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Senior U.S. officials are advising Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive against Russian forces until the latest supply of U.S. weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a senior Biden administration official said on Friday. The official, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States was holding fast to its decision not to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine at this time, amid a controversy with Germany over tanks. U.S. talks with Ukraine about any counter-offensive have been in the context of ensuring the Ukrainians devote enough time first...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian shells pummeled the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday, killing seven people and injuring 58 more in the city that Moscow’s forces were forced to abandon last month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, just back from his quick trip to Washington, posted photos of the wreckage on his social media accounts. He noted the destruction came as Ukrainians were beginning Christmas celebrations that for many Orthodox Christians will culminate in the traditional celebration on January 7th.

NATO's head said earlier this month that Russia may want the fighting to slow, seeking a "freeze" in the fighting so it can better prepare for a bigger assault next year. "What we see now is Russia is actually trying to have some kind of 'freeze' of this war at least for a short period of time so they can regroup, repair, recover," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. "And then try to launch a bigger offensive next spring." The UK Ministry of Defence predicted on Monday that Russian forces will not see any big gains over the winter, even...

Ukrainians’ mass exodus from their recently liberated city of Kherson continued Sunday as Russia’s sustained shelling on the area has made it virtually unlivable. The city, which was freed by Ukrainian forces more than two weeks ago, has faced intense attacks by nearby Russian soldiers as Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor reaches the nine-month mark. Residents facing awful conditions and fearing imminent strikes kept fleeing the city over the weekend. One resident said he was devastated he had to leave especially since the city had just regained its freedom from Russian occupation.

Mangled metal, charred debris and shattered glass cover the floor as a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit storms a Russian command center on the outskirts of the recently liberated city of Kherson. (snip) The exchange was recorded by the reconnaissance team and shared with CNN. It offers a valuable insight into the grueling battle for the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, which culminated in a Russian withdrawal from a swathe of land on the west bank of the Dnipro river earlier this month, a major setback for the Kremlin’s war. (snip)“They had the big losses here,” the head of the reconnaissance...

Voluntary evacuation from the liberated Kherson and Mykolaiv Oblasts has already begun, and the state is paying all related costs. Source: Ukrinform with references to Iryna Vereshchuk, Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, and Vitalii Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Oblast Military Administration Quote from Vereshchuk: "Voluntary evacuation from the liberated territories of the southern part of Ukraine has already begun, and the state is paying all costs and taking all responsibility associated with this process.

Russians are fleeing Crimea amid fears that Ukraine will soon move to recapture the region that Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in 2014, according to local media reports. Emil Ibragimov, the head of the Crimean project and educational platform Q-Hub, told Radio NV in a video published on Friday that Russians are fleeing from Crimea to the neighboring Russian region of Krasnodar because they fear Ukraine will eventually liberate the Black Sea peninsula. Ibragimov said that many Russian citizens who settled in Crimea after it was occupied eight years ago had already left. -snip- His remarks coincide with an assessment by...

The Kremlin-imposed head of Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea says Russian forces are strengthening positions on the peninsula as Ukrainian troops make gains in the nearby Kherson region. Sergei Aksyonov said in a post on Telegram on November 18 that he is overseeing "fortification work" in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow used Crimea in February as one of the areas from which it launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has said it intends to fight to recapture Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared his country retaking the regional capital of Kherson to D-Day, the start of the Allies regaining captured territory from the Nazis during World War II, saying it could be a turning point in the war with Russia. Zelensky said in an address to the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Indonesia on Tuesday that the Ukrainian operation to liberate Kherson is reminiscent of many other battles in the past that were turning points in armed conflicts. “Those battles symbolized such changes, after which people already knew who will be victorious even though the ultimate victory...

The gates swing open, creaking ominously on their hinges. This is the first time Valery has been back to the prison where the Russians took him. As he walks through the gates he points out the cell on the second floor where he was locked up. And when he recounts what happened here it's clear that it is a painful experience. (snip) Each image is dated - it all happened in March shortly after the invasion when they captured Kherson city. On the walls of the prison graffiti reads "Zelenskyy we are coming". But surprisingly Valery considers himself lucky as,...

Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, is outraged by the arrival of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s President, in the city of Kherson, which has been liberated from the occupiers. Source: Kremlin-aligned news outlet RIA Novosti, citing Peskov Details: Peskov did not want to comment on journalists' questions about Zelenskyy's arrival in Kherson, but he said that the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast is "the territory of Russia". Background: On 14 November, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in the city of Kherson, which was liberated from the Russian invaders.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made an unannounced visit to the newly freed city of Kherson on Monday, reveling in perhaps the most significant success by his country’s forces since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February. “We are, step by step, coming to all of our country,” he said to a crowd of hundreds of people, some wrapped in Ukrainian flags. “I am happy we are in Kherson.” The president’s visit to Kherson just days after it was retaken was a tangible sign of Ukraine’s soaring morale and its growing boldness in the nearly nine-month war. Kherson, a vital Black...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is vowing to push Russian forces from Ukraine after Kyiv retook the strategic city of Kherson. “We will see many more such greetings,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday. “In those cities and villages that are still under occupation. We don’t forget anyone, we won’t leave anyone. Thanks to our defense operations and diplomacy, we will definitely reach our state border — all sections of the internationally recognized border of Ukraine.”

Update from Ukraine | Drone Attack on Sevastopol, Crimea | Ruzzian ships are damaged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLMXGO6t3CM&list=PL07GENlkQ2ASL3mJmE5xL8nPzIBThcUAw&index=365 Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Military maps here: https://militaryland.net/ https://militaryland.net/maps/invasion-maps/ The summary of the 261st day on Kherson Front, as of 22:00 – 11th November 2022 (Kyiv time). https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-261-kherson-front/

Russian TV Presenter: “The decision of our MoD has become known that we are withdrawing troops from the right bank of Dnieper, that is, we are leaving Kherson… Now, if you are expecting I will explain my opinion on this, then I won’t tell you anything. But I’ll explain why. If I support this decision [to withdraw] then this turns out to be a public call for violation of the territorial integrity of Russia in our criminal code… This is several years of imprisonment. If I do not support this decision and believe that the MoD [is wrong], these are...

Ukraine landed a significant blow on Russia Saturday after it allegedly killed a large group of bloodthirsty Chechen special forces dispatched to assassinate the country's president Volodymyr Zelensky. The armed group - famed for their barbaric violence and human rights abuses - are said to have been obliterated after their convoy of 56 tanks was blown to smithereens near Hostomel, just northeast of Kyiv, by Ukrainian missile fire on the second day of the Chechens' deployment. It is unclear how many died - but the number is likely to run into the hundreds. Their deaths were announced as officials in...

Despite the apparent success of the retreat, the loss of Kherson still represents a major defeat for Putin and his armed forces. It was the sole regional capital captured by his army since the invasion began, and sits in a region he declared to be part of Russia just a few weeks ago. Ukrainian flags are flying in the centre of Kherson once again, as Russia fled eight months after taking city Locals gathered on the streets to welcome Kyiv's men as official said entire city is almost under their control Ukrainian artillery hammered Russian units fleeing across Dnipro River...

The Kremlin on Wednesday announced a retreat of Russian forces from the strategically important city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, a concession to military reality eight months after capturing the area, and one of the most significant reversals of President Vladimir V. Putin’s war effort. The withdrawal order came from Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, in a meeting with top military leaders that was broadcast on Russian state television, after Gen. Sergei V. Surovikin, Moscow’s commander in Ukraine, explained that heavy shelling by advancing Ukrainian forces had made the Russian position west of the Dnipro River, where Kherson is,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia's announced retreat from Kherson, a regional capital in southern Ukraine that it seized early in the war, and a potential stalemate in fighting over the winter could provide both countries an opportunity to negotiate peace, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. He said as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over" 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, now in its ninth month. “Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side," Milley added. “There has been a tremendous amount of suffering, human suffering,” he said...

At 5am on Wednesday Serhii Melnikov heard a noise outside. The Russian soldiers who were living in the house opposite – were packing up to leave. They had occupied the village of Mylove in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region for eight months. Now they were off, as part of a humiliating pull-out from the right-bank of the Dnipro river. “Vladimir Putin said Russia would be here for ever. In the end they left in five minutes and ran away like goats,Putin wanted to kill us. He’s ended up destroying his own country. Russia’s retreat from Kherson is an enormous failure.” ...The...