Here are the key events from day 1,364 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 19 Nov 2025
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Here is how things stand on Wednesday, November 19:
Fighting
- Russian drones struck two central districts – Slobidskyi and Osnovyansk – in Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, injuring five people in an apartment building and triggering a fire, authorities said.
- Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 22 residents had been evacuated from one section of the damaged apartment building while another drone struck an area outside a medical facility, injuring a doctor and damaging the building and nearby cars.
- The Kharkiv region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said 11 drones were deployed in the attack and seven people were injured in total.
- Russia’s civil aviation authority said it was temporarily halting flights at Krasnodar International Airport in southern Russia on Wednesday morning, saying only that it was for flight safety.
- Russian air defences shot down four Ukrainian drones en route to Moscow on Tuesday, the city’s mayor said. Moscow’s two largest airports, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo, stopped all air traffic for a time before later reopening, Russia’s aviation watchdog said.
- Ukrainian drone attacks have caused extensive damage to the power grid in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region. Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-appointed head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said about 65 percent of consumers were without power in the region.
- Ukraine attacked two thermal power stations in Russian-occupied Donetsk, according to a Telegram post by the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces. Major Robert Brovdi said the Starobeshivska and Zuivska power plants had been hit by his forces.
- Ukraine said it attacked military targets in Russia with United States-supplied ATACMS missiles, calling it a “significant development”. The military said in a statement that the “use of long-range strike capabilities, including systems such as ATACMS, will continue”.
- Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov conducted a regular inspection of troops fighting in eastern Ukraine, his ministry’s outlet, Zvezda, reported. Video posted by Zvezda showed Belousov presenting awards to military servicemen.
Military aid
- The Trump administration has approved a $105m arms sale to Ukraine to help it maintain existing Patriot missile air defence systems. The sale includes upgrading from M901 to M903 launchers, which can fire more missiles at once.
- Spain will provide Ukraine with a new military aid package worth 615 million euros ($710m), Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Tuesday.
- “Your fight is ours,” Sanchez said alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “neoimperialism” seeks to “weaken the European project and everything it stands for”.
Regional security
- The United Kingdom lacks a plan to defend itself from military attack, members of parliament warned while at least 13 sites across the UK have been identified for new factories to make munitions and military explosives, according to a report.
- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said authorities have identified two Ukrainian nationals who had collaborated with Russia for “a long time” and were responsible for an explosion on a Polish railway route to Ukraine.
- “The most important information is that … we have identified the people responsible for the acts of sabotage,” Tusk told lawmakers. “In both cases, we are sure that the attempt to blow up the rails and the railway infrastructure violation were intentional and their aim was to cause a railway traffic catastrophe,” he said.
- The Kremlin accused Poland of succumbing to Russophobia after Warsaw blamed the explosion on a railway route to Ukraine on two Ukrainian citizens who it said were recruited by Russian intelligence.
- Soldiers from across the NATO alliance practised counterdrone skills in Poland on Tuesday with troops from the US, UK and Romania joining their Polish counterparts at the exercises in Nowa Deba in Poland’s southeast corner.
- The European Commission will propose a new initiative to help speed up the development and purchase of innovative defence technologies, according to a draft document seen by the Reuters news agency.
US soldiers carry an AS3 interceptor, part of the US-made, AI-powered counterdrone system MEROPS, during a presentation in Nowa Deba, Poland [Kacper Pempel/Reuters]
Ceasefire
- Zelenskyy said Ukraine will try to “reactivate” the diplomatic process to end the war with Russia. Zelenskyy later announced he planned to go to Turkiye on Wednesday to try to revive talks with Russia on how to end the war in Ukraine.
- No face-to-face talks have taken place between Kyiv and Moscow since they met in Istanbul in July.
- Steve Witkoff, a US special envoy, is expected to join the talks with Zelenskyy in Turkiye, another Ukrainian official involved in the meeting’s preparations told the AFP news agency.
- Ukraine plans to claim $43bn in climate compensation from Russia to help fund a planet-friendly rebuild after the war, Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Economy, Environment and Agriculture Pavlo Kartashov announced at the UN climate conference in Brazil.
- “We in Ukraine face brutality directly, but the climate shockwaves of this aggression will be felt well beyond our borders and into the future,” Kartashov said.
Politics and diplomacy
- One of Ukraine’s main opposition parties physically blocked lawmakers from holding a vote in parliament on Tuesday to dismiss two ministers over a corruption investigation, demanding the removal of the entire cabinet instead.
- Zelenskyy made a one-day visit on Tuesday to Spain and took the opportunity to view Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a painting that depicts the horrors of war and specifically the bombardment of civilian targets in Spain by fascist German and Italian forces.
Economy
- Russian state conglomerate Rostec said its defence exports have fallen by half since 2022 as domestic orders became a priority during the war in Ukraine. Until 2022, Russia held second place in the world after the US in defence exports, but the volumes dropped “due to the fact that we have had to supply most of our production to our army”, Rostec chief Sergey Chemezov told reporters.
- Russian lawmakers endorsed new tax hikes on Tuesday as Moscow looks for new revenue sources to boost its economy during its nearly four-year war with Ukraine. Legislators in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved the key second reading of a bill to raise the value-added tax from 20 percent to 22 percent.
Sanctions
- US oil firm Exxon Mobil has joined rival Chevron Corp in considering options to buy parts of sanctioned Russian oil firm Lukoil’s international assets, sources familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency.
- Exxon is considering options for Lukoil assets in Kazakhstan, where both the US and the Russian firm have stakes in the Karachaganak and Tengiz fields, the sources said. Chevron, another partner in these assets, is also studying options to buy.
