WAR IN UKRAINE: November 25, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 275
Zelensky: Reports of Russian attacks on liberated Kherson Oblast come ‘almost every hour.’ In an address on Nov. 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the frequent attacks started after Russian forces were forced to withdraw from Kherson Oblast. “Only the liberation of our land and reliable security guarantees for Ukraine can protect our people from any escalation by Russia,” he said. “We are working with our partners every day for this” - Kyiv Independent
DTEK: Electricity for Kyiv residents to be reduced to 2-3 hours daily until power fully restored. Dmytro Saharuk, the executive director of Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK, said on Nov. 24 that the city’s critical infrastructure has partially been restored. Saharuk said electricity has been restored to around 30% of the city’s residents. DTEK will reportedly revert back to scheduled power outages once the system is stabilized - Kyiv Independent
Nearly half of Kyiv residents were still without electricity on November 25 as engineers battled to restore services two days after Russian strikes hammered the country's energy grid. In Odesa, sources there tell me outages are long and frequent. One popular, high-end eatery in the center of the port city has temporarily closed its doors after struggling for days to serve customers with little power.
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska tells the BBC that Ukraine will endure this coming winter despite the cold and the blackouts caused by Russian missiles, and will keep fighting what she describes as a war of world views, because "without victory there can be no peace". "We've had so many terrible challenges, seen so many victims, so much destruction, that blackouts are not the worst thing to happen to us." She cites a recent poll where 90 % of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union.
"We share your pain," Russian President Vladimir Putin has told a group of mothers of Russian soldiers who have been fighting - and some of whom have been killed - in Ukraine, reports BBC. "Nothing can replace the loss of a son", he said in his opening remarks, before the footage on state TV was cut. The Kremlin has not commented on reports that the mothers were carefully chosen for the meeting. Opposition has been growing to Mr Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. In recent weeks mothers and wives of Russians drafted into the army have been posting collective video messages complaining about how their sons and husbands have been sent off to war untrained and ill-equipped, says the BBC’s Steven Rosenberg from Moscow. Some women have been appealing directly to President Putin, the commander-in-chief, to sort things out.
The governor of the embattled Kherson region of southeastern Ukraine said on November 25 that "due to constant shelling" officials have evacuated hospital patients from several facilities, while another official there blamed dozens of deaths on Russian shelling the same day. Galina Lugova, head of the Kherson city military administration, said 15 Kherson city residents had been killed by Russian shelling during the day and 35 more injured, including a child - RFE/RL
Required reading..
Russia Traffics in Ukrainian Children, by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times
The trafficking of Ukrainian children by Russian forces is an ongoing drama that Moscow does not hide, even showing the children on television as an “achievement” for having saved them from the destruction caused by their own hands.
“My best guess is that Russia takes the children to serve as props in its TV propaganda shows. And then he doesn’t bother to return them,” he said. Nicholas Kristof, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, in a column for the New York Times in which he reviews several cases of children forcibly taken to Russian-controlled territories, as well as the torture of their families in Ukraine.
Based on the cases he knew firsthand, the Russian forces use various motives to transfer them. In some cases, they are minors who were orphaned by the bombings. In others, they promised to take them to a free summer camp where they would be safe from fire, away from the front line.
“The Russians promised that it would be two or three weeks, and then the children would return.”, Nadia Borysenko, from the city of Balakliya, told Kristof. His daughter, Daria, was among the 25 children who boarded the bus and did not return because Russia puts too many obstacles to their return. In some cases, they have already been given up for adoption.
Weeks ago, at the G20 summit, President Volodimir Zelensky said that there are “tens of thousands” of cases, while the official count exceeds 11,000. “Among them are many whose parents were killed by Russian attacks, and are now being held in the state that killed them,” the Ukrainian leader said.
It’s not something Russia hides. On the contrary, there are Ukrainian families who recognized their nephews or grandchildren because they were featured on Russian TV, giving them gifts and proclaiming an “achievement” for having saved them. The Russian commissioner for the rights of the child, Maria Lvova-Belova, boasted weeks ago that she had adopted a Ukrainian child.
“That is not charity; it could be a genocide”, highlighted Kristof, recalling that an international treaty from 1948 specifies that “the forced transfer of children”, when it is intended to destroy a nationality, constitutes genocide.
Orphanage in the Donetsk region (AP)
Also, Russia hides behind the fact that it offers the possibility of returning them. But the conditions it sets are impossible for many families who are already devastated or lost everything in the war. They must go to Russia but through Poland and then to other countries, with passports and documentation difficult to obtain and considerable expense.