As we enter the 639th day of the war, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation as of Friday, November 24, 2023.

Battle

• Vitaliy Barabash, head of the military administration in Avdiivka, said Russian forces had launched “the most fierce” attacks on the devastated city. “Everything is very tough,” Barabash told Channel 24 television. “As far as the city is concerned, there are an average of eight to 16 to 18 airstrikes a day. “Sometimes 30. We don’t have time to count them.” He added that the defensive line held. Fewer than 1,400 of the 32,000 people who lived in the city before the war remain. Barabash said 102 residents were evacuated last week.
• At least six people were killed and five injured in Russian attacks on various parts of Ukraine, including three people in a cluster bomb attack on a suburb of the southern city of Kherson, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. Cluster bombs are used by both Russia and Ukraine. Critics say the weapons litter the ground and harm and kill many more civilians than soldiers.
• Russian actress Polina Menshikh was killed in a Ukrainian attack while performing for Russian troops in a Russian-controlled area of ​​Donbass in eastern Ukraine, her theater said. Military officials from both sides confirmed that there was a Ukrainian attack in the area on November 19. Russia said a school and a cultural center were attacked in the village of Kumachovo, known to Ukrainians as Kumachove, killing one civilian. Ukraine said it held a Russian military awards ceremony against Russia’s 810th Separate Marine Infantry Brigade. Robert Brovdi, a Ukrainian military commander, said 25 people were killed and 100 wounded. Russia did not mention any military casualties in the attack. Kumachove is about 60 km (37 miles) from the front line.
• This was said by Rossiya 24 correspondent Boris Maksudov from Russian state television died due to injuries sustained in a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhia earlier this week. The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that he had been injured, but said his injuries were not life-threatening.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine’s national seed bank, the world’s 10th-largest seed collection, has been moved from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to a safer location, said Crop Trust, a nonprofit organization, without disclosing the collection’s new location. The gene bank includes many endemic seed species, some of which, including wheat and rapeseed, are important for food security.
• A Russian military court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Ukrainian Dmitri Golubev to 18 years in prison for trying to blow up buildings in the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol in August last year. Golubev was found guilty of “international terrorism” for an explosion and two attempted explosions that Kiev prosecutors said were staged, Russian state media reported.
• Sergei Mironov, a Russian lawmaker and supporter of President Vladimir Putin, denied a BBC report that he adopted a child who was forcibly abducted from a Ukrainian orphanage in Kherson last year. Citing Russian and Ukrainian documents, the BBC reported that Mironov adopted a child, now 2, who was taken from an orphanage in the Ukrainian city of Kherson last year by a woman who is now his wife. Without commenting on specific details of the report, Mironov dismissed the investigation as a “hysterical fabrication” and said it was an “information attack” aimed at “discrediting” him.
• A Russian court fined online search giant Google four million rubles ($44,582) for failing to delete what the court called “false information” about the course of the war in Ukraine, the reported RIA news agency.