As the war enters its 986th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Thursday, November 7:
Fighting
- A Russian drone attack badly damaged an apartment in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district early on Thursday. No injuries have been reported.
- Air defence units destroyed 38 of 63 Russian drones launched overnight, Ukraine’s air force said on Wednesday.
- Russian forces have captured two more settlements in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s Ministry of Defence announced, naming them as the villages of Maksymivka, just north of the town of Vuhledar, and Antonivka, near the town of Kurakhove, further north.
- Ukraine reported fighting around both villages in the eastern sector of the 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front line, saying its forces repelled two attacks near Maksymivka and a village near Vuhledar in the Donetsk region and did not acknowledge that either had fallen.
- The General Staff of Ukraine’s military also reported a “tense” situation around Kurakhove, with 39 Russian attacks on Ukrainian positions.
North Korean soldiers in Ukraine
- The upper house of Russia’s parliament has voted in favour of ratifying a treaty between Russia and North Korea which includes a mutual defence clause.
- South Korea is not ruling out supplying Ukraine with weapons, following North Korea’s deployment of troops to support Russia, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol has said. North Korea’s involvement in the war presents a threat to the South as Pyongyang gets combat experience and is rewarded with sensitive military technology transfers, Yoon said.
- Yoon also held a call with United States President-elect Donald Trump and discussed forging closer ties with the US across all areas of security and economics, and shared his concerns over North Korea’s deployment of troops backing Russia.
International diplomacy
- The Kremlin has reacted cautiously after Trump was elected US president, saying the US is still a hostile state and that only time will tell if his rhetoric on ending the Ukraine war will translate into reality.
- “Let us not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country, which is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state [in Ukraine],” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that he was not aware of any plans by President Vladimir Putin to congratulate Trump.
- In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed Trump’s “absolutely convincing” election victory. Zelenskyy said he spoke with Trump following his victory, in a call in which the pair agreed to “maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation”. He also heralded Trump’s “commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs”.
- The White House is reportedly planning to rush billions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine before President Joe Biden leaves office, as concerns remain over Trump’s commitment to Kyiv after he previously criticised the scale of US military and financial support.
- Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said a Trump win is probably bad news for Ukraine but said it was unclear how far he would be able to cut US financing for the war.
Russian affairs
- Prominent Russian nationalist and former militia commander, Igor Girkin, who accused Putin and the army of failures in the Ukraine war, has lost his Supreme Court appeal against a four-year jail term for inciting extremism.
- Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Moscow is ready to keep supplying gas to Europe via Ukraine when the current transit deal expires at the end of the year, but this should be agreed by Kyiv and the European countries involved.