Day 641: Oleksii Makeiev sees Ukraine better prepared for winter attacks. Moscow claims to have fended off 20 Ukrainian drones. All information in the news blog.
The most important things at a glance
Netherlands returns “Crimea gold” to Ukraine
7:32 p.m.: According to official information, the gold treasure known as “Crimean gold” has returned to Ukraine from the Netherlands after almost ten years. The Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam said all the pieces had arrived in Kiev. Historians at the Ukrainian National History Museum in Kiev thank the Amsterdam museum for carefully preserving the items and helping them return home.
The cultural assets were caught between the fronts of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The approximately 2,000-year-old gold treasure, also known as “Scythian gold,” came to Amsterdam in 2014 from four museums on the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula for exhibition purposes.
After Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea Peninsula that same year, Moscow laid claim to the treasure. However, the museum did not send the valuable objects back to Crimea after the exhibition ended because it did not know who was the rightful owner. The exhibits remained in the Netherlands until the legal situation was clarified. In the summer of 2023, the High Council in The Hague rejected the Russian claim and ordered the return of the valuable cultural assets to Ukraine.
Russia expands attacks on Avdiivka and Robotyne
7:21 p.m.: According to Ukrainian sources, Russia has intensified its attacks on the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka and the southern Ukrainian village of Robotyne. Moscow’s armed forces carried out “more than 150 attacks” on Ukrainian positions in villages around Avdiivka, the Ukrainian army says. In the south, Russian troops made several unsuccessful attempts to “recapture lost positions near Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region.”
Neither side has been able to report any significant successes on the battlefield in recent weeks. Russia has recently focused its efforts on the Avdiivka industrial site in the Donetsk region, which now appears to be surrounded by Russian forces. Kiev reports neither profits nor losses in the region.
However, the US-based Institute for War Studies said Russian troops had made “progress in northwest and southeast Avdiivka” over the weekend. Moscow controls the area to the north, east and south of the city, which is only about ten kilometers from the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. In southern Ukraine, Kiev’s soldiers recaptured the small village of Robotyne in August and described it as a strategic victory in the counteroffensive. Since then, Russia has repeatedly attacked the village, and Ukraine apparently has difficulty holding Robotyne.
Wives of Russian mobilizers criticize Putin
6:02 p.m.: A group of wives of Russians mobilized for the Ukraine war have launched a call for their husbands to be brought back, peppered with sharp criticism of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. “We will only leave the field when our men are safe at home (FOREVER, we are not interested in rotation),” says the letter published on the Telegram channel “Putj domoi” (“Way home”). Among other things, it criticizes the fact that problems on the front are being swept under the carpet in order not to endanger Putin’s re-election next year.
There is currently no information on how many wives of mobilized people are taking part in the protests or sympathizing with them. “We remember that the President promised that reservists would not be drafted, that the tasks of military special operations would be carried out by professional volunteers,” the authors write. Instead, their men have now been deployed for 15 months and many have already fallen. “Mobilization has proven to be a terrible mistake.” No one is immune from further partial mobilization in 2024, they warn.
