Archive November 6, 2025

Russian forces have spread rapidly through Pokrovsk, the city in Ukraine’s east where the warring sides have concentrated their manpower and tactical ingenuity during the past week, in what may be a final culmination of a 21-month battle.

Geolocated footage placed Russian troops in central, northern and northeastern Pokrovsk, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

Russia sees control of Pokrovsk and neighbouring Myrnohrad as essential to capturing the remaining unoccupied parts of the Donetsk region.

It set its sights on the city almost two years ago, after capturing Avdiivka, 39km (24 miles) to the east.

Ukraine sees the defence of the city as a means of eroding Russian manpower and buying time for the “fortress belt” of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk, the largest remaining and most heavily defended cities of Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded their surrender as part of a land swap and ceasefire he discussed with United States President Donald Trump last August. Ukraine has refused.

A recent US intelligence assessment said Putin was more determined than ever to prevail on the battlefield in Ukraine, NBC reported.

Russia seems to have outmanoeuvred Ukraine by striking its drone operators before they had time to deploy, and cutting off resupply routes at critical points.

“Operational and tactical aircraft, backed by drones, significantly disrupted the Ukrainian army’s logistics in Pokrovsk,” said Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Friday. It said it had destroyed two out of three bridges across the Vovcha River, used by Ukrainian logistics to reach the city.

“Unfortunately, everything is sad in the Pokrovsk direction,” wrote a Ukrainian drone unit calling itself Peaky Blinders on the messaging app Telegram. “The intensity of movements is so great that drone operators simply do not have time to lift the [drone] overboard.”

On October 29, Ukrainian commanders reported only 200 Russian soldiers in Pokrovsk.

Peaky Blinders said Russia was sending as many as 300 into the city a day, “in groups of three people with the expectation that two will be destroyed”.

By neutralising Ukraine’s drone operators and using fibre optic drones immune to jamming, Russia reportedly acquired a numerical drone advantage in the city’s vicinity.

Ukrainian commanders said Russia also took advantage of wet weather, which disadvantaged the use of light, first-person-view drones.

Ukrainian military observer Konstantyn Mashovets said the Russian command had developed these new infiltration tactics to exploit Ukrainian vulnerabilities – a lack of manpower and gaps among their units.

“The Russian command ‘tried different options’ for some time,” said Mashovets.

“Russian technical innovations, such as first-person-view drones with increased ranges, thermobaric warheads, and ‘sleeper’ or ‘waiter’ drones along [ground lines of communication], allowed Russian forces to … restrict Ukrainian troop movements, evacuations, and logistics,” the ISW said.

As recently as Saturday, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii framed the battle as one of counterattack rather than defence.

“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “There is no encirclement or blockade of the cities.”

Yet there was clearly alarm. Ukraine sent its intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, to the Pokrovsk area with military intelligence (GUR) forces to keep supply lines open.

Two Ukrainian military sources told the Reuters news agency that the GUR had successfully landed at least 10 operators in a Blackhawk helicopter near Pokrovsk on Friday.

On Saturday, Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed “an operation to deploy a GUR special operations group by a helicopter in 1km (0.6 miles) northwest of [Pokrovsk] was thwarted. All 11 militants who disembarked from the helicopter have been neutralised.”

It was unclear whether the two reports referred to the same group.

Deep air strikes

Russia kept up a separate campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity and gas infrastructure, launching 1,448 drones and 74 missiles into the rear of the country from October 30 to November 5.

Ukraine said it intercepted 86 percent of the drones but just less than half the missiles, such that 208 drones and 41 missiles found their targets.

With US help, Ukraine has responded with strikes on Russian refineries and oil export terminals.

Ukraine appeared on Sunday to strike both a Russian oil terminal and, for the first time, two foreign civilian tankers taking on oil there.

Video appeared to show the tankers at Tuapse terminal on the Black Sea on fire, and the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region confirmed the hit.

“As a result of the drone attack on the port of Tuapse on the night of November 2, two foreign civilian ships were damaged,” he said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it intercepted another 238 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said it struck the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.

Russian regional authorities also said Ukraine attempted to damage a petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan, 1,500km (930 miles) east of Ukraine.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 204 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

According to the head of Ukraine’s State Security Service, SBU, Kyiv’s forces have struck 160 oil and energy facilities in Russia this year.

Vasyl Maliuk said a special SBU operation had destroyed a hypersonic ballistic Oreshnik missile on Russian soil.

“One of the three Oreshniks was successfully destroyed on their (Russian) territory at Kapustin Yar,” Maliuk briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.

Russia unveiled the Oreshnik with a strike on the city of Dnipro a year ago. It says it will deploy the missile in Belarus by December.

Ukraine has been lobbying the US government for Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). So far, Trump has refused, on the basis that “we need them too.”

The Pentagon cleared Ukraine to receive Tomahawk missiles, after determining this would not deprive the US military of the stockpile it needs, CNN reported last week, quoting unnamed US and European officials.

The political decision now rests with Trump on whether to send those missiles or not. The report did not specify how many Ukraine could have.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Aasif Manzoor, a 32-year-old cricketer from Anantnag, a district in the south of Indian-administered Kashmir, was readying himself on Saturday morning to play a match in a star-studded tournament.

Retired global stars, local cricket icons and up-and-coming players were all part of the Indian Heaven Premier League (IHPL), which organisers had billed as a spectacle that they promised would grip the troubled region and draw large crowds.

Instead, Manzoor found himself huddled with his teammates in the corridors of the Radisson, a five-star hotel overlooking the Jhelum River in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s biggest city, which was hosting the series.

Their hotel bookings had been arranged by the Yuva Society, a private group based in India’s northern state of Punjab, which had also organised the tournament. “The staff was refusing to let us check out,” Manzoor told Al Jazeera.

The reason? The organisers had vanished the night before, allegedly after running out of money midway through the tournament.

As the hotel bills mounted and ran into millions of rupees, dozens of players like Manzoor found themselves trapped. Scoring runs and taking wickets wasn’t on their minds any more. Getting out of the hotel was.

They eventually were able to leave, but the rest of the tournament was scrapped.

The embarrassing debacle has raised questions about the event’s planning and the role of the region’s administrators. But to many, the episode is also the latest example of the pitfalls of attempts by the Indian government and corporate entities backed by it to portray a sense of “normalcy” in Kashmir, six years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped the region’s semiautonomous special status.

“It was a shocking experience for us,” Manzoor said.

A star-studded show, now ‘abandoned’

The fortnight-long cricket tournament kicked off on October 25 in chilly Srinagar as winter set in. The competition had eight teams, including 32 former international cricketers, with the bulk of the rest of the players from Kashmir.

Major global stars included former West Indies champion batsman Chris Gayle, ex-Sri Lankan all-rounder Thisara Perera, New Zealand batsman Jesse Ryder, South African Richard Levi and Omani player Ayab Khan.

“For the first time, we will have international cricket superstars like Chris Gayle playing for a local Kashmiri team,” Nuzhat Gul, who heads the Jammu and Kashmir Sports Council, said at the beginning of the tournament.

“The motive for organising such tournaments was to engage the young positively,” she said, adding that the government had offered infrastructure, publicity and logistical assistance to the organisers.

The tournament was supposed to conclude on Friday.

But officials who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity said the event ran into “sponsorship difficulties”. In other words, sponsors didn’t pay up as they had promised to. That challenge was amplified once it became clear that only a trickle of local Kashmiris was coming to watch the matches at the Bakshi Stadium, a sprawling sports facility in the middle of Srinagar.

Things came to a head when the organisers packed up and left in the middle of the night last Friday, leaving players haggling with hotels over unpaid room rents.

Trapped at the Radisson, Manzoor said he tried calling the organisers. But no one picked up or returned his calls.

“It took a while to understand what was going on.”

Eventually, Manzoor said, a senior member from the English Cricket Board, Melissa Juniper, who was also in Srinagar for the event, rang up the British high commission in New Delhi, whose officials spoke to the hotel staff.

“They worked out something, and the players were allowed to check out, including myself,” he added. Juniper, he said, stayed back at the hotel while British officials figured out how to clear the dues.

The British high commission did not return queries from Al Jazeera on its reported mediation with the hotel staff in Srinagar on behalf of the players. But on Wednesday, Mushtaq Chaya, owner of the Radisson in Srinagar, told reporters that the organisers had defaulted on payments of more than 5 million rupees ($57,531).

Meanwhile, FanCode, a cricket streaming app, has since Saturday listed the remaining matches of the competition as “abandoned”.

‘Something cool is coming’

According to Manzoor, players had started realising that there was something wrong with the event even before the organisers packed up and left.

“Local players were demanding that the organisers must first sign a contract with them before they can proceed [to play]. They were assuring us that it would happen. But it did not,” Manzoor said.

“Then suddenly, they left without anyone knowing about it. We did not expect it to end this way.”

Kashmiri authorities are now facing mounting questions from locals: How was the event given a go-ahead without background checks on the organisers? And did the tournament go through the rigorous scrutiny any event in Kashmir is usually subject to in a region known for sweeping restrictions and surveillance?

Police in Kashmir have announced an investigation as regional sports authorities — including Gul of the Jammu and Kashmir Sports Council — are now distancing themselves from the organisers.

“If they did this, the law would take its own course,” said Satish Sharma, the minister for youth services and sports in Kashmir. “An inquiry has started, and action will follow. Police have taken up the case.”

Al Jazeera tried to reach the Yuva Society but has not received any response. Meanwhile, the organisation’s website appears to be down since the debacle. Details about the organisers are no longer available on the portal.

All it still has is a single message flashing on the screen: “Get ready, something cool is coming!”

‘A lot of anticipation’

For a while, it did seem like something “cool” could be coming to Kashmir.

Social media visuals for the event show Gayle, who was one of international cricket’s biggest draws for two decades, taking heavy steps on the damp turf in the Srinagar stadium as his hair swung under a black bandana tied around his forehead.

In most shots, the seats around the venue during matches were sparsely occupied. But in one scene, a small crowd of young fans is jumping with jubilation as heavily armed members of the Indian paramilitary forces surround them.

“There was a lot of anticipation for this tournament,” Parvez Rasool, arguably Kashmir’s best-known cricketer, told Al Jazeera. “That local Kashmiri cricketers would share the same dressing room as these megastars was a major thing in itself.”

Rasool was also to play in the tournament. He rose to stardom in 2013 after briefly playing for the Indian cricket team – the first Kashmiri to do so. His inclusion in the national team was lauded by the Indian media and politicians as an example of the “mainstreaming” of Kashmiris at a time when the region was in turmoil after a crackdown on protesters. Since the late 1980s, Kashmir has been in the throes of an armed rebellion with separatists seeking independence from India.

Rasool said his payments have not been settled by organisers so far. “The people who approached me to take part are big names in Indian cricket, so I consented,” he said, without naming the individuals he was referring to.

“I don’t agree with the allegations that the event was organised in bad faith, but it seems that it may not have been properly planned. The sponsors have reportedly failed to turn up, and the audience wasn’t even 5 percent of what was expected,” he added.

Apples over cricket

Another Kashmiri cricketer who was part of the trials before the main tournament was held said a lot of his peers were already disappointed with the league because of the absence of any formal contracts or payments.

“They took a fee of $14 from bowlers and batsmen and of $20 from all-rounders who took part in the trials,” the 24-year-old said on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions for his comments.

“Everything seemed suspicious from the very beginning. Thisara Perera, the Sri Lankan star, played with us. It was embarrassing that even his uniform wasn’t tailored to his size. The size of his sportswear was 46 [inches], but they offered him 42,” the Kashmiri player said, chuckling.

While some sports enthusiasts in Kashmir said it was the comparatively high price of the tickets at $4 each that kept spectators away, others blamed the timing of the event, which coincided with the annual apple harvest. As a result, many locals were busy tending to their orchards. Apples provide a livelihood for nearly half the region’s eight million people.

“Some matches lasted from 10am until 5 in the evening,” said a video journalist who filmed the tournament for his Instagram page. He spoke on condition of anonymity. “Obviously, who would turn up in the middle of the harvest?”

But to some analysts, the tournament’s collapse is also emblematic of the attempts by Modi’s government and local authorities to portray a sense of normalcy in Kashmir.

Critics argued that such state-backed events aim to depoliticise Kashmir’s realities even as surveillance tightens, dissent is curbed and political representation remains suspended.

In 2019, Modi’s government annulled Kashmir’s special status and downgraded the region into a federally controlled territory during a crackdown on journalists, human rights campaigners and opposition politicians.

Omar Abdullah, who returned as Kashmir’s chief minister during last year’s polls, has been pleading in vain with New Delhi to reinstate Kashmir’s pre-2019 powers.

Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at the University of Delhi who writes literary and cultural criticism, told Al Jazeera that the cricket tournament fit a broader pattern.

“It’s been a part of Modi’s political repertoire right from 2014 to organise these celebrations to give an appearance of cheerfulness so that his critics don’t question him,” Apoorvanand, who goes by a single name, said, referring to the year Modi became India’s prime minister.

Similar events held in Kashmir in the past have come under criticism, such as last month when a popular New Delhi-headquartered television news channel organised a concert featuring popular Indian performer Sonu Nigam.

The concert was boycotted by many Kashmiris, citing the performer’s past tweets in which he had criticised the practice of loudspeakers being used for the Islamic call to prayer.

“The principal addressees of these events are Modi’s voters across what is known as the country’s Hindi-speaking belt. The message that his administration wants to telegraph is that everything is hunky-dory in the [Kashmir] Valley,” Apoorvanand said.

“It is to give them a sense of ownership over the region.”

Kashmiri researchers who have been observing the conflict for decades said that while large events such as the cricket competition are by themselves harmless, any effort to use them to send broader messages about the current state of Kashmir is problematic.

“If these events are meant to suggest Kashmir is ‘normal’, then what better way to demonstrate [that] than withdrawing the military forces, the draconian laws and the suppression of dissent?” said Mohamad Junaid, an associate professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States.

United States President Donald Trump will host the heads of five Central Asian countries – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – in an annual summit in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The group, founded in 2015, is known as C5+1, which refers to the five Central Asian countries and the US.

According to the US Department of State, the forum aims to increase cooperation between Washington and the Central Asian countries to “advance regional solutions to global challenges” through “fair and reciprocal economic partnerships, increased energy security, and promoting peace through strength”.

“C5+1 working groups support three pillars of engagement: economy, energy, and security,” it added.

But Thursday’s meeting with the heads of former Soviet republics comes as both Russia and China look to secure their own trade deals in the region.

Shairbek Dzhuraev, president of Crossroads Central Asia, an independent research institute, told Al Jazeera that he expects trade agreements to be discussed on Thursday, especially those involving “critical mineral resources”.

Here’s what we know about the summit:

What is the C5+1?

The forum was established in 2015 at its first meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, when the foreign ministers of the six countries pledged to deepen cooperation over trade, transport, energy and communications.

Talks were also used to discuss security concerns relating to the war in Afghanistan before the US pulled out in 2021.

In 2023, then-US President Joe Biden held a meeting with Central Asian leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly for the first time as well, marking a significant shift in US focus to the region.

According to a statement issued by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the discussion between the two leaders in 2023 addressed “strengthening cooperation to address security challenges, including threats such as cybersecurity, terrorism, extremism, illegal migration and drug trafficking”.

Biden hailed the inaugural meeting of the leaders as a “historic moment” and claimed the countries were building on years of “close cooperation”. “A cooperation that is grounded in our shared commitment to sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity,” he said.

What trade deals have been agreed by the US in Central Asia recently?

In the first six months of Trump’s second term, the US has signed trade deals with Central Asia worth a collective $12.4bn.

In September, Trump hailed Uzbekistan’s government’s $8bn deal with US aviation manufacturer, Boeing, to buy Dreamliner aircraft as a “great deal”, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. Welcoming the deal signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev for Uzbekistan Airways to acquire 22 Dreamliners, Trump said it would create more than 35,000 jobs in the US. 

“President Mirziyoyev is a man of his word, and we will continue to work on many more items,” Trump wrote.

The same month, Kazakhstan signed a $4.2bn agreement with the US ​​locomotive parts maker Wabtec. According to the US Department of Commerce, the agreement will provide Kazakhstan with 300 locomotive kits to build locomotives for the Kazakh national rail company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy.

Trump, again, took to Truth Social to trumpet the deal, referring to it as “the largest Railroad Equipment Purchase in History”.

Why are rare-earth minerals top of the agenda this year?

Central Asia has abundant reserves of rare-earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacture of everything from smartphones to air force jets.

In April, Kazakhstan reported that geologists had discovered deposits of the rare-earth metals, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and yttrium – which are used in the manufacture of components of smartphones and computer hard disks.

While still preliminary, as the deposits need to be verified and processed, the deposits’ site in Karagandy, central Kazakhstan, is estimated to contain more than 20 million tonnes of these metals, according to the Ministry of Industry and Construction. If that proves to be correct, it is close to half the rare-earth resources of China, which has the most in the world.

At the end of October, Kazakhstan’s Bank for Development announced the launch of a $1bn financing programme to extract and process the rare-earth metals between 2025 and 2030.

Rare-earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacture of defence equipment, smartphones, electric vehicles and for the development of AI technology among many other uses, have become a flash point in the trade war between the US and China over the past year.

Since taking office in January, Trump has spoken frequently of the importance of the US acquiring more rare-earth materials and making it a top foreign policy goal.

China is home to the world’s largest reserves of rare-earth materials at 44 million tonnes. It also processes 90 percent of the world’s rare earths. The country has deposits of 12 of the 17 rare-earth metals on the periodic table, but placed restrictions on exports of seven of these in April this year. In October, it announced restrictions on five more, but has since agreed to delay those during talks between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea last week.

The US is actively seeking rare earth deals in other parts of the world. In October, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described a framework agreement it had reached with the US as supporting a pipeline of $8.5bn “ready-to-go” projects which will enable Australia to massively increase its mining and processing capabilities. The two countries will each invest $1bn over the next six months into mining projects.

Meanwhile, a US agreement to assist with the rebuilding of Ukraine after the war with Russia ends, also features US access to rare earth deposits in the country. In May, following months of negotiations, the two countries signed a rare-earth minerals deal that would give the US preferential access to new minerals and natural resources licences in Ukraine.

It is, therefore, unsurprising that Trump is now interested in Central Asia. Dzhuraev explained that the region is “rich with mineral resources of various forms, particularly Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two biggest economies of the region”.

“So I expect certain talks on this subject, whether it will come out into some public announcement or not, I don’t know, but that will be the one big topic,” he said.

Who else is looking to cement relations in Central Asia?

Two of the US’s biggest rivals: Russia and China.

In October, Russia held its second Central Asia summit in Tajikistan, in which President Vladimir Putin also called for enhanced trade relations. The first meeting was held in 2022, at which the six countries agreed to strengthen relations.

Much of Central Asia once fell within the Soviet Union, making this a region that is close to Putin’s heart.

In an address to the five other heads of state within the region, Putin affirmed Moscow’s commitment to “further strengthening the strategic partnership and alliance with your states, as well as deepening constructive political, economic, and cultural ties”.

“Significant progress has already been achieved in all these areas. For instance, last year’s trade between Russia and the Central Asian states, the five nations, exceeded $45 billion. This is generally a good result,” he said.

According to the Observatory for Economic Complexity, a trade data visualisation platform, in 2023, the most common destinations for Russian exports included China at $129bn, India at $66.1bn, Turkiye at $31bn and Kazakhstan at $16.1bn.

Meanwhile, China has also been angling to up its influence in the region.

During a Kazakh-Chinese Business Council meeting in Beijing, which was attended by Kazakh President Tokayev and senior Chinese representatives in September, the two countries signed 70 trade agreements worth nearly $15bn, according to the Kazakh news agency, The Astana Times.

According to the Eurasian Development Bank, mutual trade between China and Central Asia in 2024 amounted to $66.2bn.

Will the US make inroads in Central Asia against this competition?

Dzhuraev said the US will struggle to compete with Russia and China when it comes to making trade deals with Central Asian countries.