Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,374

Here’s where things stand on Saturday, November 29.

Fighting

• Russian drones struck six locations in Kyiv’s city centre and eastern suburbs early on Saturday, injuring four people, as apartment buildings and other dwellings were hit, said the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko.
• Ukrainian forces are defending their positions and hunting down sabotage groups in the northeastern city of Kupiansk, despite Moscow’s claims that its troops are fully in control of the area, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said.
• Russia seized Kupiansk in the first weeks of its 2022 full-scale invasion, but Ukrainian troops recaptured it later that year. Russian President Vladimir Putin then claimed on Thursday that the city was “fully in our hands”. Syrskii swiftly rejected the claims, saying that “the scale of lies from the Russian leadership about the situation in Kupiansk is astonishing”.
• Russian forces cleared Ukrainian troops from 6,585 buildings in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in the last week amid fierce fighting, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed.
• Ukraine said its forces have hit Russia’s Saratov oil refinery and the Saky airbase in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. “A series of explosions was recorded, followed by a fire in the target area,” Ukraine’s military said regarding the refinery strike.
• Russian air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 136 Ukrainian drones overnight, Moscow’s Defence Ministry has said.

Ukrainian politics

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, a close ally who has headed Ukraine’s negotiation team at fraught United States-backed peace talks, has quit, hours after anticorruption agents searched his home. Yermak was leading Ukraine’s effort to push back against peace terms proposed by the US, which would satisfy many of Moscow’s territorial and security demands.
• Zelenskyy said he would consider a replacement for his chief of staff on Saturday. “Russia is eager for Ukraine to make mistakes. We won’t make any,” Zelenskyy said in a video address, calling for unity. “Our work goes on. Our struggle goes on,” he added.
• Investigations into high-level corruption, coming just weeks after Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers resigned amid a wide-reaching probe, have sparked public outrage and thrust government leadership into crisis at a time when the country is fighting for its very survival.

Ceasefire talks

• In a video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said that senior Ukrainian officials representing the military, intelligence and Foreign Ministry would soon participate in talks with Washington officials on how to end the conflict.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia expects to have information on the agreed points of a proposed peace plan by the time a US delegation arrives in Moscow next week. Peskov said that Moscow is working on the assumption that it is negotiating the plan solely with the US.

Sanctions

• A European Union spokesperson said that “intensive discussions” are ongoing, including with Belgium, on using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine stay afloat. Belgium’s support for the plan is crucial as the assets the EU hopes to use are held by Belgium-based financial institution Euroclear.
• The talks come as Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever warned in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that using the assets could derail a Ukraine peace deal.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he saw the need to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine as “increasingly urgent” and hoped there would soon be an agreement.
• Russia will deliver agreed crude and gas supplies to Hungary according to existing