Ukraine-Russia war: Collaborator ‘handed over own father to Russians for torture’

A Ukrainian collaborator has been arrested for handing his own father over to Russian soldiers for torture, the country’s SBU secret service has said.

The SBU said the former elected official, who has not been named, gave occupying forces the names and addresses of a string of partisans in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region – including his parent’s details.

“The father, a patriot, was taken to a local Russian torture chamber, and subjected to numerous forms of torture in an attempt to persuade him to cooperate,” the SBU said.

It said the former official faces life in prison if convicted on charges of high treason and collaboration.

The events are said to have occurred shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine has opened more than 6,600 criminal cases “against individuals for collaboration and other conflict-related crimes” since the start of the war, the United Nations said last week.

03:05 PM GMTThat’s all for today

Thank you for following today’s blog. We will be back with all the latest developments in Ukraine on Monday.

03:04 PM GMTToday’s headlines

03:03 PM GMTPictured: Ukrainian police evacuate elderly woman

Ukrainian policemen carry an elderly woman out of Toretsk village in Donetsk – Ukrainian National Police

The woman is carried into a waiting ambulance – Ukrainian National Police

02:51 PM GMTRussia: We will retaliate against Moldova for joining EU sanctions

Russia has vowed to retaliate against Moldova for joining European Union sanctions against it.

“We regard this as yet another hostile step by the Moldovan leadership, which is fully integrated into the anti-Russian campaign of the ‘collective West’,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Its aim is the complete destruction of Russian-Moldovan relations, which, through the fault of official Chisinau, are already in a very deplorable state.”

02:36 PM GMTWest has a ‘dangerous’ monopoly on AI, says Putin

Vladimir Putin has accused the West of having a “dangerous” monopoly over artificial intelligence (AI).

He said Western software was “biased” and that Russia needed to create its own rival chatbots and processors.

“The monopolistic domination of such foreign creations in Russia is unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible,” he said at an AI conference in Moscow, urging Russia to be “ahead of the curve”.

“They do not take into account Russian culture, and sometimes simply ignore and cancel it,” he added.

01:30 PM GMTUkraine identifies commander who ordered Bucha killings

Ukraine has identified a Russian commander who gave orders to kill at least four Ukrainian civilians in Bucha in March 2022.

The SBU secret service said Lieutenant Colonel Dosyagaev, a commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 104th Regiment of the 76th Airborne Assault Division of the Russian Airborne Forces, was later awarded the Hero of Russia medal for his service in Ukraine.

Bucha, north of Kyiv, was occupied by Russia shortly after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Mass graves have been found in the city after Russian soldiers murdered hundreds of civilians there.

The Ukrainian army said in May 2022 that Lt Col Dosyagaev had been killed in action. But the SBU said it was yet to confirm this and even if true, its investigation would proceed.

12:29 PM GMTGermany to deliver Patriot anti-air missiles ‘this winter’

Germany will deliver Patriot anti-air missiles “this winter”, its ambassador to Ukraine has said.

Martin Jaegar told Ukraine’s state press agency the delivery is intended to alleviate the “very difficult” winter the country is facing.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz originally pledged to deliver the surface-to-air missile system in October but did not specify a timeline.

Russia is expected to launch a major bombardment of Ukraine’s energy grid this winter, just as it did last year.

11:37 AM GMTKremlin condemns Nato for plotting ‘military Schengen zone’

The Kremlin has condemned Nato after the alliance’s logistics chief backed introducing a “military Schengen zone” to make troop movements easier.

Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, who leads Nato’s logistics command, told Reuters on Thursday that the not having the zone would bog down soldiers in the event of a future war with Russia.

“The alliance has always regarded our country as a so-called notional enemy,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

“Now it openly considers our country to be an obvious adversary. This is nothing more than about fuelling tensions in Europe which has consequences.”

11:02 AM GMTRussian cluster bomb attack kills three civilians in Kherson

Three Ukrainian civilians have reportedly been killed in a Russian cluster bomb attack on the southern city of Kherson.

Five others were wounded and 60 buildings damaged during the daylight attack in the city’s Chornobayivka suburb on Thursday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

“It is preliminarily known that the shelling was carried out with cluster munitions,” said Andriy Yermark, Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Cluster munitions – a type of bomb that opens in the air and releases smaller “bomblets” across a wide area – are used by both Russia and Ukraine, the latter having received them as military aid from the United States.

Critics say the weapons litter the ground and harm and kill many more civilians than combatants.

Kherson was retaken by Ukrainian soldiers last year but Russian forces remain entrenched just miles away, across the Dnipro river.

The Ukrainian army last week said it had gained multiple bridgeheads on the left bank of the river.

10:29 AM GMTRussia and China discuss building ‘underwater tunnel’ to Crimea

Russia and China have secretly discussed building an underwater tunnel between occupied Crimea and the Russian mainland, the Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper said the Ukrainian secret service has intercepted messages between companies in the two countries about the potential project.

It is believed that the talks were triggered by Russian fears of new Ukrainian strikes on the Kerch bridge, which links Crimea to mainland Russia.

The project would cost at least £4bn ($5bn), an engineer told the newspaper.

09:50 AM GMTIn pictures: Ukrainian operations

Ukrainian artillery fires on Russian positions in the direction of Bakhmut in Donetsk – Diego Herrera Carcedo

Ukrainian soldiers man a German Flakpanzer Gepard, self-propelled anti-aircraft gun – Kostya Liberov

09:15 AM GMTUkrainian long-range strikes causing ‘mass casualties’, says MoD

Long-range Ukrainian missile strikes are causing “mass casualties” among Russian soldiers, Britain’s Ministry of Defence has said.

In its latest intelligence briefing, the MoD said Ukraine’s ability to strike deep behind enemy lines was creating an “acute dilemma” for Russia commanders.

“They must balance the best practice of keeping the troops dispersed, and less vulnerable to strikes, and the day-to-day requirement to gather units together to conduct administration and to maintain morale,” it added.

08:34 AM GMTPutin exploiting war in Gaza to ‘undermine’ West’s Ukraine support

Vladimir Putin is exploiting the war between Israel and Hamas to undermine Western support for Ukraine.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank said the Russian president has changed his rhetoric on the war in Gaza to a “much more anti-Israel position”.

It added that Putin is now attempting to push “the supposed hypocrisy of Western condemnations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” by highlighting its support for Israel.

The Russian president referred on Wednesday to what he called the “extermination of the civilian population of Palestine”.

He has previously claimed that the conflict “will distract from the provision of Western military aid to Ukraine”, the ISW said.

08:10 AM GMTUkrainian imprisoned for 12 years after spying for Russia

A Ukrainian has been imprisoned for 12 years after spying for the Russian army in Donetsk, Ukraine’s secret service has said.

The man, who has not been named, identified troop movements, bases and weapons depots in Ukrainian-controlled territory and shared these with Russian forces.

He sent the information on his mobile phone using voice messages.

Some Ukrainians have been given life sentences for spying for the Russians during the war.

08:01 AM GMTRussia downs 16 Ukrainian drones overnight

Russian forces shot down 16 Ukrainian drones overnight as they flew over occupied Crimea and Russia’s south-western Volgograd region, its defence ministry has said.

It said 13 of those were operating over Crimea as Ukraine appears to continue to ramp up its operations over the occupied peninsula.

Ukraine said it downed three Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones overnight.

It said Russia also launched two air missiles but did not say if they had shot them down.

07:55 AM GMTUkraine seizes assets of MP arrested for Biden corruption conspiracy

A Ukrainian court has ruled to seize the assets of an MP who is accused of working with Russian intelligence to find links between the Biden family and corruption.

Oleksandr Dubinskyi has been charged with treason and is said to have worked “at the behest of Russian intelligence when they aligned with efforts by Rudolph W. Giuliani to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine” in 2019.

A Kyiv court has now said assets belonging to Mr Dubinskyi and his family should be seized, which includes 23 apartments, 15 cars, eight plots of land and two houses.

He is a member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.

07:50 AM GMTUkrainian secret service assassinates collaborator on Russian territory

A Ukrainian who collaborated with the Russian occupation has been assassinated inside Russia by the secret service, reports have claimed.

Ukraine’s state news agency said Oleksandr Slisarenko died in hospital after his car was blown up in the Russian city of Belgorod on 16 November.

Mr Slisarenko is a former employee of Ukraine’s interior ministry who was deputy head of Russia’s occupation in Kharkiv and also fought for Russian proxy forces in Luhansk.

On Thursday, president Volodymyr Zelensky said he received a report from the SBU’s chief Vasyl Maliuk on “new results in countering enemy operations and collaborators.”

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