UNITED24 Media Telegram Highlights (from yesterday lunchtime eu time)
Ukraine and Russia have agreed on a new large-scale prisoner exchange, Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation at the talks in Abu Dhabi, said.
βοΈUkraine may test the first European ballistic missile defense system as early as this winter, President Zelenskyy said.
According to the President, Ukraine is working with European partners to develop a new anti-ballistic missile system and hopes to see initial results in the coming months. However, he stressed that Ukraine cannot carry out such a project on its own.
Russian forces are absorbing record losses each month with diminishing battlefield returns. While Moscow previously traded mass casualties for tactical advances in 2024, October 2026 marked the bloodiest month of the invasion with no territorial gains.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that during recent peace talks, Russian negotiators claimed they controlled vast Ukrainian territory they have never touched. Moscowβs military and intelligence envoys insisted they occupied an extra half of the Ukrainian-held Donbas, presenting fabricated frontlines as serious baseline facts.
Denmark will provide a β¬20 million energy support package for the Kherson region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the cityβs liberation from Russian occupation.
President Zelenskyy announced that Denmarkβs new military aid package, worth approximately β¬643 million, will fund the procurement of strike and interceptor drones, ammunition for F-16s, and support for the PURL program.
All EU accession negotiation clusters for Ukraine and Moldova could be opened by the end of the year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.
Russian forces attacked six major electrical substations in the Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, and Cherkasy regions.
In Kryvyi Rih, they struck a heating utility facility, disrupting heat supplies to residential buildings. Energy workers are currently working to restore heating across the city.
Russian forces also targeted railway infrastructure in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions.
Russia is attempting to destroy all vessels in the Black Sea, regardless of their country of origin, President Zelenskyy said.
He stated that Russian missile and drone attacks pose a threat to shipping in the Black Sea. Ukraine therefore believes a system of vessel escorts is needed to protect agricultural exports.
Ukrainian retaliatory strikes have disrupted operations at Russian oil refineries accounting for approximately 30% of the countryβs total refining capacity, Reuters reports.
According to two sources in the Russian oil industry, attacks over the past week alone have caused disruptions and emergency shutdowns at nine of Russiaβs 35 largest refineries.
The combined design capacity of the facilities targeted since late October is about 300,000 metric tons of oil per day, equivalent to 2.2 million barrels. This represents roughly one-third of Russiaβs total refining capacity.
However, this does not mean that one-third of the countryβs refining operations have been completely shut down. The sources estimate that the actual reduction in output could reach 200,000 metric tons per day.
Affected facilities include refineries in Ryazan, Yaroslavl, and the Volga region. On the night of November 9, the Kirishi refinery in the Leningrad region, Russiaβs second-largest, was also struck.
The latest retaliatory wave of attacks is worsening Russiaβs fuel problems, further reducing gasoline and diesel production amid existing shortages in some regions.
Meanwhile, Moscow is demanding an end to strikes on its energy infrastructure even as it continues to systematically target Ukrainian power plants and energy grids.
Russian aerial bombs destroyed a medical facility, an administrative building, and more than 80 homes in Sloviansk over the past 24 hours.
The last of three tankers carrying Russian diesel to the U.S. has changed course and is no longer bound for New York, Bloomberg reports.
The company managing the vessel said its destination had been changed from New York to βawaiting orders,β as the final destination has yet to be confirmed.
Russian oil exports have fallen sharply, with daily shipments dropping by 700,000 barrels over the course of a week, Bloomberg reports.
For the week ending November 8, Russia exported an average of 3.37 million barrels of oil per day, the lowest level in three weeks. A total of 23.6 million barrels were loaded onto tankers, down from 28.53 million the previous week.
One contributing factor was the suspension of shipments at the key Pacific port of Kozmino. Satellite imagery showed that both of its berths remained empty for three consecutive days, presumably due to maintenance work.
Shipments through Russian ports on the Baltic and Black Seas also declined. On November 2, a Ukrainian drone struck an oil-pumping station in Samara, a critical hub linked to export routes toward Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk. However, Bloomberg has not confirmed a direct link between the strike and the decline in shipments.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has resumed intensive attacks on Russian oil refineries. Since the beginning of November, six facilities with a combined capacity of 1.7 million barrels per day have been targeted.
As a result, the four-week average gross value of Russiaβs seaborne oil exports has fallen to a six-week low of $2.48 billion.
18 Ukrainian universities have been included in the prestigious international Leiden Ranking.
Published by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in the Netherlands, the ranking covers 3,049 universities across 122 countries. It evaluates institutions based on their research output, citation impact, and international collaboration.
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ranked first among Ukrainian institutions by the number of scientific publications. The ranking recorded 1,217 research papers published by the university between 2021 and 2024, 35 of which rank among the top 10% most-cited papers worldwide. The university placed 1,562nd globally.
Lviv Polytechnic National University ranked second among Ukrainian institutions, with 928 scientific publications. Other Ukrainian universities included in the ranking are the Kyiv and Kharkiv Polytechnic Institutes, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Bogomolets National Medical University, and others.
In three Russian regions, one in every three men who died between the ages of 18 and 49 was killed in the war against Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.
In Buryatia, Tuva, and Zabaykalsky Krai, approximately one-third of men in this age group who died between the start of Russiaβs full-scale invasion and mid-2024 were victims of war-related causes. This is according to leaked Rosstat (Russian Federal State Statistics Service) data analyzed by Bloomberg.
By comparison, the share was 10% in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As of October 30, 2026, Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service had identified 5,879 deaths in Buryatia, 2,421 in Tuva, and 5,736 in Zabaykalsky Krai, compared with 3,505 in Moscow and 2,362 in St. Petersburg.
The Rosstat dataset, obtained by the Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans and the Ukrainian group Silent Crow, contains more than 11 million death certificates covering the period from 2021 through the end of August 2026. The records include information on age, place of residence, and circumstances of death.
According to Bloombergβs analysis, nearly 392,700 deaths are directly linked to the war. This classification is based on specific codes and terms such as βmilitary operation,β βshelling,β and βdronesβ used to categorize causes of death.
A Putin associate is developing an βelixir of longevityβ using elderly monkeys, Russian media report.
The Kurchatov Institute, headed by Mikhail Kovalchuk, a longtime associate of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, has assembled a unique collection of elderly monkeys. Scientists hope to use the animals to identify ways to extend human lifespan. Kovalchuk discussed the research at the Kurchatov Genomic Forum in Moscow, according to Russian media.
The instituteβs breeding facilities house more than 7,000 primates representing 22 species.
βWe are screening elderly monkeys to track every stage of the aging process. We are evaluating individuals ranging from 18 to over 30 years old. We conduct comprehensive screenings, including biochemical and structural analyses, examining blood vessels, the brain, and everything else. Primates are the closest model we have. This serves as the foundation for creating a regulatory system to extend lifespan,β Kovalchuk said.
In collaboration with the Russian Scientific Center of Surgery, the Kurchatov Institute has already established a biobank containing blood samples from long-lived monkeys. According to the centerβs director, Konstantin Kotenko, the samples will be used to study the aging process.
Mikhail Kovalchuk is considered a longtime friend of 74-year-old Putin and serves as his unofficial scientific adviser. His brother, billionaire Yuri Kovalchuk, is a member of Putinβs inner circle.
Putin has also shown a keen interest in longevity research. In September 2025, during his visit to China, it emerged that he had discussed extending the human lifespan to 150 years with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Genetic research is being conducted not only at the Kurchatov Institute but also by Putinβs eldest daughter, endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova.
In October, she spoke at the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, where a longevity laboratory had been established. Vorontsova described attempts to overcome the natural limits of human lifespan as an effort to βcheat God.β
According to The Wall Street Journal, Russian life-extension projects include research into slowing cellular aging through gene therapy and growing transplantable organs inside genetically modified pigs. The Kremlin is allocating significant funding to such research.
In October, drone operators from the Phoenix unit of the State Border Guard Service destroyed more than 520 Russian fixed-wing UAVs worth a total of over $14 million.