A man stands atop a Russian tank and flies the Ukrainian flag, defying the Russian occupation of Kherson in southern Ukraine

Sunday’s Coverage: US to Zelenskiy — Say You’ll Negotiate With Putin

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1543 GMT:

Conservative cleric Masih Mohajeri has challenged Iran’s regime over its supply of drones for Russian attacks on Ukraine.

In a front-page commentary for the newspaper Jomhouri-e-Islami, Mojaheri said Iran should have advised Russia to observe international regulations that prohibit encroachment on the territory of other countries. Moscow should have been told, as it invaded Ukraine, that it had no right to use the Iranian drones, while Tehran maintained better relations with Kyiv.

Mohajeri said Foreign Minister Hossein Amur-Abdollahian’s admission last weekend that Iran had supplied a “small number” of drones —- but insisting it was months before Moscow’s invasion — as a “good omen”.

“You still have time to change policy on the war in Ukraine,” he said to the Foreign Minister. “You should not put all your eggs in the Russian basket. This method contradicts the policy of ‘neither east nor west’ which is the core of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

A former Iranian ambassador to Moscow, Nematollah Izadi, chided the regime for no proper cooperation between the military and diplomatic branches, possibly leaving the Foreign Ministry in the dark about the drone deliveries.

Izadi said, “We seem to have succumbed to a deception operation by Russia, which, in my opinion, does not serve our national interests at all.”

UPDATE 1409 GMT:

The Russian Defense Ministry has rejected the complaint of surviving members of the 155th Marine Brigade of the Pacific Fleet that 300 troops were killed, wounded, or captured because of poor command (see 0920 GMT).

The Ministry declared that the unit advanced 5 km (3.1 miles) in 10 days in its offensive in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

“Due to the competent actions of the unit commanders, the losses of marines for the given period do not exceed 1% of combat strength, and 7% wounded, a significant part of whom have already returned to duty,” the Ministry insisted.

UPDATE 1405 GMT:

Ukraine has received its first delivery of Nasams and Apside air defense systems.

Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said, “We will continue to shoot down the enemy targets attacking us. Thank you to our partners: Norway, Spain and the US.”

UPDATE 0941 GMT:

The latest Russian attacks across the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine have killed one civilian and wounded five.

The fatality was in Bakhmut, the city which has faced Russian assaults for weeks as Vladimir Putin seeks a symbolic victory to offset Ukraine’s advances since late August.

Russian forces also S-300 missiles on the Ukrainian-held part of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine early Monday. There was damage to farmers’ warehouses, a cultural site, and private houses.

UPDATE 0933 GMT:

A Russian priest who encouraged women to have more babies — so they would feel less distressed about sending their sons to fight in Ukraine — has been killed on the battlefield.

Archpriest Mikhail Vasilyev died “while carrying out pastoral duties in the area of the special military operation in Ukraine on the morning of November 6,” said the Russian Orthodox Church in a statement.

The Russian military said Vasilyev, 51, died from shrapnel wounds in an explosion from a Ukrainian attack with a US-supplied HIMARS medium-range rocket launcher.

The archpriest served in the Church of St. Barbara the Great Martyr and the Venerable Ilya Muromets outside Moscow.

In late October, Vasilyev told the Russian woman to “be fruitful and multiply”: “Thus, she would not find it so painful and terrifying to part with her children.”

UPDATE 0920 GMT:

An elite Russian naval infantry unit has blamed commanders for the loss of 300 troops in a failed assault in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine last week.

The commanders launched an assault on an Ukrainian garrison the village of Pavlivka, on a key supply route southwest of Donetsk city, on Wednesday.

Members of the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, in a letter to the governor of their home region in Russia’s far east, wrote:

We were thrown into a baffling offensive.

We lost about 300 men killed, wounded, and missing in four days as a result of a “carefully” planned offensive by the “great commanders”.

Russian war correspondent Alexei Sukonkin said 63 brigade members were killed in two days — more fatalities of Russian naval infantrymen than during the entire first Chechen war from December 1994 to August 1996.

The surviving troops asked the governor of the Primorye region for an independent investigation.

The district command together with [the brigade commander] are hiding this…for fear of accountability.

They don’t care about anything other than showing off. They call people meat.

UPDATE 0906 GMT:

In his nightly address to the nation, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said authorities are preparing for power blackouts, as Vladimir Putin tries to avoid the defeat of his invasion.

Zelenskiy said Russia “is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, primarily energy.”

Although air defenses and extensive repairs have blunted the effect of the Russian missile and drone assault, the CEO of the Yasno energy company said Ukraine faced a 32% deficit in projected power supply on Monday.

Ukrainian officials are preparing thousands of shelters to ensure heat and power. Seventeen EU countries are sending about 500 power generators.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko asked residents to make emergency plans to leave the capital: “If you have extended family or friends outside Kyiv, where there is autonomous water supply, an oven, heating, please keep in mind the possibility of staying there for a certain amount of time.”

However, he added, “We will do everything that depends on us so that such a scenario does not happen.”

Rolling blackouts to conserve energy are planned for seven regions — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava — on Monday.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: As Ukrainian forces close on occupied Kherson city in southern Ukraine, Russia and its proxy officials have ordered residents to accept removal to other occupied areas or even to Russian territory.

But some Ukrainians are resisting and enduring the worsening conditions.

One of them tells The Guardian:

Everything is frozen, hidden. After 3 pm, there are no people on the streets. In the morning they go out to buy groceries and then they sit at home.

Kherson is being robbed by the Russians. Everything is taken out: monuments to Suvorov, Ushakov, Potemkin, and Margelov were removed from their pedestals; barges, fire engines, ambulances and office chairs. They break into apartments. Even the windows of the city hall have been removed. A total organised plunder of the city is under way.

Having ordered residents to move across the Dnipro River to its left bank and then further into the occupied region, the Russian proxy officials said on Sunday that electricity and water supplies are “temporarily absent” after a Ukrainian attack damaged three power lines.

Ukrainian officials say the Russians had dismantled 1.5 km (0.9 miles) of power lines, and electricity probably will not return until the area is liberated.

But the resident — and others — will not be transported out of Kherson.

A car with a loudspeaker drives around the city urging residents to leave and text messages are sent during the night. But, like me, many of my friends stayed. We buy food and store water. We do not believe in forced evacuation.

He explained that “communication has disappeared” with “practically no internet in Kherson” and Russian TV channels off-air.

He is preparing food for the winter and trying to break slow and monotonous days. He meets work colleagues and acquaintances, reads, practices his cooking, and makes grape juice.

The residents hold on: “We hear Ukraine’s artillery duel with Russia and we wait for release.”

Time could be short. The Guardian’s source has been detained and beaten. His apartment has been searched. He is helping his friend move out of the city.

But he is defiant: “I think the right-bank part of the country will be liberated and that Ukraine will win. I am preparing to fight.”