Russia Recruited a Child to Kill — Case Goes to Court

In Rivne, a 14-year-old girl recruited by Russian handlers killed a Ukrainian soldier on assignment, and her case is now headed to court, a stark sign of Moscow's willingness to use minors as weapons inside Ukraine. The violence continued elsewhere overnight: in occupied Kharkiv region Russian forces forcibly removed 25 civilians, including children, while in Zaporizhzhia a Russian FPV drone struck a minibus at a bus stop, injuring three people. Against that backdrop, the information war moved too. Montenegro detained the founder of Rybar, the Russian propaganda network, a rare strike against a Kremlin-aligned outlet abroad, while deeper inside Russia drones knocked out part of a Yandex data center in Kaluga. There was relief and renewed grief among journalists too. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry confirmed Ukrainska Pravda reporter Tkach was released and reached Vienna, though the outlet's editor said he remains unreachable and cameraman Bondarenko was wounded. Separately, MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn called for journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna to be posthumously named a Hero of Ukraine. Elsewhere, Germany's AfD stretched its lead over Merz's CDU/CSU to a record in the polls, France offered concessions and an emergency teacher plan to calm student protests, Kosovo elected economist Shiroka Pula president after months of crisis, and the EU heads into winter facing a gas supply deficit.