WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Russia shells Ukraine's Kherson, injuring 8, damaging buildings
Russian forces heavily shelled the centre of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Friday, injuring eight people and destroying or damaging at least 15 buildings, a senior city official said.
Pictures posted on social media showed at least three sites dotted with piles of rubble and the interior of one building strewn with shattered building materials and other debris.
Roman Mrochko, head of the city's military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app that three of the injured were being treated in hospital. He said two buildings had been destroyed, three suffered heavy damage and 10 less damage.
"In the evening the entire city trembled," Ukraine's Emergency Services said on Telegram. "The enemy targeted the very centre of Kherson."
The posting said emergency workers had rescued two women, in their 70s and 80s, who had been blocked in a building, and brought a fire under control in a rubble-strewn area.
Ukraine's Suspilne public broadcaster said Russian forces had also shelled Beryslav, a town further north on the Dnipro River in Kherson Region, wounding one person.
Russian forces captured Kherson in the early days of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but abandoned the city and the western bank of the Dnipro late last year. They now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.
** Russian diplomats deny Moscow executed soldiers on battlefield
Russian diplomats on Friday dismissed as lies a White House allegation that Moscow's military was executing its own soldiers if they refused to carry out battlefield orders in Ukraine.
"Whoever came up with these other-worldly lies could only have been a person with an imagination far into overdrive," the Russian embassy in Washington said in comments carried by the RIA Novosti news agency.
"And all this simply to justify the failed, much publicised counteroffensive of its (Ukrainian) ward. Let us say with full responsibility that all insinuations about this in comments by the White House spokesperson are a lie."
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the U.S government had information the Russian military had been executing soldiers who refuse orders.
"We also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire," he said.
Kirby provided no evidence for his assertions.
Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive, which has regained villages in the south and east, but is moving more slowly than an advance last year through occupied northeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that Russian losses had grown significantly in the past week. These included, he said, at least a brigade worth of troops trying to advance on the eastern town of Avdiivka.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russia appoints replacement for controversial sacked general
Lieutenant-General Viktor Afzalov has been confirmed as the new head of the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Friday. He had stepped in as acting commander when Sergey Surovikin, the general who masterminded the defense of Zaporozhye and Kherson, was relieved after the Wagner mutiny.
“Appointed commander of the Aerospace Force in October 2023, by presidential decree,” read the general’s official biography on the Russian Defense Ministry website as of Friday, confirming unofficial reports by major media outlets last week.
Afzalov, 55, is a highly decorated career air defense officer, whose previous post was heading the Aerospace Force general staff since 2018. He was born near Simferopol, in Crimea.
The official appointment comes approximately two months after Afzalov stepped in as acting head of the force. Surovikin was reassigned to other duty in late August, and was subsequently spotted in Africa with several high-ranking military officials. His biography has since disappeared from the Defense Ministry website, without explanation.
Surovikin had gained fame during the conflicts in Chechnya and Syria, garnering the nickname ‘General Armageddon’ for his approach to military operations. He was put in charge of the entire Russian force engaging the Ukrainian military in October 2022, amid the Ukrainian offensives in Kharkov and Kherson. In January 2023, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov took over that post and Surovikin continued acting as his deputy.
It was Surovikin who reportedly recommended a tactical retreat from the right bank of the Dnieper in Kherson and building the extensive fortifications in both Kherson and Zaporozhye – dubbed the ‘Surovikin Line’. The Ukrainian army attempted to breach the line starting in June 2023 and failed while losing an estimated 90,000 men and thousands of pieces of equipment.
** Russian forces destroy 31 Ukrainian warplanes, 3 helicopters since October 1
Russian combat aircraft and air defense forces have destroyed 31 Ukrainian warplanes and three helicopters since October 1 in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Friday.
"Since October 1, fighter aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces and air defense capabilities have destroyed 31 Ukrainian Air Force planes and three helicopters, including 20 MiG-29 fighters, eight Su-25 ground attack aircraft, a Su-24 bomber, two L-39 combat training planes and three Mi-8 helicopters," the ministry said in a statement.
In all, the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed 515 Ukrainian warplanes, 253 helicopters, 8,312 unmanned aerial vehicles, 441 surface-to-air missile systems, 12,960 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,169 multiple rocket launchers, 6,893 field artillery guns and mortars and 14,684 special military motor vehicles since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, the ministry reported.
On October 25, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at a meeting with the personnel of the battlegroup East decorated with state awards that Russian troops had shot down 24 Ukrainian warplanes over the past few days with the weapons they received. Later, a source close to the Defense Ministry told TASS that Russia had employed the latest S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile system in conjunction with an A-50 long-range radar surveillance aircraft in the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine.
Reuters/RT/Tass
