Here is how things stand on Wednesday, November 12:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said the army’s situation has “significantly worsened” in parts of the southeastern Zaporizhia region amid fierce fighting with Russian forces.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he had received an update from Syrskii, which conveyed that the situation” remains difficult” in the Zaporizhia region, as well as in the direction of the embattled city of Pokrovsk.
• Zaporizhia Governor Ivan Fedorov said that a Russian drone attack killed a 56-year-old man in the Polohivskyi district.
• Also in Zaporizhia, the Kushuhum Village Council announced in a post on the Telegram messaging app that families with children must begin mandatory evacuations from the area.
• Ukraine’s Southern Defence Forces said in a post on Facebook that they had to withdraw from positions near the settlements of Novouspenivske, Nove, Okhotnyche, Uspenivka, and Novomykolaivka in the Zaporizhia region.
• Ukraine’s General Staff claimed that explosions and fire were recorded after Ukrainian forces hit the Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in Russia’s Orenburg region.
• A Ukrainian mine explosion killed one person in the village of Bahatyr in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Donetsk, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said, while persistent Ukrainian drone attacks have forced people to flee the area, Russia’s state TASS news agency reports.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces seized the eastern part of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to TASS.

Diplomacy

• Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, has arrived in Turkiye’s Istanbul, where he said in a post on Facebook that he is working “to unblock” the process of exchanging captives with Moscow and ensuring the implementation of the agreement that has already been reached with Russia.
• The state environmental inspectorate in Ukraine’s Sumy region announced in a post on Telegram that it has launched a lawsuit over environmental damages, including the destruction of forest areas, against Russian forces that spearheaded the invasion of the region in 2022.
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that 30 Japanese people, including a foreign ministry official, were now barred from entering Russia in response to sanctions introduced by Tokyo against Moscow.

Regional security

• The FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, claimed that Russia thwarted a Ukrainian-United Kingdom plan to hijack a MiG-31 jet equipped with a hypersonic missile and to use it to carry out a false flag attack on a major NATO airbase.

Energy

• Romanian Minister of Energy Bogdan Ivan said his country must take control of the local Romanian company of Russia’s Lukoil, as Western sanctions have prompted a wave of similar moves across Europe.
• Ukrainian authorities have charged seven people in relation to an alleged $100m kickback scheme involving senior energy officials, a day after launching a probe into Ukraine’s state nuclear agency Energoatom.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the government had dismissed Energoatom’s supervisory board and that an urgent audit of the agency would be conducted, “including its procurement activities”.

• A former deputy prime minister was among the suspects in the Energoatom probe, Ukraine’s anticorruption bureau said, alleging it had recorded a total of $1.2m being transferred to the official, whom it did not name in line with Ukrainian law.

Military aid

• Denmark’s Ministry of Defence announced 1.4 billion kroner ($217m) worth of military aid to Ukraine, including for the purchase of US weapons.