Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 650

Summary for Tuesday, 5th December 2023 - DAY 650

• President Joe Biden’s budget director, Shalanda Young, said in a blunt letter to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson that if military assistance dries up it would “kneecap” Kyiv’s fight against the Russian invasion. “Cutting off the flow of US weapons and equipment will kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield, not only putting at risk the gains Ukraine has made, but increasing the likelihood of Russian military victories,” she said.
  
  
• Speaker Johnson said the Biden administration had “failed to substantively address any of my conference’s legitimate concerns about the lack of a clear strategy in Ukraine”. Johnson also repeated the Republicans’ insistence on tying any Ukraine aid to changes in US policy on the southern border with Mexico, as the number of migrant arrivals rises.
  
  
• Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán demanded that a summit of EU leaders next week avoid any decision on Ukraine’s coveted goal of getting approval for membership talks. The European Commission recommended the bloc’s leaders give their approval to launch membership talks as soon as it meets final conditions but their unanimous agreement is needed.
  
  
• A Russian general died while deployed in Ukraine, the governor of Russia’s Voronezh region said, the latest high-ranking Russian military figure to die during the 21-month offensive. “Maj Gen Vladimir Zavadsky, deputy commander of the 14th Army Corps of the Northern Fleet, died in the line of duty in a special operation zone,” Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev said on Telegram, using the Russian term for its offensive in Ukraine.
  
  
• President Vladimir Putin said Russia should never repeat Soviet-era mass repressions, even as Moscow carries out an unprecedented crackdown on opponents of its Ukraine campaign. “It is important for us that nothing like this repeats itself in the history of our country,” Putin told his human rights council, according to Russian news agencies, referring to the mass repression seen under the Soviet Union.
  
  
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched in February last year, accounts for about 150m tons of carbon dioxide emissions, a Ukrainian deputy minister cited experts as saying on Monday. “The war has a devastating impact on the environment. Air, soil and water is polluted as a result of the fighting,” Viktoria Kireyeva, Ukraine’s deputy minister of environmental protection and natural resources, said at a conference on the sidelines of the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai.
  
  
• Putin said he regretted deteriorating ties with western countries, as he accepted the credentials of two dozen new ambassadors at the Kremlin. “The times are not easy,” Putin told the envoys. Addressing the new ambassador of the UK, he said “In the postwar [second world war] period and until recently, our countries were able to build relations. But the current state of things … is well known and we should hope that the situation – in the interest of our countries and nations – will change for the better.”
  
  
• Ukraine said it had exported around 7m tons of cargo through the Black Sea despite Russia’s blockade – a more than fivefold increase in just over a month. “200 vessels exported 7m tons of cargo,” Ukraine’s reconstruction ministry said in a post on Telegram. The cargo included “almost 5m tons of Ukrainian agricultural products”.
  
  
• Poland has called on the EU to restore permits limiting transit for Ukrainian truckers, prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said as Polish and Slovakian truckers blocked several border crossings to Ukraine. Polish drivers have been blocking the crossings since 6 November, demanding that the EU reinstate a system whereby Ukrainian companies need permits to operate in the bloc and the same for European truckers to enter Ukraine.
  
  
• Ukraine’s military said it had attacked oil depots in the Russia-controlled Ukrainian city of Luhansk on Sunday. Its forces carried out a “successful strike”, the Strategic Communications Department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram, without going into further detail.
  
  
• Russian forces are assaulting the industrial town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine from two new directions, Ukrainian officials said on Monday, as Moscow expanded its bid to capture the near-encircled town. Moscow has been trying for nearly two months to seize Avdiivka, an industrial town in the eastern Donetsk region that has become the fiercest flashpoint on the sprawling frontline.
  

Russia claims dozens of Ukrainian drones downed overnight

Ukraine’s military shot down 10 out of 17 attack drones launched overnight by Russia

Nepal has asked Moscow not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army and immediately send back any Nepali soldiers back to the Himalayan nation, after revealing six soldiers serving Russia’s military had been killed

Two killed in Russian strike on Kherson

Russian soldier shot dead commander who mocked his 'Ukrainian' name

Russia confirms death of seventh major general since invasion of Ukraine

Today’s UK Ministry of Defence intelligence briefing focused on Russian gains in Maryinka, a small Donetsk town that has been at the frontline of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine since 2014.

Slovak lorry drivers interrupted a blockade of the country’s freight border crossing with Ukraine on Monday night after four days

Six Ukrainian children to be returned from Russia through Qatari mediation

Qatari minister of state for international cooperation said both countries fully cooperated.

[Qatar has facilitated] the reunification of six additional Ukrainian children with their families in time for the festive holidays.
Both sides cooperated fully and engaged in good faith throughout the process, with Qatar serving as an intermediary.

It is 2pm in Kyiv and here is a summary of today’s events so far:

• At least two people were killed and one wounded after Russian forces struck the southern city of Kherson, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency said. Regional prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into one of the strikes, which occurred at about 9am and killed a 48-year-old man and a woman who had not yet been identified.
  
  
• Ukraine’s military shot down 10 out of 17 attack drones launched overnight by Russia, Ukrainian authorities said. The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyy, said three drones had struck an unspecified infrastructure target, causing a fire, but damage had been minimal and no casualties had been reported.
  
  
• Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted a total of 41 Ukraine-launched drones overnight and early morning, the Russian defence ministry has said. Twenty-six of the drones were destroyed over Russian territory, and 15 were intercepted over the Sea of Azov and the Crimean peninsula, the ministry said. It did not say whether there was any damage caused by the attack or falling debris.
  
  
• Six children will be returned to Ukraine from Russia under a deal brokered by Qatar, according to a Qatari official. The children are en route to Ukraine via Moscow, the source said. This is the second phase of a Qatar-mediated return of children, after four minors were returned in October.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin will make a one-day trip to both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia tomorrow, the Kremlin said. The Russian president will hold talks focusing on bilateral relations, the war between Israel and Hamas and other international issues, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
  
  
• Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, will travel to Russia on Thursday along with a political and economic delegation, the Tasnim news agency reported. Moscow and Tehran have boosted security, political and economic ties since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
  
  
• Two Finnish companies are suspected of having exported drones and other military classified products worth over €3m (£2.6m) to Russia in violation of EU sanctions, Finnish customs said. The agency said that nearly 3,500 drones are thought to have ended up in Russia as a result.
  
  
• Nepal has asked Moscow not to recruit its citizens into the Russian army and immediately send back any Nepali soldiers back to the Himalayan nation, after revealing six soldiers serving Russia’s military had been killed. “The government of Nepal has requested the Russian government to immediately return their bodies and pay compensation to their families,” Nepal’s foreign ministry said late on Monday.
  

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the minister of internal affairs in Ukraine, has shared a video purporting to show Russian children shooting at targets featuring the faces of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, US president Joe Biden and Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg at a festival in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

A growing number of Russian women are demanding the return of their husbands, sons and brothers from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine

Russian oil giant Lukoil has said it would consider selling its oil refinery in Bulgaria, following a Bulgarian government plan to end imports of Russian crude oil

Russians ‘killing their own wounded soldiers with drones to prevent capture’

Russia’s tactic of killing its own troops to avoid them being captured poses a practical problem for Kyiv – fewer POWs to swap for captured Ukrainian soldiers.

Russian forces are killing their own troops using drones so they can’t be captured by Ukraine, Kyiv’s military and security services have claimed.
Spokesman for the Tauride Defense Forces, Oleksandr Stupun, made the claim on national TV on Monday evening, saying: “The fact is that the Russians do not allow their soldiers to surrender.
“There have even been cases when Russian drones have killed their own wounded.”
Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukrainian intelligence (HUR), told Kyiv Post such incidents have been recorded “repeatedly, including by Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance using [drones].”
Referring to the documented cases of Russian units firing on their comrades trying to escape the front lines, he said: “Barrier units and killing their own soldiers is what the Russian army is really using against its own.

“Those who refuse to go into battle and carry out criminal orders or go on meat assaults. This is all a tactic of terror and intimidation of our own people in order to reduce the number of refuseniks, deserters, and those who voluntarily surrender.
“This is actually a reaction to the fact that there are quite a few people willing to surrender to Ukrainian captivity.”
According to Ukrainian figures, over the past three weeks around 80 Russians have surrendered in the Tavriya sector, one of the hottest areas of fighting around the besieged town of Avdiivka.
Russia’s apparent tactic of killing its own troops to avoid them being captured poses a practical problem for Ukraine – fewer POWs to swap for captured Ukrainian soldiers.
Yusov added: “No matter how much we hate the Russian occupiers and invaders, of course, replenishing Russian prisoners in Ukrainian captivity is also important to speed up the return of our defenders from Russian captivity.”
While there is currently no video evidence specifically of drones being used by Russia to kill its own troops, there are plenty of examples of them using other methods.

Earlier this year footage emerged of Russian barrier units firing on their own men trying to escape, a practice supported by evidence obtained with POWs.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1669429787822260224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1669429787822260224%7Ctwgr%5Ef689af52cb19febf592ce0956602d4eaa3aaaa4b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kyivpost.com%2Fpost%2F25078

Another video released in October appeared to show a Russian soldier shooting dead a wounded fellow soldier before looting his body.



And in interviews with Kyiv Post, Russian POWs say they were told to blow themselves up with a grenade rather than be captured and face “Ukrainian torture.”

Closing summary

• Six children will be returned to Ukraine from Russia under a deal brokered by Qatar, according to a Qatari official. The children are en route to Ukraine via Moscow, the source said. This is the second phase of a Qatar-mediated return of children, after four minors were returned in October.
  
  
• British foreign secretary David Cameron has told the House of Lords that there will be no reduction in UK military support for Ukraine in 2024. The update comes after the White House yesterday warned that “it is weeks away from running out of money to support Kyiv’s defence against Russia’s invasion”.
  
  
• At least two people were killed and one wounded after Russian forces struck the southern city of Kherson, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency said. Regional prosecutors opened a war crimes investigation into one of the strikes, which occurred at about 9am and killed a 48-year-old man and a woman who had not yet been identified.
  
  
• Russia claims it downed dozens of Ukrainian drones overnight. Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted a total of 41 Ukraine-launched drones overnight and early morning, the Russian defence ministry has said.
  
  
• Ukraine’s military shot down 10 out of 17 attack drones launched overnight by Russia, Ukrainian authorities said. The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyy, said three drones had struck an unspecified infrastructure target, causing a fire, but damage had been minimal and no casualties had been reported.