Svitlana Morenets

Growing up as a Ukrainian means being acquainted with death when you are too young to know much about life. When I was a teenager, I saw dozens of coffins being brought to my hometown from Vladimir Putin’s war in the Donbas. Now, I am seeing my friends go to war – and, like so many thousands of Ukrainians, die. One was buried last month: Maksym Burda, a 25-year-old wedding photographer. Another friend went to war this week. This friend, an artist, had just five weeks of accelerated training: now he’s an infantry soldier in one of the hottest spots on the Dobas front. He has been provided with a weapon, bulletproof vest, a helmet and a second-hand first-aid kit – far more than soldiers were given after the 2014 invasion. I doubt that the first owner of that kit is still alive.

Ukraine has been shaken by a wave of corruption scandals in recent days. Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, six deputy ministers and five regional governors all left their posts today after a string of controversies left their positions untenable. Some were fired by the President, others left of their own accord – the number may yet grow.  The first scandal broke on Sunday after Vasyl Lozynsky, Ukraine's deputy minister of infrastructure, was accused of receiving a bribe worth £285,000 to procure generators at an inflated price for the government’s war relief efforts. Then Oleksiy Symonenko, a deputy prosecutor general, was caught holidaying in Spain despite Zelensky’s restriction on fighting-age men leaving the country.

Moscow this morning hailed the ‘liberation’ of Soledar, a strategic point in the battle for control of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday that his mercenaries – who are spearheading the offensive – were in control of the salt-mining town (or what remains of it). It was denied at the time, but the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said it believes Russian forces have taken ‘most, if not all’ of the town.

Since the start of the war, there has been a risk of Ukraine’s neighbours being caught in crossfire – especially when Russia turned to a missile-based strategy. This now seems to have happened, with two rockets hitting the Polish village of Przewodów, nearly six miles from Ukraine’s border, killing two farm workers. The stakes are obviously high: if Russian missiles struck a Nato member for the first time, that has implications. US president Joe Biden has said it is ‘unlikely’ that the missile was fired from Russia while Turkey said it must ‘respect’ Moscow’s fervent denial that Russia (which had just fired 100 missiles at Ukraine in a third wave of attacks) had anything to do with the strike.

Less than two months ago, Putin declared four occupied regions of Ukraine as part of Russia. Some speculated that Moscow would view any attempt to liberate those territories as equivalent to an attack on Russian soil. Yet today Volodymyr Zelensky visited the recently liberated Kherson, awarded Ukrainian soldiers and watched them raise the country’s flag. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Zelensky's visit to Kherson and reiterated that it was ‘Russian territory’. Zelensky did what Putin couldn’t manage to do in eight months of Russian control over the city – he faced its residents. Asked where Ukrainian forces might advance next, Zelensky said: ‘Not Moscow… We’re not interested in the territories of another country.

The only large Ukrainian city Russia has been able to capture since February’s invasion – Kherson – has now been liberated. But something else extraordinary happened: Russian reports emerged of thousands of troops being left on the right bank of the Dnipro river after the occupiers blew up the mile-long Antonivsky bridge. Moscow flatly denies this, saying: ‘Not a single unit of soldiers, military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank of the Dnipro.’ But pro-Kremlin military blogs are full of reports to the contrary, some saying that thousands of Russians have been left on the wrong side of the river. If even some are captured, they could be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine has been shelling the river all night, to discourage attempts at escape.

The Russian evacuation of Kherson is now well underway, leaving an expected trail of destruction in its wake. Russian soldiers are publishing bitter videos as they retreat, with one saying that ‘defending the city with these supplies would be complete madness’ and another adding ‘I hope we will return’. Local reports say fleeing Russians are destroying infrastructure in the area – the region’s energy supplier and TV centre were reportedly blown up today. Russian troops are also placing mines on roads and settlements, in preparation for the Ukrainian army. Meanwhile the Ukrainian advance continues, with dozens of settlements west and north of Kherson liberated today.

In one of the biggest developments of the Ukraine war, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has just announced the evacuation of his troops from Kherson. The city, located on the western bank of the Dnipro river, is the capital of one of the 'oblasts' (or regions) that Vladimir Putin recently declared to be part of Russia. Kherson is also the only major Ukrainian city that Russian forces have captured intact. Ukraine’s troops have been closing in for months on the city, making sustained Russian occupation impossible. The city has now been surrendered without a fight – assuming, that is, the retreat is not a bluff. The question is whether Russia intends to bomb Kherson when Ukrainian troops move in.

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin declared an end to the deal allowing Ukraine to export its grain to the world. This threatened to send prices surging, with a potentially devastating impact on world hunger. But his bluff was called. Turkey, Ukraine and the UN held talks and continued a deal without Russia – and three days later, Putin returned to the agreement. Why? And what does this tell us about Russian vulnerabilities? The trigger for Putin pulling out was a drone strike on Russian ships near Sevastopol last Saturday. This was devastating for Moscow: until recently, Ukraine simply didn’t have such military capabilities. Now, suddenly, it does.

So far this week, 128 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukraine. Half were intercepted by air defences, according to figures from Ukrainian authorities, but all too many of the others hit their target: power stations. This is a new phase in war, an anti-humanitarian campaign to cut supplies of water, electricity and leave the notoriously cold Ukrainian winter to do its worst.  ‘Ukraine is about to face the hardest winter in all the years of independence,’ said Volodymyr Zelensky in one of his nightly addresses to the nation. About a third of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been hit by Russian missiles and Iranian kamikaze drones. Kyiv had expected Russia to start shelling Ukraine’s critical infrastructure as soon as the first snow fell.