WAR IN UKRAINE: November 18, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 268
Two Russians and a Ukrainian have been sentenced to life by a Dutch court for the downing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine with 298 people on board. All are thought to be in Russia. A fourth suspect, Oleg Pulatov, who had a top-flight Dutch legal team represent him (believed to have been bankrolled by the Kremlin), was acquitted.
More than eight years after MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine, the court concluded on Thursday that the missile had been fired deliberately to bring down a plane, even if the target had been a military aircraft rather than a civilian airliner. The two Russians, Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, were all senior figures in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), set up by so-called separatists when war broke out in eastern Ukraine months before MH17 was brought down. The court found that Russia had overall control over the DPR and that there was ample evidence of contact with Moscow before and after the attack. All three were found guilty in absentia of mass murder and bringing down the plane - BBC
Australia has called on Russia to extradite three men found guilty of the downing of MH17. "We call on Russia to surrender those convicted, so they may face the court sentence for their heinous crime," said Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
The Russian foreign ministry has denounced both the trial and the verdict as "based on a political order to reinforce the version promoted by The Hague" as well as by international investigators about Russia's involvement in the attack. "The trial in the Netherlands has every chance of becoming one of the most scandalous in the history of legal proceedings with its extensive list of oddities, inconsistencies and dubious arguments of the prosecution, which nonetheless formed the basis of the verdict," said a statement on the foreign ministry's website.
Ten million Ukrainians are enduring emergency power cuts after more Russian missile attacks, just as temperatures fall to freezing and below, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Russia's strikes in Ukraine on Thursday targeted the country's missile manufacturing facilities along with military-associated fuel and energy infrastructure, the defense ministry said - CNN
Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry said an agreement had been reached to extend the Black Sea grain initiative by 120 days. However, as I told international media, including BBC World Television, with horrendously long daily power outages in Odesa, it is unclear how the three designated Ukrainian ports in the Odesa region can continue to function at the capacity needed. Earlier, Russia had voiced doubts about the agreement, saying a large percentage of the grain leaving Ukraine under the deal goes to wealthier countries such as Spain.
Almost 30% of Ukraine is mined, says the Ukrainian government. Since the beginning of the war, dangerous areas have increased 10 times. In terms of scale, it is comparable two territories of Austria. There is a lot of work ahead on de-mining Kherson region and Mykolaiv region.
An investigation into the September blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines has found traces of explosives at the site, confirming that sabotage had taken place, Swedish prosecutors have said.
