As we enter the 632nd day of the war, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation as of Friday, November 17, 2023.

Battle

• Russia stepped up its attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, near the Russian-controlled regional stronghold of Donetsk. Mayor Vitaliy Barabash told national television the situation was “very hot” and that the Russians had deployed armored vehicles, targeting the industrial area and attacking positions in the city “24 hours a day” to capture it. Avdiivka had a population of about 30,000 people before the war, and just over 1,400 still live today.
• Two people were killed and at least 12 injured in Russian attacks on various areas in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. Regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said one of the dead was a 75-year-old woman who was killed when Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro River shelled Kherson, the region’s largest city.
• Ukrainian officials said Russia fired 18 drones and an unspecified number of missiles, with the air force destroying 16 of the drones and one missile. One person was injured by falling debris in the western Khmelnytskyi region. Food warehouses were also damaged.
• Search and rescue teams in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove have found the bodies of a couple as they cleared the rubble of Wednesday’s Russian missile attack, which has already been confirmed to have killed two people. The prosecutor general’s office said the couple moved from another city in the Donetsk region because of the war.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deployment of a fleet of naval drones helped Kiev “seize the initiative” from Russia in the Black Sea and forced the Russian navy to limit its activities.
• The Russian Defense Ministry said its missile defenses shot down three Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea near Crimea and two more over the Bryansk region.
• A Russian court convicted Ukraine-based Russian far-right activist Denis Kapustin of treason and terrorism for organizing armed raids in Russia’s Bryansk region, state news agency TASS reported.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab said in a report that at least 2,442 Ukrainian children from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine have been transferred to 13 facilities in Belarus, where they must participate in political and cultural re-education and military training. The report accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of being directly involved in the deportation of the children. The Yale laboratory is a partner of the Conflict Observatory, which is funded by the US State Department.
• A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko to seven years in prison after she was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military. Skochilenko was arrested after she replaced five supermarket price tags with messages calling for an end to Moscow’s war in Ukraine in March 2022.
• Newly appointed British Foreign Secretary David Cameron made a surprise trip to Kiev and promised Ukraine the UK’s “moral, diplomatic and military support” for “However long it takes“. Cameron also traveled to the Black Sea port city of Odessa.
• Switzerland joined an international call to set up a special tribunal to investigate the Russian crime of “aggression” against Ukraine. “Switzerland is firmly convinced that aggression against Ukraine must not go unpunished,” the foreign minister said in a statement. The tribunal is supported by 38 countries, including Canada, France, Guatemala and Japan.
• Finland has announced it close On Saturday, four of its eight border crossings with Russia were blocked after a sharp rise in the number of asylum seekers. Helsinki believes Moscow is encouraging people to go to the Finnish border, where they can apply for asylum, in order to destabilize the country. The number of undocumented people, especially from Africa and the Middle East, arriving from Russia has risen sharply.
• The United States imposed sanctions on three United Arab Emirates shipping companies and their vessels for transporting Russian oil that was sold above a price limit of $60 per barrel agreed by the Group of Seven nations (G7) and Australia.
• The Kremlin said the Czech Republic’s decision to freeze Russian state property was unlawful and warned it could retaliate against what it said was a hostile move. The Czech government announced on Wednesday that it would freeze an expansion of sanctions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

weapons

• Zelensky said deliveries of key artillery shells to Ukraine have since declined Israel-Hamas war started last month. “Our supplies have decreased,” Zelensky told reporters, referring specifically to the 155-millimeter grenades that are widely used on Ukraine’s eastern and southern fronts. “They have really slowed down,” adding, “Everyone is fighting for it.” [stockpiles] itself”.