Ukraine updates: Russia admits Kyiv forces crossed Dnipro

The European Commission has proposed banning the import of Russian diamonds and liquefied petroleum gases in a new round of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, according to a document seen by the AFP news agency.

The package of sanctions, which needs to be approved unanimously by European Union countries, also includes measures aimed at preventing Moscow from circumventing an oil price cap. 

The EU has already imposed 11 rounds of sanctions on Russia since its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, including hitting its key oil and gas exports.

The latest measures are designed to further cut off income to Russia's war chest by targeting its lucrative diamond exports, worth some $4 billion (€3.7 billion) a year before the war. 

The EU ban would apply to natural and synthetic diamonds, and jewelry, from the start of 2024 and to Russian diamonds processed in third countries from next September. The diamond prohibition is part of broader G7 scheme to put in place a system for tracing the Russian precious stones. 

A German publisher said it would stop selling books about Vladimir Putinby an award-winning journalist after he allegedly received at least €600,000 ($651,000) ) in undisclosed offshore payments from companies linked to an oligarch close to the Russian president.

Hoffmann und Campe said it would no longer sell two non-fiction books about Putin by Hubert Seipel following the revelations by German magazine Der Spiegel and public broadcaster ZDF.

The books, are "Putin's Power" from 2021, and "Putin. Interior views of a power" from 2015, were both written in German and translated into other languages. 

According to the reports Seipel allegedly received money indirectly linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch in exchange for portraying Putin favorably in his published works."

German public broascaster NDR, which had produced a documentary with Seipel in 2012 about Putin and aired his interviews with the Russian president in the past, also said it was considering legal action against the reporter.

NDR said in a statement that "Seipel admitted to NDR that he had received money from Alexey Mordashov via two 'sponsorship contracts' in 2013 and 2018 and explained that it was for two book projects."

Mordashov, believed to have close ties to Putin, is one of many Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a resident of Tyumen in Siberia, accusing him of passing military information to Ukraine, according to state-run news agencies.

This marks the latest instance in a series of treason or espionage cases linked to Ukraine, with trials often conducted behind closed doors and scant details emerging.

The classified nature of these cases, coupled with the lack of transparency, has raised concerns among Russian rights groups about the legitimacy of the charges.

The FSB alleges that the Tyumen resident sold Ukraine information pertaining to military facilities situated within his region, as reported by TASS.

The individual has been placed in pre-trial detention and faces a potential life sentence.

Hungary called for a review of the European Union's policy towards Ukraine

It disagreed with Germany, Lithuania, Finland and Ireland on the pace of Ukraine's accession to the EU and the level of aid.

"We need a period of reflection and a strategic discussion on the policy of the European Union towards Ukraine," Hungary's European affairs minister, Janos Boka, said as he arrived for talks with his EU peers to prepare a December 14-15 summit of the bloc's leaders.

Such discussion is necessary for Budapest to support any EU decisions to advance Ukraine's accession process or further aid for Kyiv, he said.

Hungary is the main stumbling block to a decision by EU leaders next month to open formal membership talks with Ukraine, as recommended by the EU Commission, and assign €50 billion ($54 billion) in aid for Kyiv from the bloc's budget through 2027.

Those decisions require unanimity of the 27 countries in the bloc, which has supported Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.

But Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has since said the bloc's strategy of sending money and military aid to Ukraine has failed, and that he opposed starting membership negotiations with Kyiv.

Russia has conceded for the first time that "small groups" of Ukrainian troops had established positions on the Russian-held side of the Dnipro River.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of the part of the Kherson region, which Moscow controls, acknowledged in a statement that Ukrainian forces had managed to cross the river which was seen by Russia as a difficult barrier for Ukraine's soldiers to surmount.

But citing what he said was first-hand information from Russia's military, he said Russian forces had pinned the Ukrainians down and were raining "Hellfire" on them and predicted they would be wiped out.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said its troops were trying to push back Russian forces along the Dnipro River in the southern Kherson region and called for operational "silence" along what it described as a "fairly fluid" front line.

"Along the front line, which runs along the Dnipro... The pushback from our side is taking place on a line from 3 to 8 kilometers (2-5 miles) along the entire bank from the water's edge," Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the southern military command, said.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it had secured a foothold on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the vast river, for the first time confirming an advance that could open a new line of attack towards occupied Crimea.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that the war in Ukraine is losing public attention, but that Germany will not forget it.

"Ukraine needs our support all the more now that war is also raging in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine is no longer receiving the attention it so urgently needs. Putin's calculation is that the world should forget Ukraine," Steinmeier said at the German-Ukrainian municipal partnerships conference in Leipzig.

According to Steinmeier, Germany may not and will not do the Russian president this favor. "We will not get used to Russia's unlawful and inhuman war of aggression," the German President added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also joined the conference via video call. He stressed that it was not only Ukraine that was threatened by the Russian regime, but also his country's neighbors.

Zelenskyy reminded that the second winter of the full-scale war is approaching. "Russia is stockpiling missiles to attack Ukraine's energy system, as it did last year," he said.

Leipzig, which is organizing the conference, has been a sister city of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv for 62 years. According to the Office of the Federal President, this is the oldest German-Ukrainian town twinning.

Ukrainian food shipments by road fell by 2.7% in the first 13 days of November due to difficulties at the Polish border caused by a drivers' strike, brokers said.

Spike Brokers, which regularly tracks and publishes export statistics in Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app that 220,000 metric tons of agricultural goods were exported by truck from November 1-13, versus 226,000 tons in same period in October.

It also noted that traffic at border crossings with Romania, Hungary and Moldova was gradually increasing.

Polish truckers last week blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Their demands include reimposing restrictions on the number of Ukraine-registered trucks entering Poland and a ban on transport companies with capital from outside the European Union, among others.

At least one person was killed in an overnight Russian missile strike that hit an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove, northwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk.

Five others, including a child, were rescued but at least one person is believed to be trapped under the rubble after the attack on Selydove, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. A four-story building was heavily damaged, he said on Telegram.

Rescuers early on Wednesday were clearing the rubble and warned residents against approaching the structure, which appeared to have been obliterated by the impact.

A large crane assisted workers in clearing a mass of loose rubble from where the top floor once had been. Many onlookers were shocked, some cried.

Russia has carried out regular missile and drone strikes on population centers behind the front line of its 21-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Eastern European Baltic states want the European Union to do more to ensure the EU's ammunition plan for Ukraine doesn't fail. If enough ammunition cannot be delivered from EU states' stocks and new orders from European manufacturers, the bloc should be prepared to buy from third countries, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told dpa in an interview.

"This is one of the possible solutions," he said. Pevkur pointed out that, according to EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, significant quantities of ammunition produced in the EU are supplied to other countries due to existing contracts.

Negotiations could be held with these countries to redirect the orders to Ukraine, the ministers said. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday that he expected the plan to fail due to limited production capacity in Europe.

"The production is there," Pevkur however insisted. The government of Latvia, Estonia's Baltic neighbor, expressed a similar view. Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds called on Tuesday for "aspiration and ambition" in order to achieve the target.

EU states agreed to provide Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition by March 2024 to help the country defend itself against Russia, but are in danger of failing to meet their promise. So far, some 300,000 rounds have been delivered and a further 180,000 have been ordered through joint procurement projects, according to EU figures.

A Russian delegation led by natural resources minister Alexander Kozlov is visiting Pyongyang, North Korean state media said , as the politically isolated state announced new progress in its banned ballistic missile programme.

Russia and North Korea were conducting talks on economy, science and technology, KCNA state media reported, without elaborating.

Kozlov told a reception that Russia wants to develop "substantial cooperation" with North Korea based on the agreements made by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when they met in September in Russia's far east, KCNA reported.

He also thanked North Korea for extending its "full support" to Russia over regional and international issues, the report said.

Washington has accused North Korea of supplying military equipment to Russia for use in its war with Ukraine, and Moscow of providing technical military support to help North Korea.

North Korea and Russia have denied any arms deals, though their leaders pledged closer military cooperation at their September summit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said defending the shattered eastern town of Avdiivka was key to Kyiv's war plans, with heavy Russian losses there likely to undermine Moscow's conduct of the wider conflict.

Moscow's forces have focused on eastern Ukraine since failing to advance on Kyiv in the first days of the invasion in February 2022. They've been targeting Avdiivka since mid-October, and officials from the town, which used to boast a pre-war population of 32,000, say not a single building remains intact.

Zelenskyy said Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region, including Avdiivka, had been "very intense."

"Russia is already losing men and equipment near Avdiivka faster and on a larger scale than, for example, near Bakhmut," he said, referring to months of heavy fighting that culminated in Russian forces capturing the eastern town of Bakhmut in May.

"Withstanding their pressure is extremely difficult ... The more Russian forces that are destroyed near Avdiivka, the worse the overall situation will be for the enemy and the overall course of this war," Zelenskyy added.

Bakhmut lies about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Avdiivka, which is only 20 kilometers west of the Russian-held regional capital of Donetsk.