Kyiv Post Morning Memo – Everything You Need to Know on Tuesday, Nov. 29

Good morning from Kyiv. It was a quiet night in the Ukrainian capital with no air raid sirens, but the entire country is on high alert with another Russian mass-missile attack expected imminently.

What’s happening today?

In positive news, NATO foreign ministers are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Bucharest where the U.S. is expected to reveal a further financial aid package for Ukraine.

The “substantial” amount is designed to deal with the damage caused by Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, but whether it will come quickly enough to counter the expected salvo of missiles remains to be seen.

You can read more about that story here.

What did Zelensky say last night?

In his daily address on Monday, Nov. 28, President Zelensky discussed the Russian shelling of recently-liberated Kherson, claiming 30 settlements had been fired upon 258 times in just one week.

“They are capable of nothing but devastation,” he said. “This is all they leave behind.

“And what they are doing now against Ukraine is their attempt to take revenge. To take revenge for the fact that Ukrainians have repeatedly defended themselves from them.

“Ukraine will never be a place for devastation.”

Zelensky also mentioned the work being done to create a “Special Tribunal for the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine”.

“There will be more news tomorrow,” he added.

What’s the situation on the front lines?

The Nov. 29 U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) Intelligence Update focuses on the tactical weaknesses of the Russian army, specifically the deficiencies of deploying Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs).

Other Topics of Interest

N. Korean Troops Massed in Russia to Enter Ukraine War ’Soon’: Pentagon Chief

Austin said he had "not seen significant reporting" of North Korean troops being "actively engaged in combat" to date.

“The BTG concept has played a major part in Russian military doctrine for the last ten years,” the MoD writes, “and saw battalions integrated with a full range of supporting sub-units, including armor, reconnaissance and (in a departure from usual Western practice) artillery.”

The MoD says the current war and Russia’s ongoing defeats have exposed a number of weaknesses with this approach, including insufficient numbers of infantry and commanders not being given enough authority to “flexibly exploit opportunities in the way the BTG model was designed to promote”.

Any other news I need to know about?

Of course, here’s a roundup of the morning’s top stories:

• Ukrainian infantrymen have revealed to Kyiv Post what they still need to defeat Russia;
• Russia has hit out at comments from the Pope that some minority groups of soldiers have behaved worse than others in the invasion of Ukraine, the BBC reports;
• The Washington Post has a great story on Ukraine’s drone hunters scrambling to destroy Russia’s Iranian-built fleet;
• In an exclusive interview with Kyiv Post, Natalya Popova, head of the wildlife rescue center UAnimals, talked about the rescue of wild animals from a warzone.

Additionally, the Institute for the Study of War’s Nov. 28 daily assessment covers a multitude of topics, most notably:

• The Russian-claimed capture of several small villages around Bakhmut on Nov. 27 and 28 does not portend an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut;
• Recent Russian force deployments to Belarus during November are likely part of a Russian effort to augment Russian training capacity and conduct an information operation;
• Russian forces are likely preparing to launch a new wave of missile strikes across Ukraine in the coming week, but such preparations are likely intended to sustain the recent pace of strikes rather than increase it.

And that’s it for today’s Morning Memo. Kyiv Post will bring you the latest news throughout the day and we’ll be back with another edition tomorrow.