Russia-Ukraine War: List of Key Events, Day 1,359 | Russia-Ukraine War

Here are the key events of the 1,359th day of the Russian war against Ukraine.

Here’s how things are going on Friday, November 14:

Struggle

• Russian forces launched a “massive” attack on kyiv on Friday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, with air defenses in action and a series of explosions reported in the capital.
• Klitschko said falling debris hit a five-story apartment building in the Dniprovskyi district on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, and a high-rise building was on fire in the Podil district on the opposite bank.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited troops near Ukraine’s southeastern front line, where he warned of the need to strengthen defenses after his troops lost ground in increasingly intense fighting, far from the main Russian offensive in the country’s east.
• President Zelensky said the situation near the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhia region was “one of the most difficult” along a sprawling front line and that thwarting Russian forces there was essential to protecting the town of Zaporizhia.
• The Ukrainian military said its troops struck a Russian oil terminal in occupied Crimea as well as an oil depot in the occupied Zaporizhia region.
• Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian oil installations and other military targets were hit by domestically produced weapons, including the “Flamingo” ground-launched cruise missile, drone missiles and drones.
• The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces captured two more Ukrainian settlements: Synelnykove in the Kharkiv region and Danylivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
• Russian air defense units destroyed and intercepted 130 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russia, the official TASS news agency reports, citing daily data from the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

Peace talks

• The Kremlin said Ukraine would have to negotiate an end to the war “sooner or later” and predicted kyiv’s negotiating position would deteriorate by the day.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped Washington would not take any steps that would escalate the Ukrainian conflict.
• Lavrov said US President Donald Trump has long advocated dialogue with Russia, sought to fully understand the Russian position on Ukraine and “demonstrated his commitment to finding a lasting peaceful solution.”
• “We are counting on common sense and the fact that maintaining this position will prevail in Washington and that they will refrain from any actions that could bring the conflict to a new level,” Lavrov said.

Energy scandal in Ukraine

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Zelensky discussed the $100 million energy corruption scandal that has engulfed kyiv, the German government said in a statement.
• Zelensky pledged full transparency, long-term support for independent anti-corruption authorities and rapid new steps to regain the trust of the Ukrainian people, European partners and international donors, the statement said.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko also announced an audit of all state-owned companies, including in the energy sector, following the scandal that led to the suspension of two ministers.
• The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced it was lending 22.3 million euros ($26 million) to a Ukrainian energy company in a series of deals, demonstrating its continued support for the sector despite the corruption scandal.
• The EBRD money will go to Ukrainian private energy company Power One to finance new gas-piston power plants and battery energy storage systems, the lender said in a statement.

Aid to Ukraine

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will soon begin a mission to Ukraine to discuss its financing needs and a possible new lending program, said IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack.
• Ukraine is in talks with the IMF over a new four-year loan program for the country that would replace its current four-year, $15.5 billion program. Ukraine has already received $10.6 billion of this amount.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament that the European Union could either borrow the money needed to cover kyiv’s financial needs in 2026 and 2027 against the guarantee of its long-term budget, or each EU country could borrow on its own and provide a grant to Ukraine.
• A third option was a Commission proposal to arrange a loan that would effectively turn into a grant, based on Russian central bank assets frozen in the EU. European finance ministers agreed that financing Ukraine with a repair loan based on immobilized Russian assets would be the most “effective” of the three options considered.
• Europe’s leading development banks and Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz have signed a deal providing an EU grant of 127 million euros ($127 million) in additional financing to the company, on top of a 300 billion euros ($349 billion) loan announced last month to secure Ukraine’s natural gas supplies, amid continued attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure by Russia.
• The Nordic and Baltic countries will jointly contribute $500 million to Ukraine’s priority needs list arms initiative, their defense ministers said in a joint statement.

Russian sanctions

• About 1.4 million barrels per day of Russian oil, nearly a third of the country’s maritime export potential, remains on tankers as offloading slows due to U.S. sanctions on energy companies Rosneft and Lukoil, according to U.S. financial services firm JPMorgan.
• Bulgaria’s parliament has overridden a presidential veto of legislation allowing the government to take control of the Lukoil oil refinery and sell it to protect the asset from looming U.S. sanctions.
• Bulgarian President Rumen Radev had tried to veto a move by lawmakers giving a government-appointed commercial director the power to oversee the continued operation of Lukoil’s refinery in Bulgaria beyond Nov. 21, when U.S. sanctions are due to take effect, and to sell the company if necessary.
• Russian Port Alliance Group, which operates a network of maritime cargo terminals, said foreign hackers targeted its systems for three days in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and attempted hacking.
• The group said critical elements of its digital infrastructure had been targeted in a bid to disrupt exports of coal and mineral fertilizers to its shipping terminals in the Baltic, Black Sea, Far East and Arctic regions. The attack was successfully repelled and operations were not affected, Port Alliance said.