November 18, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Ukraine news here or read through the updates below.?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr?Zelensky says energy supply issues persist in the capital and 17 other regions Friday, even after utility officials indicated that power access had been restored across the country.

Speaking in his nightly address, Zelensky said it’s still difficult to get enough electricity to “Kyiv region and Kyiv. It’s very difficult in the Odesa region, and also the Vinnytsia region and Ternopil region.”?

The director of Ukraine’s Energy Industry Research Center said earlier Friday that power had been restored nearly everywhere in the country, after 10 million customers lost service due to missile attacks Thursday.

Even when utilities repair infrastructure in Ukraine and customers regain access, operators have had to widely impose emergency cuts to deal with the country’s diminished supply. That means regions only receive a limited amount of energy and are sometimes subject to intentional blackouts aimed at stabilizing and maintaining the fragile grid.

Fighting in the east: In his update, Zelensky also reported “fierce fighting” in the (eastern) Donetsk region. He claimed that about 100 Russian attacks were repelled in the region on Thursday alone.

Donetsk, which is one of four Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Moscow, has been subject to some of the conflict’s fiercest fighting.

Passengers and staff go aboard the first train departing Kyiv railway station after Ukrainian forces reclaimed the occupied city on November 18, in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The first train from Kyiv to the recently liberated city of Kherson left Friday.

“This is our train of victory!”?Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said on Telegram.

There were about 200 passengers on board.

Some context: Kherson residents lived under Russian occupation for eight months, but last week, Ukrainian forces swept into the city as?Moscow’s troops retreated east.

The return of the city, which was the only regional capital held by the Kremlin’s forces, brought scenes of jubilation in the streets, where locals sang, waved flags and embraced Ukrainian soldiers.

Much work remains to restore basic services to the city and the region surrounding it, however, and Ukrainian officials are now investigating the brutality and torture suffered by detainees in the city.

The Kremlin hopes for a “positive outcome” in negotiations on a prisoner exchange for?Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, an official told Russian state media Friday.

That remark comes as the US blames Moscow for bringing unreasonable demands to the table in discussions on two Americans jailed in Russia.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the state media agency TASS that Bout, who is serving a 25-year US prison sentence,?is “one of those that are being discussed” in conversations with the Biden administration.

“The time will come when the prospect will become a concrete agreement,” he said, according to the state media report.

In August, Bout’s attorney Steve Zissou told CNN’s “New Day” he was confident the proposed prisoner swap of his client is going to happen.

“Look, it’s no secret they’ve been wanting him back for several years now,” he said. “They’ve been trying to get him back for decades.”

What the US is saying: In July, CNN reported that the Biden administration offered to exchange Bout as part of a potential deal to secure the release of two Americans held by?Russia, basketball star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.

The State Department has declared both Griner and Whelan wrongfully detained. And US officials have blamed Moscow for not bringing reasonable expectations to the negotiations on their release.

Asked about Ryabkov’s comments Friday, state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Russia’s “failure to seriously negotiate on these issues … runs counter to its public statements.”

“Ultimately here, actions speak louder than words,” Patel added.

Russian officials have requested that Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from the country’s domestic spy agency, be included in the proposed swap of Bout for Griner and Whelan, multiple sources familiar with the discussions have told CNN.

More background: Whelan has been held by?Russia?for alleged espionage since 2018, while Griner was recently transferred to a penal colony after she was sentenced to 9 years in jail for smuggling drugs into Russia.

Griner’s detention has raised concerns she is being used as a political pawn in?Russia’s war against Ukraine.

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand and Fred Pleitgen contributed to this report.

Power has been restored nearly everywhere in Ukraine after more than 10 million customers were disconnected Thursday,?according to?Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of the Energy Industry Research Center.

“Maybe nearly 300 consumers are still out of connection, but most of them are near the frontline,”?Kharchenko told reporters Friday, while giving updates on restoration work after Thursday’s missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.?

The situation is getting better with each hour, he said, adding that he hopes “we can have at least 10- to 12-days pause so that we can restore the network sustainability.”

There was a shutdown at?Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant in the west and one power unit of the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant in the northwest caused by damage to substations and power lines Thursday, he confirmed.

“The power units shut down for several hours and diesel generators had to be used. Nevertheless, the situation is much better now, access to the network of most power units has been restored and I think that in the near future we will be able to resume their work,” Kharchenko said.

He said that a lack of electricity affects not just power but also mobile phone networks, electrical pumps used to supply water and waste treatment. Several cities, including Kyiv, were without water for four to 10 hours.

Dmytro Tishyn appears on CNN on November 18.

While his family picks up rocket fragments in their backyard in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, 15-year-old Dmytro Tishyn is about to make his debut on the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie?Hall in New York City.

His choice of instrument: his dad’s bassoon.

Tishyn left Dnipro with just his backpack and bassoon. After waiting in a packed crowd of?evacuees, he took a 24-hour train ride to?Poland, making his way to Berlin and eventually arriving in the United?States.

His family is still in Ukraine. His mother was with him for a short period, but chose to return to their home country. His brother couldn’t leave because he was of the eligible age to serve in the army as Ukraine defends its territory from Russia’s invasion.

As his debut approaches, the orchestra plans to send videos of Tishyn’s performance to his family.

“I’m really excited because?New York symphony is the best?orchestra I’ve ever played in.?It is just going to be great,” he told CNN.

Tishyn also played a portion of a sonata for CNN. Watch here:

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Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal speaks in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 18.

Almost half of Ukraine’s energy system has been disabled by Russian strikes, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal?told reporters Friday in Kyiv.

“Just on Nov. 15, Russia fired about 100 missiles at Ukrainian cities. Almost half of our energy system has been disabled,” Shmygal said.?

He called for additional support from European partners as Russia continues to launch missile strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and temperatures continue to drop.

“In these conditions, we need additional support from our European partners, both in the field of energy, supply of additional equipment and additional financial resources for the purchase of additional volumes of gas, as well as for other support of the energy sector,” Shmygal said.

Ten million Ukrainians are without power just as temperatures fall to freezing and below after more Russian missile attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. CNN spoke to Kyiv residents and how they’re coping under these conditions.

Volodimyr Hontar,?32, is the head of the training department of the Emergency Medical Care Center in Kyiv.?Due to the nature of his work, ambulance stations are always independent of power outages and have electricity. However, it’s when he comes home that problems begin.

“I live on the 9th floor, it’s hard to go up without the elevator, which is turned off during power outages,” he says. “But with my wife, it’s romantic by candlelight in the evenings.”

But Hontar is most concerned about?soldiers at the front line. He says that if they’re alright, everyone will be alright.?

Olena Kravchuk, 35, is a utility worker who lives in Irpin and works in Kyiv.

Olena Kravchuk,?35,?is a utility worker who lives in Irpin and works in Kyiv. The blackouts aren’t affecting her job because she works outside, but at home, her kids have trouble logging into school online and miss classes.

“If there is no electricity and gas, there will be no heat, we are very worried about it,” Kravchuck says. “When you come home from work, there’s no light, you can’t call your children, there’s no cell phone or internet.”

Elena Khaykina, 63, and Larisa Polyakova, 66, are pensioners displaced from Kharkiv who have been living in Kyiv for the past three months.?

Elena Khaykina, 63,?and Larisa Polyakova, 66,?are pensioners displaced from Kharkiv who have been living in Kyiv for the past three months. Both women are very concerned about their loved ones who remain in Kharkiv.?

“My son in Kharkiv has no electricity 24 hours a day, it worries me a lot,”?Polyakova?says. The power cuts are not as intense in the capital.?

“We are from Kharkiv, and we are united here in Kyiv and try to support each other,” Khaykina says. The windows in her Kharkiv apartment are broken from shelling, and she cannot go back and survive winter there.

Bogdan, 30, is a food delivery man in Kyiv. Bogdan, who did not want to give his last name, says power outages affect his work because many cafes have to close, and there are less orders.

He also finds it difficult to charge his electric bike that he uses for deliveries. Heavier snow will make it more difficult to bike around the city.?

When there is no power at home, he listens to audiobooks downloaded on his phone.?

He worries about the soldiers in the trenches facing a harsh winter. And the rest, he says, “we will get through the rest.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?said?on Thursday it was committing $7 billion to Africa over the next four years, as Bill Gates warned that the Ukraine crisis was reducing the amount of aid flowing to the continent.

The Foundation’s pledge, which is up 40% on the amount spent during the previous four years, will target projects tackling hunger, disease, poverty and gender inequality.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, will take the biggest share.

“If you take all aid (into Africa) including all climate aid – we’ll have a few years where it’ll probably go down.”

Read the full story:

The Gates Foundation has pledged to commit $7 billion to Africa over the next four years

Related article Gates Foundation pledges $7 billion for Africa as Ukraine war diverts donor cash | CNN

Ukraine’s pavilion at the?COP27 UN climate?conference in Egypt is built of austere, dark gray walls. It feels like a bomb shelter, a bit out of place among all the brightly colored structures erected by other countries that are showcasing climate solutions and celebrating natural beauty.

The contrast is intentional. The Ukrainians came to Sharm el-Sheikh with a clear mission: to highlight the damage caused by?Russia’s aggressive war?– a war that is funded mostly by oil and gas revenues.

Russia, meanwhile, has largely been invisible at the conference. It has not put up a pavilion, contrary to previous years, and its delegation has been largely sidelined.

That’s an unusual sight in Sharm. The Red Sea resort town is a popular holiday destination for Russians wealthy enough to travel abroad – now more than ever as sanctions and visa restrictions related to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine make many other tourist hotspots inaccessible to them.

Restaurant menus and signs in shops and entertainment venues are often in Russian as well as Arabic, making it clear that Russians – and their money – are welcomed here.

But inside the COP conference venue, the reception has been far less friendly. Ukrainian activists have staged several protests during Russia-hosted events at the summit and protests often include anti-war messages.

At one panel featuring the Russian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology, one protestor shouted, “You are criminals, war criminals. You are killing my people. You are shooting bombs at our people,” before being escorted out of the venue.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has found many new allies among climate activists at the conference by making a clear link between fossil fuels and the invasion. Protests against the war and other conflicts have become part of the daily demonstrations at COP, where “fossil fuels kill” is one of activists’ key messages.

A pavilion hostess explains a presentation that shows Ukrainian soil samples and how the Russian war in Ukraine is having a negative impact on soil quality at the Ukraine pavilion during the UNFCCC COP27 climate conference on November 10, 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The conference is bringing together political leaders and representatives from 190 countries to discuss climate-related topics including climate change adaptation, climate finance, decarbonisation, agriculture and biodiversity. The conference is running from November 6-18.

Related article Ukraine is finding new allies in a Russian tourist hotspot | CNN

Police officers carry a body that was found under debris of a residential house destroyed by a Russian missile strike in the town of Vilniansk in the Zaporizhzhia region,?Ukraine, on November 17.

The Russian defense ministry said the strikes it launched against Ukraine on Thursday targeted missile manufacturing facilities along with “fuel and energy infrastructure” associated with the military.?

“On Nov. 17, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a concentrated strike with long-range precision weapons, air-, sea- and land-based, against military command and control facilities, the military-industrial complex of Ukraine and the fuel and energy infrastructure associated with them,” spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said.?

“As a result of the strike, the production facilities for the manufacture of rocket weapons were hit. An arsenal with artillery weapons supplied by Western countries, prepared for shipment to the troops, was destroyed. The transfer of reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the delivery of foreign weapons to the areas of hostilities have been disrupted,” it added.?

Aerial view taken of the site where a missile strike killed two men in the eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine, November 17.

Ukrainian experts are working at the site of a blast in Poland where a missile killed two people on Tuesday, according to a senior government minister.

“Ukrainian experts are already working at the site of the tragedy in Przewodów caused by Russian missile terror against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted Friday.

“I am grateful to the Polish side for granting them access. We will continue our cooperation in an open and constructive manner, as closest friends do.”

The leaders of Poland and NATO said the missile that landed in the Polish village of Przewodow was?likely fired by Ukrainian forces?to defend against a wave of Russian strikes. The incident appeared to be an accident, they added.

CNN’s Phil Mattingly,?Kevin Liptak,?Radina Gigova,?Jim Sciutto?and?Sophie Tanno contributed reporting.

A gas leak causes bubbles on the surface of the water in the sea in Sweden on September 30.

The blasts at the Nord Stream pipeline in September were caused by?an act of sabotage, Swedish prosecutors said Friday after evidence of explosives was discovered at the sites by investigators.

In a statement, Mats Ljungqvist, the prosecutor leading the preliminary investigation, described the incident as “gross sabotage,” adding that “traces of explosives” were found at the scene.

The preliminary investigation will continue and has yet to determine any charges, the statement said. The prosecutor’s office declined to give further comment, Reuters reported.

Swedish and Danish authorities have been?investigating four holes?in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines which link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea.

Both pipelines have been flashpoints in an escalating energy war between European capitals and Moscow that has pummeled major Western economies, sent gas prices soaring and sparked a hunt for alternative energy supplies since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Read the full story here:

A large disturbance in the sea is seen off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm on Tuesday, September 27. Western nations have said leaks in two Russian gas pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, are likely the result of sabotage. Both of the pipelines, created to funnel gas from Russia into the European Union, run under the Baltic Sea near Denmark and Sweden.

Related article Traces of explosives found at Nord Stream pipelines, Sweden says | CNN Business

Russia has launched renewed strikes on Kyiv’s frontline positions in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to the Ukrainian military.

“The enemy is concentrating its efforts on thwarting our Defence Forces in specific areas … launching assaults in the direction of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said Friday.

Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been fiercely fought over for several months, but they?remain in Ukrainian hands.

Many other Ukrainian positions in the Donbas – the eastern region at the heart of Russia’s war in Ukraine – also came under fire on Thursday, Shtupun added.

Russia will “likely” bolster its offensive operations in eastern Ukraine by redeploying troops from the south, after they were forced to retreat from the city of Kherson last week, according to the UK’s defense ministry.

“Following the withdrawal of its forces from west of the Dnipro River, Russian forces continue to prioritise refitting, reorganisation and the preparation of defences across most sectors in Ukraine,” the ministry tweeted in its daily intelligence update Friday.

“It is likely that Russia will attempt to eventually redeploy some of the forces recovered from Kherson to reinforce and expand its offensive operations near the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast.”

Kremlin building in Moscow, Russia, on October 18.

The West could be a “guiding and reinforcing element” for Kyiv in any negotiations with Moscow over the war in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin.

Without the presence of the West, Kyiv’s position is “highly changeable,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

“Directives” from those countries are “very scrupulously implemented by Kyiv,” he added.?

The Kremlin repeatedly accused Ukrainian authorities of withdrawing from negotiations with Moscow and demonstrating an unwillingness to resume talks, amid renewed Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and energy facilities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously told CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour he did not rule out peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The tense diplomatic relationship between both countries further unraveled after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February.

As the war approaches the nine-month mark, Zelensky proposed a 10-point peace plan in front of world leaders at the G20 summit on Tuesday.

CNN’s Masrur Jamaluddin and Xiaofei Xu contributed reporting.

Police officers carry fragments of a body found under debris of a residential house destroyed by a Russian missile strike in the town of Vilniansk,?Zaporizhzhia?region, Ukraine, on November 17.

The death toll from Russian shelling on a residential building in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region overnight into Thursday has risen to nine, according to the Ukrainian presidential office.

“As of this morning 2 more dead were found” in Vilniansk, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said on Telegram.

“Thus, 9 dead have already been found as a result of Russian terrorists’ missiles that shelled residential buildings yesterday.”

Pictures posted in the aftermath of the attack by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service showed dozens of rescuers working at the scene.

A girl walks a dog during first snow fall in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, on November 17.

Temperatures have plummeted in Ukraine this week, putting the country’s power grid under extra strain as engineers try to repair damage caused by fresh Russian missile strikes, according to the state energy company.

“Due to a dramatic drop in temperature, electricity consumption is increasing daily in those regions of Ukraine where power supply has already been restored after massive missile strikes on November 15 on the energy infrastructure,” Ukrenergo said in a statement Friday.

The latest barrage of shelling from Moscow targeted critical infrastructure in multiple Ukrainian cities, leaving 10 million people without power, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.?

Ukrenergo said it was restricting the use of electricity in some areas as “a necessary measure to preserve the stability of the energy system” and had teams “working around the clock to restore the damaged infrastructure in order to return light to Ukrainians.”

Many parts of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, saw the first snowfall of the season on Thursday.

Read the full story:

A girl walks a dog during first snow fall in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, on November 17, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by YURIY DYACHYSHYN / AFP) (Photo by YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article Russian strikes leave 10 million Ukrainians without power as temperatures plummet | CNN

A view from a detention center on Wednesday, which Ukrainians say was used by Russian forces to jail and?torture?people before they retreated from?Kherson.

Oleksander’s restless pale blue eyes speak as loudly as his words. He is on edge, and with good reason, as he returns to the jail in the newly liberated city of Kherson where he says Russian guards beat him daily.

We pass cell blocks and rusting outdoor exercise cages, move through guard rooms, turnstiles and heavy iron doors, and travel along fences topped in reams of razor wire in this Soviet-era prison until we reach one of the epicenters of Russia’s brutal occupation of Ukraine.

It’s here, in a dark and rubble-strewn corridor, that Oleksander and another former prisoner who didn’t want to be interviewed say Russian guards executed Ukrainian prisoners for pro-Ukrainian chants or tattoos. CNN is identifying Oleksander only by his first name for security reasons.

As Oleksander pushes on a solid, red iron cell door at the end of the corridor, burning wood falls from the ceiling, smoke billows and glowing embers tumble out. The ceiling in this part of the cell block is alight and burning timbers are crashing down.

Read the full story here.

Police prepare for the arrival of Polish President Andrzej Duda in Przewodow on Thursday.

Poland will move quickly with its investigation into the missile that landed on the village of Przewodow on Tuesday, a Polish official told CNN on Thursday.

Speaking to CNN’s Isa Soares, Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lukasz Jasina said Poland is pushing ahead with its investigation into the incident, adding that authorities expect to receive the results in the next few days.

Jasina said Ukrainian experts will also be allowed access to the site, stressing there first needs to be “some legal arrangements to create a good space for their expertise.”

Some background:?Earlier Thursday, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Ukrainian investigators will be allowed to observe the investigation, “but when it comes to participation in proceedings and access to documents and information, it requires specific treaty grounds, specific grounds in the field of international law and international agreements.”

Jasina, who told CNN he comes from the region where the missile exploded, said the mood among his friends and neighbors is “very very sad.”

A man helps a pharmacist find a product with his cellphone flashlight in Lviv on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country is enduring emergency power cuts Thursday night after more Russian missile attacks, just as temperatures fall to freezing and below.

In his daily video message, Zelensky said crews are doing everything to normalize supply, but there were “emergency power cuts again in addition to the planned stabilization ones.”

“As of now, more than 10 million Ukrainians are without electricity,” he said — the same number as on Tuesday night after a barrage of missile attacks.

Most of the outages are in Vinnytsia, Odesa, Sumy and Kyiv regions, the president said.

Yasno, a power supplier in Kyiv, said the city had experienced emergency blackouts all day, with the grid having less than half of its normal supply. It said power engineers were trying to stabilize the system to avoid even greater damage.?

Zelensky said dozens of people were wounded as a result of a missile strike in Dnipro. In Zaporizhzhia, seven bodies had been recovered from the debris of a residential building destroyed by Russian shelling, he said.

Zelensky also welcomed the renewal for four months of the Black Sea grain export accord and the verdict at the MH17 trial in the Netherlands.

Brittney Griner before her court hearing during her trial on charges of drug smuggling, in Khimki, outside Moscow on August 2.

American basketball star?Brittney Griner?has been transferred to a?penal colony?in Yavas, in the western Russian region of Mordovia, her lawyers said Thursday, ending days of speculation over her whereabouts.

Her lawyers, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov, thanked everyone who has reached out in support.

On Wednesday, the US State Department said it had been in touch with Griner’s legal team and was aware of reports she had been sent to a penal colony roughly a seven-hour drive southeast of Moscow.

What is life like in a penal colony??While the conditions vary greatly in different Russian penal colonies, there are?reports?of political prisoners being placed in harsh conditions. Prisoners can be subjected to “solitary confinement or punitive stays in psychiatric units,” the State Department’s human rights report says.

Russian law also allows for forced labor in penal colonies, and in some cases, inmates have been tortured to death, the report says. There are also reports of prison authorities recruiting inmates to abuse other inmates, the report adds.

Read more here.

The?UN-brokered deal?that allows Ukraine to export grain from its Black Sea ports during the war will be extended for 120 days in the same format, according to a news release from the Russian Foreign Ministry published on Thursday.

According to the ministry, Moscow “has clearly and openly emphasised that the agreements on Ukrainian food and the effective implementation of the Russian-UN Memorandum on the normalisation of Russian agricultural exports is a package deal, and that remains unchanged.”

“We took note of the intensification of the UN Secretariat’s effort to fulfill its obligations in this regard and the information provided to us on the intermediate results of its work to remove obstacles to Russian fertiliser and food exports. All these issues must be resolved within 120 days, the period for which the package deal is to be extended,” the ministry said.

The ministry added that “any attempt to use the humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea for military provocations will receive a harsh response.”

Some context:?Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday?cast doubt?on the future of?the agreement, saying it depended on?existing terms being met. Earlier this month, Russia rejoined the deal after saying it was pulling out.

Ukraine and Russia together account for?nearly a third?of global wheat exports, and the grain deal has played a crucial role in lowering the price of wheat and other commodities globally.

Judges enter the court room at the Schiphol Judicial Complex on November 17, in Badhoevedorp, Netherlands.

A Dutch court on Thursday found two Russians and a separatist Ukrainian guilty of mass murder for their involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and Sergey Dubinskiy, who worked for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, were convicted along with Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko, who is believed to have led a combat unit in Donetsk in July 2014.

The three were sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay the victims more than 16 million euros ($16.5 million), but as the convictions were handed down in absentia, none of them are likely to serve their sentences. A fourth suspect, Russian national Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier of the Russian special forces Spetsnaz-GRU, was acquitted.

Flight MH17?was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board were killed, including 15 crew members and 283 passengers from 17 countries.

The downing of the jet happened in the early phase of the conflict between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian forces, a precursor to Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

Read more here.

Russia’s?first mobilization since World War II?may be complete, but the deployment of thousands of soldiers to the battlefields of?Ukraine?is generating dissent and protest on the front lines — and back home.

With the Russian government touting that at least 50,000 of the?recently drafted?are now in Ukraine, a long list of complaints is emerging: Lack of leadership from mid-ranking officers, tactics that lead to heavy casualties, non-existent training, promised payments not received.

There are also logistical difficulties, as reported by soldiers, their families and Russian military bloggers: Insufficient uniforms, poor food, a lack of medical supplies.

And there are discipline issues, with some families complaining their men face charges of desertion and are being held in basements in occupied Ukrainian territory.

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

Astra reported it had the names of 42 people of those detained. It also cited relatives in identifying seven basements or detention facilities in Luhansk and Donetsk for soldiers.

It?quoted?the wife of one detained soldier as saying: “My husband and 80 other people are sitting in the basement; they were stripped naked in order to confiscate their phones, but one person, fortunately, hid the phone.”

Astra said the men were arrested after retreating from the town of Lyman and then refusing to return to the line of fire.

CNN is unable to verify the existence or location of detention centers for men refusing to fight.

Read more here.