Here are the key events from day 1,353 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, November 8:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s top general Oleksandr Syrskii said Kyiv’s troops were stepping up assaults on Russian forces around the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia to ease pressure on the embattled hub of Pokrovsk.
• Ukrainian forces carried out a long-range drone strike on a petrochemical plant in Russia’s Bashkortostan region. Kyiv’s military intelligence agency said the attack on the Sterlitamak plant sparked a fire in part of the facility that produces an additive for aviation fuel.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is massing troops near the city of Vovchansk in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
• Ukrainian energy provider DTEK has returned electricity to 170,000 households in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, after overnight Russian drone strikes on energy infrastructure. The company said 373 settlements had been left without power, but utility workers had returned electricity to all critical infrastructure and most residential consumers.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces have taken control of the village of Uspenivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region.
• More than 1,400 citizens from three dozen African countries are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has said. He said Russia was enticing Africans to sign contracts he described as “equivalent to … a death sentence”, and urged African governments to warn their citizens.

Sanctions

• The United States has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from sanctions connected to Russian energy, the White House and Hungary have said, after President Donald Trump heaped praise on Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a White House meeting that glossed over differences about Hungary’s use of Russian oil and gas.
• Trump, who has been pushing Europe to avoid using Russian energy in order to pressure Moscow to end its war with Ukraine, expressed sympathy with his ally, Orban, before the announcement, saying: “We’re looking at it [a sanctions exemption], because it’s very different for him to get the oil and gas from other areas.”
• Greece has agreed to import 700 million cubic metres of US liquefied natural gas per year starting in 2030 in its first long-term deal with Washington, as the country seeks to replace Russian supplies to Europe.
• Two tankers carrying about 1.5 million barrels of Russian Urals crude have dropped anchor at sea on either end of the Suez Canal, in an apparent sign of the difficulty Moscow is having selling oil due to Western sanctions. The vessels Sikar and Monte 1 were both loaded with oil from Russia’s Baltic port of Primorsk in early October and have remained anchored near the canal for over a week.
• Moldovan Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said Russian energy company Lukoil will have to stop its operations in the country as of November 21 due to US sanctions. Junghietu said the company, which owns petrol stations and operates an airport fuel storage facility, will not be able to provide petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Ukrainian affairs

• President Zelenskyy has appointed Yuri Cherevashenko as the new commander responsible for drone air defences, a role seen as critical in defending against Russian attacks.
• The president’s website said Cherevashenko had experience in helping create Ukraine’s first group of reaction forces of air defence mobile brigades. He also played a role in developing interceptor drones, which Zelenskyy portrayed as a key part in countering intensive Russian drone assaults.
• Ukrainian state oil and gas firm Naftogaz said it was increasing imports of US liquefied natural gas through Polish firm Orlen and US partners to ensure supplies for the winter amid continuing Russian strikes on the energy system. In a statement, CEO Serhiy Koretskyi said the imports would total at least 300 million cubic metres.

Regional security

• The European Union has adopted stricter visa rules for Russian nationals in light of what it describes as the “weaponisation of migration, acts of sabotage and potential misuse of visas”. Russian nationals will no longer be eligible for multiple-entry visas and must apply for a new visa each time they travel to the EU.
• Russia is set to double its stocks of artillery, missiles and munitions by 2030 compared with 2022, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, said the chief of Germany’s joint operations command, Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius suggested a link between recent drone incidents in Belgium and discussions over the use of frozen Russian assets, which are held by Belgian financial institution Euroclear, to fund a giant loan to Ukraine.
• Sightings of drones over airports and military bases have become a constant problem in Belgium and have caused major disruptions across Europe in recent months.
• A British man who offered the United Kingdom’s then-Defence Minister Grant Shapps’s personal information to purported Russian spies has been jailed for assisting a foreign intelligence service.
• Howard Phillips offered Shapps’s home address and phone number to two people he believed were Russian agents, but who were in fact British undercover officers, prosecutors said. The 66-year-old denied one count of engaging in conduct intended to materially assist a foreign intelligence service.

Russian affairs

• A man whose lawyer says he accidentally stumbled on information about pro-Ukrainian combat units while browsing the internet on a bus is the first Russian known to be investigated under a new law banning online searches for material Moscow deems “extremist”.
• Russian media quoted Sergei Barsukov, a lawyer in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, as saying he was representing 20-year-old Sergei Glukhikh, who had been reported by his internet service provider to the FSB security service for viewing information about units Russia regards as terrorists.