Ukraine Russia war: Putin suffers serious losses in largest offensive in months

A teenager is among at least six people killed in Russian airstrikes across Ukraine over the past 24-hour period, local officials said on Sunday.

Two more people died in the Donetsk area, local officials said. An airstrike in the Kharkiv region killed a 57-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman, and also destroyed their home.

A 14-year-old boy was killed in a separate incident after a mine exploded in a field in the Mykolaiv region, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said. Another 12-year-old boy was also injured in the attack.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022 in what the Kremlin is still calling a “special military operation”.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that between 24th February 2022 and 16th October 2023, Russia had lost about 288,630 personnel, 4,965 tanks, 9,385 armoured combat vehicles, 6,910 artillery units, 814 multiple launch rocket systems, 547 air defence systems, 318 warplanes, 317 helicopters, 5,280 drones, 1,531 cruise missiles, 20 warships, 1 submarine, 9,271 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 981 units of special equipment.

Russia has claimed that its casualties have been much lower but provides infrequent updates on its latest figures.

A video of the burning wreckage of a Russian Mi-8 helicopter has been released by Ukraine’s military, which says the aircraft was shot down by paratroopers.

The12-second video of the helicopter engulfed in flames was shared by General Syrskyi on his official Telegram channel late on Sunday.

The location and the time of the destruction of the Russian helicopter was not immediately clear.

Slovakia’s former Prime Minister Robert Fico and his SMER-SSD party will sign a coalition agreement to form a new government with the centre-left HLAS and nationalist SNS parties on Monday, SMER said.

Fico, a three-time prime minister, won an election on September 30 with pledges to halt military aid to Ukraine.

He struck a deal with the coalition parties last week and is expected to lead a new government.

The parties are seeking to have an administration in place ahead of a European Union summit this month where Ukraine will be high on the agenda.

Ukraine is working to evacuate nearly 260 of its citizens from Gaza and to fly other Ukrainians out of Israel, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on Sunday.

Ukraine‘s embassy in Israel said on social media on Saturday that 207 Ukrainian citizens, including 63 children, were evacuated from Tel Aviv to Romania on Saturday and that another flight would take 155 people to Romania on Sunday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to meet Chinese leaders in Beijing this week on a visit that underscores China’s economic and diplomatic support for Moscow during its war in Ukraine.

China has sought to balance its ties with Israel with its economic relations with Iran and Syria, which are strongly backed by Russia.

Mr Putin’s visit is also a show of support for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road drive to build infrastructure and expand China’s overseas influence.

The Russian leader will be among the highest profile guests at a gathering marking the 10th anniversary of Mr Xi’s announcement of the policy, which has laden countries such as Zambia and Sri Lanka with heavy debt after they signed contracts with Chinese companies to build roads, airports and other public works.

Chinese officials have suggested he will be arriving late on Monday.

Three Ukrainian children who had been taken to Russia are being reunited with family back in their home country, under a mechanism run by Qatar.

Qatari diplomats in Moscow aim to return many more children from Russia to Ukraine, a Qatari official briefed on the plans told Reuters on Monday.

Qatar on Friday facilitated the return of another Ukrainian child, aged 7, who was reunited with his grandmother and is en route to Ukraine via Estonia, the official said. The other three children are a boy aged 2, a 9-year-old boy, and a girl aged 17.

Kyiv has identified 20,000 children as taken to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of family or guardians.

The return of these first four children tests a system the Gulf Arab state established after months of secret talks with Moscow and Kyiv, according to the Qatari official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the process.

Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, shared a short initial list of Ukrainian children to be returned with a team of Qatari diplomats who verified each child’s identity, the official said.

About 400 children have been returned to Ukraine since Moscow’s invasion began in February 2022, but the United Nations human rights agency raised concerns last week that there was no system to facilitate the return.

Airstrikes from Russia continued overnight with five missiles and 12 kamikaze drones launched by Moscow toward Ukraine, Kyiv said early on Monday.

Ukraine’s air force said the missiles, of which it shot down two, targeted northern and eastern regions, while the drones, of which 11 were downed, were launched in several directions with a particular focus on western Ukraine.

The governor of the eastern region of Poltava, Filip Pronin, also said his region had been attacked by drones and missiles, and that three civilians had been hospitalised as a result.

“Fortunately, no civilian or critical infrastructure was hit. However, missile fragments damaged several private homes,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging service.

Russia also carried out artillery shelling and air strikes in the Zaporizhzhia region, damaging several residential buildings and infrastructure and injuring one elderly woman, the governor there said.

Two civilians were killed in Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka on Saturday, the Donetsk region administration said on Sunday.

In one of its few offensives in months, Russia’s military pressed on for a fifth day with assaults on Avdiivka, with shelling so fierce that emergency crews were unable to recover the dead from wrecked buildings.

The administration of the Donetsk region said on Sunday on the Telegram messaging app that one more person was injured elsewhere in the region.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Sunday its forces had repelled 15 Russian attacks near Avdiivka, Tonenke and Pervomaiske in the Donetsk region, while Russian forces launched heavy air strikes in the area.

Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region also in Ukraine’s east, said on Sunday a 54-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man were killed and one woman injured in an overnight Russian air attack.