Pro-Russian local authorities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region said that the Russian army and its allied forces continue to restore areas of Donetsk that were under the control of the Ukrainian army, and that a civilian was killed and 4 others wounded in Ukrainian artillery shelling.
The Russian Defense Ministry stated that its forces are repelling attempts by Ukrainian forces to regain lost positions south of Donetsk.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian Staff Command stated that its forces repelled 8 Russian attempts to advance in Donetsk.
The Ukrainian governor of Donetsk said that 4 civilians were wounded in Russian bombing that targeted several cities and towns in the province during the past hours.
In the city of Kramtorsk, Russian bombing caused damage to nearby houses.
The Ukrainian army also said that two people were killed and 10 others wounded in Russian bombing of the southern Kherson province.
Authorities in Kherson Province stated that they had begun evacuating patients from provincial hospitals to safer districts.
With the escalation of Russian bombing of the Kherson region, the Ukrainian army said that a number of villages in the province are under continuous Russian bombing.
Ukrainian authorities said infrastructure was damaged and advised residents of the area to leave.
As for the pro-Russian local authorities, they announced the killing of 6 civilians in shelling by Ukrainian forces.
In the Zaporizhia district, the Ukrainian authorities of Melitopol said that the Ukrainian forces destroyed 3 ammunition depots and equipment for the Russian forces, and wounded 130 Russian soldiers in the bombing they launched on the city.
For its part, the Ukrainian army said that the Russian forces bombed the infrastructure in what it called the liberated part of Zaporizhia, destroying 19 houses.
Within the framework of prisoner exchange deals between the two sides, TASS said, quoting the Russian Ministry of Defense, that 9 Russian prisoners were liberated in a prisoner exchange deal with Ukraine, while the head of Zelensky's office stated that Ukraine had recovered 12 people, including 3 civilians, as part of a prisoner exchange with Russian forces.
Cruise missiles with fake nuclear warheads
This comes amid British military intelligence information that Russia has begun resorting to removing nuclear warheads from old nuclear cruise missiles and then firing them at Ukraine, and said that a weight is likely to be placed in place of the warheads.
And she said - in her daily assessment of the Ukraine war - that a system like this will cause destruction through the kinetic energy of the missile and unspent fuel, but it is unlikely to achieve reliable results against targets.
And the ministry considered that "these improvised actions illustrate the level of depletion of Russia's stock of long-range missiles."
The Center for Strategic Communications of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that a Russian missile carrying an imaginary nuclear warhead was shot down on Thursday, November 17, in the sky of Kyiv.
❗️ Russia is removing nuclear warheads from aging nuclear cruise missiles and bombarding Ukraine with missiles without a warhead, British intelligence reports.
Open source images show debris from a downed AS-15 KENT (X-55) air-launched cruise missile, pic.twitter.com/rY3pRfC8Zt
- 🇺🇦War in Ukraine🇺🇦 (@Rinegati) November 26, 2022
greater military support
On the political front, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo held consultations with President Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Zelensky said he had asked for greater international military support for his country, especially in the field of demining.
During a joint press conference with De Croo, he praised the support provided by Brussels to Ukraine militarily and in the field of energy supply.
In the same context, a spokesman for the German government said - yesterday, Friday - that Berlin is discussing with its allies Poland's request to provide Ukraine with the Patriot air defense missile system, after Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of NATO, said that NATO would not oppose this step.
Germany had handed over the Patriot system to Poland to help it secure its airspace after a missile "originating from Ukraine" fell and killed two people last week, but Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak asked Berlin to direct the system to Ukraine instead of Poland.
From Zelensky's meeting (right) with the Belgian Prime Minister in Kyiv (Reuters)
On the other hand, NATO carried out, on Friday, maneuvers on the border of the Russian province of Kaliningrad, which is located between Poland and Belarus, and the alliance said that there would be no peace if Russia won in Ukraine.
The Polish Ministry of Defense said that the exercises include two thousand soldiers from the land and air forces, and more than a thousand pieces of combat and logistical support equipment are used, while a senior Polish officer stated that the exercises are part of a major maneuver that has been taking place for several weeks in the region.
Russian criticism
For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Ukrainian president has entered his own orbit and has now begun to blackmail the West in several ways.
And she explained in a statement to a Russian channel that Western countries understand that Zelensky is out of their complete control, and that he has already entered an uncontrollable orbit.
The spokeswoman noted that Ukraine now needs more and more Western money and weapons on a global scale;
Because of the difficulties faced by the West.