Russia-Ukraine war: Putin’s forces ramp up Avdiivka assault as Kyiv strikes Crimea

President Joe Biden will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping face-to-face for the first time in a year on Wednesday, the White House said, in high-stakes diplomacy aimed at curbing tensions between the world’s two superpowers.

The closely watched interaction, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the San Francisco Bay area, could last hours and involve teams of officials from Beijing and Washington.

It is expected to cover global issues from the Israel-Hamas war to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s ties with Russia, Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, human rights, fentanyl, artificial intelligence, as well as “fair” trade and economic relations, senior Biden administration officials said.

“Nothing will be held back; everything is on the table,” according to one U.S. official, who declined to be named, in a briefing with reporters.

“We’re clear-eyed about this. We know efforts to shape or reform China over several decades have failed. But we expect China to be around and to be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defence says it has now trained 30,000 Ukrainians as part of Operation Interflex.

“The UK and its ten partner nations continued to train Ukrainian recruits in the fight against the illegal invasion of their country”, the MoD said in a statement.

It added that the milestone had been reached ahead of schedule.

Operation Interflex, to help train Ukrainian troops in their battle against Russia’s invasion, was launched in June 2022 with the target of training 30,000 troops by the end of this year.

German government leaders on Friday pledged to raise regular budget outlays for defence to ensure Berlin meets its NATO spending target of 2 per cent of economic output even after a special 100 billion euro ($106 billion) defence fund has been exhausted.

Defence minister Boris Pistorius said Germany would incorporate higher spending into medium term financing plans.

He was speaking a day after the government pledged to make the German military the “backbone” of European defence as part of a major policy shift to boost spending and modernise its forces following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian-installed health officials in Crimea said Thursday that private clinics on the Moscow-annexed peninsula have “voluntarily” stopped providing abortions, which means that the procedure is now only available there in state-run medical facilities.

The move comes amid a wider effort in Russia to restrict abortion, still legal and widely available, as the country takes an increasingly conservative turn under President Vladimir Putin.

As President Joe Biden likes to remind anyone who will listen, “This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party”.

Russian attacks on a town near the eastern frontline have intensified after war broke out between Hamas and Israel, a Ukrainian military spokesman has said.

Putin’s troops have been bearing down since mid-October on the shattered town of Avdiivka, known for its coking plant and its position as a gateway to the city of Donetsk, 20 km (12 miles) to the east.

Oleksandr Borodin, press officer for Ukraine’s third separate assault brigade, said Russian forces were launching major infantry attacks, while trying to keep equipment intact.

“All this started after the events in Israel,” he said. “Perhaps they believe it is the best time to advance, but they have no serious successes.”

Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka’s military administration, told Espreso TV Russian forces were shelling the town “round the clock” but wet ground from several days of rain was holding their troops back.

Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the southern military district headquarters in Rostov-on-Don as he assessed the state of his country’s forces in Ukraine as the war drags on toward winter.

It was his second public visit to the headquarters in less than a month.

Video shared by a Russian state news agency showed Mr Putin being greeted late on Thursday by defence minister Sergey Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff.

In Rostov-on-Don, less than 60 miles from Ukraine’s south-eastern border, Mr Putin was “introduced to new types of military equipment” and was informed about the progress of the war, his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Mr Putin made the visit on the way back from a trip to Kazakhstan, where he aimed to cement ties with Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbour and major economic partner in the midst of tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Ukraine’s special intelligence service have posted a video purporting to show their overnight operation that destroyed multiple Russian landing ships docked in northwestern Crimea.

They claimed that multiple small vessels “carrying a crew and loaded armoured vehicles” were destroyed in the early hours of this morning.

Local reports suggest the attack took place around the port village of Chornomorske.

Previously, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) have used small groups of its operatives to carry out swift attacks on Crimea, traversing the Black Sea using jet skis to avoid detection.

The war-hit country is arranging a fourth meeting of national security advisers in late November or early December, said Ihor Zhovka, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s top diplomatic adviser.

“And the Global Summit might take place in February 2024,” he said in a statement.

He added that the summit will “definitely” take place “as it will mark both the symbolic beginning of the practical implementation of the Ukraine ‘peace formula’ and summarise all the results that have already been achieved on this track”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday that the government will adapt the defence budget to ensure that the country achieves its NATO spending target even after its 100-billion-euro special defence fund has been exhausted.

“This is because procurement processes can only be planned and implemented sustainably if the Bundeswehr can rely on” receiving sufficient funds, said Scholz.

He added that adapting the budget to reach the two percent NATO defence spending target from 2028, without the help of a special fund, would be a formidable but feasible political task.

“Everybody understands that we need to spend more on defence,” Scholz said.

While the need for longterm planning for defence investment in Europe has long been known, low levels of stockpiles across the bloc after nearly two years of supporting Ukraine have compounded this problem. Mr Scholz’s announcement appears to be an attempt to remedy this.