Russia Ukraine war latest: Putin suffers serious losses in largest offensive in months

Vladimir Putin has branded Ukraine‘s counteroffensive a “failure”.

While Kyiv took back territory taken by Russia last year, the Ukrainian army has struggled to penetrate Russian lines which have been bolstered with minefields and thousands of extra troops.

“As for the counteroffensive, which is allegedly stalling, it has failed completely,” Mr Putin said in video remarks posted to social media by a Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin.

“The opposing side is preparing new active offensive operations. We see it and we know it,” he added when asked about the battle for the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka.

According to the Belfer Center at Harvard, Ukraine made a net gain of 8 square miles of territory the month to 10 October.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine‘s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed forces fighting Ukraine‘s armed forces.

Two civilians were killed in Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka on Saturday, the Donetsk region administration said on Sunday.

In one of its few offensives in months, Russia’s military pressed on for a fifth day with assaults on Avdiivka, with shelling so fierce that emergency crews were unable to recover the dead from wrecked buildings.

The administration of the Donetsk region said on Sunday on the Telegram messaging app that one more person was injured elsewhere in the region.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday its forces had repelled 15 Russian attacks near Avdiivka, Tonenke and Pervomaiske in the Donetsk region, while Russian forces launched heavy air strikes in the area.

Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region also in Ukraine’s east, said on Sunday a 54-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man were killed and one woman injured in an overnight Russian air attack.

Ninety-three explosions were reported in Sumy Oblast on Sunday according to Governor Volodymyr Artiukh.

Artiukh noted that, as a result of Russian shelling in the region, civilian infrastructure and homes were damaged. No casualties were reported.

“Enemy military aircraft, kamikaze drones, artillery systems, and salvo fire systems were used,” he said. “Over the past month of (Russian) shelling, seven civilians have died in our region, including a 13-year-old girl. Many wounded.”

Artiukh added that there are currently over 5,000 homes in Sumy Oblast that have been damaged by Russian shelling.

Sumy Oblast, which borders Russia, has been targeted by Russian forces on a near-daily basis since April 2022.

The woman was killed in her garden when shells struck her home in the city of Avdiivka.

“A man was taken to the hospital with a concussion, fracture and shrapnel wounds for medical treatment. According to preliminary data, the Russian army shelled both settlements with artillery,” regional spokesperson Anastasia Medvedeva said.

Two people were killed and three more injured in the Kherson area after more than 100 shells bombarded the region over the weekend, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on social media.

Two guided bombs later hit key infrastructure in Kherson city, sparking a partial blackout and disruption to the area’s water supply, reported the head of the city’s military administration, Roman Mrochko.

Local officials said two more people died in the Donetsk area and that a 57-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman were killed by an airstrike that destroyed their home in the Kharkiv region.

In a separate incident, a 14-year-old boy was killed by a mine in a field in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. The explosion also injured another 12-year-old boy.

Fighting remained fierce across eastern Ukraine over the weekend, with Russian forces repeatedly attempting to encircle the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, military officials said.

A Russian governor was accused by critics on Sunday of “discrediting Russia’s armed forces” after telling residents in her region that the country had “no need” for its war in Ukraine.

Natalya Komarova, the governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk region and a member of President Vladimir Putin’s governing United Russia party, made the remarks during a meeting with residents in the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk on Saturday.

Critics have called for authorities to launch an investigation into her remarks, but Komarova hasn’t been detained or faced any charges so far.

A video of the event posted on social media showed the politician being confronted by the wife of a Russian soldier who said that mobilized men had been poorly equipped for the front line.

“Are you asking me (why your husband does not have equipment), knowing that I’m the governor and not the minister of defence?”, the 67-year-old said.

“As a whole, we did not prepare for this war. We don’t need it. We were building a completely different world, so in this regard, there will certainly be some inconsistencies and unresolved issues,” she said.

President Vladimir Putin will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing this week in a rare visit from the Russian leader.

During Tuesday’s trip to Beijing, Putin will attend a forum marking 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure program that has helped boost its influence worldwide.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

Washington and Brussels have been eyeing with alarm the relationship between China and Russia, with Beijing refusing to condemn Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even as it has voiced support for the principle of territorial integrity.

“Over the past decade, Xi has built with Putin’s Russia the most consequential undeclared alliance in the world,” Graham Allison, professor at Harvard University and a former assistant secretary of defence under Bill Clinton, told Reuters.

“The U.S. will have to come to grips with the inconvenient fact that a rapidly rising systemic rival and a revanchist one-dimensional superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world are tightly aligned in opposing the USA.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that the Biden administration hopes to push a new weapons package for Israel and Ukraine through Congress that will be significantly higher than $2 billion.

Sullivan, in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said U.S. President Joe Biden will have intensive talks with the U.S. Congress this week on the need for the package to be approved.

Asked whether the request would be for $2 billion, as has been previously reported, Sullivan said: “The number is going to be significantly higher than that, but it will, as I said, certainly include the necessary military equipment to defend freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity in Ukraine, and to help Israel defend itself as it fights its terrorist threat.”

Some Republicans have already said they would not back any Israel aid package that also contains aid for Ukraine.

Ukraine is working to evacuate nearly 260 of its citizens from Gaza and to fly other Ukrainians out of Israel, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Sunday.

Ukraine’s embassy in Israel said on social media on Saturday that 207 Ukrainian citizens, including 63 children, were evacuated from Tel Aviv to Romania on Saturday and that another flight would take 155 people to Romania on Sunday.

Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said three parties would have to approve the departure of Ukrainians from Gaza, complicating the process.

“The Palestinians need to release all Ukrainian citizens, Egypt to accept them, and Israel should not conduct any operation at this time, so that the crossing point would be safe,” he said in remarks televised on Sunday.

A Russian governor was accused by critics of “discrediting Russia’s armed forces” after telling residents in her region that the country had “no need” for its war in Ukraine. Natalya Komarova, the governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk region and a member of President Vladimir Putin’s governing United Russia party, made the remarks during a meeting with residents in the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk on Saturday. Critics have called for authorities to launch an investigation into her remarks, but Komarova hasn’t been detained or faced any charges so far.