Russia-Ukraine war: Putin drafting Wagner Group mercenaries into national guard, UK says

Moscow’s troops have begun a push to regain territory near Bakhmut, the eastern mining city that was the site of the war’s bloodiest battle before falling into Russian hands in May, the head of Ukraine‘s ground forces wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian troops had recaptured the heights over Bakhmut and made some advances to the city’s west, north and south since Kyiv launched its summer counteroffensive.

“Toward Bakhmut, the Russians have become more active and are trying to recapture previously lost positions. … Enemy attacks are being repelled,” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote in a Telegram update on Sunday afternoon.

Ukraine‘s long-awaited counteroffensive has so far resulted in only incremental gains and heavy losses, with Ukrainian troops struggling to punch through Russian lines in the south. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces have attempted to press forward in the northeast, likely with a view to distract Kyiv and minimize the number of troops it is able to send to key southern and eastern battles.

The Ukrainian ground forces’ spokesperson similarly reported that Russian troops had “switched from defense to active defense” near Bakhmut, “putting pressure” on Ukrainian troops south of the city. Vladimir Fityo made the remarks on Ukrainian TV, adding that Russian troops were searching for weak points in Ukrainian defenses and ramping up artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition has agreed in principle to double the country’s military aid for Ukraine next year to 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion), a political source in Berlin said.

If approved by parliament, where Scholz’s parties hold a majority, the boost would lift Germany’s defence spending to 2.1% of its gross domestic product target, beyond the 2% pledged by all North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, the source added.

Lawmakers of Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Green party agreed on the increase in negotiations over the proposed 2024 federal budget ahead of a formal meeting of the budget committee of the Bundestag – or lower house of parliament – on Thursday, Nov. 16, the source said.

A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry of Defence said the Bundestag committee has not finished negotiations and declined to comment further.

Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper also said the committee is due to approve the additional 4 billion euros.

“Doubling the military spending is both the right thing to do and important,” it quoted member of parliament Andreas Schwarz, who acts as an SPD military budget official, as saying.

“With the move we will underscore our promise to Ukraine with the necessary funds. The fact that we will also be able to fulfil our NATO obligation is a great success of the … coalition,” he was reported as saying.

A European Union plan to spend up to 20 billion euros ($21.4 billion) on military aid for Ukraine is meeting with resistance from EU countries, diplomats said this week.

This wasn’t how Pavel Butorin expected to celebrate his anniversary this week, with his wife of 21 years in a Russian prison and barely any communication available.

Russian-American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva — who works as an editor for U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe — has been detained in Russia for almost a month and charged with failing to self-register as a “foreign agent.”

“Alsu should be celebrating this anniversary with me and our children at home, not in a Russian prison,” Butorin told The Associated Press in an interview in Prague on Friday. “We want her back. Alsu must be released as soon as possible,” he said, visibly shaken.

Rosgvardiya’s national guard is thought to be led by Pavel Prigozhin, the son of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Wagner leader who died in a plane crash in August of this year soon after the rebel group captured Rostov-on-Don.

Other Wagner fighters are likely to have joined Redut, another Private Military Company, which have a total of 7,000 personnel, say the Ministry of Defence.

Wagner group fighters also joined Chechen Akhmat special forces and 170 former Wagner fighters had already joined Akhmat, according to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

The UK government describes the Wagner mercenary group as a terrorist organisation.

Hungary’s prime minister said Friday he does not support moving forward on negotiations on Ukraine‘s future membership in the European Union, signaling again that his country could pose a major roadblock to Kyiv‘s ambitions to join the bloc.

EU leaders are to decide in mid-December whether Ukraine should be formally invited to begin talks to join the 27-member union, with Hungary seen as a potential obstacle. Unanimity among all member states is required to admit a new country into the bloc, giving Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a powerful veto.

The EU’s executive branch on Wednesday recommended that Ukraine should be permitted to open membership talks once it has addressed some shortfalls. But in an interview with state radio on Friday, Orbán said the embattled country is nowhere near gaining membership in the world’s largest trading bloc.

With somber bugles and bells from Australia to western Europe’s battlefields of World War I, people around the globe on Saturday remembered the slaughter and losses just over a century ago that was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.”

Yet the rumble of tanks and the screeching of incoming fire from Ukraine to Gaza pierced the solemnity of the occasion and the notion that humankind could somehow circumvent violence to settle its worst differences.

“This time last year, our thoughts were focused on Ukraine. Today, our minds are full with the terrible images emerging from Israel and Gaza. These are just two of the more than 100 armed conflicts in the world today,” said Benoit Mottrie, the head of the Last Post Association in western Belgium’s Ypres, where some of the fiercest and deadliest World War I battles were fought.

Ukrainian military intelligence said two amphibious Russian ships loaded with armoured vehicles had been hit by naval drones overnight.

One of the boats was identified as an Akula class vessel, while the other landing vessel was a Serna class.

“The results of intelligence conducted on 10 November 2023 near Vuzka Bay in temporarily occupied Crimea show that after an attack by naval drones, two small Russian landing ships have been destroyed,” a Ukraine military report said.

As President Joe Biden likes to remind anyone who will listen, “This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party”.

Gustaf Kilander and Ariana Baio report:

A European Union plan to spend up to 20 billion euros ($21.4 billion) on military aid for Ukraine is meeting resistance from EU countries and may not survive in its current form, diplomats have said.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, proposed in July that the bloc create a fund with up to 5 billion euros a year over four years as part of broader Western security commitments to bolster Ukraine as it fights Russia’s invasion.

But as EU defence ministers prepare to discuss the plan in Brussels on Tuesday, diplomats say multiple countries – including EU heavyweight Germany – have voiced reservations about committing such large sums years in advance.

The EU and its members have been among the biggest donors of military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, providing arms and equipment worth some 25 billion euros, according to the bloc’s diplomatic service.

Borrell’s proposal was an effort to put support on a longer-term footing, by creating a cash pot for Ukraine aid inside a bigger fund, the European Peace Facility, used to reimburse EU members for military assistance to other countries.

“I’m not going to declare it dead at this point yet. But of course, improvements can always be made,” a senior EU diplomat said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Germany has had a lot of questions … and rightfully so. We’re talking about a lot of money.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his troops can still deliver results on the frontline and says that country has a battlefield plan for 2024, without revealing details.

“We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very [concrete] directions where we go. I can’t share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east,” he said. “And some, I think good steps … near Kherson region. I am sure we’ll have success. It’s difficult.”

Ukrainian forces have been trying to establish a bridgehead on the eastern, Russian-occupied, bank of the vast Dnipro river in Kherson region. A rapid counteroffensive liberated the region west of the Dnipro and its capital, Kherson City, almost exactly a year ago.