November 8, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Ukrainian forces fire a howitzer round toward Russian positions in the Donetsk Oblast on Tuesday.

Amid fierce fighting in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the “situation is complicated along the entire frontline.”

In his daily video address, Zelensky said “fierce positional battles continue in some areas, and the situation is especially difficult in Donetsk region. The occupiers’ activity there remains at an extremely high level — dozens of attacks every day.”

He said Russian forces “suffer extremely large-scale losses, but their order has not changed — to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk region. We do not surrender a single centimeter of our land there. And I thank all our heroes who hold positions in Donbas.”

In the southern Kherson region, Zelensky said Ukrainian units were acting “carefully, thoroughly and in the interests of liberating our entire territory. We are strengthening our positions, breaking Russian logistics, consistently destroying the potential of the occupiers to keep the south of our country in occupation.”

Zelensky said work continued to restore normal life in the liberated areas. In two districts of Kharkiv region, he said, “more than a thousand households have their gas and electricity supply restored.” 

Across the country, repair work continued on energy facilities,

“As of this evening, about 4 million Ukrainians in 14 regions and the city of Kyiv are cut off from electricity supply. But the majority of them are under stabilization power cut off schedules, not emergency ones.” The schedules implement twelve hours of power cuts a day.

To address the energy crisis, Zelensky said that imports of goods necessary during the heating season will be exempt from VAT and import duties. “This should simplify and reduce the cost of supplying generators, batteries, transformers and other similar equipment for energy and heat supply to Ukraine.”

A top State Department official said the Biden administration is “confident” that US support for Ukraine will be “unwavering and unflinching” no matter the results of the midterm elections in the US.

Donfried also said she believes the European Union is committed to economically supporting Ukraine. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared on a screen as he delivered a speech today at the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Centre.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky stressed on Tuesday that the international community needs peace to have joint and effective actions to respond to the climate crisis, in a virtual address to the UN climate summit COP27 in Egypt. 

“We must stop those who, with their insane and illegal war, are destroying the world’s ability to work united for a common goal,” Zelensky said in a pre-recorded video message. 

He pointed at the potential danger of a nuclear accident at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where shelling continues in the area. The power plant has lost external electricity power several times since the war first broke out, forcing it to temporarily switch to diesel generators. 

“Who will care, for example, about the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere if part of Europe or the Middle East and possibly Northern Africa, God forbid, are covered by a radiation cloud after an accident in Zaporizhzhia?” Zelensky said. 

“We must ensure that suffering doesn’t multiply because the world doesn’t have time to respond to climate challenges. But to do this we need joint [and] effective actions and for that we need peace,” he added. 

People walk on a dark street in the old town of Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 6.

Many residents of Ukraine’s capital city said the idea of a negotiated end to Russia’s invasion can only be possible once Russia withdraws from Ukrainian territory.

Senior US officials have in recent weeks been urging Ukraine to signal that they are still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia, amid concerns that public support for the country’s war effort could wane with no end to the conflict in sight and neither side willing to begin peace talks, sources familiar with the discussions tell CNN.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out talks with Russia so long as President Vladimir Putin is in charge. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia is “open to” negotiation with Ukraine, but that the moment was not right for talks.

CNN took to the streets of Kyiv Tuesday to get a sense of residents’ openness to negotiation with Russia.

Daryna Chupat is a 20-year-old student who said the mood in Ukraine is “victory or death.”

“We have to push back to our borders, or at least to try to do so,” he told CNN. “There is an opinion that Ukraine will 100% win only when Russia falls. It seems like a great idea to me because any agreement with Russia is nothing but empty words. Any of their guarantees are not actually guarantees at all. “

Zoya Popova, 70-year-old retiree, said she agreed with Zelensky that the only acceptable outcome was a total withdrawal of Russian troops.

“After all the cessations, a trial in The Hague must take place. After that, we can discuss any kind of peace,” she said.  

Valentyna Polischuk is a 53-year-old saleswoman, said “all the ways to achieve a peace are good, including negotiations, but they should take into account our demands.”

She said that while Crimea was a “complicated issue,” the Russia-claimed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson “are ours.” 

“If our conditions are accepted – even though it’s difficult for the Russians, they can find a way, and do so – if they leave, the war will be over,” she said.

Ukraine should talk to Russia, she said, but if negotiations aren’t successful, “we have to ask assistance from our allies, defend ourselves, and push them out of here.” 

Vlad, a 31-year-old who provided only his first name because he’s serving in the military. said the “only way” for negotiations to start is “when we get regain all our borders.”

Negotiations, he said, are impossible, “because their attitude to us is not human.”

“These talks can be launched only after we get back our borders as they were in 1991,” including Crimea and all of Donetsk and Luhansk, he said. “Other kinds of negotiations with them make no sense, because the only thing Russia wants is to restore the Soviet Union.”

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, Kylie Atwood and Oren Liebermann contributed reporting to this post.

Ukrainian servicemen load a rocket into a BM21 Grad multiple launch rocket system on the border of the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, Ukraine, on November 3.

The senior Ukrainian official for the easternLuhansk region says troops continue to advance despite a “huge number” of Russian reserves arriving in the area.

Serhiy Hayday, head of Luhansk region military administration, said on Ukrainian television that the armed forces were advancing, but “it should be taken into account that there are certain specifics of the Luhansk region: the Russian occupation troops managed to bring a huge number of reserves there, managed to build defensive structures, mined a very large area, so the advance is quite cautious.”

Ukrainian troops began to probe into the Luhansk region in September after a rapid advance across Kharkiv region. 

Hayday added: “They [the Russians] are trying to make some incomprehensible counter-offensive actions. There are a very large number of freshly mobilized. “

He predicted the Russians would take heavy casualties as the fighting in the area around Svatove and Kreminna continued.

Hayday said that civilians remained in recently liberated settlements despite official efforts to persuade them to move, amid constant shelling from the Russian side.

“People stay in some liberated settlements, no matter how we are trying to persuade them. They sometimes agree to leave when they see that their neighbor’s house was hit. Fear prevails over stubbornness,” he said.

Ukraine Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov, left, welcomes US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield before their meeting in Kyiv as part of her visit to Ukraine on November 8.

US Ambassador to the United Nation Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s message to Ukrainians on Election Day in the US is that America’s support will not wane, despite growing questions about lawmakers willingness to sustain massive US support to the country as it continues facing Russian bombardments. 

Thomas-Greenfield will meet with Ukrainian farmers, crime scene experts who are collecting evidence of atrocities in the country, and Ukrainian President Zelensky.

“I know she’s looking forward to personally conveying our ironclad commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, core concepts of the UN Charter,” the official said of her meeting with Zelensky. 

The US diplomat is visiting the country after senior US officials have been urging Ukraine in recent weeks to signal that they are still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia, amid concerns that public support for the country’s war effort could wane with no end to the conflict in sight and neither side willing to begin peace talks, sources familiar with the discussions tell CNN. 

The official would not wade into details about any conversations Thomas-Greenfield could have with Ukrainian officials about appearing open to diplomatic discussions to bring an end to the war. 

“The important thing here to understand is that any decisions with regard to conducting negotiations with regards to ending this war, those decisions are going to be determined in Kyiv and not anywhere else,” the official said. 

The official explained that Thomas-Greenfield’s visit to the Ukrainian capital will focus on three priorities: holding Russia accountable for the atrocities its forces have committed, addressing the unprecedented global food security crisis and ensuring Ukraine can prepare for winter ahead in the face of continued attacks by Russian forces on its critical infrastructure.

Swiss bank UBS office in Frankfurt, Germany, on November 8.

German investigators are searching branches of a Swiss bank in Germany in connection with money laundering allegations surrounding a Russian oligarch.

Officers from the German Criminal Police Office began searching branches in Frankfurt and Munich earlier today, a spokesperson for the General Public Prosecutor’s Office in Frankfurt told CNN. 

German media is naming the bank branches in question as those of UBS, the Swiss bank. The prosecutor’s office did not name the bank. 

That spokesperson said the bank itself is not the target, but says authorities hope to secure evidence relating to money laundering allegations against the Russian national. While the BKA will not name him, the prosecutor’s office spokesman confirmed it was the same individual whose properties were previously searched for similar allegations. German investigators have previously targeted an Uzbek-born Russian national, Alisher Usmanov, in these searches. 

German law enforcement does not as a rule name people under investigation. German media is naming Usmanov as the target of Tuesday’s searches. 

A UBS spokesperson tells CNN: “We confirm that the offices of UBS Europe SE in Frankfurt and Munich are currently being searched by the public prosecutor. We are cooperating fully with the authorities ”

CNN has reached out to Usmanov’s representative and the German Criminal Police Office for comment. 

A spokesperson for Usmanov denied the allegations to Reuters, describing them as unfounded, false and defamatory. Usmanov has not been charged with any wrongdoing in Germany so far.

Previous allegations by the BKA targeting the Russian have included transfer of funds for tax evasion purposes. The BKA has said in a previous press release that “multi-digit millions” of Euros were transferred, allegedly to avoid paying tax.

A yacht linked to Usmanov, sitting in Bremen harbor during the ongoing investigation, as well as one property connected to him in the upmarket area of Lake Tegernsee, were previously searched by the BKA in September. In September, a spokesperson for Usmanov denied any wrongdoing by the Russian businessman, saying he is a “lawful and diligent taxpayer and has always paid his taxes currently and on time.”

Linda Thomas Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, speaks to CNN.

Ukrainian farmers are growing increasingly “desperate” as the UN-brokered grain deal draws closer to expiring, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Tuesday.

“They certainly are under pressure, but also they are desperate. They need the confidence of the market to plant,” Thomas-Greenfield said in remarks following a visit to a grain facility in Kyiv.

“So there’s a sense of desperation as well that I heard from them and I will take that message back to my colleagues in the Security Council, to the Secretary General, and I know that he knows it.”

The agreement, brokered by the UN, put in place a procedure that guaranteed the safety of ships carrying Ukrainian grain, fertilizer and other foodstuffs through a humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea.

Under the deal, all vessels coming to and from Ukraine’s ports are inspected and monitored by international teams made up of officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN.

However the deal is due to expire this month and there are fears that Russia, which already suspended its participation in the deal once, will not agree to its renewal.

Thomas-Greenfield described her visit to the facility, which was not named due to security reasons, as short but “extraordinarily enlightening.”

Thomas-Greenfield was joined on the tour by US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.

Signs continue to emerge that both Russia and Ukraine are preparing for a showdown in the southern city of Kherson, while a US diplomat has underlined Washington’s “unwavering” support for Kyiv after Ukrainian officials hit out at reports that their US counterparts have been urging them to signal they are still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia.

Here are the latest headlines:

Russian forces have stepped up their scrutiny of civilians in occupied areas of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, detaining locals to root out partisan resistance, according to the Ukrainian military.

In the city of Kherson, Russian troops are now largely wearing civilian clothing and living in residential housing as they “strengthen positions inside for conducting street battles,” according to the Ukrainian military and a resident of the city with whom CNN exchanged messages.

Ukrainian forces have taken back a significant swathe of territory in Kherson that Russian troops had seized shortly after the invasion began in late February. Kyiv strung together a series of surprising victories in early October in the region, but progress has slowed as Ukrainian forces edge closer to the regional capital, Kherson. It appears as though an intense battle for the city may be looming.

Read the full story here.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield on June 8, in Washington, DC.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has said that American support for Ukraine is “unwavering” and will continue until the nation “wins this war.”

“We have been unified from day one, and we have not seen any cracks in that unity,” Thomas-Greenfield told CNN during an unannounced trip to the capital, Kyiv. “Europe is unified. NATO is unified. We’ve had bipartisan support in the United States for support for Ukraine.”

When asked about reports that US officials have urged Ukraine to signal that they are still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia, amid concerns that public support for the country’s war effort could wane, Thomas-Greenfield demurred.

“We’ve been clear,” she said. “No negotiations in which Ukraine is not in the driver’s seat. No negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

The international community, she said, “wants justice for the people of Ukraine.”

“Any negotiations that take place have to take place with Ukraine in the driver’s seat. They have to determine that, when they are ready for those negotiations, with the backing and support of the international community, following the charter that Russia has violated.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda speaking at the COP27 UN climate summit on November 8 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is putting the climate at risk, said Poland’s President Andrzej Duda in an address at COP27, the United Nations climate summit, on Tuesday.  

“The consequence[s] of Russia’s aggression are crisis and huge costs which put at risk timely implementation of climate transition as well as timely attainment of the intended goals,” said Duda at the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“It has also generated additional emissions exceeding the level of those produced by a number of developing countries within the scope of one year,” he added.

“The world, however, has the right to ask where we have moved our production. For if we have moved it into non-European countries, then we should not forget that our responsibility has not disappeared.”

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other to raise their clean energy ambitions at the 27th annual UN climate summit, which is focused on loss and damage.

Low-emitting countries inundated with floods or watching their islands sink into the ocean are demanding that developed, high-emissions countries pay up for this damage. 

The sun sets over the west of Kyiv on November 7 as electricity and heating outages across Ukraine continue.

A drop in temperatures in Ukraine this week has prompted the national electric utility, Ukrenergo, to introduce further energy restrictions.

“Additional restrictions on consumption are necessary because due to the cold snap, electricity consumption is increasing, which leads to an increase in the load on equipment and a shortage of electricity in the power system,” said Ukrenergo in a statement.

The emergency power cuts that have been a daily occurrence for weeks continued Tuesday, with outages planned for the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, as well as the capital, Kyiv.

Responding to various media reports about a push for negotiation with Russia, Ukrainian officials on Tuesday said that an essential condition for any settlement of the war is the restoration of Ukrainian occupied territory.

“The main condition of the [Ukrainian] President of is restoration of [Ukrainian] territorial integrity,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Twitter.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, asked on Twitter: “What do you mean by the word ‘negotiations’? Russian ultimatums are well-known: ‘we came with tanks, admit defeat and [the loss of territory].’ This is unacceptable. So what to talk about? Or you just hide the word ‘surrender’ behind the word ‘settlement?’”

Some background: The pair spoke out following reports that senior US officials have in recent weeks been urging Ukraine to signal that they are still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia. The push comes amid concerns that public support for the country’s war effort could wane with no end to the conflict in sight and neither side willing to begin peace talks, sources familiar with the discussions tell CNN.

The discussions are not aimed at encouraging the Ukrainians to negotiate now – rather, the US wants Kyiv to convey more clearly that it wants to find a resolution to the conflict and that Ukraine has the moral high ground, sources said. 

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have disrupted a Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance group” in the occupied southern Kherson region, and detained nine Ukrainian citizens.

The FSB said on Tuesday that it had “revealed and prevented the activities of an SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] sabotage and reconnaissance group in Kherson region, whose tasks included committing terrorist acts against high-ranking members of the military and civil administration of Kherson region.”

The FSB claimed to have discovered explosives, detonators and small arms.

The Ukrainian government has not commented on the claimed arrests.

Residents evacuated from Kherson arrive in Oleshky, Kherson region, Ukraine, on October 25.

Monday was the last day of Russia’s “organized evacuation” offer for civilians from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the occupied portion of Ukraine’s Kherson region, according to a Russian-backed official.

His comments come as an intense battle for the southern city of Kherson appears to be looming, with Ukrainian forces edging closer to the regional capital as part of a push to retake territory seized by Russian forces shortly after their invasion began in February.

Anyone who leaves the Kherson region will be given “a one-time payment of 100,000 rubles” (about $1,600) “and a housing certificate,” Stremousov added.

Some context: Evacuation offers like this have sparked concerns that Ukrainian citizens may be forced to go to Russian territory against their will. 

A Kherson city resident told CNN over the weekend they viewed the idea of getting on an “evacuation bus” to Crimea as a “one-way ticket.” CNN is not identifying the resident for their safety.

Reports emerged early in the war of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being forcibly sent to so-called “filtration centers” before being moved to Russia. Moscow denounced the claims as lies, alleging that Ukraine has hindered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia.

Kherson is one of four regions Russia has said it will annex from Ukraine in violation of international law. 

North Korea on Tuesday denied dealing arms to Russia following US accusations that Pyongyang is secretly supplying Moscow with weapons for use in the Ukraine war.

The United States was attempting “to tarnish the image” of North Korea “in the international arena,” according to a statement by the vice director of military foreign affairs at North Korea’s Defense Ministry published by state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Some background: Last week, declassified US intelligence said North Korea is secretly supplying Russia with a significant number of artillery shells for use in Ukraine and is trying to hide the shipments by making it appear as if the ammunition is being sent to countries in the Middle East or North Africa.

US officials believe the alleged surreptitious North Korean shipments — along with drones and other weaponry that Russia has acquired from Iran — are further evidence that even Moscow’s conventional artillery arsenals have dwindled during eight months of combat.

The report follows a US statement in September that North Korea intends to supply weapons to Russia including rockets and artillery shells, which Pyongyang promptly denied.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a mortar on a front line near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on November 6, 2022.

In a letter purportedly sent from the front lines to a regional governor in Russia, the men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines say they were thrown into an “incomprehensible battle” in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

The letter, published by a prominent Russian military blog on Monday, was sent to the governor of Primorsky Krai.

“Once again we were thrown into an incomprehensible battle by General Muradov and his brother-in-law, his countryman Akhmedov, so that Muradov could earn bonuses to make him look good in the eyes of Gerasimov [Russia’s Chief of the General Staff],” it said.

In the letter, they asked the governor, Oleg Kozhemyako, “For how long will such mediocrities as Muradov and Akhmedov be allowed to continue to plan the military actions just to keep up appearances and gain awards at the cost of so many people’s lives?”

CNN cannot verify how many soldiers signed the letter nor their ranks, but Kozhemyako confirmed he had received a letter from the soldiers of the unit.

A US citizen recently died in Ukraine, the US State Department said Monday, the latest known American to die in the country since Russia’s invasion in February.

While the State Department did not name the individual, the International Legion of the Defense of Ukraine identified Timothy Griffin as a US citizen killed during combat in Eastern Ukraine.

Both the State Department and Ukraine’s International Legion said they were in touch with family of the deceased and asked the public to respect their privacy.

At least five other Americans are known to have been killed in the country fighting alongside Ukrainian forces during the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Read more here.