The Guardian..
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The US has claimed that North Korea delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
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Fighting on the eastern frontline, in Avdiivka, entered a fourth day as Russia seeks to regain the initiative in its biggest offensive in months. Ukraine’s top military command said that it had repelled more than 20 attacks over the past day around the town, while there were claims Ukrainian reservists were being sent in to shore up defences after initial Russian breakthroughs.
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Vladimir Putin dismissed the idea that Russia damaged a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia and suggested such claims were made up to divert attention from what he said was a western attack on Nord Stream.
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EU leaders meeting later in October will demand “decisive progress” on using Russian assets frozen by sanctions to help Ukraine, according to their draft statement.
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Former Olympic champions Yelena Isinbayeva and Shamil Tarpischev – Russia‘s two International Olympic Committee members – have no contractual links to the country’s military and have not supported the invasion of Ukraine, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, said.
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No final communique is expected to be released at the end of the International Monetary Fund’s meetings in Marrakech because of a disagreement on how to refer to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a European official said on Friday…..
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NY Times….
Russian and Ukrainian forces were locked in fierce fighting around the eastern frontline town of Avdiivka for a fourth straight day on Friday, in one of Moscow’s biggest military offensives in months.
Ukraine’s top military command said that it had repelled more than 20 attacks over the past day around the town, a linchpin of regional defenses whose capture by Russia would ease the way to the nearby, larger cities of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka.
Local officials described round-the-clock fighting and residential buildings that had been reduced to rubble by shelling, with heavy bombardments and the deployment of large numbers of troops and tanks by Russian forces.
“It was a hot night in Avdiivka,” Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the town’s military administration, told Ukrainian television. “The assaults do not stop, day or night.”….
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“The enemy sees Avdiivka as an opportunity to gain a significant victory and turn the tide of hostilities,” Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for Ukraine’s southern forces, said on Thursday.
But as much as Ukrainian forces have struggled to break through Russia’s formidable defensive lines in the south, it will not be easy for Russian troops to overrun Kyiv’s heavily fortified positions around Avdiivka, which has been on the front line since Russian-backed militants seized territory in eastern Ukraine, including the nearby city of Donetsk, in 2014.
The government in Kyiv has warned in recent months that Moscow was massing troops and equipment in eastern Ukraine, where Russia claims to have annexed the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, even though it does not fully control them.
The attack on Avdiivka has coincided with Russian ground troop assaults near Kupiansk, another frontline town in the east, local officials said…..
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Washington Post….
An official with Ukraine’s State Security Service, the SBU, said a joint operation with Ukraine’s navy had damaged the Buyan missile carrier on Friday in the port of Sevastopol. The Pavel Derzhavin patrol boat was hit two days earlier. The Russian submarine Alrosa came under attack on Thursday but escaped damage, the official said…..