Russia Hits Kyiv’s Internet. Ukraine’s Last City in Western Donbas Nears Collapse. Lavrov Rejects a Ceasefire — While Trump Gives Xi the Same Welcome Putin Received Before the Failed Anchorage Summit.

Internet in Kyiv Knocked Out — and a Starlink Facility Targeted

During the night into Thursday, Russia carried out another attack on Kyiv — this time combining jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones with up to ten Iskander-M ballistic missiles and Zircon hypersonic missiles.

Among the confirmed targets listed by the Russian Defence Ministry were two major data centres in Kyiv, which were seriously damaged and caused a period of complete internet outage across large parts of the city.

Because data centres are much larger targets and require less precision than a petrol station in the centre of the city, this strike could be carried out at night, unlike yesterday’s daylight operation.

It is worth mentioning an alternative theory that circulated afterwards: that Ukrainian authorities themselves shut down the internet in order to conceal the extent of the damage from yesterday’s daylight attack, and that this was subsequently attributed to the Russians.

It is an intriguing idea, but the Russian confirmation that two data centres were specifically targeted is in itself sufficient to explain the outage.

Interestingly, a facility connected to the Starlink system was also reportedly among the targets — which may explain why Ukraine’s own drone attack against Russia that same night was unusually small, involving only dozens of drones rather than the usual hundreds: without a functioning Starlink connection, coordinating and controlling a large-scale drone offensive becomes far more difficult.

The Railway, the Internet and a Pattern Pointing Toward Isolation

Russia is continuing its methodical campaign to cut Kyiv’s connections to the outside world — not only the railway line to Poland, which was directly attacked yesterday, but now also internet and communications infrastructure.

This will not happen tomorrow, and Kyiv will never be completely or totally isolated — landlines, radio and other communications channels will remain, although under constant threat of Russian jamming.

But there is a clear, step-by-step process toward a point where the railway becomes too dangerous to use and Western access to Kyiv becomes severely restricted.

If that happens, the most likely solution for evacuating Western personnel would be a locally negotiated ceasefire and transport by road to Belarus.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed on Thursday morning the capture of Mala Dobropillia, southwest of the city of the same name — securing Russian control over the entire southwestern approach.

Independent Russian sources regarded as reliable, including Raovka and Khairullin, meanwhile confirm that Anivka northeast of the city remains under Russian control.

Raovka has published a detailed assessment: the Ukrainian garrison in Dobropillia is completely surrounded in the city centre, under heavy bombardment, and its days are numbered.

At the same time, Russia’s 51st Army is not waiting for the city to fall — it is now advancing north toward the large village of Bilotserkivka, the Ukrainian logistics base that has been supplying the garrison.

All Russian commentators regard the fall of Dobropillia as a matter of a short time, after which an outflanking manoeuvre westward toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk will begin in earnest.

In Orikhiv, Group East continues advancing northeast and is approaching another settlement.

With Russian forces already confirmed in Novopavlivka and Novoandriivka northwest of the city, the Ukrainian withdrawal route appears to have been cut — exactly the same pattern as in Dobropillia.

If the final remaining village falls, the cauldron around Orikhiv will be completely closed, leaving no organised escape route for the garrison there.

In northeastern Kharkiv region, Group North has announced the capture of two villages in the centre of the pocket surrounding around 1,700 Ukrainian soldiers — the pocket has now been split into at least two, perhaps three, separate sections.

When an encircled force is divided to the point where its units can no longer support one another, resistance usually collapses quickly.

The most striking aspect of the whole situation is that, by all appearances, it was entirely avoidable: after the village of Bila Kolodiazne fell weeks ago, every logic suggested that Ukraine should have withdrawn these forces.

That this did not happen was probably the result of the power struggle in Kyiv surrounding General Syrskyi’s departure and General Drapatyi’s succession — no one wanted to appear weak or defeatist by ordering a retreat in the middle of an internal struggle for power.

The result is that these men are now being isolated and hunted down, a fate made all the more tragic by the fact that it was unnecessary.

There is still remarkably little reliable information about the Lyman offensive — only increasingly extravagant rumours without video confirmation.

The most solid information available still places Russian forces well west of the Zherebets River.

It is worth remembering that Ukrainian counteroffensives have repeatedly set themselves unrealistically ambitious objectives — such as the attempt earlier this year to push all the way south to Velyka Novosilka in the Zaporizhzhia region, an operation that ended in a serious defeat.

If the Kharkiv pocket collapses completely and Velykyi Burluk falls, Russia will be able to intervene in the Lyman area from the north — potentially trapping the Ukrainian offensive force there.

After a 52-minute meeting with Secretary of State Rubio in New York, Lavrov addressed the UN Security Council and stated: “We will not halt the special military operation during negotiations, in any format.”

He accused Europe of seeking a pause solely in order to “pump the Kyiv regime full of weapons” again, and justified Russia’s position by citing “bitter experience.”

Lavrov said Russia remained open to negotiations on a “just peace”, but dismissed a pre-agreed ceasefire as “not serious.”

Rubio said after the meeting that the United States has invited Putin to the G20 summit in Miami in December and hopes he will attend.

Lavrov’s logic is simple and self-interested: Russia is winning the war and has no incentive to give Ukraine breathing space precisely now.

But Lavrov also makes a broader point worth noting: there is no historical rule requiring negotiations to wait for a ceasefire.

During both the Korean War and the Vietnam War, fighting continued for years while the parties negotiated.

The Western insistence that a ceasefire must come first reverses the usual sequence — and raises questions about how genuine the desire for actual negotiations really is.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday for a three-day state visit, his first to the United States in a decade. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump personally greeted him at the aircraft stairs, with a gun salute, honour guard and military band.

It is the kind of reception US presidents normally reserve for the White House rather than an airport — and Trump has previously made such an exception for only one other foreign leader: Vladimir Putin, whom he greeted in exactly the same way on the tarmac in Anchorage last August.

The parallel is striking and probably not accidental.

The Anchorage summit ended, as is well known, with Putin returning home believing he had an agreement with Trump — based on a proposal communicated by Steve Witkoff that largely reflected Russia’s own demands from June 2024.

Trump subsequently failed to deliver on his promise to bring the Europeans and Kyiv into line with that agreement.

It is tempting to speculate whether the conspicuous similarity between Xi’s reception and Anchorage is an attempt to normalise — perhaps even erase — the memory of last year’s embarrassing collapse.

Either way, the pattern of grand ceremony, flyovers and warm personal gestures, followed by little substantive result, appears to be repeating itself.

A US–China trade truce, if it materialises at all, would stand in direct tension with the Graham sanctions law Congress has just passed — legislation giving Trump authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on China precisely because it buys Russian oil.

There are currently no negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, no articulated diplomatic strategy from any European government, and a US–China summit that is likely to end in profound disappointment.

A Ukrainian business leader recently said on Ukrainian television that the country has not prepared adequately for winter — that the entire economic situation, not merely the energy sector, is now critical, and that a major Russian attack could make reconstruction impossible.

That, rather than fantasies about a Russian invasion of Europe, is what should concern Western decision-makers.