Tag: military

As the war enters its 656th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, December 11, 2023.

Fighting

• One civilian was killed and another wounded after Russian forces dropped an explosive from a drone on the town of Beryslav in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson. Prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into the incident, which took place on Saturday morning. Both victims had been walking on the street at the time of the attack, authorities said.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Joe Biden will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday at the White House where the two will discuss the “urgent needs” facing Ukraine. The meeting comes as Biden tries to reach an agreement with the United States Congress that would provide military aid for Ukraine and Israel. Zelenskyy is also expected to meet senators and hold private talks with House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.
• Zelenskyy spoke briefly with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban while attending the inauguration of Argentinian President Javier Milei, according to a video published on the Argentinian Senate’s YouTube channel. Orban’s press chief Bertalan Havasi confirmed the encounter but did not say whether Orban would continue to oppose Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.
• Ukraine strongly condemned Russian plans to hold presidential elections next March in occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which Moscow annexed in 2022, declaring the polls “null and void” and promising to prosecute any observers sent to monitor them.
• Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, voiced hope that a coalition of countries formed to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken illegally to Russia by Moscow will work out a faster mechanism to bring them home. Some 19,000 children are still believed to be in Russia or separated from their families in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

• Matviy Bidnyi, Ukraine’s minister of youth and sport, said the country must consider whether participating in the 2024 Olympics is in the nation’s interests after the International Olympic Committee announced athletes from Belarus and Russia would be able to compete as “neutrals” without flags, emblems or anthems.
• Municipal workers in Kyiv dismantled a statue of Mykola Shchors, a Soviet field commander during the Russian Civil War, as part of an ongoing campaign to remove all Soviet-era monuments.

Weapons

• Bulgaria’s parliament approved the provision of additional military aid, including portable anti-aircraft missile systems and surface-to-air missiles, to Ukraine. The state-run BTA news agency said 147 lawmakers in the 240-seat chamber voted in favour of the plan. Ukraine will have to repair the weapons before they can be deployed, or use them for spare parts.

As the war enters its 653rd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Friday, December 8, 2023.

Fighting

• Russia launched a swarm of Iranian-designed attack drones, damaging port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region and killing one civilian. The Ukrainian air force said it destroyed 15 of the 18 Shahed drones. The attack was the first on the Danube ports since November 21.
• Ukraine urged residents to save electricity after Russia shelled a thermal power plant near the front line causing serious damage as temperatures plunge below freezing. The energy ministry, which did not name the plant, said two of its power units stopped working, leading to a “temporary shortage of electricity” in the grid.
• United Nations officials told the Security Council in New York that intensifying Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities were worsening humanitarian conditions across the country. Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca said Russia must stop its attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure that are “prohibited under international humanitarian law” while Ramesh Rajasingham, the UN humanitarian coordinator, said “the deaths, injuries and level of destruction of vital civilian infrastructure is staggering”.
• Russia began using smaller attack groups with the backing of armoured vehicles and air cover in its long-running effort to capture Ukraine’s eastern town of Avdiivka, Ukrainian officials said. In its Thursday evening update, Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces had rebuffed 15 attacks in Avdiivka and nearby villages, after reporting 34 attacks in its morning bulletin.
• Russia’s FSB security service said it had arrested a Belarusian man it accused of blowing up two trains in Siberia last month allegedly as part of a sabotage campaign conducted by the Ukrainian intelligence services.

Politics and diplomacy

• An aid tracker from the Kiel Institute showed Ukraine’s allies have drastically scaled back their pledges of new aid to the country, which have fallen to their lowest level since the start of the war. The Germany-based institute said new military, financial and humanitarian aid promised to Ukraine between August and October 2023 fell almost 90 percent from the same period in 2022.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia hoped US lawmakers would continue to block White House requests for billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine as Republicans demand immigration concessions be included in the assistance package. Peskov accused US President Joe Biden of “demonising” Russia in his attempts to get Congress’s approval for the spending.
• Visiting Beijing, top European Union officials urged China to do more to press Russia to end its war in Ukraine. European Council President Charles Michel said the EU would like China, which has not condemned Moscow’s full-scale invasion, to “be more assertive” and “be very clear they support the UN Charter and condemn this war caused by Russia against Ukraine”.
• Speaking to journalists following the summit, a Chinese foreign ministry official insisted that, despite the bloc’s calls, Beijing would not be able to sway Moscow. Russia “is a very independent sovereign nation”, Wang Lutong, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s European department, told a press briefing. “President Putin is making his decision based on his own national interest and security,” he said.
• Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida promised $4.5bn to Ukraine, including funding for generators and other power supplies, as well as measures to clear Russian mines.
• British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, on a visit to the US, said there was a strong argument for seizing frozen Russian assets and using them to help rebuild war-ravaged Ukraine.
• Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he wanted to arrange a meeting between Zelenskyy and Hungarian leader Viktor Orban amid Budapest’s opposition to a proposal to start talks on EU membership for Kyiv. An EU summit is due to take place next week, and Orban has said leaders could fail to achieve a consensus on Ukraine’s membership.

Weapons

• Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries, said Kyiv will work with two firms from the US to jointly manufacture 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine. The shells are vital for the war, but Kamyshin said production was unlikely to start for at least two years because Ukraine had never produced such shells before.
• Kyiv said it signed an agreement with the US to help develop weapons production in Ukraine. “The document will facilitate the building of production facilities in our country to provide the armed forces with the necessary weapons, in particular in the areas of air defence, production of critical munitions, and repair and sustainment,” the Ukrainian presidency said in a statement.

As the war enters its 652nd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, December 7, 2023.

Fighting

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians that Kyiv would defeat Russia and win a fair peace in an unusual early-morning video that showed him walking through Kyiv on his way to pay his respects to fallen soldiers on what Ukraine marks as Armed Forces Day. “It has been difficult, but we have persevered,” he said. “No matter how difficult it is, we will get there. To our borders, to our people. To our peace. Fair peace. Free peace. Against all odds.”
• Russia launched a major drone attack on southern, central and eastern Ukrainian regions, damaging privately owned and commercial buildings as well as key infrastructure. Air defences shot down 41 of 48 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia’s western Kursk region and Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
• Russian television broadcast footage of what it said was a US-built Bradley infantry fighting vehicle captured on the front line in Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Channel 1 said the Bradley, one of several dozen supplied to Ukraine this year, was immobilised by Russian fire and abandoned by its crew. The broadcaster suggested that its capture would enable Russian forces to identify the vehicle’s vulnerabilities.

Politics and diplomacy

• Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries met virtually with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of solidarity and agreed to a new ban on Russian diamonds. The countries will ban non-industrial Russian diamonds by January and those sold by third countries from March, they said in a joint statement. The G7 includes Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• Legislation to provide $106bn in new security assistance for Ukraine and Israel was blocked in the US Senate as Republicans pressed their demands for tougher measures to control immigration at the US border with Mexico.
• Illia Kyva, a former pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for charges including treason and incitement to violence, was shot dead near Moscow.  News agencies, including Reuters and AFP, quoted sources saying Kyva was killed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
• Oleg Popov, a deputy in the pro-Moscow regional parliament in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, was killed in a car bombing. Ukraine did not immediately comment on Popov’s reported death.

• The US charged four Russia-affiliated soldiers with war crimes over their treatment of a US citizen kidnapped from his home in the village of Mylove in southern Ukraine in April 2022 and held captive for 10 days. The Justice Department accused the four of beating and torturing the man, who was not named, and staging a mock execution.
• Kathmandu District Police Chief Bhupendra Khatri said 10 people had been arrested in connection with the illegal recruitment of young men from Nepal into the Russian army. The country this week told Moscow not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army, and to send home any Nepali soldier in its ranks after six citizens were killed while fighting in Ukraine.
• The UK announced 46 new measures against individuals and groups it said were involved in Russia’s military supply chains. Those sanctioned included businesses operating in China, Turkey, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan, Britain’s foreign ministry said. The Chinese embassy in London said it condemned the move and would counter anything that undermined its interests.

Weapons

• Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon as Austin announced an additional new $175m aid package for Kyiv, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, and also anti-armour systems and high-speed anti-radiation missiles. The package will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, which takes weapons from existing US stockpiles
• A joint US-Ukraine defence conference was held behind closed doors in Washington. Zelenskyy told delegates that Kyiv was ramping up domestic military production. “Ukraine does not wish to rely solely on partners. Ukraine aspires to and is capable of becoming a security donor to all of our neighbours once it has ensured its own safety,” he said.

• At the conference, representatives from the US and Ukrainian governments signed an agreement to ramp up weapons co-production and data sharing. Areas of concentration include “air defence systems, repair and sustainment and production of critical munitions”, Jason Israel, the White House National Security Council’s Director for Defense Policy and Strategy, told the audience.
• The Reuters news agency, citing documents it had seen, said officials from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also presented a new list of US weapons it says it needs to fight the Russian military. The list included sophisticated air defence systems, F-18 fighter jets, a variety of drones, and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.

As the war enters its 651st day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Wednesday, December 6, 2023.

Fighting

• Russia targeted an aid centre, a medical centre and residential buildings in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions, killing three people and injuring at least 11, officials said. The International Rescue Committee confirmed an overnight missile attack hit its humanitarian centre, “I am Kherson”, destroying stockpiles of aid.
• Ukraine’s military said it shot down 10 out of 17 attack drones launched overnight by Russia. The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region said three drones had struck an unspecified infrastructure target, but there was minimal damage. In the Kharkiv region in the east, authorities said drones hit private homes and residential buildings in at least two different settlements.
• Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems destroyed or intercepted a total of 41 Ukraine-launched drones. Twenty-six were destroyed over Russian territory, and 15 over the Sea of Azov and the Crimean Peninsula, the ministry said in a statement. It did not say whether there was any damage.
• Ukraine said the drones hit several “important military facilities in Crimea” including radar systems and an anti-aircraft missile control system. A Ukrainian defence source with knowledge of the operations of the SBU military intelligence services told the AFP news agency the attacks were a “result of a special SBU operation”. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
• Russia confirmed that Major-General Vladimir Zavadsky, the deputy commander of Russia’s 14th Army Corps, had been killed “at a combat post” in Ukraine.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cancelled plans for a video-link appeal for new aid to lawmakers in the United States as some Republicans attempt to link such support to US immigration policy.
• Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, told a US think tank that the postponement of US assistance for Kyiv would create a “big risk” of Ukraine losing the war with Russia.

• Six Ukrainian children will be returned to their immediate families in Ukraine from Russia under a deal brokered by Qatar, and are on their way home via Moscow. Kyiv has accused Russia of taking about 20,000 Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of their families or guardians.
• The US, meanwhile, announced sanctions against Dzmitry Shautsou, the head of the Belarus Red Cross, accusing him of being complicit in the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has suspended the Belarus Red Cross for failing to sack Shautsou.
• Russia rejected a “substantial” proposal for the release of businessman and former Marine Paul Whelan as well as journalist Evan Gershkovich, according to the US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. Miller declined to go into detail on the proposal, which he said had been offered in “recent weeks”. Whelan is serving a 16-year jail term for spying, while Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich was arrested in March and accused of espionage. Both men deny the charges.
• Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot sought to reassure Ukraine of continued support from the Netherlands during an unannounced trip to Kyiv following the election victory of Geert Wilders, whose far-right party wants to stop weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “Be assured of our support. Your fight is our fight. Your security is our security,” the foreign minister said during a joint press conference with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
• Washington imposed new Russia-related sanctions, targeting a defence procurement network consisting of nine entities and five people based in Russia, Belgium, Cyprus, Sweden, Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

Weapons

• Ukraine said it was investigating alleged corruption in arms procurement but said there was no “misuse” of the Western weapons sent to the country to fight the Russian invasion. “There are several proceedings related to arms procurement,” said Oleksandr Klymenko, the head of the anticorruption prosecutor’s office. He added that these included contracts amounting “from 10 to 100 millions of euros”, but said he could not disclose details.