WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukrainian troops have reclaimed dozens of landmine-littered settlementsabandoned by Russian forces in southern Ukraine, officials said, the day after Moscow announced its withdrawal from the strategic capital city of Kherson province.
CONFLICT
* Ukrainian forces have liberated 41 settlements as they advance through the south of the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
* Ukraine's army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said Kyiv could not yet confirm whether Russia was indeed pulling out of Kherson, but that Ukrainian troops had advanced7 km (4 miles) in the past 24 hours.
* A small group of Ukrainian soldiers was shown on Ukraine's state TV in the centre of the village of Snihurivka around 55 km north of Kherson city. They were greeted by dozens of residents in a square, with a Ukrainian flag fluttering from a pole behind them. Reuters verified the location of the video.
* Moscow ordered its troops to withdraw from the entire Russian-held pocket on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson city, the only regional capital Russia had captured in nine months of war. Ukraine's defence minister said Russia has not started real movement from Kherson city and would take at least a weekto withdraw.
* A senior adviser to Ukraine's president said Russia wanted to turn Kherson into a "city of death", and accused Moscow of mining everything from apartments to sewers and planning to shell the city from the other side of the River Dnipro.
* Ukrainian military said Russian forces were proceeding with offensive operations near Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region and near Novopavlivsk in the Mykolaiv region.
DIPLOMACY
* Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend a gathering of leaders from the Group of 20 (G20) nations in person next week but may join virtually, officials from Russia and the host country Indonesia said.
* U.S. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington was not pressuring Ukraine to engage in diplomacy with Russia over the war.
ECONOMY & SANCTIONS
* The British government said it had frozen assets together worth 18 billion pounds ($20.5 billion) held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Sanctions on Russia have not achieved any of the EU’s stated goals and only backfired by hurting the economies of member states, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
The EU, along with the US and several other countries, imposed sweeping restrictions on Moscow in response to its military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in February.
“The sanctions which have been introduced by the European Union [against] Russia have failed. It’s a total failure,” Szijjarto told Jordan’s Roya News on Sunday.
“The war is becoming more and more brutal … And, in the meantime, the European economy is suffering very badly,” Szijjarto stated, adding that the continent has been hit by a “tremendous energy crisis,” as well as high inflation and rising food prices.
The minister said that Hungary paid €7 billion ($6.9 billion) for energy imports in 2021, but has to pay €19 billion ($18.9 billion) this year. “That’s huge. And this is the outcome of a failed sanctions policy.”
Szijjarto said that, instead of economic restrictions, the EU should focus on achieving peace in the region. He argued that a settlement in Ukraine could come as a result of negotiations between Russia and the US.
“Basically, we are the only ones in Europe who are arguing in favor of peace,” he said. The foreign minister defended Hungary’s decision to reject Kiev’s calls to send weapons and not to participate in the training of Ukrainian troops. These measures “contribute to escalation” rather than helping to end the conflict, he said.
Hungary’s economy heavily relies on Russian energy, and the government has resisted Brussels’ plans to completely ban oil and gas imports from Moscow. After tense negotiations, Budapest received several exemptions from the bloc-wide restrictions on purchases of Russian fossil fuels.
Hungary said this week that it will not support the EU’s joint loan package, which would secure €18 billion ($17.9 billion) in aid for Kiev.
* Russia’s economic contraction is now expected to be much smaller than previously thought, according to Aleksey Kudrin, head of the Accounts Chamber and former finance minister.
He told RT on the sidelines of the INTOSAI Congress on Thursday that “the situation is actually turning out better than originally thought.”
Kudrin explained that “the unprecedented sanctions that were introduced against Russia, of course, affect our economy, and initially it was predicted that GDP would fall by more than 7%. Nevertheless, now I think the decline will be only about 2.9-3.3%.”
He believes it will take two to three years for the country’s economy to return to pre-sanctions levels, though “it’s still difficult to make forecasts for the long term.”
Meanwhile, the former finance minister said that inflation would continue to slow and could drop to 4% in 2024. “Inflation is expected to be around 12% in 2022. In this regard, we are certainly seeing a big leap forward. The peak of this inflation was in April, when in annual terms it rose to almost 18%. However, now there is a steady decline.”
“In the meantime, the budget deficit may turn out to be higher than forecasts, but Russia has a margin of safety and resources to cover costs,” Kudrin suggested, adding that the “flexibility of the Russian economy is quite high.”
He also pointed out that many businesses have already managed to reorient to new sales or procurement markets, thus bypassing sanctions.
* The relocation of Russian forces to the left bank of Dnieper is a correct decision, necessary to preserve the lives of Russian servicemen, says head of the LDPR party, chairman of the State Duma Committee on international affairs Leonid Slutsky.
He made this remark during the working meeting of the LDPR Duma faction delegation with Kherson Region Acting Governor Vladimir Saldo, which took place in Genichesk Thursday.
"As for the withdrawal of forces from the right bank, it is a forced decision, it is a correct decision, made to preserve the lives of our servicemen. We will definitely come back to Kherson, we will definitely win in the foreseeable future," Slutsky said, according to the LDPR press office.
"The collective West has concentrated an incredible amount of modern lethal weapons in Ukraine, we assess this situation objectively. We will definitely win. Nobody is going to give up Kherson once and for all. Russia does not leave anyone behind," he added.
According to Slutsky, LDPR intends to constantly work with Kherson Region residents. The lawmaker noted that the delegation visited schools and a central district hospital in the Kherson Region.
"We also visited a temporary deployment facility for those who will shortly get comfortable residence, we will participate in that. Our main goal is to resolve the problems that Kherson faces right now," he added.
On November 9, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered to withdraw Russian forces form the right bank of Dnieper under the proposal of Russian Joint Forces Group Commander Army General Sergey Surovikin. Surovikin underscored that Russian forces have been successfully repelling Ukrainian attacks, and the decision to withdraw the forces was connected to the threat of isolation of the group because of potential flooding of the territory below the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam. According to Surovikin all civilians who expressed their desire have been evacuated from the right bank - over 115,000 people.
ReutersRT/TASS
