As we enter the 635th day of the war, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation as of Monday, November 20, 2023.

Battle

• The Ukrainian army said it pushed Russian forces back up to 8 km (5 miles) from the banks of the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian and Russian troops have been holed up on opposite sides of the Dnipro for more than a year after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November. Ukraine said last week it had achieved a breakthrough. “Preliminary figures vary between 3 and 8 kilometers (2 to 5 miles), depending on the characteristics, geography and landscape of the Left Bank,” army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television when asked how much progress Kiev has made . She added that there was still “a lot of work to do.”
• The U.K. Defense Ministry said there was “little immediate prospect of major changes on the front line” and said neither Russia nor Ukraine had made significant progress on the battlefield. A statement said intense fighting was concentrated near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, Avdiivka in the Dontesk region and on the left bank of the Dnipro River.
• Russia has launched several Waves of drone attacks For the second night in a row, airstrikes occurred in Kiev, prompting airstrike warnings. The Ukrainian Air Force said its air defense systems destroyed 15 of the 20 Shahed kamikaze drones that targeted the Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions. There were no initial reports of “critical damage” or casualties. Russian drone strikes led to power outages in more than 400 towns and villages in southern, southeastern and northern Ukraine on Saturday.
• According to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, five people were injured in the Russian artillery shelling of Kherson, including a three-year-old girl who was outside with her grandmother. One person was killed by shelling in the northeastern Sumy region.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for rapid changes in the Ukrainian military’s operations during his meeting with Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. Zelensky said “priorities have been set” and stressed that “there is little time left to wait for results.” Zelensky said he also replaced Maj. Gen. Tetiana Ostashenko as commander of the armed forces’ medical forces and said the armed forces needed a “fundamentally new level of medical support.”

Politics and diplomacy

• Bohdan Yermokhin, an orphaned Ukrainian teenager who was kidnapped from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol to Russia during the war and prevented from leaving the country in March, has returned to Ukraine. Yermokhin, now 18, told Reuters that his return was a “very pleasant gift.” Ukraine estimates that Russia has illegally abducted around 20,000 children. Zelensky welcomed Yermokhin’s return and thanked Ukrainian officials, international organizations and in particular UNICEF, as well as the authorities in Qatar for their help in mediation.
• Zelensky imposed sanctions on 37 Russian groups and 108 individuals, including two former top Ukrainian officials currently in Russia, for their alleged involvement “in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories,” as well as individuals “in various ways support Russian terror against Ukraine.” .
• Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial on charges of inciting extremism, said he wants to run for president. The former Federal Security Service (FSB) official, also known by the pseudonym Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said that Russia will face revolution and even civil war if President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass do not wage the war in Ukraine more effectively . Girkin helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 and then helped organize pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.