THE RUSSO-UKRAINE WAR BRIEF
For: 2024-11-15
Slava Ukraini! In early 2022 I began a Telegram channel aggregating news from a number of sources daily on the war in Ukraine. In June 2023 I began providing a daily draft for the Ukraine War Brief Podcast collecting news from over 70 sources daily, much of which formed the basis of the script. While the Podcast no longer exists I have continued to make this Brief available both on my own Substack and The People’s Media for those who wish to keep up with events on a daily basis.
All the latest news on the Russo-Ukraine War 6 days per week
ALONG THE CONTACT LINE
GSAFU Morning Report
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in its Operational Information update at 22:00 on Nov 14 stated that day 995 of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation against Ukraine was about to begin.
During the past day, 138 combat engagements took place. Over the past 24 hours, the enemy carried out 45 air strikes, 400 drone strikes and more than 3,000 artillery strikes across the positions of Ukrainian forces.
At the same time, Ukrainian soldiers continue to inflict losses in manpower and equipment on the occupying troops, exhausting the enemy along the entire front line and continue to disrupt the plans of Russian occupiers to advance deep into the territory of Ukraine.
Air Force Daily Report
On the night of November 15, 2024 (from 9:00 p.m. on November 15), the enemy attacked Odesa with two Kh-59/69 guided air missiles from the Black Sea area, and also attacked 29 Shahed-type attack UAVs from the Primorsko-Akhtarsk regions - Russian Federation, Crimea.
As of 08:30, the shooting down of one Kh-59/69 guided air missile and 25 strike UAVs was confirmed. The vast majority of aerial targets were shot down in Odesa. Anti-aircraft defence also worked in the Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad and Ternopil regions.
As a result of the enemy attack in Odesa, houses, cars and property of citizens were damaged, the victims are provided with assistance.
The Russian Border Incursion
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US based think tank, in its Nov 14 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment reported that Russian forces recently advanced within the Ukrainian main salient in Kursk Oblast. Geolocated footage published on Nov 13 shows Ukrainian forces repelling a Russian platoon-sized mechanised assault south of Zelenyi Shlyakh (southeast of Korenevo) and indicates that Russian forces advanced in the area. Geolocated footage published on Nov 14 shows that elements of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet, Southern Military District [SMD]) launched mechanised attacks near Maryevka, Pogrebki, Orlovka, and Novaya Sorochina (all northwest of Sudzha), and advanced to the southern part of Novaya Sorochina.
Russian milbloggers claimed that the Russian rate of advance had slowed down; that Russian forces seized some positions between Pogrebki and Kremyanoye (east of Korenevo); and there are no confirmations that Russian forces entered Kurilovka (south of Sudzha). Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that fighting continued east of Korenevo near Kremyanoye; south of Korenevo near Nikolayevo-Darino; southeast of Korenevo near Novoivanovka, Leonidovo, and Darino; northwest of Sudzha near Novaya Sorochina and Malaya Loknya; and south of Sudzha near Plekhovo. Elements of the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet, Eastern Military District [EMD]), 56th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division), and 106th VDV Division reportedly continued to operate in the Kursk direction. Assault elements of the Russian "Arbat" Separate Spetsnaz Battalion (Russian Volunteer Corps) are reportedly operating near Plekhovo.
A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian field commanders are deliberately producing false reports, which exaggerate Russian advances within the Ukrainian main salient in Kursk Oblast and contribute to Russian losses on the battlefield. The milblogger stated that Russian military command is committing elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade to daily unprepared assaults and that Ukrainian defences are further destroying the brigade. The milblogger added that elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade are still fighting for Orlovka, Pogrebki, Novaya Sorochina, and Staraya Sorochina (immediately southwest of Novaya Sorochina), and that Ukrainian forces encircled and eliminated one of the brigade's two groups. The Kremlin is beginning to face some limited protests from Russians residents in Kursk Oblast's border area, and the problem of Russian field commanders misreporting the extent of the Russian advances in Kursk Oblast is likely a symptom of the Kremlin's demands to decisively repel the Ukrainian incursion.
Russian forces recently marginally advanced west of Ukraine's main salient in Kursk Oblast in Glushkovsky Raion. Geolocated footage published on November 14 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced east of Novy Put (southwest of Glushkovo).
The Khortytsia operational-strategic group
(Responsible for the northeastern part of Ukraine. )
Kharkiv Sector: Over the last day Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled 4 Russian attacks in the area of Tykhe and Vovchansk.
Kupyansk Sector: Russian Forces carried out 10 offensive actions against Ukrainian defensive positions near Houlubivka, Petropavlivka, Pishchane, Hlushkivka, Kruhlyakivka, Zahryzove and Lozova, Zelenyi Hai and Pershotravneve.
Lyman Sector: Russian Forces carried out 9 offensive actions against Ukrainian defensive positions near Druzzhelyubivka, Katerynivka, Nevske, Terny and Torske.
Siversk Sector: Russian forces carried out 2 offensive actions near Verkhnokamyanske.
Kramatorsk Sector: Russian forces carried out 1 unsuccessful offensive action against Ukrainian defences in the vicinity of Predtechyne.
Toretsk Sector: Russian forces carried out 10 offensive actions with air support near Dyliivka, Toretsk and Shcherbynivka.
The Tavria operational-strategic group
(Responsible for the central-eastern and southeastern part of Ukraine.)
Pokrovsk Sector : Russian forces carried out 23 offensive actions in the vicinity of Promin, Sukhyi Yar, Lysivka, Zhovte, Pustynka and Pushkine. 5 engagements continue.
Kurakhove Sector: In this district 18 offensive actions took place in the vicinity of Zorya, Novoselydivka, Sontsivka, Berestky, Illinka, Dalnje, Kostyantynivka.
Vremivka Sector: Russian forces made 12 attempts to break through Ukrainian defences in the vicinity of , Rivnopil, Makarivka, Yantarne and Trudove.
Orikhiv Sector: In this sector, over the last day, Russian forces made 2 attempts to dislodge Ukrainian units from their positions near Novodanlyivka.
The Odesa operational-strategic group
(Responsible for Kherson, Qırım, (also known as Crimea) and the Black Sea.)
Prydniprovsk Sector: In this sector, over the last day, there has been no significant change in the combat environment. Russian forces made 4 unsuccessful attempts to dislodge Ukrainian units from their positions on the left bank of the Dnipro.
TEMPORARILY OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Nothing major to report.
THE HOME FRONT
Russian attacks against Ukraine kill 1, injure 19 over past day
Russian strikes across Ukraine killed at least one civilian and injured at least 19 others in the past day, The Kyiv Independent reported citing regional authorities reported on Nov 15.
Russia attacked several regions with two X-59/69 guided missiles from the Black Sea and 29 Shahed-type attack drones from Crimea. The Air Force confirmed that one guided missile and 25 drones were shot down.
Russian attacks on Odesa, where most of the air targets were intercepted, killed one woman and injured 10 people, the State Emergency Service reported.
Among them, a nine-year-old boy is in moderate condition at a hospital, a 22-year-old man is in serious condition, and the rest of the wounded are in moderate condition at medical facilities throughout the city and region, according to Odesa Oblast Governor Oleh Kiper.
An apartment building was destroyed, and several high-rise buildings were damaged, Kiper said.
The attack also damaged the main district heating pipeline, which served 220 apartment buildings (with a population of 40,000), seven kindergartens, four schools, and a maternity hospital.
In Donetsk Oblast, three people were injured in Russian attacks, Governor Vadym Filashkin reported. The injuries occurred in the villages of Shcherbynivka, Vovkove, and Shevchenko.
Five people were wounded by Russian attacks on Kherson Oblast, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin. A critical infrastructure facility, a post office, and 12 houses were also damaged.
In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, the communities of Nikopol, Myrove and Marhanets were attacked, and a 51-year-old woman was injured, Governor Serhii Lysak reported.
Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Ternopil, Poltava, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were also attacked, but no casualties were reported.
SBU arrests Ukrainian officer allegedly working as a Russian mole in special forces
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has uncovered and arrested a high-ranking Ukrainian officer allegedly working as a Russian mole, The Kyiv Independent reported on Nov 15, citing the SBU’s Telegram channel.
According to the report, the officer, the commander of a unit in Special Operations Forces, had been transmitting critical military intelligence to Russian troops.
The leaked information included sensitive details about sabotage and reconnaissance missions conducted by Ukrainian special forces in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts and Russian-occupied Crimea.
Russian forces were reportedly using this intelligence to target Ukrainian Defense Forces stationed at the front lines and in occupied areas of southern Ukraine.
The officer, whose identity was not revealed, has been arrested and is currently in custody.
He faces charges of treason and espionage, which carry severe penalties, including life imprisonment and asset forfeiture upon conviction.
The suspect was recruited by the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, and started receiving tasks in the spring of 2024, according to the SBU.
RUSSIAN WORLD
Inflation is defeating Russia’s plans to scale up their defence industry to replace massive losses
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US based think tank, in its Nov 14 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment reported that the Kremlin's efforts to combat inflation and high interest rates are also reportedly impacting the expansion of the Russian defence industrial base (DIB) and prospects for mobilising the economy. The Russian Central Bank recently raised the key interest rate to 21 percent on Oct 25, which reportedly prompted discontent among Russian politicians, DIB CEOs, and elites.
Kremlin-affiliated Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (TsMAKP) reported that the Russian economy is "effectively facing the threat of stagflation - simultaneous stagnation or even recession and high inflation" because of the Central Bank's tight monetary policy. TsMAKP assessed that if the Russian Central Bank maintains the key interest rate at around 20 percent until mid-2025 then the composite leading indicator (CLI) for recession will exceed its critical threshold.
The Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service similarly reported that the number of loans with a dynamic rate — which depends on a discount from the Central Bank — increased from 44 percent in late 2023 to 53 percent in late 2024. The Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service added that high interest rates may create a shock and a decline in production, which can result in bankruptcies and corporate defaults. A Kremlin insider source claimed that the Central Bank's tight monetary policy is restraining the Russian DIB's pace of development in the long term and has already complicated several Russian export projects, despite the fact that it had not yet directly impacted Russian military-technological support for the Russian war effort.
The Russian DIB is unlikely to match the production rate necessary to replace Russian weapons losses under these monetary policies.
Foreign Policy (FP), citing OSINT analysts, reported that Russia has been losing around 320 tank and artillery cannon barrels per month but can only produce 20 per month.
FP reported that Russia will likely run out of cannon barrels in 2025 due to battlefield losses, dwindling Soviet stocks, and sanctions impacts. FP also cited OSINT estimates that Russian forces have lost at least 4,955 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) since February 2022 — about 155 IFVs per month. FP reported that Russia can only produce about 17 IFVs monthly or 200 annually. FP assessed that the Central Bank's policy of raising interest rates has made it difficult for nondefense companies to raise capital through loans, which is shrinking the civilian economy and may lead to significant post-war recession as returning Russian veterans will have a harder time finding employment.
Echos of the Soviet Union - Russians are informing on each other over the Ukrainian War
On the last day of January, a woman took her son to see paediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova at Polyclinic No. 140 in northwest Moscow. The boy, aged seven, had a problem with one of his eyes. Reuters reports.
The conversation that the boy’s mother alleged took place during an 18-minute encounter at the clinic would change both women’s lives and land the 68-year-old doctor in prison.
The case hinged on a denunciation - part of a rising trend of Russians informing on fellow citizens for their views on the war in Ukraine and other alleged political crimes. Critics say the wave of denunciations is helping President Vladimir Putin’s government crack down on dissent.
In a video recorded as she was walking away from the clinic, the mother, Anastasia Akinshina, said she had told the doctor the boy was traumatised because his father was killed fighting for Russia in the war in Ukraine.
“Do you know what she told me? ‘Well, my dear, what do you expect? Your husband was a legitimate target of Ukraine,’” Akinshina said, mimicking the doctor’s voice and intonation.
Fighting back tears, Akinshina said she had raised the incident with the hospital administration and suspected they planned to hush it up.
“So the question is: where can I complain about this bitch now, so that she’ll be kicked out of the fucking country or sent to the devil in jail?” she said in the video, which went viral on social media and thrust her into a high-profile criminal trial as the key prosecution witness.
At the trial, Buyanova denied making the comment. But despite a lack of further adult witnesses, the denunciation was sufficient to destroy her 40-year medical career and her life.
The doctor, who had been in pre-trial detention since April, appeared before a Moscow court on Tuesday, her grey hair closely cropped. She was found guilty under a wartime censorship law of “publicly spreading deliberately false information” about the armed forces and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in a penal colony.
Buyanova was born in Ukraine but is a citizen of Russia, where she has lived and worked for three decades. Her lawyer Oscar Cherdzhiyev told Reuters the defence believed Akinshina acted out of malice because of the doctor’s Ukrainian origins.
Akinshina did not respond to written questions for this story, or answer her phone.
At the trial, she stated: “We are Russian. Buyanova hates Russians. She feels hostility towards me, that’s what I think,” according to a transcript by independent Russian outlet Mediazona.
Two hospital staff who saw Akinshina after the consultation with Buyanova described her in evidence as being distraught.
The prosecution’s case was based almost entirely on Akinshina’s account, along with a transcript read out in the trial of an interview with the child, conducted by an officer of the FSB security service. At first, Akinshina said the boy was not in the room when the comments were made, but later changed her story, telling the court she originally spoke in a state of shock.
Kremlin and FSB Order Gulag Museum’s Closure in Latest Crackdown on Historical Memory
High-ranking Kremlin officials and Russia’s security services were behind the decision to shutter Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, Moscow officials close to the matter have said. The Moscow Times reports.
Moscow authorities announced Wednesday that the museum, which chronicles one of the darkest chapters of the Soviet Union’s repressions, would temporarily close due to “fire safety violations” that “pose a threat to the safety and comfort of visitors.”
But the museum’s closure was political rather than technical.
“We’ve sent inspection teams to the museum multiple times this year. They didn’t find any fire safety violations,” a Moscow government official told The Moscow Times.
According to another Moscow official, the future of the museum — which was named Europe’s best museum in 2021 — “remains unclear.”
Both officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, admitted that Moscow City Hall was pressured to close the museum’s doors at the “strong recommendation from senior Kremlin figures and people from the Federal Security Service [the successor to the Soviet KGB].”
Moscow officials were not told the reason for the Kremlin’s decision. Sources in the city government called the fire safety violations a “smokescreen hiding the real reasons.”
The closure may be linked to the museum’s recent Prayer of Remembrance event dedicated to preserving the names of victims of Stalinist repressions.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Putin and Scholz Hold First Direct Call in Almost Two Years
Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a phone call Friday to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine, according a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Bloomberg reports.
The call — the first direct communication between the leaders in almost two years — comes at a critical time for Ukraine as the war-battered nation braces for the third full winter under attack from Russia, with large parts of the country’s energy infrastructure damaged or destroyed.
Uncertainty over support from Western allies has also been growing ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year. Germany is Ukraine’s second-biggest supporter after the US and has pledged billions of euros in additional aid.
Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia
Protesters stormed the parliament of the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia on Friday and opposition politicians demanded the resignation of the self-styled president over an unpopular investment agreement with Moscow. Reuters reports.
Protesters used a truck to smash through the metal gates surrounding the parliament in the capital Sukhumi. Video from the scene then showed people climbing through windows after prying off metal bars and chanting in the corridors.
An opposition leader, Temur Gulia, told Reuters that their initial demand was to scrap the agreement, but now protesters wanted to go further.
"The people demand the resignation of Aslan Bzhania and categorically intend to achieve it," said Gulia.
"We ourselves were not prepared for this turn of events. Our initial demand was only the withdrawal of the investment agreement."
Protesters also broke into the presidential administration offices located in the same building as the parliament. Emergency services said at least nine people were taken to hospital.
Bzhania, who became president in 2020, was not in the complex, Russia's TASS state agency reported. His office did not immediately respond to a question from Reuters about Bzhania's whereabouts on Friday.
The presidential administration said in a statement that authorities were preparing to withdraw the investment agreement with Russia that some people in Abkhazia fear will price them out of the property market.
Russia recognised Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five-day war.
Most of the world recognises Abkhazia as part of Georgia, from which it broke away during wars in the early 1990s, but Russian money has poured into the lush sub-tropical territory where Soviet-era spa resorts cling to the Black Sea coast.
MILITARY & TECH
Ukrainian Navy - No Russian ships operating in the Black or Azov Seas
As of 06:00 a.m. on Friday, Nov 15, there are no Russian warships in the Black and Azov Seas. Ukranews reported citing an announcement by the command of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Telegram channel.
"There are no enemy ships in the Black Sea; there are no enemy ships in the Sea of Azov; in the Mediterranean Sea
- 2 enemy ships, 1 of which is a carrier of Kalibr cruise missiles with a total salvo of up to 8 missiles," the message reads.
During the day, in the interests of the Russian federation, passage through the Kerch Strait was carried out by:
- to the Black Sea - 10 ships, of which 4 continued their movement in the direction of the Bosphorus Strait;
- to the Sea of Azov - 6 ships, none of them moved from the Bosphorus Strait.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, there were no Russian warships in the Black and Azov Seas on Nov 14 either.
That’s it for today’s Draft folks if you would like to keep up with events in Ukraine daily please consider subscribing, its free!
Feel free to share this update with your friends. Heroyam Slava!
#RazPutin iz allowing the #Oligarchs to settle their disputes without intervention. Hence, gun crimes amongst the #Russian-oligarchs are increasing. “They’re eating the #Russians!” ~ DJT … So, it “es imperativo” that the current #Oligarchies in #Kaliningrad choose their leaders now to present to the Global Community upon secession from the current iteration of #Stalin’s-Kleptocracy in #Moscow. #Church-O-Stalin #Eugene! #Georgia-Meloni