A small Russian assault group briefly broke through to the outskirts of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kupiansk for the first time since Moscow’s forces fled in September 2022, said officials, in a sign of mounting pressure on the outpost.
Germany has refused to allow a Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipment at the Brunsbuttel terminal in northern Germany, in line with Berlin’s policy not to import LNG from Russia, said industry sources on Thursday.
Russia was open to negotiations on an end to the Ukraine war if initiated by US president-elect Donald Trump, but any talks need to be based on the realities of Russian advances, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva told reporters on Thursday.
Russian attack on Kupiansk steps up pressure on northeast front
A small Russian assault group briefly broke through to the outskirts of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kupiansk for the first time since Moscow’s forces fled in September 2022, officials said, in a sign of mounting pressure on the outpost.
Moscow’s forces, including soldiers disguised as Ukrainian troops, attacked in four waves on Wednesday, but were repelled from the city, an important railway hub with a pre-war population of 26,000, said Ukraine’s general staff.
“They partially entered the suburbs, the industrial zone, and were destroyed by our troops... There were assault actions using heavy armoured vehicles, there were attempts to bring in infantry,” said the city’s military administration chief.
The city, now just 2.5km from the front line, was under constant shelling and the population had dwindled to 3,000 people who were being urged to evacuate, the official, Andriy Besedin, told Reuters by phone.
Kupiansk was captured by Russian forces in the early days of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion and then retaken by Ukraine in a counteroffensive months later.
Russia’s military has not commented on the Kupiansk front, but Vitaly Ganchev, a Russian official, said Moscow’s forces were gaining a foothold on the city’s outskirts.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.
Ukraine’s outnumbered troops have been losing ground in the east for months while trying to hold the line in Russia’s Kursk region against what Ukrainian authorities say is a 50,000-strong Russian force there. Ukraine says Russia also plans to launch a push in the southeast soon.
The Kupiansk thrust, involving 15 pieces of hardware such as tanks and armoured combat vehicles, according to Ukraine’s general staff, was an attempt to expand offensive operations on a front that sprawls over more than 1,000km, said President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Russian attack looked opportunistic and Kyiv appeared to have isolated and destroyed most of the Russian forces that penetrated the outskirts of Kupiansk, said Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Black Bird Group.
“However, a penetration like that certainly signals confusion and weakness in Ukrainian defences in that area, which could prompt the local Russian commanders to increase their efforts to squeeze or cut off the Ukrainian salient,” he added.
He said the coming days would probably indicate whether the Kremlin would react to this by ramping up Russian attacks there.
Ukrainian forces, some of whom have been fighting since before the full-scale invasion in 2022, are outnumbered by Russia’s troops, which Kyiv says have been taking heavy losses while making advances.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said Russia was probably hoping to eject Ukraine from the swathe of land it carved out in the Kursk region in time for the 20 January inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump, a Republican, has vowed to quickly end the war, without saying how. This has created speculation about looming negotiations, giving Ukraine and Russia an incentive to try to improve their battlefield positions as much as possible.
With that in mind, Kovalenko said he believed Russia could step up operations on the southeast front which has for months seen much less combat than other places, though he said it lacked the resources to threaten the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine’s military said Russia had in recent days transferred some assault groups to forward positions in the Zaporizhzhia region after conducting active reconnaissance there. Moscow’s troops had also stepped up attacks in the area where the southeastern Zaporizhzhia and eastern Donetsk regions meet, it said.
“They have the resources to become more active on the front line and seize a certain amount of square kilometres and imitate future advances to compel their antagonists to agree to Moscow’s conditions,” said Kovalenko.
Germany rejects arrival of Russian LNG shipment at terminal
Germany has refused to allow a Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipment at the Brunsbuttel terminal in northern Germany, in line with Berlin’s policy not to import LNG from Russia, said industry sources on Thursday.
The Financial Times reported earlier on Thursday that Germany’s economy ministry BMWK had instructed the Deutsche Energy Terminal not to accept any deliveries of Russian LNG after the company informed Berlin that its Brunsbuttel import facility was set to receive a Russian cargo on Sunday.
It was not clear who ordered the shipment. Three LNG tankers recently left the Yamal LNG facility in Russia and were awaiting orders, LSEG data showed.
“The cargo was destined for Brunsbuttel and someone tried [their] luck and it seems wanted to check how Berlin would react,” an industry source told Reuters, adding that this was “a bit of political PR stunt”.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy and once Russia’s largest importer of natural gas, has never directly imported Russian LNG and has stopped buying Russian pipeline gas following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
It has relied on LNG from the US and elsewhere as well as on pipeline gas from Norway to replace Russian gas.
“Germany does not import Russian gas as a matter of principle and it is also clear to the BMWK that this must not happen via German LNG terminals,” said a BMWK spokesperson.
Russia open to any Ukraine peace talks ‘if initiated by Trump’
Russia was open to negotiations on an end to the Ukraine war if initiated by Trump, but any talks needed to be based on the realities of Russian advances, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva told reporters on Thursday.
Trump has repeatedly criticised the scale of Western aid to Kyiv and has promised to end the conflict swiftly, without explaining how. His victory in the 5 November presidential election has spurred concerns in Kyiv and other European capitals about the degree of future US commitment to helping Ukraine.
“Trump promised to settle the Ukrainian crisis overnight. Okay, let him try. But we are realistic people, of course we understand that this will never happen,” said Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.
“But if he starts or suggests something to start the political process, it’s welcome.”
He said that any such negotiations needed to be based on what he called the “realities on the ground”, describing Ukraine as being on the back foot in the more-than-two-year conflict. Russian forces are advancing at the fastest pace in at least a year in Ukraine and now control about one-fifth of the country.
Zelensky has repeatedly said peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned. The “victory plan” he outlined last month maintained that provision, as well as an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato, long denounced by Russia.
Zelensky told European leaders in Budapest last week that concessions to Russia would be “unacceptable for Ukraine and suicidal for all Europe”.
Romania’s leftist PM and far-right leader ahead in presidential race
Romania’s leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and the head of an opposition far-right party were in the lead ahead of a presidential election this month and so would face each other in the runoff second round, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.
Conducted by pollster Inscop, the survey showed 56-year-old Social Democrat leader Ciolacu gaining 25.3% of the vote in the first round, with George Simion, leader of the Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) placed second with 19.1%.
The runoff takes place on 8 December and there is a parliamentary election sandwiched between the two rounds, on 1 December.
The president’s powers include oversight of foreign policy, and the winner will play a critical role in determining how committed the country remains to supporting neighbouring Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Ciolacu strongly supports Ukraine and the country’s EU and Nato membership. Simion opposes aid to Ukraine, particularly military aid.
The winner will also nominate the next prime minister, which complicates policymaking and the political outlook.
Austria’s Russian gas supply could stop before year-end
Russian gas supply to the oil and gas company OMV in Austria was at risk of stopping before the end of the year due to an arbitration case against Gazprom, said the company.
Austria is one of the few European countries still dependent on Russian gas as much of the rest of the continent has reduced imports following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On Wednesday, OMV said it had received an arbitral award of more than €230-million from the International Chamber of Commerce due to irregular gas supplies to its unit in Germany from Gazprom which ended in September 2022.
The Nordstream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was ruptured at that time due to explosions and has never been repaired.
Although the arbitration award is related to gas supplies to Austria’s German unit, if Gazprom does not pay the award the court decided, OMV will have to offset the claim against invoices under its Austrian gas supply contract with Gazprom Export, which comes via a Ukrainian transit route, to compensate.
Gazprom declined to comment.
The Ukraine transit route is set to end by the end of the year anyway if a new contract between Ukraine’s Naftogaz and Gazprom is not arranged. Kyiv has said repeatedly it will not extend the contract with Gazprom.
OMV’s payments for gas to Austria are usually made to Gazprom every month towards the end of the month, meaning gas could stop this month or in December, it said.
“The next payment due date (20 November) might mean that gas supplies via Ukraine will halve from 21 November onwards if Gazprom quits delivery,” added Klaas Dozeman, market analyst at Brainchild Commodity Intelligence.
As of August, 82% of all Austria’s gas imports came from Russia, according to Austrian energy ministry data. One of the reasons why large amounts are still flowing to Austria is that OMV has a supply contract with Gazprom until 2040.
This contract stipulates an annual delivery of about six billion cubic metres of gas and includes a take-or-pay clause, which obliges OMV to pay regardless of whether it takes the gas or not.
OMV has said it has been preparing for the eventual cut-off of Russian gas for a while and it can still deliver gas to its customers. It has secured transport capacity from Germany and Italy to Austria, as well as long-term contracts with other suppliers for gas. It can also get liquefied natural gas from the Netherlands.
Russian woman jailed for demanding Putin’s death over war
A military court in Moscow sentenced a 43-year-old woman to eight years in a penal colony on Thursday for posting anti-war comments online, including several calling for the assassination of President Vladimir Putin, reported Russian news agencies.
Anastasia Berezhinskaya, a Moscow-based theatre director and mother of two young children, was found guilty of two wartime censorship laws — discrediting the Russian army and spreading false information about it — as well as justifying terrorism.
More than 1,000 people have been criminally prosecuted in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine, according to the rights project OVD-Info, and more than 20,000 have been detained for protesting.
On Tuesday, a Moscow court sentenced a 68-year-old paediatrician to 5½ years in prison after the mother of one of her patients publicly denounced her over comments about Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
In the first months following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Berezhinskaya published dozens of posts online against the conflict. The Russian army, the Interior Ministry and Putin himself, she said, were waging a “genocide” against the Ukrainian people.
On 14 May 2022, she posted over three dozen times on VKontakte, a social network, hurling insults at Putin and saying he bore personal responsibility for the deaths of men, women and children whose bodies were being pulled from under the rubble of Ukrainian apartment blocks.
As Berezhinskaya continued to post that day in May, she began to call for the death of Putin, who at 72 years old is on course to become Russia’s longest-serving leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
“Shoot that stupid bastard Putin, how many more murders of civilians do we have to bear?” she wrote. “Wipe him off the face of the earth.” DM