November 22, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

The European Union will provide another 2.5 billion euros (around $2.57 billion) in financial aid for Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday. 

The EU Commission is planning to aid Ukraine with a support package of 18 billion euros (around $18.5 billion) in 2023, with funding disbursed regularly, for urgent repairs and recovery, she said in a tweet. 

“We will keep on supporting [Ukraine] for as long as it takes,” she wrote.  

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal thanked the EU for the assistance, describing the move as “another step of solidarity.” 

There has been a "significant increase" in the number of Ukrainians who entered the UK under Ukraine Humanitarian Schemes in work compared to the number in June this year, a survey by the UK’s Office for National Statistics has found.

The UK Humanitarian Response Insight Survey collected responses from 9,601 individuals in June 2022, the majority of whom entered the United Kingdom under the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme, and followed up with 3,148 of those individuals between Oct. 17 and Nov. 7. 

In the followup survey, 56% of adults reported working in the UK, up from 19% in June’s survey.

There was also an increase in the number of respondents who said they could speak English “fluently or a fair amount” – from 44% in June’s survey to 57% in the followup.

The percentage of those surveyed who said they had “enough money to support themselves and their dependents for the next three months” also increased from 37% to 60%.

However, the results showed that half of the surveyed individuals reported “difficulties taking up work” in the UK, while 45% had “experienced barriers to accessing private rented accommodation.”

The majority of working respondents said they did not work in the same sector as they had in Ukraine.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics cautioned that the statistics are “experimental,” which means that they are “official statistics that are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed.”

The limitations of the survey include that it was conducted online, although responding by telephone was an option, and that it is “highly likely” that not all visa holders received an email invite to complete the survey, the ONS said.

In March 2022, the UK government launched two visa programs for Ukrainians fleeing war, the ONS release said.

The Ukraine Family Scheme allows Ukrainian nationals to join family members already living in the UK, while the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme permits Ukrainian nationals and their families to enter the UK if they have a “named sponsor” who can provide accommodation. 

There is "mounting evidence" of “systemic war crimes" being committed in "every region where Russia's forces have been deployed" in Ukraine, including attacks against the civilian population, a top US State Department official has said.

And more than 6,500 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the start of the war in February, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Here are the latest developments:

Experts from Iran and Ukraine have met to discuss allegations about the use of Iranian-made attack drones in Russia’s war on Ukraine, a spokesperson from the foreign ministry in Kyiv told CNN on Tuesday. 

“Such an expert meeting did take place. I cannot disclose the details, but I can assure you that the Ukrainian side continues to take the most drastic measures to prevent the use of Iranian weapons by Russia for the war against Ukraine,” said Oleg Nikolenko, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

US officials have said that Russia has received hundreds of drones from Tehran, which have been used to deadly effect. 

A spokesperson for the Iranian Mission to the UN had previously told CNN that it had requested a “joint expert meeting” to consider the allegations.

“Following the alleged claims of using Iranian drones in the Ukraine conflict, Iran has requested a joint expert meeting with Ukraine authorities to consider such allegations. Significant steps have been taken so far in the collaborative dialogue between Iranian and Ukrainian defense experts, and it will continue to clear up any misunderstanding on this matter," the spokesperson said.

CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed reporting to this post.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will this week meet with the mothers of reservist soldiers summoned to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, amid ongoing complaints of mobilization issues.

“Indeed, such a meeting is planned, we can confirm,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.

"The president often holds such meetings, they are not all public. In any case, the president receives first-hand information about the real state of affairs."

Peskov did not specify the precise date that Putin would be meeting the reservists mothers.

Some background: Putin provided an update to his increased military conscription order on November 7 and said that 50,000 of the recently drafted soldiers are now in Ukraine.

However, a long list of complaints has since emerged from the front lines, including a lack of leadership from mid-ranking officers, tactics that lead to heavy causalities, non-existent training and promised payments not received. Soldiers, their families and Russian military bloggers also reported logistical difficulties such as insufficient uniforms, poor food and a lack of medical supplies.

Some 300 mobilized Russians are being held in a basement in Zaitsevo in the Luhansk region for refusing to return to the front line, the Astra Telegram channel – a project of independent Russian journalists – reported, quoting their relatives.

One woman said her husband had told her: “New people are constantly brought in. They are in a large basement in the House of Culture in Zaitsevo. They feed them once a day: One dry ration to share between five to six people. They constantly threaten them.”

A social worker has been killed after Russian forces shelled an aid distribution point in the town of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region on Tuesday, governor Oleksandr Starukh said on Telegram.

“As a result of a direct hit to the humanitarian aid distribution centre in a school, one social worker was killed and two more women were wounded,” Starukh, head of Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, said.

The Ukrainian security service said it raided a historic Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv on Tuesday as part of an effort to counter suspected “subversive activities of [the] Russian special services” in the country.

The raid on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra was aimed at “preventing the use of the Lavra as a cell of the ‘Russian world’” and the “use of Ukrainian Orthodox Church premises for hiding sabotage and reconnaissance groups, foreign citizens, storing weapons, etc,” the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said in a statement.

The Lavra is home to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – a branch of Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine that has been traditionally loyal to Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian church. Kirill is a close ally of Vladimir Putin and a supporter of his war on Ukraine. In May, the UOC cut ties with Moscow and declared “full independence.”

The Kremlin condemned the raid and said it was another example of Ukraine's hostility to Russian Orthodoxy.

“The Ukrainian side has long been at war with the Russian Orthodox Church,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.

“I would say this can be seen as another link in the chain of hostilities against Russian Orthodoxy.”

The Russian Orthodox Church also responded to the raid, describing it as an “act of intimidation."

“The Russian Orthodox Church, serving in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, has already been in the role of a target chosen by the godless authorities for destruction,” Vladimir Legoyda, a spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, said on Telegram.

“We pray for fellow believers in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, who become victims of lawlessness, and we call on all caring people to do everything possible so that the persecution stops, and the ancient shrine remains a place of prayer for peace.” 

The Lavra was founded in the 11th century. As well as being a place of pilgrimage, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It it also one of the most popular tourist attractions in Kyiv.

Fighting raged on in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Tuesday, as Russia launched “massive shelling” in towns and villages on the eastern front line, according to a local official.

The town of Avdiivka was hit by a wave of artillery fire, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk region military administration.

Avdiivka has been within a few miles of the front lines of the war for several months, but remains in Ukrainian hands.

There was also “massive shelling” in two areas near the strategic city of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Kyrylenko said. Four civilians in the region were killed on Monday, he added in a separate post.

The Ukrainian military said it was under sustained attack in the Donetsk region.

“The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday.

“They continue firing at the critical infrastructure and civilian housing ... In the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions the enemy is focusing its efforts on conducting offensive actions.”

Russia is pursuing offensive combat operations in Donetsk and Luhansk, which together form the Donbas, the eastern part of Ukraine where the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists started in 2014.

At least 6,595 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 10,189 injured since Russia invaded the country in February, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Among those killed were at least 415 children, 2,575 men, 1,767 women and 1,838 other adults whose gender is yet to be identified, according to data released Monday's figures.

Many of the civilian casualties have occurred in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas -- an eastern region at the heart of the war that has seen the most intense fighting in recent months.

The OHCHR report said 3,939 civilians were killed and 5,338 others injured in Donetsk and Luhansk, including 449 in Russian-controlled territory. 

The commission said actual figures are “considerably higher” due to a lack of or delayed information in areas where the conflict has intensified, including in cities such as Mariupol, Izium, Lysychansk, Popasna and Severodonetsk.

Most of the casualties recorded were a result of explosive weapons with wide area effects such as shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes, the report added.