footage, apparently shot from a car cam, showing a driver's journey through Dnipro being interrupted by a huge blast ahead that sent flames and black smoke pouring into the sky.
"No matter what the terrorists want, no matter what they try to achieve, we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than we are now, even more ready for the liberation of our entire territory than we are now," he said.
7:25 a.m.:
7:15 a.m.: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released a statement Thursday on the renewal of the Black Sea Grain initiative.
“I welcome the agreement by all parties to continue the Black Sea grain initiative to facilitate the safe navigation of export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine," he said.
Guterres said the UN was also "fully committed to removing the remaining obstacles to exporting food and fertilizers from the Russian Federation" - a part of the deal Moscow sees as critical.
“Both agreements signed in Istanbul three months ago are essential to bring down the prices of food and fertilizer and avoid a global food crisis,” he noted.
6:50 a.m.: A deal aimed at easing global food shortages by facilitating Ukraine's agricultural exports from its southern Black Sea ports was extended for 120 days on Thursday, though Moscow said its own demands were yet to be fully addressed, Reuters reported.
The agreement, initially reached in July, created a protected sea transit corridor and was designed to alleviate global food shortages by allowing exports to resume from three ports in Ukraine, a major producer of grains and oilseeds.
Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the extension of the Black Sea grain deal for 120 days starting from Nov. 18, without any changes to the current one.
The export of Russian ammonia via a pipeline to the Black Sea has not yet been agreed as part of the renewal, two sources familiar with discussions told Reuters. But Russia would continue efforts to resume those exports, one of the sources added. Ammonia is an important ingredient in fertilizer.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in September he would only back the idea of reopening Russian ammonia exports through Ukraine if Moscow handed back prisoners of war, an idea the Kremlin quickly rejected.
"The renewal of the Black Sea grain initiative is good news for global food security and for the developing world," Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said on Twitter, calling it a "beacon of hope".
"Solving the fertiliser crunch must come next," she added.
6:30 a.m.: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns and President Vladimir Putin's spy chief discussed "sensitive" questions when they met this week in Turkey, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, Reuters reported citing Interfax reported.
6 a.m.: Russian missile strikes on Thursday damaged or destroyed some of Ukraine's gas production facilities, state energy company Naftogaz said.
Naftogaz chief executive Oleksiy Chernyshov said Russia had carried out a "massive attack" on the infrastructure of gas producer Ukrgazvydobuvannia in eastern Ukraine.
"Currently, we know of several objects that have been destroyed. Others have suffered damage of varying degrees," Cherynshov said.
5:15 a.m.: The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said in its latest Ukraine assessment that Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast while Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian forces and logistics nodes in southern Ukraine.
Multiple reports, the assessment said, indicate that the morale and psychological state of Russian forces in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts are exceedingly low.
4:13 a.m.: President Vladimir Putin urged the Russian government on Wednesday to control car prices, Reuters reported, as one industry head said Western sanctions could send annual sales crashing to below 1 million for the first time since records began.
Auto sales have fallen more than 60% so far this year and may end up being less than a quarter of what they were a decade ago, according to Maxim Sokolov, head of Russia's top carmaker, Avtovaz.
Some of this year's drop is the result of the pullout of foreign carmakers such as Renault and Mercedes-Benz and a collapse in demand because of a mass mobilization for the conflict in Ukraine.
But much is also because of falling living standards and higher prices, as well as the difficulty of securing foreign-made components after the imposition of a barrage of sanctions by Western countries in response to Russia's military campaign in Ukraine; the latest Lada model has had to be produced without airbags or anti-lock brakes.
3:06 a.m.: Agence France-Presse, citing a Ukrainian official, reported that the Black Sea grain export deal has been extended for 120 days. The deal lets Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea.
2:10 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K. defense ministry said Ukraine is seeing "a significant decrease" in power from its national grid — which is bad news for civilian access to communications, heating and water supplies.
1:06 a.m.: U.S. think tank the Institute for the Study of War says that Ukrainian children are being forcibly adopted by Russian families. It cites a documentary series that alleges that Russian officials have evacuated more than 150,000 children, a figure Ukraine had previously estimated to be 6,000-8,000.
"Forced adoption programs and the deportation of children under the guise of vacation and rehabilitation schemes likely form the backbone of a massive Russian depopulation campaign that may amount to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and constitute a wider ethnic cleansing effort," the Institute reported.
12:02 a.m.: Russia's economy has entered a recession as gross domestic output fell by 4% in the third quarter, according to first estimates published Wednesday by the national statistics agency, Rosstat, Agence France-Presse reported.
The drop in GDP follows a similar 4% contraction in the second quarter, as Western sanctions pummel Russia's economy following Moscow's offensive in Ukraine.
Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
